Liam’s mouth squirmed into an ugly sneer. ‘You always take his part.’
Reaching up, he carefully spread the ends of the kingly torc and gently removed it from around his father’s throat. Holding the silver ornament in both hands, he extended it to me. ‘Would you so honour me?’
I gazed at the torc and, after a moment’s hesitation, said, ‘Perhaps we should wait until we’ve returned to Dúnaird for a proper kingship ceremony. Rónán could perform it for you.’
‘You gainsay me already?’ said Liam sharply. ‘Is this how we begin, old friend?’
‘Nay, nay,’ I said, taken aback by the sharpness in my new lord’s tone, ‘only that our kinsmen would want to participate in the king-making.’
‘Our people will have their day when the druids come to affirm the decision,’ Liam pointed out. ‘Aye, and Rónán can make the ceremony. We will celebrate then.’ He looked down at the body of his father and his voice took on a softer tone. ‘But the people also need a king now—not in ten days’ time when we lay Ardan with his fathers.’
Again, he thrust the torc at me, insisting I take it. ‘Will you honour me, or must I do it myself?’
With no little reluctance, I placed the torc around Liam’s neck and closed the ends—for better or worse, sealing the fate of our tribe. Then, without a word, our new lord started off once more. ‘Bring the men.’
‘Where are you going? They’ll be lighting the funeral pyres soon.’
‘Not my father,’ Liam snarled. ‘I’ll not be leaving him to the flames. We’re going home.’
34
‘I think I saw Médon and some of the others out on the plain,’ intoned Galart in a voice that sounded like it came from inside an empty shell. ‘The fianna should be here soon.’
Conor put out a hand to the exhausted warrior. ‘Rest now and take some food if you can find any. We’ll have need of you later, so restore your strength while you can. Tell the others.’
Fergal—his hair matted, cloak and breecs spattered with mud and blood, a rent in his siarc revealing an ugly gash in his upper chest—leaned on the shaft of his spear too exhausted to move. ‘No sign of Ardan and the Darini? Nothing at all?’ he asked, his voice shattered from shouting.
‘Maybe they were never here,’ suggested Donal; head in hands, he sat beside Conor on the rim of the inner ditch of the council ring. ‘That, or they are still on the way.’
‘Lucky them if they are,’ said Fergal. He made to turn and staggered backward, almost falling into the ditch.
‘Sit down, brother, before you collapse,’ Conor advised. Looking out across the battlefield—the once sacred ground now a foul morass strewn with the corpses of men and horses, of friend and foe alike. A dazed few survivors searched among the dead, stumbling on unfeeling feet like sleepwalkers. Conor shook his weary head, trying to clear it of the thick buzzing noise only he seemed to hear. ‘There will not be a single tribe that has not lost their most esteemed warriors—kings and warleaders included.’
‘Except the Brigantes,’ put in Donal. ‘It seems they had not yet arrived either.’
‘No doubt Vainche the Vain wanted to make a grand procession of it,’ grumbled Fergal. He turned red, tired eyes toward the plain stretching away to the west. He sighed, too tired to raise any spite at the thought. ‘Ach, well, I expect we should go back to our camp and wait for the others. There is nothing to keep us here.’
Slowly, like enfeebled old men, the four rose on stiff and wobbly legs, took up their weapons, and started across the devastated ground, pausing here and there to speak to those who were searching among the fallen for friends or kinsmen, and collecting valuables and weapons to be shared out among the living. They had just started down the slope path leading to the plains below when they heard someone call out, ‘Wait, lord! We would speak to you.’
Conor paused and turned around to see three Auteini warriors stumbling toward them. ‘I know you,’ said Conor. ‘You are the battlechief who lost your lord—’
‘And you saved us,’ said the warrior. Before Conor could reply, the warrior added, ‘That is why we want to join you.’
‘Join us?’ wondered Fergal. ‘Why would you be wanting to do that?’
The man looked to Conor and answered, ‘We have no one else.’
‘What about your tribe?’ asked Conor. ‘Now that your king is dead, your people will be needing you all the more in the days to come.’
‘I will not lie,’ replied the Auteini battlechief. ‘Our tribe is in a bad way. We can no longer defend the coast. We came to the gathering hoping to find a lord who would agree to help resettle us.’
‘We have discussed it,’ offered another of the three, ‘and we believe our people will fare better with you to lead them than anyone else we know.’
‘Especially after what we saw last night. Truly, lord, you have no equal in battle,’ said the third warrior—the first person to mention Conor’s extraordinary transformation. Not everyone had seen it, but enough had that word had begun circulating among the survivors that a new champion had appeared among them.
‘Will you have us?’
Conor looked at the three of them and felt their need. Though they hardly knew what they were asking, how could he turn them away? ‘I will,’ he told them. ‘You and your people will be welcome to join us.’
The Auteini battlechief pressed the back of his hand to his forehead in the ancient acknowledgement of fealty. ‘Thank you, lord. We are yours to command.’
‘Then go and tell your people what is in your mind to do. If they all agree—’
‘They will,’ said one of the warriors.
‘If they all agree,’ repeated Conor, ‘then make ready and return to us in the spring. Bring with you whatever you can carry.’
‘That we will,’ said the battlechief. They took their leave then, and started away. One of them turned back and called, ‘Where shall we come to?’
‘Here,’ Conor told him, spreading his arms to take in Tara Hill. ‘You will find us here.’
The three Auteini went away and as soon as they were alone once more, Fergal said, ‘Come to us here in the spring? We cannot be staying here, brother.’
‘Why not?’ asked Conor. He turned and started down the path to the plain once more.
‘Because…,’ began Fergal, then, unable to conjure a coherent argument, looked to Donal. ‘Tell him, brother. He’ll listen to you.’
‘Because,’ said Donal, falling into step behind Conor, ‘there is nothing here—no food, no shelter, no stronghold.’
‘Once of a time, there was.’ Conor stopped again, his eyes narrowed as if peering far into the distance to discern the shape of a thing moving toward him through the morning murk. He turned to face his questioners. ‘You say we cannot stay here, but I say that is exactly what we are going to do. Brothers, we are taking Tara for our own.’
‘Taking Tara…,’ Donal repeated slowly. ‘Here is a new thing.’
‘New, maybe—but that does not make it wise or good,’ blustered Fergal. ‘You cannot be claiming Tara for your own. The lords will take a dim view of that. They’ll never allow it.’
‘How many men were killed last night?’ asked Conor, defiance edging into his tone. ‘Answer me that, brother. How many?’
‘How should I be knowing that?’ replied Fergal, somewhat tetchily. ‘Do you know?’
‘I do not,’ replied Conor, ‘but I know that every last one of those warriors shed life’s sweet blood to save Eirlandia—and he did it here in this place.’ He flung a hand wide to take in the entire hilltop. ‘Hear me, brothers, Eirlandia lost a great many of its best warriors last night—aye, and many of them kings and battlechiefs. Not so?’ He looked to Fergal, who offered a sober nod.
‘You said the lords would not look well on my taking this hill,’ Conor continued, ‘but I ask you which lords do you mean?’ He gestured across Tara’s plains below, strewn with the corpses of slaughtered defenders and a few shattered survivors picking thr
ough the carnage of last night’s catastrophe. ‘Who among them will make bold to forbid us taking Tara for our stronghold?’
‘The tribes will never stand for it. They will rise up against you,’ Fergal insisted. He threw a pleading look to Donal for help. ‘Tell him.’
‘Nay, nay, brother,’ countered Donal, his eyes lifted to the cloud-shrouded sky. ‘Conor is right. I see it now. This is where it begins.’
Fergal stared at both his friends as if he had never seen either one of them before. ‘Listen to the both of you,’ he said, stubbing the butt of his spear against the turf. ‘You said it yourself, Donal—there is nothing here. Look around. Take a good long look. A stronghold needs walls, so it does. It needs houses for people to live in, and stables for horses, and storehouses, and such. It needs fields and farmers to work them. It needs flocks and herds and pens to keep them. A stronghold needs a tribe of folk to people it, to work the land and make a life—men and women, aye, as many women as men, come to that. We have none of these things. Are we to raise walls and build houses and plough fields and breed cattle overnight?’ He shook his head fiercely. ‘Put this folly right out of your heads the both of you.’
‘You call it folly?’ said Conor. ‘Think you now! Many of the lords and kings who clung so tightly to their small portion of power, who held their pride so high that they could never bring themselves to unite under Brecan Brigantes were swept away last night with the storm. Today the sun rises on a new day and with it a new chance to gather up what remains and bind it together, unite it and make it whole.’
Conor, his birthmark tingling as the vision sparked to life in his mind. ‘Eirlandia is broken now. But it could be that breaking is what we needed in order to bring us together, bind us together, and make us strong.’
‘Or weaken us for the killing blow,’ suggested Fergal. ‘Does that not seem the more likely?’
‘There is another way to see it.’ Conor began walking again in his excitement, causing Fergal and Donal to hurry to keep up. ‘It seems to me that Balor Evil Eye and his dog-eaters achieved in one night what Lord Brecan could not accomplish in ten years of trying. The old opposition has been carried away on the wings of the storm, and now we have a chance to put our broken land back together stronger than it was before, stronger maybe than it has ever been. And Donal is right, this is where the saving of Eirlandia begins.’
‘Ach, it is a grand scheme, I’ll give you that, brother. Very grand,’ said Fergal. ‘You may have found a fleck of gold hidden in these ashes. But where are the people, eh? Where are the people to put flesh and bone to this handsome dream of yours?’
‘Many of the tribes who were here for the Oenach have lost kings and lords, they’ve lost their warleaders—’
‘They’ll choose new ones to take their places.’
‘Aye, they will. But I mean to offer them a choice. They could choose us—’
‘Like the Auteini up there just now,’ Donal pointed out.
‘Aye, the Auteini are but the first and there will be others—perhaps many others. These tribes, weakened as they are, still have farmers and carpenters and weavers—women and children, elders and bards. Each will have an offering to make and it is just what we will need to support our fianna. We will make Tara’s hill and plains the beating heart of Eirlandia. It was once of a time, and it will be again.’
‘A new tribe with a new king whose stronghold is here,’ mused Donal approvingly. ‘It will be as it was in the days when Ros Ruadh ruled as high king and Eirlandia was the envy of the world.’
‘Perhaps these lordless clans will not so readily leave their ancient homelands, brother,’ said Fergal. ‘It may not be so easy as you imply.’
‘We’ll see,’ Conor. ‘We’ll see. But there are more pressing matters just now, duties we must discharge before anything else. We must help bury our swordbrothers and see them properly honoured.’
‘While we are about it, we can tell our swordbrothers about our new tribe, ask about their people, and offer them a place at Tara,’ suggested Donal, and stopped on the path so abruptly that Fergal almost tripped over him.
Fergal opened his mouth to object, but the strange look on Donal’s face drove any such notion right out of his head. ‘What is it? Have you seen something?’
‘Remember when I told you about seeing a foot on a stone?’
‘After the battle on Mag Belach when Médon returned with the first of the fianna?’ answered Conor. ‘Aye, you said you saw a man’s foot upon a stone.’
‘And you asked me then … you said, “Whose foot? What stone?” Remember? Well, I see it now.’ Donal gazed at Conor, a clear and certain light in his eyes. ‘It is your foot, Conor mac Ardan.’ He gestured back toward the hilltop. ‘And the stone is there.’
‘The Pillar Stone?’ said Fergal.
‘Also called the Lia Rígad,’ Donal told him. ‘The Stone of Kingmaking.’
Fergal, unable to overcome his incredulity, rubbed his hand over his face. Perhaps, this was merely exhaustion taking hold of their better judgement. He decided not to press them further. ‘What are you thinking, Conor?’
‘Only this—that if I am to be king, then I must have a queen,’ he replied, and started down the path again. ‘And I am thinking that I have kept that lady waiting long enough.’
35
Even from a distance, Dúnaird appeared quiet. The late autumn sun was bright in a cloud-dappled sky, shimmering on the silvery sweep of sea visible beyond the rock cliffs to the northeast and turning the stubble in the hillside fields a rich golden brown. Conor savoured the sight, drinking it in through every pore. After the horrific battle at Tara, a little calm in this peaceful corner of Eirlandia was a healing balm to a battered soul. So many dead … far too many dead: the funeral fires across Mag Rí were still burning when they left. The smoke rose in a forest of black columns and ash fell like snow from a black sky.
The fianna had missed the battle, but reached Tara in time to help prepare the pyres and collect the weapons and valuables. What with the sudden surplus of horses that had lost their riders—both Scálda and Dé Danann—Fergal claimed, confiscated, and appropriated enough to mount Conor’s entire warband and a few more besides. No more sore feet for Conor’s men; from now on the fianna would ride.
Only when the last pyres had been lit did Conor give the order for the fianna to wash, gather whatever food they could find, find their mounts, and ride with him to Dúnaird. No Darini had been seen at the battle, nor afterward among the dead, and Conor was impatient for news of his father and brother. More than that, he was eager to see Aoife and tell her his plans for their future together at Tara; and for that he wanted to approach her in strength and with force.
Now, as he gazed upon his childhood home, a feeling of acute disquiet stole over him, for despite the apparent serenity and light, he sensed distress; misery seemed to flow from the stronghold like the troubled currents of a dark, invisible stream.
‘Dúnaird is in mourning,’ observed Donal, reining to a halt beside him.
‘You feel it, too?’ Conor glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. ‘What do you see?’
‘I see only that the board and bench in the king’s hall is empty,’ he replied, squinting his eyes as if to peer in through a darkened doorway into the next room. ‘And the yard as well. Nothing more.’
Conor nodded and lifted the reins and made to continue on.
‘Stay, brother,’ called Fergal as his horse trotted up to join them. ‘You are still an outcast here, remember. Let me go down and talk to them and see how things sit. If all is well, I’ll summon you and the others.’
Conor dismissed the notion with a shake of his head. ‘We’ll go together.’
‘Just us three, then,’ said Donal. ‘If we bring the fianna, Liam may think we’ve come for a fight and give us one.’
‘He wouldn’t,’ said Conor.
‘He might,’ Fergal countered. ‘You know what he’s like.’
‘He wouldn’t
,’ insisted Conor. ‘My father would never allow it.’ He looked down at the stronghold, uncertain what his reception would be. Fergal had a point, he concluded, and decided, ‘Right, then. We’ll go together, but leave the fianna here until we see what manner of welcome the king will give us.’
‘Very wise,’ allowed Fergal. Wheeling his horse, he rode back and commanded Médon to wait with the fianna but remain ready to join them when summoned; then, returning to Conor and Donal, the three started down the long slope to the trail leading to the Darini stronghold. The sense of desolation that Conor felt upon seeing his home grew stronger the closer they came. They reached the ráth and stopped to observe. All was as quiet as it appeared from a distance; no sounds of activity could be discerned from within. The gates were closed, but there was no guard on the walkway.
‘Where is the watchman?’ muttered Conor.
‘Let’s see if we can rouse them.’ Fergal urged his mount ahead a few steps and called out a greeting. Receiving no answer, he shouted again. When that brought no response, he glanced back to where Conor and Donal sat watching, shrugged, then dismounted and walked to the gate. Drawing the knife from his belt, he gave the timber a few good thumps, shouting, ‘Anyone in there? Open the door, it is Fergal mac Caen come home! Who is guarding this gate?’
He was about to renew his assault on the door when a voice called out from within, saying, ‘Hold your water! I’m coming!’ There came a scramble on the wooden ladder leading to the walkway and presently a round head looked over the breastwork. ‘Fergal! What are you doing here? We thought you were killed.’
‘Who is that up there that would be thinking such a thing?’
‘It is Cermod mac Riorigh,’ came the reply.
‘Cermod, lad. What are you playing at? Leaving your watch like that? Liam will have your skin off you. Open the gate and let us in.’
‘I would do that right readily, but the king has made a stern command not to let anyone into the ráth.’
‘Has he now?’ Fergal rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘I recall we’ve had this kind of talk before—and I can tell you it never ends happy.’
In the Land of the Everliving Page 34
