The Hound of Ulster

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘There is a third chariot,’ said Findabair, ‘and the horses of its team are one grey as rain, and one black as midnight. The sods from their hooves fly in their wake like gulls behind the plough, and they cover the ground with the speed of a winter wind. And in that chariot stands a dark youth, his pleated tunic is crimson, and his cloak white and clasped with gold, and his shield is crimson with a silver rim and images of animals shine on it in gold. His hair is dark, and his look is dark also, yet it might well draw love, and assuredly it shoots fire; and the Hero light plays about his head.’

  ‘That can only be the Hero Cuchulain,’ said Maeve. ‘Truly we shall be ground like fresh barley in the mill, if that one comes as an enemy.’ And she rose and strode to the window beside her daughter and stood looking out, with her jewelled comb in her hand, and the long silver gilt hair falling either side of her long, fair, fierce face. And she saw the three chariots and behind them almost all of the Red Branch Warriors, the sound of the chariots and the horses’ hooves as the dashing waves of the sea. ‘I will send word to summon the King,’ she said. ‘We must welcome them fitly, and feast them finely, and if they are for trouble maybe that will turn their wrath away from Cruachan.’

  And so the three heroes and their followers received a courteous welcome from Maeve, who was not wont to welcome strangers, and from Ailell, the King in her crowned shadow, and were feasted royally for three days and three nights, and at the end of that time, they demanded of Maeve and Ailell the judgement that they had come for. And Maeve and the King put them to three tests, by the three great cats of the Lordly Ones, and by the witches of a certain haunted valley, and by setting them to fight one at a time with Ailell’s own foster father Ercol, who was a mighty magician skilled in all the ancient magic of red bronze and grey iron and blade’s edge and shield’s rim. And in all these tests and encounters, Cuchulain was the only one to overthrow his antagonists. But still Laery and Conall would not admit his right to the Championship of Ireland.

  And now indeed Ailell grew perplexed, for he knew that he could no longer delay giving his judgement, and he knew that whichever of the three he named Champion, the two disappointed heroes would be his enemies from that day forward, and he was a peaceable man. He took counsel with Maeve in their chamber, and Maeve, who was as warlike as he was peaceable, listened to him with scorn and half-laughter on her pale face. ‘What makes you think that the matter is for your judgement, little royal husband?’ said she. For in Connacht the Queen was the Queen in her own right, but the King was the King only because he married her. But she was no fool, and though she scorned him for his caution, she knew in her heart that he was right to be anxious. So she said at last, ‘Ach now, I spoke unthinking. But cease troubling for yourself and leave all to me. I promise you that I will so work it that all three of these Ulster madmen shall go from here satisfied.’

  And summoning the King’s armour-bearer, she bade him first to fetch certain things from the treasury, and then call to her Laery the Triumphant. And when the big ruddy man came ducking his head under the black and saffron painted lintel, she spoke for the King who sat uneasily beside her. ‘Welcome to you, Laery the Triumphant. Well may men call you by that name, for you are the Champion of Ireland, and to you, my lord, I award the right to the Champion’s Portion at any feast where you may be present.’ And smiling, she took from the table and held out to him a cup of polished bronze with a silver bird inlaid upon one side. ‘In token that it is so, take this, and show it to no man until you come again to King Connor at Emain Macha. Then show it before all men, and claim your right to the Championship of Ireland, and none, I think, will dispute it with you.’

  So Laery stowed the cup in his breast, and went back to the great hall where the warriors were at their evening pastimes.

  Then Maeve sent the armour-bearer for Conall, bidding him make sure that Laery and Cuchulain did not see. And to Conall also, she pretended to award the Championship of Ireland. But the cup that she gave him to show in proof was of whitest silver, inlaid with a bird of gold.

  She waited until the other two had gone to their sleeping places before sending the armour-bearer for Cuchulain, who was sitting late over a game of chess with one of Ailell’s warriors. But Cuchulain only twitched his shoulders as though a fly were troubling him, and would not come before he had finished and won the game.

  Maeve grew angry at that, for she was the Queen of Connacht to her heart’s core, and she sat tapping her foot on the hearth-stone, her eyes glittering bright and heavy under her lids while she waited, and twisted the ear of her favourite hound bitch between finger and thumb when it crept to her, until the poor brute yelped with surprise and pain. ‘He shall have cause to regret one day that he kept Maeve of Connacht waiting!’ she said.

  But when at last Cuchulain appeared, she smiled upon him and greeted him as she had done the other two. ‘Most welcome are you, Cuchulain of Ulster. But it is in my heart that you will never be lacking for welcome, save when you come in wrath, and then all men must quail before you as before the wrath of the High Gods themselves.’ And she held out to him a third cup, wrought of yellow river gold, on which was a bird worked out in coral and carbuncle and blue enamel. ‘Take this as a royal gift from Connacht to the Champion of all Ireland. Show it to no man until you come to King Conor at Emain Macha, then bring it out in the sight of all men. No other warrior, I think, will claim the right to the Championship hereafter.’

  So Cuchulain stowed the golden cup in the breast of his tunic, and went out well content to the warriors’ sleeping place.

  Next morning the Red Branch Warriors took their leave of Maeve and Ailell, and set out for Emain Macha once again. And the chariots of Laery and Conall and Cuchulain drove in the forefront as by right, leaving the rest to follow in the cloud of their dust. But none of the three heroes asked the other two how they had fared, for each thought that he knew.

  So they came again to Emain Macha, and that night there was feasting in the King’s Hall to welcome the warriors home. And when the Champion’s Portion was cut from the great roast and set aside, the feasting fell silent, and all men looked towards the three.

  Then Laery rose in his place, and pulled from the breast of his tunic the bronze cup with the silver bird. ‘I claim the Champion’s Share!’

  ‘By what right?’ demanded Conor.

  ‘By right of this cup, which Maeve of Connacht gave me to prove it!’

  But before the words were out of his mouth, Conall of the Victories sprang to his feet, holding high the cup of silver with the bird of gold upon it. ‘What of this, then, my lord the King? This that was given to me by the same Queen of Connacht, to prove my right to the Champion’s Portion.’

  And in the same instant Cuchulain also was on his feet and holding up for all to see, the cup of gold with its jewelled bird, which blazed in the firelit hall like the sun at midsummer. And standing there he said no word at all, but laughed until his laughter rang against the weapons on the walls.

  8. The Championship of Ireland

  THE QUARREL BEGAN all over again, with Laery roaring in Cuchulain’s face that he had bribed Maeve with a promise of his service to give him the golden cup. And though Conall said nothing as to that, he would no more accept the judgement than would Laery.

  And when Conor the King could make himself heard, he said, coldly angry, ‘Then here is my word. You shall go to Curoi of Kerry with this accursed claim; his sight is deeper and his powers older even than those of the Druids, and it may be that he can settle the thing once and for all. Meanwhile, let me hear no more of it.’

  So next day the three heroes and their charioteers set out to lay the matter before Curoi the Lord of Kerry.

  He was gone from home when they came clattering up the chariot way into the great Dūn on its coastwise headland where he had his palace. But Blanid his wife greeted them softly and warmly, lifting long eyelids at each in turn. And when she had heard what brought them to Dūn Curoi, she said ‘Surely that
is a thing that can be settled easily enough. But my lord will be three nights from home, and though he has left warriors set about me, I am a foolish woman and grow nervous when he is not by my side. Therefore, let me beg of you as a favour that each of you in turn will watch one night outside the stockade of the Dun. In that way I shall feel safe.’

  That night, when the time came for the warriors to seek their sleeping places, Laery, who was so much the eldest of the three, claimed the first watch, and took up his position outside the big thorn bush that closed the stockade. And Curoi’s Queen went to her own chamber and lit a small fire in a brazier and fed it with strange and unholy things until it burned blue; and began to comb her crow-black hair and sing, weaving the charm that guarded the gate from all comers after nightfall—and other spells besides.

  The night wore on quietly, and Laery was almost asleep leaning on his spear, when he saw a great shadow rising from the sea. Denser and darker and more menacing it grew, until it took the shape of a monstrous human figure, and the moonlight was blotted out behind its shoulders. And Laery saw with a thrill of horror that it carried two war spears whose shafts were branch-stripped oak trees.

  ‘This is a bad night for Ulster,’ said the Shadow Giant, and the voice of him boomed hollow as the sea in a cave. And on the word he flung both his spears at Laery the Triumphant; but they passed him by, one on either side, and stood quivering in the massive timber ramparts of the Dun. Then Laery flung his own spears, and though they were better aimed, he might as well have thrown at a thundercloud as at the great mass towering over him; and with a boom of laughter the monster stooped and caught him up, gripping him so hard in one hand as almost to crush his ribs like egg-shells, and tossed him over the ramparts of the Dūn.

  The tumult roused the warriors within, and they came running with Cuchulain and Conall at their head, and found Laery lying just inside the stockade, half dead with his bruises and bubbling for breath; and beyond the stockade the moonlight shining bright and unhindered as before.

  The next night Conall took the watch, and all happened in the same way. And when the warriors came running to his aid, he told them of the fight with the giant, just as Laery had done, but like Laery, he could not bring himself to tell how the giant had tossed him contemptuously like a bundle of old rags over the wall. And so, knowing of the spell that Blanid the Queen set every night on the gateway, all men believed that both had jumped the high stockade.

  The third night Cuchulain, the youngest, took up his watch outside the Dūn, and the Queen went to her chamber and made her blue fire and let down her black hair to weave the same spells as before, but this time she braided her hair into strange patterns and with each pattern she made another spell that she had not woven last night nor the night before, and little winds ran about the place and small shapeless things squeaked in the corners.

  And Cuchulain, leaning on his spear before the gateway, had a quiet watch until midnight. And then he thought he saw nine grey shadows creeping towards him. ‘Who comes?’ he shouted. ‘If you be friends, stand where you are; if you be foes, come on!’

  And the nine shadow-warriors raised a great shout and sprang upon him all together, like hounds pulling down a stag; and he fought them all together, shouting his war-cry that made the very timbers of the Dūn shudder behind him, and slew them or drove them back into mist or hacked them into the ground. Then nine more of the shadows leapt upon him, and for the third time, nine more, and all of them Cuchulain dealt with; and then spent and breathless, sat down on a boulder beside the gate to rest.

  And as he sat with his head sunk on his breast, he heard a great boom and crash of waves as though of a winter storm beating on the shore, though all about him the night was still. And looking up, he saw a monstrous dragon threshing up from the water. High and higher into the air it rose in an arching blaze of fearful glory like a shooting star, and its wings spread half across the sky as it sank with terrible open jaws towards Cuchulain.

  Cuchulain’s weariness dropped from him like a threadbare cloak, and he sprang to his feet, then made the Hero’s Salmon Leap straight up to meet the winged terror, and thrust the full length of his arm down its throat. It was as though his arm was engulfed to the shoulder in living fire, and the hot stinking breath of the creature beat in his face. His hand found the huge pulsing heart and tore it out by the roots.

  The monster fell out of the air, black blood bursting from its mouth, and the blaze of its eyes dying out like the red gleeds of a sinking fire. Cuchulain sprang upon the body of the dead monster, and smiting off its head, set it on the pile of three times nine grey snarling warriors’ heads he had raised already. And again he sank down on the boulder.

  It was almost dawn when he became aware of the shadow coming up from the sea that both Laery and Conall had encountered. Cuchulain rose to his feet and stood waiting while the shadow darkened and took on giant shape.

  ‘This is a bad night for Ulster,’ said the shape, raising the first of the two great spears.

  ‘Yet it may be a worse night for you!’ Cuchulain cried.

  And the two spears came whistling one after the other, missing him as narrowly as they had missed Laery and Conall, to crash deep into the timber walls of Dūn Curoi; and the monster stooped to grapple with him. But in the same instant Cuchulain sprang up, sword in hand, and leaping as high as the giant’s head, flashed in a mighty blow that brought him tumbling to his knees. The giant roared out in a great anguished voice, and with the cry still hanging in the air, was gone like a curl of wood-smoke that the wind whips away.

  The first faint light of dawn was broadening over the sea, and Cuchulain knew that there would be no more comers that night, and weary as he was, he thought to go back into the Dūn and rest. But the spells that held the gateway would not yield until the first rays of the sun touched the threshold, and if, as he believed, the other two had leapt the stockade, then so could he. Twice he tried the leap, and twice, with his weariness on him, he failed; and then a great rage rose in him that he could not do what his comrades had done, and with the rage, his utmost strength came upon him, and the Hero light began to flicker like summer lightning about his head, and he took a little run, and vaulting on his spear, went up and over, so high and far that the leap carried him not merely across the wall but into the heart of the Dūn, and he landed on his feet again in the inner court, on the very threshold of Curoi’s hall.

  He sank down on the door sill, and leaning against the painted doorpost, heaved a great slow sigh.

  And Curoi’s wife came out from the hall behind him and stooped to touch his shoulder, letting the darkness of her hair trail all across his face. ‘That is the sigh of a weary conqueror, not of a beaten man,’ she said. ‘Come in now, and eat and rest.’

  Later, she showed to all three the pile of heads that lay at her gate and said, ‘Those are beside the Shadow Giant, who leaves no trace. Now are you content to yield to Cuchulain the Champion’s Portion?’ she said.

  But still the other two would not yield the victory, Laery out of hot jealousy and Conall because by that time he was growing ashamed, and shame always made him the more stubborn. ‘No!’ said Laery. ‘And how should we be content? All men know that Cuchulain was fathered within the Hollow Hills. His own kin among the Lordly People have aided him in this; therefore the contest is an unfair one.’

  ‘Then there is no more that I can do to help you settle the thing,’ said Blanid; and she looked just as any other woman whose patience is worn into holes, save that the dark hair on the head of her lifted and crackled like the fur of a black cat that is stroked the wrong way when there is thunder in the air. ‘Go home now to Emain Macha, and wait there until my Lord Curoi himself brings you his judgement. But see that you keep the peace with each other while you wait, and whatever the judgement of Curoi may be, see that you accept it, lest Ulster become a laughing stock to Munster and Leinster and Tara and Connacht, for this child’s quarrel among her greatest heroes!’

  So
the three returned to King Conor with the quarrel still unhealed between them, but they kept the peace as Curoi’s wife had commanded.

  And the days went by and the days went by with no word from Curoi of Kerry. And then one evening when all the Red Branch Warriors were at meat in the King’s Hall, save for Conall who was off hunting and his foster brother Cuchulain who had driven down to his own lands of Murthemney to see how the work went on the new house that his men were raising within the old ring-banks of Dūn Dealgan, the door flew open as though at a great blast from the first of the winter gales that was howling like a wolf pack outside. And as all eyes leapt towards it, a terrible figure strode through into the wind-scurried firelight. A creature like a man but taller than any mortal man, horrible to see, and with the yellow eyes of a wolf that glared about the hall as he came. He was clad only in wolfskins roughly sewn together, and a grey mantle over them, and shaded himself from the light of fire and torches with a young oak tree torn up by the roots; and in his free hand he swung a mighty axe with a keen and cruelly shining edge.

  Up the hall strode the horrifying visitor, where every warrior had sprung to his feet, and leaned himself against the massive carved and painted roof-tree beside the central hearth.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked Cethern Son of Findtan, striving to make a jest of it. ‘Are you come to be our candlestick, or would you burn the house down? Go farther down the hall, my large and hairy friend.’

  ‘Men call me Uath the Stranger, and I am come for neither of those purposes,’ returned the giant, in a voice as terrible as his looks. ‘I come to see whether, here among the Red Branch Warriors of Ulster, I may find the thing that I have failed to find elsewhere in all Ireland.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ demanded Conor the King.

  ‘A man to keep the bargain that he makes with me.’

  ‘And this bargain? Is it then so hard to keep?’

  The stranger hunched his great skin-clad shoulders. ‘It would seem so.’ Then he swung up the great axe he carried, and held it high, so that all might see the glitter of the firelit blade. ‘Behold this axe of mine, is she not fair? But always she is hungry—hungry for the blood of men. Any man bold enough to grasp her tonight may use her to cut my head from my shoulders—provided that he comes here to meet me again tomorrow night that I may return the blow.’