The Mists of Doom cma-1

by Andrew J Offutt

  He was nervous and thoughtful while he stripped and cleansed himself for he was much bespattered. Bad enow that Bress had disliked him on sight. Now the dislike had loped into a feeling beyond animosity.

  After washing, Cormac pulled on leggings of white linen. Over them he drew the blue tunic Lugaid the Fox was happy to lend him, and he drew his boots up over his tight braecs. Next came the vest of black leather with its shoulder-broadening guards for upper arms and shoulders, and about his waist he buckled his weapon-belt, without sword or scabbard. He took a dagger of course, sheathed at his hip, but yesterday’s experience told him he’d be better off in Carman without a sword. He might draw it in anger. As for the dagger: that was after all an eating utensil.

  Men were waiting for him; they wanted the suddenly-popular foreigner as part of their group.

  Cormac remembered his desire to have his hair Leinsterishly trimmed, and made mention of it’.

  “Och, Partha! If ye’d but said that afore; it’s I cut the hair of half the men here, and for a trifle. But now…”

  Cormac nodded. “Perhaps this evening.”

  “Absolutely! But come-let us go and find a good inn and empty its larder!”

  The group of full dozen weapon-men, swaggering for they’d won this leave, left the camp. They went happily and rather boisterously along the road to Leinster’s gate, keeping to the grass alongside; the road was muddy and they’d had enough of that. A carter with loose red-grey hair smiled on them, and his youngish son and his daughter-who was older-turned and stared large-eyed at these fine heroes of King Ulad. Each received a wink or three; the boy grinned, assuming they were for him.

  Just inside the gate sat a young slender fellow, red of hair and blue of eye. He was covered in a shapeless and threadbare mantle drawn on over a once-red tunic faded to the colour of dying red clover. In his hands a lute; on his lips a song. The words included mesca and mocci.

  With a smile, Cormac went to him.

  “A good tune, minstrel! Have you a name?”

  “Most likely. An ye go to the next cross-street and turn by your right hand-not left, right-and walk past three crossings, ye’ll want to be asking someone for the Inn of the Flame Lady.”

  “All this I’ll be wanting to do? And why?”

  “A certain caustic maid we both know, and her no street-slut, has desire to see yourself again, foreigner. Whence come ye?”

  “Ulster; Partha mac Othna my name.” Cormac’s heartbeat had speeded and the sun seemed to have grown warmer. “Ye mean-”

  “I mean that though it makes me none too happy and she knows it, it’s herself would have been here for all to gawp at and remark upon, did I not agree to send ye along.”

  “Partha!” that from one of the other waiting Blueshirts.

  He half-turned waved a hand. “Go on with ye, all. I’ll not be going your way; it’s business this minstrel and I have.”

  “And him male!” This was followed by laughter.

  “He has a sister,” Cormac called, and that brought laughter and hoots, remarks and a whistle along with a stallionish whinny. Then off the others went, not without Lugaid the Fox’s asking whether she had a sister. Cormac turned back to the minstrel. “What is she to yourself, minstrel?”

  “One I hold in esteem,” the young redhead said very seriously, and Cormac heard warning and admonition. “We are not, however, lovers.”

  “I hear ye. It’s in your debt I am.”

  “Partha: you are. Begone; ye be not good enough to keep her waiting.”

  That grated sufficiently for Cormac to tarry: “My father commands a stronghold rath for Ulster’s king, and is of clan-na Morna.”

  The nameless minstrel snorted. “In truth,” he said, and it was neither a statement nor a question but an entirely neutral tone, unimpressed.

  Cormac started away. “Ah-friend minstrel. How is she named?”

  “Breotigernd,” the minstrel said, and Cormac laughed; the name was the same as that of the inn: Flame-lady.

  “What else!” he called and went happily the way he’d been bidden.

  Soon he was aware of why the minstrel had repeated that he was not to go left; that way he’d gone yesterday. The street to the right led him into better environs. After he’d made three crossings of other streets, he asked directions to the bruidean called Breotigernd. The flower-pedlar pointed, and Cormac sadly told her he had naught with which to buy a blossom. Then he turned leftward and walked past an armourer’s and meat-seller’s. The third building was hung with a yellow sign emblazoned with a stylized red flame outlining a naked woman. Cormac entered.

  He was disappointed. Of Flame Lady’s nine patrons, none was the girl of the Blue Shamrock; indeed, none was female. The brughaid came to him, fast as he of the Blue Shamrock. Far from sure of himself or what he was doing, Cormac quietly asked a question. The innkeeper became visibly happier and more hospitable.

  The lady awaited in a privy chamber behind the tap-room, he said, and led Cormac thither. The wary youth entered.

  Cormac was astonished. Here was a board laid out with savoury viands and not ale but good mead. And here waited she, in a green gown cut closely to her slender body, and hardly so lowly as her attire of the previous day.

  She smiled. “Close your mouth, huge boy. Even though flies are not yet abuzz in Carman, ye might dehydrate your tongue.”

  “I… it’s the same I am as on yester day, and my hair the same. What… what means all this?”

  “It means we eat together. It means I make apology for my display of temper at that inn of mesca and mocci, and that “ I thank your fine strapping self for coming to my rescue as though I were a lady. And it means I bid ye be joining me.”

  Cormac shook his head in incomprehension. “And… who else?”

  “None other! And would ye be shutting the door? I’ve no fear on me of yourself, huge boy. Look here, where we met on yester day a girl must be known to be able to take care of herself. I showed that. Now-none will join us here. I but remembered your great height and the thickness of your arms, and made sure there’d be food aplenty. What have ye been at since last I saw ye?” With a flash of white arms, she poured mead gurgling into a jack, which she extended.

  “Fighting.”

  “I’d not be doubting it!”

  Cormac laughed. He took the jack, made a tiny bow, and drank off half its contents. “This is good!”

  “So I thought, when I tasted it for us. Fighting. And winning, o’course.”

  “Aye. But this was practice-the Royal Army’s practice,” he added, pridefully. “Most of the morning. Six men I was made to face, for one in command has no love for me.”

  “Six men at once?”

  “Singly. Two at once. In the mud.”

  “Ah. Do sit down. Mightn’t I be persuading ye to remove the weapon-belt and leather jack? It is most handsome-but the leather creaks so. New?”

  “New.” Gods of my fathers, but she’s so sure of herself, so full of sophistication! It’s a buffoon I am indeed. And he drained his cup.

  “More?”

  “Aye.”

  “There. My name isn’t really Flame-Lady.”

  “It’s what I’ll be calling ye.”

  “Then ye’ve no need of knowing my real name!”

  “What is it?”

  She laughed. “Aha!” she cried, and he knew he’d been successfully teased. “Aine. And do you have a name?”

  He was surprised to discover he wanted to tell her his real name; he did not.

  “Partha,” she repeated. “A good enough name; I know it or not. Ulster and Leinster are hardly neighbors.”

  “Strange that names should be so different though, betwixt kingdoms, isn’t it? He laid aside his weapon belt. “Now ‘aine’ is in use all over Errin, surely.”

  She shrugged. And the jiggle that movement brought about within her bodice made his head go light while warmth came upon him. She was the most attractive member of her sex he’d ever been with. Indee
d, he’d been alone with none, not this way… none under twoscore years of age, at any rate.

  “Aye, it’s such a common name,” she said. “It’s Partha I’d rather be.”

  Cormac laughed. “Or Drolleen?”

  Aine looked unpleasant, then smiled, then laughed; the sound, he thought, was that of a happy brook in the hills. “Do see that ye never call me that. Or filly, either!”

  “Memory will be on me till the end of my days, Flame-lady; I make vow by the gods my people’s people swear by. Aine. Aine. It is a pretty sound. Ye be of Carman?”

  No, she told him, she was a merchant’s daughter from Ailenn, come down to Carman with her father for goods. They talked of that, and of trading, and they ate, and talked too of names, and springtime, and Carman, and other matters. She was bored with this self-conscious capital city, Aine told him; she preferred her Ailenn. When she asked about him, he mixed truth with necessary lies and made all as sketchy as possible. She filled his mug a third time and he told her that he was far ahead in the quaffing. She pointed out that he was much bigger-and then drank off hers and filled her cup and drank most of that, and filled it to the brim again. How was it no green eyes he’d seen afore had been so beautiful, so… green; no red hair so firelike, so beautiful?

  They compared ages. She claimed to sixteen years. So did he, shy a month. Ah, he said, lifting his cup, an older woman! And he but a poor foreign-boy all alone in the great city. And they laughed, and drank.

  “And why did Othna’s son Partha leave Ulster and travel even across Meath, all the way down to Leinster?”

  “Oh… a matter of a woman,” he said, with an airy wave of his hand.

  They smiled, exchanging looks; they drank. She leaned close with her eyes on his, and Cormac, staggering at the brink of those green wells, asked why she’d been in such a place as the Blue Shamrock.

  Looking suddenly not happy with him, Aine straightened. “I told ye. Boredom’s one me here, with my father ever busy at the dickering. I… wander.”

  “The minstrel?”

  “A friend I met.”

  “And I?”

  “A friend I met. A good friend.”

  “A better friend?”

  “Greedy Partha! O’course. It’s not the bard for whom I took room and so much food-and mead. Good, isn’t it.”

  “It is! It… truth to tell…”

  “I know! Me too: lightheaded! Well, it makes kissing easier, doesn’t it?”

  It did.

  It did again. And even again, and a fourth time. Her mouth was like, chestnuts in winter before the fire; he could not stop with but a taste.

  “I was set to hurl something at you,” she said softly, nestling.

  “What did I do, dairlin’ girl?”

  “It is what you did not, oaf!”

  He squeezed her slim waist, and his thumb wandered high. “Oaf, is it?”

  “Ah! Oww-no no-dairlin’ boy, Partha, mo chroi… mmm… my dairlin’ boy…”

  When he left later he knew that he was indeed a man, and more than mead went to Cormac’s head, and he walked tall and aswagger through Carman, and proved his maleness if not his manhood with his thought: Well, after all, it’s a weapon-man of the king I am, and her but a pedlar’s daughter-who wanted me.

  Chapter Nine:

  On the Plain of Sorrow

  The tramp of men shook the air, mingled with the lowing of kine, the creak of laden waggons, and the occasional whinny of a dray-horse. Northward marched the armed men of Leinster, toward a destination between Ailenn and Atha Cliath, up near the Meathish border. The marching men in their sleeved tunics of Leinster blue comprised a catha, a battle force three thousand strong. With them moved like a number of cattle, and creaking, rattling wain laden with treasure. From other areas of the kingdom other men marched, herding more lowing boru.

  Up the Slaigne to its joining with the Bann they tramped, and followed the Bann northward to its source, and still they trekked toward the north.

  Och, Leinster! Ochone! O my grief!

  All knew that Meathish forces were marching southward to meet them at the border. There would they claim the tribute-under-duress, the bitter legacy of men long, long in the ground and nigh forgotten.

  All knew too that messengers had carried strong words from the high house of Ulad of Leinster to that of Lugaid on Tara Hill, and back had come words no less strong. King Ulad had made himself plain. The High-king, he decreed, “in his weening arrogance and desire for ‘tribute’ the reason for which he remembers not, but demands only in greed.” And Meath would not chew so great a slice of Leinster without having to bite it off.

  Tradition. Neither Leinster nor Meath wanted war. There would not be war. Yet there must be these demands, the reticence, the annual negotiations, the threats-and finally the pitched battle at the border on Magh na-Broin; the Plain of Sorrow. This, annually, for Leinster’s honour. And sure, was blood that fed honour, time out of mind.

  Ulad’s General Fergus Buadach and his two elder sons had ridden up to Ailenn already. There they awaited the troops, slowed both by their baggage and by the animals they accompanied.

  The trek north was an easy one. Even the weather was kind to the troop, if the weather of wet, misty Eirrin could ever be said to be kind. To the people they passed they made a great pageant, so that the Blueshirts marched nearly every yard with an audience of russet-clad farmers.

  About them the heather was rising, and the bilberry, and fields were sown with grain. Already ferns and low, woody shrubs were renewing themselves, in their annual attempt to impart a nigh-subtropical aspect to much of the Emerald Isle. Clearly visible were the spurs and corries of distant hills. The sky had left off its sullen brooding to smile on eastern Eirrin-and nowhere on all that isle could a man stand and not see hills. Cromlechs and the black of springfires crowned the hilltops, and now and again a druid of the Old Faith or a priest of the New could be seen staring, starlng in silence, knowing the mission of these marching men and wishing it were not so.

  Round about children stared, too, close to the shade of thatched rooves from the comers of which hung the stones that, anchored them in place. Tramping men skirted the bogs and swamps that splotched green-gold Eirrin with brown, and smiled at the sweet voice of the cuckoo. On the second day they passed through grass and farmlands, where charlocks and artichokes freely grew, and the needly junipers. valued for their savoury berries and fragrant wood. Wild ducks called, and the order was passed that they were not to be molested, this early in the year.

  Truag nuin! Sad evil!

  Five thousand kine. Five thousand hogs. A like number of good cloaks and brazen vessels of silver. As to the silver a concession had been made; nevertheless a well-guarded wain carried two hundred pounds. The wealth of Leinster. Ochone!

  Northward they bore it, and Cormac mac Art marched brooding as though a Leinsterman born. He thought too of Aine, his flame-lady with her hair like gold and bronze and rowan-berries, those eyes green as grass in May-time under their darkened brows; the taste of her lips, redolent of honey and herbs and her own sweet breath. Cormac brooded, and he mooned.

  Truag nuin, heavy-laden Leinster! Ochone and Ochon a righ!

  They reached their destination, and already they were sick of cattle and pigs.

  Only a camp they had, on Magh na-Broin, where men traded with local citizens and entrepreneurs for food and drink. Within the hour kine and swine were raising a stench. All very well to go forth in armour and armed, mayhap to gain honour, mayhap with the woundy blow or death itself. But to have to nursemaid all these noisy, stinking animals as well… Ochon a righ!

  Fergus the Battle-winner called in his commanders and captains for a great conference. Forgall went out from the camp, leaving Bress in command of his Fifty, with his instructions: stay in place; prepare the Coichte as other Fifties were being readied, to meet the enemy. Two men of each Coichte were to remain here, with the drovers and churls, to guard hogs and cows.

  Word came t
hen, and it was good. Leinstermen cheered and called Meathmen weak: a last-minute concession by the High-king excused his “brother-king and fellow sons of Eirrin” from the porcine portion of the tribute, and half the measure of silver, already reduced.

  With scales and great care, men measured out half the thirty-two hundred ounces of good silver. Then they reloaded, and hogs and wagons moved southward. This lest Lugaid’s mind be changed still again, for in truth ’twas changeable as the winds that blew the clouds overhead so willy-nilly that often the land itself seemed to move.

  No man but was glad to see those stinking pigs go.

  Bress made his preparations. Bress made his choices. The barber Cond he would leave to mind the camp-and Partha mac Othna. Partha who was Cormac understood what had motivated Bress to such a decision; leaving behind his best fighting man! Cormac chafed… and obeyed without comment, a good and loyal weapon-man of Leinster.

  Anger was hot in him nevertheless, and he knew that one day he and Bress the contemner must needs settle this cloud between them. A wonder the arrogant Big-foot hadn’t sent Cormac forward among the foremost men, in hopes he’d be slain.

  “Be sure he considered that,” Cond said, as he and Cormac commiserated. “But there is also the possibility that ye might be slaying so many Meathmen it’s a hero ye’d be. That, Partha, would outweigh the other in Bress’s mind.”

  Cormac tried not to hope for the death of Bress mac Keth.

  And so the troops marched out, less than a hundred having set out back toward Carman with the pigs and silver. A hundred and forty-eight remained with the herdsmen. A hundred and forty-eight weapon-men become cowherds.

  For two days Cormac was but a churl, a buachall or bachlach. He chafed with the bored men of the other companies at guarding stupid stinking beasts-against naught. All were aware that northward their fellows were doing battle with the Meathish force. Cormac hated the inactivity and despised the lowliness of his task. More than restless, he had much company in his disquiet.