by Jules Watson
She bowed her head and let the keening wash over her.
As the sun broke over the hills, changing gray to gold, the jingling of sword-belts drew up Maeve’s head. Cormac trailed up the hill, his fair hair wet, as if he’d dunked it in a stream. His cheek and jaw were bruised, eyes red-rimmed.
Behind him Ferdia wove an unsteady path over the wet grass, looking at Maeve as if she had stabbed Fergus herself.
Maeve faced them. “What happened to Fergus was an abomination. We of Connacht grieve with you, rage with you. But it was a mistake wrought by jealousy and ale, not treachery. We should leave such things to Conor.”
Cormac gritted his teeth. “You do not have the right to speak mac Roy’s name.”
Sorrow bore Maeve down, and she did not mask her raw expression. If they splintered now, worse evils would come. They would turn on each other, and those left alive would be easy pickings for Conor, even in his weakened state.
“If you leave now, then Conor has already won,” she croaked. “Do not let that happen because of a terrible mistake. Fergus fought hard for this. He wanted to be avenged. He wanted to save his own people from Conor—your people.”
Cormac cradled the elbow Fraech had bent in the skirmish in the tent. “That murderer Ailill has to pay for what he took from us.”
“He will accept his punishment, but only after we are victorious. We must stay strong, together, until then. If you go now, we lose everything.”
Cormac jutted out his jaw, his lips thinning as he gazed at Fergus’s draped body.
Maeve had no choice but to wield a greater weapon. And she hated it, for she was deathly weary of such things now. “Only my forces have the strength to take Emain Macha. So stay with me and rule your own lands, or leave us now and become our enemies forever.” She drew what fire remained into her eyes. They had to understand what was at stake, for all of them.
Framed by his tangled hair and dark stubble, Ferdia’s gaze was hot with accusation.
Maeve turned to him. “And if you do walk away, Ferdia, soon Cúchulainn will either be dead or avowed to me in surrender. His honor will not let him break an oath to follow you all over Erin, will it? It didn’t before.” The broken shard in her heart pricked her. But it is necessary. There were enemies behind and in front of them: she had to hold them as one or die.
Ferdia’s lashes lowered. He staggered as he turned away, barely staying upright. Cormac threw the hem of his cloak around his neck against the cold mist. “Ailill will pay,” he hissed, crossing to the other side of the pyre with Ferdia.
Maeve left them to mourn their leader.
For the rest of the day and night, Fraech and Maeve fought to knit the war-band back together. Summoning all their skills of persuasion, they cajoled and coaxed, calming Laigin men who bristled at the insults thrown at Ailill, smoothing the hackles of Connacht warriors who had been struck by Ulaid and Laigin fists.
And yet still the murmurs rustled across the camp like a foul wind. They were cursed by the gods. Around every campfire warriors hunched, casting fearful glances over their shoulders to the sky, the looming hills, and the fading woods along the stream-banks.
Lugh, Manannán, and the Dagda had withdrawn their favor because of the murder of the great king Fergus mac Roy.
Despair invaded Maeve with every breath of that dank, heavy air. She sought out Ailill. If he left, he would take his Laigin fighters and the Galeoín, and the superstitious Mumu would probably follow after.
Ailill lay hidden in one of the crude tents his warriors slept in, guarded on all sides. His men did not let her in at first, but Maeve stared them down. “Your king, Ros Ruadh, blessed this raid. He is allied with me as Queen of Connacht.” At last they dropped their heads and let her through.
Maeve crept into the tent and sat beside Ailill in the shadows. She smelled reedy water on his hair, as if he had dunked it, but his breath still reeked of sour ale and vomit. She bent her knees up. “I never rutted with Fergus, and I was never going to set you aside. I do not—” She cut herself off, by habit shielding her heart.
What Ailill said was wrong: she had never wanted to rule Erin. Huddled in that cold forest, the howls of grief rising around her, Maeve now realized a more bitter truth.
She did not want to rule Connacht, either.
Not now that she knew death and pain were the cost of power, and it was her people who bore it. She had only ever wanted to rule herself, and if she could, protect her people. How did that become this?
Strong they might be, but they all paid the price. Idath and Felim’s men. Lassar and his swordmates on the raid. Their women, their children.
Fergus.
Now it was too late to go back. She could only bind together what was left, and bring Conor down before he did them.
Maeve cleared her throat. “You saw a chance to grasp at power by marrying me, Ailill, and now you have set all that at risk.” She laid a hand on his wrist. “If you return to your father so dishonored, he will refuse to name you his heir and your lords will never follow you again. You will lose everything you ever wanted.”
Ailill’s hand curled into a fist in the dark.
Maeve’s breath stirred his hair. “Or … redeem yourself. Fight alongside the Red Branch exiles to win their kingdom. Only battle glories can outshine this dark deed.”
There was a rustle of bracken as Ailill turned his back to her. “Go away, Maeve.”
She dragged herself up. Outside, dread still hung over the camp like the stink of something rotting. In the darkness, she looked down, realizing that her hand had come to rest beneath her breastplate.
All the children of Connacht. She could not bear to think of that swell in her belly as anything else. With a sharp breath, Maeve bound her other hand over the first, clutching herself.
Macha. Hold them safe.
The fragile ties that bound the war-band held.
They left the Plain of Muirthemne and passed north, close to Dun Dalgan. Cúchulainn’s fort and all the lands about were deserted, the scouts reported. The cottages were dark and empty, the cattle driven away.
The only things that stirred were the dying leaves on the trees, the grasses, bleached by cold and wind, and the red bracken. Clouds of white fleece scudded in the sky, but there were no sheep-flocks dotting the slopes beneath.
“There is the way to Emain Macha.” Cormac pointed at the range of hills that ringed the great whale-back of Cullen’s Mount.
A pass led inside this circle of lower peaks, and from there a good cart track skirted the sacred mountain and headed north and then west. The trail of gravel, packed-down mud, and timbers dug in across boggy ground made for swifter riding, and speed was of the essence.
This path through the hills also provided cover for them, Cormac said. Nor were the defenses of Macha as strong here: the ditches shallow, with no timber rampart.
Cúchulainn’s presence had reassured Conor that no war-party could ever come this way.
They continued north along the trail until it was squeezed between the slopes of Cullen’s Mount and a long, dark lake. “It is a narrow way,” Maeve observed at dusk, from the far end of the valley.
“It is the swiftest.” Cormac rubbed his stubbled jaw. His eyes were still veined from the smoke of Fergus’s pyre.
Maeve glanced at the tremor in his hands where they grasped his reins. She needed a swift victory before all the Ulaid-men lost heart, and she lost them. “If this is the quickest way,” she murmured, “then tomorrow we will take it.”
After a night huddled beneath barren, wind-scoured slopes, they came into the valley of Cullen’s Mount at sunrise.
When the scouts came galloping back with their reports, their faces were ashen. “Lady,” one stammered, “you must come and see what the dawn has revealed, or you will not believe us.” The mingling of wonder and fear in his eyes brought Maeve upright in her saddle.
Maeve, Cormac, and Fraech rode their horses with the scouts and a few guards, approaching the narr
ow throat between the lakeshore and the slope of the great mount. The woods clinging to the hollows at the base of the mount breathed early mist, the browning leaves dripping dew onto their faces.
The rising sun warmed their cheeks as at last it flooded the landscape.
“I would not go closer,” the scout muttered. He pointed with his spear, his horse stamping in a cloud of warm breath on the cold air.
Maeve squinted, then blinked to clear her gritty eyes.
The sun spilled from behind their right shoulders in the east, but a brighter flame flared before them—on the western shore, beyond the sheet of bronzed water.
A second sun dawned this day in the Ulaid.
A stream cut the path, spilling down the hill and flowing into the lake. On the other side, someone had erected ranks of felled saplings, a procession of spears with no bearers. Each sapling was topped with a polished shield, and the branches were hung with bronze armbands, horse harness, necklets, and buckles—anything that would reflect the rising sun. Rows of real lances flanked the trees, the light playing over the mass of iron spear-tips just as it rippled across the lake.
A movement caught Maeve’s eye. She shaded the glare with her hand. Two horses galloped out of the trees, one gray and one black. The whites of their eyes flashed, their mouths speckling their harnesses with foam. They pulled a chariot encrusted in gleaming shields and every sort of weapon. Red banners streamed from spears that stuck out of the wicker sides.
The figure in the chariot shouted and flicked the reins, and the horses streaked along the processional way formed by the bronze-hung saplings. At the last minute before hitting the stream, the warrior slid the chariot into a broadside, the fittings of metal and oiled wood setting off another sunburst in Maeve’s eyes.
As the chariot yawed, the man leaped up and, dropping the reins, expertly ran along the yoke. He paused between the shoulders of his streaking horses, balanced despite the lurching wheels, and brandishing his sword, let out a mighty bellow.
The valley sides gathered that challenge and crashed it back on itself, over and over. The shrieking waves hit the rocks, building up an assault of sound. Meallán reared and shook his head as Maeve scrambled to grab his reins. The other men were also dragging back their horses, their faces pale.
Cormac swore.
Using the jolt of the ground, the warrior launched into a somersault, soaring back into his chariot. He caught the reins and hauled his horses about a heartbeat before they collided with the slope. The sun lit upon his fair hair, crowning him in gold.
The Connacht scouts stared with mouths agape. “The Hound,” Cormac whispered.
Maeve snapped her mouth shut, choking on the name.
Cúchulainn.
CHAPTER 33
“That is the sign of the oak.” Cormac sounded dazed as he watched Cúchulainn stake a branch into the ground on his side of the stream. “He wants to speak.”
Maeve dragged a hand over her lips to wipe away a tremor. Cúchulainn was a golden god to everyone else, but to her, he was so much else.
A vicious sword that Conor wielded. A wolf set free of Conor’s leash, to tear her world to pieces.
Her response to him was primitive. Heat swept her and the hairs stood up over her arms and neck. Unconsciously, she bared her teeth, her shoulders rigid.
He was her death. Or she was his.
“I will go to him.” Fraech’s eyes were fixed on the Hound with great intensity.
Cormac came to life. “I, too.”
“Take druids with you,” Maeve said. No warrior would harm a priest under a branch of sacred oak.
Two of the Connacht druids hacked a branch off a tree, murmuring to its spirit, and holding it up, walked before Fraech and Cormac’s horses as they rode down to the stream, which was a golden ribbon in the dawn light.
Like wildfire, Cormac’s utterance of the Hound’s name had spread to the Connacht camp behind them, borne on the tongues of the scouts. While Maeve waited on Fraech, the men of her war-band began gathering, spilling along the path by the lake and spreading up the slopes to crouch in the bracken, even though it was soaked with dew.
Maeve glanced at them, alarm stirring.
They jostled to see Cúchulainn, craning their necks, even climbing trees and clambering up the mossy boulders that had tumbled down from the crest of the mount above them. The dark mutters of the past few days were replaced by bright chatter.
Every boy in Erin had heard of Cúchulainn—one of his greatest exploits took place on the other side of this very hill. Many years before, Conor and his Red Branch were gathered at the fort of the smith Cullen for a feast. The plucky boy known then as Sétanta was running late, and coming to the gates after dark was attacked by Cullen’s great hound. Sétanta slew the hound in self-defense—a feat that amazed Conor’s warriors even as it grieved Cullen. To compensate him, Sétanta vowed to protect the smith’s fort himself for a year, sleeping at his gates like a dog.
This legend earned Sétanta his adult name: Cúchulainn, Hound of Cullen.
At the Samhain feast soon after, the Ulaid druid Cathbad foretold that any boy who took his first weapons from the Red Branch hall that day would enjoy the greatest renown of any warrior, but in return a short life. Cúchulainn was the only youth waiting at the doors of the hall before the sun cleared the hills.
A short life, Maeve repeated to herself now, rubbing gooseflesh from her arms. That means he can be killed.
Fraech and Cormac returned. Fraech dismounted, hesitating before Maeve.
Cormac cut in instead, breathing as if he’d just run up the slope. “Cúchulainn says he is the Hound who guards the territory of the Goddess Macha. He defends this path into the Ulaid by the grace of the divine ones.”
Maeve could not decipher Cormac’s expression. Dismay, fear … relief?
Cormac’s color was high. “Cúchulainn therefore sends out a sacred challenge to every man here. He will fight the warriors one by one, in single combat, and only if he is beaten will this army pass, for then all will know it is the will of the gods.”
Maeve looked to one of the druids, who bowed his head. “It is as he says.”
The voices of the warriors rose behind Maeve, leaping into life like the splashing of the sunlit stream. Maeve caught their sentiment. Cúchulainn bore the most blessed name in Erin. Any man who defeated him would become him.
Her stomach plunged, understanding what had happened before her mind caught up.
Around her, warriors were crowing that they would be the first to triumph over the great Hound of Cullen. Their swordmates chorused that the gods must have taken their wits. Speculation flew about Cúchulainn’s wondrous weapons and all the gold that would become the winner’s spoils.
Fools. They truly thought they would be the first to defeat Cúchulainn? Maeve gazed around at their glassy eyes, heard their delirious laughter. To make himself run toward the sharp glint of swords, the stab and slice of flesh, a warrior had to think he was invincible.
“We are a war-band,” Maeve declared over the noise. “We cannot be distracted by some prancing horseman while the rest of Conor’s warriors circle around us!”
They must reach Emain Macha swiftly, break Conor’s power with the fewest deaths, in the briefest time.
“The Hound has bound us with his oath.” Cormac’s voice was flat, unassailable. “There is no war-band behind him. There will be no treachery.”
More warriors were streaming in from the camp behind them. Dark Galeóin spearmen now mingled with Mumu fighters. Men of Laigin and Connacht crushed together in a throng, faces lit by the same zeal. Their enmities had been forgotten.
The irony of this pushed Maeve off her horse. As she slid to the ground, an intense pain speared her, and she halted, biting her lip as beads of sweat broke over her brow.
The cramp eased, and forcing herself to straighten, Maeve limped before her men. “The Red Branch are struck down by a curse. Lord Garvan is holding the West. We are nearly at Emai
n Macha, where we can defeat Conor and rid our land of him forever. And here stands the most famed warrior of the Ulaid—our greatest threat—alone.” She swung back. “If we charge now, the path to Emain Macha will lie open before us. Now go and arm yourselves. This triumph will be ours before the sun is high.”
No one moved, men looking at their feet or up at the red hills. Most merely stared at the gilded Cúchulainn. One bold soul spoke up. “The gods curse us for the death of Fergus mac Roy. A grievous taint has fallen upon our names, our kin.”
There were mutters of “Aye.”
Someone else turned to yell at his sword-brothers. “The gods have shown us how to claim our honor again, so that our names are bard-sung once more. If we take up the Hound’s challenge, they will bless us forever, even in death!”
The roar of approval drowned out Maeve’s protests.
Maeve turned to Fraech. “Order them to attack,” she gasped.
But Fraech shook his head. He had found an eagle’s wing-feather on the trail and stuck it through the braid at his neck. A call for courage from the gods, he had named it. Now Maeve could not look away from the taunting flash of it among his brown locks.
“Each man must stand alone before the gods in the Otherworld, proud of name and deeds. Only then can we be reborn in honor.” Even Fraech’s eyes betrayed a smoldering desire. “No warrior can turn from this chance to fight Cúchulainn, and reclaim his pride after the death of mac Roy.”
“You mean be killed by Cúchulainn,” Maeve retorted. She noticed Cormac, watching the shouting men with a slight smile. “Anyone would think you do not want to defeat your father and set the Ulaid to rights.”
Cormac’s expression soured. “The death of Fergus has angered the gods.” The warriors close to him grew hushed. “Though I want to regain my hall, I will not pile treachery upon treachery. I have been suffering for too long—but now the Hound himself shows me the way from pain to glory.”