“Be quiet, woman! Did you not hear the law? Labraid’s mother was joined with me in a marriage of the fourth degree so I’m entitled to call him my son. Ainvar, if you think there’s the smallest chance that he’s alive, take the fastest horses I have and go and bring him back to me!”
He reached out and clapped me on the back after all.
chapter XXIII
EVEN BEFORE A PALLID SUN ROSE THE NEXT MORNING, I WAS ON my way back to the fort to select mounts for our journey. I found Aislinn already at the horse pen. Seeing me appear out of the gloom, she said apologetically, “I’m sorry I haven’t been coming to the glade, Ainvar. But I’m kept so busy caring for the horses. I do all of the feeding and tending myself, you know.
“Make no excuses,” I told the girl. “I haven’t been there myself lately, though I’ll be resuming the classes in the future. Your father wants more brehons; more judges.”
“I don’t have that gift.”
“You don’t need it, Aislinn; your own talents are quite sufficient. I’m here this morning because Fíachu is lending me three horses to ride for a journey we must make.”
I heard, rather than saw, her swift intake of breath. “You’re going to find Labraid!”
“Did Fíachu tell you?”
“He said nothing to me about it. I just woke up this morning…knowing,” she replied. Her voice shook with repressed excitement.
In this girl the druid gift was strong indeed. “I want to ask your advice,” I said. “Which of these animals is the fastest?”
She opened the gate and led me into the enclosure. The horses eagerly crowded around her. She gently stroked the most importunate muzzle. In the growing light I could see that the animal had an elegant, wedge-shaped head and a reddish coat. “This chestnut mare is probably the fastest,” Aislinn said, “but she’s hot-tempered and hard to ride.”
“I’ll need two more who can keep up with her.”
“Two? Well, this big, dark brown horse is nearly as fast. And so is the gray over there.”
The gray horse she indicated was the only animal in the pen who was still lying down. When I walked over to take a closer look the gray made no effort to get to its feet. I bent over the recumbent head. The gray opened one eye and looked at me, then closed the eye again. “I think this one’s sick,” I called to Aislinn.
She laughed. “Don’t worry, he’ll get up as soon as I start feeding them. He spends all his time either resting or eating, but he can run like the wind.”
If appearances were any indication, the gray horse was not capable of stirring up a light breeze. He seemed tame enough for a woman to ride; I would choose between the other two. The third horse would go to Grannus, who was going to act as our guard. He was not a warrior by nature but I thought we might have need of his strength.
As far as I knew, neither Briga nor Grannus knew how to ride.
As for me…here was another example of the Two-Faced One. While I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Cormiac again, and possibly Maia as well, I was not at all happy about entrusting myself to the vagaries of a horse. Warriors ride, druids walk.
The only time I had ridden horses was during the war with Caesar, when it was imperative that I keep up with Vercingetorix. The experience had not been a happy one for me. Nor, I suspect, for the horses. Rix blended so totally with his black stallion that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began. Not me. The first time my mount trotted I bounced. When it galloped I fell off.
Rix had laughed at me. I had laughed too, rather ruefully, and silently promised myself that when the war was over I would never get on another horse.
For Maia and Cormiac Ru I would break that promise.
Memories of Rix decided me to take the big brown horse, who was so dark he almost looked black, and had a reassuringly calm eye. The fiery chestnut mare would go to Grannus. He should be strong enough to manage her, I told myself.
Rank has some privileges.
I was reluctant to attempt to mount with Aislinn watching, so I asked her to bridle the horses for me, then find her father and tell him which ones I was taking. She led the animals from the enclosure and tied them to the fence outside. As soon as the girl was gone I untied the dark horse and availed myself of the gate to clamber onto his back. In the process I accidentally kneed him in the ribs. He turned his head and looked at me.
“I am Ainvar,” I told him in my most reassuring voice—though I wanted some reassuring myself—“and I’m not very good at this. If you’re gentle with me I’ll try to be gentle with you.”
The horse flared his nostrils and made a little huffing sound. Bending his neck farther, he explored my foot with his soft muzzle. Through the worn leather of my shoe I felt the warmth of his breath.
I gathered up the reins of the other two and turned our collective heads for home.
By the time I reached my lodge Grannus was already there, with a sword in the sheath fastened to his belt. Briga had made up two leather packs. One held bread and cheese and a large assortment of medicaments; the other contained blankets. Grannus and I strapped the packs onto our backs before donning our warmest cloaks. Then we went to the waiting horses.
Thinking ahead, I had tied the dark horse beside a fallen log we used as a chopping block. I simply stepped up and onto my horse’s back. Grannus lifted my senior wife onto the gray. Before I could warn him, he took a running start and vaulted over the rump of the chestnut mare.
Who bolted.
Not to be outdone, the other two horses followed. They were eager to join the race. To my surprise I did not fall off. More surprisingly, neither did Briga. She clung to the reins with one hand and wrapped her other hand in the mare’s flaxen mane. I clung to the brown horse in the same way. Grannus was so far ahead of us I could not tell how he was retaining his seat, but I heard him give a shout that spurred the mare on to greater speed.
I suspect that was unintentional on Grannus’s part.
When I was certain my seat was secure enough, I risked a glance at the wintry sun. By a fortunate coincidence we were galloping in the direction I had meant to take anyway.
Except there are no coincidences. Just unexpected glimpses of the hidden Pattern.
As the horses continued to run, my body remembered to relax and sit upright. Briga emulated me. She hardly needed a model, though. She had excellent balance right from the start.
Ahead of us Grannus was making a heroic effort to bring the chestnut mare under control. From the motions of his shoulders I could tell that he was sawing the reins, pulling the bit back and forth in her mouth.
If I were a horse I would hate that.
“Ease up on the reins, Grannus!” I shouted to him.
His voice came back to me in gasps. “That’ll make her run faster, you fool!”
Grannus must be very frightened to forget himself so far as to call me a fool. “Trust me!” I cried.
To my relief, the frantic motions of his arms and shoulders slowed; stopped. After a few moments the mare slowed; stopped. He turned her around with little difficulty and rode back to us. She was soaking wet with sweat beneath her shaggy coat, as I was beneath my clothes.
“Whew,” said Grannus.
“There was no need to go racing off like that.”
“Tell the horse, not me. Why do you keep getting me into these situations, Ainvar?”
“You can hardly blame the mare for running when you gave her such a fright.”
“I gave her a fright?”
“You leaped onto her back like a lion dropping onto a horse from a tree,” Briga interjected.
There were no lions in Hibernia. There were not any in Gaul, either. The only lions I knew anything about were those the Romans had brought from Africa. Yet my senior wife could envision the interactions of prey and predator in a land she had never seen, and use these to understand the emotions of a horse in Hibernia.
Briga was an astonishing person.
No category adequately em
braced the wide range of her gifts. She was like a newly created spirit appearing for the first time in Thisworld. Yet she accommodated herself so quickly, so easily, to the gray horse, one might think she had learned to ride in a prior life.
No, I told myself sternly. Do not be fooled into believing in past lives or future lives. That is just wishful thinking.
We soon caught up with the fishermen, who had set out on foot before us. I offered to let three of them ride behind us on our horses, but the man with the broken fingers demurred. “No point in getting ourselves hurt worse than we already were,” he said cheerfully.
The remark did not cheer me, since at that moment my mount began to prance and snatch at the bit in a most unsettling way. The horses were fresh and unwilling to stand still for long.
The fishermen suggested we ride across country in a northerly direction until we came to the river Liffey, which rose somewhere in the mountains to the southeast and meandered in a large loop across the Plain of Broad Spears before turning toward the great bay on the coast. “Once you reach the river, just follow it to our settlement,” said the man with the broken fingers.
“Mind the footing, though,” another man added. “The Liffey’s tidal; there’s a powerful inflow from the sea when the tide turns. Beware of the marshes. You could drown before you know what’s happened.”
We thanked the fishermen for their advice. As we rode away from them Briga remarked, “I’ve been to the source of the Liffey, Ainvar.”
“You have? You never told me.”
Her nose crinkled in the way I loved. “Oh, Ainvar,” she laughed, “I don’t tell you everything.”
I could hardly reproach her, since I did not tell her everything, either.
The kingdom of the Laigin spread out before us, a tapestry of meadowland occasionally lifting into low, rolling hills. Like Fíachu, the other chieftains had built their strongholds on the high ground so they could watch for aggressors. Their lookouts must have seen us ride by, but no one hailed us.
We kept the horses at a gallop. My big dark horse stood me in good stead. As long as we were on open ground the chestnut surged ahead of him. When we came to seas of bracken and nettles he unhesitatingly breasted through while the other horses hesitated.
He was a chieftainly horse.
We were crossing a part of our tribeland I had not visited before. I observed with interest that the range of heavily forested mountains that separated us from Cohern’s clan also guarded the Plain of Broad Spears from the sea. Seen from a distance, it looked like an impenetrable barrier. From what others had told me, most of Hibernia was either heavily forested or mountainous or both, with plains only in the central region. The topography was designed by nature to keep the various kingdoms isolated from one another. Given the warlike nature of the Gaels, this was a good thing.
As we galloped on, my muscles began to ache. I knew my bones would protest in the morning—whatever the morning might bring. But we had no time to lose; the winter’s day would be short. Briga kept calling to me, “Hurry, Ainvar. Hurry!”
Long before we reached the river we felt its influence. The horses’ hooves sank into softer soil. They were breathing hard from their long run, so in spite of Briga I drew rein and slowed to a walk to allow them to recover.
To allow us to recover.
The air smelled rank. And damp, in spite of the cold. Listen! I commanded my ears.
In Gaul I had known the great rivers; the sacred rivers. Their voices had been as familiar to me as those of my friends. The Loire whispered, the Seine murmured.
The Liffey was different.
She sang to herself with a hundred different voices. She laughed and wept and giggled and threatened and shouted and hummed. The Liffey was a capricious creature. Kissed by the dim winter sun, she sparkled flirtatiously. Moments later she turned sullen, nursing secrets in her dark heart. She meandered this way and that, sometimes rushing forward, sometimes sauntering along as if she had no place special to go. But she did; she was irreversibly destined for the sea. That was her Pattern.
“We’re all right now,” I told Briga and Grannus. “From here on, the river will guide us.”
The songs of the Liffey were accompanied by the cry of the curlew and the warbling of the thrush. Unseen frogs croaked counterpoint. As the river swung toward the east seagulls appeared, alighting on the riverbank to squabble over anything edible. Farther on we surprised a pair of fully grown otters frisking in the river like children. To avoid disturbing them, I turned my horse aside and led my companions a short distance inland.
The terrain changed. A detritus of waterworn gravel was piled in long ridges that extended like fingers into areas of low-lying marsh. “We had best be careful along here,” I told the others. “Remember what the fishermen said?”
Briga spoke up. “Trust the horses, they know what’s safe and what isn’t.” She stroked the neck of the gray. “Trust the horses,” she repeated softly.
We rejoined the Liffey downstream at another bend in the river. We had been riding for a long time; I was thirsty and the sight and sound of water made it worse. I longed to drink. But if I dismounted I would have to get back on. My eyes searched in both directions for a useful log or boulder. They found only reeds.
The dark horse stretched his neck and yearned toward the water. The chestnut mare was fighting for her head. Grannus struggled valiantly, but when she got the bit in her teeth a single bound took her to water’s edge. She plunged her muzzle greedily into the water. The other horses followed. We could no more stop them than stop the flow of the Liffey.
Briga flung one leg across the gray horse’s neck and slid down. Gathering up her clothing in both hands, she waded into the river. The bitterly cold water did not seem to bother her any more than it had bothered the otters.
“Beware of the current!” I called. Briga merely shook her head. While I watched anxiously, she bent over and touched her lips to the surface of the river; more of a caress than a drink. She looked up smiling. “It’s so sweet, Ainvar. Do come and have a taste.”
The sound of the horses sucking in great mouthfuls of water was hard enough to resist, but it was impossible to resist Briga. I slid to the ground. My feet stung from the shock; my knees almost buckled. Instead of wading out into the river I rather painfully squatted down at water’s edge and made a cup of my two hands. Grannus did the same.
Briga splashed back to join us. Wringing water from her skirts, she said, “The river isn’t cold, Ainvar, once you get used to it.”
I doubt if any river would dare to chill my Briga.
Humans and horses together, we drank as if the Liffey flowed with wine.
Afterward we relieved ourselves, then walked back and forth for a little while, easing our limbs. When it was time to remount, the dark horse seemed taller than I remembered. It was a long way up to his back. I could grasp his mane with both hands and pull myself up like climbing a rope…but no sooner did the thought cross my mind than he laid his ears back and stepped sideways. As clearly as if he spoke in words, my horse was telling me he did not like the idea.
Fortunately there is more than one way to mount a horse.
Once again, Grannus lifted Briga onto the gray. When he turned to the chestnut mare I warned, “Don’t try to get on the way you did last time. She’ll never stand for it. ”
“Have you a better suggestion, Ainvar?”
“Actually, I do. I’ll even demonstrate.” I led my horse into the shallows and then downriver to a point where the bank rose straight up from water’s edge. The Liffey was liquid ice. When the water came almost to my horse’s chest and the current was tugging at us both, I clambered up onto the bank above him. From there it was a simple matter to ease myself down onto his back.
“See how easy that was, Grannus? Now you do it.”
The chestnut mare danced and fretted, but the water impeded her. Grannus managed to get on without a repetition of the last time.
We resumed our journey
along the Liffey’s erratic course. Eventually the river grew broader, spilling out onto the floodplain. The sun was low in the sky when we came upon a large midden of empty shells, evidence of a nearby tribe that made shellfish a staple of their diet. Grannus’s stomach growled. “Can’t we halt for a while and eat that bread and cheese?”
“Not yet,” I told him. “The mouth of the river can’t be far ahead.”
When the last rays of the winter sun were smothered by a mottled twilight, Grannus grumbled, “It’s almost dark, Ainvar, and I’ve got used to having a layer of thatch over my head at night. We’d better get there soon.”
“You sound like an old woman,” I scoffed.
Then we heard the scream.
chapter XXIV
THE CRY SHATTERED THE TWILIGHT INTO A THOUSAND ICY slivers. It might have been the ghastly shriek of a man being torn in half. Anyone familiar with Caesar knew the sound of agony.
Our horses shied violently. Grannus hit the ground with a thud. Briga and I brought our mounts under control, though they stood with their ears stiffly pricked in the direction of the scream. The direction in which we were traveling.
Cursing under his breath, Grannus got to his feet. He snatched at the mare’s dangling reins. She snorted and danced out of reach. “Let me,” said Briga.
She urged the gray horse forward, reached out, and caught hold of the mare’s reins. “Take off your sword, Grannus,” Briga said softly. Quietly. “Now give it to Ainvar.”
The sword was heavy in my hand. Alien. My fingers did not know the shape of the hilt.
“All right,” Briga told Grannus, “get back on your horse.”
He looked around but saw nothing he could use as a mounting block. “How?”
Briga sighed. In just such a way, women must have sighed over the inadequacies of their menfolk since before the before. “Lean your chest against your horse’s ribs,” she directed, “and reach across her back. Gently, Grannus! Stroke her opposite side a time or two. That’s fine. Now jump as high as you can and use your arms to pull yourself up and over.”
The Greener Shore Page 25