Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  But when they entered a region where armed warriors met them with spears raised, they were happier. After battle there was permissible plundering. Half of what they took belonged to the king. The other half went to Finn Mac Cool, to be divided among his men.

  “I bitterly resent the fact,” Blamec commented on one occasion, “that Cormac’s friends are the wealthy ones, who would have good plunder if we were allowed it, and his enemies always seem to be poor, so that what we take from them is shabby and mean.”

  “If you don’t want your share, you can give it to me,” replied Conan Maol.

  “You always seem to get your own share and half of everyone else’s too,” Donn interjected. “You’re greedy, Conan.”

  “I’m not greedy. I just have big hands.”

  Fergus Honey-Tongue said, “Conan the Hairless has a mighty reach.”

  When they were in amicable regions, the Fíanna devoted most of their time to hunting. They built hunting booths in the glens and on the hillsides to screen themselves from the weather and the eyes of their prey, and ceaselessly trained their hounds to hunt the deer and the wolf. Along their way, many of them had acquired hounds, so that Bran and Sceolaun now led a pack of huge, shaggy animals as eager as they. Finn had added Lomair and Brod and Lomluath to his personal pack, and rejoiced in watching Bran lay down the law to them. No dog questioned Bran’s leadership, ever.

  Deep in Erainn territory, a man called Robartach brought a huge dog to Finn, extolling its virtues above all the hounds of the Fíanna. The creature was as tall as Bran, though not as shaggy, heavier through the jaw, with pricked ears and a crescent of white showing at the edges of the eyes.

  “I don’t like the look of that animal,” Finn said behind his hand to Cailte. “There’s a nasty glint in the eye.”

  “You don’t like the look of any dog that doesn’t resemble Bran.”

  “True. Would you say this one’s any good at all?”

  Overhearing, the owner replied eagerly, “The only way to know is to match them at fighting! As for a wager, if my dog overcomes yours, he will replace Bran as leader of the pack of the Rígfénnid Fíanna and his whelps will command great prices. I have a few of them available,” he added.

  “Bags full, I’d say,” remarked Conan. “And you can’t get rid of them.”

  Robartach, who was red-faced and balding, glared at the totally hairless Conan before turning back to Finn. “Is it a wager?”

  Confident of Bran, Finn replied, “It is. But when Bran defeats your dog, I pledge you to tell every person you meet that Finn Mac Cool’s Bran is the mightiest hound in Erin.”

  Robartach smirked. “I won’t have to. My dog will win.”

  The warriors formed a circle. Finn and Robartach crouched beside their dogs, rubbing them and whispering to them. Then they stood back. The dogs knew what was expected of them. After circling one another stiff-legged and snarling, they attacked simultaneously.

  Finn’s assessment of the other dog proved correct. The animal was not only savage, but devious. Its hide was very loose so that every time Bran took a hold, the other dog twisted away, leaving Bran with a mouthful of flesh but no real damage done. In that moment, Robartach’s dog would double back with a dropped shoulder and try to seize Bran’s foreleg in its jaws to snap the bone.

  Bran fought cleanly and fiercely and bravely, but was not experienced in fighting other dogs, while it soon became obvious that Robartach’s animal had been bred and trained for that express purpose.

  The sounds of the dogs growling and the spectators yelling soon brought Cormac and his host outside to watch. They had to shoulder into the crowd, which was more respectful of the fighting dogs at the moment than of princes.

  The battle went on and on, progressively bloodier, with Bran refusing to surrender even when it became obvious the other dog must win. At last Finn could bear it no longer. “Call off your dog!” he cried to Robartach.

  “I will not.”

  “Then give me his name and I’ll call him off myself!”

  Robartach clamped his jaws shut and stood with arms folded.

  Without the dog’s name, Finn could not command him. He yelled inarticulately and waded into the melee, hoping to pull the combatants apart by brute force, but the dogs were too fast even for him. He shouted at the prick-eared dog, but it ignored him and continued to rend and tear Bran’s flesh.

  Robartach only laughed. “Admit it, Finn. Mine is the better animal.”

  Heedless of the danger to himself, Finn continued to try to separate the fighting dogs. As he struggled, he could hear the comments of the spectators, some of whom had come with Robartach. A youth spent in the wilds of Erin had given Finn almost preternatural hearing. Even over the growling of the animals, he heard one man mutter the name of Robartach’s dog to a companion.

  Finn froze. He stood erect, jammed his thumb into his mouth, and appeared to listen intently. Then he yelled, “Coinn Iotair! Hound of Rage! Stop fighting and come to me!”

  When he heard his name, Coinn Iotair hesitated, In that fatal instant, Bran sank deadly fangs into his throat and ripped it open.

  Robartach was dismayed. “How did you know the name?” he asked, watching his dog in its death throes.

  Finn gave a nonchalant shrug. “I listened to my thumb.”

  “What?”

  “One of my men will explain it to you, ask any of them. You should never underestimate Finn Mac Cool.” He sank to his knees beside Bran, who was bleeding profusely. Bran tried to lick his hands.

  Finn lifted the hound in his arms and approached Cormac Mac Airt. “I request your physician to heal Bran’s wounds,” he said to the king.

  Cormac was taken aback, and his Erainn host was appalled. “A king’s physician tending an animal? You must be joking.”

  “Not about this,” said Finn Mac Cool, his eyes locking with those of the king.

  For the first time, Cormac felt the full force of his will. Suddenly feeling it was necessary, the king told his Rígfénnid Fíanna, “You can’t always have what you want, Finn.”

  Finn’s posture did not change, nor did he move a muscle in his face. Nothing changed. Yet a Thing looked out of his eyes that had not been there before, a creature more feral than a wolf, more terrible than a storm. A creature wild beyond imagining, an elemental force, a power capable of destroying everything in its path if opposed.

  “Your physician will heal my dog,” said the Thing in Finn’s eyes.

  Cormac recalled that Finn claimed kinship with the Tuatha Dé Danann. Shapechangers.

  I must face him down now, the king told himself. I must face him down surely, I dare not allow him any advantage over me.

  He drew in breath to speak. The words of royal refusal were already on his tongue when his talent for reading the thoughts of others rose in him, and he knew beyond doubt that Finn would kill him where he stood if he did not help Bran.

  Would kill him where he stood as a wolf would kill a king, caring nothing for his titles or ancestry.

  And Finn Mac Cool was so fast that the deed would be done before any human could stop him.

  With a great effort, as if his features were carved of stone that he must first soften, Cormac made himself smile. “As a favour to the Rígfénnid Fíanna,” he said loudly, “I accede to his request. This is a splendid hound whose death would be a loss. My own physician will tend the wounds.”

  The Thing that had looked at the king from Finn’s eyes was gone in a blink. “I thank you for your generosity,” said Finn.

  With trembling hands, Cormac’s own physician bathed and dressed Bran’s wounds and pulled the flaps of skin together, poulticing them and binding them with strips of linen as precisely as he would have done had the wounds been on the body of Cormac Mac Airt. The whole time he was working, Finn stood over him, saying nothing, merely watching.

  The whole time he was working, Bran’s eyes were fixed on Finn with absolute devotion. The dog neither flinched nor whined, just watched Fi
nn.

  When it was over, the physician got himself a big cup of mead and went off with it for a while.

  That night as they sat by their feasting fire under the stars, breathing fresh, clean air while Cormac had to breathe the stifling atmosphere of his host’s banquetting hall, Cailte remarked to Finn, “You love that dog.”

  Finn smiled. “I love the clamour of the hunt on the mountainside, the belling of stags in the glen, the screaming of gulls on the shore, the sound of the waterfall in the forest, the song of the blackbird in the morning.

  “And I love Bran.”

  Lying beside him as always, Bran pricked one badly torn ear and thumped the ground with a feathery tail.

  “Poetry again?” enquired Cailte.

  “I had to be a warrior today. I can be a poet tonight.”

  “Is it hard to be both?”

  Finn Mac Cool did not answer.

  Those were indeed the days of high summer. Cormac’s circuit carried his name to remote clanholds where no king of Tara had ever visited before, and wherever he went, Finn and his companions accompanied him. The legends grew around them, acquiring a life of their own. After the king’s entourage had moved on, those who had met them told tales to those who had not, tales that grew in the telling like ripples spreading on a pond.

  The stories of Finn’s hounds, particularly of Bran and Sceolaun, multiplied in the same way. At a feast held in Cormac’s honour by a king of the Deisi, Fithel the royal brehon enumerated a number of the laws pertaining to hounds, who had an extensive category of their own.

  “Brehon Law,” he explained, “grades dogs into fully lawful, half-lawful, and quarter-lawful animals. Lawful dogs enjoy full recognition under the law, and for any damage done them, there must be compensation. Lawful dogs include hunting hounds, dogs kept as watchdogs, and the lapdog of a king’s woman. The value of the whelp of a lawful dog is one ninth the value of its mother.

  “In dogfights, every type of bite and action must be considered. If the inciter of the fight is a sensible man, his dog is free of liability. If he is a foolish man, the dog has more liability, it being considered that the animal’s brain exceeds the owner’s.”

  Finn, who had offered no compensation to Robartach, spoke up. “When the dog of an inciter is killed, should there be an honour price paid for it?”

  Fithel happily launched into a long explanation of the different grades of distress and compensation as applied to every sort of injury, including those of dogs in fights. He would as gladly have spent the night listing the laws applying to beekeeping, which were even more detailed and extensive.

  But Finn did not keep bees. He did not need that information.

  In the high, golden days of summer, there were women. In the royal forts of provincial kings, there were women. In the wattle huts of cattle herders, there were women. When a woman’s eyes met the eyes of one of the Fíanna, sometimes a look passed between them. Sometimes a word, a touch on the arm …

  Finn did not deny his men the pleasure of women. He did, however, hedge them with rules, so they would do nothing to dishonour themselves or the Fíanna. When he saw a glance pass between man and woman, he invariably took that man aside and spoke to him in a strong, urgent voice, reminding him of his vows and obligations, demanding that he treat the woman in a way that would leave no regrets.

  For himself, there were no women. Sometimes at night he lay on his back and stared at the stars and thought of Cruina.

  Sometimes he clenched his fists in the darkness.

  More than once he sent Cailte with a string of runners to Tara to learn if the Ulaid had made any move. The reply was always the same. “No sign of them,” Cailte would report as he sat on the ground, thinner than ever, his legs scarred with briers, gulping ale as if he had drunk nothing the whole journey to Tara and back.

  Cormac wondered, “When will they make their move?”

  No one could tell him. Even Goll could not guess.

  As the summer passed, the lack of activity on the part of the Ulaid preyed increasingly on Cormac’s mind. He began, almost without conscious thought, to wend his way toward Tara again, leaving behind a network of self-proclaimed allies and supporters, all of whom had been promised rewards for their allegiance or threatened with dire punishments for their defection.

  “How many of them will we still hold at this time next year?” Finn wondered aloud to Goll Mac Morna.

  The one-eyed man squinted and stared up at the sky; a hot sky, that summer, of a blue so strong as to be opaque, filled with the sun in his blazing chariot. “About half,” Goll hazarded. “Of course that depends on what happens between now and then. If the Ulidians attack Tara and we hold them off and pursue them back north, and loot them as they deserve, we’ll find outselves with a lot more allies from the south clamourning for admission to Tara.”

  “And for their share.”

  “To be sure.”

  “Are all men greedy?” Finn asked unexpectedly.

  “The best way to answer that,” Goll told him, “is to look inside yourself. Honestly. Know how you are, and that will give you some idea of what other men are like. What do you know of yourself?”

  Finn waited a time before answering. When he spoke, his voice was low, the words measured and somehow very sad. “I know that I am quiet in peace and angry in battle,” he said. “And that is all I know.”

  As they made their way through the territory of the Laigin, Finn recognized the landmarks of his childhood, though not with fond nostalgia. He seemed to retire within himself, brooding. Earlier in the summer he had entertained his companions with vivid tales by the campfire, but now he sat silently, apart from them, staring into the flames and saying little.

  Late one day found them camped in a valley not far from the Bog of Almhain. All day Finn had been silent, only issuing an occasional order in a distracted tone when absolutely necessary. Cormac and his retinue were spending the night in the stronghold of a tribal leader some distance up the valley. At the other end of the valley, the land gave way to a meandering stream, then rose to form a hill studded with ancient ruins.

  “Once,” Goll told the others, “a mighty fortress was on that hill, but it’s a long time gone. Legends still haunt it, though. Some say it was a seat of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Whether that’s true or not, no one builds a fort there now, though it’s the most defensible site within half a day’s walk.”

  Once the Fíanna had set up camp, Finn and some of his men went hunting. Sceolaun pranced at her master’s side. Bran followed more sedately, still sore from the wounds of battle but refusing to be left behind. For a long time Finn had made his men carry the injured hound on a litter as they would a wounded warrior, but that was no longer necessary, and both man and hound were thankful.

  Summer days in Erin were as long as winter nights, with only a sliver of darkness between. The hunt lasted late. Enough game was soon taken, but the joy of the chase was not exhausted and Finn and his men went on and on, occasionally sending a runner back for porters to carry the meat to camp.

  At last even the most ardent hunter had to admit it would be wasteful to kill any more game. They reluctantly turned toward camp, boasting among themselves of this spear throw or that rack of antlers.

  Finn walked with them but not among them. Slowly the distance between himself and the others widened, though he was not aware of it. He was alone with his thoughts.

  Nearby, just on the other side of a strip of woodland, was the Bog of Almhain.

  Sometimes he could not resist sinking into melancholy. His was the nature of the poet who understands intuitively that pain is the balance of pleasure.

  Abandoned her Fir Bolg baby on the Bog of Almhain.

  Lost in the darkness inside his head, Finn at first did not see the deer. Then a flash of colour just at the periphery of his vision caught his attention and he turned his head.

  A young doe stood at the edge of the woods, sun-dappled by the light of the setting sun as it streamed between
the leaves. The pale patches on her back and flanks might have been the last remnants of a fawn’s spots. She stood with her head high, her eyes fixed on Finn.

  He stopped in mid-stride; stopped slowly, not abruptly, and gently lowered his raised foot back to the earth. Then he stood like a tree, returning the deer’s gaze.

  She did not run. Her large ears swivelled back and forth in search of threatening sounds. Finn made himself breathe slowly, so he would not sound like a predator panting. With one hand, out of sight of the deer, he signalled to Bran and Sceolaun to be still and was thankful that the rest of the hounds had gone on with his men.

  The deer took half a hesitant step forward, toward him.

  “Do I know you?” he breathed. Perhaps he said the words aloud. Perhaps he said them only in his mind.

  But she heard. Her mouth opened slightly, as if to speak, and she took another step forward.

  In that moment, the final line of demarcation between fantasy and reality was forever destroyed for Finn Mac Cool. There was no going back.

  The deer walked toward him with incredible grace, each delicate lifting of leg a miracle of beauty.

  Finn could not breathe. I made this up, he thought. Now it happens. Here is the deer … but not Muirinn. Not my mother. Someone else …

  He and the doe gazed at one another across the gulf that is supposed to separate man from the animal kingdom, and as they gazed, the gulf vanished.

  Finn saw a woman standing in dappling, golden sunlight.

  What the deer saw, he did not know.

  But she continued to approach him until she was only a few paces away. Then she paused. He thought she smiled.

  The deer … the woman … lay down … seated herself … on the grass.

  Ignoring Finn’s command for the first time, Bran and Sceolaun ran up to her then and fawned at her feet, licking her, wriggling with joy as she caressed them.

  Her brown eyes never left Finn’s eyes.