Finn Mac Cool

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “I know that. I’m not asking you to. I’m just asking for what help you can give: a chariot for Crania to ride in and enough food to get us across Erin without stopping if we must.”

  Angus stared into the fire and considered. He was a beefy, grizzled man with a broad red face and a fringe of whiskers like moss creeping over his features, moss that did not hide his concern as he said, “As your foster father, I shall do what I can for you. And I won’t condemn you. There’ll be enough of them to do that. I’ve always been proud of you, Diarmait, and never prouder than the day I heard you’d been welcomed into the Fiarma and were training as an officer. That’s come to be a noble boast, and I’ve boasted of you.”

  “I’m sorry you can boast of me no more,” Diarmait said sadly.

  Angus gathered himself. “Who says I can’t? I can indeed! Who else has a son bold enough to steal a king’s daughter and a commander’s wife?” Determined to convince both himself and Diarmait, he clapped the young man on the back so hard he left a huge bruise that ached for days. “Now get some sleep, and we’ll see you away at dawn.”

  The light of the next day was just creeping into the sky when a grateful Diarmait departed the stronghold of his foster father, equipped with a chariot and two horses trained to pull it, for which he had exchanged the riding horses taken from Tara. Bundles of food were stored in the wicker-sided cart, leaving just enough room for Diarmait to stand and drive, with Grania beside him.

  Sleepily, she leaned her head on his shoulder as he waved farewell to Angus and lifted the reins. “I hope I see you again,” Diarmait called to his fosterer.

  “Here or in the Land of Everlasting Youth,” the other replied with a cheer he did not feel.

  The fugitives set off for the west, for the empty places.

  Diarmait had hunted with Finn and Oisin, he knew how the hounds worked. He deliberately drove the chariot as far as he could along the beds of rivers and streams, destroying the scent for the hounds to follow. Where the water was too deep or the way too narrow, he emerged to drive along the bank, regretting but unable to prevent the ruts the chariot wheels made. It would have been easier riding horses, but he would not chide Grania.

  She touched a deep protective streak within him. The enormity of their deed had gradually dawned on her as well, and he knew she was afraid. From time to time she trembled. But she clung to him and reiterated her love for him until he could not doubt her. He could do nothing but go on.

  Chariots made for rough riding. They leaped and lurched and threatened to overturn almost constantly. Diarmait, trained to ride horses, was uncertain with the reins, and the team felt his hesitation and took advantage of him. But he continued grimly, determined to save Grania and himself if he could.

  It was a large if.

  The systematic hunting of the fugitives was underway. Finn himself led the principal team of trackers with his best hounds, and Caurag to tend them. Cailte insisted on accompanying him.

  “I could use you better with another company,” Finn told the thin man. “I need officers I trust. Too many of the Fíanna seem to be taking Diarmait’s part in this.”

  “The young ones,” Cailte assured him. “Diarmait’s one of their own, they sympathize with him.”

  “Some of the older ones too, I’m afraid. There are men who admire what he’s done.”

  “There were men who admired Cuhal Mac Trenmor,” Goll could not resist remarking.

  Finn tried not to hear.

  When he was occupied elsewhere, Cailte approached Caurag. “If the hounds pick up the trail,” he said, “see that Conbec of Perfect Symmetry leads them. If you can, send him on ahead and hold the others back. If Diarmait sees him, he’ll know Finn is close behind and be warned.”

  “You’re asking me to act against the commander.”

  “I am not, I’m asking you to act in his best interests. If he catches them while in his current state of mind, he’ll do something that will blight the rest of his days.”

  “Och, I don’t think he’d hurt the woman.”

  “Do you not? Have you looked at him recently, Caurag? Really looked at him? There’s nothing behind his eyes but madness. He looks like a wolf with the foaming-mouth sickness. Do as I ask, help me protect him from his own actions.”

  Reluctantly, Caurag agreed. “If I find out later that I’ve betrayed him. I’ll blame you for it,” he promised Cailte.

  The hunters found wheel tracks occasionally, often enough to lead them in time to the ford of Luan on the Shannon. There, Diarmait had finally realized the chariot was more trouble than it was worth and abandoned it. The hounds found it lying broken among the reeds by the river, and the horses turned loose to graze.

  “From this point, they’ve gone on foot,” Caurag reported to Finn.

  “They’ll be easier to find, then.”

  “Not necessarily. They can move in and out of streams more easily now, and climb bare rocks where the scent won’t hold.”

  “The girl could never do that.”

  “She can if she’s determined enough.”

  She was.

  Within herself Grania had found, to an unexpected degree, a stamina and tenacity that surprised both herself and Diarmait. The spoiled and petted child of a king, she stripped her spirit to the bare bones of survival and went on long after a lesser woman would have collapsed.

  Diarmait’s admiration for her, and pride in her, increased daily.

  Within one cycle of the moon she had shapechanged from a plump. pretty girl with a white skin to a thin, freckled woman with ropy sinews in her arms and wild hair snarled and tangled by briers. Yet to Diarmait she seemed more beautiful than ever. He no longer remembered that her first purpose had been to flee Finn. He remembered only that she loved him and wanted to be with him, and was willing to undergo terrible hardships to that end.

  His own sufferings seemed meagre compared to hers.

  Feeling the hot breath of dishonour on the back of his neck, Diarmait made a point of telling people, whenever they encountered anyone, “This is not my wife. She is my woman, but not my wife.” In that way he felt he was to some small degree keeping faith with Finn.

  It was the best he could do.

  But those words angered Grania. Whenever she heard them, she always announced, “I am his wife! I am wife to Diarmait Mac Donn.”

  “It isn’t true,” he told her repeatedly. “We’ve agreed to no contract, we’ve exchanged no vows. We’ve exchanged no vows, Grania!”

  “Then let’s exchange them now,” she would plead.

  But he could not take that irrevocable step. The tattered shreds of his loyalty to Finn lay like splinters in his eyes. Grania, seeing them there, wept.

  But she went on.

  And Finn pursued them.

  Across the face of Erin, he pursued them. Soon enough, people in every territory knew the reason for the hunt. It was the sort of story beloved by bards.

  Many were sympathetic with the guilty pair. Women especially wept over the imagined fate of Diarmait and Grania, and urged their husbands to hide the two if they saw them.

  Men with an eye on their own prosperity and survival were less quick to turn against Finn. As one chieftain remarked to another, “There’s no harm in a bit of fun with a woman, but any lad who tries to take the Rígfénnid Fíanna’s woman deserves whatever befalls him. I wouldn’t care to have Finn Mac Cool angry with me. It would mean having the whole Fíanna against me, and I can’t afford it.”

  “Not the whole Fíanna,” said the second man. “From what I hear, some of them sympathize with Diarmait and refuse to join in the hunt.”

  “A bad thing, that. It could split the army.”

  It could and did. Finn seemed unaware of the quarrels that sprang up at night when the hunters were encamped. Officers and fénnidi who were accompanying him seemed to have divided loyalties. Many counted themselves among Diarmait’s friends, and were with Finn only because of the oath to him that they had sworn. The Finn Mac Cool t
hey found themselves following now was a man they did not know.

  Goll Mac Morna was surprised to discover how much he regretted Finn’s disintegration. He tried more than once to talk to him. But as he subsequently confided to Red Ridge, “Talking to Finn is like talking to a bull maddened by bees. He hears nothing. He just shakes his head and roars.”

  Still, Goll tried. One last time.

  He waited until the evening of a long day, when he hoped Finn would be too tired to be argumentative. He himself was exhausted, but he knelt by a stream and splashed icy water on his face until he was somewhat restored, then went and sat down beside Finn at the campfire.

  When he turned to look at the Rígfénnid Fíanna’s profile with his one good eye, he thought at first he was seeing the implacable face of a stony cliff. Even the mouth, once so tender and merry, was a cruel slash.

  “Let them go, Finn,” Goll said.

  Finn did not look at him. “I cannot let them go. Diarmait. Mac Donn has disgraced the Fíanna. We discipline our own; it’s up to me to catch him and do what needs to be done.”

  “And what does need to be done? Are you going to hound that lad to death, and the girl too? To what purpose? Men who loved you once are beginning to look at you sideways now. Diarmait’s obviously dismissed from the Fíanna, which is the normal punishment. What more do you want to do to him?”

  “He owes compensation.”

  “You know he couldn’t pay the compensation in a hundred years. Would you destroy his tribe over this? Donn’s been loyal to you all these years, why make him suffer for—”

  “I’m not making Donn suffer. You’ll notice I haven’t included him in the pursuit.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

  “Then I don’t know what you do mean,” Finn said stonily.

  “That this relentless pursuit is nothing more than a lust for revenge! And you telling me for truth, all those seasons ago, that you disavowed personal vengeance. You even made that a rule for the Fíanna. Yet here you are, breaking your own rules just to get even with Diarmait and Grania.”

  Finn slowly turned the upper part of his body until he was looking at Goll. “I did say that, didn’t I? That I would seek no vengeance?” he asked slowly, as if he had forgotten.

  “You did of course. And I’ve relied on your word ever since,” Goll added recklessly.

  “Have you? Did you really believe me?” Finn asked.

  Goll’s entire body tensed. I knew it, he told himself, I knew it all along. “Are you saying it was a lie, Finn? A lie you told to get my guard down, so someday you could take revenge for your father?” he asked in the calmest voice he could manage. There was, he felt, a terrible inevitability about the question.

  As Goll watched, Finn’s features seemed to blur, shift, re-form themselves. A feral light glowed in his eyes.

  The hackles rose on the back of Goll’s neck. I should have kept my mouth shut, he told himself. I should never have reminded him of Cuhal’s death, not in his current mood.

  Then Finn smiled. The smile was most frightening of all. “I never lie, Goll. I’m famous for my honesty. What I say, I believe to be the truth … when I say it.”

  “So it was the truth, once. But apparently it’s not the truth any longer, because you are seeking vengeance.”

  “That was then and this is now,” said Finn Mac Cool.

  Run for your life! cried Goll’s brain, trapped inside his skull, peering out through the eye-hole at a merciless face that had its teeth bared in what was not a smile after all, but the snarl preceding the attack.

  As a hunter, Goll had faced dangerous wild animals many times. He knew enough not to run. He stood up slowly and carefully, making no sudden move that might provoke Finn. “I’m tired,” he said, trying to sound casual. “I’m going to make my bed now.”

  No muscle of Finn’s moved, yet Goll received a sudden impression of coiled intensity. With his good eye he measured the space between them. If Finn leaped, there was no way he could outrun him—and no way he could outfight the younger man either. If Finn leaped, he was dead.

  But Finn did not move. He stayed exactly where he was, fixing Goll with that terrible gaze. Through his bared teeth came one word, spoken low. “Compensation.”

  Goll’s nerve broke. He turned and left the fireside at a pace lacking in all dignity. Every moment he expected to be seized from behind.

  The love he had borne Finn had always been mingled with resentment and fear, but it had been, in its own way, the proud affection of a father toward a son. Even when Goll plotted against Finn, there had been an element of sport about it, the attempt to regain the Fíanna being a game he did not even need to win, so long as he could play.

  But the time for games was over, and so was the love. Finn had destroyed that by revealing Goll to himself as a man who would run if he was frightened enough.

  And he was frightened. Goll’s legs were pumping with an energy they had not felt for years. He went from trot to gallop in a heartbeat and sped into the woods beyond the campsite, fleeing thoughtlessly, knowing only that he had to get away from the creature with silvery hair who sat beside the fire and grinned at him.

  He did not stop running until he was deep into the woods and so breathless he thought his heart would burst. Then he sank onto a rotting log and just sat there for a measureless time, feeling very old and very broken.

  29

  GOLL STAYED HIDDEN IN THE WOODS UNTIL DAWN, FIGHTING to recover his lost courage. He was furious with himself for running. Though he tried to excuse his action on the grounds of age and weariness, when he considered it honestly, he knew he had simply been afraid.

  Any man who had seen the look Finn Mac Cool gave him would, he told himself, have been afraid.

  I could take the officers and men of Clan Morna and pull out now, he said silently. I should do. I don’t owe Finn anything. I could simply go home.

  The prospect was tempting.

  But he had already been a coward. He could not allow himself to be a deserter as well. And so, when the sky began to fill with grey light and the first sonorous call of Caurag’s hunting horn rang through the dawn air, Goll wearily stood up. Every muscle ached. Every bone rebelled.

  But he put one foot after the other and returned to the camp.

  To his relief, Finn paid no attention to him. He was busy organizing the day’s pursuit.

  Each new day brought new problems. More and more of the Fíanna were openly reluctant to continue. A team of expert trackers belonging to Clan Navin approached Finn and told him, “We are friends of Diarmait Mac Donn and resent being made to search for his trail. Get someone else to do it.”

  Finn’s lip curled. “You swore an oath to me when you joined the Fíanna. You vowed to obey me. Are you breaking your oath now?”

  The young men glanced nervously at one another. “We are not,” their spokesman said at last. “We just wanted to say—”

  “Say nothing to me until you’ve picked up Diarmait’s trail,” Finn snapped.

  The party set out again. A thoroughly exhausted Goll gathered his fíans and went with them, thankful that he had a horse to ride and was no longer a foot warrior. He could slump on his horse’s back and doze, trusting the animal to follow the line of march, and one of his men to catch him if he actually went to sleep and started to fall off.

  His fíans were made up of men from Clan Morna, and he was certain of their loyalty.

  The hunt swung southward.

  Oisin was increasingly unhappy. Like every member of the Fíanna, he had sworn an oath to Finn, a powerful and binding oath upon which his honour depended. But they were pursuing his best friend, and the man leading the hunt no longer seemed like Oisin’s father. He was a stranger with staring eyes, a man who listened to no one and nothing but his own obsession.

  “I know where they are!” Finn announced some time later. “They’re hiding in an oak forest in the next valley!” He kicked his horse to a canter, riding at speed
toward the distant darkness of the trees.

  Hurrying to keep up with him, Caurag muttered, “He’s like a wolf, he scents his prey when no one else can. Even the hounds haven’t got the scent yet, they’re trying to go west.”

  Cailte put a hand on Cuarag’s arm. “Whistle in the one called Conbec and direct him into that wood at once,” he urged. “He’s the swiftest of the hounds and he’ll get there before Finn. When Diarmait sees him, he’ll know we’re not far behind and he’ll have time to make good an escape.”

  Caurag frowned. “In all the seasons I’ve served him, I’ve never been disloyal to Finn.”

  “Trust me when I tell you you aren’t being disloyal now. Do this, Caurag. Do it for Finn, even if he can’t appreciate it at the moment.”

  Cailte fixed the huntsman with his grey eyes, and at last Caurag nodded. He whistled to Conbec, who came running up to him. Then he gave a firm directional signal with his arm and the huge hound raced off toward the woods, reaching them well before Finn Mac Cool did.

  By the time Finn and his men arrived, there were only cooling embers where a campfire had been, and crushed branches that had once formed a bed for Grania and Diarmait. But the pair were gone.

  Oisin commented, openly admiring, “See how he’s dragged the limbs of trees after him to obscure his trail! There’s no substitute for a training in the Fíanna. Now that they’ve abandoned travelling by chariot, they’ll be harder to find.”

  “Not so hard,” Finn replied grimly. “They go slower on foot. We’ll catch them. Soon.” He scowled at Oisin, his expression warning his son not to sympathize with the fugitives. But Oisin threw a fearless look back at him. “Diarmait may surprise you,” he said. “He’s young and strong and clever.”

  “I’m young enough to take him,” Finn snarled.

  He drove his men relentlessly. Once they loved hunting; the joys of the chase were their greatest pleasure. Now, increasingly aware of the tragic nature of their prey, they had to be urged forward continually. Even those most devoted to Finn found themselves dragging their feet. Only Finn seemed more determined than ever. Each time Diarmait eluded him he grew angrier.