A Gathering of Ravens

by Scott Oden

  The chiefs and captains bowed in turn and filed from the courtyard of the monastery until only Murrough and the king remained. The son waved off a servant who hurried to his father’s side; instead, he offered Brian his own arm to lean on. The king was weary. His years had more than caught up with him over the last weeks, and with each passing day it became harder and harder to hide his infirmity from their enemies.

  Brian smiled at the frown etching his son’s scarred brow; with one liver-spotted hand he patted the strong forearm that helped support him. “Why so glum, boy? I’m not dead, yet. Though I expect this will be my last spear-gathering.”

  “And then what? You’ll hand me your crown and go off to sit in the sun at Kincora?” Murrough chuckled at the thought of his father idle. “Nay, you’ve got fight left in you, old man.”

  Arm in arm, father and son shuffled across the moonlit courtyard to where Brian’s own tent stood. It was a simple pavilion, its austerity befitting the old man’s personality; before it rested a four-wheeled cart bearing the Cross of Kincora, carved from the stone of Golgotha by the apostle Peter and brought from Rome by Saint Flannán as a gift to the faithful of Ériu. Four young monks tended it, praying day and night for the Almighty’s blessing, while the sons of Thomond sat round, whetting their terrible Dalcassian axes.

  With Murrough’s help, the king knelt and kissed the base of the Cross before he entered the royal pavilion. Inside, the younger man winced at the stifling warmth, at the musty stench of age barely masked by drifting tendrils of incense. A night lamp flickered from the center pole of the pavilion, and a brazier smoldered beneath it. The king released Murrough’s arm and shuffled to his divan, where he sat with an audible groan.

  The prince glanced about. Besides the divan, the pavilion contained a tree for the king’s cloak and crown, for his axe from his days with the war bands, for his brightly painted shield, and for the sword that was his symbol of power; the white bearskin on the back of the divan Murrough recognized as a gift from the chief of the Hlymrekr Danes, while the open Gospel on its stand near the head of the divan came from the monastery at Iona—its leather-and-gilt covers the only touch of ostentation to his father’s spartan quarters.

  “Where was Malachy, this eve?” Brian said. “The men of Meath did not answer my summons.”

  “He’s camped to the west of us, near Dolcan’s Meadow. That old snake claims not to trust you, though I’d wager he’s treating with the Norse on his own and planning to betray us.”

  “He feels ill-used,” Brian replied. He reclined against the arm of the divan, where an old rolled cloak served as a pillow. “And with good reason. I ousted him from his throne and took Kormlada from him to be my wife, even if that proved ill-thought. I would not trust him, either, were our situations reversed. Give him the benefit of the doubt, my son. Tomorrow, invite Malachy to cross the Liffey and scour the lands north of Dubhlinn. Go with him. With luck, it will draw that pup Sitric and his faithless uncle out from behind their walls if they see the rich estates of Howth in flames. But”—Brian looked at his son with a stern expression that brooked no dissent—“that bloodthirsty villain O’Ruairc stays in the camp. Let him watch the Dubhlinn road.”

  Murrough pursed his lips. “Do not judge him too harshly, Father. He may have flouted your wishes, but he followed mine to the letter.”

  The old king sighed, a sound that pierced Murrough to the core; though a man in the prime of his power, wise to the ways of axe and sword, the prince ever despaired of disappointing his sire. “I guessed as much. I saw the look that passed between you.” Brian invited his son to sit. “Why would you do this, boy? Why would you condemn our people to hellfire and damnation? We’re not beasts.”

  “Last season,” Murrough said quietly, “I met a man in single combat—I say man, but he was only a handful of years older than young Turlough, your grandson. This was on the banks of the River Sláine, in Leinster, where a Danish war band sought to thwart our raid into their territory. He knew my name, this lad. Thrice, he called it. I could not ignore the challenge.” Murrough rubbed his face, suddenly weary in the stuffy warmth of the king’s pavilion. “He said I had killed his own father, years before, and that he had grown up with a thirst to slay me. So, he tried.” The prince looked down at his scarred hands. “My axe felled him like a sapling. But, I wondered, in the days and weeks after, if this pup might not have a pup of his own, back in some stinking longhouse. A pup whose bitch-whore of a mother might wean it on tales of vengeance against Black Murrough of Kincora.

  “We reap what we sow, Father. And I have sown a field of Danish bastards hot for my blood—or for the blood of my son. I don’t want that for Turlough. I’d rather him grow old reading the Good Book, tilling his fields, and finally dying in his bed when he has a score of years on you. That is my dream. To make that dream come to pass means reaping the harvest I’ve sown, aye, but it also means harrowing that field with salt. For this to end, every Dane must die … and every Dane’s son, wife, or daughter.”

  Far from angry, the king looked upon Murrough with great pity. “The Almighty preserve us, my son, but I once thought the same as you. I reckoned that with the sword I could buy peace and long life for all my sons. But, alas, such is not the way of the world. Blood begets blood; slaughter begets slaughter. Only in forgiveness can we find peace.”

  “If we need only forgive our enemies, why do we sit with an army three miles from Dubhlinn’s gates? Why threaten battle at all, Father, if a mere apology from Maelmorda is all that prevents us from retiring to enjoy the first fruits of spring?”

  Brian’s gray eyes flashed in the faint light. “Don’t be daft, boy. I didn’t raise you to play the fool. You know as well as I the difference between a just and an unjust war. Order is what we keep with the sword, not peace. And Order demands punishment for those who would flout it. I would forgive Maelmorda his treason, if he but asked. But Order still requires that I punish him for it.

  “Slaughter is an offense against Order, my son. And the slaughter of innocents is an offense against God. That is why O’Ruairc must face judgment.”

  Murrough stood; he pulled the bearskin over the king’s shoulders. “Then judge me alongside him. And forgive me, Father.”

  Brian grasped his son’s hand and kissed it. “Ask the Almighty for forgiveness, my son, and remember this day when you wear the crown.”

  Murrough nodded and withdrew. Brian watched him; the weariness that crushed his body weighed his soul down like an anchor.

  27

  When Étaín finally emerged from the trees south and west of the Irish encampment, she breathed a sigh of relief. Exhaustion cut her to the bone; she was thorn-scratched and footsore. Sweat matted her copper hair to her skull. Cramped fingers knotted in the halter of the pony, which plodded along with its head down despite its lightened burden. Bran lay on his belly on the drag, unmoving; when last she checked, the silver-bearded Irishman still clung to life, his pale forehead damp and feverish.

  Stragglers yet streamed after the Irish host—a polyglot of sutlers and whores, scavengers and merchants. Wagons plodded along, some clanking with wares and others empty in anticipation of spoils gleaned from the killing fields; a profusion of carts carried whole families, human carrion-crows and rootless vagabonds drawn by the promise of war. The whole converged on a second camp that lay in the shadow of King Brian’s, like a fungus growing in the stubbled fields once claimed by the Norse settlers of Kilmainham. Étaín joined the flow of this human river without a single challenge, as though they knew she belonged among them.

  Étaín paused at the edge of a makeshift market to let a barrel-laden wain trundle past. Around her, though the hour grew late, this crude city of camp followers yet seethed and jostled. She heard snatches of song, of music; hawkers extolled their meager goods, their cries shrill with desperation; merchants hounded after the likes of her, plucking at the hem of her tattered cloak in an effort to get her attention, to draw her eye to woven baskets filled wi
th bits of cast-off rubbish, to hard-baked biscuits and wilted greens scavenged on the march, or to a back-bent slave offered by the hour. Étaín brushed aside their importuning hands and ignored their palaver. “A physician,” she said, over and again as she traversed the edges of the torchlit market. “I seek a physician!”

  Before she reached her wits’ end, however, the figure of a man stepped from the throng and blocked her way—a Dane, by the look of him, sinewy and gray with age, a spade-shaped beard brushing his chest; he wore a plain white tunic and cross-gaitered trousers beneath a charcoal-colored cloak and bore no weapon that she could see. He looked her up and down with eyes a pale shade of blue. “This lot, little sister,” he said, his voice deep but soft. “This lot has never seen a physician.”

  “Have you someone who can treat wounds, then? A wise-woman perhaps?” Étaín said.

  “Let me look.” The Dane came and crouched alongside the drag. Bran mewled as hard-callused fingers gently probed the wound. Frowning, the man leaned closer and sniffed it. His face grew solemn; he straightened and stood. “He needs a priest, little sister. And soon. Come.” He gestured a short distance away, to where a fly-rigged pavilion stood. A trio of Danes, all equal in the simplicity of their dress, handed out bread, cups of watered wine, and wooden bowls of thin broth to the latecomers. “I will send someone to fetch a priest.”

  “Who are you?”

  The Dane smiled without showing his teeth. “Ragnall of Corcaigh. Here, take some wine.”

  Étaín gratefully accepted a cup, drained it, and returned it to the taciturn Dane. To her surprise, he refilled it and handed it back.

  “How are you called, little sister?”

  “Forgive me.” She passed a grimy hand over her brow. “I am Étaín, once of Wessex. My poor friend, here, is Bran of the Uí Garrchon, who was crossing the mountains with his mates to join good King Brian’s army.”

  Ragnall motioned for his companions. “Étaín of Wessex, these men will see your friend is made comfortable. I bid you, sit and rest. A priest will come soon.”

  “Are you … monks?”

  Ragnall laughed. “No, little sister. We were slaves, once, till King Brian freed us. We swore an oath to the White Christ that we’d offer an equal measure of succor to the Gaels that the king offered to us.”

  “But I am no Gael.”

  “All the same.” Ragnall shrugged. “Are you not in need?”

  Étaín nodded. “I thank you.”

  Ragnall sat beside her on a bench of salt-scoured wood. “What happened to your friend? I’ve never seen an arrow lodged so deep. You said he traveled with his mates?”

  Étaín looked up from her cup of wine; shivering, she felt a Divine hand on her, propelling her into the role of witness. She exhaled. I am the beacon of Christ. “The tale is long in the telling, good Ragnall, and by its end you might think me a madwoman…”

  28

  At the stroke of midnight, a maelstrom of birds converged on the moonlit spike of Carraig Dubh with a deafening cacophony of voices—shrill tweets and croaks, caws and staccato crakes. Silver glittered from beak and claw as they swirled over naked stone; then, as suddenly as they appeared, they dispersed … leaving in their wake the cloaked and hooded figure of Kormlada.

  The Witch of Dubhlinn stood motionless near the edge of the precipice, one wrong step away from its deadly thousand-foot drop. Before her was the Rock of Brule. Black and rune-etched, the Rock could have been a giant turned to stone, with its suggestion of human form and the eerie impression of eyes where the face should have been. It had kept silent sentinel over the shores of Ériu for time out of mind, as the name Brule slowly faded from the Gaelic memory and attained a gloss of myth—it was the cenotaph of a god, some said, from a time before a great cataclysm had ended the Elder Days; others called it the cairn for a great king of the Cruithne, the Stone Folk. In truth, however, not even the Tuatha knew the Rock’s origins.

  Beneath the hood, her eyes raked the line of twisted yews down the slope from the precipice. If her enemy was here, she could not see him. Slowly, she picked her way down closer to the Rock. The glamour of the Tuatha no longer clung to this place. Nechtan’s death had stripped it away; within a generation, she was certain the looming height of Carraig Dubh would crack and crumble down the mountainside.

  Kormlada prowled the fringes of the Rock, searching, pausing now and again to listen to the breath of the night. Nothing. She felt no scrutiny, heard nothing that led her to believe the fomórach lurked nearby. Was this some ruse? Some game of dominance? As she came full circle, she wondered if the beast had not found some way into the barrow beneath the great stone—though the otherworldly stairs that led to his lair should have vanished with Nechtan’s demise. Kormlada turned, her lips poised to emit the whistle that would summon Cruach …

  … and stopped. There, in the well of moon shadow at the base of the Rock, she saw him—squatting on his haunches, apish arms resting on wide-flung knees; red eyes smoldered like forge-gledes through a veil of coarse hair.

  “Half-Dane’s whore,” the creature said, chuckling. The sound came out low and mean, and it touched that place of atavistic fear in the pit of her belly like nothing and no one she had ever known. “I’ve had my eye on you since those wretched birds shit you out upon the rocks. You must have seen me? No? Ah, pity.” His nostrils widened as he snuffled the air. “You have his stink on you.”

  “Bjarki’s why I’ve come,” she said, recovering her composure. “You and I, we have a common goal: we both want that bastard dead. That makes us allies, after a fashion.”

  Grimnir raised an eyebrow. “So-ho! Not wanting to lift your skirts for him anymore, are you? You’d rather see him swing at the end of the rope he’s knotted for himself?”

  “I want that sallow son of a Danish whore dead, even if I have to wield the knife myself!”

  Grimnir uncoiled like a spring; before she could move—before she could so much as flinch away from him—the beast was on his feet and within arm’s reach of her. Black-nailed fingers seized her by the chin. Grimnir’s other hand stripped her hood back as he tilted her head into a bar of silver moonlight. That pale glow revealed discolored bruises on her cheek, the swelling of her bottom lip. His eyes bored into hers; she took his savagery and blood madness in full measure and did not look away. He grunted. “And you’d do it, too. If you could.”

  Kormlada wrenched free of his grasp. “His art is too formidable. That’s why I need you—”

  “His art?” The fomórach’s laughter was harsh and stony, tinged with malice. “You tender little fool! Art? The only art that idiot can claim is the art of the trickster; the honeyed word and the sleighty hand, that’s his seiðr. And he’s lived long enough to have seen everything your miserable kind can devise, which puts him two steps ahead of your precious little schemes. That’s why you need me.” Grimnir’s humor vanished without warning; it fell away like a mask he no longer needed. Red eyes flared in the darkness. “What I don’t know, witchling, is why I need you.”

  Kormlada blinked. Her mind spun and whirled with the revelation that the man she had feared as a sorcerer, whose mastery of the arcane she had time and again deferred to, was nothing more than a charlatan—a fraud. It was almost too much to comprehend. “I can … I can get you inside the walls … past the axes of his Norsemen.” Even as the words left her lips, Kormlada realized her error. She had stepped into his trap.

  Iron fingers knotted in her midnight hair; she heard a soft, quick rasp as, with his free hand, Grimnir drew the cold iron of his seax. “Do you take me for a fool?” the beast hissed, his rank breath hot against her cheek. “I should gut you like a fish. Open your belly and pitch you over the edge of this filthy elf rock!” Kormlada made to reply but Grimnir scraped the blade along her throat, creasing the skin at the side of her neck. Blood welled around the shallow gash. “You so much as open that maggot-hole in your face and I’ll carve you a new smile! He sent you, didn’t he? That ugly little rat’s
spent too much time among men. He’s forgotten that a true son of Bálegyr suckles deceit at his mother’s teat. Let me guess: I step into your little cloud of birds and when I come out at the other end there’s a spear waiting to bury itself in my gullet?”

  Kormlada nodded.

  Grimnir snarled and shoved her away. “The dolt can’t even plan treachery right. This is the art you so fear? Bah!”

  “I … I could bring us to a different part of the castle,” the witch replied, daubing at the runnel of blood trickling down her neck.

  “I’d be a bigger idiot than him if I trusted you, now.” Grimnir paced in a tight pattern, deftly twirling his seax in one clawed hand. “No,” he muttered. “No, we’re at loggerheads: you want him dead and I have sworn to end him, but I’ll not enter Dubhlinn knowing he’s waiting to spring some ill-thought trap, nor will I suffer some other hand to strike the killing blow. Faugh! Old Hróarr spoke true when he said Bjarki would ever be a thorn in my side.” Grimnir stopped and shook his head. “Enough of these games! I will take that wretch on the battlefield, as the Sly One intended!”

  “The battlefield?” Kormlada echoed. A slow smile twisted her dark lips as she finally found a measure of her old equilibrium. “Now who’s the tender fool? Bjarki has no plans to step foot on the battlefield, not when there are others more willing than he to raise the spear. My brother, Maelmorda; my son, Sitric; Sigurðr of the Orkneys and Bródir of Mann—these men will lead Dubhlinn’s host against the Gaels. And Bjarki need only bide his time”—she gestured to the town, slumbering on the silver ribbon of the Liffey—“snug behind those ramparts, until the death birds reap their gory reward.”