by Lari Don
Sylvie coughed. “I listen to bargains much better than you, human child. I was challenged to bring her down, not to kill her. I wasn’t going to kill a white hind; it would have been a very inauspicious start to this quest. So I just knocked her down. But she led me a good hunt first.”
Helen laughed in relief. “Poor thing. She didn’t know you weren’t planning to rip her throat out. Yann would have had a shorter distance to race if you’d told her your plans. She wouldn’t have run so far, so fast, if she hadn’t been in fear of her life.”
“That would have been cheating. Anyway, only a foolish deer would trust the word of a wolf.” Sylvie grinned, showing her sharp white teeth.
Ossian nodded seriously. “First round to the challengers from the sky. Now, let’s go down to the flat grass and see how you fare with weapons. Who is your swordsman?”
“I am,” said Lee, flipping back his cloak, a brighter, more confident scarlet than any red the Fianna wore.
“You must face Cuchullin, the champion of all Celtic warriors. Are you ready to do that for your fiddler and your small boy?”
Lee laid his hand on his hilt. “I am always ready.”
They followed the Fianna down the hill. Only Helen glanced back at the red stag lying on the ridge.
Yann finally found enough breath to speak. He put his hand on Lee’s shoulder. “Lil …” he shook his head. “Lee. Thank you for your words of encouragement.”
Lee shrugged gently, allowing the centaur’s hand to stay on his shoulder. “You ran brilliantly. You just needed a warm welcome, not the thorns the Fianna were throwing under Caoilte’s feet.”
Yann tightened his grip on the faery’s shoulder. “Now I want to give you words of warning. All I did was run a race, Lee. There was no danger to me, nor Sylvie. Just a hard race.
“But you face a fight. A fight against the legendary warrior those mountains we flew past were named after. The legendary warrior so fierce in battle they run three baths of ice-cold water to cool him when his enemies are dead. When he jumps into the first bath it steams away to nothing, the second bubbles and boils, the third simmers, because his battle rage burns so hot.
“You take too much of a risk facing Cuchullin. You could be injured, you could be killed. There must be another sport we can play to persuade Ossian to help Helen.”
“You just won a race against the fastest man in myth! But you think I should back away from my challenge?”
“I think you’re young and untried. Cuchullin is a champion.”
“So am I,” Lee grinned. “I am my King’s champion.”
“You have a title, but what does it mean? It means your King asked you to spy for him, to intrigue against his wife, to help a human child. Champion is a title to give you confidence. It doesn’t make you a warrior. It shouldn’t get you killed.”
“It’s not an honorary title. It’s not a bauble given to friends or loyal servants. You have to earn the title of champion.”
“How?” asked Helen, walking fast to keep up. “How do you earn it?”
“You have to kill the previous champion,” Lee said harshly.
He strode down the hill. Helen’s step faltered. She let him get ahead.
The Fianna led them back to the river, to a circle of grass, not green and lush like the rest of the riverbank, but trampled flat.
Lee took off his hat, his cloak and his waistcoat, and laid them carefully on a clean rock at the edge of the circle. Soon the faery was wearing only his breeches, his shirt, his boots and the belt holding his scabbard.
Ossian summoned the island’s champion. “Cuchullin! I have a duel for you to fight.”
Helen saw a figure walk towards them from a grove of rowan trees. Tall. Broad. And terrifying.
He looked permanently angry. His face scowled. His bristly red hair stood on end. One of his eyes bulged huge and red-rimmed, the other was half-closed in a painful squint. His lips were drawn back, showing his crooked yellow teeth.
“My lord, who do you want me to kill?”
Ossian pointed at Lee.
Chapter 18
“I want you to kill this one,” Ossian said smoothly to Cuchullin. “The faery. Kill him or disarm him, disable him or ground him, my champion, or else I must work again. We of the ever young do not work, do we?”
“Except me,” muttered Cuchullin. “I work every time I lift the sword for you.”
Ossian smiled. “But you love it. So do it for me one more time.”
Cuchullin pulled his shield off his back, dragged the pin from the neck of his cloak and threw the cloak on the ground. He marched grumpily towards Lee, who was standing in the centre of the trampled grass, his shoulders relaxed inside his perfectly white, uncreased shirt.
Cuchullin stopped suddenly and looked in disbelief at his opponent. “You want me to fight this child? This pup? This flea on the neck of the runt of the litter?”
Ossian laughed. “He wants to fight you.”
“He doesn’t even have a shield. I can’t fight a child without a shield.”
“I don’t need a shield,” said Lee calmly. “My sword is my defence.”
“You will wear a shield on one arm and hold a sword with the other,” insisted Cuchullin. “It’s the way a man fights. I will teach you that, before I teach you how to fight, then teach you how to lose.”
Lee smiled politely. “I have no shield with me.”
“I will lend you one.”
The Fianna’s circle broke into a flurry of activity, with shields tossed around and weighed and compared. A round wooden shield, covered in leather and with a bronze boss in the centre, was thrown at Lee’s feet.
Lee picked it up, slid the leather handles at the back over his left arm and said, “I have been ready all this time. Are you ready yet?”
Cuchullin nodded as he walked towards Lee.
Lee’s shield was large enough to cover him from the top of his thighs to his throat. Cuchullin’s oval shield was even longer. Helen hoped that meant it would be heavier.
Cuchullin was taller and wider than Lee. His arms bulged with muscles, where Lee’s were slim and smooth. Cuchullin’s sword was longer and broader, though Lee’s sword shone brighter.
Helen had seen the faery polish and sharpen that blade. The gleam on his weapon wasn’t glamour or enchantment. It was love and care and pride.
Helen hoped his pride wasn’t misplaced. Lee was about to risk his life to save her and James from the Faery Queen. Could she let him do that? But before she’d reached the end of the thought, the fight had started.
Helen thought duels began with insults, circling, flourishes of the blade, but there were no preliminaries. As Cuchullin reached the centre of the circle, he raised his sword and slashed across
Lee’s throat, in a blow that would have sliced the faery’s head off if he hadn’t spun away. Lee slashed back, over the rim of his borrowed shield. Cuchullin, instead of dodging the blow, moved into it, took the force of it on his own shield and crashed into Lee, using his weight and height and longer shield to force Lee backwards and downwards.
But Lee was no longer there. Shorter and faster, he had twisted away again.
Helen thought they were fighting more with their shields than their swords. Battering the metal centres together. Slicing the sharp edges at each other’s faces and knees. Driving them hard with their shoulders into each other’s bodies.
Then they realized that the shields would not break, though the leather covering was ripped, and that their weight would not wear down their opponent. So the shields became, not weapons, but instruments of deceit.
By hiding their sword hands behind the shields, both Lee and Cuchullin could hide the direction of the sword’s next attack behind a counter motion of the shield.
Lee stabbed his blade over the top rim and Cuchullin fell to his knees to avoid the point arcing towards his face.
Cuchullin, quickly back on his feet, brought the edge of his blade out from under his shield and slashed at
Lee’s legs. The red leather of the faery’s right boot flapped open as the blade slid along it.
“Below the belt!” muttered Helen. “Aren’t there any rules?”
“Yes,” said Yann. “Don’t die first.”
They spoke quietly. Everyone else was silent, listening to the sounds of the fight. The thump of feet on the ground. The thud of shields meeting edge to edge, boss to boss. The whistle as blades moved fast through the air. The crash and the echoes of the crash as blades smashed together.
She watched Lee’s sword snake out from the edge of the shield and attack Cuchullin again.
“What’s he fighting with?” she whispered.
“Every skill he has,” Yann whispered back.
“No, I meant the sword. You know he can’t touch iron. So what’s his sword made of?”
“Bronze. The faeries use bronze swords, spearheads and knives.”
“Bronze?” repeated Helen. “Like the bronze age? Like axes in museums? Lee is fighting with a prehistoric weapon?”
She watched his slim figure twist out of the way of a slashing drive. Lee’s sword was as sharp and lethal-looking as Cuchullin’s weapon.
Yann grinned. “Some of your people’s greatest warriors fought with bronze. Achilles and Hector fought by the walls of Troy with bronze blades.”
Helen watched as the two blades met with a clatter above the fighters’ heads. Was Lee’s sword more coppery red than the silver steel of Cuchullin’s sword? Or was that just the sun reflecting on it?
Sylvie laughed grimly. “If Lee can drive his blade into that man, it will kill him just as dead as iron or steel.”
But as the duel continued, it didn’t look like Lee was going to have the chance, or the strength, to prove the value of his blade.
Lee had been faster to start with, but he was tiring now. His face was grey, his breath audible even over the grunts of the angry swordsman.
And Lee wasn’t bringing his sword out from the safety of the shield any more. He wasn’t even using the shield as a weapon, just as a hiding place. He was sheltering under it, while the blade of Cuchullin crashed down and down and down like a joiner hammering nails into wood.
Helen said, “He’s going to be killed. We must stop this. It isn’t worth his life, to save mine.”
“Don’t humiliate him by interfering,” Yann ordered. “It was his choice to fight. You have to respect that.”
“No,” interrupted Lavender from Helen’s shoulder. “It wasn’t all his choice. It wasn’t his choice to fight with that shield. Take this bandage off, I need to get closer.”
Helen quickly unwound the narrow bandage. Lavender extended her wings to fly up and over the duel, listing to the left as she struggled to use her painful wing, but staying so high that neither fighter saw her.
Then she fluttered back, falling into Helen’s cupped hands. “I knew something wasn’t right. It’s the shield. Look next time Lee turns. Where the leather is torn at the edge. What do you see?”
Lee swivelled right round and Helen stared hard. Where the brown hide was ripped, she could see nails holding the wooden boards together.
They weren’t the brassy bronze of the boss, but a darker metal.
Lavender worked it out first and yelled at the top of her tiny voice. “Iron! Lee! The shield has iron on it!”
Lee was breathing loudly, and the crash of the sword on the shield was like a marching drum, and Cuchullin was muttering angrily under his breath. Lavender’s voice was as small as her body and Lee didn’t hear her warning.
So Helen opened her mouth to yell.
But Yann rose onto his hind legs, using his stallion’s lungs and his storyteller’s voice to scream, “Lee! Drop the shield! Now!”
Lee heard a voice he trusted and obeyed instantly. He didn’t look round at the centaur, he didn’t glance at the shield. He just flung the shield away, spinning it along the ground to Sapphire’s feet.
Suddenly without protection, he had to somersault out of the way of the next sword slash and leap to his feet, struggling to catch his breath.
Then he stood up straight, his sword steady in his pale hand.
Cuchullin laughed. “Was the shield weighing you down, faery? Then let’s both fight light and fast.” He threw his shield away too, crashing it into the smaller one at the dragon’s feet. She put her claws on the edge of the oval shield, as if she was about to tiddlywink the round one into the river beside her.
The fight began again. It sounded different now. Lee’s breathing was lighter, less laboured. Their feet moved faster. There was no deep drumbeat of shield music. Just the light sharp notes of blade against blade, iron against bronze.
Now they fought in sudden bursts. Without shields, they couldn’t stay so close. Instead they rushed forward to attack and jumped back to defend.
Lee would run forward and attack Cuchullin, who would parry and knock him back. Then they would circle each other, watching their opponents’ eyes and blades, until one or other would leap to the attack again.
They were using more of the ground, fighting beside the campfire and the riverbank, as well as in the centre of the circle.
Lee had his colour back, and most of his speed. But he wasn’t grinning, unlike Cuchullin, whose grunts and growls weren’t so angry now. “Even without the iron sickness, you are no match for me, faery boy.”
Lee didn’t answer, he just attacked again, driving at Cuchullin’s chest. His sword was knocked sideways, his guard down for a moment, and Cuchullin pointed his sword at Lee’s throat.
Lee brought his own sword back and parried the menacing point, but Cuchullin circled it round and pointed at Lee’s throat again.
The faery stepped back as the man moved towards him along the bank of the river, forcing the point ever forward. Lee pushed it away again, but not far and not for long, and the point got nearer and nearer to his throat.
Then Lee brought his sword up and round and down, hard and fast, and drove the threatening sword all the way to the ground. But the clang of the two blades meeting sounded flat and wrong. Helen saw the coppery blade of Lee’s sword shiver. He used his left hand to grab and support his right wrist, shaken and shocked by the impact.
Lee backed off and looked along the length of his sword. He frowned.
He backed off further, rubbing his aching wrist.
Helen tried to run forward, to protect Lee. Yann blocked her way with a heavy hoof. “Don’t. You can’t help him now.”
Lee backed away a few more steps. Trailing the tip of his damaged sword.
Falling backwards, struggling to stay on his feet. The flap of his cut boot dragging on the ground, the tip of his sword getting dusty in the earth.
His face pale, his steps slow, Lee kept backing away.
Chapter 19
Cuchullin screamed his triumph. “See the true value of iron! Steel against bronze will always win!”
He laughed, as Lee backed further away.
Then he raised his sword and aimed it at Lee’s throat one last time.
“Are you going to run, boy?”
“Yes,” said Lee quietly.
Yann groaned in disappointment.
And Lee ran.
He ran towards the tall red-headed warrior.
He lifted his sword delicately and sprinted straight at the steady blade of Cuchullin.
But at the last moment, when Cuchullin’s blade and arm were fixed immovably at the point Lee was running towards, Lee swerved and leapt into the air, raising his sword, crashing the broad hilt into Cuchullin’s face, jabbing his twisting elbow into Cuchullin’s throat. Then he flung himself aside as the grey blade slashed up and the man fell backwards into the river.
Water spouted into the air like steam from a kettle. Water whirled white round Cuchullin like boiling bubbles in a pan.
When the water settled, Lee was standing in the river, the tip of his sword on the belly of his enemy, his left hand resting on the pommel, ready to drive the sword down.
; “No!” yelled Helen, running towards them. “Stop!”
Ossian stood on the bank. “Well fought. Well won.”
Lee nodded and lifted the sword high into the air.
Yann reached down from the bank and pulled Lee out of the water. Then Lee leant down and offered his hand to Cuchullin, who accepted it and scrambled out of the river. A friend threw him his cloak and he hid his bright red face and wet red hair in it as he dried himself.
“Lee!” cried Helen. “Why didn’t you refuse the shield? You must have known it had iron in it. Iron always makes you feel sick. Why did you take it?”
“I didn’t know it was iron.” Lee leant down, trying to put his boot back together. “I did feel really sick and sweaty when I took the shield, but I thought it was because he was walking towards me. I thought it was because I was scared.”
Yann slapped his back. “You didn’t look scared, my friend. You looked like a King’s champion … and you fought like one too.”
The two of them grinned at each other. Helen shook her head.
They all walked back to the Fianna’s fire, Sapphire putting every one of her clawed feet carefully on the round shield which had nearly killed Lee, leaving it crushed to splinters behind her.
“Not again!” said Lee, as the leather on his fancy red boot flapped loose. Suddenly he was walking beside Helen in a pair of squelching trainers and damp jeans with a rip in the left leg.
Sylvie gasped, Yann laughed, Lavender muttered disapprovingly, “That won’t go with the waistcoat and cloak,” and Helen finally managed to smile.
The men of the Fianna made space for the centaur, the wolf, the faery and the fiddler to sit round the fire. There wasn’t quite enough room for the dragon, who lay in a curve behind her friends, picking bits of shield out from between her toes.
Ossian spoke sternly to the damp Cuchullin. “Giving a faery a shield to protect him, with iron studs to undermine him. Was that honourable?”
Cuchullin looked sourly at Ossian. “I took my cue from you, my lord, setting the wolf to hunt the white hind. Was that sportsman-like?”