Only the Stones Survive: A Novel

by Morgan Llywelyn

  Éremón had tried to override their objections, and to his surprise Donn backed him up. “You don’t need to gather salt when all you have to eat is fish from the sea. The soil here is very stony; your children can’t eat stones, and they will soon tire of fish. We have always been cattle people, and there is rich pasture land waiting for us. If we go overland, it will take many days, during which you and your children will be in danger of attack by savages. But if we travel by sea, it is only a short journey.”

  Donn’s argument was indisputable.

  With many a wistful backward glance, the Gaels had once again loaded their livestock and belongings and the pack of reluctant hounds and entrusted themselves to the sea.

  The fleet had sailed north along the sunrise coast. The journey was uneventful until they came to the specified river mouth, which was just as Greine had promised. Éremón had felt a sense of vindication. Things were going to turn out well in spite of Colptha’s ravings. Beyond a fine natural harbor, he could see grassy hills and fertile meadows.

  Aboard Donn’s galley, the bard had removed Clarsah from her case and prepared to commemorate the landing.

  They were exactly nine waves from shore when the sunlight disappeared. A storm of incredible proportions roared toward them.

  From Éremón’s ship, Colptha’s scream had soared above the wail of the wind. “Amergin has betrayed us all to sorcery!”

  The bard had tied Clarsah to his belt and joined the crew struggling to turn the galley into the gale. He looked up just in time to see a dark green wall hanging over him: a mighty, onrushing wall of water high enough and heavy enough to smash an entire people. There was no time to compose a death song for Clarsah to sing. Time had run out.

  The Green Wave crashed down.

  No seaman, no matter how experienced, could have resisted the spawn of that storm. The enormous force of the green sea had battered everything in its path, tearing planks from galleys and hurling men and women into the sea. In moments, the little coracles had been swamped. Terrified would-be colonists had died with the vision of rolling pastureland still in their eyes.

  Amergin had struggled to keep his footing on the slippery deck of the galley while he looked for a rope to throw to the nearest survivors in the water. When the ship rolled, he was swept overboard.

  Donn shook his fist at the storm. The apathy that had plagued him since the death of Scotta was washed away now. “The land denies us! I myself will put this island under sword and spear!”

  The wind had slammed with all its force against the side of the galley. The sea heaved; the vessel heeled over still farther, partially righted itself, then went under, catapulting terrified humans and panicked livestock into the water.

  Amergin had come spluttering to the surface in time to see the ship go down. Éremón’s galley was not far away, but swimming had never been a part of bardic studies. But he could feel the harp against his body, depending on him for survival.

  If he drowned, Clarsah would die too, taking generations of music and history with her.

  Clenching his teeth, Amergin began to fight the waves.

  A section of timber with Colptha sprawled atop it struck him, and he caught hold of the broken end. “Get away!” shouted the sacrificer. “This raft is mine!”

  “It will hold both of us.”

  “It will never hold you, bard. You’ll die in the sea as you deserve, a sacrifice I gladly offer!” Putting both hands on Amergin’s head, Colptha had pushed him under.

  The bard had fought his way back to the surface and lifted Clarsah clear of the water. Colptha promptly seized Amergin by the hair and tried to thrust him down again.

  Clarsah struck the sacrificer’s head with a force that made her brass strings roar.

  Aboard Éremón’s galley, Ír had seen Donn’s ship go down. Donn, who was the bedrock in his life. Without his oldest brother, he knew the madness would consume him, the madness the two of them had tried to hold at bay like a rabid animal for so many years.

  The madness that Ír suspected was the truth of the world.

  Long-legged, golden-haired Ír, the most beautiful of the sons of Mílesios, had leaped onto the ship’s rail and dived into the sea without hesitation, determined to save Donn. But the water was dark and the sky was dark, and he could not find his brother.

  Nor would he let the madness win. For Donn’s sake, Ír had grabbed the first body he came to and propelled the limp little form toward hands reaching down for it. Loving hands and calling voices. He had rescued several children before the dark sea finally claimed him.

  Sakkar the Phoenician was also a survivor. When he caught sight of Amergin’s dark head among the waves, he had shouted for a rope to be thrown to the bard.

  They had waded out of the sea together.

  Éremón’s wrecked galley had washed ashore in the river mouth. So had many of the bodies, including Éber Finn’s senior wife and two of his children. And Ír. And Colptha. And Donn.

  When Donn’s body was recovered, his wife, wailing and tearing out her hair, ran headlong into the sea that had killed her husband. She had misjudged her footing and drowned without calling for help. When her sodden body washed ashore, what remained of her hair had resembled a straggle of seaweed.

  “Yes,” Éremón responded to Éber Finn’s question. “Yes, I remember the Green Wave.” He spoke in a whisper, as if afraid that any word he said might be the one that summoned the monster sea. Memories were the cruelest of enemies. The only way he knew to put an end to the terror they engendered was to destroy an entire race.

  At his command, the remaining Gaelicians had assembled their battle force. The surviving chieftains had gathered their men around them. The trumpets of war had outscreamed the song of the harp.

  Amergin the bard had been a reluctant witness to that final battle. Unwilling yet unable to stay away, by the nature of his gift he was compelled to observe and commemorate events of importance to his tribe.

  As they neared the designated battlefield, the Mílesians had observed only a small number of Dananns gathered on the plain. Éber Finn shouted to his brother, “I thought there would be thousands of them!”

  “There are thousands,” Éremón called back from his chariot. “The rest are in hiding, waiting to ambush us.”

  Éber Finn had mentally added this remark to a long list of mistakes he was holding against his brother. The field was a vast meadow uninterrupted by woodlands or rock formations. The pallid winter light was too dim to create dark shadows. There was no place where anyone could hide. No ambush, then, and only a small army facing them. Victory was a certainty.

  “Let’s get it over with,” Éber Finn said briskly to his charioteer. The sooner the battle was concluded, the sooner the real business of establishing leadership in Ierne would begin.

  The snorting of horses, the creaking of chariots, the insistent tramping of feet; so many feet pounding the earth. Warriors checking their weapons. Making crude jokes and grinning at one another. Relishing the excitement to come.

  When Amergin had tried to persuade Éremón and Éber Finn to turn aside, his brothers, deaf to reason, thought he was exhorting them to deeds of valor. They had not listened to his actual words. Words meant nothing on a battlefield.

  And it was a battlefield now; the opposing sides were near enough to see each other clearly.

  Once Éremón left his chariot, he did not look at faces. He liked to think of the enemy as a shoal of fish, a sea of anonymous bodies. It was easier to kill them that way. He stepped down from his cart with his sword drawn, watching for the regal apparel of Danann nobility.

  He was disconcerted to find himself confronted by a small child.

  For a critical heartbeat, Éremón hesitated.

  No, not a child. She was a young girl, a slim girl with a glowing face and sparkling eyes that were transformed even as he watched, until they became the features of a beautiful woman.

  Beyond her, Éremón glimpsed other Dananns similarly cha
nging. Children were turning into adults; old men, into young.

  Colptha had warned, “Nothing here is natural or ordinary.”

  Éremón hefted his iron sword.

  The lovely young woman looked into his face and laughed.

  In an agonized voice, Amergin cried, “Shinann!” as the two armies came together in the center of the plain.

  Éber Finn, determined to be first to kill a Danann chieftain, had ordered his charioteer to drive across the front of the Gaelic line in an attempt to cut off Éremón. When he saw him, Éremón roared in fury, “You won’t get my place!” He turned away from the woman and ran to drag his brother from his war cart.

  The enemy was temporarily forgotten as two brothers struggled for supremacy.

  Amergin tried to dodge around them to get to … but there was no avoiding the explosion of battle that now convulsed the meadow. The Túatha Dé Danann, men and women alike, were throwing back the rainbow-colored cloaks they wore to reveal the weapons hidden beneath them. Bronze-bladed swords, bronze-headed axes, obsidian knives sharpened to a deadly edge.

  Delighted to see that their festive and beflowered opponents had come to fight after all, the howling warriors of the Gael engulfed them.

  But the Dananns did not wait to be killed. They flowed away like quicksilver, leaving iron swords slashing through the air at … empty air.

  The Dananns’ agility was astonishing. They shifted from place to place more swiftly than the eye could follow. With a sideways blow here and a clever maneuver there, they parried the weapons of the Gaels, then danced out of reach.

  Without killing anyone.

  Sakkar put his own sword back in his belt.

  He caught a fleeting glimpse of Amergin’s blue cloak as the bard elbowed his way across the field of battle. Bards did not take part in combat, so why was he risking his life? Sakkar made a spur-of-the-moment decision to become bodyguard to his friend rather than trying to kill strangers. For what must be the tenth time already, Sakkar pushed his helmet up so he could see better and ran after the blue cloak.

  The battle that should have been swiftly concluded turned into a contest unlike any the Mílesians had experienced. Brute strength was useless against an enemy you could not catch. But the Dananns did not run away. They concentrated on wearing the invaders down and exhausting them, and for a while they succeeded.

  To Éremón it was like fighting shadows. His temper, barely under control at the best of times, exploded. He ran at one band of Dananns after another, hacking at them as if he were trying to cut down trees. Sometimes he felt the resistance of a body. More often not.

  The experience was common that day.

  At last the warriors of the Gael were able to surround and close on their quarry, pinning them down through sheer weight of numbers. When iron met bronze, there was no contest. The roar of bloodlust mingled with cries of pain. First Cuill, then Cet, were cut down in the front lines.

  In spite of the death of his royal brothers, the Son of the Sun had refused to give ground. Greine stood to meet the invaders head-on. The only concession he made to their superior force was to hold his shield in front of his body.

  Desperate to intercept Shinann, Amergin ran in that direction.

  Greine was unaware of the approaching bard. The Danann king had just caught a glimpse of his wife amid the confusion, and his attention was focused on her. There was a smear of blood on her cheek, yet Eriu still wore the serene expression he loved so well.

  When she felt the warmth of Greine’s eyes upon her, Eriu turned toward him. And smiled. As if the two of them were all alone on a morning that would forever be sunseason.

  A few paces away, Éremón had just hacked another Danann prince to death. When he recognized the Danann queen, he started toward her.

  Greine sprang forward to lift his sword above the Mílesian’s naked back.

  With instinct wiser than thought, Amergin seized an abandoned bronze sword from the bloodstained grass, knocked aside Greine’s shield, and drove the sword through the Danann’s belly.

  The warm flesh of the Son of the Sun folded around cold iron.

  Reason returned to the bard in a horrific flood.

  This is worse than killing Colptha! he thought with horror. He stepped back and let the weight of the dying king’s body pull it from the blade.

  Blithely unaware that Amergin had just saved his life, Éremón moved on, looking for a more worthy opponent than a mere woman. A good battle had a rhythm, and this was turning out to be a good battle, in spite of a slow start. He wanted to attack another warrior and leave the mark of Mílesios on him.

  Eriu flung herself onto the ground beside her husband and lifted his head and shoulders onto her lap. When she bent to press her lips against his cheek, he opened his eyes.

  The twilight was falling too early; he could not make out her face. “Eriu?” he said.

  “I am here.”

  Following the bard, Sakkar emerged from the melee. He stared down at them; at Her.

  Greine said again, “Eriu?”

  “Do not try to talk; save your strength.”

  “There is nothing left to save. How goes the battle?”

  Her lips formed no words, but Greine knew. “We have come to the fork in the road, then,” he said. “And we go your way, my brave queen. I did not give the order. The Sword and the…” He fought to capture the last breath. “Eriu? When the morning comes, this will only be a dream.”

  She felt him slipping away. She gripped his shoulders and called out with all her strength, “In the morning, Greine!”

  Slipping away. Going out. Gone.

  Sakkar looked from Eriu to Amergin and back again. Identical anguish was etched on both their faces.

  Gently, gently Eriu laid her husband down and straightened the body that agony had contorted. With trembling fingers, she smoothed his sweat-soaked hair back from his brow. Her gray eyes paused on his terrible wound; absorbed the whole of it, the hurt and destruction; turned away. She spread her cloak over him and got to her feet like an old, old woman.

  Then she who must nurture any living creature in pain walked toward Amergin. She laid the palm of her hand flat on his chest. “I exonerate you of this, bard.”

  He flung the fatal sword as far away as he could. He hated it as he had never hated anything before.

  Eriu left the dead king on the trampled grass and went into the heart of the battle. Glided with her back straight and her head high, looking to neither right nor left, until one of her enemies mercifully struck her down.

  Sakkar did not see Her die. In his head he heard one sweet, pure note rise above the tumult of the battlefield like the song of a lark, then stop abruptly.

  When the tide of battle moved farther down the field, Sakkar helped Amergin search among the bodies left behind for a young woman the bard described as “small and beautiful and perfect.” It was not much of a description.

  Amergin had seen Shinann with his heart rather than with his eyes.

  As Sakkar observed while they went from one slain Danann to another, the same description fitted all of them. “She’s not here,” he said to Amergin to give him hope. “So she’s not dead.”

  Yet it was hard to believe anyone could have survived the slaughter. After the last battle of all, the blood-soaked Children of Light lay amid their tattered banners. One or two moaned or stirred slightly, but their wounds were too terrible for hope.

  Amergin was sickened. He returned several times to the body of Greine and gazed down at the noble face. “I would have been proud to call him brother,” he told Sakkar. “There was no need for this, not for any of it. I killed him to save my brother, but for all I know, this was the better man.”

  Sakkar asked, “What do you suppose he meant when he said he did not give the order? What order? After that, he said something about a sword, but he had his sword with him. I don’t understand, Amergin.”

  “Neither do I.”

  When they came upon a Danann who w
as only slightly wounded, the man refused their help but told them, “We did not use the right weapons; that was our mistake.”

  The battle lasted until there were too few living Dananns left on the field to fight. At that point, the combatants on both sides simply put their weapons down. It was not a triumphant occasion. No member of the Túatha Dé Danann knelt in surrender before the Mílesians. None of them knelt at all.

  Éremón and Éber Finn ordered that their wounded warriors be cared for and their dead taken to their waiting kinfolk for burial. There were surprisingly few Gaelic casualties. In the long twilight, they were gathered and carried off the field.

  When the Mílesians finally made camp for the night—at a distance beyond the pervasive smell of blood—Éber Finn sat with his two surviving brothers beside a smoky fire. No matter how close he held his hands to the flame, he could not get them warm. “I don’t think we behaved very well today,” he commented.

  “We won,” snapped Éremón.

  “They didn’t fight back.”

  “Of course they fought back. I have bruises all over my body and a deep hole in my shoulder … here, look at this!”

  Éber squinted at the wound. “That’s not so deep. If a man was really trying to kill you, he would have…”

  “It wasn’t a man; it was a woman. With a spear.”

  “A woman!” Amergin leaned forward. The firelight revealed his tired, drawn face. “A small woman about as high as my heart?”

  Éremón told him, “I killed a number of those today.”

  “The one I’m asking about is…”

  “Is out there somewhere, as cold as a frog in a puddle by now.” Éremón gave a dismissive wave of his hand. He was very tired. His back ached, and his arms were weary from the weight of his weapons. Not to mention the yawning cavity in his belly that should be filled with a hot meal. “Where are my women?” he shouted into the darkness beyond the fire. “Is no one roasting meat for me? A battle won and two wives to my name, and yet I’m being allowed to starve to death!”