by Jo Walton
“We were astonished to see Darag, much more than Atha. Atha belonged to the Isles when the curse was spoken, and maybe even now. But Darag is unquestionably one of the fighting folk of Oriel. I asked him why he was here and not laid low. He answered that it seemed he had his father to thank for that, whoever his father might be.”
“Who is his father?” Nandran asked.
“Nobody knows,” Maga said. “His mother was unmarried, and he was born at the Feast of the Mother. Nobody ever knew Dechtir to care about any man except her brother Conary.”
Elenn didn’t want to say anything; she especially didn’t want to make Maga angry, but she couldn’t help remembering Darag’s face when he’d talked to her at the Feast of Bel last year. “Everyone knows the gods go to the festivals sometimes,” she said quietly. “If he’s not been struck down, it’s more likely because his father is a god than anything unnatural.”
“Incest is hateful to the gods,” Nandran agreed. He looked at Elenn worshipfully. She smiled at him. He was only two years older than Mingor, but already he was acknowledged the greatest champion in Cruachan. He would have been handsome if it hadn’t been for his scars. A few years ago, she used to think he was wonderful. It was nice that he looked at her like that even though she must look a mess. She still had her hair straggling loose around her face from the funeral.
“Go on,” Maga directed Allel.
“Darag demanded single combats, exactly as Atha had. Eleven men went against him before the light went, eleven champions, and all of them he killed or wounded. Only one of them struck him, wounding him in the upper thigh. He recovered from it rapidly.”
“So what tomorrow?” Mingor asked.
“The same,” Allel said.
“The same except that someone will kill Darag or Atha, and the army will move forward as we planned,” Maga said impatiently.
“Atha is a famous warrior in the prime of her life,” Allel said. “Darag is young and relatively untried, but he did remarkably well today. Even though they are fighting alone against us all, we must fight them one at a time, so it might not be as easy as you think to get past them.”
“I have heard that Darag once played hurley alone against all of the children of Ardmachan,” Mingor said.
Maga frowned at him. “We have such a large army,” she said. “Some champion will bring them down. Let us send champions against both of them until one of them falls.”
Allel looked at Nandran, who looked away. Elenn waited for him to say that he would kill Atha. She hoped it would be Atha, who was loud and rude and thought herself better than everyone else. She liked Darag. She realized abruptly that war was horrible when it came to killing people. She remembered the Ward, the vow that Maga had renewed only yesterday. How could you have strife without bitterness if you were killing people, one against another?
She wanted Connat to win, of course, but her cousin Bran was dead. Dead, never again to laugh and flirt with her or try to get her to go for walks with him outside the dun. Even now, his soul would be moving through the underworld, giving back his life, ready to come out and be reborn. He’d have to go through childhood again somewhere else, as someone else. It would be twenty years before he was again as old and wise as he had been this morning. He would never again be Bran of Cruachan, or know that he had been. His soul was passing through the underworld and all his memories were being given back with his name. Poor Bran. Or worse, maybe Atha had taken his head, and one of his souls would live on trapped inside it as one of her protectors. Either way was terribly sad. She wondered suddenly how Darag felt. Atha had killed people before, but Darag hadn’t.
Nandran had still not said anything, and the silence was becoming awkward. “What’s it like to kill people?” Elenn asked. Everyone turned to stare at her. Nandran looked embarrassed. Maga looked curious. Allel looked tired.
“Easier than you would think,” Emer said. “Like in practice, only doing it for real.”
“I didn’t mean that,” she said, not able to say what she meant, knowing it was a childish question, an unanswerable question, something she shouldn’t have said. Maybe it was even one of the things that had been explained sometime when she had been sitting dreaming with her ears turned off. She struggled to explain. “I was thinking about Bran, so alive this morning, dead now. What it is to do that to someone.”
“When you’re in battle, you know they’d do it to you unless you do it first,” Emer said.
“And there’s usually no time to think anyway,” Mingor said. “That’s what Emer means about it being like practice. You know what to do, you do it, you don’t think. Especially you don’t think about that sort of thing, that they are alive and so are you, and soon one of you will be dead, good-bye to everyone, down into the dark and everything to learn again.”
“Did Atha take his head?” she asked, wanting to know now.
“Yes,” Allel said.
“I took the head of the man I killed at Edar,” Emer said. “It is protecting Conal’s chariot even now. His family wanted to ransom it, but I wouldn’t.”
“I don’t know how you could,” Elenn said.
“Your older daughter is as gentle as she is beautiful,” Nandran said to Allel. “If you will let me marry her, I will kill Darag for you.”
Elenn went cold all through. She liked Nandran. But she loved Ferdia. Surely Maga wouldn’t agree, surely she couldn’t. She had told Conal that Elenn could not marry before she had taken up arms. But she had been negotiating shadow marriage alliances all spring.
Allel looked at Maga uncertainly.
“Do we need to bargain with our champions now?” Maga asked, looking down her nose.
“Darag killed eleven of your champions today,” Nandran said. “People fight because they want to win. Let me put it the other way around—if I kill Darag and open the road to Oriel as an offering to lay at her feet, might I hope to marry your daughter?” He smiled shyly at Elenn, as if it were all agreed between them and they had only to convince her parents. She smiled back, chilled at heart but unable to say anything.
“Kill Darag and I will entertain your suit,” Maga said.
Elenn did not faint. She continued to sit and smile for the whole evening. She went to bed, keeping Beauty with her in the tent, which wasn’t allowed now that Beauty was bigger. She knew Emer would not complain about it. She hardly slept all night, even with the comfort of Beauty’s presence. She didn’t know what to think. She tried to console herself. Marrying Nandran would not be such a terrible thing after all. She liked him. She could stay at home. But in the dark hours, she realized that this was not what she wanted. She wanted to leave Cruachan, to get away from Maga.
When she did fall asleep, her dreams were confused nightmares. She kissed Nandran before he got into his chariot, boasting he would kill Darag and marry her. She kissed his cold lips when they brought his body back. He became an empty armor coat, which she feared and loathed, but Maga laughed when she saw it. She was hunting through a press of people on the top of Ardmachan, looking for Ferdia. At last she saw him through the crowd, but when she pushed her way to him, she found that he was hollowed out from within and there was nothing inside his skin.
She woke to find it still dark. Emer was asleep and snoring gently. She dressed quietly in the darkness. Beauty was asleep, too, but woke quickly when Elenn roused her, making hardly any protest, her tail thumping enthusiastically. They crawled out of the tent. It was not long before dawn. A chilly wind was blowing, she clutched her cloak around her. People were sleeping everywhere, in tents or wrapped in cloaks, but nobody else seemed to be awake. She could walk away, pick her way between the sleeping champions, walk right away from Nandran and Maga and everyone. Emer would be so surprised when she woke up. But where would she go? Where was there a place for her in the world?
Beauty pushed her nose into Elenn’s hand. She hardly had to jump up at all now, she had grown so much. She was half her full size already. Elenn stroked her head absently, star
ing into the darkness. There wasn’t anywhere to go, nowhere out in the wide world for a princess and her dog. Worse, Maga didn’t mean well for her. She couldn’t be trusted. Maga always said she knew best, and Elenn had believed it, or tried to believe it. Maga loved her, of course she did. She pulled Beauty’s ears, making the dog wriggle with delight. She couldn’t say no to Maga, she knew she couldn’t. It was bad enough for Maga that Emer was defying her all the time since they came home. Elenn had to do what she said. But that meant she was in Maga’s power, for good or ill. Maga had said to Conal that a champion was a small gain to her for the loss of a daughter, which made it seem as if to Maga her daughters were something to be spent. She didn’t want to be spent for her mother’s goals.
She wondered if she could go out into the night and find Darag and persuade him to make peace. She had no sooner thought it than she knew how ridiculous it was. He hadn’t sought this war. Maga had. Her mother and father and everyone else thought it was a wonderful idea. They could stop it if they changed their minds, but Darag couldn’t. They had talked about the wealth of Oriel, the gold and the weapons—and the real wealth of course, the cows and the land. Darag was only defending his home.
The sky was growing a little paler. Day was coming. Maga never changed her mind once she had really made it up. There was nowhere to go, and besides, her mother needed her. She should go back to the tent and sleep so that she would not look terrible when she waved the army off again in the real morning. She kept telling herself this, but she didn’t move, just stood there with Beauty as if she thought something was going to change.
23
(EMER)
The streaming clouds in the western sky were red-lit as the sun slipped down between them. On the other side of the stream, Darag was taking an ax to the throat of Trivan ap Cunegan, whose mother was Allel’s charioteer Iross. Maga had never liked Trivan. For once, she would be pleased at another day’s delay, assuming Atha had held her road.
Emer felt as if she had been beaten all over. She could hardly drag herself out of the chariot to stretch. She was covered in bruises and healed wounds. The grass under the trees looked temptingly soft. She could have flung herself down on it and slept for three days without waking. She stretched, loosening her muscles, but the ache went bone-deep.
She was sickened by the whole thing. She had not thought what it would mean to be killing her friends and kinfolk, or rather, helping Darag to kill them. Trivan had fought Atha on the second day and survived, badly wounded. As soon as she was fully recovered, she had come against Darag, wanting the glory. The cold comfort in seeing Trivan dead was knowing that at least one of the champions who had come against them today had not done it dreaming of Elenn. Far too many of them seemed to have taken up the cult of Elenn’s perfection and longed to die for her or win her. There was something unwholesome about it, especially the delight Maga took in it.
She wished she could have warned Trivan how good Darag was. Trivan was ten years older than Emer. She had been a fine hurley player. Emer had always been a little in awe of her. She had spoken up against Maga in council. She was one of the Royal Kin of Connat. Her grandfather was Allel’s father’s brother, she was a cousin. If Emer had killed her, it would have been kinmurder. All she had done was hold the horses steady; Darag had killed her with his first thrown spear. In any normal situation, even if they had been fighting on different sides of a battle, she wouldn’t have gone against her cousin.
Darag smiled up at Emer as he waded back across the stream. The Oriel side was higher than the Connat side, and fringed by willow trees. This was to their advantage when they were waiting; it gave them shade and some relief from the flies. He climbed out up the side of the ford. “You look tired. I wouldn’t wonder if we feel as bad as everyone else tonight, and nobody is envious of us.”
She smiled back feebly. “I can’t come back with you now, there’s no time,” she said.
Darag glanced at the sun and then over at the massed champions of Connat, who were clearly milling about preparing to go back to camp. Trivan’s charioteer was carrying her headless body towards Allel.
“She was the last challenge of the day,” he said, swinging Trivan’s head by its hair. “You could spare an hour. It cheers Conal so much to see you.”
Emer couldn’t say that it didn’t cheer her to see him, though it was the truth. She could never have imagined strong Conal struck down and made feeble, groaning in pain, hardly able to stand. Still less would she have imagined her own squeamishness. She could bear battle and death, but sickness and pain were different, especially Conal’s pain which she could do nothing to help. Seeing him on the other nights had been terrible. His face was drawn and lined, and every so often he drew in his breath as he endured another pain. He said it felt like being knifed in the belly, but it ran through him like cramps. The whole host of Oriel was in the same state. Finca seemed to take it best of all of them, hardly wincing even when the pain was so bad she had to hold on to a tree in order to stand up. Emer didn’t want to see them again. Today had been bad enough already. Until she could see Conal restored to himself, it was unendurably painful to see him at all.
“They will miss me at the camp if I don’t hurry back,” she said, although there had been no sign so far that they had missed her.
“I do really appreciate your doing this,” Darag said. “I know Conal does, and Conary, too. All of Oriel.”
“All of Oriel doesn’t know, and needn’t if all goes well. Don’t thank me yet,” Emer said, looking resolutely away from the head in his hand. She was glad of the scarf over her face, hiding her expression.
Sometimes, fighting with him, free from the thought of having to marry him, she could almost like Darag. Other times, he still made her skin crawl. He knew who Trivan was, he knew she was Emer’s cousin, but still he stood there swinging her head as if she were nothing more to either of them than another guardian for the chariot. It had plenty of them already, too many of them people she had liked.
“We’ve got through three days,” Darag said. “Ap Carbad said we’d never do that. Maybe it will end tonight. But anyway, I’ll see you here in the morning?”
“Of course,” she said. She had promised Conal she would do it, even if she had not thought what it meant to belong to both sides at once. They would put her name in the lists as a traitor if this were ever known. If the curse were over tomorrow, she would hear it from Darag. She did not believe it would be. Some part of her did not believe it would ever be over. Life would keep this pattern, killing her own people day after day, and she would never have enough rest.
She spat on the ground and called on the Wise Lady’s help against self-pity as she came under the shade of the trees. She changed out of her armor, leaving it there for Darag to retrieve for cleaning later. At least there were plenty of hale people to do that. She tucked the scarf inside her helmet. Then she dressed in the clothes she had left bundled up that morning. She made her way through the trees downstream to the other crossing point she had found lower down.
When she slipped into their tent, Elenn was combing her hair. Beauty was sitting at her feet. They both turned to look at Emer as she came in. “Where have you been?” Elenn asked.
“Around,” Emer said, lying down on the comfortable mound of heather that was her bed. She didn’t need to change her clothes, they had hardly been worn. “Do I have time for a nap before dinner?”
“No!” Elenn sounded impatient. “Get the leaves out of your hair. If you’ve been in the woods all day, you won’t have heard, but can’t you even see what I’m wearing?”
Emer opened her eyes and looked. Elenn’s overdress was one of Maga’s, a very pale yellow. On her shoulders she was settling a tightly woven shawl, the warp red and the weft yellow. The effect was bridal orange.
“She’s letting you marry Ferdia?” Emer asked, bouncing up off the bed and feeling the stiffness in all her bones.
Elenn’s face closed up like a flower at sunset. “No. Nei
ther Ferdia nor Cethern have asked. A new alliance.”
“I didn’t think she’d go as far as marriage unless someone actually opened the road into Oriel,” Emer said, then regretted it at once as the calm mask of her sister’s face cracked and for a moment, she saw the anguish beneath.
“Neither did I,” said Elenn, and her voice had tears not far behind it. She swallowed. “But Firbaith ap Gren has come, come by sea. Maga thinks Atha will have to withdraw if her brother tells her to.”
“That’s nonsense,” Emer said. “I met Firbaith when I was in the Isles. I got the feeling he’d make a fine king one day, because unlike Atha, he can do things other than fight. He’ll probably make you an excellent husband, though I suppose he must be nearly thirty. But the thought that Atha would listen to him, or to anyone, is nonsense.”
“But it’s Mother’s kind of nonsense,” Elenn said, picking up the comb again. “It is an alliance, and of the kind she most wants. At least I’ll get away.”
“And it means she’ll have to stop promising you to people as a sort of prize for killing Darag,” Emer said.
Elenn ran the comb through her hair, though it was smooth and shining already. “Firbaith has promised her that as well as the alliance, he will open a road into Oriel. If Atha won’t obey, that means he’ll have to fight Darag.”
“How awful for Darag to have to kill his wife’s brother,” Emer said without thinking, Trivan’s face in her mind, dangling by the hair from Darag’s hand.
“You might consider that he could win,” Elenn said, flinging the comb down. Beauty whined and put her nose in Elenn’s lap. “Do you think I like the thought of being married to someone who is about to die?” she asked more quietly.
“Yes, of course he could win,” Emer said quickly. “He’s not as noted a warrior as Atha, but Atha would tend to overshadow anyone. Firbaith has a good reputation.” She was surprised that he’d agreed to anything so silly as opening a road; his reputation was for good sense. Darag was so terribly good, almost inhumanly good. Even though she had practiced near him and seen him in contests all the last year, it was only now she was driving his chariot that she saw how good he was. It would be disloyal to think that he was better than Conal. But he was awfully good, and it seemed to come to him so easily. No wonder Conal resented it.