by C.S. Fanning
Bretharc just long enough to insure that all of the families were ok before moving on south to the capital. Finnis had opposed this plan but Riordan and Teagan had overridden him. She was training to be a druid now, and though the magic and divination seemed to present a challenge for her, but she was a gifted natural healer, and a surprisingly adept student of the histories.
They had finally settled on the port of Glenarm, and the remaining friends had gathered one last time to say their farewells. Riordan would take Teagan and Faolan on with him as they made the crossing to Caledonia, and then on to Albion. Aeden and Fianna would work from within Eire to free their homeland from the affliction that plagued her. They all made plans to celebrate their sure victory over the unknown enemy but each privately wondered if they would ever see one another again.
Homecoming
The first hints of spring were just beginning to show when Aeden and Fianna rode back across the ford where with a little help from the Dagda Mor they had eluded the hounds of the enemy. The waters had not yet risen from the spring thaw, but soon this tiny little river would become a raging torrent, and they would need to be back across it and on their way to the capital or else their journey would be delayed for weeks as they rode around to a safe crossing.
The villages and towns along the path had provided much of the information that they needed. The current state of their homeland was something neither of them cared to consider overlong. The north and much of the west had mobilized against the King, and war was brewing. The Lords of Eire were loyal but they had begun to realize that the High King was not serving them or the people, and rumors ran wild that he was serving something other than his own petty interests.
Monuments were being destroyed alongside the institutions that had been the hallmark of Eire and the replacement of the benevolent druids with these dark priests was a violation of the ancient traditions. That been the beginning, but soon lords who opposed such changes vocally began disappearing from within the walls of their own keeps or being charged with treason or some other ridiculous charge.
The final straw had had come when the King’s army had marched on the Keel. Lord Achill had pronounced the King a traitor of Eire after the King’s mysterious priests razed the grove on the hill beyond the wall. The King had responded by emptying his garrison at Newport to march on the Keel, along with every other garrison in the north.
It had been a bloody battle, with heavy casualties. The Keel itself was well fortified, and the sound worked like a natural moat. In the history of Eire, routinely fraught with war and strife, no army had ever breached the Keel. Lord Achill’s neighbors did not fare so well, as the King’s Army had taken out the King’s wrath upon the neighboring baronies, burning and pillaging those closest to the Keel and impoverishing the remainder as food and supplies were commandeered to feed the army while it kept up a continuous assault against the wall and its defenders who refused to yield.
In the end it had been trickery and dark magic that had finally taken the wall. The King’s entire northern army mobilized to destroy Lord Achill. The King intent upon making an example of this young upstart of a Lord had sent the whole of his northern army against the Keel with orders to slay everyone, men, women, and children, but that was not all. Even as the troops were making preparations to ford the sound, smoke and flame billowed on the horizon. The Keel was already burning. A ship bearing the dark sorcerers that had until that moment been little more than fanciful tales this far north had sailed into the harbor, sinking Achill’s small fleet and assailing the Keel and Keep alike with enormous orbs of flame that were so enchanted as to cling to whatever they touched, be it stone, tree, or flesh. These horrendous flames burned with a ferocity unquenchable. Water seemed only to spread the magical flame, so the defense of the keep was forsaken, and the evacuation was begun instead.
Lord Achill had been at the sound preparing his troops to repel the King’s Army when the assault began. In his stead Lady Achill had personally taken charge of the evacuation and rescue of their people. A flaming tapestry had fallen across her as she coaxed two frightened servant’s children out of the unused fire place that they had taken refuge in. The children had been rescued unharmed, and Lady Achill had been carried from her burning home; alive but severely burned. She was alive, but the healers could not be certain that she would survive her injuries to live another day.
Lord Achill was a man of tradition and when the purge of the druids had come to his attention, he had not only hidden and protected those of his own local grove, but dozens of survivors from the destruction of the other groves in the north. No doubt it came as a shock to the crew of the attacking vessel when the sea rose up to swallow their vessel and the very planks from which the ship was constructed wrapped about them like irons, dragging the villains to a watery grave.
Protected against the King’s unjust treatment for nearly two years by this lord of the north, the druid’s of Eire knew that it was now their time to repay their host. The best healers in the group stayed to use their skills on the sick and injured, while the remaining adepts rode for the Keel at a gallop.
At the wall word had already reached the defenders of the cowardly assault upon the keep and it’s casualties including the Lady of the Keel, whose very life now hung by a thread. Lord Achill was in conference with his commanders when Anrod, chief of the Grove of the Keel, arrived to offer his services along with those of his fellow druids. He was ushered into the conference just in time to hear his lord’s proclamation.
“My Lady withstood the assault of dark sorcery, and gave life and limb to save our people. I will lead the battle from the front General, and if I fall I expect every man here to fight on until the last. May our ghosts rise up from this ground to spoil the sleep of any man who raises sword against the rightful men of the Keel!”
“Your Lady yet lives, and the best healers among the druids tend her even now, striving along with the powers of the land of her birth to keep her so” Anrod shouted to be heard over the throng of cheering commanders. “Our order strives never to become embroiled in the in politics or sovereignty matters accept as arbiters, one of our tradition functions. Our enemies have forced our hand, using the powers once reserved only for our order and the gods themselves against the people. These powers exist to help nurture the land and its people, not to be used as a weapon against them! You, Lord Achill, have done more to protect this land than we and today this grove pledges itself to your cause. I would ask to stand at your side as we go into battle!”
This unprecedented alliance between the men of the north and the druids was met with silence as those present all looked on knowing that they witnessed a thing that had not occurred since the founding of the druid order. None were foolish enough to think that the fifteen hundred men of the Keel could hold the neck of the sound and narrow bridge. The King’s army would bring twelve thousand men to bear against their fortifications, and in the end the Keel would fall. Even with the assistance of the druids, few harbored any hope of withstanding the King’s Army and immerging victorious, but with the druids help they felt more confident that their final battle would send a message down through the history of Eire that they would never stand for tyranny. They had no hope of winning this fight, but fight they would nonetheless.
No one doubted that the rains that struck the very day that the northern army was prepared to assail the sound were the result of the druid’s efforts. For three days the rains fell in blinding sheets, making any attack upon the Keel impossible. Lightening flashed regularly from the blackened skies, invariably striking the hilltop on which the King’s Army had chosen to place their encampment. On the morning of the third day the rains ceased, and as the sun came out and burned away the deep fog which had enshrouded the hill it was obvious that the King’s Army had already suffered losses. At least a third of their number had disappeared into the fog, defecting rather than fight their own countrymen in a battle that was clearl
y not favored by the gods.
Eight thousand men, determined and ready to fight would still easily overwhelm the Keel’s defenders, but it was a wholly dispirited army that assembled to advance across what was now a swampy bog adjoining the sound. The men of the Keel were emboldened by the very thing that had disheartened their enemy.
The battle of the sound, as it had come to be called, had ended without bloodshed. As the King’s Army reached the base of the hill on which they had weathered the storm, they heard the horns of the defenders before them, and to their utter dismay those horns were answered by the blaring of horns from behind them. Another force had flanked them, and was now at their backs.
Lord Donegal, King of Connacht, had ridden forth from Donegal Castle in the wake of the King’s Army. Sending word to all his Barons that no northern lord would stand alone against a mad king’s aggression, he brought a thousand horse. He knew that his small force could not hope to break the King’s Army lines, but he hoped that his impassioned plea would be answered by his countrymen.
When the rains set in, his cavalry camped in the lees of a