Ardan, who preferred his two feet to any horse’s four, ran at the black mare’s shoulder. He was breathing hard but grinning. “We made it!” he exulted. “I don’t think they even knew what was happening!”
Hearing shouts behind them, Brian replied, “They do by now. I just hope Nessa’s act wasn’t too realistic, and he’s out of the water by now and on his way to join us.”
“He knows where we’re going?”
“I told him, and listed the landmarks to watch for. If he’s all right he can find us easily enough; he might catch up with us when we stop for the night.”
Ardan ran in silence, working to deepen his breathing and find the rhythm which allowed his legs to cover tireless miles. The horses trotted, their own breathing still ragged from the swim. Brian turned often to look over his shoulder for signs of pursuit, but there were none.
“Will the king send someone after us?” Ardan asked.
Brian looked back once more; the way behind them lay empty. “I think not. I’ve been a plague to him for a long time; maybe I prick his conscience. I expect he will go on to Boruma and think himself well rid of me, as I am of him.”
To say those words aloud hurt him, but it served as a bellows on the smoldering coals of his anger. As he looked back the way they had come he had felt lost for a moment, cut off from the past and close to being frightened by the responsibilities he had taken on so precipitously. But being reminded of his quarrel with Mahon steadied him in his determination to see it through, whatever lay ahead.
That night they built a large fire to guide Nessa, though several of the men worried that it might also serve as a beacon to any of the numerous Northmen in the vicinity. Brian had the same worry and took a sentry watch himself, pacing tirelessly beyond the edge of the firelight.
A strange jubilation seized the men. Like small boys who had miraculously escaped from some wearisome chore, they were on the verge of hilarity, laughing at nothing and feeding on one another’s emotions. Watching them, Brian wondered how he could keep that spirit of adventure alive in them through the hardships that were sure to follow.
And then one of the men warming himself at the campfire began to tell a tale. The man was no seanchai, but the storytelling gift had brushed his tongue in passing, and the men listened to him with breath-held interest. They were eager for anything that might distract their minds from the step they had all just taken.
The speaker, a sandy-haired man at the start of his third decade, with an easy grin and a hearty voice, drained his cup and began. “Sitting here in the company of heroes” (he was immediately rewarded with laughter and cheers), “I am reminded of a tale I often heard in my youth. Are any of you familiar with the story of Mac Da Tho’s Pig?”
Men who knew the story backward and forward pleaded ignorance of it and begged him to continue.
“Mac Da Tho was a famous king of Leinster, descended from the High King Crimthann Nia Nair, him who was king of all the Irish at the time Jesus Christ was born.”
“Blessed be his name,” someone intoned.
“Blessed be,” the storyteller echoed reverently. “Well, this Mac Da Tho had a huge hound called by the name of Ailbe, who was the guardian of the entire province of Leinster. Ailill and Maeve, king and queen of Connacht, heard of the dog and sent word to Mac Da Tho that they wanted him for themselves. At the same time Conchobar, king of Ulster, took it into his head that he was deserving of the hound, and likewise sent for him.”
“Sure, and that’s trouble,” a listener was moved to comment.
“Aye, and it was,” the spellweaver agreed. “With such pressure coming at him from both sides, the king of Leinster was much troubled in his mind. He could neither eat nor sleep nor bed his wife, until the lady tired of the situation and made a suggestion of her own.
“‘Send word to Conchobar that our splendid dog is his for a gift’ said she, ‘if he will but honor us with a personal visit to collect him. Then send word likewise to Connacht, that Ailbe is theirs if they will come to accept him in person. Speak with each messenger in secret and assign them to bid their masters come on the same day. Then, when Conchobar and Ailill arrive, let them fight it out between them. That way they will decide it for themselves and we will be free of the responsibility.’
“Now, this Mac Da Tho had a wife whose brain was greater than her beauty, so he did as she suggested. And when the two kings arrived on the same day he pretended to be much surprised, and proclaimed it all a misunderstanding. He played the gracious host, seating them and their parties facing each other on opposite sides of the banquet hall, and when they looked death and daggers at one another he contrived not to notice.”
Brian stood beyond the firelight, his senses divided between his assigned watch and the magic of the story being spun.
“Mac Da Tho presented his guests with a wondrous large pig that he had slaughtered in their honor. One of those present, Bricriu (called Poison-Tongue by those who knew him best), suggested that the pig be divided so that the largest portion should go to the greatest champion among them.
“Ailill and Conchobar both agreed, and the argument began at once. Cet mac Magach of Connacht clutched his knife in his big red fist and sat down next to the smoking hot meat, saying he would claim both haunches. The brave men of Ulster stood up in turn to dispute him, but he had a silver tongue and was able to remind each man of some failure of courage or loss of valor on that man’s part, so they were forced to sit down again, one by one.
“Then, as Cet was plunging his knife into the pig and the men of Connacht were crowding around their champion, Conall Cernach, strongest man in Ulster, came bursting in out of the night. If the tongue of Cet was silver, the tongue of Conall was golden, and he recited in fine poetry a catalogue of his deeds of heroism that put Cet to shame.
“But before he would surrender the pig to Ulster, Cet said bitterly, ‘If the great Anluan, my brother, were only here, he would give you a challenge that would bring you down!’
“‘Ach, but Anluan is here!’ cried the Ulsterman, and so saying he pulled a bag from his belt and lifted out the head of the same Anluan, with the blood still flowing from its severed neck. With a laugh to chill your marrow he flung it at Cet.
“The stunned men of Connacht offered no further challenge to their old foes, and Conall divided the pig, taking the whole hindquarter for himself.”
“The murderin’ savage!” one of the listeners around the campfire exclaimed.
“You’re one to talk,” retorted his neighbor. “Haven’t I heard you often enough, boasting of the Leinstermen and the Ulstermen you’ve killed in one dispute or another?”
“Aye, well. That’s another thing entirely. But I’ve never taken a man’s head. I’m a Christian!”
Ignoring them, the spinner of tales went on. “When the men of Connacht saw how little was left for them of that pig they were hurt in their pride, which is the worst place to wound a Connachtman. They began the argument afresh, with words and then with weapons, and the banquet table was reduced to a heap of splinters, by the blows they exchanged across it.
“Mac Da Tho saw his chance. He had watched them going at it, Ulster pounding on Connacht, Connacht slicing at Ulster, and enjoyed the show—except for the loss of his good table, of course. But he thought the time was right to be rid of the lot of them, so he whistled up his hound, the fearful Ailbe, and turned it loose on the fighting men.
“‘You put such value on my hound,’ he yelled to them over the shrieks and moans, ‘we will let him resolve this matter in his own way!’
“Sure, it’s one thing to fight a man; it’s another thing entirely to fight a magic hound as big as a bear. The men of Ulster and the men of Connacht poured out of the hall together, falling over each other in their hurry and not stopping to say, ‘Pardon.’ But the Ulstermen were fleeter of foot, and the men from south Munster were slowed by the fat of their land, and it was them Ailbe caught first.
“Mac Da Tho was laughing to the po
int of hiccups. But there was one hero yet to be heard from. Fer Loga, the royal charioteer of Connacht, came forward at the gallop and ran right into the huge hound, splitting its skull on the chariot pole.
“By now everyone was in full flight. They ran through the night with their hair streaming out behind them, and in their ears they thought they still heard the baying of that hound.
“Fer Loga, flushed with his kill, leaped out of his chariot and hid in the heather to waylay Conchobar. When the Ulster chariot came abreast of his hiding place he jumped up behind and seized Conchobar by the neck, his hands closing on the throat of north Ireland itself. ‘Buy your freedom of me, Conchobar, or there will be a wailing and a tearing of hair in your palace when your body is carried home!’
“‘I bow to your terms,’ said Conchobar, who had it in him to live to a great age.
“‘Then my demand is this,’ said the charioteer of the west country. ‘Every night for a year, the fair maidens of Ulster must sing: “Fer Loga is my darling.”’
“And that was the victory of Connacht over Ulster, and of Mac Da Tho over the both of them. He and his wife laughed that night on their pillow, remembering how foolish their enemies had looked in full flight.”
A shout of laughter went up when Fer Loga named the price of Conchobar’s ransom, and the men seated around the campfire toasted the longdead charioteer with their drinking cups. Then another toast was raised to Mac Da Tho, who had used his enemies as weapons against one another.
Observing them, Brian thought, I am not the only one who loves a story, nor is mine the only heart that hungers for heroic deeds. A champion like those in the legends could unite these men in a bond too strong for the Northmen to break, for the love of great deeds is still alive in our blood.
But who? Murketagh of the Leather Cloaks was such a man, but he died spitted on a Danish sword when I was an infant. His son Donall is Ard Ri now, but the land suffers as much as ever and the provinces fight among themselves like a pack of dogs; Donall is powerless to bring them together.
Once, I thought that Mahon … but that is over. No king in Ireland is less fit than he for such a role.
Brian stood very still, looking into the night beyond the fire. If the legends could live again; if a hero could be found … or made …
From the forests and mountain solitudes of Thomond, Brian and his little band of followers waged their relentless war. Danish merchants with richly laden vessels learned to watch the shores of the Shannon as they made their way downriver to Limerick, or followed the inland highway of the river and lakes to Portumna and Athlone. Norse raiding parties began to choose those routes which led over open country and the treeless, windswept lowlands, and leave the highlands to Brian and his men.
Mahon, rebuilding the Dal Cais tuath at Boruma, heard the tales told of his brother. It was impossible not to, for it seemed that Brian’s name was on the lips of every passing traveler.
“He and his men sleep curled on the bare ground, with their heads on tree roots,” the story went. “They ignore the cold and rain; they go without food for days and still fight like the wolves themselves. They lay traps and snares and seize up the Northmen like hares, and some of the boys get a bit taken away with the fun of it all and do some fancy carving on the foreigners with their knives.”
Mahon shuddered the first time he heard that. “Is that what we’ve come to—mutilating a fallen enemy?”
The left corner of Olan’s mouth had dragged downward with the passage of time, leaving a permanent sneer that showed the stumps of his teeth against his paling gums. “The Northmen fight that way themselves,” he remarked. “Prince Brian is leaving his mark on them in a way they can understand.”
“You didn’t think much of Brian when he was with us; now that he’s a deserter you seem to admire him.”
“A man can change his opinion,” Olan said stiffly. “It may be I think he’s acquitted himself well.”
Mahon made a gesture that included the large, well-furnished room where they stood and the community that lay beyond. “And haven’t I acquitted myself well, Olan? I have rebuilt my father’s house, finer than it ever was before, and had the best stonecarvers in Munster to honor my mother’s tomb. There’s mead on my table in glass goblets, and silk on my back—and on yours, too. I didn’t notice you refuse it.”
“I only wore it the one time. When I learned it was a gift from a Danish chief I tore it up and buried the pieces under a rock,” Olan said gruffly.
Mahon looked in astonishment at his longtime friend. “You did! I never suspected you capable of such gestures.”
“I never thought you would take silk from a Dane.”
A year passed, and then another. The stories told of Brian grew wilder.
A pair of travelers making their way to Roscrea had encountered Brian’s band returning from a skirmish and had been invited to spend the night under their protection. One of the travelers, an old graybeard known as Young Rory, recounted the story of that evening to Mahon and the tribal elders over a dinner far different from that he had shared in the wilderness with Brian.
“There are no more than fifty of them left,” he told his hushed audience, “but they are men of such strength I cannot describe it convincingly. They are lean as winter wolves, and they run miles each day, faster than deer over the rocks. All their time is given over to making themselves strong and savage; I swear they think of nothing else.
“A meal was brought, one stringy cow that had been stolen somewhere, and the poor carcass was thrown down in the center of their camping place. Prince Brian called all to him, and fought them in turn for the meat.”
There were shocked murmurs.
“It’s true, I swear it! He put them on the ground, every one of them, and taunted them as he did it.” Young Rory paused to mop his perspiring brow and judge the effect this recital had had upon Brian’s kinsmen. He was not disappointed.
“Ach, yes,” he resumed, “the prince has become a terrible hard man. No single warrior can stand against him. Some awful rage moves him—what, I cannot say, but it burns around him like a light wherever he goes.”
Mahon looked at his cousins and friends and saw the admiration written plainly on their faces. Their chins were greasy with the rich food he had provided for them, but in their hearts they were in the mountains, wrestling Brian for the stringy haunch of a stolen cow.
Month followed month, and there was peace at Boruma. Mahon credited it to his truce, and his subsequent dealing with the Norsemen and the Danes, but there were others in the community who said openly, “The Northmen will not bother us as long as Brian watches over us from the hills.”
Their second winter in the mountains was bitterly cold. Nessa had somehow injured his back during the performance at the river crossing, and when at last he caught up with Brian it was obvious he would be unable to fight for a long time. He never really regained his strength, and his face became haggard, with old eyes that watched uncomplainingly as preparations were made to move the camp for yet another time.
Both Ivar of Limerick and the Norse king of Dublin, Olaf Cuaran, had begun to tire of Brian’s persistent harassment. They sent search parties to scour the mountains and put an end to what Ivar called “the black-fly bites” of the Dalcassian, but Brian’s knowledge of the region had become so complete that he was able to melt away from them again and again, hiding in forgotten glens and lost caves beneath the hills. It meant that they were constantly on the move, and Nessa suffered.
At the end of the season of Advent, when the band was contemplating a bleak Christ Mass, Nessa summoned Brian to him. “I’ve grown to be a burden to you, my lord,” he said with regret. “It would be better for you to let me starve, or freeze, or put your sword through me yourself, than for me to be the cause of your being caught some dark day.”
Brian took Nessa’s hand in his and felt how thin the cold fingers had become, how cracked and dead the skin. Pain had made Nessa an old man. Yet his eyes still glowed wi
th the fire of youthful pride as he looked at the tall figure bent over him. “You know what I say is true, Brian.”
Brian looked away and made no answer.
“I know that you have left death-wounded men on the field of battle in order to save the whole body of your force. It hurt you to do it, for I’ve seen it in your eyes when you thought no one was watching. But it was the best military decision, and because of it we’ve survived to fight again. The men know that and they respect you for it. That’s why you should do the same for me, now.”
“My old mare is thin and weak, Nessa. Should I slaughter her, too, and feed her to my men?” Brian asked in a bitter voice.
“Yes, if it comes to that! She is a war-horse, Brian, as I am a warrior; we are pledged to be spent in the pursuit of victory.”
Brian turned away. The cold wind howled down the mountain passes.
At Cashel, passing bards sang of the new Lion of Thomond who had killed a hundred Northmen in a single day. Callachan, on the brink of death, did not hear the songs, but his son listened with a scowl on his face. The young Déirdre held her hands in her lap and kept her eyes downcast as a maiden should, but a rose flush colored her cheeks as she listened to the marvelous exploits of the Dalcassian prince.
Noticing, Donogh warned her, “The man sounds like a wild animal. You would do well to stop up your ears, my dear.”
“He is no wild animal,” the bard hastened to explain. “He is more like the great Cuchullain reborn. It is said that he dresses in samite and cloth of gold, is as beautiful as the dawn, and is building a mighty army that will sweep the invaders into the sea forever!”
“Is he really so beautiful?” Deirdre asked, raising her violet eyes.
“Mother of God!” swore Donogh. “Enough of this yammer. There is a dying man in the king’s chamber this night, and I beg you to be quiet out of respect for him.”
In the month of the two-headed Roman god, Brian and the ragged men still left to him returned to their latest hiding place to find Nessa’s body, an ax buried in the skull and human excrement smeared over the corpse in contempt. The love Brian had borne his friend drove him to his knees in agony, and he sobbed without shame over the pitiful form.
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