Only the Stones Survive: A Novel (15 page)

In the excitement of the moment, the warriors forgot who supported Éremón and who was aligned with Éber Finn. They even forgot what had precipitated the quarrel. Ír did not understand at all; he thought it was some kind of game and cheered them both on. But Donn understood well enough. For years he had observed the tensions growing between his brothers. Hot blood, hot tempers, hot ambitions—Donn had held himself apart, forcing himself to remain cool. Privately wondering if madness was Ír’s way of escaping from a closely woven family destined to tear itself apart.

On that ill-starred night, Donn had watched with grave concern as his druid brothers dueled, each pitting the strength of his mind and his will against the other. In the end, Colptha had backed down. To Donn’s relief, the bard’s anger burned too hot for him to challenge.

But later, as Colptha lay wrapped in his blanket, he had promised himself, “Amergin will be sacrificed. On Ierne, I will silence the voice of the bard forever. Then only my voice will be heard.”

FIFTEEN

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING,
the Mílesians had set off to collect the rest of the colonists. They had moved swiftly, hoping to avoid the primitive tribes and save their energies for the ultimate adversary.

They did have a few skirmishes on the way south, but a larger problem was the division within their own ranks. Every night, more men were sleeping around Éber Finn’s campfire, and fewer around Éremón’s. Éremón missed the sense of brotherhood that had distinguished the Gaels until now and looked forward to a heroic battle with the Dananns that would unite them against a common enemy.

Amergin hoped to discourage that battle entirely, but whenever the bard had tried to speak to Éremón about it, Colptha had thrust himself between them. The sacrificer only had one song to sing, but he repeated it every chance he got. “Fight the Dananns and kill them—kill them all! They are our mortal enemies. Feed the Mother their blood so we will prosper in this new land.”

Éremón did not want to listen, but the words slid into his ears anyway.

Persuading the rest of the colonists had not been as easy as Éremón envisioned in the high tide of self-congratulation. Odba argued with him on general principle. Even Taya did not take his side. Most of the women wanted nothing more to do with perpetually damp wooden galleys and leather coracles reeking of mildew. “Why not stay here?” they asked. “This is a pleasant place; the weather is warm and the headland protects us from the wind. We’ve already set out our salt pans, and they’re almost half full.”

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 changing. 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.