Only the Stones Survive: A Novel (6 page)

Standing among the trees, one with the alder and ash, the holly and hornbeam, blending into the landscape so the strangers could not see them, the Dananns had been distracted by the arrival of the bard.

A tall dark-haired man had been the first stranger to set foot on Ierne. He leaped off one of the galleys and ran high-kneed through the foaming surf, carrying a leather case raised at arm’s length to be clear of the water. The satchel was a work of art in its own right. Cut from the finest hides, it had been shaped to fit its contents, then embossed with curvilinear designs and brightly painted. As soon as the man reached dry land, he knelt to open the case. With reverent fingers he turned back a fold of white silk and lifted out his treasure.

The watching Dananns were transfixed.

There had never been such a beautiful harp. Even at a distance they could tell that the workmanship was exquisite. Bow-shaped and small enough to be cradled in the man’s arms, the wooden frame was richly gilded. The neck and body formed sinuous curves that were perfectly balanced by the straight line of the forepillar. Every golden surface was elaborately ornamented. The nine strings were made of gleaming brass.

The man with the harp stood up in one lithe movement. He held the instrument high above his head and cried with all the power in his lungs, “Bard land!” Lowering the harp to the height of his heart, he ran his fingers lightly across the strings. They made a sound like spring wind rippling the willows. He smiled to himself. A lock of dark hair tumbled across his forehead as he bent his head and began to play. The music was totally different from that which he had played in the fog. Now the notes were fresh and joyous, golden and green. They danced on the air.

The high-arched feet of the Túatha Dé Danann could barely resist dancing with them.

More people were now splashing through the surf. A powerfully built man with ruddy hair paused to say something to the harper—who ignored him. The bard was lost in the moment. He and his harp might have been all alone, existing in a world outside time.

The Dananns found it difficult to look away from him. But they must. In spite of the impression he made, he was not alone; he was only the first of a veritable tidal wave of strangers hurrying to come ashore. In their eagerness, they abandoned all caution. They pushed and shoved and scrambled, the women as fiercely as the men. They were almost as tall as men and no less determined.

Torrian warned, “Someone is going to be hurt.”

“That is not our responsibility,” Greine remarked.

The spear carrier shrugged. “I was only saying.”

“He was only saying,” echoed Ladra.

Many of the foreigners carried swords in their belts. Swords with blades as long as a man’s forearm for the men, and shorter weapons resembling a dagger for the women. The blades had been forged from a dull bluish metal instead of bronze.

Observing them, Fodla felt a twinge of unease. “It might be best not to reveal ourselves right away,” she whispered to Greine. “Strangers in a strange land, they are bound to be nervous. We should allow them time to unload their ships and settle in.”

“Settle in?” Greine gave her a sharp look. “Do you think they intend to stay?”

“Of course they intend to stay. Look at what they have brought with them. Cattle and sheep and goats and…”

“Armloads of children,” Eriu interrupted. “I have never seen so many little ones all at one time.” Her voice was very tender. “Those are colonists, beloved; the first colonists to come here since our ancestors Before the Before. Only good people could make such beautiful music. We must give them the warmest of welcomes, greet them with fruits and flowers and singing, offer them the best of everything we have.”

Greine hesitated. Ierne had been theirs since the time of his grandfathers’ grandfathers, and before. Feared and reviled because they were different—a difference that was their greatest blessing—the Túatha Dé Danann had found the one place in the world where they could be themselves. In gratitude, they had turned the island in the sunset into a paradise. They had been willing to share its bounty with the earlier inhabitants, but these were too primitive to comprehend what they were being offered. They hated the Dananns because they did not understand. And worshipped them too, because they did not understand.

Would it be the same with these strangers?

Or might they become comrades, learning and growing together? Was the long isolation of Danu’s children about to be over?

Greine watched with keen interest and some trepidation as the newcomers began to unload two of the galleys. Gaunt horses were led ashore on trembling legs; nervous, long-maned Asturian horses who carried the hot blood of the desert in their veins. They were to pull the chariots belonging to the sons of Mílesios: wickerwork chariots with timber wheels painted the color of blood, and round shields hanging from the sides. Battered shields with heavy metal bosses.

There was domestic livestock, too; a pair of half-grown bull calves and a small herd of pregnant heifers, plus some white-faced sheep. Every animal had been handpicked for its youth, strength, and quality. The calves would become seed bulls in time. While still young and amenable they would be trained to the yoke and used for ploughing the new land. Black Mílesian cattle provided milk and meat and fine, supple leather. The long-stapled wool that the Mílesian sheep produced was soft and durable.

As soon as the livestock was unloaded, the women began trying to herd the animals into groups. A pack of shaggy, long-legged hounds, happy to be on land again, raced along the sand and shingle, barking exuberantly and chasing anything that moved.

Cattle and sheep scattered.

Anxious women shouted at the hounds, irritable men kicked them aside, overtired children shrieked for no reason at all.

Meanwhile, the third and fourth galleys disgorged a similar cargo of people and equipment. The rest of the Gaelicians took their first tentative steps on what would be their new homeland. Weary but wide-eyed, they gazed around with the expressions of people just wakened from a dream.

When the unloading was complete, the chariots were drawn into a line on the beach. Horse boys motioned to waiting charioteers, who stepped forward and took up the reins.

The ruddy man who had paused to speak to the harper strode to the center of the line. His charioteer greeted him with a salute. Éremón’s chariot was the only one ornamented with rather bedraggled plumes. When he stepped up into the cart, the floor creaked under his weight.

He glanced first to one side and then the other, assessing the mood of his warrior brothers. Donn wore his usual grave expression, and Ír was staring down at his own knuckles, but Éber Finn grinned at Éremón. “At last, brother!”

Off to one side, Colptha was watching the chariot warriors with an expression that Éremón took for envy. Amergin was preoccupied with his harp. Bards had little interest in chariots.

Éremón settled his leather helmet with its bristling horsehair crest firmly on his head, then gave a terse nod. His charioteer cracked a whip in the air, and the pair of bay horses bolted forward as if the whip had slashed them. The other teams raced after them.

The warriors of the Gael screamed at the top of their lungs. They pounded their swords against their shields as they hurtled forward in an outpouring of explosive energy. The charioteers sawed on the reins; spumes of white foam streaked with blood poured from the mouths of the overexcited horses. Noise and clatter, rage and fury! They might have been a hundred, a thousand! They saw themselves as a conquering horde. So did the followers who ran after them. A seething mass of men and women and children, wild with joy at being on land again. Almost trampling one another in their eagerness. Shouting the traditional war cries of the Gael.

With a bellow of martial voices and the thunder of seventy-two hooves, the Mílesians invaded Ierne.

SIX

T
HE TÚATHA DÉ
DANANN
WERE SHOCKED.

A warm welcome was out of the question and might prove fatal. With a hasty, all-inclusive gesture, Greine gathered his party and gave orders to withdraw before the strangers caught sight of them.

As far as the Mílesians could tell, Ierne was uninhabited.

Éremón undertook an initial reconnoiter of the surrounding area. Then he went back to the landing site. Before dismounting from his chariot, he raced his team in a wide circle, throwing up great showers of sand to impress the women—who were busy unpacking and setting up a camp for the night. They gave his display no more than a perfunctory glance before returning to matters of real importance. The children were tired and fretful, and there was cooking to be done. A night spent on the beach would not be so bad. At least the earth under their feet was not moving.

Taya, who had no children to tend as yet, went forward to greet Éremón. “Did you see anyone?” she asked anxiously.

“Not a tooth or a whisker of another person,” he told her. “This place is ours. It’s everything I promised you and more.” Seeing Sakkar watching them, he called to the Phoenician, “Amazing, is it not? This land is uninhabited.”

“Amazing,” Sakkar replied drily. He had not told the Mílesians all of the stories repeated in the taverns of Tyre and Sidon. If he had, they might have decided not to make the voyage, and Sakkar was as eager as any of them for a new beginning on the island in the sunset, the island on the rim of the world.

Which he alone knew was populated by someone, something.

He recalled the mysterious inhabitants the sailors had talked about in hushed voices. “Magic people” they had called them. Were they gods? Demons? Incredibly powerful sorcerers—or merely men more clever than those who sought to rob them?

In his previous life, Sakkar had not indulged in abstract musings. Rendered pragmatic by circumstance, he had relied on the strength of his muscles for answers to problems. He could hardly blame Age-Nor for abandoning him. What good was a shipwright who could not repair ships any longer?

Physical disability had forced the Phoenician to develop a better tool: his brain. He was thinking very quickly now.

Sooner or later, the natives of Ierne were bound to make their presence known. If they were more numerous or better armed than the Mílesians, it would be prudent to befriend them as soon as possible. The pretty speech Sakkar had made to Éremón about honor and obligation was just that, a pretty speech. His philosophy could be quickly adjusted. In the crooked streets and dangerous alleyways of Tyre, he had learned there was but one imperative: survive.

Always ally oneself to the strongest side.

Shielding his eyes against the sun with his left hand, the little man surveyed the tranquil face of Ierne. A fleeting vision of the coastal cities of the Levant slid across his memory, obscuring the verdant panorama before him. Tyre and Sidon, Biblos and Acre. Greatest of all was Carthage, built on a triangular peninsula covered with low hills and backed by the Lake of Tunis, the powerful capital of the Phoenician world. Towers, terraces, noisome crowds, and massive stonework hotly gleaming in the ubiquitous sunshine. Blowing sand and billowing dust, clouds of biting insects, shifty-eyed traders speaking incomprehensible dialects. Clever fingers briefly slipping into unguarded purses. Thousands of sweaty bodies trying to mask their stink with costly perfumed oils. And among rich and poor alike, the casual cruelty that had exemplified the only life Sakkar knew until fate delivered him to the Mílesians.

Now this. This luxuriously green island. This singular, solitary paradise. Whatever might be wrong with the place, it was better than anywhere else.

His eyes scanned the woodland beyond the beach. What sort of trees were those? Such dense leaves … were there any date palms among them? They surely must bear some kind of fruit. His mouth watered at the thought of fresh fruit. Figs and grapes and sweet purple plums. Perhaps …

When he squinted and tilted his head to one side, he glimpsed what might be a human form among the trees. Then it was gone.

Yet he knew someone was there. He felt the weight of their eyes.

If Sakkar had not possessed a powerful instinct for detecting danger, he would not have lived past childhood. Fortunately, there was no chill on the back of his neck now, no instinctive tensing of his leg muscles, so whoever watched him was not inimical, at least not to him. There was danger, though. He knew it. Danger had come ashore with the warriors and their chariots.

It might be a good idea to do some exploring on his own, without waiting for Éremón and the others. The only person Sakkar trusted totally was himself.

Glancing around to make certain that none of the Mílesians were watching him, he set off for the trees.

The Danann party drifted away from the coast like smoke blown by a gentle breeze. They were in no hurry. Sure of their own powers, they chose to remove themselves from the immediate vicinity of the strangers and await developments.

Only one of them hesitated.

As they observed the strangers, Lerys, wife of Mongan, had noticed a short, swarthy man who stood apart from the others. He held his right arm clamped against his side, and there was a curious asymmetry to his shoulders. The right one was higher than the other, with an odd, lumpy shape. Although it might be a congenital deformity, the shoulder looked as if it had been badly damaged through accident or violence.

She turned around and went back.

When the cold shade of the trees fell upon Sakkar, he drew a deep breath. The air smelled wonderful, yet strange. It made his nostrils tingle.

Perhaps he was making a mistake. The recent voyage had been hard from the beginning and terrifying at the end; perhaps his good common sense was …

A woman emerged from a stand of ash saplings. She was very small and slender, dressed in flowing draperies the color of water. Her heart-shaped face was as pale as the moon; her violet-colored eyes were huge and brimming with sympathy.

What is wrong with your shoulder?