Pride of Lions (21 page)

Some tried to run.

Donough saw a tall man who appeared in a fleeting glimpse to be Domnall Mac Donohue, sprinting toward a stand of trees.

Coward. Donough ran after him.

The forest swallowed them.

Teigue, watching, could stand no more. He galloped back and joined the fighting.

As he ran through the woods in pursuit of the Owenacht, Donough thought of the Norseman Brodir, fleeing after the Battle of Clontarf. Running for his life until he came across a tent in Tomar's Wood where the aging High King waited and prayed for Irish victory.

Brodir had halted to kill Brian Boru.

Anger lent wings to Donough's feet. In his imagination he was not pursuing an Owenacht, an Irish man like himself, but his father's killer. "Boru!" he screamed into the darkness of the trees.

In the cabin smothered by ivy, Cera had been fretting for days. Padraic could feel her anxiety. Her knitted brow formed a pattern that disturbed the air around him.

"You need to be away from here for a while," he told her.

"Not at all! Have I not just been away? As far as Kincora, which is farther than I've ever traveled before."

"And you've not been the same since," he father pointed out. "What troubles you?"

"Nothing troubles me."

"You can tell me. Do I not always understand?"

"Nothing troubles me!" She did not like the feeling of mental fingers teasing at the edges of her mind, seeking a way in. Padraic had learned too much in his time with Niamh.

Cera plied her twig broom on the earthen floor so ferociously that she stirred up a cloud of dust, making her father cough. She burned the stirabout in its iron pot and the cabin reeked of scorched oatmeal. She put too much wood on the fire, until Padraic complained of the heat and went outside into the rain.

When his sons returned that evening he suggested to Torccan, the eldest, "Perhaps you might take some of our produce south to the market at Limerick. It's a bad year, we won't get anything for it around here, but the Vikings will always buy wool. And, ah, while you're about it, take Cera with you. I don't think I can survive another day in the house with her."

In the far distance, someone was playing music.

For a time Donough was content to lie dreamily, listening. Harp music. A small bardic harp with brass strings, like the one his father had played occasionally in the hall at Kincora.

His senses sharpened. That was no harp, but the pounding of the bodhran. He felt a vague disappointment and tried to go back to sleep. But he could not. The pounding was not that of a drum, but his own head, throbbing agonizingly.

Keeping his eyes closed, he tried to assess the situation. He seemed to be lying on the ground --he could feel twigs beneath him. Yet his head was pillowed.

His pounding, aching head.

In spite of himself, he moaned.

Instantly a cool hand touched his forehead.

"Sssshhh, that only makes it worse."

The hand moved and was joined by another hand, one on each side of his head, bracketing the tormented skull between them, pressing very gently as if to press out the pain.

Donough tensed, but the pain grew no worse.

In fact, it lessened. Then he heard a sound like humming and a vibration passed through his body.

The pain eased more.

He was able to open his eyes.

Light stabbed his pupils; he closed his lids quickly, then opened them a hair's breadth at a time, peeping out.

At first everything was blurred. His vision slowly cleared to reveal a dark shape bending over him.

He was lying with his head in someone's lap. Or so it seemed.

"Did we win?" he asked hoarsely.

"Win what?"

"The battle." His lips were dry, his tongue thick.

"I saw no battle. Only you and the other one, the one who hit you."

Donough tried to raise his head. "Where is he?" Before a blinding stab of pain lanced through his skull, forcing him to lie down again, he glimpsed a man lying on his face a few paces distant.

Donough closed his eyes, grateful for the touch of the soothing hands on his head again. "What happened to him?"

"He was trying to hurt you."

"Did you ...?" He left the thought unfinished. Talking, even thinking, was too painful. Closing his eyes, he let himself tumble down into some lovely soft gray wool that seemed to have gathered around him ...

When next he opened his eyes, he saw the rotting litter of a forest floor. His cheek was not pillowed on a lap, but on the earth.

A man lay facedown a few paces away.

Experimentally, Donough raised his head. No pain. He got to his hands and knees and crept over to the other man.

When he turned the body over he was disappointed to discover it did not belong to Domnall Mac Donohue.

Nor was there a mark on it. No weapon had slain him, whoever he was.

Suddenly Donough was fully conscious, every sense alert. The memory of the previous conversation came back to him like an echo.

Who was with me? A woman?

"He was trying to hurt you," I thought my rescuer had said. But what was the voice like?

Male ... no. Surely it was female. My ears were ringing and I was groggy; I should have paid more attention.

But had the conversation ever taken place at all, or was it his imagination, the dream of an injured man? It was receding like the memory of harp music, fading into the blur of battle and excitement and chasing someone ...

Donough returned to the body and examined it again. There were not even any bruises. A big, strong warrior with the unmistakable stamp of an Owenacht was dead of no apparent cause.

With tentative fingers, Donough examined himself.

He found a sizable wound on the right side of his skull, above and slightly behind the ear, where the glancing blow of a blade had torn loose a flap of skin. His neck and shoulder were bathed with blood, which had already begun to form a crust.

His ears were still ringing. But there was no pain.

In its sheath, he found his short-sword.

The last he remembered it had been in his hand.

He began a systematic search of the surrounding forest. No one. Only the trail left by broken undergrowth where he had chased the Owenacht.

Returning to the dead warrior, Donough studied him thoughtfully for some time. Then he drew his short-sword and stabbed the man through the heart. The Owenacht's battle axe he thrust through his own belt.

Expecting pain, he crouched, wrestled the dead body onto his shoulders, stood up.

There was no pain.

Bemused, he set off through the woods carrying his dead enemy and looking for the rest of the Dalcassians.

In the annals, Declan of Kill Dalua subsequently wrote, "A battle was fought at Annacotry, the Ford of Small Boats, between the sons of Brian Boru and Domnall of the Owenachts. A number of men were slain."

As Donough had discovered before he returned to the ford, the man he killed in the forest was not the Owenacht leader. That honor had gone to his cousin Fergal Mac Anluan, who endlessly recounted every detail of the death of Domnall Mac Donohue until no one would listen.

Teigue had also slain several men, but he did not talk about them. For a victorious warrior, he was in a far from celebratory mood.

"All-out war with the Owenachts, that's what this means," he predicted glumly to his officers as they made their way back to Kincora. "Cian was turned against us already, now the rest of his tribe share his enmity."

He shot a dark look toward his younger brother, riding off to one side. But Donough did not notice. His thoughts were far away.

He was trying to recall the voice of the person who had soothed his injured head in the forest--and perhaps saved his life. A conviction was slowly growing in him, based on no fact whatsoever, that he had been rescued by the girl in the red skirt.

Impossible, he knew.

And yet ... and yet, he wanted to believe.

He rode bemused, letting his horse pick its own way. From time to time he reached up absentmindedly to scratch at the dried blood crusted on his ear and jaw.

As soon as they reached Kincora, Teigue summoned his personal physician to examine his brother's head wound. Ferchar had Donough sit on a stool in the courtyard, in good light. "You say you were hit with an axe?"

"Only a glancing blow, fortunately. I brought the axe back with me."

Donough tried not to flinch as Ferchar lifted the partially dislodged flap of skin with a practiced thumb, bathed it gently with willow-water to free the clotted hair, then eased it into its proper place and affixed an herbal poultice of ribwort and plantain. "For an axe wound this is remarkably clean," the physician commented.

"Men who survive axe wounds usually die anyway of some latent poison that clings to the blades, but there is no sign of purulence here.

Did you bathe your head in a magic spring? Or did the guardian spirit of the Dal Cais come down from her mountain to mend you?" he teased, chuckling.

Donough did not laugh. Instead something shifted behind his eyes.

He had told no one of his encounter in the forest, partly because it might be a figment of his imagination resulting from his head wound. Partly because, if real, it was a very private memory.

His response to Ferchar was simply, "The axe hasn't been forged that can kill me."

Perhaps it was true.

Once Teigue learned that his brother was going to be all right, he crisply informed Donough that his services were no longer required at Kincora.

He chose not to remember the promise he had made to himself in the ford.

Donough was genuinely taken aback. "Is this how you show your gratitude for my help in the battle?"

"There would have been no battle if you had not caused trouble between our tribe and the Owenachts."

"A quarrel! It was just a simple quarrel!"

"That's how wars start," Teigue told him.

"Had it not been for your "simple quarrel" I doubt if the Owenachts would ever have undertaken to march on Limerick."

"You can't know that! Don't you listen to the news your own messengers bring you? Battles are breaking out all over Ireland. Men who have been allies for years are turning on one another. The Ard Ri held them together, but those coalitions are falling apart now."

Teigue ignored him. "You alone are responsible for this problem," he insisted, "and I think the farther you stay from Kincora, the better.

Perhaps with time resentments will die down."

"And you'll continue as King of Munster without opposition," Donough said darkly. "Or so you think."

"What does that mean?"

Donough shrugged. "Whatever you want it to mean."

Gathering his supporters, he informed them in terse monosyllables that they were leaving again. "We will go back to Corcomrua long enough to collect my women," he told Conor, "but then I must build a fort for myself. I don't have to have Kincora to survive."

But the jut of his jaw and the light in his eyes said otherwise.

Before they set out for the Burren once more, Donough called on Maeve. "Whatever happens between Teigue and myself," he told her, "I shall always be grateful to you for the kindness you have shown me."

She put out her hand to him. "I don't want the two of you quarreling. I don't think he does either, not really. But by now it's become a matter of pride with him; he's his father's son."

"So am I," said Donough.

He had one final visit to pay. Approaching Mac Liag's house by the lake, he found the poet standing in the doorway as if expecting him.

The old man's face was gray with fatigue.

"He's working too hard," Cumara told Donough. "He keeps insisting he will die soon and he's trying to complete a biography of Brian Boru first. Writing it all down himself, he won't even send for a scribe from the monastery."

"I have things to relate I would not want one of Cathal's monks to hear," said Mac Liag.

Donough asked, "Should not Carroll be compiling the history of my father's life and deeds?"

The poet's faded eyes twinkled. "There are some things even Carroll does not know. He would only tell facts; I know truth. Come inside with me, lad, and we can talk while I take a rest from my labors. But only briefly, mind you. There is much still to be done and I don't want my inks to dry up."

They seated themselves on either side of the hearth while Cumara served them with summer foods: berries and soft cheese, stewed cresses, a cake made of flour, curds, and eggs. He poured brimming goblets of mead from a jug and put some sticks on the fire, though the day was warm enough and the inside of the house was stifling.

As Donough studied Mac Liag's face, he realized the chief poet really was dying. Some integral spirit had collapsed.

"Before I leave Kincora for ... for what may be a long time," Donough said, choosing his words carefully, "I would appreciate a little more of your truth."

Mac Liag stirred his bowl of cheese with his forefinger. "What can I tell you?" Aside from suckling his finger like an infant at the breast, Donough observed, the old man had little appetite.

Cumara hovered, watching him anxiously.

Donough said, "Talk to me about Crag Liath."

"You know what everyone knows."

"But you know more," Donough insisted. "You are a treasure-house, the repository of Dalcassian myth and legend."

"A treasure-house?" Mac Liag smiled, pleased. "Perhaps I am. For example, I can tell you that myth is often just a name for forgotten history." He interrupted himself to twist around on his stool and address his son. "Find some work to do outside. This does not concern you."

Grumbling under his breath, Cumara left the house.

Before he spoke again the poet took a long drink of mead and belched pleasurably, exhaling a fragrance of fermented honey and apples instead of an old man's sour stench. "The spirit of Crag Liath," he resumed in a murmurous voice, gazing up into the rafters as if he could see her there. "Her true name, the ancient name she bore as one of the Tuatha De Danann, is Eevin, the Danann word for "beautiful." Cathal's monks would probably spell that Aebhinn, in the way they have of contorting the language--if they wrote her name at all, which they would not. She and her kind are anathema to them."