The Hound of Ulster (16 page)

Cuchulain did not charge straight upon the war host, but yelling, howling, singing to his flying team, he thundered about and about and about the host, until the shrieking chariot wheels that spurted fire at every flint in the way, ploughed the earth to ruts like the ditches of a mighty camp; and the dartings of his great spear were bright and blasting strokes of the lightning flash that slew all before it; and the curved war-blades on the chariot wheels caught and mangled and mowed down the enemy until bodies were piled upon bodies for a fortress wall within the ditches of the camp. And with Cuchulain went a wild and screaming wind and darkness that was full of terror and flying things, and as he yelled in his wrath, every demon and night-thing in all Ireland shrieked and howled in answer.
And as terror of the Unseen in the war host mounted upon the terror of the Hound of Ulster, men swayed and surged together, each one hampering his comrade's spear arm, and some fell by each other's weapons and others were trampled to death or crushed by the terrified chariot steeds loose in their midst, and some fell dead from fear alone, as a man choking in the grip of a hideous dream. And only when day had worn away to first starlight, and the horses of his team were quenched and weary, Cuchulain drew them off and returned to his own place.

Close on two hundred chiefs and princes of the hosts of Maeve died that day, and lesser warriors and horses and war-hounds and women without number.

And this was called ever after ‘The Slaughter of Murthemney'; the slaughter that Cuchulain made in vengeance for the death of the Boys' Band.

THAT NIGHT MAEVE
called a council among those that were yet living of her chiefs and princes, and they determined to loose upon Cuchulain the terrible Clan Calatin.

Now the Clan Calatin was a wizard of great and dreadful power, and he and his twenty-seven sons formed one being, so that each son was as it were a limb of the father, in the way that elm suckers are still part of the tree they spring from; a whole war band sharing one mind and one heart. So venomous they were that any weapon they handled would kill within nine days if it so much as broke the skin.

And so next morning as Cuchulain turned away from tending the horses—he had lain down to sleep in full war gear as usual—he saw this ghastly monster trotting towards the ford, a spear in every right hand.

Cuchulain caught up his own spear and ran, and the monster, seeing him, quickened to a run also, seeming to flow many-legged along the ground like a pack of hounds. And so both came racing down to meet at the ford, and as they neared, Clan Calatin checked an instant and flung at the Ulster champion its whole flight of venomed spears.

While the flight was yet in the air, Cuchulain flung his own spear in return, and all twenty-eight of the monster's barbs he caught on his shield so that not one of them would draw a single drop of blood. But with the weight of the shafts dragging down on the great bullshide buckler it was quite unmanageable, and as he snatched his sword from its sheath to hack them away, the monster sprang at him, swifter than any mortal flesh and blood could strike, and seizing him in a grip that had the strength of eight and twenty men, flung him down, and snarling and slavering, ground his face into the sharp river-washed gravel at the ford's edge.

A great hoarse shout broke from Cuchulain's strained and tortured heart, and the sound of it came like a cry for aid to one of the Ulster men who had followed Fergus Mac Roy. Fiacha Son of Firaba had drawn close to watch the fight, and suddenly he felt the old loyalties of the Red Branch rise within him, and he drew his sword and sprang in to Cuchulain's aid, and with one mighty blow struck off six and fifty claw-hands of Clan Calatin that were grinding his face into the murderous gravel.

Then Cuchulain leapt up, his face a streaming mask of blood, and with his own sword which had been prisoned under him, struck off the shrieking and snarling heads of the monster, and hacked it limb from limb that nothing might be left to tell Maeve of Fiacha's part in the deed. ‘For it were poor thanks to a friend in time of need, that he and all his following should suffer death for it,' he said.

That was the last fight but one of Cuchulain at the ford, and the last fight was the sorest one to him of all.

He knew in his own heart how it must be, and when that same night Laeg returned to him, he said, ‘Ach well, maybe I can finish the task without the men of Ulster. Now that the Clan Calatin is dead, I have fought and overcome all the greatest of Maeve's warriors save one.'

‘And that one?'

‘Ferdia Mac Daman—after old Fergus, the greatest of them all,' said Cuchulain, and he turned from his charioteer to the rough trunk of the alder tree against which he leaned, and hid his face in the crook of his arm.

And that same night, over in the camp of Maeve, which by now had crossed the river farther up into the hills where the rocks broke it, over in the camp of the joined war hosts of Ireland, when the evening meal was done—they, had eaten well, of Murthemney's fattest cattle—Maeve sent for Ferdia Son of Daman to come to her beside her own fire. And he went with a heavy heart, knowing all too well what the summons meant.

Seated on her piled crimson chariot cushions. Maeve leaned back against the wheel of her chariot and looked up at him with the firelight in her pale hair and pale bright eyes, as though even she were not sure how to break in to the things that she would speak of.

‘Ferdia Mac Daman,' she said at last, ‘I know how it is between you and this Hound of Ulster, and therefore, all this while I have not asked that you should go down against him in this long duel of champions. But you are the last left among the
great
warriors, and now it is you that must take your weapons and your turn.'

‘So, you know how it is between me and the Hound of
Ulster,' Ferdia said, standing before her. ‘You know then that I will not do as you bid me in this thing.'

‘Have you forgotten that you are a man of Connacht and I am Connacht's Queen?'

‘I have not forgotten, but I will not go down weapon in hand against my friend.'

‘We are all the friends you have,' said the Queen.

‘My brother, then,' Ferdia said, his blue eyes levelled like a spear into her pale ones.

Maeve the Queen leaned forward. ‘I can give you sweeter than a brother.'

‘And what would that be?'

‘Does not Findabair my daughter seem to you fair? Take your weapons and go down against Cuchulain, and if you prevail, then you shall take Findabair of the Fair Eyebrows for your wife.'

Ferdia knew well enough what she offered, for to wed the Royal Daughter was to be King of Connacht when her time came to be Queen. ‘And be one day as great and powerful as Ailell? You are gracious, my Queen, but I've no wishes that way.'

There was a long silence, and the night wind played with the flames and the horses stamped in the picket lines. And Maeve's eyes narrowed like those of a wild cat's before it spits, and like a cat's, too, they seemed to shine of themselves in the firelight. ‘So be it, then, since neither gifts of friendship nor your loyalty to Connacht can move you,' she said, ‘let you think of this, Ferdia Mac Daman: you alone of all the warriors of Ireland have refused to go out against the Hound at my asking. You say it is because he is your friend—ach now, a fine and noble-sounding reason—but who's to say it is the true one? Who's to say the true reason is not that you are afraid?'

‘My comrades of the war host know me better than that,' Ferdia said.

‘The war host? Even those that lie dead now by the ford, because the honour of Connacht was more dear to them than life? In Tir-Nan-Og, in the Islands of the West, will they not say that Ferdia Mac Daman betrayed and deserted them? Will that not make a fine song for all the harpers of Ireland to sing at every chieftain's hearth? You will not have the Queen's daughter for your wife, but after this, what woman is there that will mate with
you
? What man will share the drinking horn with you, Ferdia Mac Daman who forsook his own people in their time of need?'

Ferdia stood while a man's heart might beat seven times, staring across the fire at her, white as a ghost already, to the very lips. Then he turned and strode away in grief and bitter anger, to find his charioteer. ‘Have the team harnessed and all things ready by first light,' he said. ‘We drive to the ford.'

The news ran through the camp like a thin whispering midwinter wind, and Ferdia's own men were sick at heart, knowing that their lord would never in this world come driving back from Cuchulain's ford.

The world still slept in shadow though the sky already rang with light, when Ferdia came to the ford, and finding no sign yet of Cuchulain, lay down on the cushions and skin rugs from the chariot, and slept the light ear-cocked sleep of the hunter until he should come.

It was full daylight when he woke to hear his charioteer calling him, and the nearing thunder of a war chariot that he knew for Cuchulain's even before he looked.

Cuchulain came whirling down to the ford in a smother of dust and sprang from the chariot while the tall red-haired driver wheeled the team aside. And one on each bank of the
river they stood and looked across to the other. ‘So you have come at last, Ferdia who I have called my brother,' Cuchulain said sadly. ‘Every day I have wondered, but in my heart I believed you would not come.'

‘Why should I not come? Am I not a man of Connacht like the others?' Ferdia shouted back with a wild defiance.

‘Aye—and yet when we were with Skatha and learned the warriors' arts, were we not shoulder to shoulder in every fight? Did we not hunt together the same trails, and feast together and share the drink cup and the sleeping-place when the day was over?'

Ferdia sounded as though he sobbed. ‘You speak of our friendship, but all that is best forgotten. It shall not avail you now, Hound of Ulster, it shall not avail you now!'

Cuchulain made a gesture with his free arm that was strangely like to that of a bird with a broken wing. ‘So be it, it is forgotten. What weapons shall we use?'

‘We used to have something of skill with the light throw-spears,' Ferdia said.

So each champion called to his driver to bring the javelins from his chariot, and all the first half of that day, standing one at each end of the ford, they sent the light throw-spears humming to and fro like darting dragon-flies across the water. But each was as skilled at catching the missiles on his shield as he was at casting them; and by noon, neither had drawn blood. Then they turned to the heavier bronze-tipped throw-spears, and by evening both had their wounds to show, but neither more than the other. And when the dusk under the alder trees grew too deep for clear aim, they broke off as by common consent, and tossed their weapons to the waiting charioteers.

‘That is over for one day,' Cuchulain said.

And they went to meet each other in the midst of the ford
and flung their arms about each other's shoulders. Then they both returned together to the Ulster bank. And that night the two champions washed each other's hurts and shared their food and spread their sleeping-rugs together between the two chariots, while their horses cropped together at the thin wintry grass and their drivers warmed themselves at the same fire.

At dawn they rose, ate a little bannock and cheese, and then went down again to the ford. And that day Cuchulain had the choice of weapons, and all the daylight hours they fought from the chariots with the great broad-bladed spears for close combat and at sunset when the last wintry light glimmered up from the water, and the drivers and the horses were spent and staggering, and both champions were gashed and bloody as battle-torn boars, they flung aside their reeking spears and sprang down into the shallows to embrace each other; and that night all was as it had been the night before, and Cuchulain and Ferdia slept as they had done when they were boys, under the same rug.