The Hound of Ulster (22 page)

Now Lugy could not bear to travel so fast as his war bands, by reason of his hurt and the fever that rose from it, and so he had bidden them push on while he followed more easily. And so he was no farther than the crossing of the Lifé, and was indeed just going down to bathe in the coolness of the running water.

‘Keep a keen look-out across country, lest any man should come upon us unawares,' he had said.

And now the charioteer, leaning against the trunk of an alder tree to keep his watch, cried out, ‘There is a man coming across the plain, and a great hurry he is in; and you would think that all the ravens in Ireland were flying over his head, and flakes of snow whitening the ground before him.'

Then Lugy scrambled quickly up the bank and looked where
he pointed; and a groan burst from him. ‘That is Conall of the Victories, and the ravens that fly about his head are the sods that fly from the horses' hooves, and the snow flecking the ground before him is the froth that the horses scatter from their muzzles. Let them pass on the trail of the war host, if that may be, for I have no mind to fight him.' So they drew back clear of the ford, into the shadows of the alder break.

But when Conall was scarcely half across the ford he saw them, and bringing his horses splashing through to the farther shore, turned aside into the alder brake and reined in beside them. ‘Welcome is the sight of a debtor's face, so they say.'

‘In what would I be your debtor?' Lugy demanded.

‘In that you slew Cuchulain my comrade and foster brother.'

‘And what will clear the debt?'

‘Blood will clear the debt,' said Conall of the Victories.

‘If we are to fight,' said Lugy, when both had been silent for a while and a while, ‘then I claim an equal combat—that you and I should fight with each but one hand.'

‘That is fair enough,' said Conall, and springing down from the chariot he pulled off his girdle and turned to Lugy's charioteer. ‘Let you bind my right hand behind me. See that the knots are secure.'

Then he took his sword in his left hand, and Lugy did the same, and there on the bank they fought the hardest fight that was in them, for a full half day. But when it was past noon and still Conall had gained no advantage over the other, his horse the Dewy Red who stood near by, sprang forward dragging the chariot behind him, and tore a great piece out of Lugy's side.

‘Grief upon me!' cried Lugy. ‘That was not in the bargain!'

‘I took up the bargain for myself, to fight fair; who can bargain with a dumb beast that knows only faith to its master?'
and Conall sprang forward as he spoke, and ran his sword into Lugy's neck, and made an end.

Then leaving the charioteer to gather up his lord's body, he himself took Cuchulain's head and strong thin sword hand that he found bundled in a silken tunic in Lugy's chariot, and turned his way back to the pillar stone under Slieve Fuad.

By that time the herdsman had returned to D
Å«
n Dealgan, and Emer knew that her lord was slain. And she called out the teams from the stables and the chariots from the chariot shed and gathered her women about her, and said, ‘We must go out to the place where my lord is, and we must bring him home.'

So when Conall came back to the place of the pillar stone in the grey of dawn, he found that they were before him and had unbound Cuchulain's headless body and laid it down close by the body of the Grey of Macha, all among the slain, and all the women of D
Å«
n Dealgan were gathered about it on the lough shore keening for their dead, with their cloaks laid across their faces.

Conall laid Cuchulain's head with his body and his sword hand to its wrist, and standing there added his own lament to the keening of the women. ‘Never fell a better hero nor a stronger champion than has fallen here by the sword of Lugy Mac Curoi. Sore are our hearts for the loss of you, my brother. Cuchulain, my Hound of Ulster. Sorrow and grief it is to me that I was not beside you in the last fight; sorrow and grief that we did not go together on the Long Journey. My heart is broken in two halves for my brother, and there will be laughter no more in Ulster.'

‘Let us take him home and bury him now,' said Emer.

But Conall said heavily, ‘Not yet, not until I have avenged him on the men of Ireland! Bear him home if you will, but before Cuchulain lies in his grave I swear that there shall not
be one tribe left unscathed nor their blood unspilled, and the whole world shall hear of the vengeance of Conall of the Victories for his brother, the Hound of Ulster!'

Then rage and madness sprang upon Conall as though it were something of Cuchulain's battle frenzy, and he leapt back into the chariot to follow the whole war host of Ireland as he had followed Lugy to his death.

The folk of D
Å«
n Dealgan bore Cuchulain's body back to his own hall, and Emer washed the blood from it, keening over it, crying as she had been too proud ever to cry while he lived.

‘Ochone! Ochone! It is many the kings and princes of the world would be keening if they knew the way it is with the Hound of Ulster now! Beautiful was this head, though it is not beautiful now, and dear to me! Dear was the strength and courage and the gentleness of your hands. Happy, happy are they that will not hear the cuckoo again, now that Cuchulain is gone. I am carried away like a branch on a dark stream; I will not bind up my hair today nor any other day. Oh my love, my love, we have been happy in our time, for if the world would be searched from the rising to the setting of the sun, the like would never be found again together in one place, of the Black Seinglend and the Grey of Macha, and Laeg and Emer and Cuchulain!'

By and by Conall came back from making his red rout through the war host of Ireland; and this time his own war bands were with him, and many more besides; and he brought many heads behind him, piled high in the chariots, that he tumbled out on the green meadow before D
Å«
n Dealgan. The head of Erc Son of Cairbre of the Swift Horses, and the heads of the sons of Maeve, and the head of the High King of
Leinster of the speckled spears, and the three heads, evil and hideous, of the three Witch Daughters of Calatin, and many and many more.

Then Emer came out to him, wearing her most stately gown, and with the gold ornaments that Cuchulain had given her on her arms and neck. And she said, ‘Welcome to you, Connall of the Victories, for you have avenged the treachery done to Ulster and to my lord. And now all that is left for you is to make a grave for my Hound—but, oh Conall, make it deep and broad enough for two, for my life is too heavy for me without the Hound.'

And Conall set his men to do as she bid, speaking no word to make her change her purpose, for he knew that it would be of no avail.

And when the grave was made to her satisfaction, Emer laid herself down beside Cuchulain among the late harebells in the grass, and said as though to him alone, ‘Love of my life, my friend, my sweetheart, my own choice of all the men of the world, many is the woman envied me until today, and I was proud that they envied me, because I was yours. Still I am yours, my Hound, and now there is no wish on me to live after you.' And she set her mouth to his mouth, and gave one long sigh, and with the sigh, her life went out of her.

So Conall laid them in the same grave, and raised one pillar stone over them, and carved their names upon it in the Ogham script. And all Ulster wept for their loss: because of the story of Cuchulain the Hound of Ulster, there was no more. No more.

You can learn a lot about a people from their stories, because their stories show the way they think and feel and look at things. The Cuchulain Saga belongs to the Celts, the people of Ireland and Wales and the Highlands of Scotland, just as the story of Beowulf belongs to the Anglo-Saxons; that is very broadly speaking, to the English, and the Scottish Lowlanders. And neither Celt nor Saxon could have bred the other one's story, for they belong to two quite different ways of thinking.

However wild the happenings in the Saxon story, its feet remain firmly on the ground; and Beowulf and his companions are recognisably human beings grown to hero-size. But the Celtic tale leaps off into a world completely of the imagination, and the Red Branch Heroes have the blood of the Gods and the Fairy Kind (almost the same thing in Irish legend) running fiery in their veins. It is worth noticing this difference when reading either story, and remembering that in the main the people of Cuchulain and the people of Beowulf separately or mixed together are the stock that we in Britain are sprung from.

For the rest: I have used the modern names for most places, including the five Provinces of Ireland in the time of the Red Branch Heroes, Ulster, Munster, Connacht, Leinster and Tara, the High King's territory. And I have spelled the names of people in the ‘Englished' way, Laery the Triumphant, for instance, instead of Laegaire Buadach.

‘Geise' is a kind of magical bond or prohibition, very much like ‘taboo'. I might have said that it was taboo to Cuchulain to
eat the flesh of a dog, or for Fergus Mac Roy to refuse an invitation to a feast; but it seemed better to keep the Irish word, even if it needed explaining. The important thing to remember about anybody's geise is that it
could not be broken
.

R
OSEMARY
S
UTCLIFF

Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920 in West Clanden, Surrey. With over 40 books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Her first novel,
The Queen Elizabeth Story
was published in 1950. In 1972 her book
Tristan and Iseult
was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and in 1978 her book,
Song for a Dark Queen
was commended for the Other Award.

Rosemary lived for a long time in Arundel, Sussex with her dogs and in 1975, she was awarded the OBE for services to Children's Literature. Unfortunately Rosemary passed away in July 1992 and will be much missed by her many fans.

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