The Mammoth Book of Irish Romance (44 page)

“I am the Ard Rí’s eldest daughter and Banríon of Ulster.” Medb’s voice rose above the shriek of the fal en woman and the gasps of the men seated at the tables, and silence fel on the hal . “I do not care who you take to your bed,” she continued, her voice ringing in the silence. “It is no great loss to me. But no one save I sits in the Banríon’s chair beside you while I am your wife.” Conchobar had been so shocked by Medb’s action and the shriek his bedmate uttered when she hit the floor that he had not moved. Now he sprang to his feet and lifted his hand to strike Medb, only to feel a very sharp pain as a knife dug into his bel y just below his navel.

“If you hit me, I wil rip you open as I fal ,” Medb murmured, smiling more broadly. “And then I wil go home to my father with your seed in my bel y. And Eochaid Fiedleach wil appoint a new Rí to Ulster, not of your blood.”

Half the men in the hal had risen from the tables at the sign of physical confrontation. Foremost was the dark boy, until he saw the knife in Medb’s hand. Then, eyes glinting red with lust as he stared at her, he laughed aloud, a ful , rich sound, deeper but just as ringing as Medb’s voice –

and the tension was broken.

Conchobar dropped his hand; Medb’s eyes fixed for one moment on the boy, took in the long knife half hidden by his tunic and withdrew the knife she held ready to pierce her husband’s gut.

She raised her eyes briefly to meet Conchobar’s glare and, stil smiling, calmly stepped around her chair and seated herself. From the women’s side, several came forward to help up the sobbing concubine and draw her into their group.

Medb used the knife, stil bare in her hand, its tip gleaming slightly red with blood, to cut a tender slice from the roast. She ate it off the tip of the knife and licked the knife blade clean. Conchobar sat down beside her.

“I spare you for what you carry,” he said.

Medb nodded, accepting the truce, and continued with her dinner with good appetite.

From the end of one of the tables, where the least important of Conchobar’s men sat, Ailil mac Máta watched Medb eating. It was clear enough that she had not been frightened by her husband’s threat. Her daring sent a wave of warmth across his groin. That woman was what he wanted.

Her marriage to Conchobar did not trouble him. He knew what Medb would do. She would give Conchobar his son, which would pay her father’s debt, and then she would break the marriage and leave, go back to her father’s house. Another wave of warmth passed through Ailil ’s lower body and he drew a quick breath. To have Medb . . .

Ailil had not missed Medb’s expression when their glances met. But that kind of having was meaningless. She did not yet take him seriously; however, this was a woman who would grow and ripen, would chal enge and reward throughout an entire lifetime. To bond with her for life would require much more than a few hot glances and a few sweet words. She would never again, he thought, come to a joining as a husband’s inferior in wealth and he, Ailil smiled grimly, did not intend to be any woman’s – even Medb’s – rag for wiping up messes.

By the end of dinner he knew what he must do. When the servants came to clear away both the food and the tables, Ailil slipped into the shadows to wait. He watched with satisfaction as Medb rose to go with a gaggle of women to their quarters. Brave, she was, but not a fool. She would not make herself an easy target while her husband was stil raw with her chal enge.

He fol owed the women, swiftly, silently insinuated himself among them, and stepped to her side. His skin tingled with her nearness and when she turned her head and looked at him a tide of lust rose through his bel y to his throat. For a moment he could not speak and what he felt looked out of his eyes.

Medb’s head tipped to the side; she met his gaze without lowering hers and she smiled slowly.

“My name is Ailil mac Máta,” he said through a thick throat. “And I find you the most desirable of women.”

Medb’s eyebrows rose – it was not the most tactful thing to say when she was surrounded by the women of her husband’s court – but before she could speak Ailil shook his head impatiently and laughed.

“I wanted you to know my name and remember me,” he went on, speaking more easily, “for I wil be gone from Ulster while you carry Conchobar’s child. Wherever you go thereafter, I wil find you.”

“I am not likely to forget you,” she said. “But can you just leave without Conchobar’s permission?”

“I am no liegeman to Conchobar,” Ailil said. “He did not think me worth inviting into his household. I am a hired sword and my time wil be ended with the coming of the new moon . . .

tomorrow.”

They were at the door of Medb’s house then. The women who attended her went in, but she could sense them clustering near the door, listening. She grinned at Ailil ; she was very tal and their eyes were exactly on a level.

“Goddess watch over you,” she said, running the tip of her tongue over her upper lip and then smiling. “I wil look forward to seeing you . . . whenever and wherever you find me.” He dipped his head once and was gone. Before it was ful y light, he had left the dun, riding the young horse Medb had watched him break, and the first place he turned the horse’s head was to Conchobar’s pasturage. There he could number and judge Medb’s cattle.

She had brought other things to her husband’s house: silver cups and plates, gold rings and bracelets, garments and linens skilful y embroidered. Such would be easy to match. Though he made no show of it, Ailil had use of a whole family of Firbolg treasure. It was the cattle that would give him trouble – not obtaining them but moving them from the Firbolg fastness to the pastures of Eriu.

The herds were easy to track and Ailil saw with relief that they were stil separate, Medb’s and Conchobar’s herders not yet friendly enough to al ow the cattle to mingle. Nor were they too far apart, as each set of herders feared being blamed for choosing less rich pastureland.

It was easy, too, to know which herd belonged to whom. Medb’s herd was smal er and the cattle, Ailil thought, of better quality, but not by much. Eochaid Fiedleach had been careful of what he sent with his daughter.

Ailil spoke to Medb’s cowherd and fixed in his mind what he had to match. As he rode slowly southward towards the lands his distant ancestors had so briefly occupied, he considered how many extra beasts he should have in reserve. Too many rather than too few. Medb, Ailil was certain, would give attention to her cattle to make sure her value increased. A few too many in his herd would not be important. He could always sel off or slaughter the extra animals for eating.

As the light faded, Ailil found a good camping place, an ancient, grown-over ledge a third of the way up a long worn-down mountain. There was grass for his horse on the flat area and a trickle of water at the far eastern end. Ailil fil ed his waterskin, watered his horse and hobbled it, threw the horse blanket on to the ground, extracted cheese, dried fruit and journey-bread from his saddle bags and settled down to eat.

It would not be so easy as simply bringing the cattle, Ailil realized, as he watched the thin sliver of new moon-rise. There were al manner of questions to be answered and problems to be solved before he could drive his herd to wherever Medb’s was and propose their mating. Like . . . should he speak to Eochaid Fiedleach first or to Medb? A smal shudder ran up and down his body. That was no easy question to answer, and—

The thought cut off as a thin wail drifted up from the base of the hil . Ailil sat more upright. It did not sound like an animal cry. The sound came again and broke off suddenly into a yelp of pain.

Ailil surged to his feet and drew his sword from the scabbard that lay on the horse blanket beside him. That was a child crying.

Upright, Ailil could see there was a fire at the base of the hil . One man sat by the fire. Beside him . . . Ailil squinted to make his sight longer and, as if at his wil , the fire flared up so he could see there was a stake in the ground and a braided cord tied to it. His eyes fol owed the line to a smal , huddled figure at the end. He leaned forward, listening intently and picked up the muffled sound of weeping.

Now, it was no strange thing that a man should strike his son or his servant for il behaviour or slacking his duties, but that the child should be leashed like a dog made Ailil uneasy. That a son or servant should be desperate enough to need to be tied on a dark night in the middle of a wilderness hinted at a cruel master.

Ailil looked beyond the fire and saw larger bodies. Another flare of light showed him cattle settling down for the night and a second man fixing a flimsy fence of withy boughs around them.

Perfectly ordinary. Two men driving home or to market some six or eight cows and bringing with them a youngling who had misbehaved. Ailil urged himself to go back to his horse blanket and mind his own business, but another glance showed him that the child was trembling and his ears made out muffled sobs.

Two men. It would not be wise simply to step into their camp and ask why the child was leashed and weeping. Even if the treatment was wel -deserved they might resent his interference. And he was dressed like a nobleman. What he had seen in the firelight was rough garments. Would those who beat a child and did not comfort its weeping try to rob a rich lone travel er? Perhaps if he were closer he could judge better what to do.

Ailil moved off wel beyond the firelight and descended the hil careful y. He could hear the child more clearly now, softly between sobs praying for help from – from Mother Dana! Tuatha Dé Danann? The child was one of the fair folk, out of a sidhe? It could not belong to these common men.

Now Ailil moved with even greater stealth wel wide of the cattle so that they and the man working on the withy fence were between him and the fire. Something slipped. It must have hit one of the cows, which grunted and got to its feet. A second cow stirred and rose, and then a third.

When the fourth began to rise, the man cursed and shouted to the one by the fire to bring the child to quiet the cattle.

Ailil , who liked little ones, watched with growing anger as the child was jerked to his feet and dragged towards the cattle. The boy cried out as his arms, which were tied behind his back, were wrenched and the man holding him slapped him hard and then shook him. The leash, fastened around his neck, flapped and his foot caught in it so that he almost fel . The man holding him shook him again.

“Make them lie down again,” he ordered, and when the child, who was now sobbing hard, was unable to respond, he struck him once more.

Meanwhile Ailil slipped farther around until he was behind the man who had been making the fence. The fence-maker’s attention was al on the child and his abuser.

“Hurry up,” he shouted, waving a branch in the face of a cow that was moving towards him.

Ailil grinned, took three steps forwards, and struck him hard on the side of the head with the hilt of his sword. His victim fel like a stone, right in front of the cow, which stopped, turned aside, and passed the withy barrier.

“You fool!” the man holding the boy shouted. “What did you do? Trip on your own feet? Get that animal back.”

Ailil did not answer. He saw he could not make his way directly through the cattle, more of which were beginning to get to their feet. He tried to run around them but some turned away from him and others stepped right into his path. Unfortunately that made him too slow to reach the man holding the child before he realized something had happened to his partner. Fear made him take fright. He jerked the boy closer by the leash around his neck and pul ed his knife.

“Go away!” the man shrieked. “Take your accursed cows and go back to your sidhe or I wil kil the child.”

The stupid peasant did not know how rare a child was among the Tuatha Dé Dunaan, how precious. He thought the Dunaan had come after their cattle as a Milesian would.

“And what do you think wil happen to you after you kil him?” Ailil asked in a quiet, pleasant voice more terrifying than bel ows of rage. “It wil take you years and years and years of screaming and begging to die. If you let him go . . . now – right now – without more harm, I wil let you run.” As he spoke, Ailil openly came closer, making sure the light of the fire glinted on the blade of his sword. “If you even scratch him with that knife, I wil gut you and leave you here to die with the flies breeding in your bel y.”

Ailil could see a smal movement, perhaps the man’s hand tightening on his knife. He leaped forwards with a shout, although he knew he could not reach them in time. But the man surprised him. He turned about and threw the boy towards the fire.

The child screamed. Ailil shouted again and twisted his body desperately to divert his path. The boy, catapulted forwards, took two involuntary steps and then tripped on the leash again. He fel face towards the fire. Ailil made another desperate leap and just caught the child, his own feet coming down into the burning wood. Sparks and embers flew, scorching the back of his legs, which gave him impetus enough to leap sideways, carrying the child.

Another desperate twist brought them down to the ground so that the child was on top and not crushed beneath him. Ailil gasped as something snapped in his side, but he thrust the child off him, away from the fire, and leaped to his feet. Running thrust a dagger into his chest with each stride, but only slowed him a trifle and it was no more than thirty or forty strides before he was close enough to strike the fleeing man.

“I said I would let you run, not escape,” Ailil snarled and swung his sword.

At the last moment, he turned the weapon so the flat, rather than the sharp edge, struck. If the Sidhe were as enraged as he feared they might be about the mistreatment of their child, Ailil wanted them to have both vil ains upon whom to slake their anger.