BENDING THE BOYNE: A novel of ancient Ireland (17 page)

“You sent Sreng! I would gladly have gone.”

“Elcmar wants to keep you away from the Boyne and off the island. He’s determined to find gold on Eire before Connor or anyone else—including you. And he has reason enough to fear what you learned about making metal at the Lake Of Many Hammers. You’re not to be harmed, since Elcmar perceives you might be useful to him in the future. He said he might make a mariner of you.” He saw Cian’s clenched jaw. “Elcmar thinks that his holding on to Cliodhna will force me back to Eire. It’s true, Cliodhna’s life is more important to me than my own. That’s why Sreng is now on his way to take her out of Elcmar’s clutches.

“Sreng brings my warning to the Dagda to protect the mounds. These fool Invaders think your mounds contain hidden gold!” Cian looked ready to strike him so Gebann spoke fast. “In the event that Sreng can get Cliodhna away from the Boyne, he’ll see that she keeps the right company through the mountains to the southern coast. The problem for her will be, as for us, to wait until a ship can be had to the Continent.”

“In this season of storms, isn’t that unlikely?” A vein pulsed in Cian’s forehead.

“Lad, it’s important for us to go on, to appear to follow Elcmar’s orders. These men want to go south, to their homes. They won’t give us passage back to Eire from here.” The lad looked like he might try to swim back home and Gebann took him by the shoulders. This wasn’t the right time to tell Cian about the Starwatchers’ gold, close to the route that Sreng would take south with Cliodhna. “We’ll take our time going along toward my village. You can study the mining and the trading with me on the Seafarer peninsula. When a ship returns to the Starwatchers, you can come back.”

Cian pushed him away. “How many moons will pass? When Elcmar finds that Cliodhna has escaped, do you really think that you or I could ever return to Eire? And what will he do to Boann and my people?” Cian swung but in stepped Lir and blocked his punch.

The Starwatcher stood panting with rage, held back by Lir. The scuffle drew stares, from their crew and from strangers. Lir gave Cian a quiet warning and let go of him.

Gebann had no easy answer for the white-faced Cian. Whether he intended to return to the Starwatcher island once Cliodhna was safely home on his Seafarer peninsula, he could not say. He felt his creeping illness, legs heavy and a tingling in his arms.

“We’ll find a way back to Eire for you,” was all he could offer.

The
naomhog
continued south over endless swells. Lir and the Seafarers used the sun by day and stars at night for navigation, skills learned over countless generations along northern coasts. Lir ran close to shore when possible, or camped until the worst of wind and rain let up. Thick ropes bound all the bundled goods, and each of the men, firmly to the craft. They had already lost one man overboard along the way. No one would sit where that man had been sitting.

Cian’s seasickness abated and he passed the time learning to navigate. During light, the mariners used familiar landmarks along the coasts to position themselves on the great waters. They chose two points along the shore backed up by a prominent landmark. “It’s much the same as sighting between points on land,” he told Lir, who gave him a nod.

He felt he might as well be navigating to the moon, given the limitless water surrounding them. Tossed and battered, Cian grabbed at his ropes while their boat rose high upon waves then plummeted into troughs. Gebann had broadsided him, swamped him. His anguish grew at Gebann’s mischief, grew to be as deep and wide as the waters tossing him. He woke from terrible dreams: whirling and bobbing through a void, the skies no longer recognizable.

They stopped at another island farther south. Cian found a place to flop down on solid ground, away from the crew who strolled easily and looked for water and foodstuffs.

Lir came to stand above him, looking at the sea. “Those who do not fear the waves do soon be drowned, for going upon the sea when they should not.” He leaned into Cian’s view. “But I do fear the waves, as you do. My men are drowned only now and again.”

The sunrises passed; he lost count, to his chagrin. Two quarters of the moon it had been since they left Eire. Lir indicated they were nearing the Seafarer peninsula. Here the great bay’s flat coastline held lengthy sand dunes, with few trees or settlements. Lir explained to him how wind and currents interacted, and that at each river estuary or inlet the tidal flow varied. Lir appeared happiest when he traveled water applying his considerable skills, and Cian felt glad for his friend at least. The large currach traveled steadily south, then veered west with the curving coastline.

A light fog closed around the
naomhog
as it reached the Seafarer coast. Cian thought he must be seeing things, deprived of sleep as he was, for far above the damp mist he saw mountains jutting impossibly high into the sky.

Gebann clapped him on the back. “Those mountains run west along my peninsula, lad. When I see those gigantic peaks reaching into the sky, I am home!” With a mighty heart, all the rowers put on fresh speed.

Cian saw that these jagged mountains—grey and devoid of trees on their sharp peaks and higher than he thought the earth could rise—ran steeply to the sea. Here and there golden beaches stretched in inlets or dark cliffs filled this coast; that much looked similar to his island. But these mountains! He had only a few hazelnuts remaining in his food pouch, but he opened it and cast the hazelnuts into the waves as an offering of thanks for letting him live to see this sight.

Lir chuckled behind him. “You should have eaten those and not fed them to a salmon! It’s a good while until we reach the landing and food, lad.”

Cian smiled, his first in a long while, to hear that salmon swam in this place. He cast a finely knotted cord net he had made on the journey, pleased to see that his net held open in the drag of the boat through waves. The crew pointed out patches where the water dimpled as if raindrops were pelting the surface, schools of fish. They trawled Cian’s net expectantly.

Soon he had taken numerous small fish and other creatures in his net, to cook over the little fire-pot on board for a quick and tasty meal. These slim little fish were new to Cian but he saw that the crew welcomed his contribution. He tried a cooked piece of a many-legged sea animal, and found it chewy but delicious. The Invaders control the landing area, Lir told him as they ate, and any food on offer there cost dearly and was not half as fresh as Cian’s catch.

As they neared the place to land, Gebann stood beside Lir, their voices too low for Cian to make out words. The number of arriving boats surprised him, many with foreign shapes. A bump and scraping, and they landed amidst hustling, shouting men and pack animals. The smith Gebann was first to wade onto shore. Shamans rushed forward chanting and waving holly branches at the smith and the arriving vessel. Cian hung back, evaluating the strange scene before his eyes.

While the crew unloaded the ship, he observed that Lir handed over a sizable portion of its copper and other cargo, to a well-fed man wearing a copper neckpiece and armlets and speaking the Invader tongue. Lir took Cian aside to explain.

“The payment to these officials, we must call them, is exacted on all boats for the privilege of landing here.” As if reading Cian’s mind, Lir added that if they were caught landing elsewhere, “All the cargo would be confiscated. They’d take your eyes and come back for the lashes.”

Cian tucked away this incident to ask about later, for this levy impressed him as much as did these steep mountains. Stumbling onto shore, he helped with unloading of the naomhog but stayed out of the way of Invader officials. His legs rolled as if still on the pitching boat, more so than after his short voyage to the Lake mine.
Will I ever be any good at sea travel?
He waited to get his land legs as Gebann said that he would, not sure that he could rely on anything the smith told him. Gebann’s walk looked none too steady, and not from drink.

The Invaders directed the men to unload the copper cargo into a storage area. It tripled the inventory on hand. The biting smell struck him, of scores of copper axeheads, daggers, and raw ingots stored in a guarded hillside passage. Cian eyed and tallied the stacked haul brought with them. The bulk of the copper produced at the Lake mine that season had in fact been shipped off to the Continent.

Fury welled; he wanted to reclaim the copper cargo, take it home. Why should others far away have the use of it? But an unarmed foreigner must not create a disturbance.
I am here to see and learn all that I can learn, not get myself more troubles.

Gebann let all the crew depart to their wives and homes, admonishing the men to return quickly when summoned by Lir.

Lir stood by, hands at his waist, a bemused expression. “Mind yourself, Starwatcher! Keep your head.” Cian gave him a slow smile; the friends touched with the sign of farewell and Lir strode off, pack slung over his shoulder.

Lir would be getting himself another boat; the one they arrived in must return to the north, Gebann said, “To Taranis.” That name meant nothing to Cian.

“Follow me,” said the smith. Gebann bargained for two sturdy animals, mules he called them, from a sun-wizened trader of animals. Gebann said they would be leaving on them. The animals appeared bad-tempered, teeth bared and long ears twitching, even compared with Invader horses. Cian got up onto one but as Gebann handed him the hemp strap controlling its head, something closed around his wrists. He looked down. The crafty Gebann had slipped a leather thong about his wrists in a slipknot that tightened when he tried to pull free. Stunned at being bound, he struggled to handle the mule and keep his balance. He resented the smith now as he had no one else except Elcmar.

They ventured into the peninsula, into more land area than he thought existed. They threaded narrow valleys through towering mountains, Cian following Gebann’s lead. The animals carried them and leather packs on each flank. In the roughest terrain they walked the mules. Cian took greater care to count sunrises than he had on the sea voyage. The jumbled, high peaks made noting the direction they traveled difficult.

After almost a quarter moon, they crossed a high pass in an area that Gebann said was unknown to intruders. “The few people living here do not grow crops. Nor do they mine metals.”

Below them forested plains went south into a deep green unbounded by mountains. It occurred to Cian that endless forest could swallow him, hide him.

“I have heard that farther inland, some of the tribes practice cannibalism,” Gebann told him. “In case you are thinking of giving me the slip.” Gebann indicated that they would be traveling west from this pass. It was then he took off the binding from Cian’s sore wrists.

They continued to travel west. The inland air seemed warmer, spicier, than on Eire. Cian marveled at drier, yellow soil. Plants he had never seen bore grey-green, thick leaves like fingers. Shrubs had glossy leaves covered in a waxy substance protecting them from the hotter sunlight. He sampled new herbs, strange but wonderful, and he wanted to bring these to Boann and Airmid. A native healer would know of their medicinal uses and the best way to take them, root or cutting; he would find such a person to show him. Gebann jolted his thoughts back to the here and now.

Along their way, the smith showed him gold. How to separate placer gold from gravel in streambeds. They climbed ridges and he showed Cian how to find gold veins in quartz and other rock types, and to examine the layering of an outcropping or an entire mountain. Cian found himself eager and grateful to learn.

They arrived at a mine after having to urge their mules steadily upward on narrow trails, Cian not sure whether Gebann took him on the most convoluted route to reach this area. He saw men digging out shadow moon metal, soft and malleable. The miners carried out ore in thick leather bags.

“Leather bags spill less ore than hauling it in open sledges on these slopes. Every drop of metal must be squeezed from the rocks,” Gebann said.

At a different spot, men sluiced water through a dugout log to capture sun metal. Cian wondered what power the sun metal conveyed, new to him as it was. He saw gold carefully assessed, portioned into equal piles using the amount of water it displaced in a vessel. Only then was a weight of gold turned over to a smith who worked it into jewelry—a finely crafted ear disc, or gold wire, or hammered sheets. He saw many items unknown to him and wondrous in their craft. The copper jewelry worn by Lein and Creidhne in Eire exceeded any ornament he could have imagined. Here the master smiths wore even thicker copper pieces, and a very few of them flaunted jewelry items made in fiery gold.

He saw that Creidhne’s talents were underused at the Lake mine so long as that smith lacked sun metal to produce stunning gold adornments like Boann’s gift from Elcmar. The competition between Connor and Elcmar to find gold on Eire took on new meaning to Cian.

They traveled on. Gebann pointed out standing stones carved with rudimentary symbols: rayed suns, and grids of lines and slashes. He said the metal traders’ search for ores from their very first contact disrupted the Seafarers’ ways.

“We learned to use subterfuge. Axes carved on our stones, or patterns of lines, or a shepherd’s crook, meant little to illiterate Invaders. They couldn’t tell if a marker stone showed a boundary or the sun’s path or where to find metal.” Cian laughed aloud for the first time since he left Eire’s shores and Gebann went on with gusto, “We had more than a few skirmishes when Invaders couldn’t find any ore deposits after getting bad directions. That’s how we protected our gold and copper from pillage.” He sighed. “I hope you’re listening, Starwatcher.”