Night of the Fifth Moon (2 page)

‘But . . . that means only one of us can learn to be a druid!' said Nessa.

‘Which one?' asked Riona.

Lorccán thrust back his shoulders and looked at the druid with bright, expectant eyes.

Faelán tugged the end of his long beard. ‘I have not yet decided.'

Nath-í's long, gangly body seemed to collapse. ‘It won't be me,' he mumbled.

Ket couldn't speak. His stomach was squeezed into a tight, nervous ball.

‘From now until the next new moon,' Faelán went on, ‘I will teach you some of the Knowledge. I will set tasks and watch you. When the dark nights return, you will know your time of judgement is nigh. And when we gather here again to welcome the rising of the next new moon, one of you will be sent away. So we will continue from new moon to new moon, till only two of you remain. Then, on the night of the fifth moon . . .'

The druid drew a smooth rod of birchwood from his girdle. He heated the point of a dagger in the fire and began to burn something in the wood. Ket stared at the blackened strokes appearing on the smooth surface. He knew they were a message written in ogham, the secret code of the druids, but he had no idea what they said.

The druid faced away from the fire and held the rod towards the Sacred Yew. ‘Spirit of the Tree, I entrust this rod into your keeping,' Faelán intoned.

Stooping under the dense, dark canopy of branches, he jammed the birchwood upright between its roots. Kneeling half in shadow, half in firelight, he turned to speak.

‘Writing is a skill that is sacred and secret to the druids, to help us remember our great store of knowledge.' He rested his hand on the rod. ‘When only two of you remain, the one true anruth will succeed in reading this. It shall remain here till the chosen one is found.'

Ket stared in anguish at the black, meaningless strokes. How was he supposed to work it out?

The druid smiled as he rose to his feet. ‘Keep your eyes and your ears open. You will find clues to guide you,' he said.

THE BATTLE

That night, when the excited whispers of the other fosterlings had given way to slow, steady breathing, Ket lay tense and wakeful, his mind alive with images. He was living again the day he had first seen the druid, the day of the battle more than five years before . . .

The door was crashing open and the flames of the firepit roared high as Bríd burst into the room, the wind rushing in behind her.

‘Quick! Hide!'

The women looked up, startled, from their cooking and spinning; the children stopped their squabbling to stare.

‘The Niall clan's . . . attacking us!' Bríd gasped out, eyes wide with fear, one hand clutching her long skirt.

Then everyone leapt to their feet. Stools clattered, spindles tumbled and children squealed. They charged across the room for the trapdoor, long skirts and braids tangling together as they all tried to squeeze down the hole at once.

‘Ow, that's my hair!'

‘Don't push!'

‘Help, the ladder's wobbling!'

They disappeared down the trapdoor, and Ket heard his mother's shrill wail from deep inside the earth,
‘Ket, where's Ket?'

But Ket crouched where he was.

‘I don't belong with the babies,' he growled. ‘I'm nearly seven. I should be out with the men. Fighting!'

The cries and hurrying footsteps grew muffled, and Ket was left alone, staring around him. Though his father was the chieftain of the tuath, Ket shared a home, as everyone did, with uncles and aunts, cousins and foster cousins. Twenty people ate, slept and lived in that one round room, and it was always brimming with people and noise. But now it was eerily empty.

Ket's feet rustled on the rush-strewn floor as he padded to the door and peeked out.

The yard of the ringfort was deserted, the only movement a fluttering leaf caught between the cobbles, but in the fields beyond the walls there were shouts and the blare of trumpets.

Ket scuttled across the empty yard in his bare feet, scrambled up the steps to the top of the rampart, and stretched up to peer through the spiky barrier of blackthorn. He saw Niall warriors, ferocious in war paint, marching up the hill, beating drums and blowing trumpets. From all the surrounding ring-forts, men of the Cormac clan raced to meet them, hurdling over their low stone fences, yelling in fury. With a thrill of pride, Ket watched his father Ossian leap on his pony and gallop through a field of barley, cleaving the sea of yellow, his red chieftain's cloak billowing out behind him.

‘Victory for the Cormacs!' Ossian the Chieftain yelled.

The invaders drew to a halt, their bare chests gleaming with sweat, arms and necks glittering with gold. They had whitened hair drawn high up on their heads and eyes ringed in black paint, lurid and glaring.

‘You weakly milk-fed slop pots,' they taunted. ‘We'll beat you. We'll trample you into the mud!'

One of them lifted a trumpet shaped like a boar's head. When he blew it, the hinged wooden tongue made a rude, ululating bray.

‘We don't fear you, you ugly, rat-faced runts!' Skidding to a halt, Uncle Ailbe flung a stone at the attackers.

There was the flash of a spear, and Ket watched in horror as Uncle Ailbe keeled over, clutching a shoulder.

Then all the Cormacs roared, and barged forward with makeshift weapons of spades, reaping hooks and stones.

Ket let out a scream as his foster brother Eo fell to the ground, to vanish beneath the trampling feet. Ket thrust a fist in his mouth, and watched the bodies hurl together, blades flashing, voices screaming. Uncle Ailbe was on his feet again, hurtling like a bull at one of the Niall clan, locking chest to chest with him, muscles straining. Ket saw the gleam of a blade in the attacker's fist. As they struggled to and fro, Ket bit so hard on his knuckles he could taste the salt-taste of blood.

A horse-drawn chariot came rattling across the plain, sunlight flashing off the metal plates of armour on the chests of the horses. Ket saw his father wheel around on his pony, and Eo stagger to his feet. When the chariot plunged into the crowd, the rider waving and shouting, the painted warriors tried to surge forward, but the Cormacs roared their defiance.

Ossian's pony reared and lunged. Uncle Ailbe wrenched the dagger from his opponent's grasp, and sent the man stumbling backwards in terror.

‘Get him, Uncle!' Ket yelled.

But just when the tide of battle was turning, just when the men of the Cormac clan were beating the invaders back, a group of boys and girls dressed in long grey robes appeared at the edge of the forest. The little Ket watched, astonished, as the noises of battle stopped in mid cry, and the warriors froze with their sword arms in the air.

A tall figure materialised from the trees and glided majestically forward. His full-length robe was the colour of shadows, and his iridescent cloak of blue-green feathers flowed from his shoulders like a waterfall. He came to a halt, standing straight as a young champion, though he already had the grizzled hair and beard of an old man. The only sound was the creak of wicker from the chariot. That was Ket's first sight of Faelán, the druid of the forest.

The tall stranger raised an arm and pointed at Ossian.

‘Surrender!'
he commanded.

The anruth rang their silver bells, filling the air with the sound of tinkling.

‘The druid speaks!' they cried.

Then Faelán hunched his shoulders so that the feathers of his cloak rose in a crest behind his neck. With arm outstretched, he lifted one leg from the ground and poised there, like a giant crane.

He screwed up his face so that all his power seemed to radiate from his pointed finger and one glaring eye as words poured from his tongue.

‘Surrender, Ossian o Cormac.

No chief are you who brings a blight upon his people

No chief are you whose trees bear no fruit

No chief are you whose corn droops on the stalk

No chief are you whose cows give no milk.'

The crowd booed at Ossian. Even the people from his own clan were hissing and booing at their chieftain. The druid had bent them to his will, wiping away their memories of the bulging sacks of grain, the casks of butter laid in the cool of the bog, the storage pits filled with apples and plums . . .

‘It's not true! Don't listen!' shrilled Ket, but his voice was drowned out by the jeering.

He watched in helpless amazement. The effect of the druid's words was inexorable as the flood of a tide.

Faelán's gaze seared the crowd, quelling their
cries.

‘Surrender, Ossian o Cormac

Your prosperity is at an end

You are no longer chieftain

Ossian, grandson of Cormac.

Surrender!'

With the druid's words rising to a crescendo, powerful Ossian, head of the Cormac clan and chief of the tuath, slid from his pony and crumpled to the ground.

The druid swirled around to face the rider waiting in the chariot, gold torques gleaming on his neck and wrists.

‘Morgor of the clan of Niall,' Faelán rasped, ‘claim your right!'

The rider leapt from the chariot, and Ket cried out as he pounced on Ossian and plunged a dagger towards his chest.

‘Worm of Cormac, do you surrender?' He crouched over his victim, a handful of scarlet cloak twisted in his fist, the blade hovering.

Ket felt a swelling in his own chest that seemed to push against his throat, squeezing it tight. There was no sound. Not even the breathing of the wind. Then the fallen man gave a feeble nod of his head.

Morgor slashed. The cloak fell from Ossian's shoulders, and splayed out beneath him like a pool of blood.

A grey-robed girl stepped forward, her fingers strumming a harp. To the ripple of music, the druid began to sing. This time his voice was sweet as honey.

‘Morgor the Good

Rich and generous

Morgor the Good

Fair in judgement

Morgor the Good

Head of the Niall clan

And chief of the tuath!'

Triumphantly, Morgor sheathed his dagger. The battle was over.

Suddenly everyone was cheering – even the Cormacs. ‘Long live Morgor our chieftain!' they shouted.

And the little boy, alone on the ramparts, stared at the druid with awe.

FIRST TEST

The morning after the omen, the fosterlings waited, bubbling with nervous excitement, for Faelán to join them.

‘At last, we're going to learn some magic!'

Nath-í shook his branch of bronze bells. ‘I can't believe it!'

‘When I saw that raven, I was so scared!'

‘Uch!' Nath-í dived to the ground and scrabbled among the fallen leaves. ‘I've dropped one of my bells,' he moaned, standing up and shaking his head.

‘Never mind,' said Nessa. ‘You've still got all the others.'

‘Master Faelán will never choose me,' said Nath-í gloomily. ‘I'm too clumsy.'