Patrick (8 page)

The simple, heartfelt sentiment moved me deeply. I thanked him and meant it. He merely nodded and picked up his crook and went down to the sheepfold, lowered the top two timber poles, and led the sheep up the track toward the high meadow. I slept then and did not awake until late in the day. I rose and went to the basin, hobbled and shuffling like an old man, and bent stiffly to remove the cover. I drank and washed and then went into the nearer trees to relieve myself. I was pleased to see that my piss ran clear once more. I knew then that my bruises would heal and I would live to escape another day.

But that day would have to wait until next summer, I concluded. Already the nights were drawing in; soon the gales of autumn would arrive, and none but a fool would trust a boat to the unchancey seas of Mare Hiberniae when the wild wind blows. I would have to spend the winter on the mountain with Madog and his sheep.

The thought produced a melancholy that laid my spirit low. I remembered all that had been taken from me: my home, my family, my friends, the easy life I had known. Down and down I sank, into an unfathomable sadness—a sorrow as full and deep as the sea separating me from my homeland. Away in Britain, I imagined, life had resumed much as before the raid, and I was all but forgotten. Julian, Scipio, and Rufus were riding the coastal road and plaguing the girls at the Old Black Wolf, laughing and drinking, their old friend Succat nothing but a distant, swiftly fading memory.

For two days I lay beside the fire and wallowed in this sick bereavement for my former life, wishing I could by some miraculous power simply rise from my bed and fly across the sea and that all I had lost would be returned to me. I vowed I would escape again as soon as I was well enough to walk. Ah, but no, there was nothing for it. By the time I was hale once more, the ships would be securely anchored in snug harbors awaiting the gentler tides of spring.

I resigned myself to enduring this hardship as best I could, and decided that my time was best spent learning as much as possible about the mountains and forest surrounding our bothy. Thus, when I was well enough to resume my wood-gathering chores, I took to walking farther and farther into the forest, searching out unexplored paths and following them as far as the short days allowed. In this way I gathered a fair knowledge of the place Madog called the Wood of Focluit—a great forest that covered, so far as I could tell, the whole of the northern part of Éire.

All through the bleak, cold days and endless nights of winter, I consoled myself with the thought that by the time the sun reclaimed the heavens for its own, I would be ready.

O
NE MORNING
I awoke to a fine white powdering of frost on the ground and a crisp, cutting edge to the air. Shivering, we rose and built up the fire, and as we went about our chores the dark clouds came in a long line, concealing the tops of the mountains. The air took on a tingling of ice, and I knew that snow would not be long in coming.

I had no cloak, but Madog had saved the fleece of the injured lamb, and, using brine and oak bark, I had tanned this after a fashion; at least it did not stink too badly. Draping this skin over my shoulders and fastening it with a string of plaited rawhide, I busied myself fetching wood, building up our stack, which already towered above the bothy. On my second trip into the forest, I saw a wolf.

Now, I had seen wolves before, once or twice when hunting with Rufus and the others—always at a distance, however, and always running away. This one was young and hungry and unafraid.

I caught sight of its lean, ghostly shape gliding silently among the dark boles of the trees, and I froze, the small hairs prickling on the back of my neck. It is never a good idea to try to outrun a wolf. Huntsmen say it is best to stand your ground and hope for the best.

After circling me several times, the animal disappeared. I dropped the armload of wood I had collected, save for one stout stick which I kept to use as a club. I waited, gripping my weapon and peering into the mist-filled shadows. When
the beast did not show itself again, I quickly gathered the wood and made a hasty retreat to the bothy.

As soon as Madog returned, I told him what I had seen.

“Are you certain?”

“I am that,” I replied.

He gripped his head with his hands. “This is very bad.”

“It was only one,” I said, “and a very young one.”

“There is never only one,” he said, the whites of his eyes showing in the gloom. “They smell the sheep, and they will come for them.”

“What should we do?”

“We will build up the fire here and light another down at the entrance to the sheepfold. Then you must go to the ráth and tell the king.”

While Madog and I spoke easily enough to one another on most things, there was still much I did not know, and I had little confidence that I could address the king in his own tongue. Also, there was the fact that I was possibly the last person the king wished to see; he had nearly killed me last time we met, and I had no wish to confront him again so soon—even if I could somehow make myself understood. Madog, on the other hand, had become almost garrulous; indeed, he had recovered the greater portion of his speech during our time together.

“Maybe it would be better if
you
went to tell the king,” I suggested. “I do not speak well.”

Madog dismissed this idea at once. “If the wolves came while I was gone, you would not know what to do.”

We carried a double load of logs and branches down to the sheep enclosure and built a large heap before the opening. The walls of the pen were made of stone and topped by a rough timber palisade to keep the sheep from jumping out and predators from climbing in. Once the fire was burning strong, I departed for the ráth, taking a blazing brand for a torch to light my way.

The path down the mountainside to the settlement is well traveled, and even in the dark I had no difficulty. On the way
I tried to think of all the words I might possibly need and repeated them to myself over and over again until arriving at the ráth. The gate was closed for the night, and so I had to stand out on the rampart shouting until someone came to see what I wanted. “
Faolchúnna!
” I cried at the first head to peer over the top of the palisade. “Wolves!”

The fellow disappeared, and a few moments later the gate opened and a skinny youth emerged with sword in hand. He looked at me and sneered. “Why are you making this unseemly noise?”

To my relief I understood him clearly enough. “Wolves,” I repeated. “Madog says to send warriors.”

“The king's warband is at meat,” he informed me. “I will not disturb them.”

The superior smirk on his face sent a sheet flame of anger flashing through me. I wanted nothing more than to shove my burning torch into his smug barbarian face. Instead I said, “Then I will tell them. I am not afraid.”

He made to stop me, but I pushed past and strode directly to the hall, my face hot as the torch in my hand. The door was wooden and covered by an ox hide to better keep out the wind. Throwing aside the skin, I pulled open the door and stepped within.

The air was thick with smoke from a large fire in the center of the hall. A long board lined one wall, with benches on one side, and these were filled with men, their shields and weapons hung on the wall behind them. Young women of the ráth knelt at the edge of the hearth with long flesh forks in their hands, roasting meat, which they brought to the warriors at the board. Other members of the king's retinue reclined on piles of rushes covered with hides and fleeces to form large beds in nooks along the wall opposite the board.

King Miliucc sat at the center of it all surrounded by his warriors. He balanced a drinking bowl in his hand and held it high for the serving boy who stood behind his seat. No one seemed to take the least notice of me, so I moved boldly into the room. The youth from the gate entered behind me and
stood sniggering behind his hand as I walked to the board and stopped opposite the king.

“
Mo tiarna!
” I said in a loud voice. “My lord.”

He looked up to see me standing before him and rose to his feet, instantly angry. He slammed down the bowl, splattering its contents. The hall fell silent. I could feel the eyes of everyone on me, but what did I care for that?

“Slaves are not allowed in my house!” he shouted.

I stood to his wrath. “And are wolves allowed in your sheep pen?”

He regarded me with a frown as my meaning broke upon him. “The sheep have been attacked?”

“Madog says to send warriors.” Having delivered my message, I turned and walked from the hall; the youth tried to bar my way. I stopped a pace before him and regarded him with searing righteousness.

Slightly taller than myself, he was thinner; his long dark hair hung in a thick braid from the side of his head, and he had a slim gold bracelet high on his right arm next to his elbow. “You smell like a pig,” he told me.

I stared back at him, trying to work out what he had said.

“I said,” he repeated, enjoying himself extravagantly, “you
smell
like a pig.”

“Better the pig,” I replied, “than the pig's turd.”

He drew back his hand to strike. I still held the torch and would have hit him with it, but the warriors, having taken up their weapons, came clattering to the door just then. “Lead the way, slave!” roared the foremost warrior, pushing me through the door and into the yard outside.

We hastened up the mountain track to the sheepfold, where Madog stood guard over the flock with his crook in one hand and a firebrand in the other. The warriors looked around and, seeing no wolves, began laughing at him and calling him a cowardly old woman. One of them picked up a stone. “Here, shepherd! I found a wolf!” He tossed the stone. “There, it's gone. I chased it away.” The others, half drunk, laughed all the more.

“These wolves of yours, Madog, where are they?” demanded the foremost warrior. He was, I realized, the same man who had prevented Cernach from throttling me when I was captured the second time.

“They are coming, Forgall, never fear,” answered the old shepherd, speaking with a fluency that surprised the war chief. “The snow brings them.”

As if in answer to this assertion, a long, wavering cry came snaking down from the forest, plaintive as the wail of a lost soul. The warriors fell silent, the laughter dying in their mouths. In a moment the cry was repeated, and another, more distant voice, made a long, ululating reply, echoing out across the valley before drifting off on a falling note of feral loneliness.

“Only a dog that has lost its mate,” scoffed Forgall. But I noticed he raised his eyes to the darkling forest and held his breath when the cry came again, slightly closer. “And there is no snow.”

“The wolves are coming,” insisted Madog. “And so is the snow.”

“Perhaps,” allowed Forgall, “it would be no bad thing to wait a little.”

The howls from the forest grew in frequency and number as they came closer and ever closer; I counted no fewer than eight animals giving voice from just beyond the circle of light thrown out by our fire. The sheep heard the sound and careened around the pen, bleating piteously and leaping over one another, desperate to escape the terrifying sound.

The howling seemed to swirl around us in a weird, unseen dance. We watched and waited and listened but saw not so much as a sliver of firelight reflected in a yellow eye or the glimmer of a curved fang. Still, we waited.

And then there came a snarling growl from behind the sheepfold. Forgall called for two men to follow him; they took up torches and ran around to the back of the pen, shouting and waving their firebrands.

Glimpsing a dark shape moving just out of the circle of
the firelight, I yelled and pointed to the place. One of the warriors cried out, “There!” as two more dark forms glided by, drifting into the light. I saw their gray-black shapes slide out of the darkness and melt away again. Another warrior shouted, and suddenly the wolves seemed to be everywhere.

They ran at darting, glancing angles to the fire. Every time one of the phantom creatures appeared out of the darkness, a warrior would charge at it with torch and spear, and the wolf would snarl and disappear. When the sly beasts understood that they could not get us to give chase one at a time, they came at us by twos.

Defense became more difficult then, for the warriors had also to charge at them in twos, which drew strength from the numbers standing guard at the fire. And while we were occupied with guarding the entrance, the wolves turned their attack to the unprotected sides of the sheepfold.

Time and again they came at the pen and were chased away. I saw a large black wolf leap up onto the stone wall and try to climb over the top. I shouted the warning, and one of the younger warriors dashed forward as the animal clawed at the timbers to pull itself up and over. The warrior took aim with his spear and let fly.

I thought it a good throw, but Forgall rounded on his kinsman. “Hold!” he cried as the spear sliced the air just above the wolf's shoulder. The animal jumped down from the wall and bounded away. “You do not throw at a wolf.”

“Why?” demanded the youth angrily. “I could have hit him.”

“But you did not,” replied Forgall. Raising his hand, he pointed into the wolf-ridden darkness. “Now, tell me, who is going to go out there and recover your spear? You, Echu?”

The warrior looked to his swordbrothers for help.

“Well?” demanded Forgall.

Echu shook his head.

“No?” said the big barbarian. “Stupid you may be, Echu, but not a fool. Get away with you. Find a torch and stand over there,” he pushed him toward the fire.

So it went, all through the night. Never once did the wolves make an outright attack. They ran here and there, sometimes showing themselves, most often remaining out of sight. And they wailed as if to wake the moon, but we would not be moved.

Finally, as a raw, freezing dawn leaked into the eastern sky, the howling ceased.

When it grew light enough to see the ground, we went to inspect the tracks. Taking flaming branches from the fire, we walked around the perimeter of the sheep pen and up to the bothy and wood beyond, finding no end of tracks—so many that it was impossible to say how large the pack had been.

“Here is the leader!” called Forgall, squatting over a paw print in the mud. Others gathered around as he held his torch near and spread his hand over it. The print was almost as big as his hand.

“It is too big for a wolf,” said the warrior called Echu. “It must be a
sídhe
.”

The others laughed at this; although I did not know what Echu meant, it seemed to me the word was spoken only half in jest.

“It will take more than a few changeling sídhe to keep me from my bed,” declared Forgall. He rose and turned to Madog, who was leaning exhausted on his crook. “It was good for you to call us when you did,” he said. He looked at me and chuckled to himself. “You are a bold one,” he declared. “Coming into the king's hall like that…” He shook his head as if it were a wonder he could not fathom, and I felt an unaccountable flush of pride warm me head to heel. It was instantly followed by a pang of disgust that I should exult, however trivially, in the praise of a brute barbarian.

Some of the warriors meanwhile had gone to retrieve Echu's errant spear; Forgall called to say that he was ready to leave, and as they started through the trees, he turned to Madog and said, “Perhaps you should bring the sheep down to the ráth tonight.”

Madog frowned. “I will think about it.”

The warriors departed then; Madog and I watched them descend the mountain track until they were lost in the morning mist. When they had gone, I said, “This word they used—what does it mean?”

The old shepherd lifted his eyes to the forest that was rising like a black, bristly cloud behind us. “Some words it is not wise to speak aloud.”

“Echu said it. I only want to know what it means.”

“Sídhe,” Madog replied, his voice falling to a respectful whisper. “It is the name of a great and terrible race of…” He faltered, struggling for the words. “Of folk who delight in destruction and harm. They are full of spells and evil magic to befuddle men.”

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. “Madog, these were
wolves
, not magical beings.”

“Aye,” he agreed uncertainly. “That may be.”

He would say no more about it, so we set ourselves to putting out the fire at the entrance to the sheepfold—scattering the branches and throwing dirt on the embers until only a mound of smoldering earth remained. Madog pulled aside the timber poles to open the gate and walked into the pen. The sheep knew him and came to him; they gathered around the lanky old man to have their curly heads rubbed while he soothed them with soft words.