The Dog and the Wolf (47 page)

“This winter past, I went to a witch who dwells in the forest,” Rufinus told him. “I asked her help. She cast what spells she was able, and made this, though she has the use of but one arm. She said it ought to bring you luck.”

Uneasily, Eochaid turned the charm over and over. “What did you give her?”

“Nothing,” Rufinus answered, forgetting his tale of the gess. “She thanked me. She also has Ys to avenge and … and Grallon to love.”

3

That year Beltene in Mide was the greatest and most magnificent ever heard of since the Children of Danu held Ériu. To Temir swarmed men who would fare south with Niall after the rites and the three days of celebration that were to follow. Their tents and booths overran the land round about, a sudden bloom of colors and banners and blinking metal. Their tuathal kings and the wives of these packed the houses on the sacred hill.

Guests were all the more crowded because they must yield place to the mightiest yet seen here, other than Niall
himself—Conual Corcc, up from Mumu to keep the feast with his foster-kinsman. Beautiful and terrible were the warriors who accompanied their lord. Chariots rumbled, riders galloped and reared their horses, spears rippled to the march like grain ripe beneath the wind, shields flashed, horns roared when that company appeared; and most wonderful was that it came in peace.

Disquieting to thoughtful folk was that it would depart in peace likewise. King Conual had no wish to sail against the Romans. Rather, he had come in hopes of stopping the venture, the tale of which rang from shore to shore of Ériu.

In this he foiled. “I feared my words would be useless,” he admitted at the end. “But for the sake of the old bonds between us, I must in honor speak them.”

“I thank you for your care of me,” said Niall; “but better would be if you laid your strength to mine.”

They were side by side in the Feasting Hall on the last night before men went home or went to war. The meat was eaten, the tables cleared away, now servers flitted about refilling cups. A savor lingered in the smoke which firepit and lamps tinged pale red. Elsewhere throughout that cavernous space it gleamed off hanging shields and the gold, silver, bronze, amber, gems upon the men benched around the walls. Talk and laughter boomed between. There was an edge to its roughness, for omens had been unclear and word of that had gotten about. Everyone worked hard to keep good cheer alive. Close by the two great Kings they sat quiet, listening.

“I have my own land to think of,” said Conual. “We prosper by trade with the Romans.”

“As you did with the Ysans—” Niall stopped short. “I would never be calling you afraid, darling.”

Conual lifted his head. The locks were still flame-hued. “I try to be wise,” he said. “Why should I offend the Romans and their God? He has ever more followers in Mumu.”

“And this makes you hang behind?” Niall’s sneer was meaningless, as he himself well knew. They had been over and over the grounds for Conual’s counsel against the expedition—recklessness, the gains not worth the risk—
and Niall’s for going ahead—glory, wealth, binding closer to him his allies here at home, the fact that he had uttered his intention and could not now back down.

“It does not,” said Conual evenly, “as you know. However, I think the morrow is His. I will go to the Gods of my fathers, but it may well be that after me the Rock of Cassel upbears His Cross.”

Niall cast a glance at the druid Étain, the sole woman present. Her face remained shut and she said nothing. Thus had it been since she cast ogamm wands and kept silence about what she read.

In sudden cold fury, Niall spat, “Hell have a harder time in Mide!” He turned and beckoned to Laégare, youngest of his living sons, heir to this Kingship; so the tanist Nath I had sworn beside the Phallus. At six years of age, the boy was reckoned ready to join men at their board. He had sat quietly, for he was of such a nature, though fierce enough in sports and battle practice to gladden his father.

“Come here, my son,” Niall bade.

Laégare obeyed. Straight he stood, his hair a brightness amidst leaping shadows. Niall leaned forward and laid hands on his shoulders. “Tomorrow I go from you,” Niall said. A hush spread like ripples from a stone thrown into a pool, as others heard.

“If only I could too!” Laégare cried.

Niall smiled. “You’re a wee bit young for that, my dear.” He grew somber. “But I will take an oath of you, here and now.”

Laégare’s voice barely trembled. “Whatever it is, father, I swear.”

“This: that never in your life you make sacrifice or give pledge to the God of the Romans.”

“That is heavy gess to lay on a King,” said Conual, troubled. “Who knows what will come to him and his people?”

“At least he shall keep the pride of old Ériu,” Niall told them all. “Do you take this last command of mine, my son?”

“I do that,” Laégare replied. His voice was still childish, but it rang.

4

As Niall rode toward the sea, a hare darted across his path and a fox in pursuit of it. At once he called to him those men nearby who had seen and ordered silence about this. “Many would lose heart if they heard of such a sign,” he reminded them. His head lifted against heaven. “I go where the Mórrigu wants me.”

His old henchman Uail maqq Carbri said nothing to that, but bleakness took hold of the gaunt face.

A generation ago, the mouth of Boand’s River had seen as great a fleet as was gathered there now. Currachs drawn up ashore or bobbing in the water seemed beyond counting, as did the warriors who milled around them. At anchor in the shallows lay over a dozen Saxon-built galleys. Once more Niall’s bore a Roman skull nailed to the stempost; but this hull was painted red, for blood and fire.

The day was cloudless. Light flared on weapons aloft as men shouted greeting to the King. Color on shirts, kilts, cloaks, shields made a whirlpool rainbow. Gulls soared a hundredfold, a snowstorm of wings. Niall sprang from his chariot and strode toward his ship.

Uail squinted upward, shook his head, and muttered to Cathual, the royal charioteer, “The last time, you remember, a huge raven came down and perched on his shield. What have we today?”

“I fear I shall never be driving him again,” said Cathual. Hastily: “Because I am not the lightfoot youth I was. It was kind of him to let me hold the reins on this final trip of his.” He winced. Somehow he seemed unable to speak his meaning; the words came out unlucky.

He was not alone in his forebodings. Things had been happening for months which betokened trouble. They could be as slight as a cuckoo heard on the left or as terrifying as groans from the graves at Tallten on Beltene Eve. Old wives wove amulets for their sons to carry. Druids made divinations and shook their heads.

Yet somehow there was no portent of utter disaster, of
anything like the ruin suffered at Ys. The feeling in the air was more akin to a sorrow, though none could name that from which it welled. Niall, conqueror of the North, showed no trace of sharing it. Warriors must therefore deny it in themselves and follow him with good cheer. They dared not open their hearts to each other about it. Thus nobody knew how widely and deeply the cold current ran. The clamor at his back was as of wolves and wildcats.

He waded out to his ship, laid hand on the rail, and boarded in a single leap. Tall he stood at the prow. The light touched his hair with a ghost of the former gold. To Manandan son of Lir he offered a red cock, slashing its head off with his sword and laving the skull with its blood. “And white oxen shall You have when I bring home my victories!” he cried.

Men went to their craft. Oars rattled into place. They bit the ebb tide, and the fleet walked out over the sea.

Never did Niall look back at his country.

He passed it on that first day and made camp for the night south of the Ruirthech outflow, in Qóiqet Lagini. No fighters came to trouble them, nor did they find cattle or sheep to take. The coast stretched desolate. Not yet had the Lagini recovered from the woe that Laidchenn’s satire brought on them. When they did, Niall knew, vengefulness must kindle the marches. Well, he would deal with that then; Nath I would after him; Laégare would when his day came; such was the fate of a King.

At dawn the camp roused and the voyage went on. Weather stayed fine in the next days while the vessels worked their way down the side of Eriu. Their last evening on it, Niall called the tuathal leaders together at his fire. They were many, as diverse as their homelands, some fair as he, some dark, some redhaired, some gray, clad in linen or wool or skins, a few with hair drawn into horsetails like Gauls or with tattoos like Cruthini—subjects, allies, all the way from Condacht’s western cliffs to Dál Riata’s colony beyond the Roman Wall.

“You see how the Gods are with us,” he said; “but they only want us to run mad in battle. First we must get there, the which will take both cunning and patience.” While they knew more or less what he intended, he now
laid it out at length and answered questions with unexpected mildness.

They would not cross over to the Dumnonic tip of Britannia. The Romans must have gotten at least a breath of what he had afoot. They would look for such a layover. Weakened though their forces were, they, with help from the fierce hillmen north of the Sabrina, might have readied an ambush. “We could doubtless fight them off and get away, but we’d take losses without any gain of booty,” Niall said. “Don’t belittle them.” His mind harked back to a combat near Deva, three years ago, and the strangely impressive centurion with whom he spoke. “Rome is an aged beast, but she still has fangs. We’ll get enough of her at the Liger.”

He would go on without further stops. That was a long way across open sea; and he would make it longer still by steering very wide of the headlands where Ys had been and the hungry skerries were yet. The Scoti must keep together. Let fog or storm scatter them, and they were foredone. “It is for us to dare,” Niall finished, “and undying will be the honor we win.”

He overbore objections. They were scant. Everybody knew that their lives were his, and his alone. It seemed to them that he had taken power over wind and wave as well as war; or so they must needs believe.

Therefore, at sunrise they departed due south. This day was also bright. A favoring wind raised whitecaps on the glittery sea, and sails blossomed. Unutterably green astern lay Ériu. To watch it fall from sight was like waking from a dream of someone beloved.

Niall did not. Always he looked ahead.

Sunset smoldered on the rim of vast loneliness and went out. The night was moonless. He had planned things thus. The Romans would reckon on a force like his waiting till it had light after dark, for skippers to keep track of each other. To catch the enemy unawares, he had his galleys spaced well apart, lanterns burning at their rails. By these beacons the currachs would steer.

The wind continued friendly. It filled the sail and yet did not much chill the flesh; it lulled through the undertone of the seas, the seething at the prow, the slight creak
of timbers and tackle as the ship rolled onward. Gentle as it was, it did not make the stars gutter. They glinted uncountable around the frosty River of Heaven, almost drowning out the pictures they made, Lúg’s Chariot, the Salmon, the Sickle—but high astern stood the Lampflame by which men know the north; and as it sank night by night, it would tell him when to turn east for his goal. Yellow gleams swayed in strings out on Ocean’s unbounded night, the riding lights of the galleys.

Niall stood by himself in the bows of his ship. Save for the steersman and two on watch at the waist, sleep filled her hull. With his back to the lanterns he had some vision of mysterious shimmers and foam-swirls under the stars. The skull nodded gray above him.

I am bound for that which I was robbed of, these many years agone, he thought.

It was a quiet thought. He felt beyond hope or anger; his mind was like the wind, steadily bearing south. I am going at last to my luck.

A surge passed through the water. A white and rounded slenderness lifted half out of the bow wave. It swam alongside, or it flew or it was borne, softly and easily as the wind. He saw how the heavy hair streamed behind. She turned toward him, raising her right arm—to greet, to beckon?—-and he saw starlight wash over the wet breasts. Her face was ice-pale, her eyes two nights with each its own tiny star.

“Manandan abide!” he choked. Somehow the men on watch did not hear. Was the cold that flowed over him from her or from within himself?

She smiled. Her teeth were the hue of bleached bone. In a way unknown to him he heard: I have said that never will my love let go of you, nor will it ever, Niall, my Niall.

Dahut—But we are so far from Ys where you died.

Across the width of the world can I hear your name, Niall, my lover. It has flown on the wind and the wings of the gulls. Tide had carried it along, and the secret rivers of Ocean, and the whispering of dead men in the deeps. The Gods Whose vengeance I am have told me. Your name was a song and a longing. I followed it, blind with my need; and now again I behold you.

His desire terrified him.—Why can you not rest peaceful?

That which we did in Ys, the work of the wrathful Gods, binds us together and always will. My doom is to love you.

That dooms me too.

Fear not. For you I am the blessing of the sea. I give you fair winds, sweet skies, starlight and moonlight and radiant days. I guide you past rocks and shoals, I bid the storm swing wide of you, I bring you to safe harbor. I wreck the ships of your foemen, I drag them down below, I cast what the eels have left of them ashore for their widows to find. I am your Dahut.

But you cannot free me from the dread of what you are, nor from the sorrow of it, that this is because of me.

Aye, you betrayed me then, and left me alone. You shall betray me again, and leave me alone.

Not willingly, haunter of mine.

Nay. But by dying, as all men must. Unless your death be at sea—

Niall shuddered.

She reached toward him. Her fingers brushed his, which clutched the rail. Cold stabbed through. She lowered herself back into the starlit water and told him sadly: