The Hound of Ulster (6 page)

‘I will give you back your life,' said Cuchulain, ‘if you will swear on the Great Stone of Tara that you will never again threaten war against the Chieftainess Skatha, nor come trampling across her borders to drive off her cattle and horse herds, but keep the peace between your lands and hers.'

‘On the Great Stone of Tara, I swear,' Aifa said, with the dagger still at her throat.

And Cuchulain withdrew the dagger and sent it spinning towards the feet of Skatha the Chieftainess, where she still stood in the opening of her shelter. ‘There is one thing more. We have dead men to be buried, and wounded among us too sick for the jolting of the chariots. Therefore, we make the Death Fires here for those that have gone beyond the sunset, and bide on in this place until our wounded may be moved; and that we may sleep easy in our minds at nights, you shall send home your warriors, but
you
shall remain here in our
midst, until the time comes that we go home to our own hunting runs.'

‘I understand,' said Aifa. ‘Only let me go to the edge of my own camp to tell this thing to my warriors—you shall send men with me to be sure that I do not break faith—and I will bide as hostage for my war host while you remain in this glen.'

And so when the sun went down that night and they kindled the Death Fires, a second shelter woven of green branches stood not far from Skatha's; and the Princess Aifa slept there, on Cuchulain's crimson cloak that he had spread for her.

FOR MANY DAYS
Skatha's war host remained encamped on one side of the glen, while on the other the few who yet lived of Aifa's bodyguard remained also, after the rest of her war bands had departed. And for many days the Princess Aifa remained among her foes as a hostage. But to Cuchulain she was more than a hostage, and in those days while the bell-heather passed its glory and began to die, and the burn ran yellow with the first fallen birch leaves, he forgot Emer working at her embroidery under the apple trees of D
Å«
n Forgall, and loved the Princess Aifa in her stead.

At last the time came when the sorest wounded might be moved, and they harnessed the horses and turned back towards
the borders of the Land of Shadows. And the Princess Aifa went with them in the dust cloud behind the chariots, marching with Cuchulain in the ranks of the Warrior School, while always her own bodyguard kept faithful pace with them, a spear-throw to one side. At noon they came to the stream that was the border between the two lands, and there they halted. And there with the eyes of the whole war host upon them, Cuchulain and Aifa took hands and walked together a little way downstream.

They halted in the shelter of a thicket of blackthorn that would be fleeced with grey-white blossom in the springtime, and Cuchulain pulled a gold ring from his finger and gave it to Aifa. ‘When running water is between us, we shall not meet again,' he said, ‘but if you should bear me a son, Aifa flower-of-my-heart, send him to me in Ulster when the time comes that his hand is big enough for that ring.'

And Aifa said, ‘Have you any other bidding for me, Hound of Ulster?' not as a warrior speaks, and not as a chieftain, but as a woman accepting the thing that must be.

‘Let you call him Connla,' Cuchulain replied. ‘And when the time comes that you send him to me, put him under this geise, that he shall not tell his name to any who ask it on his way; that he shall not turn out of his way for any man's bidding; that he shall never refuse a combat, for the sake of the combat that was between you and me.'

‘I will remember,' the Princess Aifa said, and she set her hands for an instant on either side of his face, over the bronze cheek-flanges of his war-cap, and looked deep into his eyes. ‘Do you remember also, when that time comes!'

And she dropped her hands and turned and walked away with never a backward glance, towards where her waiting bodyguard stood leaning on their spears. And Cuchulain rounded
on his heel and strode off to rejoin the war host of Skatha that was already splashing through the ford.

The year and a day were almost up, and Cuchulain had mastered all the skills and all the warrior feats that Skatha had it in her power to teach him, even to the Hero's Salmon Leap and the manner of using the Gae Bolg, which when it struck into the belly of any enemy, filled all his body with its deadly barbs. And for a parting gift she had given him a sword of her own in place of the sword he lost in fighting the Princess Aifa and the Gae Bolg itself which she had never thought any other champion worthy of, not even Ferdia Mac Daman.

And so it was time for Cuchulain to take leave of the Land of Shadows, and his fellows of the Warrior School. Time that he must be taking his leave of Ferdia, who had been his fiercest rival in all that time, and was nearer to him even than Laeg or Conall his foster brother. And until it was upon him, he had not known how sore that leave-taking would be.

‘Why could you not be a man of Connacht?' Ferdia demanded with his heavy arm across Cuchulain's shoulders.

‘And why could not
you
be a man of Ulster?'

They swore the Blood Brotherhood together on the last night of all, and they swore to keep faith each with the other so long as the life was in them. And they went their separate ways, and little they knew how they should meet again.

So Cuchulain came back to Ulster, to Emain Macha once more—and found Conall his foster brother lying beside the fire in the Red Branch Hall, nursing a score of half-healed wounds and a sword arm all but hacked from his body, and
heard from him how Conary M
ō
r the High King of Ireland was dead. How he and almost all his bodyguard had been slain at the great Inn of Da Derga, where he had been passing the night, slain by pirates out of Britain, and among them his own foster brothers that he had outlawed one time for robbery and cattle rieving.

‘And what would you be doing among the High King's bodyguard?' Cuchulain asked.

And Conall shrugged. ‘I had a little falling-out with Celthair Mac Uthica. Only a little falling-out, but King Conor bade me go and offer my services to Conory M
ō
r while Ulster cooled behind me.'

‘And it seems your services were greatly worth the having! With the Inn burned down and the High King dead, how does it happen that you are here by the Red Branch fire, alive though somewhat scathed?'

‘Ask the same question of two others of his guard. When the King was dead we three that were left fought our way out and came away,' Conall said, beginning to be angry.

Cuchulain was angry then, because he had not been at Da Derga's Inn. ‘By the light of the sun, if I had been with the High King, they would not have slain him so easily!'

‘There were some among us who did not lie down for them to swarm across our necks,' said Conall between his teeth, nursing his arm to ease the ache of it. ‘A few blows we struck against the pirates, even though we had not the Hound of Ulster in our midst.'

But Cuchulain flung from the Hall, nursing his anger for the blaze of it within him that warmed the place still cold for the parting from Ferdia.

Yet when the anger sank at last, and he had made his peace with Conall, the soreness and the cold was in his heart again.
Then old wise Fergus Mac Roy saw that there was some grief in him, and knowing the best cure for such as Cuchulain, said to him on the third day after his return, ‘Now it may be that you are the best fighting man in all Ulster, yet still you have to prove it. Would you think well of a foray along the marches of Connacht?' For between Connacht and Ulster there was always a fitful surf of skirmishes and cattle-raiding along the borders.

And Cuchulain said, ‘Surely that is as good a way as any other to pass the autumn days.' And he laughed, and bade Laeg to yoke his horses and make ready the chariot, saying, ‘We are away to burn off Connacht's gorse for them. They will be grateful to us!' and so set out on his foray.

‘To the white cairn on Slieve Mourne, king of all the mountains of Ulster. From that eagle's eyrie a man can see far.'

And when they came there, he bade Laeg to pull up the horses, and turning about in the chariot he stood looking out over the hills and glens and the wide bogs and the ruffled lakes of Ulster, with the last flame of autumn on the bracken, and the heather black now as storm clouds upon the mountains, and the white gleam of the King's D
Å«
n at Emain Macha, and the rolling country of Murthemney south and westward, with Slieve Cuillen and Slieve Fuad standing like warrior brothers to hold the Gap of the North that was the chief way from Ireland into Ulster. ‘There I will build my own hall within the ring-ramparts of my own D
Å«
n when I am Champion of all Ireland and have Emer to sit beside my hearth,' he said.

And then he turned full southward and looked out beyond, over the wide green plains of Bregia. ‘Tell me the names of all the places that we can see.'

And Laeg pointed out to him Tara that was empty now of
the High Kings, and Teltin, and Brugh-Na-Boyna, and the great D
Å«
n of the Sons of Nechtan.

‘Nechtan,' Cuchulain said when he heard the name. ‘Are they the Sons of Nechtan of whom it is said that among them they have slain more Ulster men than are now living on the earth?'

‘They are so,' said Laeg.

‘Then to visit the Sons of Nechtan we will go.'

Laeg looked at him, frowning his sandy brows. ‘Do not play too rashly with this fire for the furze of Connacht. We are but two, and the Sons of Nechtan are many.'

‘Nevertheless, I have a mind to visit them,' Cuchulain said, playing a little with the great war spear in his hand.

And so they drove with the swiftness of a scudding storm down through Murthemney and into Bregia, and it would have been three days' journey to any horses save those of Cuchulain's, with any charioteer save Laeg.

Now before the D
Å«
n of the Sons of Nechtan was a wide green meadow on which the young men were wont to race their chariots and to practise the arts of war. And in the midst of the meadow stood a tall pillar stone worn smooth by the multitude of weapons that had been sharpened on it, and about the shaft of the stone was a bronze collar on which showed the word-signs of the Ogham script. And when Cuchulain had dismounted from the chariot and gone closer, he found that it set upon any stranger who should read it the geise that he should not depart again without meeting in single combat one of the seven brothers who were the lords of the D
Å«
n.

Then he laughed. ‘Surely there is no need of this stone and its message, for it bids me to do the very thing that brought me here!' and laughing still, he flung his arms round the great
stone and began to wrestle with it as though it were a living thing, heaving it to and fro until it came at last clear out of the earth into his arms. And then he flung it into the river that ran close below the D
Å«
n.

Laeg, who had sprung down to stand at the horses' heads, cried out to him, ‘You fool, Cuchulain! To go seeking adventure is one thing, but to go with both hands open, begging for a violent death, is another; and now you will surely find what you seek!'

The words were scarce out of his mouth before Foill the eldest son of Nechtan came striding down from the gate, just as he was, in a ram skin buckled with gold about his waist and no weapon in his hand. ‘That was discourteously done!' he said. ‘For what reason do you throw the pillar stone of my house into the river?'

‘For a challenge, according to the words upon the collar.'

‘All that is needful is to strike with the spear blade upon the stone,' Foill said with contempt. ‘But I do not slay boys, even boys with the strength and foolishness to overthrow my pillar stone!'

‘No, I know that you kill men—all the men of Ulster whose backs are to your spear! Now go and fetch out your weapons, for
I
slay neither drivers nor messengers nor unarmed men!'

Then Foill seemed to grow taller, and the brown hairs at his beard curled upward as though each hair had an angry life of its own. ‘For that insult I will indeed fetch out my weapons,' he said deep in his throat as the snarl of a wolf, and turned and strode back towards the gates of his D
Å«
n.

‘Now what is to be done?' Laeg growled when he was gone. ‘Did your nurse never tell you when she danced you on her knee, that Foill Son of Nechtan is proofed by magic spells
against the edge or point of any blade? Not Lugh's bright spear itself can pierce his hide.'

‘But this may,' Cuchulain said, and he brought from his breast his old supple sling, and set into its pouch a sling ball of iron mixed with silver; and he waited. And when Foill came striding back with his shield up and his war gear clanging on him, Cuchulain let fly at him with a shout like a boy letting fly at a marsh bird, and the sling ball struck him on the forehead and drove through war cap and bone into his brain, so that he leapt up into the air and fell face forward with no sound save the clangour of his armour.