Chapter 47
Chapter forty-seven
The King
The ride through the highlands was unusually calm. The Vaich was quiet and, for once, the druid felt inclined to break the silence. “You changed your mind.”
It was slight, but he felt the tightening of the king’s chest against his back. “Aye.”
“Why?”
“I gave you my word.”
“That means nothing much to me.”
The Vaich’s hands fisted the reins. Heat radiated off of him, but if he wished to argue, he held it back.
“There’s a chill on the wind,” he said, instead, pulling the shawl up around the druid’s shoulders. “You ought to mind yourself, lest you catch the death.”
A smile tempted his lips. “I minded myself many long years. I was never ill before I came to your halls.”
The Vaich let out a dry laugh. “A woodwalker come out of his wood… Suppose, much like a fry without water—got you all dried up.”
They rode for hours, stopping occasionally to rest the horse and sleep. The king kept mostly to himself. The druid did not question whatever war raged inside him. That battle belonged to the Vaich alone.
The highlands unfolded before them until the wall of the eastern wood crested the horizon. It was both comforting… and foreign.
By nightfall on the third day, they reached the treeline. The vast stretch of the Arran Fáoth rose before them like great green giants; the pale underbrush not yet hued with summer. By season’s peak, it would be a verdant sea, lush and thick and sweet.
Memories of a different world came flooding back, but worst of all was the quiet mutterings that grew as they passed.
A sound only he could hear.
Once safely within the embrace of the forest, the Vaich pulled aside to make camp. His golden eyes darted amongst the treetops, but his childlike awe went unsaid.
The druid gathered branches and kindling for a fire and placed them about the pit.
The Vaich had marked it with stone, digging shallow into the dirt.
He made a strong flame as the druid wrestled with the pack at the horse’s hind.
The rope was knotted tight and would not yield.
As he struggled, the Vaich came up behind, pulling it loose with a firm tug.
“What’s the matter, druid? You ought to have more nimble fingers than that.”
The druid said nothing, watching the Vaich turn and carry their bedrolls to the fire.
He set them up, one opposite another, and pitched two simple tents—little more than ox hide hung over four thick branches.
He bound them with twine, making sure they were sturdy before laying out the pelts.
They had brought with them some rations from the wagons: nuts and cheese and sausage.
The druid removed his shoes and curled up beside the fire. Likewise, the Vaich lay sprawled upon his furs. It was nearly comfortable.
The druid asked, “Did they teach you all of this? At Righnach’Dúir?”
“Aye,” said the Vaich. “It’s a bonny place, that. All wilds where there isnae women.” The druid watched him for maybe too long, and the Vaich leveled a smirk at him. “It’s no king who cannae handle himself out in the wood. I dinnae need to be a singr to ken how to praise the land.”
“Knowing and respect… those are two different skills.”
The Vaich did not deny it. A pause stretched, and then he asked, “And what of you, woodwalker? What shall I make of your family? What shall they make of me?”
“I am afraid you misunderstand.”
“Is it not your kin we go to? Is it not the place you were born?”
“I do not know where I was born,” he said. “No druid shall. Nor they who borne them.”
The Vaich made a face. “Have you no mother. Nor father?”
“I must have. And suppose they should still live. Though I cannot remember their faces, and I have never known their names. When we birth, we are not given to one or the other… we are raised up by the faidh.”
“The faidh?”
“It is how we call our flocks. Some of my ilk would travel together, oft these are the young and the old, and they are led by sages—great knowledgeable ones we call fíor. When bairns come, they are taken to a new faidh to be raised amongst others. It ensures we do not create unnecessary attachment.”
“Unnecessary?” The Vaich scoffed. “Is that what you’d call it?”
“Is it so different from yourself?” asked the druid. Their eyes met across the dark. “You were also taken from your mother and father.”
“Aye. But I was given family beyond blood. Can you say the same?”
He would not, and he wondered why he should.
They carried on in quiet, picking at their supper, the fire crackling between them. Saorla was asleep at her post, and the last of the dusk birds fluttered in the canopy. The druid had eaten most of his food but a few small hazelnuts, and the Vaich sat up, pushing his plate towards him.
“Go on and eat your fill. There’ll be nothing but bone on you ’fore we get west.”
“It will be no good if you haven’t any strength,” said the druid, pushing it back. “You need not forget you are our only defense.”
“I’ll be fine,” said the Vaich. “Eat.”
The druid took the meat and split it in half, offering the largest portion to the king.
He hadn’t forgotten about the bandits, though he had never heard of any surviving the green.
There were reasons the Fáoth had endured as the final bastion against the west. But in doing so, it had become a cage.
Still, perhaps nothing short of the western armies could have brought it to its knees.
It was only luck and practicality which had stayed any prior Vaich from trying, and another tether, entirely, that would ensure this one would do the same.
The druid’s gaze drifted to the iron blade lying idle at the king’s side.
He was violently aware the Vaich had the skill to dispatch most foes should they meet them.
And it occurred to him that what he had seen that day in the forest was not the mien of someone fresh to killing.
He hadn’t questioned it in the moment, but the more he considered it, the stranger it seemed.
Unless…
“That isn’t all they taught you in Righnach’Dúir.”
The Vaich paused in his chewing.
“You’ve killed men before,” said the druid. “And not once or twice. It was not simply skill back then… it was comfort.”
Understanding seeped slowly into the Vaich’s features, and those golden eyes burned low. “Aye.”
The druid remembered the words Jor had told him that night at the inn.
“What did the Thrys do to you?”
For a long time, it was silent. The Vaich rested an arm upon his knee. “I couldnae leave the grove, but anyone could be brought in, so long as they served some purpose to me.”
The druid’s stomach soured, already guessing the end of this story.
“They brought men to be my teachers. They brought boys to be my friends. And when they had good-for-nothings to be disposed of, they brought them to be my lessons. For a while, I studied on wood and grain. But blades on boughs willnae teach you to bleed bellies.” He looked emptily into the dark.
“Like a horse I was. They beat drums beside my ears so I wouldnae scare from thunder. They made me kill so I couldnae scare from murder. A king ought to ken how to take a life. And for what it was worth, I was good at it.”
“How unkind,” the druid whispered. “To teach a child to kill… you damn him for all his life.”
“That’s the way of things,” said the Vaich. “We all have our purpose. I needed to ken mine.”
The trees hummed low and again he shivered, drawing the shawl close.
“Did you ever wish… wish to run?”
The Vaich frowned. “Run?”
“From what you were meant to do.”
“I never considered it.”
Of course, the king wanted his crown. It was true in every word he had ever said. Yet the druid wondered how the man would be different if power had never fallen into his hands.
“Will you dream again tonight?” asked the Vaich.
“If I am fortunate, it shall be quiet.”
But nothing was ever quiet in the Fáoth. Twelve years and he had avoided its sounds. Now he was forced to endure them.
“When first you said you dreamed, I didnae believe you. But now I see it sure as flame. The visions haunt you.”
“Aye,” said the druid.
The Vaich seemed as if he wanted to press. The druid knew the question looming on his mind.
What does it mean… to dream?
“Then, for your sake, may they stay at bay,” he said instead.
The druid stared.
The king was far from a mystery, yet there remained an oddness. The two of them could not have been more different—more distant. Their unspoken words were violence… and yearning.
They didn’t know each other at all, if only entirely for lack of trying. What were they to one another? Enemies? Reluctant allies? Or some incalculable thing, caught between resentment and desperation.
Maybe even the gods did not know. Somehow, something had inextricably bound them, and in the three months since, they had become hopelessly tangled in their strings.