Chapter 67
LXVII
WE WALK IN SILENCE. ME STILL DAMP AND SHIVERING in the clammy winter morning’s air, Lir thoughtful as we’re shepherded by spears and glowering men up the green hill, away from the lake. No trace of Fornax in its mirrored surface. The druid keeps giving me sidelong glances. Curious. Uneasy.
My one comfort as we shuffle along is the bright pulse in my head. Close by, in the trees.
My father is watching.
We crest the hill and come to a halt. Several horses stand tethered in the makeshift camp. Gallchobhar, who went on ahead, has already taken a seat on a fallen tree and is watching past us, back down into the still valley.
“I remember my journey here.” He speaks absently as we are brought before him, gaze fixed on the motionless surface of the lake.
He’s holding the engraved silver arm I returned with, the thing looking small and light in his hands.
“The gafa and their bargain. Me choosing my spear. I was so proud, when I left Fornax. So confident that I was destined to be a Champion for the ages.” His gaze finally slides to us.
Bitterness in his expression. “I thought that for fifteen years.”
When neither of us respond, he stands. Towering, even over the other muscular warriors under his command. “Why was he different, Druid?” He addresses Lir and points the silver arm at me. “Why did he receive this instead of a weapon, and why did the gafa follow him like that?”
“What befalls each of us in Fornax is not to be spoken of. You are nasceann. You know this.” Lir says it calmly, but I do not miss the meaningful glance he gives me. He doesn’t know either. And he’s warning me not to tell anyone.
I’m gathering the way I got out isn’t the way it usually happens for druids, then, either.
“And yet here I am. Speaking of it.” He tosses the metal arm into a nearby pack, and comes to stand in front of Lir. Slightly higher on the hill, making him loom even more than he normally would over the white-cloaked man. “I would know what makes him so special.”
Lir smiles tightly. “There are some things that are impossible to explain to men like you, Gallchobhar.”
Gallchobhar’s smile is slow. He finally looks over at me. “He tried to protect you, you know. Lied to me. Said you had already failed,” he chides, shaking his head as he gestures to Lir. “Can you believe that? One of the draoi. So high-and-mighty in their neutrality.” He spits the words.
Steps forward and with one smooth motion, drives his spear through Lir’s unprotected stomach.
I shout in fury and horror as the druid moans and sags, kept upright only by the men on either side of him holding his arms; I thrash against my own captors, roar for the massive man to stop, but it makes no difference. There is a manic light in Gallchobhar’s eyes. Something wild and feverish.
With a muffled groan, somehow, Lir manages to get his legs under himself again. The spear jutting from his stomach, bright blood soaking the white of his clothes. His eyes are black. He stares at Gallchobhar, meeting his gaze. In evident pain but unafraid. Proud and defiant as he holds his staff.
“Maybe you are right, Druid,” says Gallchobhar, his lips bared back into a rictus of a smile. “But then, there are some things men like me do not need to know.”
He rips the serrated spear from Lir’s flesh, eliciting a gargled scream from the man, before drawing his iron dagger, grabbing the druid by the hair, yanking his head back and slitting his throat.
I am light-headed with shock and rage, flail futilely against the hands keeping me at bay.
Lir slumps to the ground, both light and dark fled from his eyes, his staff clattering away down the hill.
Blood pulses onto the grass and is drunk by the dirt.
Gallchobhar barely notices, stepping over the body and moving on to stop in front of me. Examining me with disdain.
“King Fiachra besieged Caer áras two days ago. I half expect when we get there, your king’s head will already be on a pike.” Still examining me as if trying to find some great secret hidden somewhere on my person.
I barely hear him. Can’t take my eyes from Lir’s motionless form. He was draoi. Sacrosanct in a way I don’t think anyone in the Republic ever was. Even having witnessed Cian’s death previously, my mind can barely process the reality of it.
“So you are Fiachra’s man,” I eventually say bitterly.
“I am his Champion, once I deliver you.” He sounds angry again.
“Ruarc knew you would be taken to Fornax, so Fiachra sent me to collect you. You are his price, and your death is Ruarc’s.
One I am more than happy to pay, but still.
” He walks up and stops directly in front of me.
Face inches from mine, breath stinking of old mead and meat.
Inviting me to struggle, to do something to provoke him.
Even through my rage, I know better than to give him the satisfaction.
Men like Gallchobhar thrive on such displays from their enemies.
“No quiet grave for you, Leathf hear. You are to be sacrificed in Lake áras upon our return. I would say …” He glances at the sun. “Dawn in two days?”
He produces what looks like a stone brooch, the pin on it impossibly thin and sharp-looking. Its body shows an intricate carving of the three joined whorls, same as on the entrance to Fornax.
“A gift from Ruarc,” he explains to the question in my eyes.
Then the man on my left is grabbing my chin with force, holding my head still despite my suddenly panicked efforts to shy away. Gallchobhar holds the brooch like a dagger. His eyes gleam.
He stabs the stone needle into the base of my neck, and all I can see is bright, quivering pain.
It’s not the wound that hurts worst, though it certainly does hurt. It’s my head. Like I’ve been in utter darkness and emerged into the midday sun, except my eyes cannot adjust and I cannot shut them. I moan as agony ricochets through my skull.
And I realise through it all that my father’s pulse, strong moments ago, has vanished. I cannot sense him. That small feeling of security, however false, however childish, is lost to me.
I’m jerked to my feet. Bound, and slung unceremoniously over horseback.
We start riding.
We travel hard and rest little, breaking only for a few hours in the evening before pressing on. Gallchobhar, for his part, largely ignores me. My legs stiffen and ache awfully from my uncomfortable positioning. The pounding of my head is unceasing.
The sounds of the siege reach us long before we see it.
It is night again as we draw close to Caer áras.
Cold and recently wet, the angry glow of fire highlighting low, racing clouds.
The same wind that hurries them brings us the cacophony of battle.
The guttural snarls and clashing of steel as warriors smash together.
Screams and cries and moans cut frighteningly short. A hollow wail of death.
We crest the final rise and though I am weary, and sore, and shivering, I wrench my head up enough to take in what lies beyond.
The Caer is surrounded.
There must be five hundred warriors in the valley around the walls.
More. Men naked to the waist, women with chests bound.
All of them tattooed, hair spiked. Torches and campfires have turned the surrounding fields into a bright, bristling hell of armed men and women, encamped just out of bowshot.
There are no siege weapons in Luceum, as far as I know, no catapults or trebuchets or the like.
Half the camp is raucous with drinking and laughter.
The other half is in the midst of an assault upon the walls.
Warriors hurl spears to and from the barricades; they fling torches at the base which are hurriedly extinguished by defenders; they charge and try to use ladders to scale the spiked fortifications.
Slings heave stones, and the twang of bows releasing whistling arrows fills the air between the screams of the injured and dying.
I watch as I am jolted closer. The weapons of war here are brutal but not destructive in the way the Catenans’ are; there are more injuries than deaths, and the casualties, while many, are likely not so drastic as to significantly deplete one side or another.
At least at first glance, the entire thing feels like posturing.
Fiachra cannot think that he is going to breach these walls like this, with these numbers.
And the defenders surely realise that eventually, they will run out of food.
For all the blood and screaming, it’s a stalemate.
Though, I suppose, I do not know what the Grove are capable of.
Heads are piked along the road to the gate, leering displays no doubt meant to taunt those behind the walls. My stomach churns as I squirm, try to make out features. I’m too far away. My imagination places my friends’ faces on each one.
“You see now, Leathf hear.” Gallchobhar has spotted my dismay. “And this is far from the entirety of Fiachra’s forces. Rónán may not yet be dead, but he was never going to win.”
We press downward and into the midst of the chaotic encampment.
It smells of sweat and urine and blood as Gallchobhar rides proudly along, and warriors turn and watch as I’m carted, sack-like, along behind him.
He is recognised by all, clearly. Not beloved, from the looks; these are Fiachra’s men, and no doubt they are still adjusting to seeing Rónán’s former Champion as their own. But no one moves to stop us.
“You. You are one of the chieftains?” Gallchobhar shouts to one man as we approach what seems to be the heart of the siege. When the stranger nods, torc glinting, Gallchobhar pulls up beside him. “Where is King Fiachra?”
“He has taken his personal warband to meet the Grove. Seems Rónán left a surprise for the druids up north.” The symbol-covered warrior smiles as if he finds the plight of his presumed allies more amusing than upsetting.
Examines me with disdain, and, interestingly, Gallchobhar with not much less. “You are Rónán’s traitor?”
I can’t see Gallchobhar’s face, but he stiffens. “Watch your words, little one,” he growls. “I slew Mel ap Mor not three months ago. I am your Champion.”
The warrior waves his hand. “My apologies, Gallchobhar ap Drin. King Fiachra left word that if you were to return, to simply do as you had been instructed.”
Gallchobhar nods, apparently unconcerned by Fiachra’s absence. “As you say.”
Before I know what’s happening I’m being hauled down from the horse; my body is so stiff that I can barely stand as Gallchobhar ties a noose around my neck with a long length of rope.
When he’s done, he tugs it experimentally and I jerk forward.
Still bound, I cannot prevent the motion.
Too much resistance and the noose will start restricting my airways.
Then Gallchobhar is striding, a leather sack now slung over his shoulder, and I am stumbling helplessly behind him.
It’s not long before I realise that we are heading for Caer áras’s main gate. The defensive wooden platforms overlooking it are crowded, though wisely, the torches up there are few and it is hard to see faces. Less for the men armed with slings and arrows down here to aim at.
Gallchobhar drags me along the main road, lit by fires on either side. Pulling me behind him as if I am a stubborn animal on a lead. He says nothing, neither once glancing back, nor up toward the Caer.
Then he stops. There has been a lull in the assault over the past few minutes, both sides catching their breaths and tending the wounded. Gallchobhar’s massive form commands the eyes of everyone in the area as he finally raises his head toward the gate.
“Do you remember Leathfhear, Rónán?” He bellows it as he yanks me forward, bringing me to my knees at his side, though there is no indication the king is actually up there.
“One of your elite warriors from Loch Traenala.” Laughter at that, from nearby.
“A man who was sent to become nasceann, but instead tried to return with a lie.”
He rummages in the sack he’s been carrying, then holds aloft the silver arm.
The laughter slowly dies. Replaced by darker, far more uneasy looks.
If Lir had been here to confirm I got it from Fornax, it would have been seen as greatly auspicious.
Without him, with only Gallchobhar’s accusation, it will be viewed as nothing less than a deceitful profanity.
Gallchobhar carefully uses the rope around my neck to attach the silver limb by its wrist. Reddish-brown smears mar its surface.
The weight drags down the noose, threatens to do the same to me.
My neck strains, already painful from the stone brooch stabbed into it; I keep myself as straight as possible, placing the weight on my shoulders, but Gallchobhar’s constant tugging me forward keeps making it slip.
“Oh.” He dips again into the sack. “And your friend, the draoi? The one who would have helped with this man’s falsehood?”
He brandishes the staff and Lir’s head, holding the latter by the hair, showing them both clearly in the light of the fires.
Howls of outrage from the walls, now, a hail of arrows falling well short as he smiles broadly. Goading them, and for a few moments I wonder if he might succeed. But the arrows stop, the shouts ease, and the gate remains closed.
“Now,” roars Gallchobhar, turning back to Fiachra’s gathered forces. “Let us show King Rónán what we think of one of his best!”
We begin to walk.
I do not know how long it goes on for. Men and women line the way, and they hurl rotten food and faeces and stones at me.
I become covered in refuse and bruises. The weight of the bloodied silver arm tears at my neck.
And still I am not allowed to stop, to collapse.
I am dragged relentlessly forward through the gauntlet of howls and muck.
Watched by silent eyes from the walls above.
Eventually, finally, it ends; whether because of some signal or because we are simply too far from the Caer’s view for it to matter, I don’t know.
But there are men dumping buckets of water over me, washing the worst of the filth from my hair and eyes, erasing the last of Lir’s blood from the silver around my neck.
And then I am being dragged into a small tent, Gallchobhar setting a guard at the entrance.
Bound and injured as I am, there’s little I can do to resist.
So I lie there. Beaten, frozen, exhausting pain still ricocheting through my head. The sounds of laughter and drinking and war outside, shadows making grim silhouettes on my tent walls against the orange of the flames beyond.
And all I can do is await the dawn.