Noting that Forgall glanced at a sky gone slate with only a puddle of molten red-gold to mark the sun’s passage, Cormac assured him he could wait a while longer for viands. Forgall was on his way up the coast from the capital, he said, to collect men from a little fort just south of Atha Cliath. This troop must then go back down to Carman with him, to train and receive their instructions for the Boruma. Captain of fifty or coichtaigheacht, Forgall said, he was in need of five more… four, with Cormac joining his company.
Carman-on-the-Slaigne, Cormac remembered, was on Leinster’s very northern border, at the estuary of the Slaigne-indeed, Carman’s nearest neighbour was no town, but the isle of Beg-Eri. Munster’s capital of Cashnel was but sixty or so miles west of Carman, and Tara less than a hundred miles to the north. Leinster-Laigen-formed a nearly perfect triangle, perched on one point. Munster and Meath bordered it, and, along the entire eastern coast, the Sea of Eirrin. Atha Cliath was only a bit south of Tara; the fortress Forgall was bound for, then, lay only five or so miles up the coast.
Neither man was interested in anything belonging to the Cruithne, and Cormac’s pack, on his dead horse, was empty. They did gather the weapons of metal the Picts had carried, taken from slain Erainn, men of Eirrin. On a shared whim, with grins, each man took from a dusky corpse a little leather-strung Pictish amulet, black.
Twice Cormac said he would walk; thrice Forgall bade him ride. Taraniseach-Thunderhorse-he said, would carry another fourteen stone without noticing. Though tall, the rangy youth from Connacht weighed hardly so much-and Thunderhorse indeed made no objection to carrying them both. Cormac rode behind Forgall, whose pack was before him, on the base of Thunderhorse’s darkmaned neck. Afoot Forgall was but a couple of inches shorter than his saviour; mounted, Cormac was easily able to see over the other man’s head.
“It’s a youthful terror with a sword ye be, Partha. That bit of mustache looks as though it’s just coming in.” Forgall spoke without turning.
“My height came on me early, but my face-hair is running several years late.”
Cormac/Partha was not about to reveal his extreme youth. Others might make him their butt, and for all he knew Leinster allowed none of his few years on its weaponish rolls.
Forgall but grunted without pursuing the matter. They rode in silence for a time, whilst night closed down over the sea and Eirrin’s eastern coast. Cormac bethought himself of the lies he’d told, of those he must tell. He wondered how long such a life must continue, with him wearing even his very name under a cloak of darkness. Had he realized that it would be a matter of years, his dismay would have been far greater.
He did not give thought to those he’d slain this day. They were Picts, only Picts, the enemies of all men. And he was a weapon-man, a warrior. Soon he’d be a professional, accepting the board and pay of Ulad Ceannselaigh, King over Leinster. A tiny smile drew at the left corner of his mouth, only a little and certainly not disarranging his unlined face. A professional! He squared his shoulders proudly and rode with hands on thighs, rather than hold to Forgall or aught else.
“Ah,” Forgall said of a sudden, and Cormac jerked. “It’s twice I’m after making mention of the Boruma… do you of Ulster know of what I speak, Partha?”
“Aye. None in Eirrin but knows of Leinster’s Burden, Captain.”
It had occurred to Cormac that it might not be his place, his new place, to call a commander of weapon-men by name, and so he called him Fiftychief. He’d have to be mindful of such niceties now; he was no longer son of a rath commander, and no longer in Connacht. He was only Partha, son of Othna; third son of a minor noble of northward Ulahd, or Ulster.
“Ah,” Forgall said again. “And what do men say of Leinster’s Burden, in Ulster?”
“That there be no justice in it,” Cormac said, and he answered truthfully; so men said in Connacht, at any rate. “Whether there was when it was imposed none of us can say, across these three centuries-”
“Nigh four” the Leinsterman snapped.
“But-surely there be no justice in it now.”
“None. And all for a woman!-Two.”
They fell silent again, with the horse named for the ancient thunder-god plodding stolidly through deep twilight. Cormac considered the Boruma, or Boru Tribute, and what he knew of it. He must know such things now; he was of Leinster. He might well soon be fighting because of the Cattle Tribute, Leinster’s Burden… fighting Meathmen, the men of the High-king.
After awhile he said, “I am not of Leinster, Forgall. Tell me of the Boruma, and how it came about when Tuathal and Eochaid lived.”
And Forgall did, as they rode through the cool night.
King Tuathal the Desired of the first century-as the Christians measured time-was sore beset by troubles. There was the usurper, Carbri CinnCait and his son, and his successor who returned from Pict-land, Feredach. Two daughters had Tuathal, though surely he wanted naught but strapping sons. His daughter Dairine he wed to Leinster’s King Eochaid, the way that there was a union of the High-king and Leinster.
“She was a whore, by the blood of the gods!” Forgall said.
That part of the story was new to Cormac. Well, he thought, Leinstermen needed a good reason for what Eochaid did-and mayhap she had been as Forgall said.
“Yet she was the wife of a king and the daughter of the High-king, and Eochaid would not have her slain. Instead, he took her by night to a tower, and there locked her up, and let it out that she had died in her sleep of a fever. And after a time King Eochaid went a-mourning up to Tara.”
All men understood death and the swiftness of its descent on even the most unsuspectingly healthy of mortals. Tuathal understood, Forgall told Cormac, and sympathized with his royal brother-in-law. Indeed, he solaced the southern king by giving him his other daughter, Fithil.
“Strange,” Cormac/Partha said, “that she was not wed to another, by then.”
“She was a harridan,” Forgall said. And he told of how Eochaid, who was a king and knew the benefits of alliance, brought the “harridan” Fithil home to Leinster. And time passed, and one day Fithil discovered her sister, and her still living.
Cormac could understand the horror, the shame and humiliation, the cries of crime most horrible; both were daughters of the High-king, and both alive, and both wed to the same man!
“They died of broken hearts,” Forgall said.
“Just… so? Of broken hearts.”
“Aye,” Forgall said with a most positive air, and Cormac was not minded to question the man. He did wonder how they told the story up on Tara hill…
Somehow Tuathal learned of the crime and the deaths of his daughters: treachery, Forgall said, foul treachery apprised the High-king. Then did the High-king gather together his men and auxiliaries and the members of his clanna and march on Leinster in sore anger and desire for revenge. Indeed Tuathal’s army ravaged the land all the way the capital-where Eochaid humbly submitted. (Rather, Forgall said, than see another Leinsterman slain, for Eochaid wept daily for his murdered countrymen. Cormac said naught, and Forgall could not see his face. Well-it was Forgall’s story.)
Tuathal then levied a crushing annual tribute: The Boruma, or cow-tribute. Nor had Eochaid power to resist, with Tuathal’s army sprawled round about and, as Forgall had it, numerous mothers and children of Leinster as hostages.
Five thousand cows annually, High-king Tuathal demanded of Leinster, and five thousand swine, and five thousand cloaks of good workmanship, and five thousand vessels of good brass, well-wrought, and the final crushing blow: five thousand ounces of silver from the mines of little Leinster.
The fine was to be paid annually, and no period of years was stipulated. Centuries later, the High-king on Tara Hill annually continued to require that awful drain of Leinster. Most often the Boruma had to be gathered by force, with the men of the High-king carrying the bloody sword down into Leinster. Those daughters of Tuathal’s and the crime of Eochaid had given cause to more of Eirrin’s blood-drenched history than aught else. Often the struggle was confined not just to Meath and Leinster, for others entered in because of empathy and alliances, even greed or unmentioned political hopes.