“The minstrel?”
“A friend I met.”
“And I?”
“A friend I met. A good friend.”
“A better friend?”
“Greedy Partha! O’course. It’s not the bard for whom I took room and so much food-and mead. Good, isn’t it.”
“It is! It… truth to tell…”
“I know! Me too: lightheaded! Well, it makes kissing easier, doesn’t it?”
It did.
It did again. And even again, and a fourth time. Her mouth was like, chestnuts in winter before the fire; he could not stop with but a taste.
“I was set to hurl something at you,” she said softly, nestling.
“What did I do, dairlin’ girl?”
“It is what you did not, oaf!”
He squeezed her slim waist, and his thumb wandered high. “Oaf, is it?”
“Ah! Oww-no no-dairlin’ boy, Partha, mo chroi… mmm… my dairlin’ boy…”
When he left later he knew that he was indeed a man, and more than mead went to Cormac’s head, and he walked tall and aswagger through Carman, and proved his maleness if not his manhood with his thought: Well, after all, it’s a weapon-man of the king I am, and her but a pedlar’s daughter-who wanted me.
Chapter Nine:
On the Plain of Sorrow
The tramp of men shook the air, mingled with the lowing of kine, the creak of laden waggons, and the occasional whinny of a dray-horse. Northward marched the armed men of Leinster, toward a destination between Ailenn and Atha Cliath, up near the Meathish border. The marching men in their sleeved tunics of Leinster blue comprised a catha, a battle force three thousand strong. With them moved like a number of cattle, and creaking, rattling wain laden with treasure. From other areas of the kingdom other men marched, herding more lowing boru.
Up the Slaigne to its joining with the Bann they tramped, and followed the Bann northward to its source, and still they trekked toward the north.
Och, Leinster! Ochone! O my grief!
All knew that Meathish forces were marching southward to meet them at the border. There would they claim the tribute-under-duress, the bitter legacy of men long, long in the ground and nigh forgotten.
All knew too that messengers had carried strong words from the high house of Ulad of Leinster to that of Lugaid on Tara Hill, and back had come words no less strong. King Ulad had made himself plain. The High-king, he decreed, “in his weening arrogance and desire for ‘tribute’ the reason for which he remembers not, but demands only in greed.” And Meath would not chew so great a slice of Leinster without having to bite it off.
Tradition. Neither Leinster nor Meath wanted war. There would not be war. Yet there must be these demands, the reticence, the annual negotiations, the threats-and finally the pitched battle at the border on Magh na-Broin; the Plain of Sorrow. This, annually, for Leinster’s honour. And sure, was blood that fed honour, time out of mind.
Ulad’s General Fergus Buadach and his two elder sons had ridden up to Ailenn already. There they awaited the troops, slowed both by their baggage and by the animals they accompanied.
The trek north was an easy one. Even the weather was kind to the troop, if the weather of wet, misty Eirrin could ever be said to be kind. To the people they passed they made a great pageant, so that the Blueshirts marched nearly every yard with an audience of russet-clad farmers.
About them the heather was rising, and the bilberry, and fields were sown with grain. Already ferns and low, woody shrubs were renewing themselves, in their annual attempt to impart a nigh-subtropical aspect to much of the Emerald Isle. Clearly visible were the spurs and corries of distant hills. The sky had left off its sullen brooding to smile on eastern Eirrin-and nowhere on all that isle could a man stand and not see hills. Cromlechs and the black of springfires crowned the hilltops, and now and again a druid of the Old Faith or a priest of the New could be seen staring, starlng in silence, knowing the mission of these marching men and wishing it were not so.
Round about children stared, too, close to the shade of thatched rooves from the comers of which hung the stones that, anchored them in place. Tramping men skirted the bogs and swamps that splotched green-gold Eirrin with brown, and smiled at the sweet voice of the cuckoo. On the second day they passed through grass and farmlands, where charlocks and artichokes freely grew, and the needly junipers. valued for their savoury berries and fragrant wood. Wild ducks called, and the order was passed that they were not to be molested, this early in the year.
Truag nuin! Sad evil!
Five thousand kine. Five thousand hogs. A like number of good cloaks and brazen vessels of silver. As to the silver a concession had been made; nevertheless a well-guarded wain carried two hundred pounds. The wealth of Leinster. Ochone!
Northward they bore it, and Cormac mac Art marched brooding as though a Leinsterman born. He thought too of Aine, his flame-lady with her hair like gold and bronze and rowan-berries, those eyes green as grass in May-time under their darkened brows; the taste of her lips, redolent of honey and herbs and her own sweet breath. Cormac brooded, and he mooned.
Truag nuin, heavy-laden Leinster! Ochone and Ochon a righ!
They reached their destination, and already they were sick of cattle and pigs.
Only a camp they had, on Magh na-Broin, where men traded with local citizens and entrepreneurs for food and drink. Within the hour kine and swine were raising a stench. All very well to go forth in armour and armed, mayhap to gain honour, mayhap with the woundy blow or death itself. But to have to nursemaid all these noisy, stinking animals as well… Ochon a righ!
Fergus the Battle-winner called in his commanders and captains for a great conference. Forgall went out from the camp, leaving Bress in command of his Fifty, with his instructions: stay in place; prepare the Coichte as other Fifties were being readied, to meet the enemy. Two men of each Coichte were to remain here, with the drovers and churls, to guard hogs and cows.
Word came then, and it was good. Leinstermen cheered and called Meathmen weak: a last-minute concession by the High-king excused his “brother-king and fellow sons of Eirrin” from the porcine portion of the tribute, and half the measure of silver, already reduced.
With scales and great care, men measured out half the thirty-two hundred ounces of good silver. Then they reloaded, and hogs and wagons moved southward. This lest Lugaid’s mind be changed still again, for in truth ’twas changeable as the winds that blew the clouds overhead so willy-nilly that often the land itself seemed to move.
No man but was glad to see those stinking pigs go.
Bress made his preparations. Bress made his choices. The barber Cond he would leave to mind the camp-and Partha mac Othna. Partha who was Cormac understood what had motivated Bress to such a decision; leaving behind his best fighting man! Cormac chafed… and obeyed without comment, a good and loyal weapon-man of Leinster.
Anger was hot in him nevertheless, and he knew that one day he and Bress the contemner must needs settle this cloud between them. A wonder the arrogant Big-foot hadn’t sent Cormac forward among the foremost men, in hopes he’d be slain.
“Be sure he considered that,” Cond said, as he and Cormac commiserated. “But there is also the possibility that ye might be slaying so many Meathmen it’s a hero ye’d be. That, Partha, would outweigh the other in Bress’s mind.”
Cormac tried not to hope for the death of Bress mac Keth.
And so the troops marched out, less than a hundred having set out back toward Carman with the pigs and silver. A hundred and forty-eight remained with the herdsmen. A hundred and forty-eight weapon-men become cowherds.