There were less Pictish screams. Armour turned blows. Dusky skin did not.
It was horrible, and the fog drifting, rocking like waves asea, with the sun of late morning striving to burn it away to reveal a plain of red-splattered grass littered with corpses. Was Cas raced after a fleeing Pict, and in doing so was well separated from the others. He came upon a Pictish shaman who stood rigid, eyes closed, lips amove, both hands extended. In passing, Cas took off one of those hands-at the shoulder. Like a deer, Cas sped on for all his weariness, and overtook his prey. He hacked the Pict a red line from shoulders to buttocks, a wound two inches deep. The man sprawled forward. Cas took but two more running steps, and struck, and turned from a headless corpse.
He turned to see fighting men-mostly his companions. The fog was dissipating rapidly now, writhing like a great grey serpent with its deathwound on it. Rather thoughtfully, Cas returned to the shaman, who was also down and writhing, and Cas mac Con created another headless body. And the fog vanished so that the sun blazed on grass that rose green-and scarlet.
It was over by the time Cas reached the surprisingly close-crowded scene of the final battle.
Sixty Picts lay dead or twitching and writhing; those were soon made still. Ten sons of Eirrin lay dead, and another would surely die. Six more were sore wounded and a score bore some wounds beyond scratches. Every man was messy with blood and gore, not his, but thrown by slashing swords and axes.
Panting, sweating men stared about, and saw no Picts save the fallen. Weary or no, the victors’ hearts raced still. That was good; they could not yet rest. Still panting men must needs tend the wounds of others, and collect their dead ere they could make their “march” back to the balance of Conan the Wolfish’s force. They did, straggling on quivery legs, and soon they must move again, to the main army that was composed of the men of both Leinster and Osraige, the tiny kingdom that might have been gathered up and dropped into great Loch Corrib over in Connacht.
Weary men collapsed and slept where they sank. When they awoke it was to the chastisement of veterans, for now it would be harder to do that which they had not done afore: they must see to dented helms, and to the scraping away of blood, that splashed mail might not rust. Too they worked at nicks in their swords-and used feet and muscle to straighten bent blades. Some shields were sundered, or so hacked that they must be replaced. Thus the dead, who had no need of marless bucklers or better spears and axes, aided the living.
A battle was fought. A war remained.
Perhaps the leader of the large band extirpated by Forgall’s force had been that very important one. In that event Cuar mac Con, who had slain him, was a great though dead hero. So was Cas, son of another Con, who lived. And perhaps that leader and that shaman had been all-important. Or perhaps Pictish scouts and leaders had got together and realized that they had taken ghastly lossess on all fronts.
Whatever the reason, scouts soon reported to the Gaelic leaders that the Cruithne were in retreat. The northern and southern forces of Leinster, with men of Osraige, would follow them right across northernmost Munster, to join with the men of that southern kingdom; all shared a hope now of wiping out the flower and more of young Pictish manhood.
They must march on the morrow. Meanwhile they stoked themselves with meat and ale. Soon they sprawled, to gain all the sleep they could. A battle was won. A war remained.
Chapter Fourteen:
On the Mountain of Death
The broad Shannon was born in Connacht, up past Cruachan. It rushed southward, broadening into a mile-wide Loch Ree, emerged from its southern end to form the boundary between Connacht and Meath. On down through northern Munster River Shannon sliced the land, to gain its freedom at last in the Western Sea.
The Picts bad crossed the Shannon at lower Loch Derg, where the lake began to narrow back into the river; the lack of current there eased their crossing. Munstermen had made the crossing from Luimneach-Limerick-just over thirty miles from their capital of Cashel. From thence they had marched but a few miles northward along the Shannon’s boggy western bank, grown up with cotton grass and bog bean, alive with ravens and jays and moorfowl calling among towering birches and spear-straight rushes.
Within a day the Munstermen came upon the Pictish rear-guard.
The battle was fought there on the flood plain, in a flashing glitter of bright steel and flint that splintered armour and bone. Cruithne died and died; some fled toward Shannon and were hunted down amid the hummocks and rushy quagmires of that swampy western shore.
The Gaels owned the Pictish line of retreat; Luimneach controlled the Shannon below. The victorious Munstermen gazed across the river, and their commander announced that they would cross.
Three days later the Pictish rear guard on the eastern shore was annihilated by the same Munsterish force; the Gaels owned both shores. Now too they had the fleet of skinboats with which the invaders had crossed, here at the lower mouth of Loch Derg, where mighty Shannon purled along as slowly as poured honey.
Already Meathish patrols had been trebled along their southern border, just above Loch Derg. Munsterish couriers were dispatched to apprise the Meath’s garrison there of the newest development; their fellows loosed the boats and sent them floating down to be snared by the men of Luimneach.
All men respected and fearfully hated the savage less-than-men; soon Meathmen were ranked deep along every inch of their southern border. Where the border became that dividing Meath and Leinster two garrisons stood like stone sentinels only two hundred yards apart. From one fluttered the pennons of Tara and the High-king; the other displayed Leinster blue. Now those watchful men forgot their never-ending enmity and recent encounter over Boruma. Keeping a far closer watch for the mutual enemy, they exchanged gestures of good-will and humor.
The forces of Leinster and Osraige were driving the Pictish remnant before them, westward across northernmost Munster. Surely the savages would come hurrying to lower Loch Derg, for their boats.
There waited Munster; the Shannon was closed to the retreating invaders and their boats gone; troops from Luimneach and Cashel had marched up to prevent their turning southward. North waited the Meathmen and others from Leinster. The Picts were being driven into a trap. There was no escape, save through ranks of men armed and armoured and armed, too, with terrible determination.
Posting sentries thick as primroses in summer, General Ferdiad an-Airt of Munster settled in to wait. He knew the Picts were coming, and he knew from what direction, and that a Leinsterish army drove the savages like a herd of wild beasts. Hopefully they would be in panicky disarray, and would never know what hit them. If not-they would die anyhow.
Ferdiad the Bear had but to wait. Here would battle be joined. Here would the invaders, surrounded, be slain to a man-if such they might be called. (Indeed, as Ferdiad the Bear had slain none but Cruithne in the fifteen-year career he had begun at age seventeen, it was said of him that he was a general who’d never done death on a man. His sword had drunk only Pictish blood; animal blood.)
Here would’ be broken the back of Pictdom.
Unfortunately, Pictish scouts, ghosting like phantoms, discovered the absence of their boats and the waiting enemy. Those scouts raced back to apprise their leaders, who were fighting as they gave ground, not retreating pell-mell.
Then did dark, squatly powerful aborigines confer, and turn their black eyes on the blue-shimmering rise of the range just inland from Shannon’s bank: Slieve Argait, the Mountain of Silver, so called for its bulging with rich veins of that moon sacred metal.
And the Picts took to the hills. And Ferdiad of Munster cursed for hours.