"My love, perhaps you should go with him. This has hit him hard. "
Brander nodded and followed his younger brother, and when he had gone I heard Connor expel his breath in an explosive rush. When I looked at him he was shaking his head.
"I know how hard it hit me, when I found out, " he said. "But Donuil loved the old man even more than we did. I've been dreading this. " He paused. "My father Athol is sorely missed, but even so, things have proceeded swiftly. You and I have to talk, Merlyn. I know you'll have a hundred things to ask of me, and I have half a score of things to talk with you about, but—" He stopped, and turned to face the women apologetically. "But it must be alone. I ask for your understanding in the face of what may seem surliness, Salina, and Tress, but what I have to say is truly for Merlyn's ears alone at this time. What he may choose to do with the information afterwards is his affair, but I must deliver it in confidence. Will you pardon us? Merlyn?" He turned to me again. "Take me to my quarters, if you will. "
It was some time before Connor and I were truly alone. When we arrived at his quarters, four of his men were moving his gear from where it had been piled in the road outside, stowing the chests and boxes neatly against the wall that faced the door. While we waited for them to finish and leave us, Connor hung his cloak on a peg by the door, placed his helmet on the table by the window and began undoing his armour. I helped him with the buckles that were most difficult to reach, then moved two chairs close to the brazier, which had now been alight for long enough to throw out solid heat. A jug of Shelagh's mead had been placed on the table where Connor's helmet lay, and I poured us each a small measure. The news of Athol's death had shaken me and I wanted to drink deep, but I restrained myself, aware that this was one time when I needed to be clear headed, for I suspected much that I was about to hear would be surprising; I could only hope it would not be unpleasant, too.
Connor's men left as I moved to sit down, holding the two cups, and he held the door open for them, thanking them for their services. When they were gone, he closed the door and clumped across to where I sat, scratching his armpit and evidently deep in thought. He took the mead I offered him, then stretched his legs towards the brazier, and sat staring into the flames for a spell, sipping occasionally at the cup.
"Well," he grunted finally, turning his head to look at me, "I imagine your head's in a turmoil. Ask me anything you want."
"No, better for me to listen at this stage, I think. You're the one with all the information. I have matters of my own to discuss with you, but even those may be affected by what you tell me now. What is so urgent that we have to speak of it alone?" I waited, saying nothing, giving him room to think.
"Change... Or changes..." He was thinking aloud, rather than speaking to me, but his voice, and his focus, hardened rapidly, and he launched into a flood of words the like of which I had never heard from him before. "It has been, what, ten years since we first met? Probably more although it seems like less. In that time I've seen more changes than I could ever have thought possible. We've left Eire behind, abandoning our holdings there, and moved our entire people to the north, successfully. So successfully, in fact, that those who choose to stay there now are calling themselves Isles men, and with pride..." He lapsed into silence for a while, then grunted in disgust.
"I wish I could spend all my life at sea, Merlyn, because I'm not suited to deal with stubborn, stupid, discontented people and their changing wishes all the time, and since my father died it seems that's all I've done. Sometimes I wish I had been born a kern with nothing more to worry over than my next good meal or my next bloody fight or even my next belly bump with some wet, willing woman..." He stopped, staring into the fire and picking idly at the hairs of his moustache. "But I was born my father's son, as we all are, and that means I must shoulder my father's burdens...
"Think of what was involved in moving all our folk from Eire, Merlyn! It was a fearsome task, demanding years, a whole lifetime, of effort, and it was my father's life that went into the doing of it. Oh, we all took part, but his was the vision. He was the one who had to face his people and convince them that the land could no longer support them and their neighbours and that wars and famine were unavoidable unless they, his people, did something they had never done before. Then, on top of that, he had to make them believe they could live better lives elsewhere, beyond the home their fathers had created from the forests, beyond their family fields, beyond Eire itself, in a distant land that none of them had ever seen. I tell you, my friend, I could never have done that, had the task been mine. But Athol Mac Iain did it, and then, having lit the flame of hope within their breasts, he brought them there in safety, despite a raging war against far greater numbers than he himself commanded.
"And what then? After it all was done and they were safely moved, many of the ingrates, hundreds strong, looked about them at the islands of their new home and decided he was wrong to have moved them! They could not stay there, they cried. They wanted to return, knowing well that the old place was lost to them and that no life there would be possible. Faugh!"
"They still wish to return, today?"
"No, they've already gone, long since... late last year, five hundred of them, not counting children."
"But how? Were they simply landed there and left to die in their old home?"
He looked at me quickly, frowning. "No, what do you take us for? They landed on the northern coast. They'll build a new home there."
"But what about Condran and his people? That's their territory, is it not?"
"It was." His voice was absolutely flat, and the way he said the two words, and then paused, raised the small hairs on the nape of my neck. Fortunately, his pause was brief, because when he spoke again I discovered I had been holding my breath.
"The Sons of Condran have seen change, as well. Brander's last voyage brought an end to them as any kind of force. He sailed right into their harbour and caught them unprepared, in high summer. He took a great risk in doing it, hazarding everything upon surprising them, but it succeeded. He planned his campaign carefully—drew off their main fleet in pursuit of part of his, and as soon as they had cleared the horizon, he struck at their home base, which lay upriver from the sea, much like our own old base to the south. Condran himself was killed in the early fighting, along with three of his blood sons. That kicked the resistance out of the remaining defenders.
"Brander then destroyed their shipyards systematically, managing to capture half a score of unmanned galleys in the process. He made sure that all their master shipbuilders had been either killed or captured —he knew all their names and paid willing turncoats in the town to betray their whereabouts, and he took pains to identify the corpse of each one who died in the fighting. He wanted to leave no possibility of new war galleys being built there in the time to come. Then he set fire to everything that could be burned, the entire town. When that had been achieved, he left some of our men to occupy the lookout posts in the approaches to the river mouth, to give no hint to the returning enemy galleys of anything being wrong, and he withdrew further down the coast to await the return of the enemy fleet. He attacked it in the river mouth and destroyed it by setting fire to all the galleys he had captured earlier and then driving them into the fleet. It was a crushing victory, final and complete. The Sons of Condran will not emerge from their holes again."
"What happened to the smaller part of Brander's fleet, the ships their main fleet chased?"