A moving shape appeared in the distance, like a shape cut out of night, and that shape became two riders, one tending northward and one coming straight toward them, smaller than the other and less dire—it seemed no more than a pony, running silently amid the wind and the lightning, its shaggy coat and mane aprick with points of light as if marsh-fire had settled there, and light glowed on the bright, bowed head of the rider slumped across his shoulders.
"Domhnull," Ciaran murmured, and louder: "Domhnull, Domhnull!" —with his hand upon the stone and running now, half in faery, to reach the pony. The hounds of lord Death coursed about it, a tide of darkness: the pony threw its head and shied, and for a moment there was mist about them, and whirling shapes wind-car ried.
"My lord!" Beorc cried, and reached him, as the winds turned watery, sluicing them with rain. The world had shadowed, the clouds had gone to greenish murk shot through with lightning and rumbling with thunderclaps that shook the ground. "Lord, stay—the men of Damh—"
He shook off Beorc's hand, running and wiping the water from his eyes, sodden with it, searched among the gorse and brambles and found a body lying, bright hair darkened with rain and twilight, in soaked clothing better suited to some hall; and that torn and stained with blood the water sought to purge. "Domhnull," Ciaran said, sinking to his knees. "O Domhnull."
Beorc likewise knelt and turned Domhnull over, his face to the rain, white and stark in the lightning; but breath stirred and one hand moved as if he would fend the flashes off him.
"Domhnull," Beorc said above the rush of water. The lightning flashed again. Pale flesh shone through the shreds of his garments, and Beorc rested his hand on Domhnull's side, on pale new scars. "A month or more healed—o gods, what could have done this?"
"The Sidhe," Ciaran murmured, shivering in the rain. "He has been with the Sidhe." He took Domhnull's cold face between his hands and wished upon the stone. "Domhnull, Domhnull, Domhnull, hear me."
The eyes opened, bruised and vague, blinking in the rain. "Lord," he murmured, "cousin, I fell—the dogs, the dogs—"
"Hush, be still. You fell from the pony. But the dogs are gone."
"Lord," said Beorc, "let us get him behind our lines."
"They are dead," Domhnull murmured, "the others,"—but Ciaran took this without question, and worked with Beorc to gather him up between them, his chilled arms locked with theirs. Domhnull tried to walk, limping as he did, and kept talking as he went, of treachery and dark and shadow, of murder and the lord of Donn, but this Ciaran had already begun to know—long since, that all his hopes were fallen, and he had sent good men to their deaths.
"At least I have you back," he said to Domhnull when they had lain him in warm dry blankets in such shelter as they had. "You must rest now." But he had seen the scars, the dreadful marks on him in the lightning.
"Go home," Beorc said gripping his arm, making him listen. "You would see them return, you said. Now you have got back all. There are no more. What more is there to do—what hope here?"
"None. None here. I shall go home." Ciaran stared into the dark with the rain trickling down his neck. "I shall withdraw all the forces but what can keep the Bradhaeth in its place. And Damh. We shall more watch than fight. My brother has answered me, I understand that well enough." Breath was short in him. He caught another, that pained him like the stone, and his eyes burned in the rain. "I shall go home."
A moment's silence. Then Beorc left him.
He shivered, flinching at the thunder. The rain in the puddles gave back the lightning where horses had churned the ground and rain smoothed it again in pock-marked sheets. Arafel, was I wise? I think that I was not. O gods, answer me. Arafel!
Domhnull slept, sometimes, clinging to the neck of the pony they had gotten for him, a farmer's elderly beast with a placid, rolling gait. Sometimes he dreamed that it strode the winds or trod on mist, swift-footed and magical, but in the intervals of his waking he found an ordinary pony and plain dalelands mire squelching about its muddy hooves, so that he grew confused, whether the other had ever been, or whether the horror that had happened to him had ever happened at all.
But now and again Ciaran rode by him, and then he would speak disjointedly the things that he recalled, knowing that he was making a muddle of them and trying to pull them into order—of Caer Donn, of Donnchadh, of Boc and the others.
"Did Donnchadh do this to you?" Ciaran asked, and there was anger in his voice. And at last: "Domhnull, give me your hand, give it me."
He gave it or yielded it, one, across the gap between them; and then a kind of strength flowed into him, surcease of misery. They had gone somewhere together, he and his lord, and it was gray and full of mist. He was sitting—somewhere, on the grass, it seemed; and his lord was sitting by him on some higher place gazing down at him— but a Ciaran strangely changed, whose brow was smooth, whose fairness burned like the sun in this shadow, whose eyes compelled the truth as he questioned him, this, this, and this, and he answered as he must.
He is like a king, thought Domhnull, surprised to think it. And if the land had had him for King and not Laochailan, then none of this grief would have happened.
He remembered other things, the Sidhe, the darkness: he told it, remembering now.
"Stay," his lord told him, and rose up from where he sat and tried to go further into the mist. It seemed he sought something, but the mist was everywhere concealing it.
"Lord," Domhnull cried, getting up from where he sat, fearing to be left behind. He tried to follow after him, but he had not the strength, and small twisted things writhed out of the mist to draw him down into the depths with them.
Of a sudden his cheek was against the pony's rough neck, his wounds paining him with a dull ache, and when he struggled to sit his lord was riding safely knee to knee beside him.
"You will fall," Ciaran said quietly. "Don't try to sit up."
He paid no heed to this, riding for a time with his hands on the pony's withers. Beorc came to his other side.
"He has come back to us” Beorc said.
"Aye," said Ciaran. "Domhnull—don't fret yourself. We are bound for home now, well inside our lands. Rest."
There were armed men about them, more troops than they had begun with; but he let that confusion pass. He felt of his wounds and found scars instead, and bone well knit, if aching. The wounds had stopped bleeding and hurting while the Sidhe had held him in her arms. He had come home, revenant among the living. He had gath ered things instead of his youth—wariness and toughness. But he had been outside the safe world and came back meshed in Eald so thoroughly he drew shreds of it with him into daylight, to haunt his waking. He had the memory when he shut his eyes of that hurtling fall past rocks and branches, that long, long tumbling in the air and the shock of landing that was no bodily pain, but a shattering slip page between life and dream.
Arafel, the voice had called her name. He recalled her bleeding light and strength into the gale like a candle that must soon fail. Arafel. The Gruagach, and the Horseman.
The wind blew cold on his face, on the tracks of tears. Something bumped his knee persistently and someone drew a cloak about him and touched his shoulder after. A face lingered in his vision, hair and beard like blowing fire.
"Beorc. I fare well enough."
"That you do, cousin. But let me take you up. Old Blaze can carry double."