The Hound of Ulster (19 page)

Then Cuchulain laughed sharp in his throat, and flung his sword away back to the sand behind him. ‘That is enough of blade-play between you and me,' and leapt upon the boy like a mountain cat. And the boy sent his own sword spinning in the same way and sprang on to a low slab of rock near by in the surf that gave surer foothold than the shifting sand; and there they grappled together, each struggling with his bare hands to throw the other, but the boy planted his feet so strongly that they sank deep into the rock—for which reason, that place was called the Strand of the Footprints ever after—
and for all his mighty strength, Cuchulain could not shift him a hair's breadth.

Long and long they fought, as when two mighty stags battle for the lordship of the herd; until at last even they began to weary, their footing grew less firm-gripped to the rock, and suddenly with a cry and a clanging of war gear and a slipping and slithering splash, they went down locked together into the foam-laced shallows. But the boy fell uppermost and his arms were still fast about Cuchulain, and his knee on Cuchulain's chest, holding him down. The Champion was near to drowning, and then, at his final gasp, with fire in his breast and the blood roaring in his ears and his eyes full of a dazzling darkness, he heard, very dimly, a shout from the shore, and something flew humming towards where they threshed about. With a supreme effort he tore one arm free, and reaching out, caught the shaft of a great spear that came like a long tailed fish cleaving the bright boil of water above him; and the instant his hand closed on it, he knew that Laeg had flung him the Gae Bolg. Struggling half over, he drew back his arm and made the death thrust. And he felt—the sick memory on him—how it tore into the boy's belly as it had done into Ferdia's by the ford, and all the shallows about them were red with blood.

‘That is a thing that Skatha never trained me to,' cried the boy. ‘And I am hurt—I am hurt—'

And Cuchulain slipped clear of the slight body and lifted him and laid him across the rock; and so saw on his hand the gold ring that he had given to Aifa, fifteen summers ago.

He gathered the boy in his arms and carried him out of the shallows and laid him down on the white sand before Conor and the Lords of Ulster. ‘Here is Connla my son for you,' he said, grey and cold. ‘There is little enough that Ulster or Ulster's honour has to fear from him now, my Lord the King.'

‘Is that the King?' the boy asked faintly, for the life was still in him.

‘That is Conor Mac Nessa, your kinsman, and the King,' Cuchulain said, kneeling to support him.

‘If I had five years to grow to manhood among your warriors, we would conquer the world, to the very—gates of Rome and—beyond.' And he looked up into his father's face as though already from a long way away. ‘But since the thing is as it is, my father, let you point out to me the famous champions that are here; for often I have thought of the Champions of the Red Branch, and I would see them before I go.'

So one after another the Red Branch Warriors came to kneel beside him and speak their names, and then the boy said, ‘So: my heart is glad that I have seen great men, and it is time that I must be away,' and turned his face against his father's shoulder and cried out once, small and plaintive like a new-born child, and the life was gone from him.

The men of Ulster dug his grave in the coarse grass, under the rest-harrow and frilled yellow sea poppies of the shore, and set up his pillar stone with deep mourning.

That was the second and the last time in all his life that Cuchulain used the Gae Bolg; and the first time he slew his dearest friend with it, and the second time he slew his only son.

FROM THAT TIME
forward, the shadows began to gather about the Hound of Ulster, and with them, unknown to any man, they gathered also for Ulster itself.

And this was the way of it.

Maeve of Connacht had indeed made her seven years' peace with Conor Mac Nessa, after the battle of Garach, but at the same time, in the deepest and fiercest inner chamber of her heart, she vowed the death of Cuchulain for the shame and loss that he had brought on her and on all Connacht, and for Ailell's triumphing over her. And she set to thinking how she might bring her cherished vengeance to flower.

She found the weapons to her hand soon enough, for the widow of the Clan Calatin, whom Cuchulain had slain at the ford, not long after his death, brought forth three daughters.
They were much as their sire had been, hideous, venomous as so many poison-toads, one-eyed, wicked; and seeing them one day squatting in the peat ash at their mother's feet, Maeve knew the unripe evil and the beginning of the unholy skills that were in them. And so she took them from their mother and sent them to learn the arts of magic, not only in Ireland, but in Britain and even as far afield as Babylon, which for divination and spell casting and necromancy was the very heart of the black rose.

They grew swiftly and learned swiftly, not in the way of mortal women, and in seven years they returned to Cruachan grown to their full strength and skill and power, so that even their father would have thought twice before he stood over against them in a duel of witches now. And they bided ready till Maeve should be ready to slip them like she-wolves upon Cuchulain.

Then Maeve called to her all those others who best hated Cuchulain—she had enough to choose from, for a man does not live as the Hound of Ulster lived, and make no enemies. Chief among them was Erc, the High King of Tara, whose father Cairpre Cuchulain had slain in battle long since, and that King of Munster who would have had Emer for his own; and Lugy the son of Curoi of Kerry—that same Curoi who had proved Cuchulain Champion of all Ireland. And the way of Lugy becoming his enemy, who had once been his friend, was this:

Curoi's wife had set her love on Cuchulain, the time that he came into Kerry for his testing, and though she waited patiently for more years than one, the time came when after a bitter quarrel with Curoi her lord, she sent lying word to Cuchulain of how her lord mistreated her, and begging him to come and bring her away from Curoi's D
Å«
n, and telling him that if he
hid with his men in the woods below, he should know when the time to attack the D
Å«
n was come by the sign of the stream that came from it running white. And she made her small blue fire and cut a long black strand of her hair and made a singing magic over it before she gave it to the woman slave who was to carry her word to Cuchulain, to be sure that he would come.

So Cuchulain came with his hearth companions, and hid in the woods; and when the time came that she thought her lord was from home, Blanid milked the three white cows with red ears that were the pride of his heart, and poured their milk into the stream so that it ran white down to the woods where Cuchulain waited.

Then Cuchulain led his war band out of the woods to storm the Dun. But Curoi had suspected something, and returned in secret, so that instead of taking it by surprise, they found warriors armed and ready and Curoi himself in their midst. The fighting was sore and long, but none the less they broke through at last and Curoi was slain and Cuchulain carried away the Queen, Blanid. He had meant to bring her back to Emain Macha, but that was not in her Fate, for Fercartna, Curoi's favourite song maker, went with them, pretending that he also was glad to be free of his lord yet in truth with the hope of avenging him; and he bided his time on the journey, until one evening he found himself near Blanid as she stood on the cliff edge of Beara looking out to sea, and he flung his arms round her and leapt with her over the cliff, so that both together they were dashed to pieces on the sea-washed rocks beneath.

And so it was that Lugy, who had been Cuchulain's friend, carried hatred in his heart towards him, and gladly answered Maeve's summons when it came.

Maeve knew that the Great Weakness of the Ulster warriors
would surely come upon them again as their need for strength grew sorer, and that once again it would be left to Cuchulain to defend the Gap of the North until they recovered. ‘Only,' she said, ‘this time we must have a yet greater war host than we had before,' and she sent Lugy southward to summon the King of Munster, and Erc to rouse out the chief men of Leinster to join them.

Only no one called forth old Fergus Mac Roy, for Maeve said, ‘We shall never make an end of the Hound with Fergus among us,' and instead she bade the daughters of Calatin to put a spell of quietness upon him so that he remained in his D
Å«
n, taking no heed of the world beyond his own hunting runs.

So the war host of the Four Provinces gathered to Cruachan by the Hill of the Lordly Ones, and from there they drove out against the Plains of Bregia and Quelgney.

Word came to Conor that his borders were being harried by the men of Munster and Connacht and all Ireland, but already the Great Weakness was upon him, and all too well he knew that all his warriors must be in the same case, save for Cuchulain who was in his own place at Murthemney. So he called for Levarcham, oldest of the women of Emain Macha, and said, ‘Go you and bring Cuchulain here to me, for it is chiefly against himself that Maeve has again gathered the war host.'

‘And how if he will not come?' grumbled the old woman. ‘He has little enough care for his own skin, that one.'

‘Fool! How should he come, if you are mad enough to speak to him of his own skin? Bid him to come without delay, for Conor the King would have his counsel for the saving of Ulster.'

So old Levarcham went with the King's word to D
Å«
n Dealgan; and at first Cuchulain would not listen to her, but in
the end she prevailed, and he summoned Laeg to yoke the chariot, and while he made ready his war gear, Emer called for her own chariot, and sent the women slaves and the children and the best of the cattle away into the secret glens of Slieve Cuillen where they might be safe; and then with Levarcham they set out for Emain Macha.

When they reached the King's D
Å«
n, the women came out with the harpers and song-makers, who were not subject to the Great Weakness when it struck down the fighting men; and they welcomed them and swept them into the House of the Red Branch, and set them down to feasting and the sweet music of the harp. For Conor had said to them, ‘Cuchulain I leave in your hands, to save him from the hatred of Maeve and the dark power of the Witch Daughters. See that you do not fail me, for if he goes down the strength and prosperity of Ulster go down for ever.'

Meanwhile the war hosts of Ireland had reached Murthemney, and finding Cuchulain gone from D
Å«
n Dealgan, they wasted no time on the place, but the three Witch Daughters flew on the wind to Emain Macha, and set themselves down in the meadow below the Royal D
Å«
n and began to pull up tufts of grass; and by their witch arts, from the grass stems and withered alder leaves and fuzz-balls, they made the semblance of mighty war hosts, so that it seemed to Cuchulain, starting up from the feast-table, that the D
Å«
n was being attacked, and on'all sides were the shouts of battling men and the smoke of burning buildings going up, so that it was all that Emer and those with her could do to hold him back. They cried out to him that it was but the magic of the Daughters of Clan Calatin, seeking to draw him out to his death. Then he looked about him like one rousing from a drugged sleep, and sat down once more, pressing his hands across his forehead. But again
and again the madness leapt upon him and he sprang from his seat, drawing his sword to rush out and fight, and each time it was harder for his friends to hold him back. For three days it went on so, and Cuchulain's mind was confused and darkened by the ceaseless sounds of battle and the music of the harp of the Lordly People that mingled it through and through, so that although part of him believed old Cathbad when he told him that it was witchcraft, and he even seemed to listen when his Druid grandfather said to him, ‘Only bide quiet for a few more days for it is a seven day magic and will burn itself out,' and nodded when they told him that word had gone to Conall of the Victories, who was away receiving the yearly tribute from the Islands, and being out of Ulster might have escaped the Weakness, and that in a few days Conall would have returned to his aid, yet time and again he would leap up, crying the old war cries, and struggle so fiercely to rush out against the phantom host, that the friends who thronged about him and held him back did so at the risk of their lives.

On the fourth morning, Conor roused himself and dragged his pain-wracked wits together, and sent for Cathbad and for Emer and the rest of the women of the Red Branch House, among them Lendabair, the wife of Conall of the Victories, who had some influence with Cuchulain. And he spoke to them urgently, while they stood about his skin-piled sleeping-place. ‘Have you thought how you will keep Cuchulain safe among you yet another day and two more to follow?'