Scotland's Great King Arthur Sword in the Stone Epic The Sword of the Western Seas Chapter IV: Seaside Days
Here you all are
Shout out to
for his hopes for Arthurian epics and to also for writing similar stories to the former.******
Autumn was a time when rain began to pour down upon the islands of the Western Seas with ever growing melancholy among the people. Few were the songs that people sang on such damp, drab days that populated the rainy season. Yet one of the songs that were sung was that of the great Wolfram warrior who was said to have rescued the southern town of Igraith. Dáire was his name and he was a warrior who was said to have been raised in the lands of Balkrenia far, far away to the east on the island of Bretwealda. A warrior who had lost his family to the invading Svartálfar he was to be raised by his kinsmen who raised him to fight against the Svartálfar. It was he who was said to have a generation before the arrival of Cormac sought to rally the people of Bretwealda. He was of the line of Griogair, the dynasty that was by right the ruling Wolframs of Bretwealda, and therefore of a nobler characteristic and nature than most people could imagine. The song itself had arrived west many centuries before and was one that the local people sang if in slightly more subdued tones than they might otherwise have done.
Their ordinary enthusiasm for it was rooted in how the song was also called the Hymn of Gwermaen. The fortress had been one of those that Roparzh King had built many centuries before the Wars of Darkness, and it was this fortress that served as something of a bastion to the northern people who lived just south of the Highlands. Therefore a great many of the people of the island had fled there in the hopes that they might find safety. Most had suffered losses, pains and torments unimaginable event to those miserable of inhabitants of the fair island of Kull! Year after year the depredations had sunk their once beauteous island into the mire, until none could remember a time when it had not been so.
They had for this reason fled there, and had prayed for a protector. It was for this reason that moved by the suffering of those of the island, even those who had long since opposed his own people the hero Dáire had hurried forward to come to the rescue of the people, fighting through the tide of Dark Elves. His heroics had seen him pincer between the men of the great fortress that belonged to one of the only claimants left to the throne of Roparzh King, who it was that had arisen to the rallying cry of the Wolfram warrior. Together they had slaughtered the invaders and might well have rejoiced, were it not for how the warrior-laird had fallen in the battle and Dáire was injured. The Svartálfar had soon received reinforcements while the Wolf-Men took refuge behind the fortress’ walls.
The song therefore was that of the great siege, and the manner in which the Wolfram had endured all that could be endured for the people of the island, ere he charged the enemy. It was a song that a great many remembered singing as children, so that now they sang it with their sons’ on their boats while the rain poured down with all the fury and wrath of a beast unchained.
“Behind green stones,
In their ancestors’ homes
They hid,
Fearful that all wouldst bid
Farewell to flesh and love,
Nervous as doves,
Bright as a star,
Rode Dáire the Wolf,
Eager for war,
Dressed not in wool
But hauberk, his mane
Black as midnight,
Great was his fame,
Sword uprais’d and bright,
Dark were the fallen Elves,
Deep into the keep walls,
They didst delve,
Arms and siege craft both fell,
Behind green stones,
In their ancestors’ homes
They hid,
Fearful that all wouldst bid
Farewell to flesh and love,
Nervous as doves,
From o’er the hills,
Rode Dáire the Wolf,
Spear long and blade tipped
Upwards that he rebuff,
Darken folks from those hills,
Bright as a star in heaven,
Unrivall’d under the suns’,
Swift as an eagle was his spear-thrust,
And true as any son’s
Virtue, he spill’d untrue men’s blood!”
“Simply glorious!” Artuir burst out, thinking it his duty to revive the spirits of all those present as he looked all about him. Though he had felt lonely and unhappy since his father had departed, he had promised himself that he would do his utmost to prove himself a worthy heir to his beloved sire.
Those around him smiled tightly. Few if any could quite bring themselves to take to the song with the same joy, and enthusiasm as he could. It was thus, with more than a little unhappiness that they joined in the singing of it.
It was during this time, the time when months had begun to pass them by that the first whispers began to be made of the dire fate that had visited itself upon the men who had gone away whither to the north. They might, some whispered among themselves have been devoured by a Carcolh, who was said to take a full year to digest people and have tendrils that grabbed at people that it might pull them deep underground. Or mayhap he had been captured by the Dwarf-King Zwergonir who was said to still dwell deep within the confines of the mountains of Bretwealda. Quite how a Dwarf could well have survived for nigh on a millennia was not really known to the people of Kull for millennia old was liable to be the age that the King would find himself if he were still alive.
If most were full of despair some strove to restore the spirits of those all around them, those such as Artuir remained determined to stay hopeful for the future. His friends might lose heart and might well cease believing that their fathers or brothers would return, but he would not.
Hope he had discovered early in his life was not something that nurtured itself, or so he was prone to saying, “It requires much in the way of watering and caring for.”
Most had taken his words seriously in younger days when he would mutter this phrase to any who cared to listen to them, yet now all regarded his words with either pity or derision. It was a mixture of these emotions that caused Hòmair to one day burst out as they sailed near Ailpin’s ship after Hòmair had complained of missing Ailpin. “Wherever did you discover this notion about hope young Master?”
“Sgiathgorm told me this proverb that has been passed down through her family for a great many generations,” Artuir explained with a shrug of his small shoulders.
“I have never seen Sgiathgorm,” Hòmair replied quietly.
“Because you have not paid attention to her and her people,” Artuir replied, “She will only visit with those who wish to see her.”
It was with more than a little confusion that the fisherman asked of him, “If such is how it is, does that not mean I should already have seen her?”
“Bah you do not understand,” Artuir grunted sharply as he shook his head as though the other man were particularly slow, and a child and he the adult. “You choose not to see her, just as I choose to see her.”
“I do not understand.”
“That is precisely what I just stated!”
Hòmair opened his mouth to speak up once more, and repeat how he could not follow the youth’s line of thought when he was suddenly interrupted by Ràild. “Oy the two of ye best not be wasting time there doing little more than chattering about fairies again! I will have ye know that there are more important things than they at present, especially as we have fish to catch!”
“Aye, Ràild,” both younger males agreed at once, neither of them keen to draw out more of the old man’s ire.
“Bah, ye are incorrigible,” growled Ràild full of impatience and anger.
Neither of the youths could quite understand the source of his ill-mood. Not that Artuir was at all interested in the inflexible old man’s sour humours. His dreamy eyes going to the waters below he could not resist beginning to whistle in the manner his father had shown him.
Life thus resumed as though naught had changed. Only the absence of sixty or so men served as a noticeable metamorphosis or sign of decline. And decline this was regarded as, since most of the men who had left were among Kiernan’s finest warriors.
This then was the cause for why where they might otherwise have greeted the sails that appeared on the horizon with considerable joy, this year they regarded those of the Island of Ervan with little more than sullen disinterest. The island in question was one of those nearest to the Emerald Isle, and was the source of some of the finest mead in the region and wool. A moderately well sized island it was overrun by sheep and beehives which were used to produce the honey the village there of the same name depended upon to make their mead. Positioned perfectly between a number of islands Ériu, it was a popular anchor-spot for ships coming and going throughout the Gerwruan Straits.
The people had used their natural advantages of geography and natural wealth to allow them to buy lumber from nearby Ériu so that they had also become natural sailors. Their strength as go-betweens among the islanders and their affable natures had it was rumoured even succeeded in helping them to craft distant ties with the people of the lands on North-Agenor and among the Romalians who ruled over the south-lands of Bretwealda.
The fact that Artuir was back to work under the watchful eye not of Ailpin, but that of the fisherman’s father and good-son was something that greatly pleased him. The former was as severe as always, where the latter was stumbling about, and constantly squealing out excuses or apologies. It was a source of great irritation to Ràild who became ever more aggravated the more the younger man apologized. This was how Artuir liked things; to be hard at work on Ailpin or Hòmair’s ships. So eager was he to contribute to the catching of fish was always something that worked to soften the likes of Ràild, who grunted that the lad was doing good work.
The three of them just as with the other dozens of ships out at sea were, set to work pulling in what fish they could to feed the largest village in the whole of those islands nearest to Bretwealda. This pleased the likes of Hòmair who was to work with a greater deal of confidence and joy thereafter. Part of him had after all fretted after the child, more than he had after himself.
It was when the day drifted to an end that Artuir was to glance up from the nets and the other tasks he had been assigned on the ship, to find his stepmother waiting for him by the shore.
“You must go home with her,” Ràild instructed sternly, and when the child went to protest he growled, “Not a word to the contrary lad! She is now thy mother so you will do as you are told, and stay with her as is proper.”
“She is not my mother,” Artuir protested no less sternly.
The old man exasperated hissed, “No matter, she is now.”
The lad might well have persisted in arguing on this point if it were not for the ship’s sails suddenly catching a great gust of wind that sent the ship forward thither to the coast. Falling over he was reminded to hold fast to the rigging in the future.
Cursing beneath his breath, the youth was to be pulled back to his feet not long thereafter, wherefore he was to against his will do as he was bidden. It was not as though he could resist them, if none of them would take him in for the night.
The lady Seònaid herself greeted him with more than a little enthusiasm, smiling wanly at him, “I have begun making thy favourite Artuir; heron and beef stew, mixed with potatoes and with carrots and onions thrown in. I do hope you will like it.”
“Bah, mayhaps,” he grunted only somewhat mollified by her offer of his favourite meal.
That most of the village had carried on with their lives and gone home, with the likes of Artuir and his stepmother largely ignored as they returned home together. Neither one of the two speaking up against or to one another, with the young woman eager to do just that, he noticed. Troubled by this and by her attempt to become friends of sorts with him Artuir was to bite his tongue to keep from lashing out at her once more.
He had no wish to like her, nor did he have any wish to make her sob and thus attract more criticism from the other people of Kiernan. None of them could possibly ever comprehend how it felt he told himself, for they had mothers and fathers that were present at all times. They had not been asked to replace the absence of one, with a kind of bronze statue. This was how he regarded Seònaid; as a kind of statue that had been installed in his home with the intention of replacing the hole in his life.
He had already come to prefer, he told himself often enough on those days when he was left alone, the lady Sgiathgorm as a kind of surrogate mother. She had at least treated him better than any other lady, and had not suddenly appeared it seemed to take his father away, as had Seònaid.
“Fine, but I do not much want to speak with you,” Artuir told her sharply, pouting as he followed after her.
“Of course,” Seònaid replied more than a little hurt by his rejection of her.
Watching her, he had to cast aside his gaze lest he feel all the worse. He did not wish to pity her.
The meal that they ate that night was one of the quietest that the ordinarily ebullient Artuir had ever enjoyed. So that in this way he was to show a colder side of his person than he had hoped to, so that he missed more than ever before his father.
It was with a start as he cleaned his plate and goblet that he was to make for his bed full of hay and blankets that he realized how badly he missed his father. Repressing a sniffle, he was to force himself to turn about and fall sleep. Not far away in the other room, Seònaid prayed for quite some time for the precipitous return of her husband.
She did not know how much longer she could endure Artuir’s hostility, and the coldness of her bed in the kitchen where she had decided to settle herself so as to not instigate his temper any more than she already had. As she slept it was after having wept ever so slightly. If her waking hours were unpleasant, her dreams gave her some sort of comfort in the form of Adomnan.
*****
Night must always fade. Always and since ages long forgotten it has always vanished with the wind, and with the fall of the moon that the suns might rise. Twilight must inevitably give way to the dawn. The same must be said of bad times as Seònaid was soon to discover, just as Artuir soon did.
The ill times as represented by the previous day were to be cast aside thanks entirely to the likes of Raonaid who was to be found as always thereupon the shore in the early hours as always. Her presence there one that served to soothe the concerns of the young lad as it had before.
Forgetting their previous quarrel, Artuir was to take his place by her side without a word, which startled her. “Artuir! You ought to be asleep still.”
“Bah, why should I sleep more than I need to?” Artuir replied quietly, with a snort.
“Because, Artuir it is early.”
“No earlier than when we met a few days prior.”
Raonaid huffed a little, of a mind to swat at him. Likely he would only take it as a game of some sort. Once more she was ignored while the blond haired child stared at the distant sunrise. Soon all the lands of the Western Isles were tinged with pink, orange and crimson. The great trees still half-covered in darkness began to cede ever more ground to the suns. It also happened that as the two children sat near to the south-eastern shore of Kiernan they saw a number of birds take flight.
The vision of a great many birds taking flight as dusk metamorphosed into dawn drew a great gasp of aw from Raonaid.
She could never quite grasp how it was that the two might quarrel one day, only to make peace just as the suns were rising or setting. Her father had long considered her habit to slip out to the southern coast where east met west to stare out east one of her strangest habits. He once said that, “All ills are forgotten as the suns rise precisely because the suns are doing what all wish they might do; heal the ills cast by the night and the prior day.”
It was a sentiment that Raonaid had long pondered over, and while she had initially disagreed with him, she now wondered if there was wisdom in his words. Artuir for his part, she imagined might disagree with them.
Curious as to his perspective on it, she was to ask him so that he to her surprise shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose, but how can the suns heal the ills of the world? The ills remain and the suns by themselves have no great power beyond giving us warmth and light.”
“Is that not a gift in and of itself Artuir?” She asked him with a small smile on her lips.
“I suppose,” Artuir replied in the sort of voice that indicated he had not thought about such a thing before, hitherto then. “Should I have concerned myself with such musings?”
“Perhaps, but what sort of musings have in the past occupied you when you look out to the east to the rising suns?” Raonaid asked of him impatiently.
Artuir looked from her to the distant spheres to the east of them. He pondered them, and how their light struck all the craggy rocks. Some of those stones that were to be found in the middle of the seas were ones that he had painted little images upon as a child with his father. They had stopped doing so two years prior, when they had nearly hit some of the rocks with their ship when the seas became too difficult to manage.
The memory of those times, of painting dragons and sea-monsters and Elves with his father brought a smile to Artuir’s lips. At that moment, though he did not say a way, nor did he do more than look out east Raonaid was struck by a moment of realization. That of what sort of man Artuir would someday be, and it made her stare at him as his face became even more golden and orange from the radiance of the suns’ than it previously was. The vision she saw was of a man bearded, laughing and always with flashing blue eyes and a stolid figure and nature.
It was just for a moment… and it served to inspire and move the young woman as nothing else in recent memory had or could.
The momentary glimpse of what Artuir might someday be was broken when the lad suddenly leapt up to his feet again having seated himself but briefly, he surprised her. “Sgiathgorm! It is just a little past sunrise I must see her to report to her what has happened in recent days! Take care Raonaid, I am away!”
“What? But later, what of dinner will you join us to-night?” Raonaid cried out only for him to wave his head behind him, without answering her question. Cursing him, she very nearly gave chase before she remembered her duties to her grandfather and other kindred. “Someday that lad will learn some measure of duty!”
“Raonaid! Raonaid!” Ràild shouted from some distance away, within the village, “Whither have you gone you fool lass, lest I beat some sense into thee for forgetting thine duties!”
*****
Many of the children had come to avoid in recent days the forest to the south of the village. They would not visit it on account that they had a great many more duties in recent days. Winter might soon be upon them, and the villagers feared they may not have enough food to survive it, should the snows be as fierce and plentiful as they were two years prior. At that time, they had been blessed with an over-abundant of sheep however their herds had not yet recovered from that time.
Even Artuir was put to work helping with the herds one day, and then with the boats the next one. There was thus good reason he knew for why others did not come out to join him in the forest after the suns’ had begun their descent. He himself knew better than most that Sgiathgorm was not as well known to others as she was to him for some reason. Some could not see her, where others such as Tasgall had little in the way of difficulty. The reason for the difficulty some had was because they had lost their faith in her, not that Artuir properly understood what was meant by this statement.
He could not stop believing in what he could see with his own two eyes. But his gaze and very being were not ordinary or considered such in the eyes of a great many. His eyes seemed almost aglow with their own supernatural light, and his being radiated with a kind of energy that was not unlike that of the sorcerer Dubhghall.
Dubhghall had once been an inhabitant of the village more than twenty-five years prior. A young man at the time, he had just before he turned middle-aged begun to chaff at life in the village so that he had departed before his thirty-fifth birthday. He had of course never returned, though his father Conall, had spent the past twenty-five years awaiting his return. That Dubhghall might never return had never crossed the old man’s mind, though most in the village knew it to be unlikely as all knew that sorcerers once they received the invitation to the Tower of Auguria rarely if ever returned. The Trials which all sorcerers had to face were ones in which most men perished in so that this had done more to keep the numbers of the Order low, more than any other cause.
“Bah what do they know of the forest, of old Anabla, and of the mysteries of the forest?” Artuir asked of himself, irritated to find himself alone again after dark. Despite his solitary nature he did indeed greatly love the company of the great fairy Queen. He loved her above all other women and almost fancied her to be a mother figure to him.
In many ways, he mused quietly to himself he almost wished that she might well be his mother though he knew in his heart that she was not.
The forest green as always and bustling with life, with rodents that burst forth from their holes, foxes that also poked their heads out curiously, their eyes wandering everywhere in search of their next meal. Others may well have judged them but not the local birches, aspen and oak trees and all the rest of their race for they could not truly think anything. They were trees after all. It was however to be other animals that judged them most harshly on account of the fact that many of them did not much like foxes, as they were among the more ferocious of hunters in that forest. There were few wolves therein those days, and still fewer bears with both of those animals to become ever more common in the days that followed after those of Artuir’s childhood.
It was as he wandered through the woodlands that he first heard the song erupt throughout it with a great many of the local animals hurrying away to hide once more. Quite why, was always a mystery to him.
“Come one, come all,
That you might draw hither,
From over yonder,
Do hurry before the fall
Is upon us, and do linger,
For she of the many lily-petals and wings,
Will come along and dost fling
Herself from top branches
Down to lowly roots,
She whom as men do dost rant,
And may well mock ye fools,
Anabla she is named,
She of great deal of fame,
And hast ne’er been lamed,
As her father was ere he was unmade,
Beauteous her petals, shimmering as the dawn,
Do not yawn,
For she will not fawn
But rather trick thee, and reduce ye all to a fawn,
Here she be Queen from dawn
To dusk, and not at all worn
Art her wings, or her wit so do not be a thorn,
Else ye shalt rue and forever mourn
This day, this we guarantee at dusk as in the morn!”
When the song had reached its end the diminutive fairy appeared. She flew down amidst a hail of flower petals, with Artuir waiting impatiently through the small storm of lily petals all whilst he ignored the hundreds of singing voices all about him. From each flower, each leaf it seemed that the fey folk arose from, with the likes of their Queen descending from the summit of Grandfather Oak. It was thus with more than a little impatience that he seated himself upon a root that stretched out from the ground, and that was as solid as the rest of the great Oak.
The song he heard then was that of the Fairy-Queen Sgiathgorm. It was a song that called to the young lad and that he had heard a thousand or perhaps ten thousand times. The song was that which the Fairy-Queen had composed once upon a time in her father’s honour not long after he had been struck dead in the First Wars of Darkness.
“Strong of arms,
And fierce of mien
He was, and great was the harm
He didst bring to many men,
Yet ne’er did he give sway,
In night or day,
To the temptation to inflict undue harm,
O how he brought joy,
And how he fill’d many with alloy,
Just as he didst avoid
Their darts, as he did shout ‘a-hoy’!
To one and all, as he didst employ
Many a ploy
That he might toy
With them, one and all and deny them joy!
Mighty was Coirebhàn White-Petal,
Who left with Horas, whom he loved,
Terrible was this love! For it was quite fatal!
How he could leave his Anabla, beloved
Of the forest, leaving her little more than her petals,
What a wrong it was that he revered
A son of Man, more than his own daughter!
Day after day she await’d him,
Until each day grew slim
And went away! If ever she saw him
The one they call Horas the Grim,
She would make him rue the day,
And make him go away, away!
For what he took from her!”
Many were the centuries she had watched over the people of the isle of Kull, and many more she expected to do so. Hers had in the past been a benevolent sort of watch, which had begun to twist in recent centuries as was the wont of many of her fey-people. The daughter of Coirebhàn, one of the mightiest of all the fay that had ever inhabited the greatest of the Western-Isles. It was he that had once upon a time acted as teacher to Horas, and had guided the youth in the art of the blade ere he had counselled him that he should depart for the Lairdly-Isle, to assist the noble Cormac and kingly Roparzh against the forces that sought to crush beneath their heel all who lived thereupon it.
Coirebhàn had ruled wisely and had even in time after terrible nightmares after his charge had left, chosen to leave to assist his friend. It was he who had arrived to the rescue with a number of his people in the battle of Nordgyle near the end of the Wars of Darkness. Many of the fairies of Kull had perished that day, with their song still sung in many parts of Bretwealda and even Ériu.
It was a song that Artuir himself had sung a great many times. It was one that Anabla dearly loved even as it filled her every time she heard it with grief immeasurable. It was a song that had been sung by the few fairies that had returned west from the war.
This was the song that had once inspired him, and once filled him with delight whenever he had the joy of visiting with the Fairy-Queen. However in recent days, his enthusiasm for the fine lyrical music of the fairies of Ervinwoods had begun to abate.
His misery over his father’s departure and at being left alone began to fade now that he was in her presence in spite of his lack of enthusiasm at that moment for music. He had endured the loneliness, the misery of not being able to join his father in rescuing Seathan as he had hoped to do as best he could.
Pleased to be in her company, Artuir sat back down once more, his eyes fixed on the lovely glowing gaze of Sgiathgorm who stared back with growing consternation as he finished his story.
“Did you truly speak to thine stepmother so?” Sgiathgorm asked of the lad when she had at last come to seat herself upon a nearby upraised root of Grandfather Oak. “I do not think it wise to carry on making an enemy of that stepmother of yours. She has done naught save seek to please thy father, therefore to anger her might well anger him.”
“Bah,” Artuir growled annoyed, “Why must you take her side in this matter?”
“Regardless you ought to obey her.”
“Yet I do not like her!”
“Oh do not be so obstinate, for victory comes only to the temperate,” she counselled him impatiently, no longer amused by his obtuse nature.
“Because, you are a child and that of my friend,” Sgiathgorm declared irritably, speaking for the first time to his astonishment, “I know your mother and would not have you become other than how she might like.”
Stunned Artuir struggled for words. He wished to object yet struggled for words, on account of the fact that he had not foreseen that the ancient Queen of the Fay might well turn on him. He stared at her for some time, also surprised due to how it was only the second time in his memory that she had ever referenced his mother. “You know mother? That woman Ackren from the festival?”
“I do not know if she is thy mother, however my duty is to the betterment of her interests in return for- well I should think it best if you were to make peace with that woman, Seònaid,” Sgiathgorm counselled wearily.
She was to leap into the air as he regained his feet abruptly and with an angry expression on his face. Never one to lash out at her, for he well knew that the fairy-queen was dangerous and not to be treated without a certain caution he could not truly bring himself to accept her words.
When at last he spoke once more, it was in a voice thick with hurt and fury, as he ignored the beauty of the many spruce, birches and aspens and oaks all about him. “Mayhaps, Sgiathgorm you might prove yourself able to overlook such a thing but I cannot!”
“Do think sensibly about this, for by the goddess Dis,” Sgiathgorm spluttered speaking in rhyme for the first time that day. Shaking with agitation her lilting musical voice that could have enchanted a hydra, burst out, “Naught wrong was done to thee, and such the burden of sorrow that it weighs, even the mightiest of heroes of old this I tell thee!”
Artuir would not listen and in that hour impulsively as was his way tore himself apart from her. Embolden by the passion that had overtaken him, he without first bowing his head as was customary when in the presence of the fairy Queen threw himself out of the forest.
Many were the days when he would do that upon arrival or departure. This was the formal manner of things and how men were meant to comport themselves before her. That he did not do so then and would not do so thereafter was a grave affront to her dignity.
Never again would she pardon him his many outbursts, tolerate his rebellion against her. While he might have found temporary solace from her presence, he was to later rue this day for he had made at that moment a terrible, life-long enemy.
*****
It was the following day as the suns arose to bask the mountains and the hills, and the forests and the sea in their glory that Artuir was to slip out of the small house. He might well have sought out Raonaid at any other time, but eager to find his male friends he went in search of them. Most of them were preoccupied with other duties as always, so that he was to find in spite of the early hours that none of them could possibly spare him the time.
This made the youth quite a bit more miserable and frustrated than any other man or child on the isle that is until Hòmair found him thereupon the shore, kicking at the sand and looking longingly at some of the boats. Newly awakened, the young man was to attempt to scare the child by leaping at him with a battle cry.
The only response from the people around him was to ignore him as always but not Hòmair who as always was given the thankless task of managing him. Exasperated by this time, for he had hoped to have a more restful morning that he might have quite a bit more energy later in the day to see to enjoying the company of his beloved wife, Catriona, Hòmair was to ask after Artuir.
“Bah, it hardly matters,” Artuir complained with a pout, “All that I have striven for hardly matters. Sgiathgorm will not take my side, Raonaid is resolved to also take the side of Seònaid and father is still gone. It hardly matters what I say or attempt, the sea continues to stretch on forever and forever.”
Pity welling up in him, Hòmair murmured, “Oh I see, well Artuir thou could rest easy for I am on thy side if there be such a thing in this moment.”
“Truly?” Artuir asked a hint of scepticism in his voice.
“Aye! But of course!”
“And if I say that I detest Seònaid and wish she was gone, what would you say? Yea or nay?”
Hòmair hesitated. He did not know how to answer. How could he? This was not a matter for him to decide and did not truly involve him, he thought. He was always eager to follow Artuir wherever he wished the lad was perhaps the most amusing and interesting of all the people of Kull.
Eager or not, he was the one who was to say, “I would say to thee that it is not right Artuir, you are destined for true greatness and have had greatness thrust upon thee. This I know, just as I know the suns will rise in the east, and set in the west and know that it is only through the support of thine father and new mother that you may become all that you were meant to be.”
This was not the answer that Artuir had hoped for, and yet it was one that he could not quite rebel against as he had all other words uttered by those others he knew of the village. Frustrated he could only nod his head and bow before the young man’s words. Hòmair for his part reached over to ruffle his curly locks, which won him a scowl and then a reluctant smile from the lad.
“Do not attempt to grow old too soon Artuir!” Hòmair said with a great big chuckle, “The world has need still of a young Artuir!”
“Oh do be quiet; I intend to grow up as quick as I can, and to be as mighty as possible!” Artuir snapped though there was no real bite to his voice and it looked as though he were repressing a grin.
Amused by this, Hòmair was to repress a chortle, just before he turned his attention once more to the catching of fish, “Well no matter, it is not as though we may do much else than fish and pray for the return of our loved ones!”
“Hmm, mayhaps,” Artuir growled impatiently though his thoughts were elsewhere.
Much later he was to have a thought for the words of his friend, so that in time he was to come to a sudden decision even as he ate with noble Seònaid. It was to be not long after he first heard that lady’s snores that he came to a decision of his own and it was as those snores continued to echo throughout the house that he was to slip forth before the dawn to take counsel with his friends.
*****
Horan-Hill had been named long ago after the hero Horas, the finest of Kiernan’s heroes after of course the founder Kiernan himself. Said to be the hill in which the hero Horas had been buried it had become something of a sacred place where none could lie, not without some divine retribution in the eyes of the local people. It was however thereupon this hill that the greatest of the children’s traditions had begun thanks to Adomnan; that of the Council of Horan-Hill.
The Council of Horan-Hill as it was later to become known to those involved was to prove itself a brief affair. It was to act as a impromptu meeting, or council if you prefer, of all the most ‘important’ of children as they regarded themselves, to discuss the matter of Adomnan’s continued absence from the isle. On account of how the adults had failed to host a proper council regarding the matter, they were to determine that what was needed was for them to decide the matter themselves.
Naturally there had been many such councils before. All of them had been headed in the past by the likes of Artuir who took his role as Chieftain’s heir quite seriously. So that when he had lit the beacon the night before on the hill (a beacon which was a large bronze bowl that his father had once laid out thereupon the hill for his amusement some four years prior), it signalled to all those that were below a certain age that once a month the children wished to have their own meeting. Their council though was the stuff of humour and amusement, with this being one of the many things the locals found absolutely hilarious about the chieftain’s son. And given that he used it to ape at being his father, they felt it to be a good tradition to encourage, as it solidified his bonds with their sons and some of their daughters, as it signified that Artuir was modelling himself after their beloved chieftain.
When the fire was lit on the hill the night before by the youth, none of the fathers and mothers thought too much of it. The latter may well have on occasion disliked the tradition, but the former were of a mind that it was a good tradition and would not heed their wives’ myriad complaints over the matter.
This then was how it happened that so many of the children flowed out from the homes with a few of their parents accompanying them. Most of those parents were present merely to keep the children from comporting themselves badly or otherwise deciding upon some sort of folly. Something that had yet to happen as those young adults such as Aldiona and Giorsail and even Amhlaigh had noted over the years.
Amhlaigh was the son of one of the many farmers. Genial, he was a friend of Cathal and was always of the view that his friend ought to be more patient with Artuir, he was also orange haired, blue eyed and muscular physically so that many young women volunteered to attend the council meetings if only to try to lead him away for a time. That they had yet to succeed in this endeavour was on account of the view that most of the men of the village had opposed its dissolution. These men’s affection for their sons and daughters was such that they would not allow their women to deny their children some measure of joy.
“Something must be done.” Artuir reported to those around him as he began the meeting, seated on a large tree-stump that had been polished and properly maintained for a number of years. It was now akin to a great chair so that the youth sat thereupon it with an ease and dignity that many great lairds of Roma would have envied in that age. “My father Adomnan has not returned and I fear it is now time we set out to his rescue. I will lead this mission, therefore who is with me?”
All the other children and people gathered who numbered three dozen in total looked on him from the great circle they formed around him, with curious expressions. It was however Dànaidh who spoke up against this strange and impulsive plan proposed by the greatest of the local children.
“I do not know if it is wise Artuir,” Dànaidh murmured quietly as he sat thereupon the stone next to the lad, “How might we steal a ship to begin with? Nay, I cannot say that this is wise and this could result in us dying Artuir!”
“What of it?” Artuir asked icily, “I do not ask that ye risk what ye are not willing to but I intend to do so alone if I must with the assistance of Hòmair.”
“You would not make it far, Artuir,” Tasgall replied to the impatience of the other lad, “We are too young, and necessitate aid.”
Boastful as he was by nature Tasgall was ever the most pragmatic of their group. He it was who was the most similar in many ways to the son of Adomnan, and he it was who was the best placed to negotiate and persuade his friend to compromise with those around him. It was for this reason that a number of his friends were grateful for his presence, since he was certain alongside Coraidh to be able to dissuade some of the wilder notions that the youth might conjure forth.
A dreamer just as much as Tasgall, it happened though that Artuir was all the more dangerous for it in the eyes of some as son of the Chieftain and as somehow the more charming of the two.
“We must consider what our fathers might well say,” Labhra remarked worriedly as she sat to one side.
“Labhra is right,” Lucrais agreed at once.
That the pair of lasses had agreed with one another was of no surprise to any of those present, for it was not in their blood or in their nature to wish for change in the slightest. Better they and others such as Dànaidh believed to entrust the whole of their fates to the adults around them even when those very people in question were confused and at a loss over what they might or ought to do.
There were still more lasses that joined together in complaining about the lads, about this notion to go across the waves and of Artuir’s other mistakes or plans. The lad might well have become angered if it were not for his utter indifference towards them and their opinions. They were females and therefore completely inconsequential to his mind. It was the other lads and the young men and women present that he needed to convince.
A shame that while he strove to be subtle in speech and manner, his friends could not quite prove themselves so as the ‘Braggart’ as one of them was called by all soon made perfectly visible to all present.
“I do not see why it should matter what ye all think,” Tasgall grumbled as he turned away, just as Coraidh reprimanded him.
“Do not speak so, lasses are not all the same.”
“Bah, yet still they contribute less than we lads do to all things such as work,” Tasgall mumbled unhappily even as Artuir chortled loudly.
“Never mind such thoughts, let us make the decision now; to leave or not?” the Chieftain’s son said for some reason amused by the scarlet flushed faces of the lasses and those young women that were present and the bickering of the other lads.
If they were amused by the young lad, they were now pressed to raise their hands with the vast majority swept up by Artuir’s self-importance and pushing them to follow him out to sea.
*****
The council at an end it was decided by the majority of the lads at the insistence of a number of the local lasses that they truly ought to hurry whither to the rescue of noble Adomnan. It was thus for this reason that they were to slink away to their homes for the night ere they were to gather the following morning.
The morn for its part ushered forth a sense of joy and relief for the likes of Artuir who though he slept well, felt as though he had waited the whole of the night for the arrival of the dawn. So that when the time came to rise he did so with more than a little enthusiasm. Dressing himself hurriedly, he did not tarry in the seizing of a small bag of rations he had prepared ahead of time, slung it over his shoulder and was out the door before even an ant could steer and take notice of his departure. It was as he went that he stopped.
Glancing behind him, he noticed how his stepmother shivered in the night where she slept in the main room. Moving back to her side he pulled up the wolf-cloak that had slipped from over her shoulders and placed it so that it covered her completely once more. This done he then flew from there for the beach where he was to meet with a number of friends.
They were all gathered there already by the time that he arrived, so that a number of those present grunted about his lateness. Yawning loudly Hòmair miserably motioned for a number of the other young men to help him prepare his ship.
Together they pushed more than six ships out to sea, with each of them whistling a small tune and chortling quietly together.
“Let us now be away!” Artuir cheered happily, eager to leap upon the nearby boat as they at last succeeded in pushing it out to sea.
“Why must we go away?” Coraidh demanded of his friends, hardly able to reconcile himself to their schemes.
“Whatever do you mean why, Coraidh?” Tasgall asked impatiently.
“I mean that we are but children what could, we possibly do?” the other lad retorted, though his words did not win him much approval among his friends.
Tasgall to the horror of more than one child was to harrumph wherefore he burst into an extravagant speech of his own grand deeds, “This reminds me of the time when I stole away aboard my father’s ship, you see it was a bright autumn day. It happened that he was absent at that time having been preoccupied with helping with calming Coraidh’s quite unreasonable, hysterical mother after she had spilled blood upon her favourite dress or some such accident. In turn, I who never misses an opportunity for heroics all well know was to leap onto the boat whereupon with nary any assistance take it out to sea. Once out at sea, I was to challenge not only the raging waves but being naturally brave, noble and unrivalled at sea, I took my own destiny well in hand and was to make to defy the largest of whales one can imagine.”
“Wales? Why there are no such things in this area!” Dànaidh exclaimed objecting to the other lad’s words.
“And hold, it was I who leapt onto the boat first!” Artuir objected also with no less indignation.
Tasgall was not to be dissuaded from carrying on with his remarkable (and extremely false) tale. “If I may
This expansive and quite remarkable narrative which the lad told of his great defiance of the storms that had raged the night he stole his father’s boat yielded not the awe and exclamations of admiration that he had expected or even hoped for. In place of such shouts, he was instead confronted by a number of those of the village. Bewildered he could only stare as dozens then nigh on hundreds began to flood onto the shore.
While he had hoped for volunteers that might assist with the quest that was to come, he had not understood how it could be that so many should hear of their plans to escape the village to assist Adomnan. It was Tasgall who murmured hopefully with a backwards glance in the direction of the village, “What is happening there along the shore?”
“What is happening?” Dànaidh asked confused by his query.
Artuir no less bewildered could only stare. He did not have long to indulge in such feelings as he stood aboard the ship, as his stepmother stepped forward from amidst the mob of people gathered thereupon the shore.
“Artuir what do you think you are up to?” the voice of Seònaid suddenly burst out from a distance behind the trio of young lads.
The sound of her voice made the three of them jump, so that they looked all about themselves guiltily. It was with more than a little reluctance that they looked up to find not only the young woman therewith Raonaid but also Coraidh.
The sense of betrayal that poured into Artuir’s being was almost more than he could bear. He had trusted his friend and had assumed that he would keep his secret, yet there he was; standing by the side of the two maidens he had been told to specifically not go and find.
It was however Eilidh who burst out with more than a little fury, “Coraidh you traitor! Artuir said not to go find Raonaid or Raonaid!”
Yet the lad had no desire to waste his time arguing with her, for he had but eyes for his friends whom he had it was evident hoped would not push through with their plans to depart to attempt a rescue of Adomnan and the other warriors.
“You would leave Kull? Leave the place that has nurtured you with no less devotion than one’s mother might?” Coraidh asked of the young lad who stood by the boat, no less full of shock and horror than the likes of Raonaid and Seònaid who stood to one side.
They had happened upon him in the midst of untying the ship with the aid of Hòmair, and Tasgall. The three youths while they stood frozen were not without some measure of pride and defiance towards the objection to their departure.
It was the likes of Coraidh who was to throw himself forward at his friend, “How could you do such a thing, traitor?”
“I am no traitor!”
“Aye you are!”
“Nay!”
“Aye!” Artuir now joined his voice to that of Coraidh.
“How could you betray us?” Tasgall demanded of the other lad, “We were to brave the deeps and the distant lands without the interference of everyone hereon the isle!”
“Madness! Madness!” Crowed several of the elderly women who had crowded near to the boats.
“Madness is but the word that the masses utilize to demean valour,” Artuir retorted evenly with no small amount of scorn, “Father always said that valour is its own justification! So I say to thee Coraidh that I say much the same! We will show our valour as father showed his!”
“And I say as thine mother that you shall not leave this isle!” Seònaid shouted as she stamped her foot several times as though to emphasize her place above him. “I command in this family until Adomnan’s return home!”
“You may well command, but I will not listen!” Artuir countered with no less stubbornness, his prior scorn growing ever greater.
The two might well have spent hours bickering with one another, if it were not for the likes of Amlaigh who was to throw himself forward. No longer caring if they should continue to differ in the deafening manner they had hitherto then, he was to decide that now was the time to leap past his friend and at one of the boats.
This elicited a gasp from the gathered crowd.
None of them moved as the boat was pushed ever further out to sea, as a number of the younger men of the village pushed it out. It was not just one, for a number of men soon surged forward to begin pushing more ships out to sea. The young men were led by the likes of Cathal, who leaping forward as one possessed threw himself against one of the nearby ships.
“Enough of this!” He growled as he made for the ships, “I for one will not stand idly by whilst children overtake me and make to go rescue my father!”
“Now see here lad, we do not as yet know whether he is in danger!” Ràild corrected him from where he stood.
“Then you hide amongst the other women, whilst I will go whither into the unknown to determine if such be the case or not,” Cathal replied in the full throes of youthful passion and filial piety.
If the young man was blinded by the love he bore for his father, others were not so blind. They were blind to the good that the youths and elderly soon set out to do. A number of the eldest men of the village were to commit themselves not long after their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their decision was one that was to change their fates forevermore.
Their cloaks and tunics were soon as soaked as those of the children of the village, who pressed the boats more than a trio of cubits out from the island before the infants were lifted up onto the boats or away from them. Four of the ships were properly pushed out to sea, where the other three were to have their crew seized and the boats pulled back to the shore.
“Artuir! Return hither at once!”
“You as well Tasgall!”
“Hòmair!” Catriona shouted out after others of the village, such as Seònaid and Tasgall’s grandfather, “Thou must return hither soon lest I shall die of loneliness and despair! Do return within the year lest I shall curse thy name to the ending of my days!”
This drew a great and merry laugh from those around Hòmair who himself chuckled ever so slightly before he impulsively threw himself into a song. One that was to remain with Artuir for the remainder of his days and remained with a number of those around him, so that the likes of Tasgall joined in the song as surely as Artuir did after a moment’s hesitation.
The song was that of the Elvish princess Eilidhyria who was said to have fallen in love not with one of her own tribe but one of a rival one, by the name of Giorlianth. A renowned warrior he had sworn never to wed yet wounded in battle and adrift at sea after his tribe had been driven out of Strathclarde by the Svartálfar he had been saved by the lovely Eilidhyria when she was out at sea as was her wont. It was said that the warrior would have perished, were it not for the song that she sung to him as she pulled him ashore, and cared for him just outside the mountain where her clan lived.
“Far and away,
Day by day,
Did love push
Eilidhyria in her full flush
Of womanhood, she of the waves,
Who in olden days,
Didst wander from the shore,
This though a full score
Of Men had fallen ‘neath the waves,
Golden locks and flaxen eyes,
Ne’er was she quick with lies,
O how the sea didst bow to her,
That it might catch a glimpse of her,
Such was her flaxen locks the suns’ shone but dimly,
Therein cavernous holes she abode,
Therein country most hilly
Her forebears took up their abode!
O how the sea didst bow to her!
And how men ached for a glimpse of her!
Grievous his injuries, and worse his grief,
Giorlianth Silver-Hair, who thrice score years ago
Buried eight sons, so that deep in grief
As in vengeance he had gone, those many days ago,
Swift his spear,
Great the fear,
He fill’d their hearts,
For ne’er did his darts
E’er miss, nor could Aengus’ music and dart!
Golden locks and flaxen eyes,
Ne’er was she quick with lies,
O how the sea didst bow to her,
That it might catch a glimpse of her,
Grievous his wounds, mighty his sorrow,
Yet as the suns’ was she,
So that thrice score losses could not resist the arrow
Of Aengus, such was the beauty of she
Of flaxen locks, and of the mighty ship,
From cavernous depths she pulled him,
So that though his heart had grown dim,
Ne’er could he resist the light of she
Who shown not dim
But bright as the suns’!
Golden locks and flaxen eyes,
Ne’er was she quick with lies,
O how the sea didst bow to her,
That it might catch a glimpse of her,
O if only I could catch a glimpse of her!”
**********
Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!