Goll did not want gratitude, not from Finn. It made him even more angry. His lips narrowed to a thin line. “I only did my duty. I always do my duty.” He stalked away.
From the other side of the fire, Finn's original companions watched him go. “That's one less knife to shield your back against,” commented Conan.
Finn replied airily, “Goll Mac Morna's not going to hurt me.” He put his thumb in his mouth, chewed on it for a while, then winked at his men with a sudden, sunny smile. “I'll outlive him!” he announced.
They laughed. But Cailte's eyes followed Goll until the darkness swallowed him, and there remained a thin line of worry etched between Cailte's eyebrows.
One day after Goll Mac Morna left Tara, the Ulaid made their move.
Battle season was over, but the autumn had proved unusually warm and golden and the earth was still dry and firm enough for marching when the army of the north came howling down the Slige Midluachra.
Cormac was in the House of the King, conferring with Maelgenn his druid, when the sentries on the gate shouted the first news. Dubdrenn, Cormac's chief steward, ran white-faced into the House of the King to be first to tell of the bad tidings. “The Ulaid! They're coming this way! An army!”
Cormac got to his feet. “Maelgenn, did you not foresee this?”
The royal druid licked his lips nervously. “I did of course. I told you nights ago of the signs I had read in the entrails of the red squirrel.” He did not dare suggest the king had forgotten; nor did he dare remind the king of how ambiguous the prophecy had been. But it was always safe to prophesy some sort of attack, sometime. This was Erin.
By the time Cormac reached the northern gateway, Finn and his men were already there, armed and preparing for battle.
“Why do you think they waited until now?” the king wondered aloud.
Finn was adjusting the scabbard of his great hacking sword. Without looking up, he replied, “I'm sorry Goll isn't here, that's the sort of question he could answer.”
“Isn't here? Where is he?”
“I told him he could go home.”
“Without my permission?”
Finn raised his eyes to Cormac's then. “The FÃanna is mine to command,” he said.
Once again Cormac had the profound conviction that Finn was deliberately going too far, testing the limits. But this was not the time for a confrontation with him, not with an enemy marching toward the gates of Tara.
“You anticipated my suggestion,” Cormac said smoothly. “I meant to have Goll sent to his fort this winter. He's not exactly in the same situation as the rest of you and there's no harm in showing him a little extra courtesy.”
“I thought so too,” said Finn.
He was almost disappointed that the king had not challenged him on the issue. He had expected Cormac to make a point of stating his own supreme authority, perhaps by countermanding Finn's orders and sending someone to bring back Goll Mac Morna.
But the king had accepted Finn's authority without protest.
Finn knew a moment of elation.
I am stronger than the king, he dared whisper in the inmost recesses of his mind.
I am not only as good as he is, but my will is stronger and he knows it.
I could be a king.
A sudden superstitious twinge raised prickles on his arms and he braced himself, half-expecting lightning to strike him from the heavens, or the earth to open and swallow him.
Neither happened.
Cormac turned and said over his shoulder, “I'll go back to the House of the King and give orders for its defense.”
“That won't be necessary,” Finn called after him. “No Ulidian will enter Tara.”
Cormac. kept on walking, however.
The army of the Ulaid, descendants of the once-invincible Red Branch, did not march all the way to the walls of Tara. They prudently halted a long walk away and regrouped, drawing themselves into their own approximation of a battle formation, which meant a broad line stretching almost from horizon to horizon but only one man deep. Seen thus, they believed they appeared more numerous than they were. Through chants and exhortations, the druids who marched with them raised their battle lust to fever pitch, until many of the painted Ulidians were in a state of full erection, the swords of their manhood as stiff as the iron swords in their hands.
Then, howling, they charged toward Tara.
They had intended a glorious battle.
They met Finn Mac Cool.
Finn had waited in front of the northern gateway until he could see their formation clearly as it ran forward. Then with a few swift words, he ordered his own men into a triangular shape like the head of a spear, with himself at the point. They marched stolidly forward to let the broad line of the Ulaid break itself on this spear.
The advancing Ulidians found it difficult to determine just how many tightly packed warriors were in the solid mass behind the silver-haired leader of the FÃanna. But they did not flinch or slow their pace; they thundered their feet on the earth of Mid beneath a golden autumn sun and tried to keep thinking about the epic poem their bards would compose to celebrate this victory against the full strength of Cormac Mac Airt.
An earlier attack would not have been as prestigious.
As the two armies came together, the air sang with spears.
Men shrieked; men fell. There was a great thudding of bodies hurling themselves against each other, a ringing of iron swords, and a roaring of battle cries as each man shouted the motto of his clan and tribe.
It might be the last chance he would have in life to identify himself as an individual
Finn Mac Cool did not cry out the name of his clan and tribe. Not did he call the name of Cormac Mac Airt. He gave one piercing scream that blew like the wind into the faces of the Ulidians, and the sound of the wind was the name:
“FÃANNA!”
The battle that followed was hard and bloody.
In the forefront, Finn was the target of every Ulidian spear. Yet they all sailed harmlessly past him. He ducked and swerved and spun like a
blown leaf, and was as hard to hit. Then, sword in hand, he closed with the Ulidian leader, easily identifiable because like most of his tribe, he smeared himself with paint, which in his case included a sun symbol on his forehead to proclaim himself superior.
In battle skills he was not superior, nor even equal, to Finn, who hacked through his knees with an angled blow of his sword, then thrust Fiachaid's spear through the man's throat and left him dying, pinned to the earth he'd tried to win.
The Ulidian was dead before he knew he'd been wounded.
Finn's followers included not only his original fÃan and the additional bands of nine, but also a number of other fÃans that had not yet left for winter quarters. Numerically the Ulidians were superior, but they were facing men who had been fighting and travelling and fighting again all summer, men who were rock-hard and supremely confident. Men who had passed the most strenuous tests Finn Mac Cool could devise for them, and were not about to be beaten by painted northerners.
The battle did not last very long. The sun was still high in the sky when the surviving Ulidians turned and fled.
Wiping his bloody hands on his arms, Finn watched them go. “I thought you wanted to fight!” he called derisively.
No one turned to answer him.
The next morning Cormac waited in the Assembly Hall with his officials and the RÃgfénnid FÃanna, and in time an emissary from the Ulaid arrived. He was a big-nosed, big-eared man, with a voice like chains dragging over stone, dressed in a cloak striped black and cream and fastened with a brooch of iron. He was obviously unhappy.
“You have done great damage to our fighting mean,” he lamented to the king of Tara.
Cormac nodded gravely but said nothing.
“Our warrior force is depleted. If an enemy attacks our homes, who will defend them?”
Cormac nodded again.
The Ulidian made a third attempt. “We offered you honourable battle but you showed us no mercy.”
Cormac smiled. “You came here looking for mercy?”
“We came here to take back what was rightfully ours.”
“Tara was never rightfully yours. It was built by a people older than yours or mine, and made into a kingly seat by men of my blood.”
“And fairly won by men of mine,” the emissary pointed out.
“And fairly lost as well. Tell your kings for me to give over now, and submit to me as their High King. They will find me merciful then.”
“Submit.” The emissary tasted the word, working it around in his mouth. “I have no orders to offer submission.”
“Then why did you come?”
“To offer ⦠a truce.”
Cormac glanced meaningfully toward Nede, his chief poet. A truce was traditionally arranged through bards.
Nede was a handsome, broad-headed man with thick yellow hair belying his age, and a presence that commanded attention. Dressed in the six colours allowed a bard and standing tall beside his king, he intoned, “As you ran from us, we shall dictate the terms of truce.”
The big-nosed man growled, “Agreed.”
“Your leaders are to send to Tara three hundred cattle, three hundred sheep with the wool unshorn, and three hundred servants.”
The emissary shook his head violently. “That is not acceptable! You would rob us!”
“If three hundred is not acceptable,” Nede replied with composure, “then I change the number to six hundred.”
The emissary drew a swift breath. “Three hundred is acceptable. Three hundred cattle, that is.”
“And sheep. And servants.”
“Sheep, three hundred,” the emissary agreed, looking more unhappy than ever. “But it is not possible to deliver three hundred servants, we simply don't have them.”
Cormac spoke up. “I doubt that. It is well known that marauders from Ulidia routinely plunder the coasts of Alba. Surely you bring back slaves?”
“Some few, I suppose, butâ”
“Quality slaves?” the king went on.
“Some few, butâ”
Cormac silenced him with a hand and turned toward Nede again. “An adjustment,” he said softly.
The bard told the emissary, “We will accept one hundred quality slaves, strong men, and women of accomplishment.”
“And if we cannot deliver them?”
Cormac looked in the other direction, toward Finn Mac Cool, who had been standing all this time immobile and with his arms folded. At the king's signal, he unfolded his arms and took one step forward, standing as tall as he knew how. The emissary looked into his face.
Something looked back at the Ulidian out of Finn's eyes.
The man swallowed, hard. “I think we can deliver one hundred quality slaves,” he said.
That night there was feasting at Tara.
In due course, herders arrived with three hundred small black cattle and three hundred woolly black sheep. It was a very small price to pay for a truce, but as Cormac explained to his court, “Showing them generosity
now will help avoid animosity later. I could have demanded much more, but the Ulidians would have simmered with resentment and boiled over sooner rather than later.”
Finn said, “You expect them to boil over again?”
“Ah, they never give up, the northerners. Once they think something is theirs, they fight for it as a hound fights for its bone, past all reason, even if it means the bone itself is destroyed in the fighting. They'll attack again, Finn. But not, I trust, in the immediate future.”
Finn was satisfied with the reply. As long as Cormac expected ongoing trouble, his RÃgfénnid FÃanna was invaluable to him.
The one hundred quality servants arrived a day after the livestock, though under almost identical circumstances. They too were herded down the Slige Midluachra by men with wooden staffs to prod them into a pack and keep them there. Reaching the gates of Tara, they stood in a wordless huddle, eyes on the ground, awaiting their fate with equanimity, though one or two looked coldly angry.
When they were brought inside, Dubdrenn the steward was put in charge of examining the men and assigning them work, and the chief attendant of Ethni the Proud examined the women. Cormac's wife took no part in this operation. She considered herself above dealing with raw material. “If any of them seem suitable to attend me,” she commanded, “train them properly before you bring them to me. I would not object to finding a better hairdresser, if there is one among them with that skill.”
Finn's men watched the parade of new women with interest. They were looking for other skills, and as the captives from the north were led through Tara to their assigned quarters, the fénnidi commented on this one and that one, not always quietly.