Oath of the Brotherhood (13 page)

The soup was tasty, made from a peppery broth and filled with fish, turnips, and beans: plain fare in comparison to the king’s table, but it was hot and filling.

“Not quite what you’re used to?” Eoghan asked.

Were his thoughts that obvious? “I could eat this quite happily every day for years.”

“You probably will. We pretty much live on beans and fish. Oh, and oats. Lots and lots of oats.”

Conor chuckled. As they mopped up the last bit of soup with their bread, he noticed men heading toward a part of the city he had not yet explored. He nodded toward them in silent inquiry.

“Evening devotions,” Eoghan said. “We should go, too. If we’re late, we’ll have to stand.”

They returned their bowls to the cookhouse
 
—Conor pitied the dishwashers even more than the cooks
 
—and fell into the crowd. They traveled toward the tree line at the northeastern edge of the city and then down a steep path that opened into a massive granite amphitheater. Dozens of tiers ringed the bowl-shaped space, and about half of the seats were already filled. Only then did Conor begin to get a sense of how many men Ard Dhaimhin housed.

“Look, there’s Brother Riordan.”

Conor followed Eoghan’s gaze. Riordan waved at them from one of the lowest tiers of the amphitheater.

Conor uneasily trailed Eoghan down the steps. The boy
exchanged greetings with men every few steps. When they reached the bottom, Conor saw Riordan had saved a space big enough for the three of them. He took a seat between the two men.

“Evening, Eoghan,” Riordan said with a nod. He turned to Conor and put a hand on his shoulder. “How was your first day?”

“Slaine got to him first and sent him to Reamonn,” Eoghan said.

Riordan’s eyes flicked to Conor’s blistered hands. “How long’d you last?”

“All morning,” Eoghan said. “Reamonn actually gave him the afternoon off.”

Riordan nodded approvingly and thumped Conor’s back. “Well done, son.”

Master Liam appeared in the center of the amphitheater then, and the rumble of voices subsided. He called out, “Greetings to my faithful brothers.”

“Greetings,” the group replied in unison.

Liam lifted his hands, his eyes cast upward. Conor started as the entire gathering joined in the invocation. “Almighty Father, Maker of the Heavens and the Earth, Salvation of the Righteous, Punisher of the Wicked, Light of All Nations, and Lord of All . . .”

The Ceannaire continued alone, “May You shine Your blessings of faith, courage, and hope upon us. Let us be receptive to Your words and write Your commands upon our hearts. Blessings to Him who Is, Was, and Always Will Be. So may it be.”

“So may it be,” the group echoed.

Liam paused, his eyes searching the faces until his gaze met Conor’s and just as swiftly moved on. “Welcome, friends, old and new. May Comdiu be with you.”

“Comdiu be with you,” the assembly said.

“Today I wish to tell you a story from the Second Canon
of the Holy Writ, one our Lord Balus told to the Kebarans. A rich man was about to embark upon a long journey. He gave differing amounts of coin to his servants to oversee while he was gone. When the master returned, he called his servants to account for the money. The first servant had invested wisely by buying a vineyard and planting it, and he returned twice the money with which he had been entrusted. For this, the master praised him and made him the steward of all of his vineyards.

“The second servant hadn’t as much money as the first, so he bought several young sheep. When those sheep multiplied, he sheared them and had the fleece woven into cloth, and sold it at the marketplace. He too returned twice the amount to his master. For his faithfulness, he was put in charge of all the master’s flocks.

“The third servant was afraid to lose the money, so he buried it out of sight. When the master saw he had hidden the coin rather than using it, he was angry and threw the servant out into the night.”

Conor listened in fascination. He had never heard the story before, though it reminded him of others he had learned in Balurnan’s great hall. Around him, heads nodded in understanding.

“Comdiu has given us all gifts. Some men use them for their own glory. Some hide them for fear of being asked to venture beyond their experience. We will all be called to account on the Day of Judgment for what use we made of them. Those of us who used our gifts for Comdiu’s kingdom will be welcomed into His presence. Those of us who squandered our opportunities in this life will have to answer for our foolishness.

“We do not choose our abilities or our circumstances. We choose only our actions. That is why Fíréin life is harsh and
unyielding, filled with discipline, hard work, and study. Not so we may boast of our great strength, our courage, our knowledge, but so we may develop our gifts to their fullness and be ready for the day Comdiu calls us to His work.”

Liam’s eyes swept the amphitheater, and they once again landed on Conor. The directness of his gaze pierced him. Liam hadn’t asked about Conor’s gifts, but Eoghan implied he could read thoughts. Was this story meant for him?

No, that was ridiculous. There were at least three thousand men present. Still, Conor couldn’t dismiss the sense the Ceannaire spoke directly to him.

The devotions lasted an hour, and despite Conor’s attempt to focus on Liam’s Scripture recitation, his mind kept wandering back to the parable. Perhaps he had read too much into it. After all, wasn’t the Fíréin life based on hard work and using one’s abilities to the fullest, regardless of what those were?

Conor felt guilty for his sense of inadequacy, his wish he could be something he wasn’t. So what if the most important thing he did was hoe fields or haul nets? His sweat and toil would still contribute to Ard Dhaimhin.

The convocation closed with another prayer. Then the men dispersed into the dim twilight, scattering to the barracks or the bathhouses. Riordan lingered near the front and placed a hand on Conor’s shoulder. “Stick with Eoghan when you can. He’ll point you in the right direction.”

“What about you?” The words spilled from Conor’s mouth before he could consider how desperate they sounded.

Riordan’s smile turned sympathetic. “We each have our own duties, Conor. I’ll be here if you truly need me. But it’s best you settle into your céad. Your loyalty lies there now.”

Conor nodded, keeping his expression blank as Riordan climbed past him on the amphitheater’s stairs. He had no right
to feel disappointed. What else had he expected? Riordan might have been the man who fathered him, but he hadn’t involved himself beyond whatever plans he and Labhrás had concocted.

He had been foolish to believe things would be different here.

Eoghan showed him the way back
to their céad’s barracks, and Conor’s stomach clenched a little tighter with every step. Easy for Riordan to say his loyalty should lie with his céad. He already knew these boys. Or men, really. To these seventy strangers, Conor was just an outsider.

Smoke curled from the hole in the thatched roof when they arrived, light spilling from the open door along with the rumble of male voices. As Conor climbed down the steps into the cavernous space, the noise quieted.

Eoghan didn’t seem to notice. “Lads, this is our new novice, Brother Conor.”

Anyone who hadn’t already been staring stopped what he was doing. Conor’s skin prickled under the scrutiny. Was he supposed to say something?

Instead, he just gave a nod and turned to Eoghan. “Where do I sleep?”

“Choose an empty bunk.”

The noise resumed around him as the men turned back to their tasks. Some swept the hard-packed floor, while others
sketched or wrote with charcoal nubs on scraps of birch bark. They all looked strong, fit, and much older than Conor. A few gave him appraising glances as he passed, sizing him up and dismissing him just as quickly.

He didn’t fit here any better than he had in Tigh.

He stopped at the first empty bed he found and sat on the edge of the mattress. The routine seemed to be winding down, his céad mates removing shoes and tunics and settling onto their bunks. He hesitated. It wasn’t as if he could hide his thin scholar’s body forever, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to make a fool of himself.

Conor looked up when a pair of trousered legs came into view. The boy was about Conor’s age, tall, muscular, with black hair and eyes nearly as dark.

“You’re the prince.”

Eoghan had said the same thing earlier, but this felt like an indictment.

Conor cleared his throat. “Not anymore, I suppose.”

The boy looked him over, then his mouth tipped up in a sardonic smile. “Nice boots.”

Conor looked down again, confused. Then he realized the Fíréin all wore soft, simply laced shoes. His fine, calf-high leather boots marked him as a nobleman as surely as if it had been branded on his forehead. He flushed.

“Tor, you coming? It’s your turn.”

Tor threw a glance at a younger boy a few bunks away, where he waited with a cross-shaped game board. King and Conqueror, Conor guessed. “Aye. I’ll be right there.” He turned back to Conor with a smirk. “Sleep well, princeling.”

Conor frowned at the boy as he swaggered away. A few others chuckled as if they were in on the joke. He scanned the area for Eoghan, but his only friend had already been swallowed into the huge room.

Slaine strode into their midst, and the sound died instantly. He glanced around, his gaze settling on Conor just long enough to say he had noted his presence. “Lights out, lads.”

Instantly, a half dozen men rose and snuffed out the rush lights, sending a waft of acrid smoke into the air even as they plunged the clochan into semidarkness. Only the small fire in the pit illuminated the rest of the céad as they settled down for the night.

Conor stripped down to his trousers, hung his tunic on the peg above his bed, and climbed beneath the scratchy wool blanket. Almost immediately, soft snores filled the room. He sighed. He would never be able to rest with the racket of seventy men snoring. Perhaps he should pray a bit first.

He only made it through the opening words before sleep took him.

Sounding horns intruded on his dreams.

Conor burrowed deeper under his blankets, trying to escape the noise, until a rough but familiar voice growled, “Up now, boy!”

Conor gasped as the blanket was ripped away, the cold air hitting his bare skin, and jerked upright. He rubbed his gritty eyes and struggled to speak through his tight throat. Surely he couldn’t have slept more than an hour or two. “What time is it?”

“Time to get up.” Slaine grabbed Conor’s tunic from the peg and tossed it at him. “Convocation, breakfast, then Reamonn. Quickly now.”

Conor donned his tunic, his pulse pounding in his ears from the urgency in Slaine’s orders. Most of his céad mates were already dressed, a few still combing and braiding their hair. Some headed up the steps into the gray morning.

He swung his feet over the side of the bed and thrust them into his boots.

His toes squelched into something cold and wet.

Snickers from across the room drew his attention. Tor and his game partner. Perfect. He should have anticipated something like this. No wonder the other lads had laughed at him.

He pulled his muddy feet out of his boots, marched to the cold fire pit, and emptied the lake from them. Wordlessly, he shoved his feet back in, trying not to grimace. The leather was ruined, and the sand would likely give him blisters, but he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing their prank had hit its mark.

Conor lingered as long as he dared, letting the others go before him. Eoghan waited for him outside, an appraising look on his face. His eyes dipped to Conor’s boots, and a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.

“So I’m to be the new target,” Conor said as they moved toward the amphitheater. “For how long?”

“Tor and Ailbhe like to test the new boys. They’ll keep pressing until you put a stop to it.”

“And how do I do that?”

“Beat them. At archery. At staff practice. While they sleep.”

Conor chuckled at his friend’s wicked grin. Then he remembered the game Tor and Ailbhe had been playing the night before. “King and Conqueror?”

Eoghan’s grin widened, and he thumped Conor on the back hard enough to knock the breath out of him. “That’ll do, princeling. For a start.”

Conor quickly fell into an unvarying routine of labor and worship: up at dawn, morning devotions in the amphitheater
followed by a quick breakfast, then off to his morning work. Sometimes he tilled or planted. Other days, he hauled nets on Loch Ceo, carried water from the lake, or performed any number of other duties that left him aching and exhausted. Still, he never complained, and he never stopped, turning his mind to Aine or a harp composition he would never play. His stoicism garnered curious looks but never praise: after all, he was just doing what was expected of a Fíréin brother.

Afternoons passed with easier but no less tedious pursuits: braiding wicks for the chandlers, gutting fish in the cookhouse, or washing dishes in one of the many troughs for which he had carried water. In the evenings, he whittled small chunks of wood into the approximation of game pieces for King and Conqueror, working as quickly as he could manage to put together his own game board. So far, he’d woken up to find a frog, a centipede, and some unpleasantness from the goat pens in his boots.

“You’d better do something quick,” Eoghan observed one morning. “Your footwear won’t endure much more ill treatment.”

Conor grinned. “This is my last piece. And it’s time for a little retaliation.”

He didn’t have time to propose a game of King and Conqueror to Tor and Ailbhe that night. They were far too busy trying to locate the smell coming from where he’d smeared the goat dung on the undersides of their mattresses. The rest of the céad roared with laughter while they tore apart their spaces looking for the source.

And in one instant, Conor’s status in the céad shifted.

Tor wasn’t first to approach him for a game, though. That honor went to Larkin, one of the older of the men, soon to take his oath of brotherhood. He settled onto the bed while Conor briefly explained the rules, then asked half a dozen simplistic
questions before proceeding to eliminate Conor’s army in thirty-six moves.

“Never underestimate your opponent,” Larkin said. “Even if he gives you reason to do so.” He glanced back to where Tor watched them and gave Conor a significant nod.

The warning made him nervous, but the retaliation Conor expected didn’t come.

That was the reason behind the backbreaking routine, he realized. The veneer of peace over Ard Dhaimhin was something of an illusion. Conflict and resentment still simmered beneath the surface. Most of the time, though, the men were too exhausted to do anything more than trade pranks or snide comments. Still, Conor held his breath, waiting for Tor’s dislike to erupt into something more.

The first time Conor saw a man whipped bloody in front of the entire assembly for striking a brother in anger, he understood why it never would.

Physical labor and discipline might have been the life’s blood of Ard Dhaimhin, but he soon learned daily devotions were its beating heart. The Fíréin required all members to attend evening convocation, but most of the oath-bound brothers attended the morning gathering as well. Sometimes Master Liam led the service, but other members of the Conclave, including Riordan, also took their turns. It was an awe-inspiring sight, all those men, all believers, gathered in one place to study the word of Comdiu. Every time they raised their voices in unison for the invocation, it sent chills across Conor’s skin.

“It’s something you never get used to,” Riordan said. “I had to hide my faith for so long, it still seems incredible to worship openly.”

Conor studied his father’s profile. The convocation was the one time of day he saw him alone. They rarely spoke, but
Riordan seemed to be content to just sit quietly together. “Is that why you stayed all these years?”

“I stayed because it was the one place I knew you’d always be able to find me.”

Conor turned back to the rapidly emptying amphitheater. “I’m glad.”

And surprisingly, he meant it.