“Come, let’s return to the mead hall,” Malthe said, clapping Conall on the back.

“Aye,” Conall said but didn’t move.

“You can begin your first task.”

“Oh, and what is that?”

“Nothing so onerous. You can tell the skáld of Dervla’s passing and your revenge.”

He nodded and gazed over the shadowed stones. Telling stories might not be onerous to the Jutes, but he found it difficult—probably more challenging than creating the stories that the skálds would tell. It also made him think some ill was about to fall. The last time someone pressured him into telling a story—the Battle of Gáirech—Medb had Cú murdered during the telling. That was the worst of all the things he had to feel guilty about. Had he risen after the storm and ridden through the pass, could he have saved his foster son? Conall thought so. Cú took three days to die, tied to a rock by his own hand so his enemies wouldn’t see him fall—the same three days Conall was drinking in the hostel on the North Road, telling tales of his battles.

Boasting. Creating my battle fame, which they consider so valuable.

Conall bent down and spat between his feet. It was a reaction that had been common since he left Cú’s headless corpse in Dún Dealgan, promising Emer he would return with his foster son’s head. It turned into a promise that took many moons to fulfill.

“Come, Conall, there’s much we must do,” Malthe called.

Looking up, he saw the Jutes striding away, knowing nothing of his internal strife, and ran to catch them. When they arrived back in the hall, the feast was as raucous as when they’d left. The revelers had eaten the food, but the mead and ale were still plentiful. The people in the hall were drunk, but—unlike at home, where they would be rutting or pissing in a darkened corner—the Jutes were laughing and having fun. A large group of warriors were standing around the table nearest the dais, and Conall turned to ask Skadi what they were doing, but there was no sign of her.

“She’s gone to tend her brother,” Malthe said, taking him by the shoulder and guiding him to a darkened corner. When his eyes adjusted to the light, Conall saw an old man sitting at a small table, looking at him. The light was not enough for him to read the man’s face. Even so, there was something—some inner sense—warning Conall that the look was stripping him of his armor, like the man was reading his inner being with nothing but a glance.

“Conall, this is Olaf Gunnarson. He is the skáld I chose to tell Dervla’s tale.”

“There’s only one chair,” Conall noted.

“Ya. I must prepare for the King’s Moot, so won’t be staying.”

Conall watched the would-be King leave the hall with a sense of relief. Telling Malthe how his sister had died had not enthused him—the brutality of it, in particular. After composing it, Olaf would sing the song, and Conall took some comfort from that. He didn’t doubt that whoever had informed Malthe about his sister’s death would have left out the brutality. Not because of the hurt it would have caused, but he suspected there would be a sense of shame in telling a Jute how animalistic the women of Tara had become during the winter solstice.

“Sit,” Olaf said.

Conall pulled out the chair and plonked himself down. “I need a drink.”

“Ya, it can be grueling on the Høje,” the skáld said, whistling to get attention and demanding mead of a server.

After the boy left a flagon, Conall said, “You knew about the oath?”

“I did. Malthe said he chose me to tell Dervla’s tale, but the truth is, I chose to tell it. I would not have done so if you were less than you are, Conall of the Victories. My lord’s choosing you sealed my decision.”

Conall frowned at the deeper shadows behind the skáld, wondering if any of them would see through his reputation and realize he was just an aging warrior wanting to see out his days with nothing more strenuous than fishing and drinking mead in the company of other aging warriors. He recalled wondering whether Bradán was trying to escape the warrior’s life with a snort and a grin.

“Something is funny, ya?”

“What do you want me to say?” Conall asked, ignoring the question, pouring and drinking a cup of mead in one pull, almost laughing at the irony.

“Tell me the story in your words.”

“I wasn’t there when she died. The King drove me away.”

“That, then, you had in common,” Olaf said. “However, Dervla’s death is only one small part of the tale.”

“Aye. I suppose it is.” Conall nodded while telling himself to be wary of his companion. Here was a man who looked fleetingly but saw much. There would be no fooling him.

“Why don’t you start with the boy—the one who rescued the princess? Something that always confused me is how he came to be here.”

Conall was surprised to find his mood perking up at the mention of Cú. Before this moment, talk of his foster son had only brought pain. Now, in the company of a stranger, he found he could not only talk about the boy, but he wanted to run to the top of Lindholm Høje and scream the story into the dark waters of the fjord. He wanted to celebrate the life of his young friend and Ulster’s hero.

“Where should I start?”

“At the beginning,” Olaf said, looking at Conall like he was a dense pupil.

And so Conall told how he got lost in the Chualann Mountains after the Battle of Da Derga’s hostel and came across the small settlement of Cú Chulainn’s family. He didn’t mention his short fight with the reaver Ingcél outside the ruined hostel. Nor that he had been carrying the man’s head in a leather sack—only that he was on his way to Emain Macha, stopping first in Tara to tell the news of High King Connery’s death.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“The boy was hurling with his friends when I arrived above the glade. I remember seeing no detail because the sinking sun was behind him. He’d a real arrogant turd of a father, man called Lugh, who gave me a cowshed to sleep in—”

“He offered a cowshed to a chief,” Olaf interrupted.

“Not a chief, just a warrior, but aye. I was too tired to argue. It was while we were at our oats the farmer asked me to take the boy, Setanta was his name back then, to Tara to the Assembly of Kings. Wanted me to find him a foster father. Never heard the like, a farmer insulting me and then demanding the privilege of chieftains and warriors.”

“But you did it?”

“Aye. I thought bringing the boy to Tara was better than leaving him in the grip of Lugh.”

“So, his father was not the God of Light, as the stories say?”

“No. That was a falsehood Mac Nessa and the druid Kathvar told for their own ends…” Conall hesitated as he thought of the druid’s scheming. The old man was dead now, murdered by his son—a sorry end that Conall would not wish on anyone—but the greybeard’s meddling had always irritated him. Whenever something not right was afoot, the druid had been close by. But even so, dying by a son’s hand was cruel.

There is one benefit to celibacy, he thought, rubbing a hand over his bristles.

“Go on.”

“Mac Nessa put the boy under my charge, and I became like a foster father, despite telling the turd it wasn’t possible.”

“That made you the father of a hound,” Olaf said with a chuckle.

“He wasn’t a hound yet,” Conall replied with a sigh. “The name came after he beat a dog to death with his camán.”

“A camán?”

“It is a stick we use to play hurling. Part of warrior training. Anyway, the boy shattered his stick on the skull of the poor hound.”

“That upsets you, I think.”

“Aye. It does. He was a strange boy, passive and subservient mostly, but when I found him standing over that dog, his dead eyes staring out of the gore, there’d been nothing there—no fear, no anger. Nothing. Not even remorse.”

“Was he a Berserk?”

Conall took a gulp of mead before saying, “From what I’ve heard of the Berserkir, they become furious—killing indiscriminately in their blood frenzy. Cú was the opposite. As I said already, he showed nothing at all.”

“And this act of calmness made him a hound?”

Conall nodded and went on to explain how the boy offered himself as a guard of Chulainn’s smithy in place of the dog he’d killed, prompting Mac Nessa to give him his new name. He told Olaf that The Hound of Chulainn was a name that stayed with the boy and that the deed that earned it was why Ulster’s King wanted to break all traditions and name Setanta as a foster son. To do that, he needed some semblance of legitimacy and sent Conall back to the Chualann Mountains in search of it.

“I discovered the settlement burned to the ground; Setanta’s father and mother were in the ashes. I was so angry at the wantonness of it I hunted the brigands—twenty of them. I found the band the following day and set about them with my hammer—”

“Ya, Lorg Mór, as fame-filled a name as your own,” Olaf said with an approving nod.

“Aye. Anyway, the last one ran, but I threw the hammer, knocking him on his arse, and then gutted him. He would’ve been better served fighting back, bundún.”

“You killed all twenty warriors single-handed,” the skáld said, raising an eyebrow.

“As I told Skadi, they weren’t warriors; they were drunk brigands and were asleep.” Olaf nodded and smiled as if they were conspirators in a kept secret. “I returned and told the King that Cú’s parents, Lugh and Deichtine, were dead. Mac Nessa would not be thwarted in his wish. After consulting that Tuatha-forsaken druid, he claimed the God of Light, Lugh, impregnated his long-lost sister, Deichtine, and he adopted Cú as a foster son—”

“Did that upset you?” Olaf interrupted.

“Why would it upset me?”

“Losing your foster son to another man, even if he was the King.”

Conall shook his head, explaining that Mac Nessa’s role was more ceremonial than actual. He awarded the boy lands that provided an income and paraded him like a trophy, nothing more. Conall remained the boy’s guardian and mentor.

And I failed in both.

“But there was always going to be trouble. It began with a visit to Lusk when the boy fell to the wiles of young womanhood. Emer…” Conall hesitated, remembering the capricious young daughter of Forgall, Lusk’s Chieftain. Even when young, she’d been a woman men found difficult to refuse, and her father found difficult to let go. “The jealousy of Forgall made the chief send Cú here to take Grendel’s head as a trophy, proof of his courage.”

“Grendel. The monster from children’s stories?” Olaf asked in a tone that was more than just disbelieving.

“Aye. He was young and easily manipulated.”

“So, he came to the forests south of Juteland in search of a monster, and instead, he rescued our princess.”

“Aye. I had the story from the boy when he returned. We sat drinking in a hostel in Lúr Cinn Trá. He wasn’t one to exaggerate, and I believed him.”

“As I you,” Olaf said. “You tell a good tale, Conall of the Victories.”

Conall thanked the skáld and continued. There was much more to tell: how Dervla followed Cú to Emain Macha and how she married High King Lugaid, the son of Mac Nessa. How she became embroiled in the Witch Queen of Connacht’s schemes, and how it all came to a confrontation in Tara during the Winter Solstice festival.

It was well beyond the witching hour when he rubbed his bristled chin with both hands and sighed. “Although I wasn’t there, the word between the roundhouses is that Medb proposed a desirability contest. When Dervla won, the women of Tara became like a pack of rabid dogs and murdered her. Lugaid found her and took his own life out of grief. Dervla and Lugaid. Two of the folk Cú held most dear. When he learned what happened, he executed the women and burned their bodies in Lugaid and Dervla’s roundhouse. One hundred and fifty women died by his hand that day.”

“There were no reprisals?”

“Whenever anyone speaks about it, they describe Cú arriving in the feast hall still covered in gore. He stood on the dais and told the warriors, husbands of the women, that he executed them for murder. Standing on that dais, red from head to foot, they saw him as a God. No one dared question his motives or judgment.”

Conall paused for a long time before telling how Medb had ordered Cú’s death after the Battle of Gáirech—of how she and the warriors of Connacht waited for him to die before taking his head. His revenge had taken too long. Conall told how he killed a warband because he thought them guilty, only to learn it was the Witch Queen. Killing her had taken time, and he was still not sure if it had been right. He killed her with a ball and sling while she was bathing.

“Her face locked in that snarling rictus visits my dreams,” he said at the end of the story. “Even King Ailill, who hated her in the end, was shocked by it.”

“Malthe will be pleased justice was done.”

Conall nodded and closed his eyes to rest them, suddenly tired of the storytelling. When he opened them, he saw several empty flagons crowding the small table. His cup was on his knee, a fist curled around it. Olaf stared at the rafters, deep in thought.

“Thank you, Conall. You should get some sleep,” the skáld said without looking at him. “I have much to do before the moot.”