The common room was dimly lit and crowded. The smoke hole was small and most of the smoke from the central fire swirled around the tables where the sons of Dond Desa were drinking mead and trying to listen to the bard on the performer’s dais at the front of the room. The bard was reciting a popular poem about the death of Nuadu and Connery’s assumption of the throne.
“The heroism of Connery Mór,
Was there for all to behold,
As Nuadu’s gruesome head stared up,
His dead eyes of shiny gold.”
Lee took a swig of his mead and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunic before spitting on the floor and shouting, “Bah, heroism, my hole.”
His shout was loud enough for those closest to look up from their drinks in surprise and not a little fear. Attacking the High King publicly was not a wise course. The brothers looked around and laughed at the fear in the eyes of the revelers nearest their table. Rogain slapped the surface hard, causing mead to spill and eyebrows to rise.
The brothers enjoyed the interlude in Temuir when, as Lee predicted, Connery had been too weak to mete out any sort of justice. The fine was hefty but not so much as to be any real punishment to the brothers. They paid farmer Colm from Munster with silver and rode away with light hearts.
“Why are we here, Lee?” Rogain asked as their laughter died to occasional splutters.
“We’re going to exploit the weakness of our beloved foster brother,” Lee said with a wink.
“Exploit how?” Gar asked.
“Everyone is becoming bored, so we will form a warband and go reaving.”
Rogain snorted, “We do not have the skills necessary to reave. Stealing a cow or two from an old farmer in Munster was easy. Reaving against the High King’s law will not be.”
“We will take counsel from those better suited to the task,” Lee explained, with an air that imparted knowledge of how best to approach all matters martial.
“Who?” Rogain asked with apparent skepticism.
“We are here to meet the warrior, Fandall. I sent for him.”
“What, Nuadu’s champion? I thought he was dead,” Gar said. “Killed when Nuadu was dethroned.”
“Everyone thinks he’s dead, but he escaped before Nuadu lost his head and his silver hand.”
The actions of a wise man, Lee thought. “He’s been hiding on Ynys Môn with the druids. Ironically.”
“What, Druid Island? That is a bit strange, is it not, hiding there? I heard the druids proclaimed him outlaw,” Rogain said.
“You shouldn’t believe all the rumors you hear, little brother. My guess is the druids had a big foot in Eterscel’s end,” Lee laughed, touching his nose conspiratorially. “It would not surprise me to learn it was they who had the old man killed in the first place.”
“How would they benefit from killing the High King?” Gar asked with a scoff.
“Eterscel was beginning to feel the ravages of time. His decisions were rash and invariably wrong,” Lee paused for effect. “I would say the Elder Council decided to replace him with someone in control of their faculties.”
“But Nuadu Necht only had one hand. Why would the druids select a ruler who was an incomplete man?”
“Perhaps Nuadu approached them with a plan and convinced them of its viability. Perhaps they saw merit in the one-handed Nuadu Necht over the youth of Connery.”
“Fat lot of good it did them. Nuadu was worse than Eterscel.”
“Exactly, brother, and so it was they replaced him with Connery.”
“Ah, Lee, you are a fellow who is overly fond of spinning a spider’s web around everything,” Gar said and then laughed.
“And what makes you think this Fandall will come?” Rogain asked.
“He has been suffering since Nuadu’s end. No one will hire him because he fled from Temuir as soon as the usurper’s plans began to unravel. He’s believed to be a coward.”
“And you think we should hire him?”
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“We need an experienced warrior, someone trained in the martial arts, but also someone who feels wronged and is willing to oppose the High King. It does not matter that he fled,” Lee said with patience.
“You are sure we can do this?” Gar asked.
Lee was about to answer when he saw an unknown warrior enter the hall. He watched the man looking around the gathering through a gap in the swirling smoke and nudged his brothers under the table with his foot.
The warrior spotted them and strode over with a grim expression. Lee watched him as he came. Fandall, a once mighty fighter—King’s Champion, looked disheveled and tired. He still carried his sword, but the leather scabbard showed evidence of neglect where the black had frayed to tan. The boss of his shield was rusty; his breeches were fading and patched in several places. Lee saw that Fandall’s hair was graying above his ears, and his chin showed several days of scruffy, graying growth.
Is he capable?
“You are Lee mac Desa?” the warrior asked as he reached the bench.
“Yes, and these are my brothers, Gar and Rogain. Please sit,” Lee said, nodding at a place between his brothers. “Will you take some food? It is not great food, but the boar we ate is passable.”
“No, just get to the point, Lee. Why am I here?”
“I guess you will take mead?”
Fandall nodded but said nothing. As soon as Lee finished pouring, the warrior took a long pull and asked again, “Why am I here?”
“No one forced you to come here,” Lee said, making it a question with a tilt of his head and raised eyebrows.
“I was promised silver if I came.”
“Yes, you were, and here it is.” Lee tossed a small leather pouch onto the bench, which jingled with the sound of coins.
Fandall snatched up the pouch and opened it to stare at the coins. Lee could see his lips moving as he counted them. Licking his lips, the warrior nodded and slipped the pouch into his belt.
“It looks to me like I’m just in time,” Lee said.
“Just in time for what?” Fandall asked.
“Just in time to save you from selling your bodalán to the Red Branch for coppers.”
The reaction of the warrior was not as immediate as Lee had expected. Eventually, though, his face reddened, and he slammed his cup into the puddle of mead left by Rogain’s earlier slap.
“You think I came here to be insulted?” the warrior said as he made to rise, his knuckles showing white where he gripped his cup.
Lee took him by the wrist and said, “I just wanted to prove a point, Fandall. I’m guessing if I’d said the same a few years ago, your sword would have been in your hand before I could finish the sentence. Am I right?”
Fandall nodded but looked bemused and furious before resigning himself to his lot and pouring another cup of mead. He quaffed it in one draught. “Those days are long gone. Now, I cannot even get a position on a merchant’s ship as a bodyguard. I am anathema to those who need protection because my charge was killed in his bed.”
“Killed in his bed by a boy,” Lee added. “But you were not even there, Fandall, were you?”
***
He looked at the boy with loathing before accepting defeat and falling back into despondency. Lee was right, and Fandall knew it. He was only a shadow of his former self. When he was a champion, everyone showed him respect and most feared him. Now, the only thing that stopped the people from spitting on him was the presence of the rusty broadsword in its shabby scabbard, high on his hip.
“How did you survive?” Gar blurted.
Fandall looked at the youngest of the brothers. He thought about ignoring him but realized defiance was futile. He was a champion without a patron to guard, left to fend for himself as best he could. He might have been able to sell his sword to the tribes in Gaul because they would not have heard of his failure. But in Ériu and Alba, he was finished as a warrior. He asked himself again why he had not fled to Gaul to fight the soldiers from the south beyond the high mountains and could not come up with a reason. He supposed he harbored some inner wish to be returned to his former glory as champion to a High King.
“The day I watched Macc Cecht’s back as they rode away from The King’s Fort, I knew it was over for Nuadu. I left for Ynys Môn the same day,” he finally answered Gar’s question.
The brothers nodded their understanding. Speaking the words made the warrior realize he had been champion to a High King for only a few days. Why, then, did he feel such a drive to return to those lofty heights? He did not know why. He only knew the need to do so was consuming him.
“I cannot even get my revenge,” he said. “I live from day to day, often stealing just to get food.”
Fandall looked up from under his brows in time to catch the look of pity on Lee’s face. It was just that type of look that caused his despondency. Pity? How he had fallen from a champion to one in need of pity angered and confused him.
“And what would you say if I told you I could change all that?” Lee asked with a smile and a wink.
“I would look at you, sitting there with your mead and your empty promises, and say, ‘Leave me out of your useless dreams, mac Desa.’”
Lee laughed.
Fandall’s frown deepened as he realized his attempted insult, referring to the youth as nothing more than the son of a warrior, had washed over the boy like the surf at high tide. Before, Fandall would have taken offense. Now, he knew he had no moral high ground and just hung his head further. He had run from his duty and someone murdered his charge in his sleep. He was nothing more than a drunkard, begging for silver in a hovel of a common room in the middle of nowhere.
“And how much, Lee, do you think the four of us can achieve against the warriors of the Five Kingdoms and Macc Cecht?”
“There will be others,” Lee countered with a look of benevolence as if he were explaining to a child why an apple fell from a tree. “Many have voiced discontent at the laws of High King Connery. We tested him and found him wanting. We think a return to the old ways is missing only a small push from us and others like us.”
“How did you test him?”
Lee explained how they had stolen livestock from a farmer each Samhain since Connery had assumed the throne. He described how their foster brother had punished them with a middling fine for acting like naughty children. After finishing the tale, Lee laughed and opened his arms to Fandall in question.
“I do not know, Lee, it all seems to me to be too easy,” Fandall said.
Just like Nuadu’s plan, he did not say, which fell from ease into rancid cow dung in the time it would take to shout Destruction.
“You are a shell of the warrior you once were, Fandall. I am offering you a chance at glory and riches. Does it matter if it ends as your last mighty reave before going on to meet Donn?”
“No, I suppose not,” Fandall allowed before quaffing what remained in his cup and pouring some more.