Conall was riding behind the King, Setanta beside him. They saw the tower long before they saw the palisade of the settlement. Conall smiled at the expression on the boy’s face. It would seem Setanta had never seen a tower.
“Well met, Forgall,” Mac Nessa called, raising his hand to salute the chieftain of Lusk as they rode through the gate.
Three years had passed, and the Assembly of Kings was about to convene to select a new High King. Mac Nessa had arranged to meet with the council members to discuss options. Lusk was chosen as the meeting place because Forgall showed no favor and could act as an impartial mediator. He was not interested in who ruled in the Five Kingdoms and did not care about what occurred on Druid Island.
Conall frowned at Setanta. Something in the young man’s expression told him trouble was brewing. He looked at the steps and saw the girl standing behind her father.
Ah, the boy grows, he thought. But not only the boy. She fiddles with her locks, a sure sign of infatuation.
It did not take the foresight of a druid to see who in the retinue she favored. He had long hair tied to his forehead with a red leather band and was tall, muscled, and young. Conall grinned and hoped the lad had the good sense not to offend the girl’s father. Forgall was renowned for impartiality but that did not include his daughters’ chastity. Suitors had died for overstepping his boundaries. Forgall would probably not dare to kill the lad because the King favored him, but no good would come of impropriety on the boy’s part.
“King Connavar, please find welcome in my settlement,” Forgall exclaimed as he walked down the steps, arms extended.
“I thank you, Forgall. Are the council here yet?”
“No, sire. The winds are from the west, and crossing from Caergybi is not expected to be possible before tomorrow or perhaps the day following.”
“Then we can use the time to discuss how we intend to proceed. The retinue will gather in the feast hall,” Mac Nessa said as he swung down from his horse and handed the reins to one of Forgall’s retainers.
“There is no need for you to attend the meeting, Setanta. Go and amuse yourself. I will send for you when we are done,” the King said as the boy made to follow the men into the feast hall. On another occasion, Setanta might have protested. However, Conall noticed his eyes following the daughter of Forgall as she wandered into the forest just outside the settlement gates. Instead, the youth nodded and followed her without a word.
Be clever, boy, Conall thought as he followed the King into the feast hall.
***
Setanta’s eyes fell on the girl as they rode through the settlement gates. She was standing behind the chief on the steps of the feast hall. He had never seen anyone as beautiful. She was an image of perfection. Tall, slim, with flaming red hair. He had never believed in the power of love. His father, or the one who had claimed to be his father, had never shown love, and his mother had been too weak to display something her husband had admonished. Setanta had always despised her weakness, but now he knew his father was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, he felt more inclined to sympathy.
Confronted by this blossoming womanhood, he felt something stirring other than a carnal urge and followed the girl under the trees. Spring was in full bloom, so the sun glinted through the leaves, and the birds sang. He followed the path he saw the girl take and soon found her in a glade, sitting on a tree stump, playing with her hair. The girl had her back to him, and he stopped on the edge of the glade to watch her.
His thought that she represented perfection did not change now that he was much closer. She was wearing a forest green dress that left her shoulders bare, and her skin seemed to be as white as goose down, which, to Setanta’s mind, was every man’s dream.
“Are you going to stand there like a gaimbín, or are you going to come closer so I can get a look at you?” she said, causing Setanta to jump and blush.
“How did you know I was there?” he asked as he entered the glade.
“You make a noise like the Red Branch in full charge,” she laughed. “I could hear you breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows from right up the pathway.”
“Oh.”
“What is your name?” she asked with a shy tilt of her head. She twirled her hair and smiled at the same time. Setanta felt powerless in front of her charms.
“They call me The Hound,” he boasted, blowing out his chest as he did so.
Because her dress was off her shoulders, he could not help but look down at the pillowy softness of her cleavage. She saw where his gaze was directed and smiled.
“What a strange name that is,” she scoffed.
“I killed the hound of Chulainn with my camán and, in recompense, promised to guard his smithy. The King named me The Hound of Chulainn after that promise.”
“You boys. Oh, how predictable you are.”
“I am not a boy; I am a warrior of Ulster,” Setanta said, pushing out his chest to emphasize his exaggerated claim. “What is your name, anyway?”
The girl looked at him with eyes the same color as her dress, and his breath caught in his throat. Not only were they the same green, but they also had a hypnotic power that was enthralling him. He was powerless before this girl and knew it. If she were to snap her fingers and make any demands upon him, he would comply immediately.
“And why, pray tell, should I give my name to a mere boy?”
“I am not a boy. I told you I am a warrior of Ulster.”
“If you are a warrior of Ulster, why are you out here in the forest and not in the feast hall with your king?” she asked.
“I am guarding the perimeter.”
“My father has more than enough men to guard his settlement, boy.”
Setanta smiled in his turn. Despite all her cleverness, the girl had let slip her identity.
She is not the only one who can play games, he decided, before saying, “I thought Forgall was the chieftain of Lusk?”
“He is.”
“Emer is his daughter, and you are surely not her. She is renowned as one of the most beautiful women in the Five Kingdoms.”
“And you think me not beautiful?” the girl asked with another tilt of her head and with her arms crossed under her chest, forcing her breasts to rise, accentuating the cleavage.
“Maybe not as much as Emer is supposed to be.”
“Oh, I am Emer, foolish boy.”
She pouted, seeming to lose interest in her game.
“And I am The Hound of Chulainn, warrior of Ulster.”
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“Oh, the mighty warrior who kills a hound with a stick. I wager you have never even seen a woman’s teats?”
“I have, too, seen a teat,” Setanta stormed as a red blush spread up from the collar of his tunic.
“What, your mother’s?” If anything, the girl’s intuition caused his blush to deepen.
“I thought so,” she laughed.
Setanta became petulant and tired of the game. “I must return to my duties. It was nice to meet you, Emer.”
“Would you not like to see my teats first?” Emer asked with a coquettish gleam in her green eyes.
“Wh”, wh”, what?” Setanta mumbled, unsure whether he had heard correctly.
“Of course you do. How silly of me,” Emer said as she pulled the bodice of her dress down and exposed her chest. She laughed as Setanta’s mouth fell open, and his eyes bulged.
“If you sit beside me on the stump, you can touch them.”
Setanta could not believe what the girl was saying. He had occasionally seen his mother’s teats when she was bathing. Still, he had never touched a breast before, at least not in memory. He supposed he must have touched one as a newborn but could not remember.
“You want me to touch them?”
“Yes, but you must be gentle. They are not hard and hairy like a man’s.”
The boy sat beside Emer and cupped her right breast in his hand. He could not believe how soft it felt. Snowy white softness with the pink of hardening nipples filled his eyes and his mind. He squeezed ever so gently until Emer began to sigh. And then her sighs were interrupted by a rustling of leaves from the edge of the glade. Setanta jumped up from the tree stump and looked towards the noise just in time to see an impish face pull back out of sight.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“My younger sister. Quick, we must intercept her. She cannot get to my father before us.”
“They are in the feast hall; she will not be allowed in.”
“Believe me, she has ways into the feast hall that none of the guards know,” Emer said as she re-covered her breasts and began to run for the settlement. Setanta fell in beside her with an easy lope, keeping himself to her slower pace. As they ran, he was convinced he could hear giggling. It seemed Emer’s young sister was keeping just out of sight of their pursuit.
“Through here,” Emer said, indicating a small gap between two trunks of the feast hall wall. He watched her turn sideways on and slip through the gap with ease. He knew it would not be so easy for him and was cursing the pain of a scraped chest as he followed her through the opening. Emer had stopped abruptly just inside the feast hall. Setanta looked over her shoulder and could see the king’s retinue gathered around the table, which ran the length of the hall. He could not see the little girl until he heard Emer hiss in a breath and glanced where she was looking. He could see the impish face of the girl looking over her father’s shoulder.
Emer held up her hand, and Setanta watched her mouth please do not, before her young sister shrugged and shouted in Forgall’s ear, pointing at Setanta as she did so, “Father, father, Emer had her dress off, and that boy was touching her teats.”
***
“It goes against all etiquette, sire. I have killed men for less,” Forgall repeated. The guards had cleared the feast hall of the retinue, and Forgall was alone with Mac Nessa. Setanta was under guard in the settlement tower, a wooden needle standing on the eastern edge of the settlement with only one entrance and no way out except to jump. Conall was with the youth, trying to console him. Supposedly, Emer was with her mother, explaining what had happened.
“It was merely the curiosity of youth,” Mac Nessa sighed.
“Emer says the boy begged her to remove her bodice, and I am inclined to believe my daughter.”
“But no harm was done, Forgall.”
“That we do not know. Emer might just be too ashamed to admit any further wrongdoing.”
“The younger girl did not report anything except a fleeting grope of a naked breast.”
Mac Nessa was becoming ever more exasperated. Forgall was renowned for being overly protective of his daughters, but enough was enough. There was no need to make a mountain range from a little rut in the road.
“Children play and explore. It is the nature of adolescence. I suggest we punish the boy with menial tasks and leave it there. There is too much happening now for us to do much more.”
“I want to hear at least what the boy has to say.”
Mac Nessa sighed again. He knew he would need to appease Forgall, or there was a risk to his plans. “We will get the boy in here to hear what he has to say, and then we will leave it, Forgall. That is my final word.”
Setanta and Conall stood before them a short time later. The boy’s head was high, and Mac Nessa was proud of him despite his stupidity in arriving in this predicament.
“Tell us what happened in the glade,” Mac Nessa encouraged.
“What did Emer say happened?”
“Emer says you begged her to pull down her bodice and expose her breasts. She says that when they were exposed, you begged her to be allowed to touch them.”
The Hound looked at the men sitting at the table for several moments before he responded. Mac Nessa could see there was something he was wrestling with. It was as though his story would differ somewhat from the girl’s. Eventually, he cleared his throat and said, “Yes, exactly that. I begged, and she did as I asked.”
“Are you satisfied, Forgall?” Mac Nessa asked.
“Did you touch her anywhere else?” Forgall asked.
“Anywhere else where?” the boy asked, exposing his innocence to all in the room.
“I am satisfied, King. He cannot be any threat if he does not even know where to touch a girl.”
***
Emer was hiding in the shadows of the feast hall, listening to how things were progressing. She fully expected the boy to deny what she had claimed and was surprised when he did not. When he took the blame for all, what had been a game with a hapless youth turned into something else. She looked at the lithe form standing before the King and her father, with his head held high, and felt a stirring in her stomach, which she had never felt before.
***
The following morning, the King and Forgall were dining together alone. Mac Nessa had been thinking throughout the night about the dilemma Setanta represented. He was good-looking and would be a temptation to all women of the Five Kingdoms. He could picture the boy going from settlement to settlement, melting the hearts of wives and daughters throughout Ériu. Nothing but trouble could come from it. He thought the best way to circumvent that potential cauldron would be to find him a wife. He was young but showed signs of becoming a full-blooded male.
“I think, Forgall, that Emer and Setanta should be betrothed.”
The chieftain looked up from his mutton with a frown. “I cannot in all conscience, sire, give my daughter to an untried youth.”
Mac Nessa did not look up from his oats. He recognized insolence when he heard it. He heard it now in the unspoken words. Forgall would not marry his daughter to the son of a farmer. “He is too young to have been tried, it is true. But he will grow.”
“Yes, my point exactly. How can I trust a boy to protect my daughter if he is not yet fully grown?”
Mac Nessa nodded and returned his attention to his mutton and oats. He had not expected Forgall to cede Emer. He would talk to Kathvar and have him come up with a suitable woman for the boy—the sooner, the better.
“There is maybe one way to solve the issue,” Forgall continued.
“What is it you propose, Forgall?”
“I have heard the Druidess Dornoll is the best martial arts trainer, second to none except Scathach on the Isle of Skye.”
“You think he should go to Dornoll?”
“Yes, lord.”
“I agree. One day, that boy will lead the Red Branch and needs the training. Why not now?”
“Yes, sire. When he returns from the druidess, he will be better able to protect Emer.”
“If he comes back. Dornoll is a hard mistress. Many never return from training under her. She does not kill as many as the Shadowy One, but enough.”
“I know, lord.”
Mac Nessa kept his head down, concentrating on his mutton, so he did not see the look of triumph on Forgall’s face.
***
Conall and Fergus were standing on the beach at Lúr Cinn Trá, watching the rise and fall of the oars as the longship went out to sea. Conall could see Setanta standing in the stern of the ship, one hand holding the sternpost, the other shading his eyes from the glare off the surface of the mirror-smooth sea.
“He does not seem afraid of his prospects,” Fergus said.
“Afraid, The Hound? He beat a dog to death with a camán. Bull’s ball sack did not even raise a sweat.”
“A dog is one thing. A warrior will be something else. And Dornoll is something else again,” Fergus laughed, remembering his training.
“You mark my words, Fergus, that boy will be the fiercest warrior the Five Kingdoms has ever known.”
“You think him that good?”
“Yes, I think him that good,” Conall replied, thinking, He has no fear and no boundaries, no one will be able to stand against him.
Fergus shook his head and laughed, saying, “So, the Ulster Champion becomes a prophet.”