Atop the gatehouse, Fergus had his back to the training field. He was gazing across Mag nAí, not listening to but hearing the grunts and bellows of Connacht’s youth. Although up, the sun found the canopy of mist challenging to breach. The yellow-tinged shroud with trees and hills poking through intermittently sent a tremor up the backs of his legs. The sun’s ineffective struggle seemed portentous, an omen of what she was driving them towards.

She was in Crúachain, having arrived back before the dawn. No one needed to tell him she had returned. When she was in the settlement, there was a palpable tenseness in the air. People did their chores with their heads down and tongues locked behind their teeth.

Fergus was leaning against a trunk of the wooden tower with his arms crossed at the wrists. Despite his negative humor, he thought the mystery of the mid-morning shroud glorious. The forest eaves on the edge of the plain were just visible. The green of the receding fields on the hills above the mist was murky and dark in contrast to the pale yellow shroud. Although not visible, the orb showed as a bright white plate in the yellow. He shivered again. An army of Ulstermen could be within a slingshot, and he would not know.

“You out there, Deceiver, shrouded in mist?” he wondered aloud.

“You are having doubts, I see.”

Fergus started and looked over his shoulder. A man’s head was poking through the hatchway, a smile splitting it. Fergus had not heard him climbing the ladder or lifting the hatch.

“What’re you talking about?” he asked, wondering how any man could be so silent.

Wearing boiled black leather, an ornate sword hilt jutting above his waist, the stranger climbed into the tower spanning the entrance to the hillfort and came to stand beside Fergus. He leaned on the adjoining stake with a smile and looked out over the shroud.

“I love the smell of the morning mists. Do you?”

“Smell? Never mind the smell, man; what do you mean, having doubts?”

“She is edging for a fight, and you are torn.”

Fergus did not need to ask who she was. She was the same she on everybody’s mind these last few weeks. She of the blue woad body paint and voracious appetites. The woman who boasted she had trained in the black arts in Babylon, the capital of evil.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“And who’re you, who know my mind better than I know it myself?”

“I am just a warrior, like you. That is how I know your mind, Fergus. If you want to put a name on me, you can call me Genonn.”

“Genonn. Do I know you?”

“No, I do not think so—enough about me. You are torn, Fergus; admit it. Although, you don’t need to speak. I can see it in every sinew of your body. Any more tense, you are liable to snap with a twang.”

Fergus looked back over the mists and wondered what brought this warrior into the gatehouse with such claims. “Torn by what?”

“You were once an Ulsterman, and your new queen is set on war with the Ulaid. When you came here, you did not think you would return to Ulster as part of an invading army. So now, you stand in the morning talking to a mist that can tell you nothing and wondering whether you will take the road she offers.”

Fergus nodded and realized the man was right. Despite wanting revenge against the king of the Ulaid, he did not want to invade his homeland. “Maybe you’re right, but even if you are, there is no other way.”

“Is your revenge so important?”

“The Deceiver killed my friends. Not only did he kill them, he laughed about it and lied to me. He denied Eogan followed his orders, forgetting Conall was there when he gave them. Conall heard and told me everything.”

“And Mac Nessa did not know Conall would report?”

“He trusts no one and does not tell anyone anything. He thinks the rest of us are the same. Secretive to the point of paranoia.”

“I concede, Fergus, that you might be right, but are you not afraid of angering the Tuatha Dé Danaan?”

“Angering the Sidhe? How?”

“They do not appreciate traitors. For you, Conall, and Longas, going to war on Ulster will incite their wrath, and they are not forgiving. Look at the plagues they visited on us after we made that boy Conaire high king.”

“And what of honor, do they not respect honor?”

“To a degree, but not as much as loyalty.”

“You think the blood and terror connected to High King Connery’s kingship, some sort of revenge of the Tuatha? You think they sent the invader to put our homes to the flame and our warriors to the sword because The Assembly voted for the boy?”

“He was born of incest. Nothing good ever comes from those born of incest. The Tuatha hate them almost as much as they hate the disloyal.”

“Maybe you’re right. We’ll never know, I fear,” Fergus turned away, unwilling to continue the talk. He did not need strangers telling him about loyalty.

“We do not want another plague.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Think about what I have said, Fergus. We will talk again soon,” Genonn said as he turned to leave.