Mission

That the gates of the settlement were closed seemed strange to Genonn. He could not think of any recent trouble to put the settlement council on their guard. Not that he should have been surprised. The age of High King Connery’s asinine laws on raids and peace had not yet arrived: the age of no rape and pillage. Warriors had their swords in sheathes or in their hands, not above the lintels of roundhouses, rusting under the baleful stares of the unemployed killers. Reaving and raping were common enough occurrences. Gates were often barred, and warriors alert. Girls and settlement women ready to make for the forest.

But he was young.

They say that youth coupled with inexperience excuses a bushel’s worth of ineptitude. Genonn was not sure the explanation fit the scene. He pushed the hood back off his white cowl—stiff with the dried mud accumulated during his journey from Ynys Môn, where he’d recently finished his training—and frowned.

“Get a grip,” he said to the forest, putting his staff on his shoulder. “There’s been no news of trouble.”

Sighing, he lifted the sack with his belongings and trudged down the hill.

As he arrived at the palisade, he could hear nothing of the usual settlement noise. There was no laughter, no sound of children at play or men and women at work. Even the dogs were silent.

Before walking down the hill, Genonn saw that the gate was on the opposite side of the settlement. On the rise, he faced Slíghe Chualann, the road that passed the gate.

“That is your reward for trying to be clever,” he told the woodland animals.

Rather than sticking to the road, he took a shortcut through the forest because the slíghe curved in a great loop, and he thought to save time, mistakenly. The forest was dense, its pitfalls many, and by the time he reached the slope overlooking the ráth, he was footsore and ready for a flagon or two of mead.

Hitching his bag higher, Genonn began the long trudge around the wooden wall, using his stave as a crutch. All the while, he listened with concentration but in vain. There was no noise. It was as though Ráth Droma had become a mound of the Sidhe: all sound and activity hidden from humankind. Or a settlement of the dead, victims of a cruel raid, perhaps? His young mind was wont to imagine a gruesome scene on the other side of the wooden pilings. Bodies all contorted. Sightless eyes staring at the deep azure sky.

Are the dogs silent because they feast?

When Genonn reached the gate, he could see no means to announce his arrival. There was no bell or knocker, so he rapped three times on the wood with his stave. The noise invaded the still like a thunderclap, which elicited no response from within. Genonn felt his heart start to beat a little faster. Something had happened. It seemed his first mission—counselor to the Chieftain Mathaman—was to be a sorry one.

Is the chieftain rotting in his feast hall?

But surely not. Badb and her ravens would be blackening the skies.

Genonn rapped again, louder.

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Still nothing. Lifting the bag from his shoulder, Genonn pulled up the skirts of his robe and tucked them into his triús, intent on climbing over the palisade, when the gruff words, “Who’re ye?” caused him to jump and feel the warmth of a blush creep up his face.

“You did not answer my knock,” Genonn tried to explain, looking at the hairy face staring from the hatch he had not seen. “I was going to—”

“Just did, didn’t I?” hairy face interrupted. “So, I repeat, who’re you?”

Before responding, Genonn blew out his chest, pushed his shoulders back, and in his haughtiest voice said, “I am Genonn, druid of the Elder Council, here to advise Chieftain Mathaman on the administration of Ráth Droma.”

“Here to advise Mathaman, are ye?” The gatekeeper shook his head and started to laugh. “This I must see.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, boyo. There’s several parts to yer tale belied by yer face and gangly pins, so there is.”

“Such as?”

“Ye says, druid of the Elder Council. Well, druids are called greybeards. Ye don’t even have an arse whisker above yer lip. And Elder Council speaks to itself. Me boots have seen more summers. Druid of the Elder Council, he says,” the gatekeeper repeated, shaking his head anew.

“You can laugh, warrior, but it is the truth. Go and tell your liege I am here.”

“Enough with the warrior. I’m just the gatekeep, so I am. Putting titles aside, ye can tell him yerself. He’s in the feast hall. I’ll bring ye.”

As he walked through the settlement, the lack of noise again confused Genonn. There was nothing, not even the sound of their boots on the road. He wondered if the gatekeeper was Donn, luring him into the Underworld. He stole glances at the hairy old guard, bent-backed, who stank. His shuffling gait did not speak of the power Genonn would expect from one of the Sidhe, so he relaxed.

Genonn was surprised to discover that where a feast hall would typically be a roundhouse—a larger version of the roundhouses where people lived—Ráth Droma’s was a blockhouse: squat, oblong, menacing. There were log stairs leading to the heavy oak doors, which were closed. The gatekeeper had to brace his legs to push them open. In the light from the door, Genonn saw an oak locking bar on the floor and realized the people must use the blockhouse as a refuge during raids.

He stopped at the door and gazed into the shadows of the hall. As his eyes adjusted, the reason the settlement was so quiet became clear. The people of Ráth Droma were packed into the bunker. Pressed together, silent shoulder to silent shoulder. At the end of the aisle was a dais. Two guards were standing with their backs to the door where Genonn stood. Between them, a figure was kneeling in the dust, head down, massive shoulders slumped, arms bound behind. On the stage, sitting on a gaudy throne, bedecked in glitter, was the man presiding over it all. Mathaman, Genonn guessed.

The two guards flanking the throne wore ill-kept armor. The heads of their spears appeared rusty in the orange glow from the braziers, and their besmirched faces stretched into expressions of intense boredom.

Mathaman could have been more remarkable. Blond, masses of facial hair, appearing beady-eyed, even considering the distance from door to dais. Genonn noticed that the chief was so round he seemed to be perched right on the edge of his chair. If not for the constant twitching of his head, Genonn might have taken him for a barrel of mead, there to service the crowd with light refreshment.

“Ye first,” the gatekeeper said, giving Genonn a slight shove to get him moving.

As he walked, he noticed settlement people studiously staring at the dais. Even the children just old enough to be standing were staring to the front. Those too young to be standing were nonetheless silent, perhaps sensing the need for quiet or more likely to have been recently fed and drowsing.

On reaching the dais, the gatekeeper said, “Make space. Got one here reckons he’s from the Elder Council, so he does. A greybeard, he says,” before shaking his head, laughing, and returning to his gate.

Grinning at him, the guards on either side of the prisoner dragged the man aside, and Genonn came to rest before the chief.

“I am Genonn, Lord. The Elder Council on Ynys Môn assigned me as your counselor.”

Mathaman raised his hand, imperious in its command. He did not even look at Genonn but continued to stare at the man on his knees.

“You have caught us at a bad time. A woodsman has been found guilty of stealing sheep and has been sentenced to death by the knotted hide.”

The proclamation caused a hiss of indrawn breath as though the settlement had been waiting for the news Mathaman had just given.