The Hound of Ulster (2 page)

The Princess Dectera had come and gone again, leaving behind her her promised gift for Ulster.

Fergus Mac Roy carried the babe in the crook of his shield arm back to Emain Macha, and they gave him to Dectera's youngest sister Finchoom, who had a child of her own a few months old. And Finchoom nursed the two together. They called him Setenta on his naming-day, and the Plain of Murthemney that runs from D
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n Dealgan southward into Meath was given to him for his inheritance. But it was little enough that Setenta cared for that, sprawling with Conall and the hound puppies about the threshold of the King's Hall.

When they were seven summers old, and besides being cousins and foster brothers, were grown to be the closest and staunchest of friends, Setenta and Conall went to the Boys' House, where the sons of the princes and chieftains of Ulster learned the lessons that would make them warriors when the time came. And there, Setenta found the second of the three
friends who were to be dearest to him through all his life. And this was Laeg, son of a Leinster noble killed in a cattle raid, who had been set in Conor's household for a hostage when he was yet too young to know the meaning of what had befallen him, and had long since forgotten that he was anything but Ulster-born among his own kind. He was a year older than Setenta, a tall boy, red-haired, and freckled as a foxglove; and such a way with horses he had that even at eight years old he had but to whisper in the ear of an angry stallion for the beast to grow gentle as a filly foal.

One day when Setenta was nearing the end of his time in the Boys' House, King Conor and his nobles were bidden to a great feast at the D
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n of a certain Cullen who was the greatest swordsmith in all Ulster, and young Setenta was to go with them—for was it not time, said Conor, that the boy learned the ways of courtesy as well as the ways of war? But he forgot the time of day and when the hour came for setting out, he was in the middle of a game of hurley with his companions, and standing, hurley stick in hand at the King's chariot wheel, he explained, ‘If I come now, we shall lose the game.'

Conor smiled in the black of his beard. He was a stern man easily moved to anger, but he was fond of this small dark fighting cock of a cousin and allowed him freedoms that he would not have allowed to any other of the Boys' Band. ‘What's to be done, then?'

‘Let my Lord the King ride on,' Setenta said, ‘and when the game is over and we have won, I will follow.'

So the King laughed and rode on with his nobles, and Setenta went back to his companions.

At dusk, Conor and his warriors reached the Rath of Cullen, and the master smith made them warmly and richly welcome, and brought them into his house-place and feasted them on
fresh boar meat and badger's flesh roasted with wild honey, and fine imported Greek wine in splendid bronze and silver cups of his own forging. Meanwhile his people, not knowing of Setenta's coming, or else forgetting about it, dragged the night-time barricade of thorn bushes into the gateway, and let loose Cullen's huge hound, who guarded his master's house so well and mightily that Cullen, who loved him, was wont to boast that with his dog loose in the forecourt he feared nothing less than the attack of a full war host.

In the midst of the feasting, with the harp music leaping to the firelit rafters, there rose an appalling uproar in the night outside, a baying and yelling that brought every man to his feet and snatching up his weapons. ‘Here is your war host, by the sound of it!' Conor said, and ran for the doorway, the lord of the house beside him and the warriors pounding at their heels. Men with torches were running towards the outer gates, where the yelling and snarling had sunk suddenly and horribly silent. And in the ragged glare of the torches, Conor and his warriors saw that the gate pillar was splashed with blood, and the thorn bushes had been thrust aside from the gateway, and in the opening, with the moon-watered darkness of the night behind him, stood Setenta, breathing like a runner after a race, and looking down at the body of the great speckled wolfhound that lay dead at his feet.

‘What has happened here?' Conor demanded.

The boy looked up at their coming, and said, ‘He would have killed me, so I killed him.'

And Cullen said harshly, ‘How was it done?'

And Setenta looked at his hands as though he were seeing them for the first time. ‘I caught him by the throat as he sprang at me, and dashed his life out against the gate pillar.'

‘Ach now, that was a deed that few among full-grown warriors could perform.' Conor beat his fist against his thigh in approval, and there was a roar of praise and laughter from the men about him.

Only Cullen the Swordsmith stood silent, staring down at the body of the great hound; and all the lines on his face were
cut heavy with grief as with one of his own sword blades. And as they looked at him, a silence fell on the rest, so that they heard the night wind and the spluttering of the torches. Setenta broke the stillness, looking slowly up into the man's face. ‘Give me a whelp of the same breed, Cullen the Swordsmith, and I will train him to be all to you that this one was. And meanwhile, let you lend me a shield and a spear, and I will be your guard-dog and keep your house as well as ever hound could do.'

Cullen shook his head, and set a hand kindly enough on the boy's thin shoulder. ‘It is a fine offer, but I can still train my own hounds. Go you back to your own training, for it is in my heart that when the time comes, you will be the guard-hound of all Ulster.'

‘And meanwhile,' said Fergus Mac Roy proudly, for he had never forgotten that it was himself had carried Setenta back to Emain Macha in the crook of his shield arm on the day that he was born, ‘let us call him Cuchulain, the Hound of Cullen, in remembrance of his first battle and the offer he made afterwards!'

And so they caught the boy up and carried him into the fire-lit hall, shouting his new name after him: ‘Cuchulain! Cuchulain!'

And Cuchulain he remained, until the day that he went beyond the sunset.

A SHORT WHILE
after the slaying of Cullen's hound, the time came for first Laeg and then Conall to Take Valour, which is to say, to take the weapons of manhood upon them, and bid farewell to the Boys' House. And Cuchulain was left behind to serve out the last months of his training.

But 'twas few enough Cuchulain served of those remaining months, for one soft autumn day with the colours of the world all rich and dark as though the bloom of bilberries were on them, he came up from spear practice, and passed close by the thicket of ancient hazels that dropped their nuts into the water above the ford of the stream. And under the hazel trees, Cathbad sat with some of the Boys' Band about him, propounding to them the laws of their people—for it was his task to teach them such things, together with star wisdom and the art of cutting the Ogham word signs on willow rods. The lesson was over, but as Cuchulain came splashing through the ford, there was laughter and a dappling of eager voices, for the boys, who were all of them near their time for becoming men, were trying to coax him into foretelling to them what days would be most fortunate for Taking Valour, for Cathbad was wise in other things than law and writing.

‘I am tired. I have told enough,' Cathbad said.

‘Of law, yes,' the others chorused, ‘but this is another thing.' And one of them, Cormac Coilinglass, the second son of the King, leaned forward with his arms across his knees and grinned at him. ‘If you give us a day under good stars for our
starting out, shall we not be like to do you the more credit among men, master dear?'

Cathbad smiled into his long beard that was still streaked with gold, though the hair of his head was white as a swan's wing; but under his white brows was a frown. ‘Children, children you are, seeking to make the old man prance for you like a juggler with apples and silver cups. This much I will do, and no more. I will tell you what fortune lies upon this day, waiting for any boy who Takes Valour on it,' and he smoothed a space on the bare earth before him, and shook red and white sand upon it from two horns at his girdle, and began with his long forefinger to trace in the sand the strange curved lines of divination, while Cuchulain his grandson checked and stood watching with his hand on the trunk of the nearest hazel tree. Cathbad was scarcely aware of him, as he stooped frowning over the patterns in the sand, for he never put forth the least part of his power without giving to it his whole self, as though the fate of all Ireland hung upon what he did. He drew more lines and studied them, frowning still, while the boys crowded closer, half of them breathing down his neck, then he brushed all smooth again, and looked up, slowly, pressing his hands across his eyes, as though he would brush away the things that he had seen. ‘The boy who takes up the spear and shield of manhood on this day will become the greatest and most renowned of all the warriors of Ireland, men will follow at his call to the world's end, and his enemies will shudder at the thunder of his chariot wheels, and the harpers shall sing of him while green Ireland yet rises above the sea; but his flowering-time shall be brief as that of the white bell-bine, opening in the morning and drooping before night. For he shall not live to count one grey hair at his temples . . . I can see no more.'

Cuchulain turned away from the hazel thicket where the
nuts fell splashing into the water above the ford, and set himself to the steep heathery slope that was crowned by the turf and timber ramparts and the great gate of Emain Macha. Once within the gates, he went in search of Conor the King, and found him just back from the hunting, sitting at ease on the bench before the Great Hall, with his legs stretched out before him, and his favourite hounds at his knee.

Cuchulain went and stood before him, and Conor, who was at peace with the world after his day's hunting, looked up and said, ‘Well now, and what will you be wanting, standing there so big and fierce, with your shadow darkening the sun?'

‘My Lord the King, I come to claim the weapons of my manhood today. I have learned all that the Boys' House teaches, and now I would be a man among men.'

‘Your time is not yet for close on another half year,' Conor said, startled.

‘That I know, but there is nothing I shall gain by the longer waiting.'

Conor looked at him long under his brows, and shook his head, and indeed, slight and dark as Cuchulain was, and small for his age, he seemed very far as yet from being a man. ‘Nothing save maybe a wind-puff of strength and a thumbnail or so of height.'

The boy flushed. ‘Size is not all that makes a warrior, and as for strength—give me your hunting spears, my lord and kinsman.'

So Conor gave him the two great wolf spears that were still red like rust on the blade, and Cuchulain took them lightly and broke them across his knee as though they had been dry hazel sticks, and tossed the pieces aside. ‘You must give me better spears than these,' he said, and it was as though deep within him a spark kindled and spread into a small fierce flame.

Conor beckoned his armour-bearer, and bade him bring war spears; but when they were brought, Cuchulain took them and whirled them above his head, and broke them almost as easily as he had done the wolf spears, and tossed the jagged pieces away. By now there was a crowd begun to gather, and Cuchulain stood in the midst of them, waiting for someone to bring him better weapons. They brought him more spears, and then swords, and each he treated as he had done the first, and flung contemptuously away. They brought chariots into the forecourt, and he smashed them as easily as he had smashed the spears, by stamping his feet through the interlaced floor straps and twisting the ash framing of the bow between his hands, until all the forecourt lay littered with wreckage as though a battle had been fought there. And at last Conor the King burst into a harsh roar of laughter and beat his hands upon his knees and shouted, ‘Enough! In the name of the High Gods, enough, or we shall have not a spear nor a war chariot left whole in Emain Macha! Bring the boy my own weapons, my spears and sword that were forged for me by Goban himself, and harness him my own chariot, for ‘tis in my mind that those are beyond even
his
breaking!'

So the King's armour-bearer brought out Conor's own angry battle spears headed with black iron and decked with collars of blue-green heron hackles, and his sword whose blade gave off fire at every blow like shooting stars on a frosty night; and the charioteer brought the King's chariot, with polished bronze collars to the wheel hubs and its wicker sides covered with red and white oxhides, and in the yoke of it the King's own speckled stallions that scorned any hand on their reins save that of Conor himself or his driver.

And Cuchulain took the spears and sword and strove to break them across his knee, and could not, though he strained
until the muscles stood out on his neck like knotted cords. ‘These weapons I cannot break,' he said at last.