Kenneth C. Flint - Gods of Eire 01 - The Riders of the Sidhe

BOOK I

THE SEA GOD

I

THE ATTACK

THE SHIPS SWEPT in suddenly from the silver mists which clung to the edge of

the northern sea.

They were beautiful ships, their soft, glowing sails extended like great

wings, swooping gracefully toward the island's rocky coast. But it was the

hard, bright edge of death that they carried within them.

The grey-uniformed warriors who filled their decks looked up in cold disdain

at the towering clifis and the line of fortress walls along their top.

Swiftly, skillfully, without a flicker of care in any of the hardened faces,

they readied ropes and grapples and weapons for their attack.

High above them, the alarm had already been raised.

Warriors swarmed within the walls of the clifftop fortress. Defensive points

were manned. Captains shouted orders to the companies who formed in the

training grounds before the central keep.

From an upper window of the keep, a dark-haired woman watched the activities

with concern. Her gaze often lifted to the sea beyond, where the sleek vessels

soared in as unwaveringly as hawks descending upon prey.

Though a young woman yet, still slim and vigorous, grey showed in the

billowing blackness of her hair, and lines aged the smooth, even-featured

face. The days of Taillta's life had not been easy. But she knew, as she

watched the ships come, that the hardest ones lay still ahead of her.

4THE RIDERS OF THE SIDHE

The commander of her companies entered the room behind her.

"My Queen, there are a score of large boats in the fleet," he announced. "We

estimate at least a thousand men!"

She turned to him, regarding him with a calmly appraising eye as she asked

bluntly:

"Can you withstand them, Cecht?"

She searched for any sign of uncertainty, any hint of weakness, but the

commander only smiled grimly as he replied.

"My Queen, we've waited on this island for fifteen years, guarding this lonely

fortress, watching, our weapons always ready. We've prayed to every god for a

chance to fight again. There's not a band of fighting men who'd have a better

chance of holding them than we!"

She nodded, satisfied.

"Who is it coming against us?" she demanded. "What is their look?"

"The ships and sails are like none I've seen before. The hulls are as shiny

and black as the hardest bog-oak. The sails stay full and steady regardless of

the winds."

"And the men?"

"Their appearance is just as strange to me. They're big-bodied, square,

hard-looking men, dressed in like tunics and trousers of smooth grey."

"There's no doubt of it, then," she told him with a chill certainty. "We have

been found by them at last!"

"How can that be?" asked Cecht in surprise. "I've never seen any warriors of

theirs who looked or dressed as these do."

"You've seen only their garrison troops. The worst of them. These are the

household troops of Balor himself. He must know!"

She thought a moment, deepening those lines which fear of this day had etched

into her face. Then she spoke, harshly and without compromise:

"Cecht, they'll not be easy to stop," she said. In fact, she knew that these

attackers could not be stopped at all. But she had no wish to wound her

commander's pride. "You must make this as hard as you can for them. It may

mean the death of every one of us—every warrior, woman, child—but we must hold

them as long as we can!"

"We know, my Queen," he replied. "We've always known."

THE SEA GOD 5

She smiled at him gently, sadly, placing a hand lightly upon

his arm.

"Loyal Cecht," she said. "It's glad I've been to have you beside me until this

day. And it's glad I am to have you with me now."

He nodded, understanding the depth of feeling behind the simple words. She

dropped her hand and added in a brisk

voice:

"Go now. See to the defense. And have the boy sent up to

me."

He hurried from the room and she turned back to the window. The ships were

already against the cliffs below, out of her sight. But she knew that their

warriors were swarming up the treacherous cliff-face without fear or

hesitation. It would be only moments before they would come against the walls.

"Taillta," said a voice behind her.

She turned to face a boy, tall for his fifteen years, fair-haired and slender,

and with a fine, long nose and boldly jutting chin that age would chisel to

clean, sharp handsomeness. He was breathless with his run to her and vibrating

with an excitement he could not totally control.

"Taillta... those ships... who are they? What's happening?"

"They're coming to attack us, Lugh," she answered bluntly.

"Attack!" The idea startled him at first. Then a look of

determination hardened his young face. "I've got to join the

companies," he said firmly.

He moved swiftly to the weapons hung along the walls and seized a longsword,

pulling it from its brackets. But Taillta moved up behind him, gripping his

shoulder.

"Lugh, you can't join them. You've got to leave." He whirled to her, his look

confused. "Leave? What do you mean? I've got to fight!" He was aroused by the

expectation of battle. The fire of it ruddied his pale skin, lit his grey

eyes. His muscles were taut with the need to act, his legs set solidly, his

sword gripped tight. She saw all of it and she felt a sudden stabbing of

regret. She had hoped that the need for this would never come. He had been

a poet, a craftsman, a lover of the peaceful ways taught him. A mild boy,

safe here from the worries of the world.

Harshly she reminded herself that she knew this day would

6THE RIDERS OF THE SIDHE

come. She fought back the sorrow which had threatened to overwhelm her usual

control.

She moved close to him and stroked his beardless cheek lightly. He realized

that her eyes were full of tears.

"Taiilta," he said, concerned now for her. "I didn't think of you. Are you

afraid?"

"It's not fear that's made my sorrow. It's regret for you," she replied

evenly, her rigid control re-established. "Lugh, you will not be fighting

here. You must run. .. and quickly!"

"Run from this?" he asked, struggling to understand. "You'll need every

man..."

She seized his shoulders in a tight grip.

"Listen! Listen to me! I know what we're facing here. There's nothing we can

do to hold these men for long. You have to get away!"

"But, what about the rest of you?"

"The rest, all of us, are here only to protect you. All of these years, our

only purpose has been to keep you safe!"

"Why?" he asked again, more urgently. Things were happening so fast he

couldn't think. There were too many questions.

"I cannot tell you. And there is no more time for talk. You only need to know

that we have one aim here ... to keep you alive. You must believe me and you

must leave! If you don't, our lives here have been meaningless."

A sudden, burning wind blasted through the open windows of the hall. The force

of it rocked the entire building. The roar of it deafened them like the

combined fury of a score of gales.

Taiilta and Lugh recovered from the shock and ran to the windows whose

shutters had been torn away by the power of the blast. Below them the thick

outer wall of the fortress was torn open, gaping like a jagged wound. The

rubble of the massive stones was scattered about the inner court. Half the men

of the companies were scattered too, killed or wounded by debris, stunned by

the blast, buried in piles of splintered rock. The rest were trying gallantly

to reform before a stream of heavily armed warriors already pouring through

the opening.

"How could they tear down the wall so quickly?' Lugh asked, astounded by the

force evidenced below. 'And who are those warriors?" There was something about

them that stirred vague, unsettling memories in him.

But Taiilta gave him no chance to think.

THE SEA GOD 7

"There's no more time!" she cried, seizing his arm. "Come

with me!"

She dragged him from the hall and then ran ahead, urging him on. Uncertainly

he followed her out of the keep and onto the upper parapet of the walls. Below

them the attackers were flooding into the fortress grounds. The two passed

defenders who were hurling spears and fragments of broken wall down on the

advancing grey-clad soldiers.

By one section of the outer wall Lugh and Taiilta stopped. Not far ahead their

warriors held a stairway against the enemy swarming upward from the breached

section. They were determined, sacrificing themselves valiantly to keep back

the overwhelming numbers below, but they couldnt

hold long.

Taiilta turned a rusted torch socket in the outer wall and pressed inward on a

massive stone. It swung back, revealing a staircase spiraling down, through

the thickness of the wall.

"This passage leads down to a sheltered cove beyond the point!" she shouted to

him above the battle's din. "A boat is hidden there. Take it and sail away.

You should be unseen. Go east to Manannan's Isle. You'll find help there!"

He listened to her words in disbelief.

"You really believe I can run away from this? Leave my friends? Leave you, my

aunt? My only family?"

"Lugh, I am no aunt to you," she told him. "You are not one of us. I am the

daughter of Mac-Erc, the last great High-King of our tribe. Long ago we vowed

to protect you, and I have been your foster mother ever since."

He couldn't grasp what she was telling him. This last assault on his sense of

reality had dazed him. He shook his head and held on doggedly to the only

truth that he did know.

"No ties of blood could make you more a mother to me," he cried. "You're the

only family I have. All I love. I won't leave you!"

In despair she searched for the words that would make him go. She could find

none.

She moved close and looked sorrowfully into his eyes.

"I love you as well," she told him gently. "And as if you were my son.

Bemember that."

She swung back her arm and, with a skillfully placed uppercut, dropped Lugh

where he stood.

8

THE RIDERS OF THE SIDHE

She stooped to check him and nodded with satisfaction. He was unhurt and

merely stunned by the blow. Briskly she went to work, calling a nearby warrior

to her.

Together they lifted the unconscious boy and started down the narrow stairway.

The sound of battle dimmed as they spiraled down, through the wall, into a

fissure in the cliff-face below. As they descended, a growing sound of

rhythmic thunder echoed up to them. It was the sea.

At the bottom of the stairs a rough-hewn passageway opened onto a tiny scrap

of shore, sheltered by a cave worn in the rocks. She and the warrior readied

the small boat hidden there, raised its sail and set its tiller to take it

toward the east.

The whole cliff above them groaned, the solid rock of it fracturing from

another powerful blast. Fine rock showered into the water beyond the cave's

mouth. More fell from cracks that opened in the cave itself. The boat had to

be gotten clear!

"Hurry!" she said. "Get him in!"

They lifted and rolled the boy into the boat. There was no time for ceremony

here. Taillta breathed a silent prayer for his survival as she and the warrior

heaved the boat out to sea with all their strength.

It floated out sluggishly, its little headway slowed by the incoming waves. As

it hung there, drifting just beyond the cave's protecting overhang, another

massive blow struck the cliff above. Larger rocks plunged from the riven face

into the sea. Two boulders bracketed the tiny boat, rocking it like a shred of

bark.

She drew her breath in fright. It would be caught there. Crushed. He would be

killed after all!

"Manannan, help us!" she shouted to the sea. "He's all that's left to us!"

The boat, perhaps pushed by the waves raised by the fallen rocks, moved

forward. It cleared the cliff and the sheltering rocks and a breeze caught at

it, pulling it out.

Once more the force, like a giant hammer, slammed against the cliff. With

protesting rumbles, it shifted in its ancient bed. The whole structure of the

cliff-face was battered to a fragile point, ready to collapse. And, under its

base, the little cave began to give way from the pressure above. Cracks seamed

its water-smoothed sides like a crushed egg. They

THE SEA GOD W

widened rapidly, broken rock falling from them in a continuous hail. "My

Queen, we must go back!" the warrior cried.

The boat was well away now, skimming out over the waves at an ever-increasing

speed. There was no more that she

could do.

Abruptly she turned away and ran to the stairway, the warrior close behind.

But he didn't make it. With a roar the cave's roof gave way all at once. The

avalanche of stone caught him, drove him down and buried him.

She hesitated and looked back, but he was gone. The delay nearly killed her

too. For even the stairs began to give way as she started up. The tight spiral

seemed to fold down into itself, almost to be sucked down, each step

collapsing, crumbling away nearly under her feet.

She ran upward desperately, just ahead of the void which opened below and

chewed upward at the stone, threatening to swallow her as well. Her legs ached

with the climb, and if she slowed for an instant she knew she would be gone.

Perhaps that was the best way, she thought. To stop and be carried away rather

than face the death awaiting her above.

Yet her instinctive need to fight for life pushed her on. She reached the top

just ahead of the disintegrating stairs. The entrance to the stairs was still

open, but it too was breaking away, slipping out and down. Leaping through it

as it fell, she crossed a widening gap to the edge of the surviving parapet

walk.

She struck the edge and slid back, hanging on with one hand gripping the

ragged stone, the other tangled in a length of trailing cloth. Below her the

whole outer curtain of cliff had slid away into the sea, taking the section of

wall with it. She dangled above a sheer drop to the water.

With an effort she was able to pull herself up, hauling at the cloth, throwing

her other arm forward over the edge. One great heave forward brought her body

up onto the walk.

She found herself meeting the gaze of a dead warrior whose jaw gaped neck to

nose from a sword cut. It was the cloak about his neck that had saved her.

She scrambled to her feet. The walk was empty save for the other bodies which

littered it. But on the inner walls beyond the keep the fight still raged.

Scooping up a dead warrior's fallen sword, she ran toward

I

10

THE RIDERS OF THE SIDHE

THE SEA GOD

11

the keep, thinking to join the survivors. She reached its doors as one of her

men staggered from it with a cry and fell, a spear piercing his back.

Behind him a large attacker clad in the strange, grey uniform emerged. With a

tug he pulled his spear from the dead man's body. He looked about for other

challengers and saw Taillta. A grim smile stretched the thin, tightly clenched

lips. Several other grey-clad soldiers' moved out behind him, drawing up on

either side of him, bloodied weapons ready.

"Well, woman, I think you're one of them we've been lookin' for," the first

one said with satisfaction. "You and the boy. Where's the boy?"

"I'll not be talking to the likes of you with anything but this!" she cried,

waving her own sword defiantly.

"You lost your protection with your fortress," he told her. "What can you do?"

"I am the daughter of a High-King," she said, drawing herself up proudly.

He laughed. "And what do you think that'll save you from? Put down that sword

and come along with us."

"Careful!" she warned, backing to a corner where none of them could come

behind her. "I'm daughter to a king and a warrior as well. You'll not find me

so easy to take."

The warrior laughed again. He nodded to one of his men who started toward her.

But he staggered back at once, pierced through the side by a lightning thrust

of her slim blade.

Two more moved in, but her skill was a match for theirs and her slender body

disguised a powerful strength. She parried the attack of both and wounded one.

The other stepped back, his battle-hardened face showing fear.

"We've grown a bit tired of this," the leader said, no longer amused. "We need

you to tell us where that boy is!"

"Come and ask me yourself, why don't you then?" she taunted, the sword

flicking out at him.

"I will do that," he told her in a hard, chill voice.

He signaled the remaining men and they all moved in around her at once.

In the tiny boat that sailed toward the east, Lugh lay still unconscious.

It might have been his pain and the disturbance created in

his mind at seeing the strange warriors, but something made

him dream.

He saw those warriors in another setting. They were moving slowly forward

through the doorway of a room behind an immense, black figure that seemed to

be something other than a man.

He realized that someone was holding him. Close above him the white,-blurred

oval of a woman's face seemed to hang, and he felt himself rocking gently.

She was shouting at the men across the room, but he couldn't understand her

words. The men came on toward her and great, clutching hands stretched out to

him. The glint of bright blades pained his eyes.

Then the men were swept from sight as he was whirled about. A bright square of

light jerked into view, then swelled to fill his field of vision as he felt

himself flying toward it.

There was a terrifying feeling of weightlessness. He sailed into the square of

light and it swallowed him, and then there was light all about him, and he

fell. There was a quick image of blue sky above running to sparkling sea below

as he began to tumble. And then he rolled up again and a glowing shaft of

white seemed to shoot up above him as a tiny square of blackness in its side

shrank away to nothingness.

He felt an impact. A double shock as cold and darkness both engulfed him in

one heartbeat. He choked as a strange, harsh liquid flooded his mouth and

nose, cutting off his breath.

But immediately more hands clutched at him, gripped him, raised him up, and he

was free of the clinging wet, emerging into the light again. Something warm

enveloped him and he felt himself cradled, rocked, his panic easing. Now he

sensed only the rocking and a swelling motion coupled with a rhythmic creaking

noise.

Above him he glimpsed the blue sky again. And, as something turned him slowly

about, he glimpsed for another instant the towering, glowing thing.

In the sunlight it was a rising pillar of ice, a sharply faceted mountain of

glass so brilliant that it burned its image on his unprotected eyes.

Lugh jerked awake. He knew that he had dreamed this many times before. No

wonder the grey soldiers had seemed familiar. But who were they? And what was

that bright tower?

12

THE RIDERS OF THE SIDHE

It suddenly came to him that the sensations of his dream still surrounded

him—the swelling motion and the rhythmic creak. He sat upright, and the image

from his dream seemed to confront him again!

There was the sparkling sea, the spread of sky. And there, hanging before his

sleep-fogged eyes, was a rising column of light.

But this was a different light, warm red and undulating, not a frozen white.

And, with that realization, the dream faded utterly and he saw what he was

really facing now.

It was his fortress home, or its remains. The whole clifitop was ablaze,

everything engulfed by the rising flames. The entire structure was shattered,

its walls gaping open all along the cliffs. There was no question of its

defeat or of the tremendous, ruthless force which had been thrown against it.

He sank back, stunned by this reality, while the boat swept him further from

the wreckage of everything he'd ever known.

II

RESCUE IN THE FOG

THE FORTRESS ON the clifftop burned brightly in the dark-ness, like a beacon,

casting a red, shifting light across the sea and ships below. Men were visible

in the red glow, moving on rope ladders, crude paths and steps up and down the

cliff-face. Most were returning now from their work, climbing down from the

shattered fortress and boarding the waiting ships.

A grey-suited captain of the raiders, followed by a party of warriors, climbed

onto the deck of the largest ship. He moved alone toward the stern where,

masked by shadows, a figure waited,

It was not the figure of a man who waited there, and yet in some monstrous,

vague way it was. Immense, motionless in the curtaining shadows which rippled

and billowed with the firelight reflected by the waves, it was undefined and

the

THE SEA GOD

13

more terrible for that. The captain's eyes strained as he tried to focus on

it, wanting to see it, yet fearing to.

Finally, reluctantly, he addressed it. "Balor?"

There was a long silence. Then, slowly, the figure moved. It shifted with an

irritated moan, like a great, ancient beast prodded from its sleep. And

somewhere in that upper mass which might have been a head, there was a sharp

click. A light appeared in the blackness there, as if an eyelid had been

raised; it opened to a slit, a hairline crack, revealing a glowing, ruby eye.

But the intensity of that thin line of light was enough to hint at the power

shielded behind the lowered lid. Many times more violent energy, more raging

heat lay in that blood-red glow than in the blazing fortress above.

Even in the coolness of the night, the captain felt the heat of the eye upon

him as its gaze turned slowly toward him, felt the sweat start and crawl upon

him.

"You have a report, Captain?" said a flat, sharp voice, like iron spearheads

rattled against a shield.

"Yes, Balor. We've searched the entire island and gathered every family living

there. We found no light-haired child among them. We've searched the keep. It

was empty, but there were signs a boy had been living there."

"What signs?" the voice snapped.

"Some clothing, some old toys... and this!"

He held up a fine harp, intricately carved and inlaid with ivory and gold. Red

light flickered along its strings as he extended it toward the dark figure.

"A harp!" The reply was a crash of sound. A great hand swept forward from the

shadow in a curve that ripped the fragile instrument from the captain's hands

and smashed it against the ship's bulwark. With a plaintive shriek of ruptured

notes it fell to the deck, a tangled pile of splinters and curled strings.

The hand withdrew into the shadows. The voice, more sharply edged, asked:

"And what about the woman?"

"We've captured her. We've brought her here."

"Let me see her"

The captain signaled to the group behind him. From their midst the woman was

drawn, now worn and covered with blood from a bound cut in her shoulder, but

still defiant,

I

14

THE RIDERS OF THE SIDHE

shaking off the arms of the guards who tried to hold her, walking boldly

forward to face the shadowed figure.

The ruby eye moved toward her, rested on her for a time before the voice came

again.

"So, Taillta, you've made a harper of the boy. What else?"

"I don't know what boy it is you're speaking of," she answered flatly.

There was a movement of the head at that. It was faint, nearly imperceptible.

But the slit that was an eye widened a fraction more, and the warriors drew

back as the wave of heat and light bathed Taillta, making her wince

involuntarily from the searing pain.

"For many years your father fought us," the voice crackled, "until we

destroyed him and his power. He was as arrogant as you. Only he and you would

have had the courage to hide the boy from me. It was you who vanished when the

boy did. For all of these years I've sought to find that out and then to find

you. Now. . . where is the boy?"

These last words rose into a shout that clanged against the cliff-face,

echoing back out across the black water.

But neither its violence nor the stinging caress of the scorching red gaze

could soften Taillta's cold disdain. She shook her head and answered him

firmly, uncompromisingly.

"Balor, your time is wasted here. Search and question as you like, but you'll

learn of no boy from any one of us."

The heat and light were like a white-hot iron blade, probing toward her,

threatening to bore into her. She tried to keep from turning her head away.

Slowly, deliberately the voice replied to her.

"You and all those people you have here will pay for defying me."

"No more can we pay than we have already," she told her tormentor

courageously.

During this exchange another soldier had climbed to the ship's deck. Now he

moved toward the group in the stern.

Kenneth C. Flint - Gods of Eire 01 - The Riders of the Sidhe

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