The High Deeds of Finn MacCool (20 page)

But Cairbri, seeing from the walls of Tara the fighting in the Fian camp, knew that the two clans were too nearly matched; and he had need of the Clan Morna chieftains. So he sent his swiftest messenger running to them with word to break off the fight and fall back within the walls of the Royal Hill. Then the Clan Morna chiefs under Fer-tai broke off the fight, and fell back, while the King's own household warriors manned the ramparts to cover their retreat with a hail-storm of spears.

Then, seeing that to push after them would be to run upon disaster, Finn sounded his horn to recall his own men. And that sunset, without pausing even to break the camp, Finn ordered the standard of the Fianna to be raised and they marched South to join themselves to Fercob, King of Munster, who was marriage-kin to Finn Mac Cool, even as was Cairbri, but a friend and sworn comrade beside.

They sent runners ahead to warn Fercob, and as they went, they called on the main body of the Fianna to gather to the Munster hosting-plain.

And in like manner, Cairbri sent out his runners, summoning them, and the kings of all the Provinces, to muster to him at Tara. And the Clan Morna and the kings of Ulster and Connacht and even Finn's own Leinster mustered to Tara. But Fercob of Munster gathered his spears to fight beside Finn, and the Clan Bascna were with them there.

The sound of armourers' hammers on anvils rang from shore to shore of Erin, and the
whitt-whitt-whitt
of weapons on weapon-stones in the forecourts of chief and captain; and the very ground trembled under the tramp of feet as the warriors gathered to Cairbri or to Finn.

Then the fighting began, and the ding of hammer on anvil became the clash of blade on blade where the war-bands met in small fierce weapon-flurries, trying each other's strength. Then, as streamlets flow into a stream and the streams flow at last into the Shannon or the slow strong Boyne, the small fights became greater ones, and at last the two war hosts came to face each other on the bare sunny moors of Gavra for the last battle that must settle all things between them.

On the night before the battle the watchfires of the hosts were as though the stars had fallen from the sky in two great scattered swathes of light, and between them the moor was an emptiness of dark. When the morning came, the two war hosts took up their battle array, and between them the moor stretched empty to the wind and sunlight, and murmurous with bees.

On the one side, Cairbri the High King stood
beneath his silken standard, and behind him and on either side stretched the war host of Tara, company by company under their chieftains. Fer-tai and Fir-li his son captained the Clan Morna and all of the Fianna that stood with them, and the kings of the provinces each with their warriors, and close around the High King the five sons of Urgriu of the ancient tribes of Tara, each leading one of the ‘Pillars' of the High King's own household troops.

And on the other side the war host was drawing up in three parts, and in the centre the King of Munster commanded all the fighting-strength of his province, while the Fianna of Clan Bascna and such as had joined them were drawn up on the wings. Osca commanded the left wing, and the leader of the right (the post which in all battles carries the most of honour and of danger) was Finn Mac Cool himself.

The Fian Captain had put on his whole splendour of war gear; a silk shirt next his skin, and over it a battle shirt of many layers of linen waxed together, and over that his tunic of fine-meshed ringmail, and over that his gold-bordered belly-armour. Round his waist, a belt clasped with golden dragon heads; his sword hung at his side, his blue-bladed Lochlan war spear was in his hand; on his shoulder his round shield covered with green leather, its boss enriched with flowers of gold and silver and bronze. On his head, his war-cap of gilded bronze set about the brow with mountain gems that sparked back yellow-tawny light in the early rays of the sun. And around him the Clan Bascna stood close – shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield under their bright-tipped spears.

The war horns sounded, and the two war hosts
rushed upon each other. As they drew close together, the throwing-spears began to hum to and fro, and the moor of Gavra shook beneath their running feet, and from both sides the war cries and the Dord Fian rose like the surf of a mighty sea. And when they came together, the crash of their meeting rang through the Five Provinces of Erin and echoed back from the cold outer circle of the sky.

Then many a spear was broken, and many a bright blade shattered into crimsoned shards, and many a shield and war-cap hacked in two, and many a champion cut down into his own blood, and many a dead face turned towards the sky. And the young heather grew purple-red as though it were in flower a month before its time.

Osca was the spearhead of the attack that day, and wherever he turned his spear it seemed that a hundred warriors fell before him, opening a broad path for his following, into the boiling heart of the battle.

And so he came at last, with his wounds blazing red upon him, to where Cairbri fought at the head of his household warriors. Cairbri leapt to meet him, and there among all the turmoil of the battle, they fought as though they had been alone in all the sunny uplands of Gavra. Again and again they wounded each other sore, but neither felt the sting of wounds that would have slain lesser men three times over, until at last Osca got in a blow that entered Cairbri's body where the upper and lower plates of his belly armour came together, and drove out again through the small of his back. But as the High King fell, his falling twisted the spear from Osca's grasp, and from the ground he thrust up at him, so that the spear entered below his
guard and pierced upward from his belly into his breast. The blood came into his mouth, and he pitched forward across the High King's body, with the pains of death already upon him.

Then Cairbri's household warriors charged forward to get possession of their lord's body, and the champion's who had slain him. But those who followed Osca did the same and after sharp and bitter struggle they brought the young champion off, with still a breath of life in him, and bore him back to where Finn stood on a little hillock, ordering the battle, and laid him at the Fian Captain's feet.

And Osca opened his eyes one last time, and said, ‘I have slain Cairbri for you.'

‘I would that you had left him for my slaying, and for me to get my death from him, instead of you,' said Finn, and for the second time in his life, he wept.

‘Do not be doing that for me,' Osca said, ‘for if it were you lying there, and I standing over you, do you think it's one tear I'd be weeping for you?'

‘I know well enough that you would not, for Dearmid O'Dyna stands between us even now,' said Finn. ‘But as for me, I will weep for whom I choose to weep for!'

And with the thing part in jest and part in sorrow between them, Osca died. And there was not a palm's breadth of his body without a wound on it.

‘That was a hero's death,' said Finn.

And the battle frenzy woke in him – the battle fury that all men, himself among them, had thought that he was too old to know again – and he plunged forward into the boil of battle, with his closest sword companions storming at his heels. And his sword was a two-edged lightning clearing a path for him wherever he turned his face, and the hero light blazed upon his brow, so that no warrior could withstand
him, and the dead fell in tangled heaps about him; and he thrust over them and through them like a young bull through standing barley. But as he went, one after another of the men behind him fell, Dering and Keelta and Coil Croda and Fincel and Ligan Lummina until he was raging alone through the enemy war host. And Fer-li the son of Fer-tai, saw him with no friend to guard his back, and made at him with drawn sword, for both their spears were gone long since; and so they fought until both were sore wounded. But at the last Finn swung up his sword for a mighty blow, and struck Fer-li's head from his shoulders so that it went rolling and bouncing away under the feet of the battle, and Finn Mac Cool had the victory in
that
fight.

But after, Fer-tai came hurling himself upon him to avenge his son.

‘Great deeds, Finn!' he shouted. ‘Great deeds to be slaying a boy!'

‘Not so much a boy. And if you felt him so young and helpless, why did you not come before?' Finn mocked him.

‘I had hoped that he would finish the slaying. I had rather that he had the pride and the honour of it!'

So they fought across Fer-li's headless body, knee to knee and shield to shield, and over their shield and under their armour, the blood ran down. And at last Finn slew the father as he had slain the son.

And as he stood over the bodies, panting and far spent, and half blind with blood, the five sons of Urgriu came upon him in a circle, and Finn turned about and saw them all round him, closing in with spears raised to strike; and he knew that the end was
come. He let his shield that could not face five ways at once drop to his feet, and stood straight and unmoving as a pillar-stone.

And the five spears came at him, making five great wounds that put out the light of the sun . . .

In the Valley of the Thrushes, not far from where Dublin stands today, a crowd of men were trying to shift a great boulder from their tilled land, the village headman directing their efforts. The stone had been there as long as any of them could remember, or their grandfathers before them, and always they had grumbled at it because it got in the way of the ploughing. But though one or two half-hearted attempts had been made to shift it, it still lay half embedded in the hill side, where it always had lain.

Now at last, they were really set upon getting rid of the thing, and every man in the village had gathered to lend his strength to the task.

But it seemed that their strength was all too little, for there they were heaving and straining and grunting and hauling, their faces crimson and the sweat running off them, and the great boulder not moving so much as a finger's breadth out of its bed.

And as they strained and struggled – and they getting nearer each moment to giving up – they saw riding towards them a horseman such as none of them had ever set eyes on before, save maybe in some glorious dream. Taller and mightier than any man of this world he was, and riding a foam-white stallion as far beyond mortal horses as he was beyond mortal men. His eyes were strangely dark, his fair hair like
a sunburst about his head. A mantle of saffron silk flowed back from brooches of yellow gold that clasped it at his shoulders, and at his side hung a great golden-hilted sword.

‘It is one of the Fairy Kind!' said an aged villager, making the sign of the horns with the first two fingers of his left hand.

‘It is an archangel out of heaven!' said a young one, and made the sign of the Cross.

The splendid being, man or fairy or angel, reined in his horse, and sat looking down at them with a puzzled pity on his face. ‘You wanted this shifting?' he said.

The headman drew nearer, greatly daring. ‘We did so, but it seems 'tis beyond our strength. Would you be lending us the power of your arm, now?'

‘Surely,' said the rider, and stooping from the saddle, set his hand under the boulder and gave a mighty heave. The boulder came out of the ground and went rolling over and over down the hillside like a shinty ball, and the watching villagers gave a great shout of wonder and admiration. But next moment their shouts turned to fearful and wondering dismay.

For as he heaved at the boulder the rider's saddle girth had burst, so that he fell headlong to the ground. The moment the white stallion felt himself free, he neighed three times and set off at a tearing gallop towards the coast, and as he went, he seemed not merely to grow small with distance, but to lose shape and substance and fade into the summer air like a wisp of wood-smoke.

And there on the ground, where the splendid stranger had fallen, lay an old, old man, huge still, but
with thin white beard and milky half-blind eyes, his silken mantle a patched and tattered cloack of coarsest homespun, his golden-hilted sword a rough ash stick such as a blind old beggar might use to support him and feel his way about the world. He half raised himself and peered about, then with a wild despairing cry, stretched all his length again burying his head in his arms.

In a little, seeing that nothing terrible seemed to have happened to any of themselves, some of the bolder of the villagers came closer and lifted him up and asked him who he was.

‘I am Oisĩn the son of Finn Mac Cool,' said the old man.

Then the villagers looked at each other, and the headman said, ‘If you mean who I think you mean, then you're as crazy as we must have been just now to be taking you for whatever it was we took you for.'

‘It was the sun in our eyes,' said another man.

And they asked the old man a second time who he was.

‘Why do you ask again, when I have already told you? I am Oisĩn the son of Finn Mac Cool, Captain of the Fianna of Erin.'