'Which brother?' asked Connavar.
'You will know. Do you accept this price?'
'I said that I would,' said Connavar. 'I will keep this promise – as I should have kept another promise all those years ago.'
'That is good,' said the Morrigu. 'And now to Bane. Will you offer me a gift?'
'What can I offer you, lady?'
'In eight days, on the night of the hunter's moon, you will return to this circle?'
'What then?'
'Whatever you choose. And now… farewell.'
The light faded. Vorna turned, and saw that the altar had disappeared.
'A simple thank you would have been pleasant,' said Bane.
Connavar pulled on his mailshirt and breastplate, and buckled on his sword belt. Bane approached him. 'How did you know the beast would not attack you?' he asked.
'I too would like the answer to that,' said Vorna.
Connavar knelt and put on his bronze greaves. 'The Morrigu took a great risk with us,' he said. 'She could have made it to the Gateway a week ago, as her energy was fading. Instead she stayed where she was, in the hope that we would come for her. I read it in her mind. She tried to close her thoughts to me, but by then she was too weak.' He straightened. 'I always thought of her as a malicious creature, but the depths of her love for this land and its people are beyond belief.'
'Yes, yes,' said Bane impatiently. 'She was a sweet and loving woman. But the beast…?'
'The creature no human could overcome? It was a lesson, Bane. A good man tried to teach it to me many years ago. You cannot overcome hatred with more hatred. Sometimes you have to surrender in order to win. There are only three possibilities when faced with an enemy: run from him, fight him, or make him your friend. The creature in the circle was created to respond. Attack it – and it will come back at you with twice your strength. I ignored it. And it, true to its nature, ignored me.'
'You sound sad, my dear,' said Vorna, moving to his side.
'Oh that it were only sadness,' said Connavar. Then he walked away from them.
Two days later, at the head of ten thousand Iron Wolves and three thousand Horse Archers, Wik among them, Connavar rode south. The main body of his footsoldiers – just over twenty-five thousand men – had already begun the march under the generalship of Govannan. Hundreds of baggage wagons followed the army, which stretched over nine miles of country. The folk of Three Streams watched them go.
Bane emerged from the Roundhouse as the king passed. Connavar saw him, and raised a hand in farewell. Bane acknowledged it with a brief wave. Then he mounted his horse and set off to the west, and his farm.
Vorna was standing by the forge as the army moved south. She watched Connavar until he was a distant, golden figure on the hilltop horizon, then she turned away and walked slowly to her house.
Meria was waiting for her there. 'It is a fine army,' said Meria. 'They will prevail.'
Vorna saw the fear in her green eyes. 'Let us hope so,' she said.
'It is Conn's destiny to defeat them,' said Meria. 'All his life he has known it.'
Vorna had no desire for company, but she stood politely, waiting for Meria to come to the point of her visit. 'Conn came to see you yesterday,' said Meria. 'How did he seem?'
'He was… thoughtful,' Vorna told her.
'Ever since the night he spent at Bane's farm he has been withdrawn. Did they argue? I see that Bane has not ridden south with the army.'
'They did not argue,' said Vorna, 'and he did not spend the night at Bane's farm. He and Bane came with me to the Wishing Tree woods.'
Meria sighed. 'He did not tell me.' She forced a smile. 'But then he did not tell me the first time he ventured into those woods. Did he meet with the Seidh?'
'Yes.'
'Did they give him a talisman against the armies of Stone?'
'In a way.'
'It is foolish, I know, for me to worry so. Conn is forty years old. Not a child to be protected. It is just…' Her eyes brimmed with tears. 'It is just the way he said farewell to me.' Meria looked into Vorna's dark eyes. 'Have you seen the future?'
'No.'
'But you think he will come back?'
Vorna turned away, and stared at the towering, distant slopes of Caer Druagh. There were storm clouds shrouding the white peaks. 'I have not seen the future,' she said. 'But Conn has. He is a man of great courage and he will face his destiny as a king should.'
'Did he tell you what is to be?'
'You already know in your heart what is to be,' said Vorna. Meria closed her eyes and tears fell to her cheeks. She let out a soft cry and sagged against the wall of the house. Vorna put her arms around her. 'Come inside,' she said.
Meria shook her head. 'No… I will go home. Gwen and I are taking some children to the Riguan Falls.' She glanced at the sky. 'I had hoped it would be sunny. You think the storm is heading this way?'
'No,' said Vorna gently. 'It is moving east.'
'The Falls are beautiful,' said Meria, wiping away her tears. 'Ruathain and I used to swim there. I remember the first day Conn leapt from the high rock into the pool. He was only five.' She bit her lip, and turned her face away. 'It does not seem so long ago, Vorna. I look at the house sometimes and I expect little Bran to come scampering into the yard, and to see Connavar and Wing playing on the hillside.' She fell silent, her eyes turning to the marching army. Then she sighed. 'Now Bran is a general, Wing is a traitor, and my Conn…'
Head bowed, tears streaming, Meria walked away across the meadow.
Banouin's spirit floated high in the sky above the Rigante army, while his body lay in a small wood to the north, Brother Solstice sitting beside it. To the casual onlooker the young druid would appear to be sleeping. Instead he was tasting the freedom that only the mystic could ever know; no yearning from the flesh, no hunger, no passion, no anger. To soar free of the body was unlike any other experience in Banouin's life, and he could not describe the exquisite joy of it. It was, he once told Connavar, like seeing the sun dawn following a night of fear and trembling. But this was a pale and inadequate description. It was said that in the far north the sun shone for six months without cease, and then night would fall and darkness remain throughout autumn and winter. Perhaps, thought Banouin, the people who dwelt there would understand better the analogy.
He gazed down at the army. They were travelling in four columns, and it seemed to Banouin, from this great height, that the columns resembled immense serpents, slithering over the hills. Furthest south was Connavar and his ten thousand Iron Wolves. Sunlight glittered on their mail shirts and helms, giving the snake the appearance of scales. Behind, and a half mile to the west, came the Horse Archers, followed by heavily armoured infantry. A long way back were the baggage and supply wagons, hundreds of them, drawn by oxen.
Banouin flew to the south, covering more than twenty miles in a few heartbeats.
The soldiers of Stone were building their nightly fortress, a massive undertaking involving the creation of ramparts ten feet tall, set in a great square with sides close to half a mile in length. This daily feat of engineering was a tribute to the skills of Stone, and the cold, calculating genius of Jasaray. Every morning three Panthers, nine thousand fighting men, would leave the fortress and march a specified distance into enemy territory – usually around twelve miles. An advance guard of mounted officers would mark out the next night camp, using coloured stakes to signify the placement of the general's command tent, the officers' area, the section where the troops would pitch their own tents, and sectors for latrines, baggage wagons, and picketing for horses. Once the Panthers arrived the first and second would take up defensive positions around the site of the camp, while the third would begin to dig the enormous square trench, throwing up earth to form the walls of the fortress.