Morrigan
The First Cyric King had come to the Highland moor, and war followed with him.
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The First Cyric King had come to the Highland moor, and war followed with him.
When the sun rose on that first morning of summer, it did so over peaceful lands. The moor was green and good. Its flowers bloomed with the morning rays, and its creek wound through the hills languid as ever. Only the beasts who called this place home trod upon the dew kissed grasses; the hare, the deer, the fox, and the badger. Yet as the sun rose higher, and the morning dew dried, the bare feet of animals were replaced with the leather shod soles of men as two armies drew up their lines.
Cathal the Fair, so named for his pale complexion, stood with his Highland kin at the fore of their gathered army. He was not their leader, nor was he a man of high status or good stock. His father had been a farmer, as was his grandfather, and his father before him. They were local stock, low bred, salt of the earth. Such was how Cathal’s humble line always saw themselves, but he was different. He was destined for greater things, a fact he’d known since his boyhood days. He simply needed the chance to prove it.
That day came four years prior, during the first skirmishes between the Lowland Ires and the Highland Gahls. Conflict between these two loose-bound factions wasn’t uncommon, but they were oft relegated to small engagements between a handful of men from each side. One day that changed, though no one truly knew why. Some claimed it the fault of the Ires, saying they’d stolen Gahlish women in the night like the underhanded louts they were. Others laid the blame on the Galhs, claiming them butchers, thieves, and marauders.
These harsh sentiments were both common and long lived. For as long as men lived on the Cyric Isle, the Ires blamed the Gahls for their problems, and the Gahls blamed the Ires. However, buried amongst these age old insults were rumors of a man who would be king. A unifier, they said, a man from the Isle who had long ago set out to sea and returned with the grandest of goals in mind: to make the disparate tribes of Cyric into one people under his rule.
Lachlan, the First Cyric King.
Cathal never believed those rumors. In fact, he hardly paid them any mind at all. The doings of men who bestowed lofty titles unto themselves were of no matter to one such as he. Greatness was his destiny, and he needed no titles to showcase this fact.
“Give me a sword,” he would say, “and I will mark for you my path to greatness!”
And he had. Despite his lowly background and humble beginnings, Cathal proved himself time and again before the Gahlish chiefs, as he would do today. With claymore in hand, he hewed his way across that bloody battleground. Steel bit flesh, cracked bone, and watered the summer grasses with the warm red blood of the Ires. On this day, Cathal the Fair would prove himself great enough to be remembered in rhyme and song, for he would be the one to take King Lachlan’s head!
“Are you sure about this, Cathal?” Declan asked.
Worry played itself plain across his younger brother’s soft features, and Cathal didn’t fault him for that. Declan was a good lad, hardworking and always mindful of Mother and Father. He wasn’t like Cathal, didn’t have that rebelliousness in him. As such, Cathal didn’t expect him to come along after hearing about the coming fight with William, the butcher’s boy from down the road. He expected the little weevil to go tell Mother, which would earn Cathal a dozen lashings from Father’s belt.
Instead, Declan chose to follow along and stand at Cathal’s side. It wouldn’t be much if William’s three friends joined in, but it was better than nothing. In fact, all truth told, Cathal was glad to have Declan there to watch, even though he knew his younger brother disliked fighting.
They were stood on an isolated road at night. The moon was out in full, its silver form casting the surrounding glade in a blueish hue. William stood across from Cathal on the opposite side of the road. Leaning forward against his knees, a wide smile split his fat face.
“What’s wrong, farmer? Afraid?” he taunted, following it with that obnoxious laugh of his, “Hurr hurr hurr!”
William was sixteen, a full year older than Cathal. He was big, too, thick armed and portly, tougher than he looked for his rotundness. Cathal was no slouch, though. He wasn’t as big as William, but he had strength, and lots of it. Endurance, too, built up over years of helping Father in the fields. The same was true of Declan also.
“Let’s just go home, Cathal,” Declan whispered.
“Aye, run home, farmer!” William’s smile widened. “Go back to your coward father.”
Cathal said nothing. Taking two steps forward, he spat in William’s direction and raised both fists.
The spittle spattered on William’s fat face. Smile twisting into a scowl, he howled and rushed at Cathal with both arms raised high. Ducking to the left, Cathal threw two blows into William’s right flank. The larger boy grunted, then grinned, protected from Cathal’s hard strikes by his layer of fat.
William then swung with his left, throwing all of his weight into the strike. Powerful, but slow. Cathal avoided it by ducking left again, then stepped back as William made a backhand swing with his right.
Their fight carried on like this for some time, with the boys who came to observe cheering the fighter they supported. Declan, meek boy that he was, celebrated the blows Cathal landed with excited shakes of his fists, while exclaiming his worry with little utterances that were barely audible. William’s friends were far more boisterous, cheering the butcher’s boy on whenever he landed a heavy blow, then jeering and throwing pebbles at Cathal anytime he got a good hit.
Both boys were winded after a short while. Like he had before the fight started, William stood leaning with both hands on his knees. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and his face was sheened with sweat as he panted heavy breaths. Blood trickled from his lower lip, which Cathal split with a hard right hook, and his left eye was starting to swell shut.
Cathal wasn’t faring much better. His lip was swollen, his nose bloodied, and a cut on his brow was dripping blood into one of his eyes. The cheering from both sides had stopped, and worry dominated the expressions of both Declan and William’s friends. They all recognized that neither would back down until one of them was laid out on the road.
Catching his breath first, Cathal raised his fists again. Growling, William spat blood onto the dirt path and stood upright with both fists clenched tight at his sides. He was saying something to Cathal, probably an insult muffled by the blood that kept filling his mouth, but Cathal didn’t hear him. His attention had been taken by a familiar sound, a nearby fluttering of feathered wings that commanded his attention.
Looking up over William’s head, he saw the shape of a crow stood upon a low branch of a nearby oak. Its eyes flashed in the silvery moonlight as it turned its head this way and that, until its gaze seemed to fall upon him. Hawr!–the crow called, and Cathal’s vision suddenly filled with the large form of William, both hands raised high to hammer down on the head of the farmer’s son.
Cathal wasn’t sure how he reacted so quickly, but before William’s hands came down, he ducked low, stepped into the butcher boy’s guard, and threw his right fist upward with all his might. William’s teeth clashed as Cathal’s fist smashed up into his jaw. He staggered backwards, stumbled as he tried to regain his footing, then fell limp onto the hard packed dirt of that Highland road.
The armies gathered on the Highlands were neither grand, nor vast. No more than three hundred men had been fielded by each side. Compared to the old tales from the mainland, stories of great kingdoms and mighty empires that waged war with soldiers that numbered in the tens of thousands, this battle was little more than a sortie.
Ah, but for the men who clashed upon the moor, this savage battle would change far more than their own lives.
Presently, Cathal waded into the thick of combat. The Gahlish forces collided with Lachlan and his Ires just beyond the banks of the winding creek. The waters had been so pristine that morning. Now they ran dark with mud, blood, and the gore of men both dead and living.
Cathal was responsible for no less than six of the dead. Among the combatants, there were some content to leave still living foes they struck down to die slowly. He was not among them. Though he reveled in combat, hungry to prove himself by facing all comers, Cathal was neither cruel nor foolish. He had no desire to leave men to suffer in their dying. He also saw it as unwise, for thoughts of vengeance may take them should they survive. It was better to kill quickly and be certain.
The Gahls had pushed the Ires nearly twenty paces back from the banks of the creek. The Lowland men were already starting to scatter. Cathal saw this, and loosed a fearsome cry, which was soon echoed by those around him. Axe and pikemen followed as he charged the Iresmen’s breaking line, trampling over fallen corpses to drive their foes into a rout.
The fight hadn’t entirely left the Iresmen, though. Many of their pikemen stood ground while a handful of others met the Gahlish charge. Among them was a youth with hair so dark it bordered on black. He was tall, rangy, and his face and chest were painted with thick lines of blue and green. He came for Cathal with an axe in each hand and no fear in his eyes.
Cathal smiled, and met him.
The sun was setting, painting the cloud spotted skies over the Cyric Isle in hues of yellow, orange, and violet, even as it stained the mountains with inky shadows. It was the third day of the fifth week of Spring, and Cathal marched by torchlight with a contingent of two dozen men led by Brann Doyle, chief of the Doyle clan. To Cathal’s right marched his younger brother, Declan. A meek and wiry boy when he was young, he’d since filled out his frame and proven himself a competent pikeman in many skirmishes against the Iresmen who stood under the banner of that so-called king of theirs.
At Cathal’s left was the local butcher boy, William, though he’d long since graduated to a proper butcher working alongside his father. In those years, the farmer’s son and the butcher boy had buried their hostilities. Though rivalry still existed between them, it was no longer predicated on who could beat the other to the ground first. Now that they had proper foes to face, they could turn their hunger for fighting against them instead.
What hadn’t changed with William was his size. He was still among the tallest and strongest from their township, with a girthy belly and limbs so corded with muscle that Cathal secretly believed the trees jealous of those mighty arms and legs. They served William well when he brought his own claymore to bear, an imposing sight to be certain.
Yet for all his size and strength, William couldn’t quite keep up with Cathal on the battlefield. To date, the so-called king’s war had been running for two years. Two years of skirmishes against not just the men under his banner, but all the Ires clans. In the minds of the Gahlish chiefs, Lachlan’s move to unify the Cyric Isle provided a chance for them to drive out the hated Lowlanders and take the Isle for themselves. Alas, this only played to Lachlan’s favor, frightening the smaller Ires clans into joining him, and softening the larger ones for easier conquest.
They were headed for Pike’s Gully, near the Highland moor. Carved as an offshoot from the upland creek that ran down into the woods, the gully fed its water to an old fortification built in those woods generations ago. Dubbed Pike’s Wall, the fort was kept by Clan Byrne since its construction over a century prior and helped establish them as the strongest Gahlish clan. Since its founding, it became the meeting place of the Gahlish chiefs whenever troubles that concerned all clans arose.
Cathal sighed as the sun dipped below the darkly shadowed peaks. Chief Brann’s troop hadn’t even reached the edge of the woods yet, and it would take them at least an hour to reach the gully once they did. Then it was a long trek through a thick forest of birch, ash, and oak to reach the Wall.
Why hadn’t they left sooner? Cathal knew the answer, but he didn’t dare speak it aloud. The Doyles and the Byrnes had been rivals as long as anyone could recall, and the stubborn Chief Brann saw being summoned to Pike’s Wall as an insult to his pride. It took time for his kinsmen to convince him otherwise, that Ronan Byrne simply recognized the threat a unified army under Lachlan posed.
Marching onward, they reached the forest’s edge shortly after dusk turned to night. The moon had risen, gibbous and waxing. Cathal glanced up at it whenever it peeked between the leaves and branches above. He’d always found the moon a beautiful thing. Haunting and secretive, too, further adding to its mystique. He’d always struggled to pinpoint why he found the celestial body so alluring. There was just something about it which pulled at his heart and mind, demanding his attention.
Hawr!–came the caw of a nearby crow.
Long feathers clapped as it swooped overhead. The noisome flutter made the men duck on instinct; even Chief Brann dipped his head down. Only Cathal stood fully upright, gaze fixed on the corvid’s silhouette. It stood amongst the birch branches, blacker than the night against the moon’s silver sheen. Its head darted here and there in that uniquely avian manner, and though Cathal couldn’t see its shining eyes, he could feel them upon him.
Hawr!–it called again, and Cathal quickly turned to his right.
“Declan, raise your torch,” he whispered to his brother as he took his claymore in both hands.
Declan looked upon him with concern. This wasn’t the first time Cathal was taken with strange suspicions, and he’d long since learned that his elder brother’s instincts were usually correct. He did as bidden, and the other torchbearers quickly followed suit. As they did, Cathal scanned the surrounding woods. It was only for the faintest moment, but he saw the Ires coming before he heard them.
“Ambush!” he howled, and he stepped forth to meet the oncoming attackers. He didn’t know how many their were, nor would he ever learn. It was enough to know they were here, enough that he had his sword in hand, enough that the crow’s eyes were upon him once more.
Cathal cleaved through the clavicle of the first man to enter his reach, and then the sounds of battle erupted around him. The melee lasted mere moments. The Ires must have expected them. Though he had no exact count, he could tell their force was just large enough to outnumber the two dozen traveling with Chief Brann.
Yet those two dozen men, knowing their hated foe was descending upon them, fought as if they had triple their number. Cathal, William, and three other long-swordsmen, including Chief Brann himself, cleaved their way through the nighttime assaulters. Axemen hacked and chopped, pikemen thrust and skewered, and four Ires fell for every Gahl. Come the end of the frenetic melee, the crow called again, and nine of their company lay dead. A victory by any reasoned account, yet the remaining fifteen would not claim it, for their foes succeeded in their task.
Cathal was the first to see, his eyes drawn to the cawing crow. It had descended from its perch to stand atop one of the corpses. The man had fallen forward. Body curled into a heap, blood oozed from an axe wound in his neck. Cathal couldn’t see his face, but his curly brown hair, garments of red and blue, and the jewel-pommeled claymore he still clutched told all.
Chief Brann Doyle was dead.
Men rush past him on either side, most in pursuit of the retreating Ires. Declan was among them. He would have stopped to aid Cathal in his battle with the painted Ires axeman, but Cathal ordered him onward. He needed no aid in putting down this brazen fool, no matter what he saw in his dreams.
The Iresman closed, swung both axes in a horizontal arc. Cathal caught them on his sword, holding the rangy man back as the Gahls flooded around them. They wouldn’t interfere. He wouldn’t allow them to. He had to prove himself, to demonstrate his greatness. He needed to be remembered.
“I know you,” Cathal said, shoving the painted man back. “I’ve seen you, Iresman! Tell me your name, I want to know what my challenger calls himself.”
“Iresman?” his foe laughed. “I’m not of your Cyric blood. I am Ivar, son of Gudmund, and I, too, know your face, Highlander.”
“One of Lachlan’s sea dogs.” Cathal spat, then splayed his arms wide in challenge. “Then face me, Ivar, son of Gudmund! I am Cathal the Fair, and my sword will mark for you my path to greatness!”
As the two men faced each other, Cathal smiled. He had heard the crow’s caw.
The Gahlish camp was lively on the eve of battle. Gathered around their cookpots, the men feasted on hearty stews of venison or rabbit. They cracked open casks of ale, strong wines, and metheglin, and drank deep. Spirits were high, for though Lachlan had succeeded in gathering the Ires under his banner, all among the Gahls knew their Lowland neighbors couldn’t stand up to them in a direct fight. Their tactics were cowardly, relying on sneak attacks and nighttime ambushes. When routed, Iresmen broke easily, and there was nowhere for them to hide upon the open field of the moor.
Cathal drank late with Declan and William. Despite his great size, William was the first to sleep. He’d never been much of a drinker, a result of the odd prudence practiced by his family. Cathal and Declan kept up well into the dark of the night, though, draining pint after pint of ale and metheglin. And as they drank, they began to talk more and more about the battle on the morrow.
“I just can’t figure it, Cathal,” Declan said. “It doesn’t make sense for King Lachlan to approach so directly, and in the open moor, no less.”
Cathal was only half listening. He tilted back another cup of the metheglin, a sweet honey wine steeped with rose, thyme, and rosemary. He loosed a belching grumble when he’d downed the potent mead, then dropped his cup by his crossed legs.
“You worry too much, Declan,” Cathal countered. “He knows he can’t take us with sneaky tricks and nighttime ambushes alone. And he’s not a king. Best to remember that, lest you speak poorly around less forgiving ears.”
He wouldn’t admit it to himself, but Cathal knew that Lachlan’s gains had the Gahlish chiefs more worried than they let on. After the slaying of Chief Brann Doyle two years prior, Lachlan’s Ires had grown bolder in their tactics. Ambushes were more frequent, and within the span of a few weeks three more Gahlish clans lost important men. The Mac Brádaighs and Forrestals both lost their first sons. Then Byron Mac Brádaigh himself was taken from that fearsome mountain clan by illness, leaving them led by Arthur, the youngest man of the clan, who himself saw barely twelve years. The Lawlers were the next to incur major losses, followed by the Hughs. The heads of both clans were stricken down by surprise attacks during pitched engagements.
It wasn’t all defeats for the Gahls, though. They’d routed many incursion attempts by Lachlan’s Ires over the last two years, taking many of the Lowland clans’ leaders with them. Colm McElroy, Arthur Munro, and Teahan O’Keane had all been felled when attempting to gain Highland ground, though it ended up meaning less for Ires than such losses did for the Gahls. Much as he hated to admit it, that Lachlan had done quite the job of banding the otherwise unstable Lowland clans together.
“Bah, where’s my damn cup?” Cathal grumbled, feeling around in the grass for it.
“Here,” Declan said, holding it out to him. It was already full of frothy ale.
“That’s why you’re my brother!” Cathal snatched the wooden mug from him with a chortle and began to guzzle the beer down. However, he paused when he saw Declan wasn’t joining him. “What is it this time, Declan?” he groaned.
Declan didn’t reply. Gaze fixed on the flickering fire before them, he stared into the flames with a sort of grim seriousness Cathal had never seen in him before. Declan had always been something of a worrier. Even as far back as when they were boys he’d been prone to overthinking simple things. This often left Cathal in the role of problem solver, assuming those problems could be solved with fists, but the look Declan wore now was far darker than anything he’d witnessed until now.
“Declan?” Cathal repeated, nudging his younger brother with his elbow.
The younger man shook his head. “I keep thinking about what you told me yesterday,” he answered. “Your dream of the moor, and tomorrow’s battle. Of the man painted in blue and green.”
A flutter of wings sounded overhead as Declan spoke. Cathal couldn’t see what they belonged to in the pitch dark of that moonless night, but he felt he knew. Looking into the darkness, he briefly scanned the nearby trees for a crow.
“You must not fight him,” Declan continued, urgency dripping in his voice.
Cathal scoffed and gave him a sidelong glance. “You jest, surely.”
“No, Cathal! I don’t think what you saw is just a dream. You are not meant to fight that man! If you do, he will-”
“Declan, I’m not about to be killed by some Iresman who paints himself up in pretty colors,” Cathal stated firmly, meeting his brother’s worry with steely determination. Then, a moment later, that broke as he threw out a chuckle. “Think about it, brother! I’m Cathal the Fair, one of the very best fighters among all Gahls! It’ll take more than a mere Iresman to strike me down.”
Declan did not look at him. Rather, he stared into the fire with a rueful smile upon his handsome face. “I pray you’re right, Cathal,” he said.
They shared one more drink after that, then Declan made for his tent. Not quite ready to sleep himself, Cathal stayed by the fire and poured himself a final cup of metheglin. He sipped at it slowly, thinking over Declan’s words as he stared into the campfire. Pure nonsense, the warnings of a worrier, nothing more. No mere axeman of the Ires would be enough to slay Cathal the Fair!
With a shake of his head, he laughed off those lingering worries with a low chortle. However, as he tipped back the last of the metheglin, his eyes fell upon a black form perched above the entrance of his tent. For a long moment, Cathal watched the crow, and the crow him. Then it flew away without a sound.
The Gahls hadn’t expected Lachlan’s cavalry. He’d never fielded horsemen against them before. They’d inspected the nearby hills the night before the battle, and finding no signs of trickery or ambush, their comfort with the familiar ground of the moor lured them into complacency. They had no idea Lachlan had moved fifty horsemen there that morning, nor were they aware the First Cyric King himself would lead their charge.
Cathal saw it all from where he lay by the creek. His battle with Ivar proved far fiercer than he anticipated. Who would’ve thought that Northmen fought with such endless ferocity?
Their battle saw Cathal pushed back to the far banks of the creek. He’d taken that position in an effort to gain higher ground, to force Ivar into unsteady footing within the cold, muddy waters. Alas, Ivar proved accustomed to such unstable ground, and pressed the attack without pause. Cathal had never fought a man like this before, so vicious, so unyielding, so reckless. Ivar had rushed into his guard, made no effort to protect himself from the descending claymore.
Cathal realized why when the heads of Ivar’s axes bit into his gut, and then his collar as his sword fell from his hands.
Now he lay amongst the bodies scattered along the winding creek, choking on his own blood. He lived long enough to see Lachlan’s charge. Long enough to see Declan and William overtaken by the horsemen. Long enough for the crow to land on his chest.
“Morrigan.”
He choked on her name, spitting red lifeblood onto his chin and chest. The crow stared at him, her eyes shimmering as she turned her head this way, then that.
“Morrigan!” he repeated, and she answered.
Hawr!–cried War herself, as she took to the wing and flew to Lachlan’s side.
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Touching and violent. I greatly enjoyed it, thanks for sharing!
Vivid descriptions immersed me right in to your world!