There must be five hundred warriors in the valley around the walls. More. Men naked to the waist, women with chests bound. All of them tattooed, hair spiked. Torches and campfires have turned the surrounding fields into a bright, bristling hell of armed men and women, encamped just out of bowshot. There are no siege weapons in Luceum, as far as I know, no catapults or trebuchets or the like. Half the camp is raucous with drinking and laughter.
The other half is in the midst of an assault upon the walls.
Warriors hurl spears to and from the barricades; they fling torches at the base which are hurriedly extinguished by defenders; they charge and try to use ladders to scale the spiked fortifications. Slings heave stones, and the twang of bows releasing whistling arrows fills the air between the screams of the injured and dying.
I watch as I am jolted closer. The weapons of war here are brutal but not destructive in the way the Catenans’ are; there are more injuries than deaths, and the casualties, while many, are likely not so drastic as to significantly deplete one side or another. At least at first glance, the entire thing feels like posturing. Fiachra cannot think that he is going to breach these walls like this, with these numbers. And the defenders surely realise that eventually, they will run out of food. For all the blood and screaming, it’s a stalemate.
Though, I suppose, I do not know what the Grove are capable of.
Heads are piked along the road to the gate, leering displays no doubt meant to taunt those behind the walls. My stomach churns as I squirm, try to make out features. I’m too far away. My imagination places my friends’ faces on each one.
“You see now, Leathf hear.” Gallchobhar has spotted my dismay. “And this is far from the entirety of Fiachra’s forces. Rónán may not yet be dead, but he was never going to win.”
We press downward and into the midst of the chaotic encampment. It smells of sweat and urine and blood as Gallchobhar rides proudly along, and warriors turn and watch as I’m carted, sack-like, along behind him. He is recognised by all, clearly. Not beloved, from the looks; these are Fiachra’s men, and no doubt they are still adjusting to seeing Rónán’s former Champion as their own. But no one moves to stop us.
“You. You are one of the chieftains?” Gallchobhar shouts to one man as weapproach what seems to be the heart of the siege. When the stranger nods, torc glinting, Gallchobhar pulls up beside him. “Where is King Fiachra?”
“He has taken his personal warband to meet the Grove. Seems Rónán left a surprise for the druids up north.” The symbol-covered warrior smiles as if he finds the plight of his presumed allies more amusing than upsetting. Examines me with disdain, and, interestingly, Gallchobhar with not much less. “You are Rónán’s traitor?”
I can’t see Gallchobhar’s face, but he stiffens. “Watch your words, little one,” he growls. “I slew Mel ap Mor not three months ago. I am your Champion.”
The warrior waves his hand. “My apologies, Gallchobhar ap Drin. King Fiachra left word that if you were to return, to simply do as you had been instructed.”
Gallchobhar nods, apparently unconcerned by Fiachra’s absence. “As you say.”
Before I know what’s happening I’m being hauled down from the horse; my body is so stiff that I can barely stand as Gallchobhar ties a noose around my neck with a long length of rope. When he’s done, he tugs it experimentally and I jerk forward. Still bound, I cannot prevent the motion. Too much resistance and the noose will start restricting my airways.
Then Gallchobhar is striding, a leather sack now slung over his shoulder, and I am stumbling helplessly behind him.
It’s not long before I realise that we are heading for Caer Áras’s main gate. The defensive wooden platforms overlooking it are crowded, though wisely, the torches up there are few and it is hard to see faces. Less for the men armed with slings and arrows down here to aim at.
Gallchobhar drags me along the main road, lit by fires on either side. Pulling me behind him as if I am a stubborn animal on a lead. He says nothing, neither once glancing back, nor up toward the Caer.
Then he stops. There has been a lull in the assault over the past few minutes, both sides catching their breaths and tending the wounded. Gallchobhar’s massive form commands the eyes of everyone in the area as he finally raises his head toward the gate.
“Do you remember Leathfhear, Rónán?” He bellows it as he yanks me forward, bringing me to my knees at his side, though there is no indication the king is actually up there. “One of yourelite warriorsfrom Loch Traenala.” Laughter at that, from nearby. “A man who was sent to becomenasceann, but instead tried to return with a lie.”
He rummages in the sack he’s been carrying, then holds aloft the silver arm. The laughter slowly dies. Replaced by darker, far more uneasy looks. If Lir had been here to confirm I got it from Fornax, it would have been seen as greatly auspicious. Without him, with only Gallchobhar’s accusation, it will be viewed as nothing less than a deceitful profanity.
Gallchobhar carefully uses the rope around my neck to attach the silver limb by its wrist. Reddish-brown smears mar its surface. The weight drags down the noose, threatens to do the same to me. My neck strains, already painful from the stone brooch stabbed into it; I keep myself as straight as possible, placing the weight on my shoulders, but Gallchobhar’s constant tugging me forward keeps making it slip.
“Oh.” He dips again into the sack. “And your friend, thedraoi? The one who would have helped with this man’s falsehood?”
He brandishes the staff and Lir’s head, holding the latter by the hair, showing them both clearly in the light of the fires.
Howls of outrage from the walls, now, a hail of arrows falling well short as he smiles broadly. Goading them, and for a few moments I wonder if he might succeed. But the arrows stop, the shouts ease, and the gate remains closed.
“Now,” roars Gallchobhar, turning back to Fiachra’s gathered forces. “Let us showKingRónán what we think of one of his best!”
We begin to walk.
I do not know how long it goes on for. Men and women line the way, and they hurl rotten food and faeces and stones at me. I become covered in refuse and bruises. The weight of the bloodied silver arm tears at my neck. And still I am not allowed to stop, to collapse. I am dragged relentlessly forward through the gauntlet of howls and muck. Watched by silent eyes from the walls above.
Eventually, finally, it ends; whether because of some signal or because we are simply too far from the Caer’s view for it to matter, I don’t know. But there are men dumping buckets of water over me, washing the worst of the filth from my hair and eyes, erasing the last of Lir’s blood from the silver around my neck. And then I am being dragged into a small tent, Gallchobhar setting a guard at the entrance. Bound and injured as I am, there’s little I can do to resist.
So I lie there. Beaten, frozen, exhausting pain still ricocheting through my head. The sounds of laughter and drinking and war outside, shadows making grim silhouettes on my tent walls against the orange of the flames beyond.
And all I can do is await the dawn.
