(Continued from the previous section.)
"Was it sorcery?"
Acorn's eyebrows rose. "So I am 'sir' to you no longer, Michael?"
Michael's jaw clenched. "What you are to me is of no moment beside what you are to the world."
"Which is?"
"A conjurer. A demonolater. And the agent of my corruption."
Acorn said nothing. Aoife's hand squeezed Michael's to counsel calm. He looked down at her, then jerked his chin toward the contraption that had spoken with his voice. It sat in the back of the cave, surrounded by other oddments of unclear import.
"There it is, wife. First I spoke to it, and then it spoke to me. But its voice was far stronger than mine. Strong enough to shatter a thrown rock to dust. Strong enough to shield the man who rode it from a swordstroke or the flight of a spear. Strong enough to cast us out of the Church, deny us the rites, make us shunned of Carach an Lagan and wherever else word of our banishment might travel. Acorn," he said, turning to the little man once more, "would it protect you from the village in arms, should Abbot Ciaran persuade them that you've leagued with a demon? Would it protect you from me?"
The color drained from Acorn's face. "You have had nothing but good of me, Michael. Why do you turn against me now?"
"By your hand I was cast out from my people!"
Acorn's eyes narrowed. He raised one small hand, made a show of inspecting it, and turned it palm up toward Michael.
"Are you sure, Michael? By my hand? Why doesn't this hand remember that? Was it I who pronounced you excommunicate? Was it I who called anathema upon you before the village? Was it I who told you that your entire family would fall under the ban unless you surrendered your wages to the abbot? And when that threat had been spoken, did I compel your answer?" Acorn's lips pulled back from his teeth. "Truly, I have been many places this past week. I am a man of power indeed!"
Michael's mouth fell open. "The abbot said --"
"That I made a pact with a demon? Did you see a demon, Michael? Did you hear a demon's voice?"
It was my own voice I heard.
"Acorn, what did we do together? If it wasn't sorcery, then what was it?"
The fire dimmed in the little man's face. His face worked as if he were tasting the words he was about to speak.
"We made an experiment, lad. I'd been told a strange tale about that chant, involving a man in a village to the south. He didn't know what it meant, no more than you or I. He recited it to his children as a nonsense rhyme, and they learned it and recited it back to him. One day when they were bandying it back and forth, faster and faster, his wife became irritated with them and hurled a potshard in their direction, and it exploded as it flew. The event terrified them. They scarcely dared to whisper of it.
"I tried it for myself, but the results were erratic. It occurred to me that speed -- sheer rapid repetition -- might be the key, but as fast as I could speak the words, still I could not make the effect reliable. So I contrived a device that would record the sounds spoken to it, and play them back at need, at a speed far higher than any human throat could manage. And I called you to me.
"Now that we can make it happen at will, we can study it. We can try to determine why it happens. We will learn more of the marvels of this marvelous world. And from those steps, who knows what other learning might come? We might learn how to rend the earth with sound, that we may have its coal, or cut a path through a mountain, to make way for a road. All because you learned an odd chant in a forgotten language and sang it into my device."
Michael nodded. He released Aoife's hand and moved to Acorn's worktable, where oddments were piled in no particular order. The hilt of a dagger protruded out one side of the pile. He pulled it free, tested its point and its edge, and turned back to the little man.
"Mount your wheel, Acorn. We're going to have another experiment, right now."
Acorn licked his lips. "That's a very valuable blade, lad. I'd prefer that --"
"Mount your wheel."
Acorn complied.
Within a few seconds, the little man had the wheel spinning furiously. Michael's recorded voice once more squawked fast and shrill from the horn. Michael raised the knife high above his head and whipped it down at Acorn's bare scalp.
It exploded in his hand. The concussion threw him backwards into the cave wall, knocked the breath out of him and sent him to the floor.
Acorn leaped off his mount. He and Aoife squatted over Michael, their faces filled with fright. Behind them, the spinning cylinder coasted to a halt, Michael's recorded voice dropping through the octaves until it ran out in a subterranean grumble.
Michael shook his head and blinked away the sparks of impact. "It works." His voice was thick.
"What was the point of that, Michael?" Acorn said.
"My redemption. And yours. And the deliverance of Carach an Lagan. Can you make your device to speak at a distance? To protect someone not mounted on the wheel?"
The question seemed to confuse Acorn. "I don't know, lad. Why?"
Michael picked himself up off the floor of the cave, straightened his tunic and folded Aoife's hand in his own.
"Armor for a champion." He looked into his wife's eyes. "Go home and tend to the babes, love. I'll be back by nightfall."
Bryndan saw the two of them approach. The big silver-haired tuathan dropped his hoe and looked ready to flee when he recognized them. Michael hailed him in a low voice.
"Shall we go inside, Bryndan?"
The tuathan turned silently and led them into his hut. He indicated with a gesture that they should sit, then descended to his haunches in the far corner of the hovel. He sat silently, eyes darting from Acorn to Michael and back.
"Balogh is coming, Bryndan."
The tuathan nodded.
"Have we the means to beat him back?"
Bryndan snorted. "We are ten score men, as many women, and a clutch of useless priests. His legion numbers six thousand. He could leave three quarters of it behind and still slay us all."
It's worse than I thought.
"Will you take up sword against him, or do you mean to let him have us without a struggle?"
The color drained from the tuathan's face. "Have you no sense, man? If we submit, we live. If we resist, we die, down to the youngest babe in arms. He had Cullaire put to the torch for resisting after its tuathan gave token of surrender!"
Michael nodded. "But if we win?"
"Madness! He has thirty times our numbers, all hard men blooded in battle!"
"The rule, Bryndan," Michael said in his gravest bass, "is that if the defenders' chieftain offers combat of champions, the attacker must accept. Father Declan says that not once in seven centuries has an attacker refused the challenge."
Bryndan peered at him as if he'd been babbling in tongues. "If you mean to suggest that I face Evan Balogh man to man with broadswords, you've gone simple. He's killed every man who's ever faced him. He keeps count by notching a cherry staff. There are three score grooves in it. I do not care to be numbered among them."
"He would not kill you."
"Why not?"
Michael closed his eyes briefly. "Acorn can prevent it."
The tuathan's gaze shot toward the little scholar, who was as startled as Bryndan at having been introduced to the exchange. "How?"
"I, ah, have a device --"
"A talisman? A relic? Balogh slew a chieftain who carried a fragment of the Cross!"
"Not that kind of device, Bryndan." Michael tried to put authority in his tone. "Acorn has a machine that can swaddle you in safety. While he works it, no blade can touch you."
The tuathan's face writhed between wonder and terror. "How?"
"I don't know," Acorn said. "But it works. Michael helped me build it."
The words hung leaden in the air as Bryndan studied Acorn's face. Michael dared not speak.
"You are what they say you are," the tuathan whispered. "For eleven years I have rebuffed the folk who called you sorcerer. He's done naught to you or to any of us, I'd say. He is courteous and free with his coin, and he calls no man his foe. He keeps his nose to his own affairs and speaks ill of no one. Get you home and do as well. And now," he grated, "I learn that I was a fool."
Acorn's face spasmed with pain. "I am no sorcerer and you are no fool, Bryndan. You could work my machine as easily as I. There are no earth powers involved. No rituals, no sacrifices, none of the dark and deadly things of the druids. It will not endanger your soul in any way. It will ward you from the blows of Balogh's sword."
Bryndan stood. Though the tuathan was aflame with anger, Michael could see no trace in him of the warrior who'd led Carach an Lagan to victory in a score of battles.
"Get you gone, sorcerers. Evan Balogh will be the King of Ireland by Midsummer's Day. I will not stand against a man who wears fate's mantle, no matter what your infernal device might do. I will submit, and pray that my people do not cost me my life by resisting the inevitable."
Only a fortnight more had passed when Balogh's outriders appeared atop the eastern ridge. Though they wore no obvious livery, it was plain that they had come to survey the village for the impending attack. They moved slowly along the rock, studied the roads, the passes, and the village's paltry defenses, then wheeled and rode off without a word.
Michael had the news of Acorn. The little scholar was flushed with excitement, as if the contest to come were but one more of his absurd experiments. The news put flutters of doom into Michael's stomach. He accelerated his practice with his new-bought sword.
Aoife took to keeping aside a day's food for the four of them. Their few movable possessions she bundled in a burlap rag, that they not be left behind when the family took flight.
Each day, Michael went to the market and asked after horses or carts that might be for sale, at any price. There were none.
Three days later Balogh's legion poured through the eastern pass, score after score like a human river, banners flying and voices singing challenge. Michael had never seen so many men in one place. He hadn't imagined that many in all of Ireland.
Evan Balogh rode at their head on a great roan whose shoulder was as high as Michael was tall. A broadsword in a dark leather scabbard was strapped to the horse's flank.
Apparently Balogh had expected to meet either a band of defenders or no one at all. When his eye lit upon Michael, he pulled up short and raised his hand. When the legion had come to a stop behind him, he leaped nimbly down from his horse and swept the area from north to south and back. Once satisfied that no ambush was afoot, he buckled on his swordbelt and strode toward Michael, who stood before the market gate with his new-forged sword sheathed at his side.
With only a pace between them, Michael found that he had to look a little downward to meet the warlord's eyes. It brought no comfort. Balogh was built like a mountain scoured by an eon of storms. He was easily as broad as Michael, and the flesh of his face and forearms bore a multitude of scars. His dark eyes were hard. His manner was that of a man who took the submission of others as his birthright.
"I am Evan Balogh."
Michael nodded, conscious of the press of eyes upon his back from where his family and townsfolk huddled. "My name is Michael."
The warlord cocked an eyebrow at the lack of a surname. "Are ye the tuathan of this place?" His expression said you have not the look.
Michael swallowed. "I am here in his place."
"To treat with me?" Balogh's voice betrayed his amusement. His legend said he never gave quarter, nor accepted anything short of absolute surrender.
"To fight you."
Balogh and his men brayed laughter as one. Michael fought not to cringe before the blast of contempt.
"Ye are no more than a boy. A strapping lad, to be sure, but no man of arms. And ye think to try your youngling's strength against the King of Ireland?"
"You are not king here."
The laughter from the ranks ceased at once. Balogh's mirth disappeared and his eyes narrowed.
"One swing of my blade and I shall be, lad. Ye have no more than twenty summers, ye smell of the bog, and that sword ye wear has never been blooded. Ye are no proper chieftain to oppose me, and there can be no more than fifteen score of ye to meet my spears. Have done with your foolishness, bend your knee to me here and now, and I'll not slay ye and all your kindred for your cheek." The scarred face produced a vicious snarl.
Yet the bluster rang false. A note of uncertainty vibrated in the warlord's voice. He'd expected none of this, and was unsure of what he really faced, either from Michael or behind the walls of Carach an Lagan.
He doesn't want to fight me!
"Our chieftain," Michael said in a tone of casual contempt, "toyed with the notion of meeting you himself, but at the last he deemed it beneath his dignity. So he summoned his retainers and bade us arrange ourselves by height, and he selected the smallest of us to go forth as his champion, that you might have some trifling chance to prevail against the might of Carach an Lagan. He wanted there to be contest enough for a song or two. He would not have it said that the great Evan Balogh was crushed like an insect and his legion swatted away without a care."
Balogh's face turned dark with fury. The gasp from his men rushed through the air like the blast of wind that opens a summer squall.
"If ye set life at so little," Balogh hissed, stepping back and drawing his sword, "I'll not deny ye a death at the hand of a king."
Michael pulled his sword from its sheath and stood at the ready. From behind him, faint but definite, came the rumble of his recorded voice, rapidly accelerated by Acorn's furious pedaling.
Lord God of hosts, I have been Your faithful servant all my life. If I am to die by this man's hand, let it be in Your arms. Let it be as a man, not a wretch who grovels and pleads for his life. Let my family and my neighbors remember me to my credit. And take Aoife and the babes under Your special care.
Balogh raised his sword high overhead, stepped forward and swung it whistling down at Michael's neck. Michael did not attempt to ward the blow.
A bare inch from his flesh, the sword clanged against something unyielding. It did not explode nor fragment. It bounced off as if Michael's neck had been sheathed in a slab of the finest steel. The reaction threw the warlord backward as if he'd been struck an equal blow. As his legion cried out in amazement, Balogh staggered and fell onto his rump.
The protective whine faltered and ceased. Michael suppressed a shudder and smiled. "Perhaps you see now, sir, why we don't need a great many warriors to deal with you."
Balogh picked himself up, glared his hatred at Michael, and charged again. Michael's ears strained after the protective chant as the warlord swept his blade at Michael's midsection.
Perhaps the chant faltered at a crucial instant. Or perhaps it had not established its shield around him quite in time. Balogh's blade sliced through Michael's leather jerkin and scored his flesh from one hip to the other, opening a long wound that bled copiously. Though the cut was too shallow to threaten Michael's life, and looked far worse than it was, the surprise and pain staggered him, almost sending him to his knees. Yet once again, Balogh took a far heavier blow. He flew backward to the earth, stretched out supine and witless from the reflected force of his stroke.
It's time.
Michael stepped forward easily, blade loose in his hand, ignoring the burning gouge across his belly. He stood over the fallen war chief and smiled down at him.
"Two of your best blows to none of mine, sir, yet here I stand over you. Will you have the least of mine to remember us by?" And he raised his virgin sword and struck.
Balogh gave a great and despairing cry as Michael severed his sword arm at the shoulder. His blood flowed out to water the soil of Carach an Lagan's market square as his hand clutched spastically at the hilt of his useless sword. Within a minute, his life was spent.
Michael wiped his sword on Balogh's jerkin, returned it to its sheath, and straightened to address the leaderless horde.
"Your chieftain has shown us his best. Is there any among you thinks to better him?"
In three minutes, all had departed as they had come, leaving Michael to stand alone over the lifeless body of Evan Balogh, who would have been King of Ireland.
None of the townsfolk would speak to him, or to Aoife. They stayed as rigidly away as if he'd ridden into battle on a demon's back. Three days after the confrontation, he and Aoife decided to go.
They didn't need to do much preparing. Their few movable possessions, of which Aoife's knives and her two earthen bowls were the greater part, made a pack that even Eamon could carry. After a last dawnlight look at the village that had been home to uncounted generations of their kin, they made for Acorn's cave in the eastern cliffs.
The little scholar stood smiling at the cave mouth to greet them. He didn't appear surprised at their arrival. He beckoned them in, bade them sit.
"I will miss you, Michael."
Michael nodded.
"It was inevitable, you know. Whether for the abbot's accusations or the defeat of Balogh, it was impossible that they accept you again. For all that you saved them, they are no longer sure what you are."
"I know, sir." I knew before I went to challenge Balogh. "I can't fault them."
"Does your wound pain you much?"
Michael grinned and pulled up his tunic. Acorn approached, peered close, and gaped. Only a thin, perfectly horizontal scar traced across his flesh. It was as neatly closed as the finest surgeon could have done.
Acorn's eyes darted from the scar to Aoife. "Lady, did you...?"
She shook her head. "Not a bit of it, sir. It closed of its own. It had stopped bleeding before Michael got home."
The little scholar's face went slack. He sat heavily upon his stool and clapped his hands against his thighs.
"When he struck that blow, I thought he'd cleave you in two. When I opened my eyes and saw you standing and him in the dirt, I thought I'd lost my reason."
Michael's brow furrowed. "But why, sir? His first stroke did me no harm. Why should his second?"
Acorn didn't answer. Instead he rose, went to the back of his cave and plucked two items from a pile of detritus. He brought them to Michael and laid them in his hands like tokens of payment.
Michael stared dumbly at the fractured halves of the cylinder upon which Acorn had inscribed his voice.
"How?" he whispered.
"It shattered at Balogh's first blow," Acorn said. "You stood naked before his second stroke, with no protection but your jerkin."
"Then why -- why -- "
"I don't know, lad." Acorn looked acutely embarrassed by his ignorance. "I'd give a year of my life to know. You had a stroke of luck to equal Balogh's stroke of his sword. That's my only conjecture."
Michael closed his eyes and sat perfectly still for a long moment.
Luck never hardened flesh against a sword swung in fury.
"Acorn," he said, "in a day or two, when we are well away from here, I want you to climb the hill and tell Father Declan of this. He needs to know. And perhaps he will have an answer for you. Will you do that, simply because I ask it?"
Tension mounted in Acorn's face. "I would not be welcome there, Michael. What would be the use?"
Michael caught the little scholar's eyes and held them. "Acorn," he said in his lowest register, "it could be worth a great deal to you."
Acorn swallowed and nodded. Michael rose and put out his hand, and the scholar took it.
"Go with God, Acorn."
Michael took Aoife's hand and led his family out of the cave. They set out to the west, along the track of the Lagan, their backs warmed by the rising sun. In two days' walk, they would come to a village where Michael could make a new hut of reeds and stones and river clay, learn to till and sow and coax grain from the earth, teach his children of their forebears and raise them to their strength, and nevermore be taken for a sorcerer...or a king.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Was it sorcery?"
Acorn's eyebrows rose. "So I am 'sir' to you no longer, Michael?"
Michael's jaw clenched. "What you are to me is of no moment beside what you are to the world."
"Which is?"
"A conjurer. A demonolater. And the agent of my corruption."
Acorn said nothing. Aoife's hand squeezed Michael's to counsel calm. He looked down at her, then jerked his chin toward the contraption that had spoken with his voice. It sat in the back of the cave, surrounded by other oddments of unclear import.
"There it is, wife. First I spoke to it, and then it spoke to me. But its voice was far stronger than mine. Strong enough to shatter a thrown rock to dust. Strong enough to shield the man who rode it from a swordstroke or the flight of a spear. Strong enough to cast us out of the Church, deny us the rites, make us shunned of Carach an Lagan and wherever else word of our banishment might travel. Acorn," he said, turning to the little man once more, "would it protect you from the village in arms, should Abbot Ciaran persuade them that you've leagued with a demon? Would it protect you from me?"
The color drained from Acorn's face. "You have had nothing but good of me, Michael. Why do you turn against me now?"
"By your hand I was cast out from my people!"
Acorn's eyes narrowed. He raised one small hand, made a show of inspecting it, and turned it palm up toward Michael.
"Are you sure, Michael? By my hand? Why doesn't this hand remember that? Was it I who pronounced you excommunicate? Was it I who called anathema upon you before the village? Was it I who told you that your entire family would fall under the ban unless you surrendered your wages to the abbot? And when that threat had been spoken, did I compel your answer?" Acorn's lips pulled back from his teeth. "Truly, I have been many places this past week. I am a man of power indeed!"
Michael's mouth fell open. "The abbot said --"
"That I made a pact with a demon? Did you see a demon, Michael? Did you hear a demon's voice?"
It was my own voice I heard.
"Acorn, what did we do together? If it wasn't sorcery, then what was it?"
The fire dimmed in the little man's face. His face worked as if he were tasting the words he was about to speak.
"We made an experiment, lad. I'd been told a strange tale about that chant, involving a man in a village to the south. He didn't know what it meant, no more than you or I. He recited it to his children as a nonsense rhyme, and they learned it and recited it back to him. One day when they were bandying it back and forth, faster and faster, his wife became irritated with them and hurled a potshard in their direction, and it exploded as it flew. The event terrified them. They scarcely dared to whisper of it.
"I tried it for myself, but the results were erratic. It occurred to me that speed -- sheer rapid repetition -- might be the key, but as fast as I could speak the words, still I could not make the effect reliable. So I contrived a device that would record the sounds spoken to it, and play them back at need, at a speed far higher than any human throat could manage. And I called you to me.
"Now that we can make it happen at will, we can study it. We can try to determine why it happens. We will learn more of the marvels of this marvelous world. And from those steps, who knows what other learning might come? We might learn how to rend the earth with sound, that we may have its coal, or cut a path through a mountain, to make way for a road. All because you learned an odd chant in a forgotten language and sang it into my device."
Michael nodded. He released Aoife's hand and moved to Acorn's worktable, where oddments were piled in no particular order. The hilt of a dagger protruded out one side of the pile. He pulled it free, tested its point and its edge, and turned back to the little man.
"Mount your wheel, Acorn. We're going to have another experiment, right now."
Acorn licked his lips. "That's a very valuable blade, lad. I'd prefer that --"
"Mount your wheel."
Acorn complied.
Within a few seconds, the little man had the wheel spinning furiously. Michael's recorded voice once more squawked fast and shrill from the horn. Michael raised the knife high above his head and whipped it down at Acorn's bare scalp.
It exploded in his hand. The concussion threw him backwards into the cave wall, knocked the breath out of him and sent him to the floor.
Acorn leaped off his mount. He and Aoife squatted over Michael, their faces filled with fright. Behind them, the spinning cylinder coasted to a halt, Michael's recorded voice dropping through the octaves until it ran out in a subterranean grumble.
Michael shook his head and blinked away the sparks of impact. "It works." His voice was thick.
"What was the point of that, Michael?" Acorn said.
"My redemption. And yours. And the deliverance of Carach an Lagan. Can you make your device to speak at a distance? To protect someone not mounted on the wheel?"
The question seemed to confuse Acorn. "I don't know, lad. Why?"
Michael picked himself up off the floor of the cave, straightened his tunic and folded Aoife's hand in his own.
"Armor for a champion." He looked into his wife's eyes. "Go home and tend to the babes, love. I'll be back by nightfall."
***
Bryndan saw the two of them approach. The big silver-haired tuathan dropped his hoe and looked ready to flee when he recognized them. Michael hailed him in a low voice.
"Shall we go inside, Bryndan?"
The tuathan turned silently and led them into his hut. He indicated with a gesture that they should sit, then descended to his haunches in the far corner of the hovel. He sat silently, eyes darting from Acorn to Michael and back.
"Balogh is coming, Bryndan."
The tuathan nodded.
"Have we the means to beat him back?"
Bryndan snorted. "We are ten score men, as many women, and a clutch of useless priests. His legion numbers six thousand. He could leave three quarters of it behind and still slay us all."
It's worse than I thought.
"Will you take up sword against him, or do you mean to let him have us without a struggle?"
The color drained from the tuathan's face. "Have you no sense, man? If we submit, we live. If we resist, we die, down to the youngest babe in arms. He had Cullaire put to the torch for resisting after its tuathan gave token of surrender!"
Michael nodded. "But if we win?"
"Madness! He has thirty times our numbers, all hard men blooded in battle!"
"The rule, Bryndan," Michael said in his gravest bass, "is that if the defenders' chieftain offers combat of champions, the attacker must accept. Father Declan says that not once in seven centuries has an attacker refused the challenge."
Bryndan peered at him as if he'd been babbling in tongues. "If you mean to suggest that I face Evan Balogh man to man with broadswords, you've gone simple. He's killed every man who's ever faced him. He keeps count by notching a cherry staff. There are three score grooves in it. I do not care to be numbered among them."
"He would not kill you."
"Why not?"
Michael closed his eyes briefly. "Acorn can prevent it."
The tuathan's gaze shot toward the little scholar, who was as startled as Bryndan at having been introduced to the exchange. "How?"
"I, ah, have a device --"
"A talisman? A relic? Balogh slew a chieftain who carried a fragment of the Cross!"
"Not that kind of device, Bryndan." Michael tried to put authority in his tone. "Acorn has a machine that can swaddle you in safety. While he works it, no blade can touch you."
The tuathan's face writhed between wonder and terror. "How?"
"I don't know," Acorn said. "But it works. Michael helped me build it."
The words hung leaden in the air as Bryndan studied Acorn's face. Michael dared not speak.
"You are what they say you are," the tuathan whispered. "For eleven years I have rebuffed the folk who called you sorcerer. He's done naught to you or to any of us, I'd say. He is courteous and free with his coin, and he calls no man his foe. He keeps his nose to his own affairs and speaks ill of no one. Get you home and do as well. And now," he grated, "I learn that I was a fool."
Acorn's face spasmed with pain. "I am no sorcerer and you are no fool, Bryndan. You could work my machine as easily as I. There are no earth powers involved. No rituals, no sacrifices, none of the dark and deadly things of the druids. It will not endanger your soul in any way. It will ward you from the blows of Balogh's sword."
Bryndan stood. Though the tuathan was aflame with anger, Michael could see no trace in him of the warrior who'd led Carach an Lagan to victory in a score of battles.
"Get you gone, sorcerers. Evan Balogh will be the King of Ireland by Midsummer's Day. I will not stand against a man who wears fate's mantle, no matter what your infernal device might do. I will submit, and pray that my people do not cost me my life by resisting the inevitable."
***
Only a fortnight more had passed when Balogh's outriders appeared atop the eastern ridge. Though they wore no obvious livery, it was plain that they had come to survey the village for the impending attack. They moved slowly along the rock, studied the roads, the passes, and the village's paltry defenses, then wheeled and rode off without a word.
Michael had the news of Acorn. The little scholar was flushed with excitement, as if the contest to come were but one more of his absurd experiments. The news put flutters of doom into Michael's stomach. He accelerated his practice with his new-bought sword.
Aoife took to keeping aside a day's food for the four of them. Their few movable possessions she bundled in a burlap rag, that they not be left behind when the family took flight.
Each day, Michael went to the market and asked after horses or carts that might be for sale, at any price. There were none.
***
Three days later Balogh's legion poured through the eastern pass, score after score like a human river, banners flying and voices singing challenge. Michael had never seen so many men in one place. He hadn't imagined that many in all of Ireland.
Evan Balogh rode at their head on a great roan whose shoulder was as high as Michael was tall. A broadsword in a dark leather scabbard was strapped to the horse's flank.
Apparently Balogh had expected to meet either a band of defenders or no one at all. When his eye lit upon Michael, he pulled up short and raised his hand. When the legion had come to a stop behind him, he leaped nimbly down from his horse and swept the area from north to south and back. Once satisfied that no ambush was afoot, he buckled on his swordbelt and strode toward Michael, who stood before the market gate with his new-forged sword sheathed at his side.
With only a pace between them, Michael found that he had to look a little downward to meet the warlord's eyes. It brought no comfort. Balogh was built like a mountain scoured by an eon of storms. He was easily as broad as Michael, and the flesh of his face and forearms bore a multitude of scars. His dark eyes were hard. His manner was that of a man who took the submission of others as his birthright.
"I am Evan Balogh."
Michael nodded, conscious of the press of eyes upon his back from where his family and townsfolk huddled. "My name is Michael."
The warlord cocked an eyebrow at the lack of a surname. "Are ye the tuathan of this place?" His expression said you have not the look.
Michael swallowed. "I am here in his place."
"To treat with me?" Balogh's voice betrayed his amusement. His legend said he never gave quarter, nor accepted anything short of absolute surrender.
"To fight you."
Balogh and his men brayed laughter as one. Michael fought not to cringe before the blast of contempt.
"Ye are no more than a boy. A strapping lad, to be sure, but no man of arms. And ye think to try your youngling's strength against the King of Ireland?"
"You are not king here."
The laughter from the ranks ceased at once. Balogh's mirth disappeared and his eyes narrowed.
"One swing of my blade and I shall be, lad. Ye have no more than twenty summers, ye smell of the bog, and that sword ye wear has never been blooded. Ye are no proper chieftain to oppose me, and there can be no more than fifteen score of ye to meet my spears. Have done with your foolishness, bend your knee to me here and now, and I'll not slay ye and all your kindred for your cheek." The scarred face produced a vicious snarl.
Yet the bluster rang false. A note of uncertainty vibrated in the warlord's voice. He'd expected none of this, and was unsure of what he really faced, either from Michael or behind the walls of Carach an Lagan.
He doesn't want to fight me!
"Our chieftain," Michael said in a tone of casual contempt, "toyed with the notion of meeting you himself, but at the last he deemed it beneath his dignity. So he summoned his retainers and bade us arrange ourselves by height, and he selected the smallest of us to go forth as his champion, that you might have some trifling chance to prevail against the might of Carach an Lagan. He wanted there to be contest enough for a song or two. He would not have it said that the great Evan Balogh was crushed like an insect and his legion swatted away without a care."
Balogh's face turned dark with fury. The gasp from his men rushed through the air like the blast of wind that opens a summer squall.
"If ye set life at so little," Balogh hissed, stepping back and drawing his sword, "I'll not deny ye a death at the hand of a king."
Michael pulled his sword from its sheath and stood at the ready. From behind him, faint but definite, came the rumble of his recorded voice, rapidly accelerated by Acorn's furious pedaling.
Lord God of hosts, I have been Your faithful servant all my life. If I am to die by this man's hand, let it be in Your arms. Let it be as a man, not a wretch who grovels and pleads for his life. Let my family and my neighbors remember me to my credit. And take Aoife and the babes under Your special care.
Balogh raised his sword high overhead, stepped forward and swung it whistling down at Michael's neck. Michael did not attempt to ward the blow.
A bare inch from his flesh, the sword clanged against something unyielding. It did not explode nor fragment. It bounced off as if Michael's neck had been sheathed in a slab of the finest steel. The reaction threw the warlord backward as if he'd been struck an equal blow. As his legion cried out in amazement, Balogh staggered and fell onto his rump.
The protective whine faltered and ceased. Michael suppressed a shudder and smiled. "Perhaps you see now, sir, why we don't need a great many warriors to deal with you."
Balogh picked himself up, glared his hatred at Michael, and charged again. Michael's ears strained after the protective chant as the warlord swept his blade at Michael's midsection.
Perhaps the chant faltered at a crucial instant. Or perhaps it had not established its shield around him quite in time. Balogh's blade sliced through Michael's leather jerkin and scored his flesh from one hip to the other, opening a long wound that bled copiously. Though the cut was too shallow to threaten Michael's life, and looked far worse than it was, the surprise and pain staggered him, almost sending him to his knees. Yet once again, Balogh took a far heavier blow. He flew backward to the earth, stretched out supine and witless from the reflected force of his stroke.
It's time.
Michael stepped forward easily, blade loose in his hand, ignoring the burning gouge across his belly. He stood over the fallen war chief and smiled down at him.
"Two of your best blows to none of mine, sir, yet here I stand over you. Will you have the least of mine to remember us by?" And he raised his virgin sword and struck.
Balogh gave a great and despairing cry as Michael severed his sword arm at the shoulder. His blood flowed out to water the soil of Carach an Lagan's market square as his hand clutched spastically at the hilt of his useless sword. Within a minute, his life was spent.
Michael wiped his sword on Balogh's jerkin, returned it to its sheath, and straightened to address the leaderless horde.
"Your chieftain has shown us his best. Is there any among you thinks to better him?"
In three minutes, all had departed as they had come, leaving Michael to stand alone over the lifeless body of Evan Balogh, who would have been King of Ireland.
***
None of the townsfolk would speak to him, or to Aoife. They stayed as rigidly away as if he'd ridden into battle on a demon's back. Three days after the confrontation, he and Aoife decided to go.
They didn't need to do much preparing. Their few movable possessions, of which Aoife's knives and her two earthen bowls were the greater part, made a pack that even Eamon could carry. After a last dawnlight look at the village that had been home to uncounted generations of their kin, they made for Acorn's cave in the eastern cliffs.
The little scholar stood smiling at the cave mouth to greet them. He didn't appear surprised at their arrival. He beckoned them in, bade them sit.
"I will miss you, Michael."
Michael nodded.
"It was inevitable, you know. Whether for the abbot's accusations or the defeat of Balogh, it was impossible that they accept you again. For all that you saved them, they are no longer sure what you are."
"I know, sir." I knew before I went to challenge Balogh. "I can't fault them."
"Does your wound pain you much?"
Michael grinned and pulled up his tunic. Acorn approached, peered close, and gaped. Only a thin, perfectly horizontal scar traced across his flesh. It was as neatly closed as the finest surgeon could have done.
Acorn's eyes darted from the scar to Aoife. "Lady, did you...?"
She shook her head. "Not a bit of it, sir. It closed of its own. It had stopped bleeding before Michael got home."
The little scholar's face went slack. He sat heavily upon his stool and clapped his hands against his thighs.
"When he struck that blow, I thought he'd cleave you in two. When I opened my eyes and saw you standing and him in the dirt, I thought I'd lost my reason."
Michael's brow furrowed. "But why, sir? His first stroke did me no harm. Why should his second?"
Acorn didn't answer. Instead he rose, went to the back of his cave and plucked two items from a pile of detritus. He brought them to Michael and laid them in his hands like tokens of payment.
Michael stared dumbly at the fractured halves of the cylinder upon which Acorn had inscribed his voice.
"How?" he whispered.
"It shattered at Balogh's first blow," Acorn said. "You stood naked before his second stroke, with no protection but your jerkin."
"Then why -- why -- "
"I don't know, lad." Acorn looked acutely embarrassed by his ignorance. "I'd give a year of my life to know. You had a stroke of luck to equal Balogh's stroke of his sword. That's my only conjecture."
Michael closed his eyes and sat perfectly still for a long moment.
Luck never hardened flesh against a sword swung in fury.
"Acorn," he said, "in a day or two, when we are well away from here, I want you to climb the hill and tell Father Declan of this. He needs to know. And perhaps he will have an answer for you. Will you do that, simply because I ask it?"
Tension mounted in Acorn's face. "I would not be welcome there, Michael. What would be the use?"
Michael caught the little scholar's eyes and held them. "Acorn," he said in his lowest register, "it could be worth a great deal to you."
Acorn swallowed and nodded. Michael rose and put out his hand, and the scholar took it.
"Go with God, Acorn."
Michael took Aoife's hand and led his family out of the cave. They set out to the west, along the track of the Lagan, their backs warmed by the rising sun. In two days' walk, they would come to a village where Michael could make a new hut of reeds and stones and river clay, learn to till and sow and coax grain from the earth, teach his children of their forebears and raise them to their strength, and nevermore be taken for a sorcerer...or a king.
==<O>==
