Sons of Ulster

SONS OF ULSTER

[Right, a short story I wrote for a CW workshop. I own so few completed works it's nice to actually pull one up. I reread it, and enjoyed it immensely, and so here it is.]

Tim's right hand was still. It didn't feel like his; the fingers twisted inwards, red with blood that shouted against his alabaster skin. His left arm was folded beneath him and had long since stopped being a part of his shoulder. The last time he'd opened his mouth to scream there was no sound, only hot blood and bile, and he'd felt stitched with nausea until the sickness squeezed snowflakes from the corners of his eyes. But his hand was still. And the pain - those three hard peach-pits of pain that cracked open his abdomen up from his pelvis to somewhere under his left nipple like coiled knots of barbed wire, herniating his guts down beneath his belt buckle – the pain was gone. Embers softened to smoke. He couldn't remember how to close his eyes and he could still taste that copper, salt-flavour in his mouth. It made him want to rip off his ski-mask. It made him want to pick up the Armalite rifle he knew was off somewhere to his left. It made him want to get up and look out the shattered window and feel the rain on his face.
It was raining, in Armagh.
He could hear the soft clocking of hiking boots coming up the stairs and the curt barking of orders being shouted by more than one person. The voices boomed, like hammer-falls into mud; senseless and distorted. He couldn't remember how to close his eyes. The floor was pine; hard and cold. Heat had sucked out of his body until he felt like a drift of snow against the wall, driftwood against the shore. The world was on its side and every piece of the wall and doorway he could see was too bright, and getting brighter. He sucked air through his nose but struggled against the sink-drain shallowness of his lungs – he wanted to smell the rain; that ripe, washed smell, that earth smell, but the metallic stink of blood filled his head. He tried to croak “Fuck” but his words spilled down his chin like ink. He tried to think of something better to say but his thoughts broke in his head like storm-clouds and everything was so bright.
His eyes closed.

The sun was hot on his face, where it shafted down through the trees. In his right arm he held a bow and he knew – he couldn't feel but he knew he had a quiver on his back. He was in a glade and the beauty of it sucked the breath from his lungs, the leaves fat with petals and sweaty with dew and the creepers hung from branches in ringlets. All around him were knitted together gorgeous alders and rowans, and the sun that fell against the ground was like handfuls of jewels in the grass. He crossed himself.
Oh Holy Mutter, he thought. Have aye come at last into yer mercy?
He was a hard man, though. Too hard, perhaps, for the church – hard enough for Ireland, yes, but for God? Who could say?
He knew why he was here, and he knew why he had a bow. He was here to slay a great beast. He was here, in death, to accomplish what he'd essayed in life. In the glade there was a small, shallow creek which pooled amidst the tangle of roots into the middle, and beyond it the beast squatted in the shadows. Its eyes were like two coins catching fire-light.
“Jeysus,” he mouthed. It was a hound, but the size of it – as big as a small pony, its eyes hanging six-feet off the ground and its fur such a dark tint of green - a hot, shadowy emerald – making it almost indistinguishable from the forest around it. Its great jaws hung open and panted in heavy gouts, big enough to tear a man in half at the waist and choke him down like a leg of chicken. It stepped forward with ghostly grace, as quiet as a moose, and its breathing shuddered across the clearing. As it stepped into the light he could see its fur was thickly braided at the throat and down its spine, festooned with ribbons.
Cù Sìth, he thought. But the words came to him in his grandmother's voice. His grandmother, who had spoken into his ear of the dreaded Dearg Due vampire, the hunting Sluagh, the Fair Folk. A Cù Sìth, a hound of the faerie. It was strange, he could only see his right arm before him as he disembodiedly took an arrow from behind him with his left. The hound's eyes fell on the bow with indifference and its great vigour shocked the hairs of his arms into standing, filled his gut with the knowledge of his great smallness in the face of this thing. A wind fell through the glade and passed through him like gossamer. It barely felt real.
“Stad.”
A deep, musical voice rang from the trees and knocked the motion from Tim's body like a sledge. It was all he could do to keep breathing; it bounced off his teeth and splattered black spots across his vision. He was shaking when he managed to force himself to turn, and when his eyes focused he tried to cross himself again.
“So you've come 'ere to kill my gadhar, 'ave ye?” A man had stepped out into the clearing. Only he wasn't a man, not really. “He's not mine, aye suppose, not really, he was Annwn's and aye took 'im. I'll soon have the rest.” He laughed at that, a bottomless sound like the tolling of great bells. His hair boiled from his skull, burning like candle-flame as it caught the light in three flashing shades; gold and brass and flaming auburn. He was an Irelander – not the tallest, but the hugeness of his gravity was like a bottomless well. And why not? He was Cú Chulainn , the Hound of Culann, the king of heroes. He was a myth made flesh. His feet and calves were sandaled, his frame shouldered with furs; robed and sashed with nothing more than his scarlet tartan. Muscle roiled under his tanned flesh as he moved; great inlaid cables knotting and un-knotting like halyards. Cú Chulainn, seven-fingered killer of men, the Raider of Cooley. His eyes were smoothed gemstones and his face was marble – unmoved by the empathic reflex of a normal man. But behind his eyes a kind of musical laughter tumbled, back and forth, weightless as fairy wings and beyond mortal ken. Beneath one arm was tucked his polished helm, leaving him crowned only in laurels of holly and fig.
Tim spoke the deity's name; only what came out was “Seanathair,”. Grandfather. The great hound slipped around the pool and knelt by its master, who stroked its furred with his seven-fingered hand.
“You are a son of Ulster, aye? A man of mine own blood. Don't fret – Scathach taught me to see beyond sight.” His eyes flashed at Tim – sparkling, scrying eyes, they seemed beyond time. No longer did his face blossom with the childish elegance of youth. He was bearded in fire, the flesh of his face gracefully lined with the dignified handsomeness of a man's. “What have ye come 'ere to ask me?”
“Cúnamh,” Tim said. Help. At the word a cloud passed over the king of heroes' features and thunder pealed behind his eyes.
“Help,” he rolled the round around his mouth like a stone. He turned from his descendant and bent over the pool, splashing a cold hand of water against his brow, wringing drops from his hair and down his chin. “'ave the men of Ulster forgotten how to help themselves? Only Cú Chulainn can deliver ye – from whom? The Saxons? The Picts?” The warrior's voice boomed against the walls of the clearing. He sneered. '''You'll find no harder warrior against you - no point more sharp, more swift, more slashing;'” he quoted venomously. “'No raven more ravenous, no hand more deft, no fighter more fierce, no one of his own age one third as good, no lion more ferocious; no barrier in battle, no hard hammer, no gate of battle, no soldier's doom, no hinderer of hosts, more fine. You will find no one there to measure against him - for youth or vigour; for apparel, horror or eloquence; for splendour, fame or form; for voice or strength or sternness; for cleverness, courage, or blows in battle;'” His voice roared into the sky like a bonfire and he lifted the mystic helm over his skull. “'for fire or fury, victory, doom or turmoil; for scheming or slaughter in the hunt; for swiftness, alertness, or wildness; and no one with the battle-feat 'nine men on each point' - none like Cuchulainn!'' He slammed the helmet down on his head and the effect was monstrous – like the hoplites of Ancient Greece his face was distorted, made hellish. He threw his head back and howled and his roar vibrated inside the helm like a fineral dirge in a haunted, steel ampitheater. The bellow exploded all around him and Tim trembled in its shadow – it was a primal reaction, like a mouse in the shadow of a kestrel. Here was a greater predator than anything that had stalked the woods before him and everything was his prey. His roar broke time like a glass window and drew out from the tombs of the past the howl of fleet-footed Achilles and the corpse-champion Orion from the astres of Olympus, the galder of One-Eyed Wotin and the snarl of menhir-breaking Lleu Llaw Gyffes.
Suddenly the noise ended – and that silence fell like a thunder-clap – and the mythic warrior took three strides towards Tim and nothing could move against that strength – he fell back on his ass and his right hand came up, and it was shaking, and Cú Chulainn roped a single limb forward and his seven-fingered hand opened like a golden flower of homicidal beauty; the hand that had sundered limb from limb the armies of Queen Mebd, who had broken the unbreakable armour of Fer Diad in single combat, that had wielded every weapon to pass through the highlands of Ireland like an extension of itself.
“Even smote by mine own gae bolga, with m'own guts tying me to a stone, aye took off the hand of Lugaid mac Con Roi as 'e reached for mine dying face – you diolain of Ulster – you have the fuil, and ye ask for my help?” A great, strangely mortal weariness settled on those unearthly shoulders. “Am aye not content to cheat Annwn and ride the haunted winds with Shaggy, 'ere? Are my deeds not done? Are they not to inspire?” Somewhere, a dog barked three times. Tim closed his eyes, and opened them. “You'll 'ave none, son of Ulster.”
Voices.
“Right, check that badger.”
“Provo bastard.”
“He's a croaker, look at 'im.”
The hand was still there – gloved, five-fingered, attached to the arm of a man robotic with flak jacket and khaki – making to jab Tim's eyes as he lay cold against the wall. As they clicked open the figure stiffened and that hand hovered inches above his face.
“Sinn Fein,” he croaked, the words sticking in his mouth like tar.
His hand was still as marble when he squeezed the detonator to the gelignite vest which lay open under his rain-coat.
He saw that seven-fingered hand one more time, and then knew nothing.