Stone Heart

Chapter 2

Seven days after their return from war, when the yule fires had been put out, the dead were buried. The naked heather bushes, whose petals were out of season, ringed the settlement's burial ground and a light mist hazed the morning fields. In the warmer months, the petals were used to fill pillows so that living heads would touch the same flowers as the spirits of the dead who rose to journey to the Otherworld.

The crunch of grass underfoot broke the icy dawn as Áed fell in line behind his father for the procession to the burial site. Thirteen graves had been dug in the days before, one for each of the brave, fallen warriors whose honourable deaths on the battlefield would cause worthy reincarnation in the afterlife. The men's bodies had been cleansed and were wrapped in linens decorated in the patterns of their tribe. Then they were burned and their ashes were buried with their swords and shields and with enough food to see them into their next life. Áed helped with the placement of the tumulus stones over each of the graves and when the last stone was put in place he stood back and observed their work. Stamping his feet on the frozen grass—they were cold while the rest of his body sweated from their labours—he asked, 'Where exactly is Tír na nÓg, father?' The Land of the Young, where warriors went when they died, was the subject of many tales.

'West,' was all that his father said.

The mourners walked sun-wise three times around each mound and the keening of the women was strong. Odhran, no longer a druid's acolyte, had returned three days before and whispered directions to the Otherworld into the ears of the dead. It pained Áed to know that secret, even though all the tales informed him that anybody who went there living never returned, or did not return in his own lifetime.

When Odhran walked barefoot into the settlement in his grey cloak, his first deed was to seek out Doirean and Airic and advise them on Grainne's progress with the archdruid. She had passed his tests and was to be further instructed into the Order. 'She sends her love,' he told Doirean, 'and she misses you dearly, but she is happy. She is working for the earth now.'

'My fruit is the earth's fruit,' Doirean said, and she left to weep on her own.

After the burial rites for the thirteen heroic warriors, Airic went to his smithy to absorb his mind in his work. There had been unfinished projects when the call to arms had come and, to forget the long months at war and the passing of his friends, he sought solace in the repetitive beat of his hammer. Áed presented his father with the shield he had made the year before.

'I made this,' Áed said, adding at a whisper, 'for you.' He realised soon after finishing the shield how little he knew of forging and how unskilled his childish carvings were. For the intensive labouring he had spent on it, he looked on it now with an abhorrent disgust. 'I'll make another,' he said, an apology. 'I get better at carving in bronze every day.'

Airic took the shield from his son and looked at it for a long time. He hefted it in his hands, levelled the brace of it with his eye, and slid his forearm through the straps at its back. 'It's a fine thing,' he said at last. 'A fine thing.'

'It's Néit,' Áed said of the face on the shield's front. 'To help win the wars. But it's poorly made. I can make a newer one. I am older and better now.'

'There is no finer shield in the land,' Airic told his son. 'And I will proudly wear it into battle.'

Áed sat on the wooden stool opposite the iron forge at which Airic had been working, and he smiled, lowered his gaze, and scuffed the dirt at his feet. 'Tell me about the war,' he asked.

With the shield still attached to his left arm, he came and knelt in front of Áed, digging the point of the shield into the floor. 'At this rate it won't be long before you find out for yourself. After Imbolc, you'll travel to the Ó Mordha for training.' He looked at his son's innocent face, at the shaggy hair that fell about his cheeks. 'War is a foul business. It is as much a part of life as it is of death. You don't need to hear my stories, you'll make your own. The only advice I can offer you is this: when you strike, strike hard. When a man comes before you on the battlefield, he is not your friend. He is the embodiment of every enemy you've ever faced before and every one you'll face thereafter. He is not to be feared; he is to fear you. Every warrior you face independently is the only war you will know. There will be no end to it until he has fallen at your feet without a head. Show me your hands.'