The High Deeds of Finn MacCool by Rosemary Sutcliff Page B

not ask lightly, for well he knew the sorrows and hazards that might be in store for a mortal man who takes a bride from the Fairy Kind.
    â€˜You asked me once,’ Saba said, ‘if I could be happy among mortal folk, with none of my own kind to speak with or to touch my hand.’
    â€˜And you said that you would tell me another time.’
    And Saba said, ‘I will tell you now. I can be happy anywhere in the Three Worlds with you, and not happy anywhere without you. You have done that tome, you who promised that in Almu no one should bind me with any bond against my will.’
    So she became Finn’s wife, and their happiness was like the happiness of the Immortals in the Land of Youth where spring never turns to winter, and magic birds sing always in the branches of the white apple trees whose blossom never falls, even when the apples sweeten and turn gold.
    The months went by, and they wanted nothing in the world but to be in each other’s company. Indeed, as moon followed moon, and summer turned to autumn and autumn to winter and back to spring, and Finn seemed to have no taste left for war or hunting or anything that could take him from her side, the Fianna began to mutter among themselves that their Captain was not the man he had been before her coming.
    And then one day word came to Almu of the White Walls that there were Lochlan war-boats in Dublin Bay.
    Then Finn roused himself, and called out the Fianna of the Five Provinces. And in the forecourt of Almu, as in other strongholds through the length and breadth of Erin, the warriors gathered to sharpen sword and spear blade on tall weapon stone.
    Saba seemed to grow whiter and thinner as she watched, and once she said to Finn with her arms round his neck, ‘Need you go?’
    â€˜A bargain is a bargain, and payment must be earned,’ Finn said. ‘The men of Erin pay us tribute and give us the shelter of their hearths and the food from their store sheds, that we may keep the shores of Erin for them, from the menace of the sea raiders. And shall we take the tribute, and eat from the store shedsand warm ourselves at the hearths, and not keep the shore in return?’
    â€˜But need
you
go?’ said Saba.
    And Finn thought, ‘That is the Fairy Kind speaking,’ but he said only, ‘The Fianna of the Five Provinces do not go into battle without their leader.’ And then he told her a thing that Goll Mac Morna had once said: ‘A man lives after his life, but not after his honour,’ and gently pulled her arms from about his neck, and went out to see how the armourers were doing.
    At the very last, with the warriors waiting before the gates, he said, ‘Wait for me, bride-of-my-heart, and soon we shall be together again. But while I am away, promise me that you will not set foot outside the walls of Almu, nor speak to anyone not of our household.’
    And Saba promised, and Finn marched away at the head of the Leinster Fianna, towards the agreed hosting-place where the Munster and Mide, Connacht and Ulster battalions would join him.
    Seven days they were fighting the sea raiders, and they drove them from the land and down the shore, and back, back, back to their ships – those that were left of them. But many a Lochlan man lay dead among the coast-wise hills of Erin, and many were left wounded or captive, to drag out their days with an iron slave collar round their necks herding cattle or threshing barley for an Irish master. And many a black war-boat staggered home with half her crew, or was left beached on the shores of Dublin Bay, for lack of enough men to work the oars. And these the Fianna fired, and left for so many beacons blazing along the shore behind them, when they turned home again on the eight day.
    With every step of the homeward way, Finn thought more strongly of Saba, and his heart went out ahead of him to be with her again. And when they reached the foot of the Hill of Almu and began to