Warrior's Daughter by Holly Bennett Page A

demoralized, and soon she was ready to make terms. My father offered to fight a one-on-one combat each day. While they fought, her armycould advance. But if Cuchulainn defeated Maeve’s champion, they would have to make camp until the following day, and he would leave them in peace.
    “At first Cuchulainn won his combats in minutes, so that Maeve’s army crawled forward at an ant’s pace,” said Laeg. “But still no reinforcements came, and between combat and night patrols there was little rest to be had. Then Maeve began to cheat. She sent assassins into our camp by night and made a mockery of the rules of single combat.
    “She sent twelve against him,” Laeg told us, the anger hard in his eyes, “and claimed that since they were all of one family it would count as but one man. And still Cuchulainn prevailed, but it was long and weary work, and meantime the army advanced. And we learned afterward that while they were far ahead of us and Cuchulainn hard pressed, Maeve sent part of her army in a loop toward Cooley, and that is the arm that the young lads from Emain encountered. And the vengeance Cuchulainn took, when word came to us of their slaughter, is beyond anything I can describe. The wrath of the Morrigu herself would not have been more deadly.”
    Still my father suffered little hurt until he faced his final challenger.
    “It was Ferdia who came at last,” Laeg told my mother, the words so bitter in his mouth you would think it was poison he tasted. “Ferdia, his own sworn arms-brother, his fellow in training with Scathach. And I swear,” he said, “it was not Ferdia’s strength and skill in arms but his betrayal that cut the Hound to the quick. Nothing would have turned him against Ferdia—not the riches Maeve offered, nor the promise of her daughter, nor the taunts and threats of her satirists either.”
    They fought for three days, and each morning my father tried to turn Ferdia from the deadly path he had chosen, but it could not be done. And Ferdia, who had learned so many of the same feats and tricks as my father, was a fierce opponent. “Never have I seen men so wounded and fighting still,” said Laeg. “From dawn till dark they hacked at each other, until their bodies ran red with blood and the ground beneath them was slick with it. At times I had to goad and mock Cuchulainn, to stir up his strength and anger, yet it was weeping with pity I was, for all the hurts that were upon him.”
    When they fought in the River Dee, at the ford they now call Ath Ferdia, it was clear that both men were near to death. Only in the last extremity did my father call for the Gae Bolga, his deadliest spear. And when my father finally killed Ferdia, launching the Gae Bolga from under the water with his foot and ramming it up under Ferdia’s iron apron, it is then he fell down weeping for the death of his friend and began to sink into a stupor from his wounds and sorrow and exhaustion.
    Laeg managed to rouse him and drag him away from the open riverbank to safety, and there my father lay, unable to bear even the weight of a cloth upon his wounds, until the sounds of battle roused him. The men of Ulster had come at last, and when Cuchulainn heard the cry of the Ochain, Conchobor’s magic shield, his anger came upon him and he rose up despite his injuries, and fought alongside his people until Maeve’s army was utterly smashed.
    He had not so much as lifted his head since.
    The long months that my father lay in the Speckled House—for he had roused only long enough to insist he be taken to sleep there among the weapons and shields of the Red Branch—werethe strangest I had yet known. To be sure, there was grieving for the dead and doctoring for the living, but life soon returned to its normal bustle for everyone, it seemed, except me. My mother spent her days at my father’s side, trying to coax him out of the uncanny sleep that held him suspended between the world of the living and that of the dead. And just