“You’re right,” I chuckled. “There was a bit more to it than that. I thought you might enjoy the short version, though.”
Flidais seemed to seriously consider whether or not she had enjoyed it. “I appreciated the denial of expectations; it is similar to when prey refuses to behave in standard fashion, making the hunt more interesting. But I know that you have skipped many details, and it already differs from what I have heard, so now I must know it all. Tell me the longer version.”
“Wait. What did you hear in Tir na nOg? The short version.”
“I heard that you stole it from Conn through chicanery and guile. In some tales you put him to sleep through use of a potion; in others you switch swords with him using an illusion. You come across as little more than a scheming, cowardly footpad.”
“How delightful. All right, then, I think perhaps it is crucial to know my state of mind leading up to the point where the sword dropped at my feet-for that is truly how it happened. Night battles are ridiculously crazy; I wasn’t sure that I was always facing people from the opposing army, you know? The only illumination saving it from being black as tar was the pale glow of a crescent moon, the stars, and a few distant campfires. I may have accidentally killed a man or two on my own side, and I was paranoid about being cut down in a similar accident. So I was thinking, this is absurdly dangerous, why am I doing this, and why am I here, and the answer that I came up with was this: We were all killing one another in the middle of the night because Conn had a magic sword given to him by Lugh Lamhfhada of the Tuatha De Danann. Fragarach’s power had allowed him to conquer most of Ireland. Great as he was, he could not have done it without that sword. Conn would have never had the stones to attack Mogh Nuadhat without it. Everyone who died in the battle to that point had done so because a single sword gave one man in power the lust for more. And as I maniacally hewed down whoever faced me, I realized that, even as we fought for Conn, Conn was fighting for the Tuatha De, manipulated by Lugh and his cronies as sure as a tree drinks water.”
“I remember this now,” Flidais said. “I stood apart because I have never had much interest in human affairs outside the forest. But Lugh was very interested, and Aenghus Og even more so.”
“Aye. I think they wanted to bring peace to Ireland at the point of a sword. They encouraged Conn to do what he did-and all the High Kings after him. And perhaps it would have been the best thing for Ireland, I don’t know. What bothered me is that the Tuatha De were manipulating human events, when they were supposed to have been removed from them centuries before.”
“Meddlesome, are we?” Flidais grinned sardonically.
“In that particular case you were. I was mentally cataloging which of you were on Conn’s side and who was on Mogh Nuadhat’s when the sword fell at my feet. I knew immediately what it was; I could feel its power pulsing through the ground, calling to me. And that’s when I heard a voice in my head, already half expected, telling me to pick it up and exit the field. Pick it up, the voice said, and I would be protected.”
“Whose voice was it?” Flidais asked.
“Cannot you guess?”
“The Morrigan,” she whispered.
“Yes indeed, the old battle crow herself. I would not be surprised if she had something to do with it slipping from Conn’s grasp in the first place. So I picked it up. When you’re in the middle of a killing field and the fucking Chooser of the Slain tells you to do something, you do it. But of course there were many agents, human and immortal, who objected to this.”
“Conn came after you?”
“Not personally. He was too busy fighting for his life with a normal sword he’d snatched from a corpse. He was in the very thick of the melee, and thus he sent some of his chiefs behind him to find Fragarach. What they found was a Druid holding his sword and not particularly anxious to surrender it. In fact, they found me trying to summon mist to cloak my escape.”
“Only trying?” Flidais raised an eyebrow. I noticed that she had a few freckles underneath her eyes, high on her cheeks. She was comfortably pink all over and slightly bronzed from the sun, not the marble white of the Morrigan.
“It was rather difficult to concentrate. Aenghus Og and Lugh were in my head, telling me to return the sword to Conn or die, and the Morrigan was telling me I would die if I gave it back. I said to the Morrigan that I wanted to keep Fragarach for my own, to which Aenghus Og and Lugh both shouted no, so of course the Morrigan instantly agreed.”
Flidais laughed. “You played them against one another. This is utterly delicious.”
“But wait, it gets tastier. The Morrigan shielded my mind from Aenghus Og and Lugh, and just in time. Conn’s lieutenants tried to slay me and quickly discovered that, while Fragarach was a great sword in Conn’s hand, it was a terrible sword in mine. They all shouted ‘Traitor!’ before they dropped in the mud, however, and I abruptly found myself surrounded by hostiles-hostiles egged on to kill me by Aenghus Og and Lugh, no doubt. The Morrigan suggested to me that the best way out would be through Mogh Nuadhat’s army. Charging in that direction, I whirled Fragarach around me with all the strength a Druid could muster from the earth, cleaving bodies in two and shearing anonymous torsos from their trunks. The flying halves of men bowled whole men over, and fountains of blood showered upon my erstwhile comrades. I eventually reached Mogh Nuadhat’s Spaniards, who parted for me like the Red Sea for Moses-”
“For whom?”
“I beg your pardon. I was alluding to a figure from the Torah, who escaped an Egyptian army by appealing to the god Yahweh for aid. Yahweh parted the Red Sea for Moses and his Jewish friends to escape, and when the pharaoh’s army tried to follow, the Red Sea fell upon them, drowning them all. And so it was when Conn’s men tried to pursue me; the Spaniards closed ranks and thwarted them, and I ran freely to the other side of the field, thanking the Morrigan for her assistance. But that’s when Aenghus Og decided to take a very personal hand in the matter. He appeared before me, in the flesh, and demanded that I return the sword.”
“You had better not be jesting with me now,” Flidais said.
“I assure you I remember it very clearly. He was outfitted in some stunning bronze armor etched with lovely bindings and dark-blue pauldrons and bracers. Do you remember seeing it?”
“Mmm. Long ago, yes. But that proves nothing.”
“Confirm it all with the Morrigan. For just as Aenghus and I were about to come to blows, she alighted on my shoulder as the battle crow and told Aenghus to back the fuck off.”
“She actually said that?”
“No.” I grinned. “I confess that was a bardic embellishment. She said I was under her personal protection and by threatening me he placed himself in mortal peril.”
Flidais clapped her hands in delight. “Oh, I bet he nearly shat kine!”
That made me laugh-I hadn’t heard that expression in a long, long time. I refrained from telling her that the modern expression would be “he had a cow,” because I liked the original better.
“Yes, the kine he nearly shat would have fed several clans.”
“What did Aenghus do then?”
“He protested that the Morrigan had gone too far and interfered beyond her compass. She replied that the battlefield was precisely her province and she could do as she wished. She tried to make him feel better by guaranteeing that Conn would survive the night and even win the battle. He accepted these concessions as his due but couldn’t leave without threatening me personally. He glared at me with those flat black eyes and promised me a short, miserable life-and I’m grateful for that, because the Morrigan has tried to make it the opposite as much as possible.
“ ‘You may enjoy this victory now, Druid,’ he said, ‘but you will never know peace. My agents, both human and Fae, will hound you until you die. Always you will have to look over your shoulder for the knife at your back. So swears Aenghus,’ blah blah blah.”
“Where did you go?” Flidais asked.
“At the Morrigan’s suggestion, I left Ireland to make it tougher for Aenghus to kill me. But the bloody Romans were everywhere and they weren’t friendly to Druids. It was the reign of Antoninus Pius, so I had to travel east of the Rhine to escape them and join the Germanic tribes holding the line there. I fathered a child, picked up a language or two, and waited a couple generations for people in Ireland to forget about me. By stealing Fragarach, I had ensured plenty more battles and horrible, bloody deaths. Conn wasn’t able to fully unite all the tribes without
