Blood Feud [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER ONE ☽

Pronunciation List

Rí = ree = king

Rithe = rih - hih = kings (pl.)

Filí = feel - ee = poet

Mean Fomhair = Mee-an Fo-ur = September

Samhain = S - ow - in = November

Names

Dorcha = Door - ka

Loinnir = Lin - ear

Tailtiu = Tal - chew

Cuán = Coo - awn

Oisín = Ush - een

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The mountain tribes, those old relations of ours

Poured down from the hills, engulfing our primitive society

Our first stab at civility,

As maggots fester in the centre of a corpse.

They unlearned the brilliance of our ancestors and favoured the way of the wolf.

Replaced with a wild rabble unable to cultivate the land they conquered,

Famine raged, pestilence razed

the people of our prospering Clann, both struck down by nature and man.

Their gods had abandoned them, many were lost to criminal horrors,

Feeding on one another -- no really eating each other-- to cling to themselves.

Brother ate brother, mother ate child

And it was then each faction of Conn became wild.

Here comes the Dark King!

In his days the wolf did not hunt,

The wild dog, that great kid killer was unknown.

Bridegroom to the great Earth Sovereign, Tailtiu gave to his Clann and family Abundance,

Therein lies the Dark King's territories now won, cloaking ourselves in secrecy,

Separating our warring people from the rest of the island.

Connacta, Tarrachta and Naithí

Subjugated under one rí whose strength safe-guarded the Clann's vitality

Following the Dark King's example; our strength lay in our obscurity.

It was bone fire night.

She pulled her furs tighter, inching closer to the blaze, ignoring the poem of the filí. The great conflagration was three times her height, stocked full of flammable timbers, and the autumnal winds howled, spitting embers into the dark sky.

The filí was a decrepit man taken hostage from a lesser king, captured for his artful tongue. Poetry and lore-keeping were well-respected trades across the island, but a thousand years ago when Dorcha, the Dark King ascended and subdued the warring tribes of Conn, a satirical poem had landed his filí in the bog with weights tied to his ankles. At present, they took poets if and when needed, the druids fulfilled most of their role, so one kidnapped poet was all that was necessary.