The Romance of Eowain

Chapter Fifteen Scene Thirty-Nine

        The flight of Findtan's spear went past his propped up left shoulder like lightning and buried itself to the wide boar-guard in the hill beside him.

Tnúthgal gaped at the quivering spear, a hand-span to Eowain's left.

For a moment, Eowain thought he would weep. Perhaps the Gods were not so forgetful after all.

But, wondered Eowain, what can I do with it? This is impossible. The kind of star-crossed love that the drymyn and the mystic coelbreni foretell, it is impossible. We are beset upon all sides by the sins of the unfaithful and the tricks of the wicked.

The cooling rain dissolved the burning, viscous sludge from his cheek. How can the love of which they dream and tell stories, how can that love survive in a land of brigandage and cattle-raiders?

Eowain thought back on a missive he had sent to Eithne once, soon after their first meeting. If I could get love by leaping into my saddle... He chuckled a bit through the taste of blood in his teeth. Well, I would surely rather do something so simple now, Eithne. I surely would. He imagined her red hair, her narrow, pale, hungry face, her strong arms, her noble spirit. She seemed to shine before him in his mind's eye.

"Fine." Eowain heard his cousin's hiss and saw him draw a short-handled wooden axe of oak and black iron from his belt. "I would've made this easy on you, boy. But I see your father is as disappointed with you as I am." The rain pelted down, splattered on his cousin's helmet, drummed on the shirt of tight-knit chain-link mail on his shoulders, soaked into the green, gold, and white woolen tartan of the Donnghaile clan.

Eowain remembered something his father had once said:

Trust your cousins against the world.

Had he trusted Tnúthgal too much? Eowain had insisted on law and order, on loyalty and family before all else. And so allowed himself to be maneuvered into all this. Why shouldn't Tnúthgal have been king, after all? Wouldn't the vote of the people have carried it that way? Was one son of the Donnghaile clan not much like another for the sake of stars and oracles?

His cousin took a long, stalking step up the hill toward him, found footing in the rivulets of rain amid slick mountain valley moss, and took another.

Eowain knew he could grab the spear. Get up on his knees and offer one last fight. Or he could let go. So Tnúthgal would take Eithne to wife and sire sons to the benefit of whatever portentous thayn she bore. What did Eowain owe to the Gods anyway? He had another life awaiting him in Tirn Aill, the Other Land. He would be reunited with many of his fine, fallen comrades, all newly-arrived to that shynn-touched feast. Why should he not let pain and regret go?

Down the steep slope of ferns and rocks, behind Tnúthgal, beneath the gloomy pines and the unrelenting rain, the sorcerer sat up.

Eowain blinked twice at him. His eyes were white and blind in the firelight. His chest was caved in. His knotted hair hung around a great bloody gash where his heart should have been. Where the spear of Findtan had done its gruesome work.

Revulsion washed over Eowain once more. There's no way in the Three Spheres of the Nine Worlds any man survives such a blow. And yet the sorcerer suddenly bounced to his feet. There was a long, wicked dagger in his hand. It dripped with black, viscous oil.

Eowain saw the look on Tnúthgal's face change, from hatred to confusion. His cousin's brow knotted. His cousin turned his head.

The sorcerer lunged into Tnúthgal's unguarded back and stabbed like a frenzied wildcat with the dagger.

Then something else his father once said came back to Eowain:

But trust your brother against your cousins.

—33—

Look for the next installment in this Continuing Tale of The Matter of Manred: The Romance of Eowain.

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