Celtic Tales 8: The Daring

By Jill Whalen

Celtic heroes seize the moment and revel in life. Join them in their struggles and triumphs.

What makes a man? Is it his age, or his size, or his mettle? Meet a man of seven years that thousands of men swore sword fealty to. A prophesy about honor is fulfilled by a boy who found a signet ring and returned it to the McLeod clan. A boy dreaming of honor, riches, and glory in far off lands gets more than he bargained for. Find out about the sword that only belongs to heroes.

These Celtic people lived exciting lives. For a little while step into the past of your ancestors. Be a part of the daring with a sword and a brain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 27, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595604760

Jill Whalen

I am a Celtic mother of eight who is writing about family stories that have been handed down by word of mouth. I live in the beautiful Missouri Ozarks, am a graduate of Millikin University, and a member of Mensa.

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Copyright © 2008 by Jill Whalen

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in these short stories are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-0-595-48385-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-595-60476-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Tale 1: Merrick McKines

Tale 2: Alba McLeod

Tale 3: Scot Boy

Tale 4: Val

Tale 5: Dark Heart

Tale 6: One Man Army

Tale 7: Reeka

Tale 8: The Sword

This book is dedicated to Clif.

Tale 1: Merrick McKines 

I was born on the white island, the main island, Alba, on the weft east of center. I did live on the southern border of Scotland as a lad, but not because I wanted to. We young lads wanted to go off and find our fortunes. The council told us to go to the southern border and do a wonderful job there. Then we wouldn’t have to go away to the foreign wars to enrich ourselves. They said it would give us status. We would have a chance to get riches of horses, weapons, silver and gold coins, silver and gold plates to eat upon, silks, tapestries, and all manner of finery. You wouldn’t expect the southern noblemen to rough it any more than that. There were a few with brains, but not many.

I had a serviceable, plain steel sword and a fine fighting knife given to me by my uncle. I couldn’t even afford a horse. I felt good to just have a sword. I didn’t have chain mail, but each of my uncles gave me a leather fighting strap with steel bosses from their own fighting duds. I connected them together so that the bosses overlapped along my left upper arm. It was like a shield over my arm and shoulder. It would keep someone from stroking down through me, and that is the most likely attack point from a right handed man. I thought about making a hat and something to protect my neck, but that wouldn’t protect me like a helmet would. It was better to have my head free. I wanted to get myself chain mail, a helm, a good sword, and all sorts of things. A man can’t have too good a sword. I would have liked to have had a horse. What I thought when I left home was that I’d like to have the best steed out there, a good war horse. Then, after awhile, I thought I’d just be happy with any old plug that would carry me along instead of me having to carry myself. Of course, horses weigh you down. You’ve got to feed them, care for them, find them shelter, and all manner of such. You’ve got to own a saddle and tack and keep tacking around for repairs, so you’ve got to have a hammer and all manner of tools also. Now you are talking of buying shoes. A horse is an expense. I couldn’t afford one right then. So it was that I was a runner, a ridge man. They put me up in the rough breaks mostly. The young gentlemen with the horses were down in the weft itself and up in the hills above the farms. They knew all the young ladies, so they could go courting.

I didn’t have any great battles there. I ran into a southern scout early one fall. He saw me and rode away on his horse. After awhile I was catching up to him. He turned to look back at me and a branch hit him in the head knocking him off his horse breaking his neck. His horse went on with all his tack and gear, except for what he had on him. They don’t even wear a light weight sporran. He had a purse of gold and a beautiful knife, but his chain mail, cloak, and such were probably left at camp so he could travel faster. I got a good solid purse out of it and put that away, but I left a few things in his purse to show the others. He had a thin bladed sword. The metal didn’t impress me. The scabbard was all fancy and had jewels on it. That was my big battle. I didn’t even get to fight; he had killed himself on that branch.

I carried the body back to our camp, because sometimes the old men can see something that we younger men don’t notice. They knew the shire he was from. They could tell a lot about him from his hair. I tracked that horse on down the trail, but it wasn’t slowing down. It was headed south. I really would have liked to have had that horse and all that gear. He had one of those huge saddles, the kind for a knight with all his armor. He had a beautiful plume in his hat. That was one of the things I saw. He broke that on the branch or on the ground when he fell. The hat and everything was filthy. None of the clothes came anywhere near to fitting me and were a bit fancy for me anyway, so I found somebody who would take them. I couldn’t get any money, but the man agreed to stand my night watches for twenty nights when I was in camp. That was a lot of standing. That was more nights than I was going to be there.

I came out of it with eight gold crowns and fifteen silver pieces that I put away before anybody knew about it. When I said I got a purse they thought I got a small gold, two large silvers, and a bunch of coppers. I got to thinking about that feather. I stiffened it up with flour and water from the cook’s shed that first night after everybody had heard about it. I went and sat in the back row by the fire with my feather on. I walked up to the front and went back to the back. This drunkard from the north came up to me when I was in camp. He wanted that feather. He offered me a hand ax. I couldn’t see it well, but it is hard to mess up an ax, and the feather was broken anyway. If there was anything wrong with the ax, how bad could it be compared to a broken feather? It was one of the cheap axes where they take a piece of metal, wrap it around, and beat it on back again, so it’s got a hole for the hilt. The far end was peened out and sharpened. The whole back thing, the riveting and the weld, was really poorly done; it was all open and loose so it was useless. In the morning mist, the magnificent feather fell over again. The man came roaring around about his feather when he found out it was held up with a flour paste. I pointed out the weld in the ax. He wanted to trade off again, but I said no. The metal was okay. It didn’t have too many impurities in it. You could have welded it back and sold it to any man in the place for farming. I traded it off to the blacksmith for metal. He has a forge, but it was on low that morning. He very neatly tapped the handle out and threw it into a fire that he had going in a barrel of rocks. He tossed it in there and used it for firewood grinning at me the whole way. In return for that and some of the money I slipped him very quietly, he gave me a knife he had made. It was a little sliver of a knife about half again as long as my fingers and the palm of my hand double bladed on either side. It was a softer metal than he would use normally, but it was sharp enough to cut with and to stab with if you had to. It was in a soft leather sheath with a hole in the top. Someone had plaited hair into a soft little rope long enough to hang the knife around my neck. It had a counter balance in the front, so it would hold it away from my throat. If people saw it around my neck they might think it was just a pendant. I had a good hold out knife now too, and it was good for throwing.

I gained a wealth of knowledge about foreign places quite by accident. One of our lads, Collough McCrory, had wanted to go off and earn his fortune in the foreign wars. He knew it could be five to ten years before he’d be back. He had an understanding with one of the girls there. She vowed to wait for his return. She loved cats, so he promised to bring her back one. At the end of five years she married another lad. Three years after that her lad, who had been off to the foreign wars to make his fortune, returned. He was burned a dark brown from the sun. All the men were called when they heard he was coming. I wanted to see him. Collough was a fine figure of a man, lean with nothing but muscles. He rode in on this horse with skinny little legs and a little head. I had never seen such a proud horse. It looked small, but when I got up close I could see it was a fair sized horse. He rode a stallion and had nine mares of the same quality. Their noses came down and came back up to the end. They were smart, bright, and beautiful. They moved easily. When I saw the look in that stallion’s eyes I knew he would fight. Each one of the mares was worth half the country around. Men wanted to buy them from him; some tried to just take them. He sold the plate armor from the would-be thieves and kept their other gewgaws he thought were valuable. His horses were all loaded down.

The first person he wanted to see was the fair Fiona with whom he had an understanding. He came up and saw her. Before a word was spoken between them her husband came up and put his arm around her waist. She almost shrugged him off, but then the baby started crying. She picked the baby up. The man and she stood there with the babe. There was no denying what was going on. Collough’s face fell, and then it firmed back up.

People were scaring his horses. I called down one of his mares. Some other lads calmed down the rest of the mares too. We offered to help him get his horses and goods over to his mother’s place.

He said, No, I think I’ll be putting up my tent here in the meadow of my father’s friends.

I went down in the meadow to help. One of the horses carried a tent made out of silk. The tent had little poles that fit together and little braided silk ropes. It went together easily and made a good house. Collough rolled silk out on the floor. He showed us the brocaded silks he brought back for Fiona. She used to be a fair thin woman with honey blond hair and eyes as blue as the sky. He had silk there the same color as her eyes. Everybody came down to look. Fiona came, but she stood back and didn’t step into the tent. He showed necklaces by putting them on another fetching young lady. There were two gold cats sitting by the door. When Fiona saw those she fell down on her knees. He came over, squatted down, and handed one of the cats to her. You could see her hands go to the ground with the weight of it.

He said, I brought these two back, because you like cats, but it wouldn’t be fitting for me to give them to you now with your husband and children.

He took both of the cats and put them away from the entrance. He showed his stores and everything he had. He brought to his mother spices that we’d heard about, but never seen. Some of them probably rotted later, because she didn’t want to use strange things in her food. Pepper was a known spice, so she was happy with that and happy with the salt he brought. The salt was fine grained and white like sand. He brought sugar that was the same way. He brought books. He could read and write. He was an educated man who could hold his own with or better the council. He had matured into a powerful and rich man.

He brought the two solid gold cats with emerald eyes, vases, baubles, and a dazzling necklace. At first I thought the necklace was tacky, but it was precious and semiprecious stones set into gold so heavy that you couldn’t believe it. He said it belonged to some king down there. He had other things too. He had shed his northern sword. He had two new swords. One was curved with a whorled pattern. The other sword was made of sky stone and other things folded many times into what is called water steel. It was long with a curve. They know how to make the curve just right, so it slices. It was a fairly thin, superb blade. When the old men looked at it they said it didn’t have enough layers to be good water steel, but you could see the envy in their eyes. Cold water ran down it like oil. On most blades it doesn’t run. The edge was little scallop like things. It was the deadliest blade I’ve ever laid my eyes to. He was wearing linked steel that was layered with hard and soft metals. There were odd lengths just barely big enough to keep an arrow from going into the link. Each one of the links was sculpted as an ouroborus, a snake eating itself. I thought that the metal links would hurt, but he showed me the inside of it. The inside part where the arms rub was flat and polished like a mirror. It was the only chain mail I ever saw where you wouldn’t absolutely need the under padding. For his under padding he had this thin stuff with silk on either side. Most of his clothes were made of various types of silk. He also had some other stuff he said was cotton, but I’ve seen cotton. This was so filmy you could see through it. I didn’t get to see the front things and neither did another lad, Carl. We wanted to go and care for the horses. Collough showed everybody everything and then he shooed them off.

He came down where the horses were. We were grooming and currying those mares, but we didn’t touch the stallion. We told him that the stallion looked like he would fight us if we touched him. Collough whistled and they all trotted over to him for tidbits. He just put a little white silk rope around and the horses wouldn’t go past it. He treated them like pets, but I could tell that all of them would be right in the middle of a battle ripping and rending right where you wanted to be. He had the two of us breathe into the nostril holes on all of the horses and pet them. Then we were able to currycomb the stallion while the man was there too, of course. They cropped around there in that circle that was roped off. He went out and whistled. The horses looked up. He swept his arm down stream. That was almost in the middle of the weft. It was not the weft stream, but it was almost down there. He whistled a certain tone all the way down while he was sweeping his arm. He swept it up to one of the crown points that was inside his father’s land. He paced over to the orchard and he went to the edge of it. He did that tone again and they wandered where they would as a herd spread out a bit. I knew they weren’t going to go outside those boundaries. They didn’t need a rope.

He unrolled robes to sleep on. We got him some rocks and sticks for a fire. He got out a little tiny cooker thing. He took what looked like different kinds of grains cracked up and mixed it with strange smelling spices, dried fruit, and nuts. From another sack he took out a container and pulled wax out of the top. Inside was a chicken pulled off the bones with its jelly and everything in there. He heated that chicken in a pot and started the grain boiling in another pot. When the grain started to boil dry we could see it was still half done, so he added chicken broth and water. He put the chicken over to the side under a cloth. When the food was done, he got out a big solid gold tray. He piled the grain on the tray and topped it with the chicken meat. All of it had faint herbs in it. It tasted nice. We ate well, the three of us.

Carl and I had taken care of grooming his horses, so he had asked us to share his meal. We talked to him about all the strange lands he’d seen. He drew maps and told us the best way to get there. He told us the sea was the best way to go, if you had the money, because if you went overland you’d be fighting the robber barons every hitch down the road. We looked at his goods in the night and held them close. We saw his wondrous blades.

I wished that I had been with the great outgoing that went to the continent to the west, but that was three generations before my time. I would have gone. People said there you could walk for two years to get across the land. I had a wander lust. I didn’t want to stay as a guard of the weft. I wanted to go to far off lands.

It turned out that Collough went out that night in the mid of the night, woke up people, and paid his father’s few debts. He left his mother the salt, spices, and silks that he had brought back for his girl. When dawn came there was no tent and no fancy horses. There was nothing in the meadow. When the moon had come up he struck his tent. It looked like the mares had just stayed there with his pile of stuff. He went with the stallion racing through the moonlight in rough country. When he came back he loaded up the mares and left.

I trotted after them. I still to this day do not know why. I traveled that long day looking ahead for that tent, which was stupid. He pitched that tent, because he thought he was going to be there for awhile and could show things off rightly. On the second day I found the tent. He had sold it and most of the other gewgaws like that. He still had the treasure. On the third day I saw those horses ahead moving along at a right smart clip. They could travel like that day in and day out. I came upon him just before dark that night. We sat and talked for awhile. He gave me the names of people that were friends of his in the land down there.

I said, Where will you be going?

He replied, Well I’ve said my good-byes down there. If I go back there’s a woman or two that I turned away. They’ll try to woo me back. If they weren’t women to keep me against the memory of Fiona at that time, then they weren’t the women for me.

I don’t know where he went, and he didn’t know where he was going. He might be back down in the hot land. He told me stories about the Chins to the east. He said they had vast armies, but that they didn’t know how to fight very well, and that they were hindered by their leaders very much. He told me to stay away from the grasslands unless I was well mounted like he was and had a lot of friends, because the clans still rode out there as well as other fierce tribes. He said he wouldn’t dare go out there with his fine horses tempting those men. He told me about six different clan tribes that rode those grasslands and terrified the people down in the low lands by the sea. Those people call them Barbarous, Scythians, Aryans, and all manner of names. He showed me the places where I’d find clan and where clan was acceptable.

He looked at me and said, For God’s sake, boy, you are prince’s blood. I noticed that he was wearing his hair in a prince’s braid. It looked good on him. His head was all tanned. Pluck your head except for the round circle on the right side of your head and braid the hair in the circle like a prince does with three braids of three. Do that before you go down there. Hang your head. I’ll fix your hair.

We sat around. He used these golden tweezers to pluck my head. We drank some of his drink which was most potent and devilishly clever. He put some of that drink on my head where he plucked. It burned. In the morning we washed my hair with soaps he had. He heated water in this thing that folded out. As long as the fire didn’t get up to the water level it couldn’t set it on fire. It made into this huge cauldron that just boiled. He had all manner of wondrous things. He had a thing to look in that you could see far away like it was right next to you. It was a useful tool. After we washed my hair he took a bath. I did too. I had hot water and he had soaps that cleansed you like you wouldn’t believe. He had hair soap and other stuff that you rubbed in your hair, and then washed it out, and then rinsed it. It made my hair as soft as silk.

He looked at my hair and said, Ah, they won’t know what to make of you, son. He was a big tall man with red hair. I was born a blond, but my hair turned dark as I grew up. You’ve got enough red in the highlights. You’ll be accepted.

He gave me a vial of stuff to put on my hair. He also gave me three beads. One bead holds each one of the three braids made up of three braids. When those three braids are braided together the beads click together and hold the braids. As long as my hair is like that, it holds. If I push it back up through, the beads come apart. They are carved out of a beautiful green stone. He told me where to find the sword smith that made his blade. It was down in Iberia in a place called Toledo. They make other types of steel for other blades, but for his blade he had them fold it more and do some other things. He explained what he had done. He packed up his things and got out of there.

I turned and went home. I had three beads that locked together to hold my braid; I was missing most of the hair on my head; and I had a little vial of oil to put on my braid to spruce it up. I saved that oil for special occasions, and just used sheep fat on my hair to keep it oiled down. When I got home, my mother took one look at my head and sat down speechless. My father was grinning from ear to ear.

He said to my mother, I told you when he was born that he would go back to wearing the clan hair braid and walking the clan way.

My father talked to me into the night. That was the night he gave me a sword. It was a plain service sword, but it was a sword. When he had gotten it, it had come without a good edge. He had been working on it some, but I worked on it more until it had a good edge on it. He worked with me mostly in my feelings about myself. He taught me tricks especially dealing with trapping and hunting game. I agreed that for one month I would only eat what I could trap or find or dig. I did that, but the first