Holder of Lightning

"I would point out that you made the decision to come here. I'm just making the decision as to how to leave. That seems fair enough." He gave her that strange, lopsided smile of his. "You know, I get the sense that you still don't like or trust me much."

"I don't," she told him. "Either one. I want to go to Inish Thuaidh; you do also. Our paths just happen to lie together at the moment."

"And when they don't?"

"When that happens, or if I decide I can't trust you, then we part."

O'Deoradhain nodded. He took a hunk of bread and gnawed it thoughtfully. "That seems fair enough, too," he said.

Chapter 33: A Battle of Stones

THEY were three days out of Ballintubber, and it still seemed strange to both of them that they'd encountered very few people. Though the land at the northern borders of Tuath Gabair was sparsely populated and they were traveling overland rather than on the road, the area seemed oddly empty. Fields that should have been plowed by now were fallow, with weeds and grass growing up among the straggling clumps of wheat and barley. The day before, they'd passed near one village, and though they heard the sounds of children playing and saw several women work-ing the fields nearby, the only men they noticed were the old. O'Deoradhain turned grim at the sight.

"They’ve been sweeping the land, then, and pressing men into service. The Ris are strengthening their armies," he’d said, and Jenna hadn’t wanted to believe him.

Now the proof lay before her.

They were walking through a wooded valley between two tall ridge lines. The trees thinned, and they came out into an open field where the hills swept wide apart in great curving arms.

A mound of raw new earth cut across their path, and the banner of Tuath Gabair flapped on a pole planted in the dirt. Jenna glanced at O’Deoradhain; his face was grim, and he pulled on the reins of his horse to Pass to the left of the mound.

He quickly brought his horse to a stop. "By the Mother," he breathed. Jenna came up alongside him. "Gods," she said. Her stomach jumped, and she tasted bile in her mouth.

They were on a slight rise. The full expanse of the field lay spread out before them: trampled, torn, and bloodied. Black flocks of carrion crows fought and scrabbled over the bodies of soldiers; feral dogs lifted their heads from gory feasts to glare suspiciously at them. Flies buzzed and whined through the air. The bodies, Jenna noted, all wore the blue and gold of Tuath Connachta. There were two more mounds on the field, and on each Gabair’s banner flew.

A few heads had been mounted on broken lances as a warning. O’Deoradhain rode his horse up to one of the trophies, the horse shying away from the smell of rotting meat and the crow-emptied eye sockets, and a cloud of flies rising from the face as O’Deoradhain leaned over from his saddle to peer at it. The jaw hung upon, the head gaping in eternal amaze-ment. "A boy," he said. "No more than fifteen, I’ll wager, and a pressman in his Ri’s army. I’ll bet he told his mam he’d be back a hero."

Jenna’s stomach turned again, and she leaned over, vomiting quickly. She hung onto the horse.

The wind shifted slightly, and the smell came to them: rotting, ripe flesh. The sweet sickly smell of death.

"Victory," O’Deoradhain said mockingly. " Tis a wonderful sight, don’t you think?"

Jenna wiped her mouth and nudged her horse

carefully forward. The horse nickered, its eyes wide and nervous. She looked down at a body to her right. The soldier sprawled awkwardly on his back, a broken sword still clutched in his hand. The rings of bronze and iron sewn on his boiled leather vest were ripped and broken over his abdomen, and a horrible wound had nearly split him in two. Scavengers had been at the body-the eyes and tongue were gone, his entrails pulled out and scattered, the flesh gnawed upon. White maggots crawled in and around his open mouth, in the sockets of his eyes. Jenna's stomach lurched again, and she forced the gorge back down.

O'Deoradhain was riding slowly around the field, occasionally looking down at the earth. Jenna stayed where she was, not wanting to go out into the carnage. "What was left of the Connachtan force retreated west," he said when he returned. "They weren't pursued-from the looks of the mounds, the Gabairan troops lost a good many men also, and their com-mander decided to stay here and bury their dead. They moved off to the east, through that pass there." He glanced down at the body of the soldier by Jenna. "The battle took place no more than two days ago, from the signs." Jenna nodded; she was still staring at the body. "Jenna?"

She wondered how young he'd been, how he'd looked in life, whether he'd had a wife and family. She imagined the body alive again, as if she could turn back time.

"Jenna?"