Only the Stones Survive: A Novel by Morgan Llywelyn Page A

reason I could not understand.

NINE
    A CCORDING TO THEIR OWN BARDS in succeeding generations, the Mílesian conquest of Ierne was a succession of epic battles against vastly superior forces.
    Truth depends on who tells the story.
    It was true that the warriors of the Gael had never encountered a foe as mysterious and enigmatic as the Túatha Dé Danann. With the passage of time, the Danann names would be added to the Gaelic pantheon of gods. The Children of Light were not the only opposition the conquerors faced, however. Their initial encounter with the Túatha Dé Danann at the lake had been only a skirmish; the first real battle had taken place a few days later, with different people entirely.
    The sons of the Míl had been feasting on the bounty of the sea and preparing to move farther inland when Donn suggested fortifying an area near the coast. “We should have a secure base to leave the mothers and children in. Someplace we can return to if … just in case.”
    Ír grimaced in disgust. “You want to come back here and eat fish and fish and more fish?” He bent over his pottery bowl and pretended to be vomiting.
    Scotta said, “Pay no attention to him,” in the voice of a patient mother whose child was still too young to behave himself.
    The woman who had been Ír’s wife for so many years she was no longer embarrassed by his antics continued chatting with Taya, who was friendly with everyone.
    Odba sat alone on the other side of the fire and picked her teeth with a fish bone. Since her presence was made known, most of the other women had spoken to her—in a rather embarrassed fashion—but no one had befriended her. Hierarchy was important among the Gael, and on Ierne it appeared that Éremón held the highest rank. If Taya was his first choice, Odba must be relegated to a lower station.
    She understood this, but she blamed Éremón long and bitterly in the dark watches of the night. She was learning that hatred could convey strength.
    Éremón expressed reservations about building a fort on the headland. He thought it would be an unnecessary delay to the conquest of the island. In his mind the army of the Gael already had swept Ierne from one end to the other. “We should be on the move now,” he declared, picking fragments of crab meat out of his beard. “Tomorrow at the latest.”
    Scotta had sided with her oldest son. “We would be foolhardy to take the entire tribe into unknown territory,” she said—ignoring the fact that they had just done that very thing. “Your father would never forgive us if we allowed harm to come to his grandchildren”—although Mílesios had never shown much affection to his grandchildren and hardly knew their names. It was the bard who remembered names.
    “Our first step,” Scotta continued, “should be to locate the most fertile soil and the best water … and any other natives. They will occupy the choice land and must be driven off.”
    “Don’t worry about them,” said Éber Finn. “Such frail people can never resist us. They would not even make useful servants, though if the women were pretty…”
    Colptha hissed, “Don’t you have enough women already?”
    The others laughed.
    Sitting in his personal space beyond the wide glow of the family’s fire, Sakkar heard the laughter. He found himself in an awkward position on Ierne. He was not a Mílesian, nor did he belong to one of the lesser Gaelic clans that had accompanied them. He was not even a freeman. As a shipwright he had possessed a status beyond his dreams as a child. When he was supervising the building of the fleet, he had the Míl for a mentor and warmed himself at the old chieftain’s hearth.
    On the island at the rim of the world he was only … Sakkar the Phoenician. Which meant nothing here.
    While Scotta and her sons filled their bellies, Sakkar had left his own tiny fire with a few crabs smouldering among the embers and retrieved the weapons he had been given. In the darkness beyond the