Bec Read Free Page B

graze. Demons can only come at night, gods be thanked. If they could attack by day as well, we’d never be able to graze our animals or tend our crops.
    I go for a walk. I like to get out of the ring fort when my duties allow, stretch my legs, breathe fresh air. I stroll to a small hill beyond the rath, from the top of which I’m able to look all the way across Sionan’s river to the taller hills on the far side. Many of the men have been to those hills, to hunt or fight. I’d love to climb the peaks and see what the world looks like from them. But it’s a journey of many days and nights. No chance of doing that while the demons are attacking. And for all we know, the demons will always be on the attack.
    I feel lonely at times like these. Desperate. I wish Banba was here. She was more powerful than me and had the gift of prophecy. She died last winter, killed by a demon. Got too close to the fighting. Struck by a Fomorii with tusks instead of arms. It took her two nights and days to die. I haven’t learned any new magic since then. I’ve worked on the spells that I know, to keep in shape, but it’s hard without a teacher. I make mistakes. I feel my magic getting weaker, when it should be growing every day.
    “Where will it end, Banba?” I mutter, eyes on the distant hills. “Will the demons keep coming until they kill us all? Are they going to take over the world?”
    Silence. A breeze stirs the branches of the nearby trees. I study the moving limbs, in case I can read a sign there. But it just seems to be an ordinary wind — not the Otherworldly voice of Banba.
    After a while I bid farewell to the hills and return to the rath. There’s work to be done. The world might be going up in flames, but we have to carry on as normal. We can’t let the demons think they’ve got the better of us. We dare not let them know how close we are to collapse.
    After a quick meal of bread soaked in milk, I start on my regular chores. Weaving comes first today. I’m a skilled weaver. My small fingers dart like eels across the loom. I’m the fastest in the rath. My work isn’t the best, but it’s not bad.
    Next I fetch honey from the hives. The bees were Banba’s. She brought them with her when she settled in the rath many years ago. They’re my responsibility now. I was scared of them when I was younger, but not anymore.
    Nectan returns from a fishing trip. He slaps two large trout down in front of me and tells me to clean them. Nectan’s a slave, captured abroad when he was a boy. Goll won him in a fight with another clan’s king. He’s as much a part of our rath now as anyone, a free man in all but name.
    I enjoy cleaning fish. Some women hate it because of the smell, but I don’t mind. Also, I like reading their guts for signs and omens, or secrets from my past. I haven’t divined anything from a fish’s insides yet, but I live in hope.
    The women grind wheat in stone querns to make bread or porridge. Some work on the roofs of the huts, thatching and mending holes. I’d love to build a hut from scratch, draw a circle on the ground and raise it up level by level. There’s something magical about building. Banba told me that all unnatural things — clothes, huts, weapons — are the result of magic. Without magic, she said, men and women would be animals, like all the other beasts.
    Most of the men are sleeping, but a few are cleaning their blades and still discussing the night’s battle. It was one of our easier nights. The attack was short-lived and the demons were few in number. Some reckon that’s a sign that the Fomorii are dying out and returning to the Otherworld. But they’re dreamers. This war with the demons is a long way from over. I don’t need fish guts to tell me that!
    Fiachna is working by himself, straightening crooked swords, fixing new handles to axes, sharpening knives. We’re the only clan in the tuath with a smith of its own. That was Goll’s doing when he was king. Most smiths wander