Prologue

The mountain track has been steadily climbing but I am running easily and breathing lightly, despite a slight stitch in my right side. The day has been warm, being Samhradh and Iúil, the ninth month of the year, just seven days before the season of Fómhar, the harvest time. The clouds are thick and the air hot and humid, sapping the strength of females of any fuller figure than I trying to race up to the summit.

There is no need of haste, though. We three sisters together have left the rest of the girls behind, breaking those who set out ahead of us by first allowing the desperate to burn themselves out on the mountain slopes before overhauling the rest by practised relentless pace.

Five and three steps behind my sisters was ideal placing for me with the final stretch of the race almost in view. Both sisters were older, Kaetlynn, one and twenty, and Bebhinn, ten and nine. The leather-shod feet of my two elder sisters crunch more heavily now on the ancient pebbles and stones that make up the well-trod pathway leading to the summit. My sisters are heavier and more sturdily built than I and, up front, Bebhinn’s head is rolling side to side and Kaetlynn thereupon takes up the leading place. Kaetlynn is no virgin like us, but a widow following a lightning raid by Icelanders longboatmen and has since borne a child in sore need of a father.

I seek a good man, too, though I care naught for wealth nor power, I am a strong woman and will make my own way in the world but I do so want children; daughters I desire mostly, for I have only had sisters, four in number, lo the eldest having left home these eight years since.

To have a family of my own I need a strong man who will love my children and provide a good bride price for each daughter to marry well when of age. For I will need a true man, not a god nor one of the Tuatha dé Danann. My people are mortals and mortals do not fear death as it is our common destiny but we respect its finality. The immortals do not fear death, although they can be killed, and they do not respect the dignity and honour of death either, so how can they respect the dignity of life?

Today’s race has been called by the High King of Ireland, Cormac mac Airt, who declared that his hero, Fionn Mac Cumhaill, must marry since he lost his wife long ago and his child now full-grown and ready to lead the Fianna, but to prove herself worthy of being the wife of such a hero any girl must prove her mettle against all-comers in a running race from the base of Slievenamon Mount to the Peak.

Now, Fionn is said to be a good man, huge, brave and powerful, and comely too according to his frequent boasts and bolstered by common testimony. So today I have set my heart on him, if not yet set my eyes. As have my sisters and countless other wenches with legs, lungs and heart enough to win such a man.

I had studied the drawings of the hill path before setting out and know that the path will turn left at the next outcrop of rock and then the cairn on the summit will appear and we’d see our goal resplendent there, the giant man Fionn, the promised prize to be the husband of the winner of this race.

I will time my sprint as soon as I pass the outcrop.

Since I was about twelve bliain I have always been a runner for my King and any other sub-king prepared to pay me in coin or kind. Along with my sisters I was a messenger, as our mother had been before us, carrying messages from king to king, headman to merchant, merchant to warehouse, warehouse to port and back. Messengers carry the Wayleave Seal of the king, a coin struck in bronze that would give us safe passage, or sign our death warrant if the local chieftains held a grudge against the king or sub-king that issued the token. Some messages are painted in runes upon rolled and ribboned sheephide but most are verbal, tempered in versed stanzas for convenience.