The Mists of Doom by Andrew J Offutt

Author:Andrew J Offutt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, 0441535046, 9780441535040

Chapter Seven:

Mesca and Mocci

The soldiers and new recruits of Forgall mac Aed entered Carman of Leinster under a pearl-hued sky lightened by a waning afternoon sun.

Though Carman was on Leinster’s southern border and the stronghold of Redrock up near the northern, Meathish border, Forgall’s company had spent but one night under the stars. The distance from Leinster’s northernmost point to its most southerly was but forty miles. The kingdom was smaller than Munster, which sprawled to its west and south; smaller than Connacht, smaller even than Mide or Meath, which had been created of parts from the other kingdoms, as an expansion of territory around Tara of the Kings.

Carman was the greatest center of population that fortess-raised Cormac had ever experienced, and he saw little while trying to see everything.

To him the human throng was enormous and exotic. Merchants and close-crowding buildings; well-dressed nobles in pearl-sewn mantles, and yapping dogs; slouching rag-tags and bustling hawkers of this and that merchandise; all merely formed a backdrop. The Connachtish youth’s eyes swerved this way and that to pick out women, and girls, more females in twenty paces than he’d seen in all his life. With fine clothes on them, and clean, curled hair, and paint or dyes to enhance eyes and lips!

The men tramped; Cormac tramped; Cormac stared. An occasional pair of bold eyes stared in return, and girls there were who imparted more swing to their hips, once they’d become aware of the big tall youth’s grey-eyed gaze. Entranced and enchanted, he heard not the babble of a hundred conversations, nor noted the words of the loud-voiced hawkers of goods. He had seen cod and white haddock before, and pig’s and badger-meat, and prawns and scallops and herring, and sloke and dulse, mace and honey, and fragrant little juniper berries his people used for flavouring and seasoning. He had not seen before so many fine-looking members of the opposite sex, and the Conachtish youth was at an age when his interest in females was passing high.

At the permanent military encampment outside the city—a bit too close, Cormac thought, to the city’s main refuse dump into the Slaigne—forsaw to the entry of “Partha” into King Ulad’s service, and to his outfitting.

Yes, he could wear his own fine chaincoat in combat, when and if that became necessary. Otherwise, and for dress, the new recruit would wear the same sleeveless coat of boiled leather as his fellows, over their Leinsterish tunics of speedwell blue.

Cormac learned that he would be charged for both, against his wages...

The captain bade the veterans from Redrock be at their ease and leave, so long as they were back in camp by sundown, for pre-dinner muster. Aye, Cormac could go into Carman too: the newcomer had earned his leave that evening on the beach. With Boruma time so nigh, Forgall warned, many and many a day might pass ere again they found opportunity to recreate themselves.

The veterans welcomed their leave, and most had already accepted Partha as a comrade. Some few of the other recruits, who must remain in camp, frowned; so, Cormac noted, did Bress mac Keth.

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