“Is it not your kin we go to? Is it not the place you were born?”
“I do not know where I was born,” he said. “No druid shall. Nor they who borne them.”
The Vaich made a face. “Have you no mother. Nor father?”
“I must have. And suppose they should still live. Though I cannot remember their faces, and I have never known their names. When we birth, we are not given to one or the other… we are raised up by the faidh.”
“The faidh?”
“It is how we call our flocks. Some of my ilk would travel together, oft these are the young and the old, and they are led by sages—great knowledgeable ones we call fíor. When bairns come, they are taken to a new faidh to be raised amongst others. It ensures we do not create unnecessary attachment.”
“Unnecessary?” The Vaich scoffed. “Is that what you’d call it?”
“Is it so different from yourself?” asked the druid. Their eyes met across the dark. “You were also taken from your mother and father.”
“Aye. But I was given family beyond blood. Can you say the same?”
He would not, and he wondered why he should.
They carried on in quiet, picking at their supper, the fire crackling between them. Saorla was asleep at her post, and the last of the dusk birds fluttered in the canopy. The druid had eaten most of his food but a few small hazelnuts, and the Vaich sat up, pushing his plate towards him.
“Go on and eat your fill. There’ll be nothing but bone on you ’fore we get west.”
“It will be no good if you haven’t any strength,” said the druid, pushing it back. “You need not forget you are our only defense.”
“I’ll be fine,” said the Vaich. “Eat.”
The druid took the meat and split it in half, offering the largest portion to the king.
He hadn’t forgotten about the bandits, though he had never heard of any surviving the green. There were reasons the Fáoth had endured as the final bastion against the west. But in doing so, it had become a cage. Still, perhaps nothing short of the western armies could have brought it to its knees. It was only luck and practicality which had stayed any prior Vaich from trying, and another tether, entirely, that would ensure this one would do the same.
The druid’s gaze drifted to the iron blade lying idle at the king’s side. He was violently aware the Vaich had the skill to dispatch most foes should they meet them. And it occurred to him that what he had seen that day in the forest was not the mien of someone fresh to killing. He hadn’t questioned it in the moment, but the more he considered it, the stranger it seemed.
Unless…
“That isn’t all they taught you in Righnach’Dúir.”
The Vaich paused in his chewing.
“You’ve killed men before,” said the druid. “And not once or twice. It was not simply skill back then… it was comfort.”
Understanding seeped slowly into the Vaich’s features, and those golden eyes burned low. “Aye.”
The druid remembered the words Jor had told him that night at the inn.
“What did the Thrys do to you?”
For a long time, it was silent. The Vaich rested an arm upon his knee. “I couldnae leave the grove, but anyone could be brought in, so long as they served some purpose to me.”
The druid’s stomach soured, already guessing the end of this story.
“They brought men to be my teachers. They brought boys to be my friends. And when they had good-for-nothings to be disposed of, they brought them to be my lessons. For a while, I studied on wood and grain. But blades on boughs willnae teach you to bleed bellies.” He looked emptily into the dark. “Like a horse I was. They beat drums beside my ears so I wouldnae scare from thunder. They made me kill so I couldnae scare from murder. A king ought to ken how to take a life. And for what it was worth, I was good at it.”
“How unkind,” the druid whispered. “To teach a child to kill… you damn him for all his life.”
“That’s the way of things,” said the Vaich. “We all have our purpose. I needed to ken mine.”
The trees hummed low and again he shivered, drawing the shawl close.
