The Abhartach

My father always said that he was nothing.

"I'm nothing more than a hunter, lad. No other mortal feeds me. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Most do not read with care, do they, lad?"

Not a soldier. Not a scholar. Not a saint.

I believed him, you know. That is, I believed him until I grew tall enough to see more of what he got up to when I couldn't see. I did not much care for it, begging your pardon. Much of it was wondrous strange, I'll grant you that. But it showed he was an artful liar. I trusted him with all my soul until then.

I was still just a lad, though you could see my beard starting to take itself seriously in the right light, when he let the mask fall altogether. We were walking down the same boring path through the same boring little patch of forest north of the boring bloody river that we had walked down legions of boring times before. I could have crawled, blindfolded and full of the water of life, from one end of that path to the other without disturbing a twig, despite my callow folly. I'd been learning to pay attention like he did.

But not one of my senses said a thing. One moment we were talking about how to dress a buck, and the next, the ugly bandit was tumbling onto the path from behind a fat birch. He fell in the dirt and writhed a bit. That was all. I hadn't heard my father raise his bow, or draw, or put that arrow into the fool's neck. He hadn't stopped gassing on about knife skills for a breath. I did not even feel the wind of the arrow's passing in my hair.

I walked over to the fallen bandit. I studied his expression. He'd died surprised.

You know, twigs and thin branches and what not make a sound very much like surprise when they snap. There they are, busily drinking sunlight and rooting around, and you come along and separate them from themselves. Who could fault them?

While I was studying the dead, ugly bandit, my father made his way a little further along the path. An angry friend of the bandit came out of the leaves, shouting curses that must have curdled milk in the small, boring village at the end of the path. My father said something I couldn't make out. I hadn't watched him, as I had been muttering angrily to the dead bandit about my father's dishonesty.

But when he made a sound, I looked up. Whatever he'd said startled the cursing bandit, who had ceased his cursing and stood still as a stone. Then my father seized the vulgarian's sword arm. Then I heard that same, startled sound snapping twigs make. The bones in his arm were surprised. The bandit screamed obscenities so foul I felt my beard grow. Then my father twisted the bandit's hand about and plunged his own sword into his guts. The expression on the cursing bandit was even more gob smacked than his friend's.

I hurried to my father. "You are not who you say you are at all," I said, trembling with fear and more righteous indignation than so young a fool as I was then had any right to feel. "I have always thought you were an honest and noble man, but your tongue is forked. I am afraid, and I know you will make me regret wagging my own, but my soul knows it to be true."

I braced myself. He seldom smote me, but when I did something dangerously silly, he would box my ears straight away. He'd an aptitude for it.

"What gave the game away?" he asked. I was struck dumb, like a monk pinched by the devil. He was cleaning the cursing bandit's sword. A terrible smell came from the cursing bandit. I could do without a nose, sometimes.

"How did you know he was there, the ugly one? How did you shoot him without giving me the smallest sign? You make me feel as daft as a dog. It isn't fair!" I was still braced for a swat, though I wasn't sure I'd walk away from it.

He chuckled. He often did that, when I'd said something that made him feel wise for thinking me a fool. I did not much care for it, begging your pardon. "Do you remember learning to read, lad?" he asked. You can imagine my frustration. He'd found that to be a lark for as long as I'd lived: leaping from one stone to another across a river of talk. I could usually follow, but not always. Wrath has always been the greatest threat to my luck after death. I wanted to smite him, but did not.

"Yes," I said, "but what could that have to do with how you do all of these things? They do not suit a mere hunter, as you plainly know." He seemed about to hold forth at length, so I relented a little on the bracing myself front. It's rather taxing, you know?

"Learning to read a forest, or a dungeon, or a desert is closely akin to learning to read words, lad," he said, "it's no mystery once you look at it aright. If you remember seeing letters without recognizing words, let alone ideas, you know what it is like for an ordinary mortal to look at ordinary things. The ugly one's shadow was plain on the stones by the tree, for a start. I can show you how to draw and shoot without making a racket. I've done more fighting than I let on." He finished cleaning the sword and handed it to me.

"Who have you fought? Have you always won?" I thought I could keep him talking by appealing to his pride. Pride is to him what wrath is to me. He hides it well, but it's there, like the beginnings of my beard.

He studied my nervous grip on the cursing bandit's sword. "It's not much of a sword lad, but it's not a dead bird. I can teach you how to forget that there's a difference between that sword and your own arm, if you like." He took hold of my hand and adjusted my grip. I felt he was telling the truth. I've held many swords since then, and not one has kept any secrets from me.

"You're no child any longer, so I can tell you about the strangest thing I slew. It is not easy to kill the dead. It makes one thoughtful, and melancholy. So many have only one death to face, and then they lie still and rot, awaiting judgment. There are some who obstinately refuse to lie still. Shall I tell the tale?" He was speaking to me as he would any man in a tavern or on the road. I felt my beard growing again. My indignation parted.

"You see, there was some trouble in a parish not far from here. Slaghtaverty, they call it now. Not too clever, that name. Quite direct.

So, it seemed that there was trouble in this parish because the ordinary folk were being badly treated by the mortal who ran the place. I heard that he was small in stature, tall in appetite and vile of soul. You know son, most mortals die in debt. They toil for another, who collects those debts. Some are made uneasy by this truth, and seek to make the toil of their debtors as gentle in its tone as can be reasonably managed. They then style themselves saintly benefactors of the ordinary folk, of course. Making a chain lighter and more flexible does not break it.

But there are those who relish collecting what is owed. They feast on the misery and the shame of their debtors. This explains why some kings breathe their last in their dotage, much admired, while other kings never sleep soundly and sometimes are drawn and quartered. The ones who enjoy the misery of the many cause trouble. They were groaning under this mad dwarf's will.

So off I went to Slaghtaverty. I've seen happier, sunnier, better fed parishes, lad. When the very young and the very old look as if they need bread and a rest, times are lean. I remember the face of one little fellow in the main thoroughfare--such as it was; Slaghtaverty, most assuredly, is no Rome--that made me gulp. He looked like a man of many years, hungry and without hope. You remember your laughing boyhood, eh? I fought hard to keep that for you."

For someone who hated usurers, he sure enjoyed reminding me of what I owed him. Still, his tale had some strong stuff in it that he would not have told my younger ears. I sat down on a log. We would reach the boring village before sunset. I wanted to concentrate. I wanted to live in his story, so that I could find out why he had lied. I wanted to believe him.

He grinned and took a seat next to me. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a glass bottle. For a moment, begging your pardon, I thought he'd made water in it. "Look, son," he said, "this here is the water of life. It is one of the few things our people are good at, apart from telling tales and making music about the battles lost in those tales. Too much of it will kill a strong man. Just enough, and that strong man will remember why he goes on living, and laughing here and there, in the dark. You're not a mewling whelp any longer. Drink just a little. Roll it about in your mouth. Breathe in through your bloody nose. Read it. You'll hear our ancestors lying for sport and loving it."

He unstopped the bottle and handed it to me. I did as he bid. Medicine. It tasted like something the apothecary would make you drink if you showed signs of palsy or ague or some other way of dying. Just the same, all the time. Begging your pardon, but isn't that boring?

The drink did distract me from the nonsense for a moment. I saw what he meant, albeit dimly.

"So Slaghtaverty was a gloomy, tired parish. It was supposed to be, if half of what I'd heard was true. What I couldn't work out right away was why any of these gaunt, ordinary folk would think twice about what an evil dwarf had to say. I mean, they could have killed him themselves. They just didn't feel equal to it. That's what leaves with your dignity, lad. The will to do something about your lot. Some feel they deserve to be miserable. That's a banquet for an evil dwarf, and no mistake.

So I decided to kill him for them. That's what they wanted. There was some meager, ceremonial mumbling involved in some of what they said to me, but their meaning was clear. They'd heard that I was good at killing nuisances and that I could do so without being imprisoned or slain myself. Powerful people knew and liked me well enough back then, lad. I thought I was doing what I ought; I was really just doing what they permitted me to do. That's why power shouldn't be given to fools or leeches."

That last turn of phrase broke the spell for a moment. "What do you mean leeches, father?"

He took a sip. Then he rose and led me off the path a ways, into the leaves. We came upon a brook, muddy and shallow. My father drew his bow. I couldn't believe it. Shooting through muddy water is a pastime for idiots. It is a way to waste arrows. I make his boring arrows. Loads of them.

He loosed some of my handiwork. Fine fletching, if I do say so myself. Of course, he'd shot a fish. He was nothing. A mere this or a humble that.

He showed me the fish. There was something nasty hidden under one of its fins. It was like a wriggling finger with an appetite. "That's a leech," said my father. "It lives by drinking the blood of this fish, or that mother, or that grandfather. It does not hunt for its supper. It lets the ordinary folk do that. Then it drinks up the life they have earned with their work. I did not have qualms about killing the dwarf. I needed someone to point him out, and someone to deal with what was left.

They told me he would see me straight away. He carried on that way when someone who wasn't starving and desperate came calling, they told me. As I said, he had appetites. I made my way to his grand house. I've seen grander.

There he was, eating and drinking and laughing away. There were two, comely lasses there with him, against their will. There was a brawny fellow in the corner with a shiny shirt and a blank look. I was pretty sure I could work with him, lad. The dwarf seemed little. Fancy hat, ornaments in his beard that I wanted to make him eat, but just that. A fellow of modest stature, but no real monster. I started counting the money in my head. There wouldn't be much, but there would be a party.

'Traveler, be welcome!'

He was given to theatrical bellowing, the dwarf. You'll notice that, when voices are used by those who think their words have great value. I've always thought you should let others' ears sort that out. Speak when you must, lad. Careful.

'What moved you to grace our humble parish with your esteemed presence? You've got all the local tongues singing in your honor, Fionn Mac Cumhail,' said he. He winked at me. Never trust a winker, lad."

That was my father's name. It had been important, once. I'd heard other people say it with awe. More than a few said it with resentment and had little to say to me once they knew I was his. He'd been furious of late, when people called him that. He told the others in the boring village to call him, "Pleota, if you please." I had no idea what that meant, and I wasn't sure he knew either.

Why was he lying this way? I still did not know, and that log we'd left so he could teach me about leeches and shooting through muddy water, my prancing pater, was not comfortable.

"So I talked for a while. I kept an eye on blank look. He was getting tired. That was encouraging. The dwarf could have talked all night. I asked the lasses their names. They seemed reluctant to tell me. They told me, but it was plain that all they wanted to say was, 'Help us, you fool.' I made it known that they should find a reason to be elsewhere, promptly. One of them had hair the color of corn silk. You must recognize beauty when it turns up, lad. Don't covet it. Just enjoy its way of being itself. Read it. You're no leech, lad!"

I think the medicine was working, though I'm not sure what ailed my father. He was red in the face and enjoying himself. We took the fish back to the log, found a few other logs to burn, cooked and ate the fish. My father had a little salt in his satchel (thank goodness there was room for his medicine) and he anointed the leech with it before he cleaned the fish. The leech writhed about like the ugly bandit with another of my arrows in his neck and let go of the fish. My father muttered something about the amount of salt it would take to really sort things out. I think I knew what he meant then; I'm not sure I remember now, begging your pardon.

"There was a little more talk, the lasses left, and I killed blank look and the dwarf with ease. He tried some weirdness, did the dwarf. He had some tricks. He tried to bite me, too! But they were both dead quickly, and I was none the worse. 'Twas a grand party. I'd bet your new sword that you were conceived that night, lad.

But it didn't take. Two nights later, I was full of drink and showing your mother my special purpose when they practically kicked the door in. More trouble. Biting. Collecting his due. Strange hexes.

So I killed him again. No blank look the second time. The dwarf was dirtier, and angry, and quite hungry. But he bled just the same.

I had to do it thrice, as it turned out. They made a great duan where he's buried. Some odd mortal they referred to as "the druid" told me to do it with a sword carved of rowan wood--you might know it as yew, lad-- the third time, and he told us we'd got the burial wrong the first two times. It seems some leeches should be buried with their heads pointing the way to hell. There's a sort of poetry there, lad. They'd buried him standing up. That's the instinct of starving people with leeches to reckon with. It saves room in the earth, you see. Many are on their way.

The third time, I took his head. He'd had a great deal to say. A terrible curse would remain on this land; he'd drunk the best of these fools long ago; I had no idea who he was! It would have bored you, lad, though I know that's easy.

My favorite was the second, I think. I called him colorful names and ran him through. I had nothing to say, the third time. Chores are necessary. Do not suffer a leech to live, lad."

He's sure something, my father.