The glow along the eastern horizon began to tremble. In a few minutes the sun would rise and throw a shimmering ray of light down the spur. The druids began a low chant as they paraded down the spur towards the ocean. At the end of the spur Gobann stepped forward, in his hands he carried a flat, rectangular metal object, whose burnished surface glowed softly in the gathering light. The other four druids chanted, a droning sound that grew mysteriously, spreading over the waters, as if guiding the sun towards the spur. The sun appeared as a huge red curve upon the water. It grew, its orb flooding the area with golden light. Gobann raised the metal object above his head so that it caught the sunbeams and flashed. It was a shield made of bronze. It was a masterpiece, a pattern of swirling lines and the inlaid precious stones represented the finest of druid history. With a single sweeping gesture the druid hurled the shield into the ocean. The little crowd let out a sigh as the ocean took the offering and moved on. The crowd dispersed, reassured after the morning’s events. Gobann sat down on the edge of the spur and began to meditate when suddenly the shield reappeared. The bronze object was suspended just below the surface of the clear water. The metal had been beaten very thinly and backed with a light wood; until the wood became waterlogged, the ceremonial shield would remain suspended there. Gobann put his head in his hands. The ceremony had not helped. The fate of the island, no doubt rested in its least likely citizen.
Mawn was a bright, brave little fellow, dark haired and blue eyed, like most of his people but a closer inspection would have revealed two unusual features in his appearance. On the front of his head, on the forelock, grew a patch of white hair as though someone had dabbed it with a brush of white dye. The second feature was much stranger. When the boy spread his fingers, it could be seen that between them, as far as the first joint was a thin layer of skin, like the webbing on a ducks foot. With his large-eyed face and wiry little body the boy made one think of a tadpole or some other creature of the waters like a small survivor of the eons of time. This young boy was the apprentice of Gobann, he was more important now than ever before for he was the key to ensure the druid way of life. He was an orphan; his parents were dead, now he was parented by the heads of the druid order. His life was hard but he loved it, like he loved the old man that sat in front of him anxious for the world which depended on him. Mawn had crept up on the druid after the ceremony, worried as to why he had not returned to the village to celebrate. The boy saw the shield and felt but a fraction of what Gobann felt but he sat next to him and there the pair stayed for hours, meditating, silhouetted against the sky.
The ceremony had taken place ten days after the news had come. Gobann had to move quickly. The threat came from the mainland; a country called Hibernia, which had been conquering realms for two years, after a man called Brecan became the king. Last year, he had come. With a modest force, mainly infantry, Brecan had disembarked below some soaring white cliffs but the druids had been warned. The warriors had fought bravely against the disciplined troops from the mainland in the summer heat. Due to their strategic advantage the islanders were victorious; but now Brecan had again turned his eyes to the mist-shrouded island of the North. News had recently begun to filter across to the isle. The summer was only a reconnoitre. A new fleet was being built by Brecan. No fewer than five thousand troops and some two thousand cavalry were rumoured to be under orders. Ten days ago a messenger to the druid council had paused at Rathowen. His message was brief and definite, ‘Brecan is coming’.
In a wood three miles South of Rathowen Gobann and Mawn lay curled in their cloaks and covered in leaves and brush. The trees grew close together in this part of the wood and people could not pass easily between them so they felt secure that the enemy would not search as carefully there. Mawn was shaking but Gobann was strong. He was going over the nights events in his head. Mawn and he had been travelling down the coast to the ancient castle of Eli; where the druid council was stationed, for an emergency meeting to discuss recent events and the future of the island. They had walked all day and whilst they supped on the shore Mawn had spotted something on the horizon. Two ships had landed further down the beach while Gobann and Mawn hid behind some rocks, waiting. The assemblage of well trained men was a sight to see, they were lightly armed, carrying the most up-to-date scouting equipment. They were there to check the size and shape of the beach, so that their battle-ships could land for the conquest. As the pair tried to sneak away they saw the soldiers begin some sort of construction. They knew that it wasn’t safe; both had received a strange feeling and knew it was time to leave. They had hidden deep within the being of the wood, as a precaution, incase the soldiers searched further inland. Gobann knew the soldiers would not stay overnight-it was too risky for them. Mawn felt odd, he didn’t know what was wrong, he felt a strange foreboding but he had been walking all day and he fell into a weary sleep.
Without warning a huge commotion began on the beach. Gobann knew instantly that the natives had attacked the soldiers and he began preparing his implements to help nurse the injured. He would leave Mawn sleeping, he was a clever boy and would know what to do when he woke but as the druid was tiptoed away, Mawn awoke. He heard the noise emanating from the shore and knew instantly what was happening. ‘Let me see the fight’ he whispered. ‘It is more than my life’s work to let you go wondering around a battlefield when two of the most powerful druids in the land have entrusted me with your safety, you must remain here’, answered Gobann. ‘But I will know better if I see it for myself’ insisted the boy. ‘You may be permitted to see it’, responded the druid, ‘But only so that you will always be sickened by war and never enamoured of it, follow me’.
As they approached the shoreline the noise stopped. The cool air was unusually still, the breeze was no longer rising from the sea and in a few hours the land would be light. Mawn slowed his breathing and listened to the sounds of the night. Somewhere in the trees there were two owls in calling to one another and not far from the path a small animal was scratching around between fallen branches. All else was silent. They had not gone fifty paces when they passed a gap in a whitethorn hedge. There, Mawn noticed, across the open ground, about another four hundred paces away, a sight that he had never before seen. Four trees, without leaf or branch, and with smooth straight boughs that looked man made, stood on the beach, growing unnaturally out of a small rocky cairn. This was so strange a thing that Mawn stopped to study hard what he saw, for he had never heard of anything like them. Gobann waited a little further on for him and after a few moments answered the question he knew was in the boy’s head. ‘They are the death trees’, he stated without any emotion. ‘Brecan's soldiers use them to murder people who they consider criminals, and as a warning to islanders’. He hesitated a little longer, unsure whether to go on, but then decided it was better that the boy be given as much information’s possible. ‘The soldiers hang the unfortunate people on the tree and leave them there to die, sometimes driving long nails into the victims wrists and then into the wood so they are gradually weakened by the loss of blood. To stop the flesh from tearing away with the weight of the body they also tie the poor souls in place with strong ropes’. ‘Why do they nail them?’ gasped Mawn in horror. ‘It makes the job of rescuing the prisoner almost impossible, for even if they are freed they will usually die from the shock of their injuries. It is a long and slow death and there is much pain.’ ‘What do we do with our prisoners, Gobann?’ The druid stopped for a second, he had not expect such a deep question from a young child as he knew that some of the druid elders had only embraced the issue a few years ago. ‘We send them away from the island and they may never return.’
Unexpectedly Mawn collapsed, not from shock, not from fear, but with a vision. Mawn had supernatural powers. It was a strange thing this possession of second sight. Though it was true that sometimes he was granted a direct vision of future of events his gift was not so much a sudden illumination as part of a more general process, a special sense of life that had become more pervasive as he grew older. Indeed, to the boy, this life seemed more and more dreamlike. Outside it laid, not darkness, but something light, very actual; something he felt he had always known, even if he could not describe it, and to which he would return. Sometimes with awful clarity, the gods would indeed show him a piece of the future, and at such times he knew he must keep it secret from other men. But usually he stumbled forward through life with only a vague sense that he was part of something predetermined, that was always so. The gods, he felt, were guiding him towards destiny, and death was only a fleeting thing, part of a larger day. But here was the strange and disquieting thing. In the last two years the gods had been signalling to him that even this larger destiny, this encompassing shadow world, was coming to an end. It was almost he sensed, as if the ancient island gods were preparing to withdraw. Was the world coming to an end? Or, he wondered, did the gods, like men, pass on, falling as leaves to the ground? Or perhaps, he wondered, sitting next to the old man, perhaps the gods were just like streams, flowing invisibly into the larger ocean. Tuatha-de-Danaan, as time permits.
