"Yah, Padrec!"

The woolly cloud of the flock swirled out from the terrace and along the hillside, Guenloie's husbands hurrying them with pebbles flung with marvelous accuracy, and at last came Guenloie, mounted and leading the other ponies. She called something to Drust, who passed her his water bag. Padrec watched the exquisite feminine grace of the girl as she brushed back the hair still sleep-tangled about her cheeks, the arm lifted, the delicate head tilted back to drink. The white smile flashed from berry-stained lips.

Truants from Eden.

"Padrec?"

He turned to see Neniane behind him, her solemn little cat's face lightened with a tentative smile. She held out the bowl of blackberries and milk still warm from the udder. Without considering it, Padrec reached to touch her cheek. "Hello, kitten."

"Dost call me small fox?"

"Small cat."

Neniane had never seen a cat, wild or domestic. They were rare outside Roman villas. "Cat has kittens like fox?"

Constantly, he assured her. In truth, Cat did little else. Neniane seemed pleased at the likeness.

Well after the last of the flocks disappeared over the last dip before the meadow, Cru and Dorelei broke out of the trees, pushing their ponies toward the crag where Padrec, Artcois, and Bredei sat enjoying the early cool of the day. They scrabbled up the last incline and slithered from the saddles together, flushed and purposeful.

"Scrapes in forest," Cru announced as if it had great meaning.

"Early," Bredei commented.

"Early but there. On ground and trees."

Artcois nodded decisively. "Should hunt then."

Cru looked much happier than the day before. If pasturing was not the best here, the game was abundant and even the stags were starting on the rut early. Clearly Mother and Lugh had not forgotten their children. Cru explained it to Padrec while preparing his weapons and edging his arrows with sandstone. Rutting season, early or not, was the one time deer might be considered careless. Not surprising, Cru allowed, when even men are inclined to be a mite reckless with love on their mind. Of course, deer were never easy to hunt, but with luck there'd be feasting that night. And whoever brought it down, his wife had a fine hide to work or share or give away. He and Dorelei rode that morning for sheer good spirits, but not blind to the distinctive hoof-scrapes in the needle carpeting under the trees or the marks on the tree bark where Stag was beginning to scent the hock glands of does and feel his own need. One of them would fall today.

"Good feasting!" Cru slapped Padrec's thigh. "Good hides!"

"If do not miss."

"Miss?" Cru's brow puckered at the absurd notion. "First bow of the world was made by Prydn, sent in a dream from Lugh, who rides each arrow." He snorted. "Miss!"

In some it might be boasting, but Padrec had seen

them shoot. Their bows were shorter than those of the western tribesmen but were reinforced with strips of antler, requiring as much pull and delivering the missile with equal power. The problem was their arrows, far from the best for heavy game. Although compensated by their accuracy, the bronze head buried in a stag's shoulder needed to be edged almost with each use. Iron was more efficient, but Padrec knew enough not to point it out. Fhain had its magic, tallfolk theirs. Iron was not mentioned directly among Prydn any more than devout Christians joked about Satan.

4 'Will pray for thee." Padrec clapped him on the back. "Good fortune on the hunt/'

The courtesy spurred Cru's already jubilant spirits. "Will be good, close as thee are to Father-God. Pray child-wealth, Padrec." Cru spread his arms to the sun's benificence. "Tens of children in the rath, sons and daughters to Dorelei. Artcois! Bredei! Be time!"

A shining day, a day for new beginnings and hopes. Padrec tested his legs with a walk to the ring of stones and back with no great fatigue or pain. The sun poised at zenith, then slid down the long afternoon to evening. The hunters returned with a buck on a pole, a yearling with a gleaming little four-point rack just stripped against a tree in his first rutting fury. Being that young, Stag was more passionate than wary, and he fell to Cru, who grinned slyly passing Padrec.

"Did say miss, Padrec?"

They put up the rath poles and hung the stag for dressing out. Fhain made the operation into an efficient industry. Nothing was wasted. The carcass was skinned and the hide stretched to dry. The fine, healthy stomach, emptied and washed, would serve a variety of purposes. The small hooves would be boiled for glue, the antlers worked into an assortment of delicate tools, the head itself cooked in a covered pit of embers until the bay-and-parsley-seasoned brains could be spooned out as a delightful pudding sided with jowl meat. Padrec won-

no Parke Godwin

dered if they could do anything with the navel. Very likely.

The head would be tomorrow's delicacy; tonight they'd feast on the loin and haunch larded with sheepfat and dripping its own goodness. The liver, rubbed with wild garlic and cooked in thin strips, would be served to Cru and Dorelei first, then passed around. There would be the story of the hunt, enacted as much as told by the hunters, and uisge to drink.

The uisge was a windfall. Any fermented drink took time, apparatus, and a degree of permanency fhain would reject on principle. Barley beer or uisge had to be traded for, which was what happened this day, more or less, and the getting was the tale to be told at the feast. They all looked forward to it.

People who drank seldom drank poorly when it came to virulent stuff like uisge. Padrec was gratified when Dorelei ordered it well diluted with spring water. He wanted to speak to fhain tonight and could hardly prevail on a prostrate congregation.

The feast was a gala! Youth alone gave their spirits resilience; appetite took care of the rest. When the first edge was off their hunger, when they visibly settled back and picked at rather than attacked their food, Dorelei's voice rose slightly above the contented buzz, with a note of mischief.

"Fhain hunters be best."

"Yah!"

"And wisest. Beside Salmon fhain, the shrewdest Taixali begs to be taught. Were two arrows loosed by fhain, Cru?"

"And two bucks fallen," he affirmed.

Dorelei turned to her people with a knowing smile. "Could ask: where be other buck? Hear from Cruaddan first husband how a did fall."

They were all mellow with food and uisge—watered but still more lethal than any of them, including Padrec, suspected. He found himself sweating, saw the sheen of it on Cru as he rose from his place by Dorelei. As he

told the tale, Artcois and Bredei rose to join him, acting out the parts they played in the adventure with a sly good humor that hurled laughter to the stones of the crannog and back again to echo about the fire.

4 'Here be fhain on the trail of fresh scrapes." The three mimics crouched, wary, moving an arm, a leg, with exaggerated caution. "Whisper quiet. Leaf falls on wind louder than fhain."

"Comes a stag," Cru presented the scene. "There. And here be Cru." He pantomimed the draw, sight, and loosing, graceful as a dancer. "Hah! Down goes Stag, a's spirit flown. But!" Cru held up a warning hand. Bredei and Artcois froze. Fhain waited in expectant silence.

There were two occasions, Cru allowed, when no man, even one with the meager wit of tallfolk, should come between Stag and his object: when he was about to make love, and when he was bolting scared. Not often did one find Stag between these two fires at once, but it happened that very day.

"Were Taixali hunting in wood," Cru said, and one would think out of kindred male spirit and plain common sense that they would at least wait until Stag was done and the doe quick with next year's wealth. "But Taixali? No-o-o!"

"Not them," mourned Artcois.

The three Taixali were just green boys. Not to imply Cru was ancient, even if he did incline to his nineteenth spring fire, but fhain men grew wise early or did not grow at all, and that was no less than truth.

Since tallfolk were quiet as thunderclaps, fhain knew they were in the wood. Stag knew it last, but then he'd had a hard day fighting and losing once already, from the marks scored in his hide. Fhain followed craftily, saw the trees lashed by his sharp horns.

Artcois spread his arms. "Eight points!"

"Nae, nine," Bredei differed.

"Be sure, brother? Thee would not put more in the tale than tale will hold?"

"Did nae see all nine coming at me?"

"Ah, well—nine, then."

A magnificent buck in his late prime, lashing the trees, trumpeting his need, scenting the doe, finding the younger male in his path with the same inspiration and blood in his eye.

"And a did fight," Cru sighed in understatement. "Did come together like Mabh's sea over salt marsh."

"Clack-clack!" Bredei lowered his head and danced at Artcois. "Clack-clack—r-r-rac&!"

But older was stronger this time and the victor in a mood for love too long denied. As Cru narrated, Bredei bent forward slightly with his head down as Artcois placed both hands on his shoulders. The sexual pantomime was graceful and abstract. Padrec saw the three women lean forward, eyes shining with excitement beyond the hunt, slender bodies moving in subtle empathy. Watching Dorelei, he was surprised at his own promptings, no holier than Stag's. He forced his eyes away and took a large swallow of uisge. That at least was not forbidden him, thanks be to God and a humane clergy.

Cru crouched near the frozen love act. "Fhain waits. But Taixali cannae wait. Or shoot very well. Poor Stag."

"Ah-h-h!" Artcois clutched his rump in huge dismay. The tallfolk boys were so anxious to bring down Stag, they loosed at him in full rut, a standing target, and still couldn't make a clean hit. The arrow aimed presumably for the shoulder hit Stag far south of it, barely creasing the hide in his laboring rump. Stag took it no better than Cruaddan would, being wounded in so undignified a quarter, forgot his doe and shot off in the first direction that came to mind, and that was straight downwind at fhain.