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By Root 524 0

-- they said not more than eighteen -- and he would not listen to his advisers and wait for a good moment to meet our attack. So high was his heart that, at the first news of foreign troops landing on the sacred soil of Ireland, the young king gathered his fighting men together, and threw them against Uther's seasoned troops. They met us on a flat plain, with a hill at our backs and a river at theirs. Uther's troops stood the first wild, brave attack without giving ground even a couple of paces, then advanced steadily in their turn, and drove the Irish into the water. Luckily for them, this was a wide stream, and shallow, and, though it ran red that evening, many hundreds of Irishmen escaped. Gilloman the king was one of them, and when we got the news that he had fled west with a handful of trusted followers, Uther, guessing he would be making for Killare, sent a thousand mounted troops after him, with instructions to catch him before he reached the gates. This they just managed to do, coming up with him barely half a mile short of the fortress, at the very foot of the hill and within sight of the walls. The second battle was short, and bloodier than the first. But it took place in the night, and in the confusion of the mêlée Gilloman himself escaped once more, and galloped away with a handful of men, this time nobody knew where. But the thing was done; by the time we, the main body of the army, came to the foot of Mount Killare, the British troops were already in possession, and the gates were open.

A lot of nonsense has been talked about what happened next. I myself have heard some of the songs, and even read one account which was set down in a book. Ambrosius had been misinformed. Killare was not strong-built of great stones; that is to say, the outer fortifications were as usual of earthworks and palisades behind a great ditch, and inside that was a second ditch, deep, and with spikes set. The central fortress itself was certainly stone-walled, and the stones were big ones, but nothing that a normal team, with the proper tackle, could not handle easily. Inside this fortress wall were houses, of the most part built of wood, but also some strong places underground, as we have in Britain. Higher yet stood the innermost ring, a wall round the crest of the hill like a crown round the brow of a king. And inside this, at the very center and apex of the hill, was the holy place. Here stood the Dance, the circle of stones that was said to contain the heart of Ireland. It could not compare with the Great Dance of Amesbury, being only a single circle of unlinked stones, but it was impressive enough, and still stood firm with much of the circle intact, and two capped uprights near the center where other stones lay, seemingly without pattern, in the long grass.

I walked up alone that same evening. The hillside was alive with the bustle and roar, familiar to me from Kaerconan, of the aftermath of battle. But when I passed the wall that hedged the holy place, and came out towards the crest of the hill, it was like leaving a bustling hall for the quiet of some tower room upstairs. Sounds fell away below the walls, and as I walked up through the long summer grass, there was almost silence, and I was alone.

A round moon stood low in the sky, pale still, and smudged with shadow, and thin at one edge like a worn coin. There was a scatter of small stars, with here and there the shepherd stars herding them, and across from the moon one great star alone, burning white. The shadows were long and soft on the seeding grasses.

A tall stone stood alone, leaning a little towards the east. A little further was a pit, and beyond that again a round boulder that looked black in the moonlight. There was something here. I paused. Nothing I could put a name to, but the old, black stone itself might have been some dark creature hunched there over the pit's edge. I felt the shiver run over my skin, and turned away. This, I would not disturb.

The moon climbed with me, and as I entered the circle she lifted her white disc over the cap-stones and shone