“And how will you be knowing the one and the other, Darthool?”
“From a dream that I had: to wit, that three birds flew hither from Emain Macha, and brought with them three sips of rare honey, and then that they left us with that honey but took away instead three sips of our blood.”
“Tell me, my queen, what is the reading you put upon that dream?”
“That Fergus comes to us with the honey-words of peace, but that behind them lies the shedding of blood, and that blood ours.”
Meanwhile Ardan welcomed Fergus, and brought him and his companions to where Nathos sat playing with Darthool upon the ivory and gold chessboard of Concobar the king. As the fair-smiling Ultonian drew near, he smiled a grimmer smile behind his beard, to see Nathos there with the two chiefest treasures of the king’s heart—the woman he wished to make his queen, and the chessboard that had come to him from some great king’s palace in the dim remote Indies of which the poets sang.
Great was the rejoicing, and Nathos and his brothers and Darthool embraced Fergus and his sons, and eagerly questioned them for tidings.
“The best tidings I have,” Fergus answered, “is that I have come to ye with messages of loving peace from Concobar, whose heart is smitten by your long absence, and who would fain see in Erin again the three noblest lords in his or any other realm. Moreover, he has sent me to you with covenants and guarantees of loving good faith. He has pledged his kingly word, and I, too, have pledged mine, and ye know well, ye sons of Usna, that Fergus MacRossa Rua is not a man of light word. So come back to Erin with me, Nathos and Ailne and Ardan, and I pray of thee, come thou too, Darthool, wife of Nathos. Great shall be the welcome given to ye all, and sure it is a good thing to end a feud, and to put an unwaking sleep upon the sword and the spear.”
“That is a good word,” said Nathos, who was well pleased; but a sob was in the heart of Darthool, and her lips quivered as she spoke.
“Surely,” she said, “Concobar MacNessa forgets. The sons of Usna are no tributaries. Nathos is overlord now of a country greater in extent than all the province of Uladh over which Concobar is king. It ill befits a king of an isle to go as a forgiven guest to the lord of a rock.”
“That is true,” said Fergus quickly, “Darthool has justice for what she says. But there is truth in what I say also, and it is a truth which the sons of Usna know, and will act by, that a man longs to see the land which is his own land or the land of his adoption. And were not Nathos and Ailne and Ardan among us as children and as boys and as youths, and are they not heroes of the Red Branch? Surely, it is a good thing for a man to see his own land each day, and to rejoice therein?”