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in that we discourage all women and children from going out alone to gather herbs, nuts, or any foodstuffs. Even our strong young apprentices, male or female, must travel in pairs as they go about their work or to the mounds.”
    Slainge the elder held up his hand for quiet, then added that cultivating crops or grazing livestock must be done only within the walled fields to the north of their village. A man protested that their flock wouldn’t have enough grazing area.
    “We can put up longer walls,” he answered. He added that a permanent watch would be posted at the stream where they bathed and drew water. “These safeguards will be lifted when we establish better relations with the intruders,” he told them.
    The Starwatchers heard these things from their elders and returned to their homes. Beyond the pall from Invaders’ fires, they contemplated their future on this, their island.
    Above them, the sky shifted almost imperceptibly.

We’ll sing a song, a soldier’s song, with cheering rousing chorus,
As round our blazing fires we throng, the starry heavens o’er us.
    From: Amhran na bhFiann , national anthem of the Republic, 20th Century CE

    Invaders
     
    C ONNOR STOMPED AWAY from the Invaders’ camp and the carousing, the feast, the false warmth, the sullen captive women, and stale mead. The tall Elcmar dared to tell him over the feast table and in front of the warriors newly arrived from overseas, “That crowd at the mounds haven’t left. I think we’re going to have trouble with these Starwatchers.”
    He returned Elcmar’s stare. “What is it you want me to do about it? Bollix!” Connor slammed down his cup. “I’ll be having a look for myself.” He stalked from the great hall.
    Dull eyes in a heavy bulk, Connor halted and sighed. It had been three nights but he was unable to lie again with any woman. His swollen hand ached.
    He labored to recall the vision, the young woman he beheld for just moments on a bright morning. That beauty got away. He had made a show of it for his companions. “Quare natives, disappearing into mists, this fecking climate. Sure, I’d break that one, what a fine filly.” And that other woman they found later at twilight, that was all an accident. She bumped into them along that stream, so she had. Like your woman walking into a door, he decided.
    He sat down on a small outcropping above the encampment. Sunset! These eejit quiet ones are after watching the sun go down again. Their tedious ways, this backward place. My task here is to find metals, exploit the locals for trade. And so I shall. Great mounds of clay and stones, is it. Where’s their gold?
    Invaders had found copper enough in the southwest and camped there, mining and smelting. His band of Invaders came to the Boyne eager to find gold and feed it to the new appetite for gold on the Continent, return in triumph with it. Connor wanted to go back to the drier, warmer coasts and plains to the south from where he journeyed a few seasons ago. It ate at him, his desire to be somewhere else.
    He felt sick. The throbbing in his hand increased. The gods must have abandoned him. If something were physically wrong with him, a blemish, then he could not remain ard ri , the warriors’ champion, in this place. All his trekking into strange territory and pillaging for new trade and slaves would have been for nothing. Connor listened for the voice of Lugh, to whom he seldom prayed and offered sacrifice. His hollowness told him Lugh wasn’t listening. Possibly there was no Lugh nor any god here, not in the whole of this island.
    Just infernal mists, and the quiet ones disappearing before your very eyes—when they aren’t trying to take off your manhood.
    His emptiness beset him, as stars came out above. He choked, then the awful sobbing of a grown man escaped from him.
    Connor’s companions found him delirious, prostrate upon the grey rocks and with an advanced fever. His left hand swelled and from it red streaks radiated