Free The Green Hero by Bernard Evslin Page B

eyeballs, which are sweet when fresh. In this weather they should keep for days.”
    “You have disgusting habits,” hissed the cat. “Were we not under magic bonds of friendship, I should seek to express my disapproval more sharply.”
    “Dear little caterpillar,” cooed the falcon. “You are too furry and earthbound to threaten me. Let us put aside our friendship for a bit and debate my habits with tooth and claw.”
    “It cannot be,” said the cat. “We are on a hero’s venture—we are Companions of the Doom. We must not indulge in private quarrels. Accept my apologies.”
    “Accepted,” said the falcon.
    “Go on with your tale. Are they such fearsome warriors, these Seal-clad Ones?”
    “They carry fish-spears that can pierce the leather armor of that behemoth they call the whale, also walrus-tusk swords. And they are very hungry. Also they come so swiftly that they will attack before anyone knows they are here. But what if they fail? Then they will be dead, and their eyeballs will be eaten.”
    “We must hold fast to our master and protect him in the time of fighting,” said the cat. “I wish him alive. He saved me from the Hag, and I am grateful.”
    “I am a war falcon, as you know. Trained by Goll McMorna to stoop upon warriors as well as game. And, as I say, I prefer to eat only what I kill. So I am yours to command, O hag-free and spell-spitting tom.”
    Finn, who was plucking the heron for their supper, heard the cackles and mewing of this conversation, and was amazed to find himself understanding it. But the hawk’s tale was so strange that he thought it might be happening in his own head.
    “Do I understand them?” he asked the harp.
    “You do.”
    “But how?”
    “Through me. I am the Harp of Dagda, who was the most potent bard of the Tuatha da Danaan, and, as you see, I am strung with catgut instead of wire. And at that time, you must know, cats were big as cows—which was as well, for rats were big as rams. You understand the tom then through me, and through him the speech of other beasts and birds, but only so long as you carry me and touch my strings.”
    “Then it is true that sailing sleds speed toward these shores?”
    “Too true. And there will be great slaughter when they come. They used to strike these coasts long ago, in the days when Dagda was first learning his scales, and he lived two thousand years, did my sweet master, before he was cut down in his prime. The seas were always frozen then, and the Seal-clad Ones would strike by night in their winged sleds, and kill and kill and kill. But then the sea gods fought. Lyr and Tyre fought their deep duel and left each other wounded on the floor of the sea. And the blood from their huge bodies, always flowing and always warm—for gods cannot die, only bleed—heated the seas and kept them from freezing, melting the ice plains and forming an impassable gulf of waters for the Seal-clad ones. Until now … until now.”
    “And we are the only ones who know of this coming?”
    “We alone.”
    “What shall I do?”
    Build man of snow
    Let the winds blow.
    Finn struck camp immediately and did not bed down for the night, but worked until dawn, raising a giant man of snow. In its eyeholes he stuffed tufts of rabbit fur soaked in oil of the heron’s liver, and put fire to them. The snow giant, looming on its headland, glared with enormous burning eyes over the frozen sea. In its lifted hand he balanced a young pine, and it seemed to be poised to cast a huge spear. He had placed the snow giant so that it faced north by west, and the north wind howled at an angle into its earhole and out its westering mouth, making a terrible sobbing bellowing cry.
    You can still see that giant if you find the headland. It stands there where Finn built it in one night, but the snow has turned to white stone, and its legs and trunk are one column of stone. Its eyeholes are dead. But you may know it by its raised arm and by the sobbing bellowing sound