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Prologue

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Prologue Out on the bog the Sun’s intense, yellow eye was staring down on the moist, brown bog of Allen, the ancient remains of a thousand-year old forest. It was the Saturday of a May Bank Holiday. The light was so clear and so warm everything appeared to glow with colour. A flash of black flickered in the undergrowth. A glossy, feathered blackbird hopped here and there, jabbing its bright yellow beak into the ooze, tugging out worms and lifting its head to swallow them whole. From time to time it would stop and give a soft trilling whistle and look around carefully. All of a sudden, a shadow shot across the surface and zeroed in on its position. The blackbird tensed as a large red kite landed in front of it, all talons and sharp raptor’s beak. The blackbird eyed the kite and the kite stared back before giving its characteristic, high-treble screech. Then, at one and the same time, both birds stretched and transformed into two very different men. The red kite was now an aged man dre...
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Chapter 1 Nothing Good …

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Chapter 1 Nothing Good … In which Cúan Cullen discovers the Warrior’s Hurl and has a vision of the Witch Queen Maedhbh. Cúan Cullen slapped angrily at the myriad of flies buzzing around his head. He was a fifteen year old youth built with a slim and sinewy frame.He was tanned from working outdoors, with green eyes glinting beneath a mop of untameable brown hair which stuck out in surprising shapes. Not for the first time he wished for his trusty hurl to swipe at the irksome but persistent insects drawn in their thousands to feast on his fresh young blood.Their vicious little mandibles bit through his sweat to the skin as if they were sent from some profound hatred of human beings embedded beneath the bog. It was all grandad Manus’ fault! Daideo Manus had insisted on this trip to the Kildare bog “to foot the turf as our ancestors have done for thousands of years.” “Why?” muttered Cúan to himself, “ Nothing good ever came out of a bog.“ Cúan’s father Dermot smiled up at him from the tr...
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Chapter 2 Even the Dogs …

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  Chapter 2 Even the Dogs … In which Cúan is followed home by a Great Irish Wolfhound ‘What happened?’ demanded Dermot jumping down off the ditch and hurrying over to his son. Grandad Manus looked down at the ancient hurl in Cúan’s hand and his eyes narrowed “What have you got there?” Cúan shook himself. “I don’t know what happened Dad, one minute I was pulling this stick out of a pool and the next… the next… I don’t know if I must have got sun stroke or fainted.” Cúan looked at his left hand. It was clenched tightly, with whitened knuckles around the old hurley. Strangely now the hurley looked a brown yellowy colour, stained from the bog. Its surface was still smooth but now there was no trace nor sign of the runes which he had seen covering its surface. It had no metal band, no plastic or cloth binding around the handle yet it felt as snug in his hand as any hurl he had ever handled. “Finders keepers’ said Dermot. “How did it get all the way out here?” he wondered lifting his s...
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Chapter 3 Going To See A Dog …

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Chapter 3 Going To See A Dog … In which Cúan commences his hero training. Once he got home Cúan took the hurley upstairs to his bedroom to examine it more closely. He took out his phone and brought up the video app. He placed the hurley on his bedside locker and flicked on the reading lamp. The hurley lay on the locker doing nothing. He videoed it from handle to base then turned it over and did it again. OK. He measured it against his right hip, it was exactly his size! He flexed it against the floor mat, it had a lovely spring in it, almost as if it were newly made. “Cúan, come down for some supper” called his mother Gráinne from the bottom of the stairs. “Yeah Cúan, come down from your boy cave and have some lovely supper,” sang Aoibhinn. He looked at the hurl “Yeah that’s what she’s like,” he said, “all ‘tude and no sense!” Then he caught himself. He was talking to a hurley now, what next? He closed the door and ran down the stairs before swinging left around the bannister at the e...
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Chapter 4 A Friend In Need…

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Chapter 4 A Friend In Need… In which Cúan confronts the school bully with his new training and a little help from his friend. “What’s this little culchie bringing into my schoolyard?” exclaimed Alex to the five-lamp gang. His angry red hair was cut short and bladed even shorter. Even though it wasn’t as short as his dreaded temper fits which always led to trouble and often as not to someone else’s red blood being spilled. Alex stood up suddenly from the bench opposite the school yard gate from which he watched the comings and goings and made believe that it was his to rule. He was over six feet in height, with strong white teeth showing against his sneering red lips set against a deep tanned skin. His good looks hid a cruel streak and his muscular frame made him feared and respected in equal measure by the other students of the school. He was an outstanding athlete in P.E., basketball, athletics and especially hurling. He had represented the school in all of these and as a result got ...
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Chapter 5 No Good Deed…

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  Chapter 5 No Good Deed… In which we meet Aoibheann Cúan’s sister again and in which there is a tragedy. Aoibheann sat on Leah her big grey mare at the start of her event. Nobody knew why the slim red-haired girl astride her mare was so good at eventing. She slim but also strong and wiry, but where some people socialised with air kisses, fake tan, concert tickets and boys, Aoibheann was happiest galloping around a forest path or race-course astride Leah, leaping fences, spanning streams, climbing hills or dropping down a descent and nothing, nothing excelled that moment when she and Leah took off from the earth over a high fence of six or seven feet as free as a lark in the air. Today was a Leinster regional competition in Clara Lara in the Wicklow Hills. There was a lot riding on doing well in the competition, competing in the national finals was at stake but for Aoibheann it was the bond between rider and horse that made all the difference, her tone urging and directing or calcu...
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Chapter 6 All That Evil Needs…

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  Chapter 6 All That Evil Needs… In which Maedhbh has Alex and his gang threaten Aoibheann and we meet Lee Ward. Alex came out of the apartment building where he and his mother Natalia lived and stopped dead. There, across the street, dressed formally in her dark St. Catherine’s uniform was a local beauty Maeve ‘Megabucks’ Naughten whom he thought of as being a stuck up snob. Her uniform was neat and pressed to within an inch of its life. With a genuine leather courier’s satchel thrown over her shoulder and the sun shining upon her golden ringlets a glistening invisible crown seemed to glisten on her brow. She crossed the road upon seeing him and marched up to him. “I want you Alex.” “Hey get in line Babe.” A stinging slap seemed to come out of nowhere and landed right on his lip cutting it with the green manicured nail and really really hurting him. He grabbed her hand and growled “ Right you Bitch now you’re going to get what’s coming to you. A red mist of anger surged over him b...
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