The Prize in the Game | Page 9

the wall, only moans and cries. That fight had ended up in bed, as her parents' fights so often did. Emer had wondered at them the next morning, seeing her father with a scratched face and her mother purring. She had been overjoyed when Allel had told them that they would at last be allowed to spend a year at Ardmachan. She had been waiting through all of Maga's excuses since she was nine years old and the royal children of Oriel had gone home without them.
King Conary marched out of the Red Hall, with everyone close behind him. Emer blinked at the sudden sunlight. There were some champions playing hurley on the field laid out for it over against the east wall. Their excited cries rose up in the warm air as someone scored. "Don't you just wish you were with them?" Conal whispered. Emer turned and grinned at him and he rolled his eyes towards the adults. King Conary was walking very fast, with an expression as if he had bitten a sour apple. Everyone else except Inis was scurrying to keep up. The king's counsellor ap Carbad was almost smiling. Nid's parents looked apprehensive, and Leary's looked confused. Conal's father, Amagien the Poet, was frowning, as usual. Emer thought it was awful that his mother hadn't even bothered to stay to see her son armed.
"Not really?" she said, tentatively, making it a question.
"Oh no, not really," Conal agreed.
"Besides, hurley is a stupid game," she said.
Conal laughed. "I don't know how you dare say so," he said, sounding surprised. "Though in many ways it is a very stupid game. I enjoy it sometimes. But such a lot depends on things you can't do anything about."
"Like how many people there are on each team, and when they switch sides," Emer said. "Is it true that Darag once played alone against all the rest of you?"
"There was a game once that started off like that," Conal said, carefully.
"He didn't want to wait to pick sides," Leary said. "He won though."
"Who was left on the other side at the end?" Emer asked.
"Just me," Conal admitted, and lowered his voice. "But that isn't the sort of thing that's worth making songs about."
"Hurley is good training for war," Nid said. "It teaches you how to move in battle."
"May the wise gods send that I never have to fight a battle where everyone changes sides as they see their advantage," Conal said.
Nid and Leary laughed, but Emer just looked at Conal, knowing he wasn't joking. His eyes met hers for a moment, dark and serious. An instant later he was laughing lightly again as they all hurried to catch up.
Then King Conary flung open the door of the Speckled Hall, and stopped abruptly, forcing everyone behind him to stop just as fast. Leary's father fell over his feet and caught himself. Nid giggled nervously.
The two guards inside the Speckled Hall looked incredibly guilty, as if they had been caught stealing from the storehouses rather than guarding them. They leapt to their feet with their spears ready. As far as Emer could tell they had been doing nothing worse than sitting talking. King Conary looked them up and down for a long moment. "Better," he said, at last, and both guards relaxed a trifle.
"I wonder what they were doing last time?" Conal asked, almost in her ear. Emer bit back a giggle.
"Ap Carbad, take all these people whose children are not here today down to the stables to wait," Conary said, without even turning his head to look. Ap Carbad gathered up the extra people, pausing when he came to Inis, but passing on as Inis beamed like an imbecile and indicated Conary. Inis was very clever about using his madness to his advantage when it suited him. He could be absolutely outrageous and nobody would challenge it. Emer had been afraid of him at first, but now she knew him better she liked him.
King Conary led the ten of them remaining into the Weapons Room. Emer had never been right inside the Weapons Room of the Speckled Hall before. As a child she had had no weapons of her own to leave, and for practice they used weapons kept down at the stables. The light came in under the eaves where the roof met the walls. The walls were plastered and painted with pictures of champions fighting in chariots. Maga would have sneered at the paintings, which used were crudely drawn and used too much blood-coloured paint. Emer quite liked them. The way the people were standing looked right, almost as if they could move. It took a moment or two for her to lower her eyes to the arms they had come to find.
The room was almost full of weapons of all descriptions,