This night, strangely, the fog rose up the hill among the houses of the nobles and even among the rath structures of the righ-danna, the many who in this way or that claimed kinship to the Ard-righ, the High-king. Aye, on this haunted night the fog eddied and crept even about that most noble lord’s own abode, the rig-thig.
Through it, his feet and robed legs vanishing into the ever-moving gray, walked a man who neither strode nor strolled. Hooded he was, rendered bodiless by the robe and faceless by the night. Almost silently, picking his way with a long holly staff, he moved toward his goal.
A peasant, in leggings and leathern stockings, a patched brown cloak and flapped cap of hareskin, touched his forehead when his path downward crossed that of the robed man ascending; the former was late wending homeward from the house of his lord who had spoken not complimentarily to him of the peasant’s care for his granary, for it was unpatched and the cats were hard-worked and fat from the catching of invading mice.
“Lord Druid,” the peasant said by way of greeting, and no more, and kept walking.
Nor did the druid in the hooded robe, the deep green of the forest, speak or otherwise acknowledge the respectful greeting. He but climbed on, a bottle-green phantom in the night of darkness and fog-damp and dripping eaves. His staff of holly made tiny sucking noises when he drew it up with each pace.
“Some of those in the service of Crom and Behl,” the peasant muttered, but not so loudly as to be heard by aught of ears other than his own, “count themselves too high among mere men… other mere men,” he added, for all of his sea-bounded land were proud and few acknowledged themselves lowly-when they were not within lordly earshot.