by Sam Taw
“My father has no alliance with this tribe. They would see my banner as a declaration of war, since they do not know me. It’s far safer to show white.” Idina explained when I queried her actions.
Tallack seemed inordinately taken with Idina. He trotted alongside her horse whenever he was not flirting with Maleek. He was like a dog with two tails. I really must have a word about his inconsistencies. This is not the behaviour of a respected Metern of the Dumnonii. As I thought this, my mind wandered back to our homeland, pondering on our tribe’s state of readiness for attack.
The further along the track we rode, the more I pined for home. Blydh was too young and inexperienced to organise battle plans without our help. He did have the respect of a great many warriors, even if those from the Priest Sect were at odds with his decisions. It made me wonder what had become of their half-brother, Paega. Perhaps he too could forgive and forget the past in order to help Blydh secure the Dumnonii future.
We passed through a wide, shallow valley where the tufted grass grew sideways from the constant funnelling wind. After a brief stop to water the horses and refill our drinking supplies, we picked up the pace towards a large swathe of moorland. This place was much like our own, similar heathland plants, boggy central lowlands and craggy hilltops. By late afternoon, the mist descended, making our bones ache with the cold dampness.
Conversation dried up as we hurried in single file along a track which threatened to engulf the wheels of the wagon. This eerie place gave me the chills. Through the fog ahead of us, the sun sank behind a solitary low tree. I recognised it immediately - the lonely hawthorn. Tallack cantered ahead, riding in a circle about its base.
When we caught up, he dismounted and unsheathed his sword, stabbing it into the mossy ground at his feet.
“What are you doing? You must stop at once!” Idina cried out. “A hawthorn marks the site of a forgotten grave. You must not disturb the dead or the demons from the underworld will rise and smite us for its desecration.” Idina led her horse as close as she dared, taking cautious steps towards him.
“Rubbish. That’s what tribe’s folk tell the young ones to stop them from stealing the troves of metals and jewels buried beneath.” Tallack kept stabbing the ground at regular intervals in the hope of hitting a trunk under the soil.
“Seriously cousin, she’s right. At the very least it’s bad luck to disturb the roots. Foul things lie at the heart of a hawthorn. Why else would it stink of rotting corpses come spring?” Cade stood next to his wife, united in their panic.
“Is that right, Aunt Mel?” Tallack said as I reached level with our group and dismounted.
“Well, boy, it ain’t our custom, but we’re closer to their lands than ours. Best leave it alone to be on the safe side.” I could see him trying to hide his pout. “A lonely tree in the middle of the moors should be honoured. Give it some of your ale as an offering, in case the gods are watching over it.”
“Bless you, Meliora.” Idina said. “I think that’s best. I’ll make my own offering too.” She reached into the bags slung across her horse and pulled out a beautiful necklace of shells and hooked it on a branch close to the trunk. I watched her bow her head and utter a prayer to the gods for protection. Tallack had already wet its roots with his best ale before the Prince sent word demanding the reason for the delay.
Every part of me ached to leave this place. It was more than a hollow where stale mist whirled and disorientated us, it had an otherworld feeling like a mouth of a burial cist or one of the barrows at Stonehenge. Despite my misgivings, Tallack ordered us all to make camp for the night. He did not seem disturbed by the place one bit, dancing about the lonely tree as though it was his friend.
Idina suggested only one small fire in this desolate, frozen wasteland. She feared that too much light would be seen by roving tribe’s folk of the Cornovii.
“Have you had much dealing with this tribe, Idina?” I asked, keen to keep the sounds of the night-time at bay with our chatter.
“Very little. What I know about them come from tales with our allies the Coritani. They are brutal people, by all accounts. They trade little and raid a lot. Their warriors make necklaces from the fingers of their enemies. They say that their old chieftain’s necklace had three long loops of bones.” The poor mite looked scared for her life. I dared not tell her that Tallack’s brother preferred to hang the entire head of his foes from his horse.
“Every tribe tells frightening stories to protect their lands from invaders.” I said, patting her shoulder to soothe her. “I expect they are nowhere near as scary in person.”
She gave me a look that said, you know nothing, old lady, but she did not voice her thoughts.
That night, the idol was lifted down to the fireside and Suliaman along with it, but there was no fresh creature to offer in sacrifice. The Prince sent out his warriors in search of rodent, rabbit, deer or fowl, but all came back empty handed. Tallack suggested more ale poured over the statue, Idina offered her bowl of salted pork stew, but both were deemed insufficient. According to Jago’s translations of the Prince’s growl, nothing would suffice but warm blood.
Cade, Idina, Tallack and I all looked at each other in fear. In the absence of animal blood, would Suliaman resort to that of mankind? His warriors all fell to their knees in regret at their failure. Maleek stepped before them glaring at each one in turn. Was he deciding who should donate blood to their god? When he reached the second to last man, Maleek unsheathed his curved blade from its scabbard. I held my breath as he drew his arm back.
“Don’t suppose this would do?” Renowden said, looming into view through the mists holding a bucking hare by the scruff. It’s a bit scrawny, granted, but it’s still kicking. My relief was overwhelming. All our shoulders slumped in collective relief. For a sailor, Renowden was the best hunter in all our lands, and his timing could not have been more perfect.
Maleek thanked him and offered him a small quantity of gold for his troubles. Renowden gestured that it was not necessary, but when Maleek’s face turned from smiling to cold and angry, he took the metal and gave his thanks. That sacrifice seemed to mark a change in our foreign friends. Something had shifted in their manner, but I could not put my finger on precisely what was different.
The Prince completed the ritual and returned directly to the confines of his cart. Maleek sat with the healer and warriors, speaking quietly in their own tongue. Jago sat behind me out of sight, with our new furs wrapped about him. I tried several times to engage him in conversation but he remained silent and troubled. Tallack and Cade drank with Renowden, while Idina and her maids stitched by the firelight. Everything looked fine to anyone watching from the outside, but my stomach tied in knots from the bleak and unforgiving atmosphere among us.
I woke from an uneasy sleep before dawn and set about reviving the fire. By the time everyone else had surfaced, I had a tasteless porridge cooked and all our possessions packed and ready to leave. There was no way I was going to hang about in this place for another day. Jago dashed about between us all, chivvying people along and rinsing bowls almost before they had finished eating. He too was keen for us to leave. At my age, you got used to trusting your gut and mine told us to get moving as quickly as possible.
The mist still lingered as we left the moorland hollow and entered another much narrower valley. I could just make out the ridge tops silhouetted against a grey sky. A massive gathering of crows was disturbed by our noise, squawking and flapping over our heads in a black mass of feathers. Idina looked petrified as she clutched the reins of her horse to her chest in fear.
“Pay them no heed, my dear.” I shouted over to her. “They won’t come closer with all these spears to protect us.” It didn’t seem to quell her panic. She and her horse slowed down, leaving the rest of us to trot along without her. I couldn’t figure out why until we got close to the other end of the gorge. Her eyesight was far better than mine. Now I could see why the crows were gathered in such large numbers at this end o
f the valley.
Stretched across our pathway were twenty or more spikes driven into the ground. Each of them supported the rotting heads of men, women, children and their horses.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tallack and Cade pulled their ponies to a stop and called after Idina. When she failed to respond to them, Cade rode back to where she sat still on her horse.
“Is this just a warning or does it mean something else? Do you think they are camped nearby? Idina!” Cade shouted. “Talk to us.”
She blinked herself alert and tore her stare away from the severed heads. “It’s a warning to go back. We shouldn’t have come. I am so sorry to have led you all here.” She twisted the reins to her left and kicked her horse, urging it to turn about.
“We can’t go back. We have travelled too far into their territory to return and anyway, you said yourself, we’d never make it over the mountains to the north.” Tallack yelled after her, stopping her from cantering away. “Listen, we’ve made it this far without trouble. How many days are we from the coast?”
Idina’s fretting affected her horse. It fussed and skittered about, spinning in circles. “I don’t know, two maybe three days.”
“Dry, fast tracks or slow and awkward?” I asked, thinking that we could afford to push the horses for longer each day if they were to rest at the coast.
“Not sure… I haven’t been this way since I was really young.” Idina confessed.
Tallack took charge. “No fires, we take the trail as fast as it will allow and sleep under and around the cart. Four-hour watches, Suliaman’s warriors scouting ahead and bringing up the rear. I don’t want any surprises.” He sounded a lot like his father, may Cernonnus take him into the Summerlands.
I rode ahead of the wagon with Idina at my side and Jago on the rear of my pony. Cade took the lead up front, while Tallack kept his eye out behind us. His mastery of his horse allowed him to ride sitting reversed on the animal’s back. I felt a little safer for all these precautions, but we needed more than luck to see us to the coast unscathed. Idina could not stop talking about the decapitated heads. That surprised me, since living with the Catuve all her life, I expected her to have seen her fair share of bloodshed.
When we reached the furthest end of the valley beyond the spiked heads, visibility was down to a few horse lengths. Tallack insisted that we kept up the fast pace, despite the wheels on the cart creaking and groaning with every rock and stone they hit on the trail. Cade pushed us all on beyond nightfall, until the scouts returned to us with news that the path ahead was boggy, and that they would need to seek out a new route come daylight. As a result, we were forced to make camp in a wooded glade at the base of a wide moorland dell.
The river water was sweet and cold. Our horses took their fill and I bathed my feet. Sitting on the riverbank with my legs dangling in the water I relaxed for a few moments and washed myself. Suliaman sat in his tethered tall chair looking out from the wagon at me. I called to Jago for a cup and filled it with the fresh liquid from further upstream. With my wooden pattens covering my clean feet, I wandered over to the cart and held the cup aloft. Suliaman’s healer took it from me and handed it to the Prince. He clamped the cup between both palms, his fingers curling into stiff and bony claws.
He drank the entire cup down in a few gulps and breathed out with its freshness. Two teeth were missing from his smile. “I have never tasted water so good before. In my land, if you can let the sediments fall to the base, it is still warm and tastes of sand.”
“Well, water is something we never go short of here.” I said, almost in complaint. I was about to turn away when I noticed a thick red liquid trickling down his top lip. “Your nose is bleeding.”
The healer stepped up and held a cloth to his face. “I didn’t notice.” His eyelids twitched as though he no longer had control over their movement. These were new symptoms of his ailment, and I was at a loss as to how to help him. The sores on his arms had toughened into raised lumps and now appeared on his forehead. Even if his nerve pain had lessened, the other symptoms showed him declining at a frightening rate.
I took some willow bark from a pocket in my cloak and gave it to the healer. He sneered at me as he reached out, but at least it was not an outright refusal. Tallack was close by, feeding the horses with some of our grain to supplement the grass.
“The Prince is failing fast.” I told him, muttering quietly so that no one else could hear.
“Then we must press on. We’ll rest for a few hours and set off before dawn.” He walked off to relay his instructions to Cade and the others. Jago and I watched Maleek directing the warriors, as they performed their nightly task of lifting the idol from the cart. I knew for what they were preparing. Their god demanded another sacrifice to hold the curse at bay for long enough to reach the stones. The problem was that we had not spotted nor heard a hint of any animal activity all day. Even if Maleek’s warriors hunted all night, it was doubtful they would return with anything dead or alive.
I glanced over at Renowden in the hope that he could give us some good news. He shook his head, predicting my request. Maleek looked deeply troubled. What would happen if the great Phoenician god, Melkarth was not given warm blood? Did he have the power to strike us all down in a raging storm, with bolts of lightning filling the skies? I was starting to wish that I’d taken a sprig of sacred hawthorn when I had the chance to protect me from spiteful vengeance.
Tallack explained how precarious our position was and the need for his warriors to patrol a boundary further out from camp. With visibility so poor, a series of signalling whistles were laid down for the watchmen to use, before Maleek sent them out into the mist. Chilled, afraid and hungry, we huddled together eating dried salted pork and drinking cold ale.
Two warriors remained in camp, heaving Suliaman from the wagon, and setting him down next to the grinning idol. The Prince called to Maleek. They spoke quietly at first, with Maleek’s tone pleading and apologetic. Suliaman on the other hand, grew in volume and temper. His anger flared up along with a resurgence of blood from his nose. His changeable temperament shocked us all. At one point in their heated debate, Maleek pointed to his horse, but Suliaman simply shook his head. The number of our ponies was too few as it was. Losing another would mean more of us doubling up and tiring the creatures quicker each day.
Jago looked panicked once again, crouching behind my back and whimpering. He was the only one of us who understood the row between them and it clearly disturbed him. This reaction was becoming so commonplace, I assumed that conflict of any sort brought back the sad memories from the past. Cernonnus knows, he had been through many of them.
With the fog increasing in density and dampening our clothes and furs, they argued in their own tongue until Maleek’s shoulder’s slumped in defeat. Suliaman began the incantation without an animal to offer to their statue. Stained in layer upon layer of fetid humours, the lurid grin and twisted arms were still visible in the diffused moonlight.
Suliaman’s healer helped him to his feet to conduct the final part of the ritual. Maleek stepped forwards, rolling his tunic sleeve up over his elbow and thrusting his forearm above the idol’s head. With his curved blade, the Prince’s son slashed his own arm and allowed the red life force to trickle out of his body and over the clay god.
We could hardly believe what we were witnessing. Suliaman had demanded this of his son, despite the risk that the wound might fester and rot in the damp conditions. How could a man expect this of his own flesh and blood?
The Prince was vexing and puzzling in the extreme. One moment he rejoiced in the simple pleasures of cool fresh water and polite conversation and the next he expected his son to slice open his veins. He was gentle and generous in one moment and wrathful and wicked the next. I cannot begin to understand their culture or religion, but to expect your son and heir to weaken themselves as an offering is beyond my tolerance.
Moreover, if Maleek was now an offering, did that mean that none of us cou
ld touch him in order to dress his wound for fear of retribution? Did he mean so little to Suliaman that he was to lie down next to the statue and drain out before us like the badger and all the other creatures forsaken in this unholy mess?
Cade, Tallack and I all stood around wondering what to do. None of us wanted to make matters worse with so many of his warriors surrounding our camp. I wanted to ease Maleek’s suffering. After all, he had done me a service when the thief tried to take my medicine kit in the Frynkish port, I felt that I owed him.
I took a deliberate step closer and stared at the Prince. In a way, he was indebted to me after all the tonics and healing balms I had made for him. I figured that he might spare me, if only for the similarities of my name to their God of Gods, Melkarth. “Prince Suliaman. Maleek must be treated at once if we are to prevent rot.” I held his glare, each of us elders facing off in a mental dance of authority. He may have the warriors and the gold, but this is my homeland and leaving them here in the dead of night would secure their fate. My narrowed eyes conveyed as much. Their heads would refresh those on spikes at the other end of the valley before the next moon grew fat.
He attempted to move a leg forward, his muscles wasted and weak. At length he fell backwards into his tall chair. Neither his healer nor his warrior servant rushed to catch him. Perhaps they knew more about his quicksilver moods than we did. What other unpleasant ways was the old man hiding?
“You are brave, Meliora, but foolish. If you interfere with the offering to Melkarth, you invite his ire.” Despite his weak body, his voice was strong and unsettling.
