* * *
Night embraced the land; the horns of the moon were fattening. It was low in the west, its gleam illuminating the dark ridges of the wooded hills and the rise of Taurovinda.
Drums began a low, steady beat. Horns sounded harshly. Metal tambours rattled. Pipes wailed.
The groves became alive with torchlight. The curl of the river seemed set on fire. The boat was hauled to the shore and eight men lifted it to their shoulders. Torches burned on prow and stern. The men walked slowly, stepping side to side at a steady pace, up the slope to where the stones waited. A hooded and masked figure walked ahead of them, using his staff to mark the rhythm of their progress.
The funeral boat was carried through the gate in the willow fence, to the heart of the grey stone ring. The drumbeat stopped, the wailing horns and rattling tambours were silenced. The boat was lowered to the ground. Nothing could be heard but the crackle of fire.
The long silence ended with the ringing of a small bronze bell. The drums struck a single thunderous beat and the boat was hoisted again.
Now the horns sounded their droning music in harmony, and the shrill pipes played a lament of singular beauty, punctuated by the dramatic striking of the calf-skin drums. The procession moved beyond the stones and through the groves, then out on to the plain. It snaked its way through the long grass, following the ancient ceremonial way, still marked by the humped backs of fallen stones.
This winding route across the plain was a reflection of the river journey that the spirit of Aylamunda had made to arrive at her birth. She would go back to death with Tauraun, the Thunder Bull.
Three times the procession stopped in dead silence, the boat lowered to the ground, the masked man who led the line of mourners standing facing them. The sky swirled with moonlit cloud; horses at the back of the column whiskered nervously; the grass rolled and rustled in the breeze.
Then again the sound of the bell, the strike of drum, and the boat was up. The horns wailed, deep and forlorn, as the step began again.
In this way we arrived before the rising slope of the hill, and the heavy Bull Gate that marked the first entrance to the fortified enclosure.
Were the Shadows of Heroes watching from those fortifications? Only their banners, streaming black and silver in the night, told me they were there.
All sound drained from the air. The horses were kicked forward, dragging the broken totems of Ghostland, grim-carved trees that were stacked in a low pile. The boat was gently placed on top of the fallen symbols of the Dead, a challenge to them. Urtha gently removed the broken lunula from the ‘corpse’. Hazel faggots were pushed below the trunks and quickly lit; flames licked high into the night. As the boat caught, and the grass effigy began to burn, the horns and drums sounded again.
Urtha stood before the pyre. He was in his battle-harness. The fire gleamed on his helmet and cuirass, and on the narrow blades of the heavy-shafted ash spear he held in his right hand. He stared at the fire, but I thought through the fire, his eyes focused on the dark ramparts of his citadel.
He began to shout; the shout was a chant, though the words were lost to me against the noise of the horns, but I heard the name Tauraun repeated; the great Donn was being summoned.
I had thought that the creature would emerge from the forest behind us, to walk steadily across the plain, and several times I glanced that way, curious as to how it would make itself manifest in the real world. In fact, it rose through the hill, something I should have expected, considering the name of the fortress.
The earth shook below our feet and the pile of burning trunks slipped, scattering a whirlwind of bright sparks into the night sky. The moon itself seemed to brighten and thicken, the clouds forming a swirling storm pattern above the ramparts.
Urtha’s voice rose in aggression and volume. I suddenly heard the words he was using, and thrilled to recognise a language far older than the lilting tongue of these Hyperboreans. The words he used were a dialect of the language of my own time, fatal and vital in their use of charms and enchantment, the pacifying, celebrating and summoning chants for the first and greatest forms of life on the earth itself.
‘Ka-scaragath, raa-Dauroch, Cuum Cawlaud, Nuath-Raydunfray, Odonn Tauraun…’
Winter-scavenging Wolf, Green-faced wildwood Hunter, Oldest Owl, Silver-hoofed, velvet-bannered Stag, Brown burnished, sun-draped Bull …
But of all of these praised, Tauraun alone was called; Urtha offered his life and his grandchildren’s lives to the Great Bull in service after death for the span of two bull-lives, two generations of man himself.
Tauraun had answered the call.
The sun began to rise inside the fortress. Two wide, curved horns rose behind the highest ramparts. The sun glowed between them. The air filled with the stink of the creature’s breath. Behind those highest walls, the gates of the citadel were opened and the forces of the Land of Shadow Heroes rode in fear and disarray from the stronghold they had won by stealth and defended with vigour. They suddenly poured out of the gate at the bottom of the steep embankments, spreading left and right, a force of one hundred or more. Again the earth was shaken as the Great Bull pounded its hooves above them, its broad, dark face peering out across the plain, the sun-disc swirling like fire between its horns.
The army of the Dead and Unborn lowered lances and drew swords and charged in a line against us. A horse was galloped up to Urtha and he jumped into its high-backed saddle, taking the reins from Manandoun. Cathabach and others galloped in front of the pyre, weapons gleaming, their faces bright with the pleasure of imminent combat. Kymon, harnessed and helmeted, was among them.
But there were not enough of us!
Then the shaking of the earth took on a different rhythm. I turned in time to see the charge of an army of horsemen from the forest at the edge of the plain, a wild, screaming ride of armed and bare-headed men, spreading out to circle round the base of the hill. At the same time, Conan pulled up in the gold-wheeled chariot beside me. ‘Jump in! Grab a spear!’ he shouted, sweat streaming from his face. ‘Quickly!’
I did as I was bidden. Javelins split the air, a sword crashed down through the wicker frame, remaining embedded there. Conan had whipped the ponies into the centre of the fray. My spear was wrenched from my hand and thrown back at me, but I used the jumping feat to avoid it and snatch it back.
‘Well done!’ my driver cried with enthusiasm. ‘My brother will soon be looking for another partner! I like the way you jump!’
‘Where did those riders come from?’
‘A trick up Urtha’s sleeve!’ was all the response I got, except that he added, ‘Cornovidians! We met them on the way back here!’
We had galloped through the fray. Now Conan turned the chariot and tore around the edge of the struggle, screaming like a Fury. Manandoun and Urtha fell in on horse behind us, then Cathabach, then Ullanna and her recruits. We rode in an encircling column, striking down to the left, leaping over the bodies of men and fallen horses. The horsemen from the forest streamed into the muddle, some jumping down to fight on foot below the stamping hooves of the Dead. Conan was screaming and laughing as he whipped his ponies, giving them their head. His hair streamed, long and golden. His torso, ridged with muscle, gleamed with sweat. The man was possessed!
I had thought we were a small party finding the right moment to re-enter the battle, but Conan suddenly turned the chariot towards the Bull Gate, a sudden charge, the king and his retinue alongside us now, acting according to a plan that took us through the gate and up the winding street, between the stockaded walls, and again into the heart of Taurovinda.
Triumphant cries, and delighted screams, accompanied our entrance into Urtha’s home. Then sudden silence.
At the far end of the enclosure towered the shimmering image of the bull Tauraun, its legs braced apart, the sun-disc faint, now, like a starlit wheel spinning between its horns. The breath from its nostrils steamed in the suddenly frigid air. It watched us through huge eyes, but made no move
towards us. Standing quite still between its front legs, watching us as he leaned on a radiant, oval shield, was a tall man with long yellow hair and beard.
When the ponies that drew Conan’s chariot reared nervously it was not because they were afraid of the gigantic creature that faced them, but because their driver had been startled by the apparition of the figure below its maw.
The young man, until now so cheerful and reckless, had become ashen and tense with fear. ‘Get down, Merlin,’ he said quietly. ‘Get down! Quickly!’
When I hesitated, he reached a hand to push at me, his eyes not straying from the lounging, golden figure at the far end of the fort.
I could still hear the battle-screams of men and horses and the ringing of iron. Urtha was shouting with triumph. More horsemen, bloodied and lathering, came riding through the inner gate, dismounting and running to the battlements to tear down the streaming banners of the fallen kings of Ghostland. I heard someone cry that the Ghostlanders were fleeing back through the marshes to the river.
Then Gwyrion came riding through the gate, Munda on the saddle behind him clinging on to his arms. His horse, too, reared up as he saw the Bull and its sun-haired master. The girl fell to the ground and Gwyrion slipped down from the saddle and helped her up, apologising profusely.
Though there was mayhem and shouting all around us, Cathabach and wise Manandoun watched in silence, aware that the young Cymbrii were in trouble.
Conan glanced at me, almost tearful. ‘Well, Merlin,’ he said, ‘it’s been a long journey, and more fun than pain. I wish I’d got to know you better.’
‘What’s happening?’ I asked him, but he simply smiled and shrugged.
‘Reckoning time.’
The man between the bull’s legs had raised his spear and was using it to beckon the boys. I began to grasp a truth that should have been obvious.
‘We stole his chariot,’ Conan said forlornly. ‘Remember? It was decorated in gold that had been spun by a Greek Land god called Haephestus, and had iron worked into its wicker frame to make it stronger than a stone wall. That man there was very proud of his chariot. Very angry when we stole it, even though he’d stolen it himself in the first place. Alas, we managed to crash it in a race, though only because the other team cheated: swords attached to their wheels. Bastards! Anyway, I don’t think this bit of copper-varnished wicker will satisfy him, even with its gold-rimmed wheels.’
‘Who is he?’
‘My god-father,’ Conan muttered sadly. ‘Who else? The great god Llew himself. That’s his Sun Bull. He always arrives with it when it surfaces from the dark. We won’t get out of this one lightly. He has other bright sons to cherish, more obedient ones—little arse-lickers!—so he’ll certainly have our heads. Goodbye, Merlin.’
Gwyrion, looking equally anguished, smiled wanly at me as he came over, then stepped into the car, gripping the rail. ‘Fun while it lasted, though,’ Conan shouted at me with a last burst of youthful bravado. ‘And you will make a great chariot-warrior!’
Then he gave the ponies their heads and the small chariot was drawn towards the waiting man. The great god Llew stepped into the car and took the reins, turning his back on his sons. Their faces became silver in hue, in contrast to his radiant gold. Frozen, unsmiling and unfocused, gripping the rails with both hands, shadows in their father’s angry eyes, they seemed to watch the end of their mortal adventure with sadness.
With a powerful lash of his whip, Llew turned the panicking horses and rode the chariot below the body of the Bull, soon disappearing into the gloom of the hill. The Bull gave a mighty shake of its head, suddenly coming alive again, and turned, to lumber back into the darkness, descending into shadow, and continue its slow walk through the underworld.
But it had done its job. Though we had lost two youthful friends, Aylamunda’s ghost was now alive again, and she was in her proper place in the most appropriate land among the Shadows of Heroes. And Urtha had reclaimed his fortress. Already, the massive gates were closed, and the banners and standards of Ghostland were being nailed to a ‘mocking tree’, made from dead wood hewn from hazel and ash. This would be hung over the north wall, permanently out of sight of the passage of the sun.
I joined Urtha on the wall. The Shadow Knights had dispersed, taking their fallen with them. But if the king was triumphant, he expressed it in subdued manner.
‘We won’t have seen the last of them,’ he said quietly. ‘Don’t you agree, Merlin? They won’t give up this easily. They’re extending their realm. Though why they should be doing that is beyond me for the moment.’
Behind us, the small army of warriors and their families were spreading out through the streets, laying claim to the houses and planning the rebuilding. It would be a lengthy task.
I recognised, among them, the standards of the Coritani.
It seemed that Urtha, when he had passed through the territory of the High King of the Coritani, had found it reoccupied by the men who had lived there before. They had returned ahead of him from the chaotic adventure that had led an army of the clans into Makedonia and Greek Land. Nosing as I was, in the form of a wolf, I had not seen this encounter. Urtha, alerted to the problems with Taurovinda, had won the respect of these men, and their agreement to assist in his own land. He had kept them in the forest, out of sight and silent. He had not known what to expect in his home citadel, but in the event the Shadow Knights, made mortal in this world, had been outnumbered.
How he would now pay his mercenaries for their continued service was a bridge to be crossed in due time; they would certainly stay for the cycle of a moon. After that they would start to claim cattle and horses.
PART THREE
The Light of Foresight
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Taurovinda
Urtha had claimed back his ancestral fortress of Taurovinda, savaged and stolen from him years before. He had reclaimed his stronghold with boldness and imagination, harnessing the slender forces of arms, men and the supernatural to great effect. He told me almost at once that he had been inspired by the fire and fury of his small son, Kymon; he might otherwise have delayed, seeking the best strategy for what had seemed to him a task that would lead to at least one failure, if not more. He had anticipated a long struggle and had won in glorious, rousing triumph, seduced by youthful recklessness.
Yes, Kymon, the spirit of the king, had been the kick to his flank; only later would he tell me that when he had heard my account of the forlorn figure of Aylamunda, moving behind the Bull on her way to a greater happiness, he had glimpsed her himself, and been filled with such insensate rage that he came close to storming the citadel himself, alone, naked and unarmed. He had seen her as clearly as I had seen her, a glimpse of the darkness below, a glimpse of the woman he had loved with passion. If he suspected that I had in any way seeded that momentary sight in his mind’s eye, he kept the thought to himself.
Love does not perish when the body dies. And in Ullanna, Urtha had a new companion—herself the survivor of a tragic separation—who understood the nature of the gash in the muscle of Urtha’s heart. With this Scythian woman by his side, he bragged, he could conquer the Land of the Shadows of Heroes itself!
This thought was idle when he expressed it to me, still in the sweat of victory, but he was aware that Ghostland would need a great deal more subjugation before Taurovinda could again open its gates to the Plain of MaegCatha.
Indeed, there was a great deal to be done, and beginning at dawn of the day following the night of the attack, Urtha and Ambaros, still frail from his wounds, tried to bring a sense of order to the chaos.
The druids, the Speakers for the Past, for Kings and for the Land, keepers of ritual, began to walk the perimeters of both the fortress and the woodland at its heart, the groves and sheltered shafts where offerings had been deposited in the deep of the earth for the last few centuries. They were joined in their task by the High Women, although the women fussed at the wells and in particular at the apple orchards—if a
pple is the correct word for the small, sour fruit that these people held in such high esteem.
The two Wolf-heads, the itinerant soothsayers who had appeared in the gorge when Kymon had been gathering his forces, were as dirty, grey and unkempt as ever, and stank of the animal oils in their skin clothing. But they were experts at carving, it was discovered, and took it upon themselves to cut away the burned wood from the tall statues that were gathered at the heart of the fortress forest, remaking the faces and using dyes and ochres to bring back the life to them.
I had expected that Munda would involve herself in these sacred duties, but she was nowhere to be seen; up to her own private tricks and trade, no doubt.
Her brother Kymon, however, was very much in evidence. He walked alongside his father, saying nothing, seeing all. He was the heir apparent and his sense of grief and anguish at having failed in his own attempts to retake Taurovinda had rapidly been consigned to a votive shaft in his own mind. He had failed; he had learned a lesson; and that was that! No time to look back, only to look forward, and Taurovinda, the citadel that would one day be his domain, had to be protected against an enemy who were more like gusts of wind than warriors: hard to see and hard to fight, but strong only where the shelter against them was flimsy.
The mercenaries recruited from the Coritani, horsemen and spearmen allied to the warchief Vortingoros, were adept and swift in their abilities in construction. Vortingoros had furnished this small army as Urtha had passed through his land, as repayment for a bond of honour that had fallen due when the two men had been in battle against a northern clan. The force of fresh and eager men swiftly dismantled many of the burned and broken houses, pulling up the roof poles and setting about building two long hostels, one on each flank of the stronghold, living quarters and feasting areas, sufficient for the host of men and women who were now in occupation.
The Iron Grail Page 15
