The Shining Company

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘Such as?’ Morien asked, to keep him talking. Aneirin talking could be as good listening as Aneirin in song.

  And the King’s bard listed his advantages gravely, sticking out a finger of his free hand for each one: ‘For the first, I have been a fighting man in my youth and am even now in better shape than he for long hard riding. For the second, it is said of us, of the Druid kind, that with a fire of rowan wood we can raise a magic mist to conceal a whole army. That is a thing that I have not tried for myself, though I have heard of one that covered all Roscommon. For the third - I can make songs.’

  ‘And so you will ride long and hard with us, and raise us a magic mist to cover us from the Saxons’ eyes, and make us songs to keep our hearts high within us,’ said my Lord Gorthyn.

  ‘All these things; but the songs will be chiefly for the time when the fighting is over,’ Aneirin said, beginning to make his harp ready for its bag as though it were a thing living and beloved. ‘Am I not the King’s bard, the keeper of the long story of his people the Gododdin? I am the one to be there, seeing over the fighting when it joins, that I may make of it afterward the Great Song that others will sing for a thousand years.’

  And Tydfwlch said, ‘That will be a triumph-song worth the singing!’ fondling the little dagger in his belt.

  There was a pause, teased with the flitter of small birds in the broom bushes. And then Llif from the Piet lands beyond Bannog, rolled over on to his belly, his chin propped between his fists, and demanded, ‘Let you sing of us all by name, that we may live as long as the song.’

  ‘All three hundred of you?’ Aneirin said, with his eyebrows quirking. ‘By name aye and by reputation.’

  ‘Sing of me how I have slain a wolf with my bare hands,’ said Gwenabwy, spreading his hands out with the fingers hooked like claws. ‘I will tell you the way of it, that you may get it right when the time comes -’ There was a general laugh, for we had all heard that story, and more than once.

  ‘That tale I will tell,’ Aneirin promised, drawing up the silken cord of his harp bag. ‘As I will tell of you, Morien, why your brethren call you the Fiery. And of you, Gorthyn, how you hunted a white hart, but guessing that he was a faery beast called your hounds off and let him go.’ (I felt Lleyn wriggle slightly beside me, and knew where that story had come from.) ‘And of you, Llif, of the Painted People -’

  The list would have gone on, but in that moment the faint and fitful wind brought the sound of a horse ridden at speed on the road from the south.

  ‘Someone comes in haste,’ Aneirin said.

  And I - there’s no knowing why, for horses came and went often enough along that track - I was back in the curve of the turf rampart above my father’s house, and Conn and Luned with me and Gelert’s rough head under my hand, on the evening that Gorthyn’s summons came; and the same smell of change was in the wind.

  Before night the news had run from end to end of Eidin Ridge, that Aelle, King of Deira was dead - a mischance on the hunting trail - and the wood being gathered for his funeral fire; and the sounds of Dyn Eidin making ready for the war-trail had taken on a new urgency.

  In the first light of next morning men rode out, mounted on the best horses in the King’s stables and heading for Dalriada and Strathclyde and the Piet lands and my own Gwynedd, all the kingdoms of the north and west.

  A little later that morning, having spoken with our Captain, Gorthyn called Lleyn and me to attend him, and bade us burnish his sword (it did not need burnishing) and help him on with his mail shirt and his cloak of grey wolfskins such as had lately been issued to all the Companions, and follow behind him up to the Inner Court and the place before the royal house where the King sat daily to give audience and pass judgements and listen to his people.

  A state visit from a king’s son to a king.

  Mynyddog half lay in his great chair spread with creamy ram skins, and with fine fur robes muffled about him for the chill of spring was in the air, and even when the sun shone it seemed that he was scarcely ever warm. His leather-clad Champion stood behind him, and his bard and men of his bodyguard on either side.

  I mind his eyes met and followed us, seeming to draw back with us as we came, the life that was so low in the rest of him banked there like a smoored fire.

  Aneirin spoke for him at first, asking with all proper formality what thing it was that brought the Prince Gorthyn seeking speech with the King.

  Gorthyn knelt before the muffled feet. ‘My Lord the King, last night came word that Aelle of Deira is gone beyond the sunset.’

  ‘That I was aware of,’ said Mynyddog.

  ‘And this morning your messengers to the kings have ridden away.’

  ‘That also.’

  ‘My lord, give me leave to go back to my father’s court. It may be that I can do better than a mere messenger, because I am his son - make him listen and send the war-bands we need -’

  I had a sense of cold shock. Gorthyn was but speaking openly the thing that was in the minds of all men. The thing was true, but it was not such a truth as young warriors speak to kings. I think that for the moment we all expected the skies to fall. I certainly feared for that moment to see a signal from the King’s hand, and Gorthyn cut down by the great two-edged sword of the King’s Champion. Maybe Gorthyn had the same fear.

  Then, ‘The thought is a good one,’ said the King’s tired voice. ‘But if I were to send you, and the rest of your kind - remember you are not the only king’s son among the Companions - it would be too many to spare out of the Three Hundred.’

  Gorthyn’s head went further up, and I saw the muscles tense and thicken at the back of his neck. ‘Does My Lord the King doubt that we should return?’

  There was a smile like a shadow on Mynyddog’s sunken face. ‘Na, na, never think that I cast doubt upon your honour.’

  ‘Then I may go?’

  The King shook his head, and the smile seemed more than ever like a shadow. ‘Aelle is dead and the thing is upon us, and if I read the signs aright, the Company must be on the march south before the swiftest horses could bring you back to it. War-bands can maybe follow on behind, but for you and your kind, there is not the time.’

  The King spoke truth. There was no time. Five days later Phanes of Syracuse roder in to Dyn Eidin alone and on a foundered horse, bringing with him in place of his usual baled silks and fine weapons, the news that Aethelfrith of Bernicia, coming down in state to attend King Aelle’s death-feast, had set himself in the King’s Seat at Catraeth, claiming the rule of Deira in double yoke with his own kingdom, since the dead king’s sons were too young for the task. He was still there, and his housecarls with him, and many of the dead king’s men also, a war-band of something over three hundred in all.

  There was more. Something about the whole war-strength of both kingdoms taking down the weapons from their walls, but all that came later in the day. The merchant had got no further than the first part of his tidings, when he keeled over and dropped like a poled ox - so said those that saw it - and they found smashed ribs and an axe gash that had bled him almost white under his cloak.

  That was at noon, and they had carried him off to the monastery for tending, and the Infirmarer had brought him back to himself. When he had told the rest, a black goat was brought in from the flock, and its throat cut, and hazel rods charred at one end were dipped in its blood, and given to swift riders. And before evening they were away, carrying the Cran-Tara through the Gododdin lands; the call to raise the warhost; the hosting place Habitancum on the road south, the day five days hence, allowing time for the men from the further hills to arrive. And for the other kingdoms, riders also, carrying on the news from Catraeth, though without the Cran-Tara that had of course no power beyond the frontiers of the Gododdin.

  We knew, seeing them go, that we should not see any coming-in of war-bands in answer, for we should be gone on our own road south with the second day’s dawning. The time for unleashing the Companions had come.

  There seemed surpr
isingly little to be done on that final day, for the ready-making for the march had been going on ever since word of Aelle’s death had reached us. Horses had been shod, and all weapons and gear that had not been given out during the past year issued to us. There was not much, for most of it we had had long since, so that both us and our horses should have time to grow used to the weight and balance of it; but I mind that my tunic of boiled leather with the horn plates on breast and shoulders seemed to take on a new significance. The Companions were given, as a final gift to each one, a thing such as I had not seen before - a coif of fine linkmail hanging straight and close to their head with a mask of the same fine mesh that could be hooked across the face covering all but the eyes. When Gorthyn and his fellows put them on to try the feel of them, they no longer looked like the Companions, but remote and beautiful and terrifying as if they might be warriors come from the faint stain of brightness in the night sky that men call the Milky Way.

  Iron rations were issued for both men and horses, though we were to live as far as might be off the country; each horse had four shoes in a bag tied to the saddle, against mischances on the road; the tools and gear for the field-forge lay piled with the pack saddles beside the farm smithy ready for loading; and Conn, with the old dirk bestowed on him by Fercos, had slept beside the stack for three nights, with Credne, one of the shoe-smiths, and the boy whose task was to fetch and carry and work the goatskin bellows. It was a lightness in my heart that Conn was riding with us.

  In the King’s Hall, a while before the evening meal, the Captain spoke with his six troop leaders; and later, in their own long-houses, the leaders passed on each to their own troop all that he had said, while most of the rest of us, crowding lofts and doorways and high windows, listened on. Lleyn and I were absent at the time on some errand for Prince Gorthyn. But when we returned and the evening meal was over, he gathered us into a corner among the great kists and storage creels stacked at the gable end, and while we squatted there, burnishing our weapons for the march, he told us in our turn, all that there was to tell.

  Rain had come on with the dusk, and I mind the whisper of it across the rough thatch and the spit and hiss as it came down through the smoke hole and into the fire. I mind the trestle tables being pulled away and the usual coming and going of hounds and men, laughter and a snatch of song and the quick flare of a quarrel, quickly quenched, all making a background to the thing he told.

  ‘Aelle is dead, and Aethelfrith has seized the double kingship and sits in Catraeth, the Royal Village, with his household warriors about him,’ Gorthyn said.

  That much we knew already, but he must be left to tell the thing from the beginning in his own way. Only Lleyn glanced up from the spear blade on his knee, ‘Around three hundred, that would be?’

  ‘As Phanes tells it. The usual number for a chief’s bodyguard. But there is word of all Deira and Bernicia sharpening their weapons for a warhosting.’

  ‘Deira could not be sharpening their weapons against Aethelfrith?’ I said.

  Gorthyn shook his head. ‘It seems that with their own king dead and his sons too young to carry his sword after him, Deira will make the best of an ill job, and follow Bernicia’s king for the sake of his strength to lead them. And his leading, now that he has both warhosts in his hand, will be northward and westward into our heartlands.’

  ‘And we are just to ride down and toss these warhosts back into the sea?’ I asked, half-laughing, half incredulous as the idea opened up before me.

  ‘That might be beyond even our powers, and must be for the warhosts of the north that by God’s grace will take the trail after us. It is for us to get down to Catraeth before the Saxons can gather there in strength, and give battle to Aethelfrith and his housecarls while they stand alone.’ He leaned forward and brushed the strewing rushes from the floor in front of him, and pulling out his dagger, began to scratch something on the bare earth.

  Lleyn and I leaned forward to watch, and saw that it was a map - a picture of a countryside as an eagle hanging in the eye of the sun might see it, looking down.

  ‘See, here is the Grand Road linking north and south, and here comes in another from across the Penuin Hills. Then five miles or so south of the joining-place, the road crosses a river, and beyond is Catraeth - Catteractonium, the Romans called it, from the rapids and broken water thereabouts. Here is what remains of the town, and here, maybe a mile on, the Saxon Royal Village. We all know that the Sea-wolves are afraid of stone-built cities and the ghosts that the Legions left behind them, and so unless we can take them by surprise and fire their own thatch over their heads, they are most like to meet us somewhere on the open ground south of the river. But be all that as it may, our task is to take the town - the Fosterling was there once; he said there’s the remains of a fort in the north-east corner - and hold out there, cutting the road, and making things as difficult as may be for the Saxon battle-lords in their coming together, until our own main warhosts can come up with us.’ He brushed his hand across the floor, rubbing out the scratched lines. ‘If the summons gets to them through their marshes and forests, the men of Elmet could reach us within the first days; they’re the nearest.’

  ‘And if they do not?’ Lleyn’s face had a sober look that I had seldom seen on it.

  ‘Then still we hold on, waiting for the Gododdin - and Dalriada and Gwynedd and Pictland and Strathclyde… . We are the buyers of time for the rest.’

  ‘Us, and the Spartans at Thermopylae,’ I said. And then wished I had not said it.

  ‘And we know what happened to them. A classical education is a fine encouraging thing.’ Lleyn’s face cracked into its familiar grin.

  One of the hounds whimpered in his sleep, and I heard again the hiss and spit of rain falling into the fire.

  14

  The Road to Catraeth

  We stood beside our horses with the re-mounts and the slim baggage train in the open ground below the Royal Farm, we, the shieldbearers, waiting for our Lords. The Companions had taken their own horses up to the Dyn the night before at the King’s bidding, that they might make a fitting ride-out through the town in the morning, a ride-out for men and women and bairns to remember afterward.

  I mind the fidgeting of the horses. Shadow stamped and shook her head, made restless by the smell of coming events, and I soothed her with a hand on her neck. ‘That mare of yours is as full of fads and fancies as a fine maiden,’ Lleyn said, over his shoulder. The dogs who always run with a warhost were already leashed. I mind the feel of my leather tunic and the faint creak of it as I moved. My leather war-cap with the iron rim hung from my saddlebow, my oxhide buckler beside it. All of us were craning towards the place where the royal road that led as straight as a spearshaft the length of the town ridge curved out from among the crowded buildings to join the trackway looping south.

  The storms of the past few days had cleared, and it was a morning of changeful wind and sunshine, cloud shadows drifting across the hills, and a thin shining rain. And as we watched, suddenly from away in the mile distant Dyn, where the King himself would be watching, the hunting horns were sounding, thin and shining like the rain, and we heard the voices of the people begin to rise like a far off sea.

  ‘Here they come,’ Lleyn said.

  We were too far to one side to see them coming; we heard them though, or rather, we heard all Eidin giving tongue as they rode by, and then the distant shingle-surge of horse hooves over cobbles, and the hounds pricked their ears to listen. A great tide of sound sweeping nearer and nearer. And a great wing of sunshine sweeping with it along the ridge before the west wind.

  The waiting was over, and we swung into our saddles and gathered the horses under us. The drumming of hooves and the sea-roar of voices broke over us. And the first of the riders swung out into the open, and behind them all the rest. The Fosterling was in the lead, and beside him Aneirin in his favourite cloak that wear and weather had changed from crimson to the colour of old spilled wine; and next behind them Geraint
from the far south, with the Red Dragon standard that the Queen and her women had stitched for us through the winter, lifting and rippling on the spring wind. Every rider wore his mail coif, but with the mask left open so that his face was bare. Grey wolfskin cloaks hung loose over a glint of colour or a flash of gold beneath. Some had a few primroses or a knot of blackthorn blossom stuck into a shoulder brooch, a token tossed to them by some girl in passing. Cynan had three. Two and two they rode, a shining company, and the sun and rain clashing together as they came. And for that one moment the thought came to me - an odd unchancy thought to be pushed away hurriedly - that it is not good for mortal men to wear that particular bloom of light.

  So they passed, and when they were gone by, the long skein of them, stringing out along the foot of the ridge, we spilled forward after them, with the baggage beasts in our midst and the field-forge with its team of weapon-smiths and farriers. So we made for the old half-lost road that struck south-westward through the Long Moss. Men and women and children followed us for a while in flying column along our flank, and then fell back.

  To take the direct way by three peaked Eildon and on down the great upland road through the heart of Gododdin territory would have seemed most likely, but once past the hosting place at Habitancum it would bring us overnear to the empty land - empty for the good reason that in the past years it had suffered too many raids from Bernicia - and our left flank would be dangerously exposed. It would be no good thing to come in contact too soon with the Saxons, and waste time and lives, and like enough have word of our coming carried ahead of us. So we followed the western road, three days longer than the other, but well clear of the Saxons’ reach almost all the way; and for most of the way through a still-living land, a thing to be considered when a war-band has to live for the most part on the country it passes through.

  At noon, over beyond the Long Moss, we halted to rest the horses, and when we went on again, by the Captain’s orders we took up the proper order of march. Now, each pair of shieldbearers rode with their warrior, to guard his back and each other; not that there would be need of that until many miles further on our way, but it was well to get into the way of it. It was good to find ourselves back in the familiar arrowhead again. The advance guard, one troop, rode ahead in small scouting groups, making a long line abreast that was maybe a mile from wing-tip to wing-tip; and the rest followed after, troop by troop, widely spaced, with the Captain and his standard bearer in the third. Our troop, that day, was the last of all, rearguard behind the baggage horses; and we rode seeing the standard far ahead, a lick of crimson in the changeful light.