Hawk of May (Down the Long Way 1)

by Gillian Bradshaw

“Yes, my lord,” I whispered, not looking at him. “A lament for the fallen.”

  His eyes had merely passed over me before; when I spoke he saw me. He glanced at his companion. The other’s mouth tightened, and he drummed his fingers on his knee. Cerdic frowned.

  I swept the strings with my hand, played a complicated prelude without really thinking. They were important, these two. Cerdic, Cyning thara West Seaxa, as his own people would put it, and the other…who? He was strong in Darkness. Cerdic, I thought, does not comprehend the Darkness, but, from ambition, wishes to use it; but this other one is like Morgawse.

  A lament for the fallen. There are plenty of laments, more than there are battle songs. Laments for those fallen by the hands of the Saxons, men such as I sat among. I sang a famous lament, a slow, fierce, proud thing that was made when the province of south-east Britain was overwhelmed by the Saxons, an old song which called the province by its still older name, the land of the tribe of the Cantii.

  “Though they made the Saxon hosts to sleep

  By the sea’s white cliffs, and made women weep;

  The fullness of glory was not complete,

  The host rides to Yffern in defeat

  And in their fields the eagles feast.

  Bitter the harvest now to reap:

  They fought the Saxons, fought and fell,

  We shall gather corpses, make tears our well,

  And the host of Cantii will not return…”

  Cerdic listened intently. When I struck the final note, he nodded. “A very fine song. And very well sung. You have had more than a little training in harping.”

  “Thank you, Great King,” I said in a flattered tone. I could not give him reason to suspect that I was anything more than a common thrall. I drew my cloak closer about my shoulders, as though I found the night cold, and hoped that it would cover my sword.

  “Play another,” ordered Cerdic, and I complied.

  The king began to talk with Wulf, drinking his mead and paying no more attention to me. But his companion, the other nobleman, watched me still, lids half drawn over those pale but oddly dark eyes.

  I played on, realizing that I was better than I had been at any time before. Perhaps it was from hearing the song in Lugh’s Hall, perhaps it was simply freedom from the Darkness, but I could tell that I was making the music live upon the strings and in the heart, a thing many professional bards cannot do. I became uneasy, and wished that I had had the sense to play badly at the beginning of the evening.

  Cerdic eventually finished whatever business he had come to speak with Wulf about, and rose to leave. I began to relax again.

  But when the companion rose, he nodded to me. “You play well, Briton,” he said. His voice was cool, and he spoke slowly, drawling out his words in a mocking tone. “Well enough to make yourself valuable. But not so valuable that you should be allowed to bear a sword, which is against all law and custom. Give it here.”

  I stared at him for a long moment, horrified, though I should have expected it. Close on the horror followed an unexpected rage, anger at this arrogant Saxon sorcerer treating me as a piece of merchandise, at his demanding my dearest possession; anger at the casual callousness of the other Saxons; and most of all, anger at myself for accepting slavery and abuse instead of laying down my life for my honor as I should have done. I raised my eyes and met the sorcerer’s gaze directly, my hand dropping to Caledvwlch. “I cannot give you the sword.”

  “You defy me?” he asked, still drawling and amused. “A slave defying the King of Bernicia?”

  So that was who he was, had to be: Aldwulf of Bernicia, reputed the cruellest of the Saxon kings. I stopped, struggling to control myself. His eyes were again questioning, demanding something. His lips moved, and I recognized the unspoken words, and my grip tightened on the sword as I recalled how Morgawse had taught them to me.

  “I am sorry, Great Lord,” I said, my voice sounding, even to myself, too soft. “The sword is my master’s. I cannot give it to any other…” I tried desperately to force myself back into the role I had chosen, reminding myself that I was no warrior. “To no one but my master, or his heir.”

  But the Saxon smiled as though he were satisfied at something. I saw that I had made some mistake, that now he knew what he had been demanding of me, and I felt cold.

  “So, you are loyal, too,” Aldwulf said, still smiling. “Keep the sword, then, for your master’s heir.” He glanced over to Cerdic and said something in Saxon. Cerdic directed a sharp question to him, and I caught the words, “ne thrall,” at which some of the other Saxons grunted. Aldwulf replied languidly and shrugged. Cerdic looked thoughtful, turned to Wulf, and asked him some question, to which Wulf replied at some length. When he had finished, Cerdic turned to me.

  “Wulf has said that you can take care of horses as well as harp, and that your master, by your report, died today in some blood feud about which you fear to give information. I am considering whether to buy you, Briton. What is your name?”

  I stared at my hands on the harp, feeling sick. If the king bought me, how could I escape? And, since Aldwulf was clearly the driving force in this inclination to buy me, what would happen to me if I did not escape?

  “Gwalchmai.” I answered Cerdic’s question with the truth.

  “A warrior’s name, not a thrall’s.”

  “I was born a free man, Chieftain. My master did not care to change my name, seeing that I was used to it.”

  “And you are loyal to this murdered master, but not so loyal as to give information about the feud. How long have you been a thrall?”

  “Three years, Chieftain.” A good enough length of time.

  He looked me up and down carefully, and I cursed my stupidity in singing so well and acting like a free man instead of a thrall. Be no one, I told myself. Make them doubt that you are anything. Here in the seat of his power this man can destroy you with a word.

  “He sings well,” Cerdic said to Wulf. “I will buy him from you, if the price is appropriate.”

  Aldwulf smiled again, looking at me steadily while Cerdic bargained with Wulf and Eduin. After only a little of the bargaining, Cerdic stripped two heavy gold armlets from his right arm, then added a third. A good price. Most slaves, in these days when men were cheap, brought scarcely more than half of that. Cerdic would not pay it because he liked my singing—but that was obvious.

  “Well, boy, now I am your master,” Cerdic told me. “Come.”

  “Yes, lord. Did you buy the harp as well?”

  “That I give you, dryhten, Lord,” said Wulf. “A token of honor from my clan for their cyning.” He sounded sincere. I wondered what he and Cerdic had said to each other.

  Cerdic nodded thanks and set off. I stumbled after him, my feet doubly sore after the short rest, carrying the harp.

  The king stopped at one or two other camps and a house within the fortress, I guessed to discuss with the leaders of influential clans. He required me to sing something to amuse the various warriors, perhaps so as to show off his new purchase. But Aldwulf abandoned us at the first stop, and I felt much better for his absence.

  It was after midnight when the Saxon king finally decided that it was time to rest. We went to a fine Roman government building at the center of the fortress. I was staggering with exhaustion by then, and didn’t even pause to notice the mosaics or the pond in the atrium. Cerdic turned me over to his servants with a brief word of explanation in the courtyard, then went off to his own apartments to sleep.

  I stood, facing Cerdic’s thralls. They looked back with a strange blend of suspicion and fear—the same look that Wulf had given me when I met his party on the road. I was too tired to puzzle at it, though, and said only, “I am Gwalchmai. Your master has, I imagine, just told you that he bought me tonight because I harp well and can tend horses. I have been walking or working all day and I am tired. Where can I sleep?”

  The thralls hesitated, still unsure of me, then finally showed me through the house to the servants�
�� quarters by the stables, and there I collapsed and fell instantly asleep.

  I woke again in less than three hours. I lay still for a little while, dizzy with weariness and stiff, wondering why I had woken. Some dream slid through my mind like a silver fish and vanished. I sighed and sat up, reaching for Caledvwlch.

  As my hand closed about the sword-hilt, the ruby began to glow. I sat, staring at it.

  “Is there something more I must do tonight, Lord?” I asked, aloud.

  There was only silence, and the warm glow which answered a deep, almost buried fire within me.

  I stood, adjusted the baldric I had forgotten to take off, and walked from the room.

  The black bulk of the house loomed above the stable against the starlit sky. The town was dark, except for the distant watch-fires at the walls. I shivered in the night air, though despite the spring coolness it was not really cold. No, there was a sensation I recognized in the air, a sensation which radiated from the house. I turned back into the house, found my way to the atrium, then, after hesitation, made my way into the mosaiced living quarters of the nobles. All the thralls slept.

  It was dark in the house, a deep silence and a black heat, different from but still similar to Morgawse’s icy cold. It was difficult to breathe. I stood for a minute, allowing my eyes to adjust, then, with my hand on the hilt of my sword and a prayer to the Light in my mind, I walked forward to the closed door at the end of the corridor, and opened it a bare inch to look beyond it.

  The first thing I saw was a shadow that swung backwards and forwards against the wall, and only after that did I see the body that cast it. The man was dead by then, head wrenched grotesquely sideways by the rope he had been hanged from. He looked to be British, but in that light one could not really tell. I recognized the pattern which was drawn on the floor beneath him, drawn in his blood, and the pattern about the single thick candle near the door. Aldwulf of Bernicia knelt before the first pattern, casting a handful of rune-sticks upon it and reading off the words they formed. Cerdic, who stood to one side, his eyes bright from the hunger in them, gave no sign of understanding what the runes meant. I, may the Light protect me, understood.

  A shadow seemed to gather about the hanged man’s head, and the body swung back and forth more rapidly, sending the shadows spinning across the wall. Aldwulf cast the runes. He had summoned no great power, I saw, but merely a messenger. “A bargain,” Aldwulf said aloud, speaking in the language of the runes as he cast them, the ancient, cold language of sorcery. His voice was no longer drawling and soft, but harsh and deadly. He arranged the sticks for his message. “Give a message. To your master. I wish, a bargain.”

  The body swung more slowly. Aldwulf cast the runes, read the reply silently, scarcely moving his lips, then arranged the sticks again. “Death,” he read out. For…Arthur, the High King. For his death, death. An offering. Acceptable.” The body ceased to swing, but the shadow remained crouched upon it. Again Aldwulf cast the runes, this time reading the reply aloud. “Not acceptable. Mortal life little. Impossible. Release.” Just below the threshold of hearing a faint keening began, thin as a knife blade, venomous, terrible to hear. Aldwulf placed his hand over the runes and spoke aloud, still in the old language: “It is no ordinary mortal life. We hold one who must be of the race of the Sidhe, at least in part, a servant of the Light, whose name is Gwalchmai. He carries a sword which is powerful for Light, of use to you.”

  I closed my eyes, leaning against the door frame, sickness on me like a great cold hand.

  The keening stopped. The body began to swing again, this time in a circle which grew more and more violent. Aldwulf cast the runes. “Possible,” he read. “With sword, possible. Kill…offering first…No,” he added, covering the runes and looking up again. “First kill the Pendragon, and you will have your offering.”

  The keening began again, and the body jerked on the rope, as though it were trying to come to life again. Aldwulf tossed down the runesticks. “Impossible. Need sword. For sword, need killing. Kill.”

  “Very well,” said Aldwulf. “But tell your master that, if he does not kill the High King Arthur after I have given him his offering and the sword, I, the Flame-bearer, will seek out as many of his kind as I may and destroy them until he will regret that he cheated me; and I will destroy you first. Do you doubt me, demon?”

  The runes themselves jerked into a new pattern. “The bargain…will be fulfilled.”

  “In two weeks, then,” said Aldwulf and, rising abruptly, he snuffed out the candle. At once the shadow vanished. The body swung slowly to a halt. Aldwulf walked over to one wall, out of my sight, and I heard him striking a flint. Presently a torch flared up, and Aldwulf walked across the room with it to light another torch on the other wall. He surveyed the body and the pattern on the floor, then looked up at Cerdic and smiled. “You see, King of the West Saxons?” he asked, his voice again pleasant and drawling.

  “Your power is real, Aldwulf,” replied Cerdic. “But you had proved that to me already. You have arranged with Woden for Arthur to die?”

  “Arthur will die when we have made the offering.”

  “Woden seems to have a great taste for dead men.” Cerdic commented, eyeing the corpse. “Will you fetch that self-professed thrall from the stables now, or wait until tomorrow?”

  Aldwulf shrugged, and began to scuff out the pattern with his foot. “Not tonight and not tomorrow. It will be difficult work, and it is important to choose the best time for it, when all things will aid us.” Bending over, he picked up the rune sticks, wiped each one with a cloth before putting it away in a small bag of black leather. “In two weeks it will be the dark of the moon. It would be best to do it then.”

  “Two weeks!” said Cerdic. “I must keep this youth a prisoner here for two weeks, and only kill him when he begins to think himself safe? No, no, we must do it sooner.”

  Aldwulf drew tight the string on his little bag, abruptly so that the rune sticks clicked together sharply. “If you are afraid, King of the West Saxons, or if you think the price too great, say so.”

  “You would do well to think before you say that word, ‘afraid,’ to me, Aldwulf of Bernicia. But I do not like this killing of thralls, and like it less if they are to be men of my own household. And I would sooner kill ten men in fair combat than…” He left the sentence unfinished, contemplating the hanging body with disgust.

  Aldwulf glanced at it, then pulled out his belt knife and began to cut it down. “You have become very honorable of a sudden. Shall I return to my own kingdom, then, and leave you to kill Arthur—in fair combat?”

  Cerdic said nothing. The rope suspending the body parted, and it fell heavily to the floor. Aldwulf stepped back, sheathing his knife, and looked across it at Cerdic.

  “I wish Arthur dead,” the king of the West Saxons said slowly. “And because I cannot kill him by fair means, I will use what means I may. Very well, in two weeks time.”

  Aldwulf smiled. “Brave and ambitious! Good. You must think, as well, that this young fool who is asleep in your stables is not what he pretends to be. He is no thrall, and is probably not even a mortal man such as ourselves. Who knows why he has come here? Certainly he means no good to you and yours. And the gods I worship want his sword, and he must be dead, I think, to get it from him. We were very lucky in finding him.”

  Cerdic grunted. “So you say. When Arthur is dead, then I will believe.”

  “What? All that I have done, and still you disbelieve me? What of the flood? What of the horse I gave you? And speaking of that horse…”

  “He is not yet broken,” Cerdic said harshly. “Very well, I believe in your powers well enough. I admitted as much. But it is said that Arthur has some Christian or druidical magics to protect him. When he is dead, and only when he is dead, will I believe that your god is stronger.”

  “He is strong,” said Aldwulf confidently. “He is very strong.”

  Yes, the Darkness is very strong, I thought as I walked back to my
place by the stables. Oh Light, protect me. I am afraid.

  Not, I thought, as I lay down in the stable again, that Aldwulf’s demon was likely to succeed in killing Arthur where Morgawse had failed. I did not see how they could use the sword for that. Aldwulf might be powerful, but still weaker than the Queen of Darkness. Aldwulf was still mortal, and Morgawse was not.

  But knowing that Aldwulf’s bargain would not be fulfilled would do me little good if Cerdic and Aldwulf offered me to their demon.

  I held my lower lip with my teeth, stifling a desire to jump up and run screaming away from the place. Offer me. Put the rope around my neck and set my body swinging back and forth by the candlelight, possessed by demons. I could almost feel the cord around my neck, see the terrible darkness. Sacrifice me? Why? Because I served the Light, owned a sword, and…

  And was not fully human.

  So Aldwulf thought. And suddenly I realized what the expression on Wulf’s face and on the faces of his kinsmen had been, the same look with which Cerdic’s servants had greeted me. It was the great fear, the fear of the unknown thing from the dark, the unnatural, the supernatural.

  I sat up in the darkness, clutching Caledvwlch’s hilt.

  “I am human,” I said out loud. My blood beat in my ears, I was sick with weariness and fear, my legs ached, my feet were sore and blistered, and my clothes itched and were too tight. I was human, I thought, clinging to these things. How could they believe differently?

  But they did. They all had, at the first meeting at least. I looked at the ruby in Caledvwlch’s hilt, dark in the night as my own fear.

  Who am I? I asked myself desperately. Gwalchmai. Gwalchmai ap Lot, a warrior of the Light, yes. But human! What has happened to me?

  My king, I said in my heart, My king, I am afraid. The Darkness is very strong, and I who am to fight it do not even know who I am, and fear even myself. How can I escape? Even if I can match Aldwulf, Cerdic has an army, hundreds of warriors, thousands of soldiers, ranks of steel, and set minds all afraid of the supernatural: solid, worldly power, unarguable blood and iron. And they do not think that I am human, and my mother is Queen of Darkness and desires my death.