‘Your father?’
‘My father.’
Gwyr rolled his eyes and sighed. ‘I know. I know. They get old before they’re ready. Women get wiser because of this, men no less so, but fussier. But I don’t think I can help you on this occasion. I’m getting too old myself!’
Before I could comment – he didn’t look that old, though he was certainly older than me – the horses tugged at him, or he made them seem to, and he turned away from me, calming the restless animals as he led them in a soothing circle.
At the first opportunity, I talked to Guiwenneth about Elidyr. She took my hand as I recounted the strange trip into the forest, the far stranger transmogrification of Elidyr and myself, and the lush, luxurious garden around the stone tomb of the knight.
‘I remember a story like that,’ Guiwenneth said. ‘It was told to us when we were children. It’s an old story:
‘A man lies dead in a fairy hill, his body guarded by his wife who will not let him go into the valley beyond. The hill is in the bend of a river, surrounded by a deep forest filled with rich fruit, strange herbs and wonderful flowers. The wife will not let her husband go until she has had a child by him, but the man is dead. There is nowhere for her love to go except into the land, and the land has flourished on this love for years, and is abundant and beautiful, mysterious and welcoming.
‘Then, one day, the wife finds a herb growing over the body of a fledgling bird that has fallen from its nest. The bird comes back to life and starts to sing. She takes the herb and plants it in earth in the mouth of her dead husband. He comes back to life and they fall in love all over again. She declares love for nothing and no one but this man and their children.
‘But without her love, now given back to her husband, the land becomes wasted and blighted. An eternal winter covers everything. And that is the lesson …
‘Each of us has only so much love to give, so we must share it carefully between everything that matters to us, no matter how small. That’s what my mother told me when she told me the story.’
She squeezed my hand, but didn’t look at me when I glanced at her. She went on, Elidyr has shown you this terrible scene for a reason. And by the look of you …’ she looked at me, now, ‘there is certainly something distressing you.’
‘He showed me a vision of my mother. He said – he said I might be able to bring her home.’ Back to life … ‘And then he left. But how? How do I bring her home?’
Guiwenneth said nothing for a while, and we walked in awkward silence. She was thinking hard, still occasionally squeezing my hand, gestures of affection that I reciprocated.
At last, she sighed.
‘Elidyr the Guide has shown you his dilemma. He is always torn between guiding the dead or giving them further life. He is showing you that there is a consequence to everything. The woman’s happiness would blight the forest. Her sadness sustains nature. Elidyr always agonises over the choice he must make.’
I thought of his crisis of indecision in the hours before he had brought Gwyr back from the pyre. And I watched Gwyr, walking with the horses, and wondered if he knew.
‘Gwyr was dead,’ I said. ‘Elidyr brought him back. So is he now living on borrowed time?’
‘It depends on the consequences,’ Guiwenneth said. ‘He might live to be old. Elidyr might take him back tomorrow. It all depends.’ She looked up at me with a smile. ‘I like your words, Christian.’
‘What words?’
‘Living on borrowed time! It’s a good way to talk about the gift Elidyr has given to Gwyr …’
‘Thank you.’
‘You use so many wonderful images in your talk …’
‘I do?’
‘They make my head spin. So soothing and charming, so … unusual.’
Clichés, I thought, but said, ‘I’m glad.’
‘I loved the way you talked about our first night together, by the river, by the fire.’
‘Remind me.’
‘You said that it was like … like a midsummer night’s dream …’
‘Ah …’
‘And that’s just how it seemed!’
‘It did,’ I said. ‘I can’t deny it.’
‘You have such a way of using words to make visions. Sometimes when you speak, it’s like listening to a poet.’
‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘I certainly can’t deny that either.’
* * *
Between one step and the next we had entered the twilight of the day, and the wood seemed to crowd suddenly upon us. Flocks of birds circled above the canopy, angrily noisy, perhaps because they were being disturbed by activity somewhere ahead of us. Guiwenneth rested a hand on my arm to draw my attention, then whispered, ‘It’s here. Just ahead of us. It’s watching us, making sure it recognises the armoured man.’
We waited for a long time, standing in a line across the road, on the chevalier’s instruction, silent but for Gwyr’s muttered words of calm to the animals. Then, astonishingly, the wall of forest split apart, the edges stretching towards us like a sucking mouth, widening as if to eat us, fires and human figures revealed within its maw; and two men on black horses cantered towards us. These riders came through the mouth, turned back suddenly and beckoned us to follow, and the chevalier led his own steed forward, the rest of us close behind.
The smells of cooking and animal ordure, and the noise of a military camp, greeted us as the hidden gate closed behind us. We were in night and in the forest, and dazzled by the brightness of twenty fires.
Almost at once, a group of runners, two women, seven men, ran towards the forest wall and appeared to merge with it, or pass through it, vanish from view in any event, a new Forlorn Hope sent to their uncertain fate.
There was so much movement of men and animals, so much barking, shouting, laughing and clashing of metal on metal, that it was hard to detect who or what was paying attention to us; but the knight was in earnest conversation with a group of men and the ethereal woman was standing, palm to palm with a second woman, who scowled as she listened to what was being said, one eye watching me, the other closed, and I guessed I was being discussed. Gwyr and Guiwenneth were in deep conversation too, peering deeper into the camp that was spread through the wood. I sensed they were expecting an arrival. Jarag sat alone on one side of a fire, his skin clothes stripped from his muscular body, whittling happily at a piece of bone with an elegant flint blade. On the other side of the flames, three grim warriors were leaning forward, idly talking as they ran whetstones lazily along their iron knives, taking scant interest in the prehistoric man who was using their firelight. All members of the same team, I thought, even though there would be no playful banter in this particular stadium.
Of Someone and Issabeau there was no sign, and I hadn’t even seen them slip away. I was puzzled by what was happening between the two of them, this odd flux of hostility and affection, with a common tongue continuing to elude them both, although the Saracen seemed able to talk to each of them in turn without difficulty.
I liked Someone. I liked his swagger, and the sudden doubt that seemed to plague him.
Guiwenneth had told me a little more about the proud Celt, who had been recruited to Legion at much the same time as she, though she had been a child at the time and placed in the care of Kylhuk’s friend Manandoun, and Someone had been a youth, wandering and making his living as a mercenary as he searched for his identity …
At the moment of his birth, with horns sounding and silver hawks circling above the house where his mother laboured, his father was being struck by the spear that had been flung across the river by his challenger. The name his father had been about to announce flew from his lips and was caught on the wind. A woman hovered there, disguised as a great bird of prey, and she caught the name.
‘I know someone who will pay well for this,’ she screeched from the clouds.
Men ran and dogs ran, following the bird, and after a day the hawk faltered and fell to the river. But before they could find the name it had
stolen, the name had been swallowed by a salmon. The salmon was pursued but was caught and eaten by an owl; the owl then fell prey to a dog-wolf. The wolf was hunted but gored by an old boar. The boar was hunted but eaten by a creature that no man or woman had ever before encountered.
And in this way, the name was lost. And because his father had died before naming the child, the father’s name was forgotten too.
It all seemed very unfair on the mother, but that was that, that was the way it worked.
The men gave up the hunt, returned, only to find themselves servants of his father’s killer. The boy was exiled. But when Someone came of age, he set out to find the single word that would make him whole.
The way Guiwenneth told it left me in no doubt as to why the man was ill at ease. A great deal indeed was placed on a name.
And as I stood listening to the sounds of the night camp, I realised that I was surrounded by people who seemed ill at ease, continually unsure, always looking around them, always questioning. I wondered whether this was to do with the fact that they were part of what appeared to be an unnatural union in this land of fairy, fey and fiction. Times fused together, stories welded one upon another, an uneasy alliance of destiny and determination that could only exist because …
Because what? Because one man had deemed it so? This Kylhuk?
Legion was not itself a memory of myth and history, like the people and creatures that occupied it. As Huxley scoured the wood for mythagos, to gain brief glimpses of the forgotten past, one such mythago – Kylhuk – had found a way to raise these entities unnaturally, to gather them like flowers, subverting their own stories to his own, transmuting their legend to his own quest, whatever that quest might have been.
How was he doing it? What ‘source’ of magic or myth was he using to so shape this already supernatural wildwood?
I became dizzy with noise and movement and strange smells, and the sensation of being alone in a huge place, with a crowd which was somehow walking through me, as if it were I who was the ghost, and not these ghostly recapitulations of the hopes and wishes and stories of long-gone generations.
I seemed to draw the wood around me, to become the narrowing focus of some creature, invisible to the eye, bending the trees and the forest with its presence as it closed down upon me, sniffing, licking, quizzically eyeing its captive, then pulling back, letting through as if from nowhere a tall man in bright clothes, a man with hair as white as snow, and with a face as hard as ice. He strode towards me, rooting me to the spot with his fierce gaze.
And I knew him. It was Manandoun, Guiwenneth’s guardian, and the last time I had seen him I had been twelve years old.
Without a flicker of emotion, Manandoun reached up to grip my face in his rough hands, his thumbs running along the two small scars by my eyes. Then the hard expression on his face broke and he grinned broadly. He jabbered excited words at me, then fell silent as he realised I was failing to understand him. But when he spoke more slowly I began to get meaning from his words, though my frown finally encouraged him to shout for Gwyr, who came running over to us, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. His beard was greasy and he was chewing and swallowing hard, ready to act as interpreter again.
Manandoun said, ‘I didn’t think you would come. You were so far at the edge of the world that we didn’t expect to see you again. But I’m glad you’re here, and Kylhuk is delighted too. It has been a good day for Kylhuk. The return of friends we thought were dead,’ he glanced at Gwyr with a slight frown as he said this and Gwyr stumbled in his translation for a moment, ‘and the discovery of a boy who is now a man and come to help him in the most difficult part of his quest.’
‘For the Long Person,’ I said and Manandoun slapped me on each shoulder, delighted.
‘That’s just the beginning of it. But if you know that, then you know it’s dangerous. That’s good. You know what you’re up against.’
‘Truthfully, I don’t,’ I said, still trying to imitate the way of speaking of Manandoun and Gwyr (which at that time was an effort for me, though it is an effort no longer). ‘I know very little, though I am eager to learn.’
‘Then don’t worry for the moment. Kylhuk will tell you everything, everything about himself, from his childhood to wise warrior, of his deeds and his disappointments. Kylhuk has lived for a long time and not one breath of wind has passed that hasn’t seen a great deed or a great fight or a great song from that man. Nothing is wasted, not time nor wit nor the strength of his arm. He is a living legend, every moment of his life packed with interest.’
‘When will I meet this man Kylhuk?’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Manandoun, glancing away from me, almost as if embarrassed. ‘When he has finished shaping the great delights of today into a story.’
And in English, Gwyr added, ‘He’s drunk.’
Manandoun, clearly understanding what had been said, scowled at the Interpreter and reprimanded him. ‘He is in the Delightful Realm!’
‘I’m sure he is.’
‘The Delightful Realm!’ Manandoun repeated. ‘From where he can see events from all sides at once!’
‘Especially from on his back, looking upwards,’ Gwyr retorted.
Manandoun stared at the other man. ‘Truthfully, I should take you to task for that insult. But Kylhuk would want me to be forgiving, now that his friends have returned from the far frontier.’
‘No fight, then,’ Gwyr said, disappointed.
‘No fight,’ said Manandoun.
Then a thought struck him. He reached out again to embrace me with his fists, feeling my arms and shoulders. ‘Can you fight? Can you throw a spear? Can you drink and run at the same time? Can you use a sling? Does the pain of a wound slow you down?’ He peered more intently at me, whispering, ‘Can you summon the frenzy? Are you willing to shoot an arrow at the Scald Crow? It would be good for us all if you could!’
Before I could attempt any answer to this tumble of questions, Gwyr said, ‘I can give him some basic training. The man is fast, I’ve seen him run, but he’s younger than he looks, and drinking will be his greatest training.’
Both men looked at me and laughed, though I couldn’t see the joke. I said, ‘I have a few tricks of my own, which I’d be glad to demonstrate.’
I was thinking of the training in unarmed combat I’d been given in ’42. I was certain that I could throw even the burly Manandoun, but had decided to wait for the right moment to demonstrate my skills. I might make a fool of myself using their own crude weapons. It would be useful to have a come-back which might earn me more respect.
‘Show those tricks to Kylhuk,’ Manandoun said. ‘He is very fond of tricks.’
And again both men laughed.
Then with the words, ‘Legion is an animal that moves on ten thousand legs. But two extra are more than welcome … Christian … Huxley,’ Manandoun bid me goodbye and went in search of Guiwenneth.
He had given me a strange look when he had used my name, but I thought no more of it.
Gwyr watched him go, then turned to me, tugging at his thin, trimmed beard. ‘Until recently, he was Guiwenneth’s guardian, but now there are others who will begin to care for her. Despite Kylhuk’s rage, pomposity and inclination to visit the Delightful Realm, he truly does see the future, and with Ear son of Hearer and Hergest Longsight, he can often tell who or what is to come into our lives.’
‘Did he know that I would come into his life? And into Guiwenneth’s?’
‘I don’t believe so. And this is why Kylhuk must be watched, and his mood determined with great skill. He will be afraid of you, and fascinated by you. He marked you, after all; he needs you for something, that is clear. I very much doubt if it’s for your head as a trophy, but I hardly see how it can be for your throwing arm. There is something that disturbs me about all of this, so I shall stay close. Guiwenneth, though, will be parting from Manandoun, so there may be a mood of sadness. Manandoun was in despair when he thought she was lost. Now he must face a differ
ent loss. According to Kylhuk, a band of hunters – the Jaguth – are rising from the earth, twelve in all, and Guiwenneth will spend time with them before the next adventure in her life.’
‘The Jaguth,’ I repeated.
Gwyr shrugged, saying, ‘I have heard of them. But Legion has never encountered them, or captured them, so they are not within its gates. They may not even arrive until this adventure is over.’ I think he was trying to reassure me. He went on: ‘But you are here, and Manandoun has told me to show you the garrison. Tomorrow, you will meet Kylhuk himself, but tonight – are you tired?’
‘Not at all.’
We had only been travelling half a day before Legion had swallowed us and shifted us away from daylight to night. It was remarkable that Gwyr and the others seemed so accepting of this phenomenon.
‘Then we can begin now,’ said the Interpreter. ‘Legion is a garrison that moves during the day and settles into the forest by night. You must come to know it intimately. You will have to work for your stay here, and you must know of your position inside the beast at any time, otherwise you will be snatched away by the forests of the Long Gone. Stop looking so forlornly at Guiwenneth. She is leaving Manandoun, not you! She has plans for you!’
There was a twinkle in his eye and an impertinent edge to the grin on his face as he added, ‘All things in their time.’
‘Yes. All things in their time. Unlike this place, Gwyr. Unlike Legion. This is not a thing in its time.’
But he pretended not to understand my point, though I’m certain he did, and simply led me to the horses.
PART THREE
Legion of the Lost
Nine
I had once read a description of a Roman legion on the march, mile upon mile of cavalry, armoured infantry, surly auxiliaries, archers, trumpeters, pack animals and their handlers, siege machines, smiths and cooks and carpenters, baggage wagons and camp followers, an orderly, organised, relentlessly advancing and thoroughly dusty column of battle-weary men that would take a day to pass, and would continue to shake the earth for hours after it had disappeared into the distance.
Gate of Ivory, Gate of Horn (Mythago Wood) Page 10
