by M. K. Hume
Arthur walked down the line of beasts, checking them carefully. One particularly large black horse had the same warmth in its brown eyes as his friend, so he knew that this stallion would give pleasure to Blaise once she had recovered from the loss of her brother.
For himself, he searched for something other than good looks, so he had almost despaired of finding that something that sparked his imagination and his emotions when he heard a pained scream from farther down the picket line. One horse in particular was being fractious and refused to be fed with its fellows. It was reluctant to accept cut fodder when succulent, belly-deep grasses stood, green and growing, just nearby. The mare was very tall for a female, and Arthur could see that it was an indeterminate color that was neither brown nor grey nor black, rather like watered silk. One white sock marked her changeable hide and, when Arthur ran his hand down her back, he was surprised to feel the vigor and crude strength of the hair in her mane. He had expected smoothness under his fingers. This beast was a chameleon.
“I’ll take the black stallion and this mare,” Arthur told the warrior who had appointed himself to the role of horse master.
“She’s trouble,” he warned. “She’s a real bitch and I imagine her temper won’t improve if you want to ride her. She argues with my lads over every little thing and now she’s complaining about the grass.” He sighed with irritation. “She’s a real female!”
“But you can’t ignore her, can you? In ten years, you’ll still remember the fractious mare that caused such grief at Lake Wener. And that’s no bad thing! I don’t want a docile horse, I want a fighter.”
“Then you’ll be a happy man,” the horse master advised him. “Just watch her teeth—she bites!”
The next morning, Arthur selected a saddle from the supply taken from the Geats and, as he placed the harness alongside his horse, she tried to bite him. He actually raised his fist and was about to strike her when he glimpsed a shadow of terror in her eyes. He quickly decided that fear was the last thing he wanted in this horse.
“Be aware, Horse, that I intend to make you love me.” Arthur’s smile was competitive, wicked, and, for the first time since they had left World’s End, boyish. “I’ll think of a suitable name for you soon. In the meantime—stand still!”
Given the mare’s obvious intelligence, she should have known that this particular human was likely to be difficult. But she was determined to win their battle of wills. For the first half hour, Arthur struggled as she tried to defy him at every step.
She had turned in continuous circles whenever he tried to mount her, then she had bucked ferociously as soon as he attempted to settle himself into the saddle. Finally, she steadfastly refused to obey any instructions conveyed through the knees and boots. Eventually, Arthur kicked her hard in the belly as he lost his temper.
“Horse! That’s enough!”
Arthur dismounted with a thunderous face and decided to take the horse’s training back to basics. He knew he had two options: he could use brutal methods that would force her to bow to his demands, or he could convince her that she could accede to his demands with dignity. He decided to take the easier option.
The young man placed a halter over the head and nose of the horse and allowed her a lead of about twenty feet. Then, with a piece of whippy cane about three feet in length, Arthur forced her to circle around him, while flicking the cane to let her know that it could be used as a method of punishment, if she refused to obey his instructions. Within half an hour, the horse had decided that she would be compliant and was happy to walk, trot, or canter in a circle as her new master required.
Then, having demonstrated that he intended to become dominant, Arthur made a further attempt to mount.
For one short moment, the animal stood perfectly still and was contemplating her options. She was obviously undecided as to whether she should resume the contest.
But sanity eventually prevailed, and the mare showed her intelligence by making no further efforts to dislodge her master. Arthur had won the battle of wills so, from that point onwards, the beast would always be compliant when Arthur mouthed her newly acquired name, Horse.
Two hours later, they went on their first amicable ride, a journey along the shore of the lake with no particular destination in mind.
Riding along the margins of the lake, while permitting Horse to have her head and determine their destination, gave Arthur a sense of peace that had been missing from his life for months. He had been engrossed with his duties towards his sister and her friend, and to Eamonn, so he hadn’t known a carefree moment since their capture. Now, with the wind in his hair and bound for nowhere in particular, Arthur felt his guilt and troubles begin to fall away.
Eventually, Arthur resumed control of his steed, and they cantered up towards the margins of Mirk Wood. Then, about a mile or so outside the forest, he saw a bald, treeless tumulus off in the distance. Such a hill was a rare sight in these flat expanses, for it seemed to rise straight out of the dense vegetation and swamps. Piqued with curiosity, he turned his mount towards the hill.
Once he was under the shelter of the trees, he discovered that Mirk Wood was far wilder and denser here, where he was away from the western edge. Even hunters didn’t venture this far into the woods, so Arthur was surprised when his mare stumbled upon a footpath beaten flat by feet that had traveled in a single file towards the low hill. She turned to follow the enigmatic path, grateful to be separated from the worst of the thickly woven climbers, shrubs, and stinging branches that created impenetrable barriers on either side of the track. Without any effort, Arthur imagined that the forest had packed itself around the track, leaving the earth untouched in a manner that made the Briton shudder.
“Well, Horse, has the Green Man built this path that leads up from the lake?” Arthur asked his steed. “Never mind! We’ll continue onwards and see where it leads.”
Horse seemed relieved and almost skipped as she walked along.
The heat generated beneath the glowering trees beat down on them, and autumn seemed far away when Arthur arrived at the bottom of the hill. The rising ground was surprisingly smooth, perhaps because the track widened as the thick vegetation relinquished its hold on the smooth slopes. As with the path, there seemed to be no logical reason why vegetation didn’t grow there. With his overactive imagination, Arthur saw himself mounting a smooth, stone skull leading upwards towards a broad forehead, where he would discover what this strange place was meant to be.
Eventually, the flinty earth gave way to sheets of shale that had been laid down in ages long gone, even before the earth had cooled. Mirk Wood could not gain a purchase on this bare stone, for even the strongest, most deadly of invasive vines cannot force its way through a foot of solid rock.
Putting aside his superstition, Arthur kicked his mare into movement, even though she turned her head back to look at him and eyed his calf longingly. Then another light kick reminded her that he wasn’t for eating, and she moved forward in a relatively good temper.
A huge monolith was standing at the front edge of the shelf of rock which served as the crown of the hill. The stone was three times the height of a man, and it seemed to be wedged into a fissure in the shelf. What craft had been used to move such a massive weight? And where had it come from? Arthur reached over Horse’s back and stroked the monolith. He knew as soon as he felt the surface that it was made of sandstone and was roughly hacked into shape, probably with stone axes. He shook his head in wonder.
Beyond the monument, an odd structure seemed to have sprung out of the bare earth in one of the rare spots that wasn’t entirely shale-covered. Arthur had seen such structures in the land around the Giant’s Circle in Britain, when Eamonn had dragged him on an impromptu holiday around the southwest. The standing stones, with a large flat rock over the top, had once been covered with earth and sod, and Arthur had been told by an old woman that the Little People had built these structures as graves.
Now, partly open to the elements, the structure offered a little shade from the baking sun, so Arthur decided to dismount and explore the area.
Leading Horse, he soon discovered a gaping black hole that plunged into darkness within the dolmen. Arthur resisted an overwhelming urge to throw himself in Horse’s saddle and ride back the way he had come as quickly as she could carry him. He would have acted on his instincts had he not heard wood being dragged over stone.
Almost unbidden, the Dragon Knife leapt into his left hand while his right hand continued to hold on to Horse’s reins. The animal’s ears were pricked, and she whickered quietly while scraping at the dirt with her left front hoof in obvious nervousness. As his eyes fixed on the black hole, he saw a figure that suddenly materialized out of an invisible passage like a conjuring trick. A knotted tree branch, long enough to use as a serviceable stick and polished by the hand until it had a honey-rich sheen, was being used to assist the figure to climb up a series of narrow steps until, shaggy and dusty, it stood upright in front of him.
“Well! A visitor! Welcome, sir, as you’re the first to come here in years. Sit! Sit! Weigh down the reins with a stone. Does your horse need water? No? Do you need water? No! Or food? Please—sit on that stone. It’s clean and safe, I swear to you.”
The gabbling figure was a small man who seemed even more dwarflike because he was much bent and twisted by a disease that caused his joints to swell and his fingers and toes to twist. He wore a dusty, coarse homespun robe of brown wool. A twist of hide was tied around his gaunt waist to expose his hollow chest and grotesquely humped back. The man’s body could have belonged to a dwarf or one of the small creatures that lived in the wild and wreaked mischief on humankind. Yet, the small man’s face was very human, although it was worn and old. Arthur knew by the soft shine of the old man’s washed-out blue eyes that he was some kind of hermit or outcast.
“My name is Arthur, and I come from Britain, a country from far away across the great sea. I serve Stormbringer, the Sae Dene captain who has just destroyed the army of the Geat commander, Olaus Healfdene. Are you a Geat? What is your name, my friend?”
As asked, Arthur hunkered down on his heels so the small man could see him, eye to eye. Arthur deliberately forced his face into an expression of friendliness and curiosity without any of the caution or surprise he was feeling.
“Why! My name is Thorvald! Very grand, isn’t it? I think I’m Dene, but who can tell? And what does it matter anyway? I’ve been here for such a very long time, fulfilling my duties to my master, that I forget the life I had before I came to the temple.”
“The temple!” Arthur exclaimed. “What temple? There’s nothing up here but those large stones.”
“Oh, no, Master Arthur. Can’t you see the temple down there? It was here before my master came. And he said that his master was just one of a long line of priests who kept the altar clean and swept out the dusty corners. We can’t have spiders in the shrine, can we? Would you like to see the temple?”
He’s crazed from loneliness, or . . . By the gods, how long has he been here? Arthur wondered, then smiled as guilelessly as he could.
“Show me, Thorvald. Whom does the temple worship?”
“Can’t you guess, Arthur?”
Thorvald skipped down the steps with surprising agility, when Arthur considered the man’s twisted feet. At the bottom of four stone steps, a short passageway of unmortared stone led to a conical room directly under the dolmen. Light slanted through the low doorway and marched towards a stone altar made of a single slab of crudely cut stone.
Arthur cautiously examined the room. The construction was coarse but very clever so the ceiling was a misshapen dome, yet the roof had all the strength of that architectural form. The only furniture was an altar, on which a statue of a man fighting a bull held pride of place.
The other objects in the room were a bowl of water on the floor near the entrance and Thorvald’s sleeping pallet. He obviously lived here, as well as caring for the shrine. A broom of twigs leaned against the entry wall, and a small box nested beside the sleeping pallet.
“Wash your hands, Arthur. Mithras expects every warrior to come to his house with clean hands.”
Somehow, Arthur felt the importance of obeying this harmless madman. What could it hurt to follow his instructions? The god of soldiers, Mithras, was a powerful deity who asked no evil from those who worshipped him.
“And now, Arthur, as the god watches, it’s time for you to do those things that you were sent here to do. My master told me that someone was coming today. An owl and a raven came by turns into the sanctuary, so I knew you’d soon need my services. You are only the second man who has come to Mithras in sixty years.”
Sixty years? Dear God, how old can this man be?
“Who was the other man?” Arthur asked. “Did he tell you his name?” Somehow, it seemed important to keep this eerie old man talking.
“I should remember . . . Was it wolf? No, that wasn’t it! Bee wolf? No! Beowulf, that was his name!”
Thorvald was very pleased with himself, so Arthur was quite shocked to hear the name of this legendary hero spoken of as if he was a real person.
“But he was real, Arthur, very much so! He was a warrior who came to Mithras because he doubted himself. The god spoke to him and gave him what he needed.”
“Beowulf!” Arthur muttered.
“Come to the altar now, Arthur, and kneel before it. The god will show us what he wants you to know.”
The Briton reluctantly allowed himself to be led to the altar, where he knelt awkwardly on the rough floor. “You don’t have to close your eyes, Arthur, for I know that a warrior is always careful.”
Thorvald knelt beside him and watched a finger of light on the wall. The silence was so thick that Arthur remained quiet, even when the stones under his knees began to cause him pain.
“You’ve been lost, Child of the Sword, lost for a long time.”
Arthur actually jumped to hear the voice that came from the priest’s throat, a voice far deeper and more masculine than Thorvald’s tenor treble.
“You’ve been confused about your place in the world, especially here, but the time of confusion is over.”
Arthur turned to look at Thorvald’s face, but his eyes were turned up so that only the whites were visible and his senses appeared to have fled.
“You must be thinking that I am a madman, but what you think today matters very little. Your page has already been written by the gods and only by denying yourself, as a man and as the foster son of Bedwyr, can you change your fate.”
How could he possibly know Bedwyr’s name?
“You will soon become the King of Winter and survive the disease that kills so many. You will be the ruin of many kings. You will return to your own lands, but nothing will be the same as it was, so you will carve out your new kingdom from Saxon earth and Saxon blood. And your kingdom will endure long into the future, although many men will think you are Dene or Angle. But you will not care, because you will save the world you know and love for the good of all your people. This goal is enough, Arthur.”
Despite himself, Arthur wanted to believe the Voice, but he had denied the worth of magic years before, and he sensed that only a demon could know him as well as this priest.
“It is your duty and your fate to save Stormbringer from the Crow King, but you must always beware of corruption. Even the Red Queen will be ensnared, but you must remain clear-sighted. You are the Last Dragon, God’s servant who is the ruin of kings and a master of the cold. If you stay true to the task that two fathers have bequeathed to the future, you will not fail in your appointed tasks, even though, in times to come, your deeds will be confused with those of your birth father. Do not fear what was, for it can be again. But only if your heart remains true.”
“But I will see Britain again?” Arthur asked, with his eyes full of longi
ng and his voice harsh with pain.
“You will see Britain again, even if you are corrupted along the way. The page is already written. Ask me no more now, for I have nothing further to say.”
But you haven’t really said anything, Arthur’s mind screamed in frustration.
Then, Thorvald’s eyes returned to their normal position before closing into a deep and dreamless sleep. Try as he might, Arthur couldn’t waken him. Eventually, to save the little man from harm, Arthur placed the slight form onto his pallet and covered him neatly with a threadbare blanket.
Despite arguments from his rational self, Arthur’s heart had been touched by his experience. Perhaps that was why he took Olaus’s torc from his tunic and laid it out as a gift to Mithras and to Thorvald on the center of the altar, where the light pooled brilliantly before dusk.
The return journey to the encampment was uneventful, and Arthur wondered that he had considered Mirk Wood to be wilder here than those places where Stormbringer’s army had breached it. Nor was he a great distance from the site of the Geat camp. Before the last light had flickered out over the lake, he was sitting at Stormbringer’s fire and attempting to describe the hill, the dolmen, the shrine, and the old hermit. For the first time in months, Arthur stayed awake and spent the evening drinking with Stormbringer, Hoel, and Thorketil, talking strategies while Ole and a brace of young warriors listened with rapt attention.
The next morning, aware that they would be leaving Lake Wener on the following day, Ole and his friends mounted horses from the picket line and set off in search of the shrine of Mithras. Although they rode up and down the margins of Mirk Wood, they never saw the naked hill. Nor did they find any trace of the path that had led Arthur into the wilderness. Puzzled, they returned to the campsite and told Arthur that he must have been mistaken about the directions he had taken.
But both Arthur and Ole knew that there had been no mistake. The shrine had vanished, as if it had never existed.
And, perhaps, it never had.
