‘Go and look, then. Those trails I leave to you. Take the best hunters with you; you’ll need them.’
‘Sa, that means my old Bron for one. Some of the best hunters in Dun Monaidh are hammering from within on the slave-house door at this moment.’
‘Men of the little Dark People?’ Gault interrupted.
‘The little Dark People are the best hunters in the world.’ The dry smile was in Sinnoch’s voice, though his face was lost now in darkness. ‘And as for those in the slave-house, Liadhan’s slaves do not learn to love her – even for Earth Mother’s sake.’
‘So be it then, hunt your little dark hounds.’
‘Those and others – a mongrel pack, shall we say – open to any who are not too proud to hunt with it.’
‘I will hunt with your mongrel pack,’ Phaedrus said, and decided, by the moment of sudden silence about him, that that had been a mistake. But to change now would have been an even worse mistake, and beside – surely even a prince of the Dalriads need not dance always to other men’s piping. ‘Unless I am too out of skill as a hunter,’ he added, pretending to misunderstand the silence.
And Sinnoch said with that dry amusement out of the darkness, ‘You are the Prince of the Dalriads. Surely you may hunt with any pack – even the Hounds of Hell – that you will.’
For four days Phaedrus hunted with Sinnoch’s mongrel pack, on foot or on one of the small mountain ponies they had rounded up beyond the heather hills and steep forested glens between the two great sea-lochs. But if Liadhan had passed that way, she had been too swift for them, and left no trace behind her. And on the fourth evening, when they forgathered with Conory and his band, far up the Glen of Baal’s Beacon, they, too, had had bad hunting.
They were fog-wet and bone-weary and their wounds had had little chance to heal. The dried meat that the tribes carried with them on trail had begun to run short and there had been no time to hunt for themselves, and so they were hungry. They made camp dourly, on the strip of turf and heather between the river and the forest that seemed to reach its hands towards them in the gathering shadows as though it, too, were hungry; and tended and picketed the rough-coated ponies – they dared not let them graze loose with the trees so near.
And meanwhile Phaedrus and Conory had come together, and as though the thing were arranged between them, gone downriver a short way towards the head of the loch. The rest of the camp had seen them go without surprise or remark: they had always been best content with each other’s company, as boys.
They did not speak at once of the thing that both knew had brought them out from the camp. Indeed, for a while they did not speak at all, but simply stood looking across the river to where the great hills of Caledonia caught the last red of the winter sun, while the striped cat, who had stalked after them through the heather and bog myrtle, sat down for another lick at the healing wound in her flank.
‘So – the She-Wolf is safe away into her kinsman’s hunting-runs,’ Phaedrus said moodily at last.
‘Unless Gault or Dergdian have had better hunting than we.’
‘They will not.’
‘No, I am not thinking it likely.’
‘Was it my doing? Or the dog’s? Or the chance fall of the dice?’
Conory shrugged. ‘Can the dice fall chance-wise from the God’s hand?’
‘I have wondered that, before. It is the way they cast for pairs of fighters in the arena . . . What will happen now?’
‘Nothing now, in the black of winter. You know what the tracks are like, and not even Liadhan can move a War Host over these mountains and mosses when the high passes are deep in snow and there’s no grass for the chariot ponies. But when the birch buds thicken and the burns come down in spate from the melting snows, then there will be a great hosting among the Caledones.’
Phaedrus looked round quickly. ‘It will really come to war?’
‘She is the King’s kinswoman. And do you think that the Great Mother – the Lady of the Forest, they call her – will not rise up in war-paint to protect her own? Have you forgotten that the Caledones follow the Old Way, too?’ Conory turned his head slowly, and the mocking, veiled gaze was on Phaedrus’s face. ‘You have forgotten many things in these seven years.’
‘There is time to forget many things in seven years.’
For an instant gaze held gaze, carefully blank.
Conory’s cloak had fallen back from his left shoulder, and glancing down, Phaedrus saw that the rags about his upper arm were dark and juicy. ‘That wants rebinding,’ he said.
‘I’ll see to it, by and by.’
‘Better now, while there’s still enough daylight to see by. I’ll do it for you.’ Then at something he saw on the other’s face, ‘It is not the first time that you and I have bathed each other’s hurts.’
There was a small, sharp silence, empty save for the rush and suck of the water, and the sudden desolate calling of some bird among the winter-black heather. Then Conory said slowly and deliberately, ‘Is it not?’
Phaedrus’s heart gave a small, sick lurch under his breastbone, but there was no shock of surprise in him. This was the thing between them, the thing that had brought them down here away from the camp. He tried once more, prepared to fight it to a finish, all the same. He forced a laugh. ‘There is one time that sticks in my mind above all others. But you did not have the beating, so there’s less reason for you to remember helping me wash the blood off my back after Dergdian had thrashed me for half braining him with a throw-stone.’
Conory whirled round on him. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Who should tell me? It was I that had the beating, and I remember well enough without being told.’
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ Conory said, silken-soft. ‘It was Midir who had that beating, and you are not Midir!’
‘You are out of your wits! It must be that you have the wound fever,’ Phaedrus said.
‘Both the wound and my wits are quite cool.’
‘Very well then, tell me who I am.’
The other’s hands shot out and clenched on his shoulders with that unexpected strength that he had felt before in the Cave of the Hunter. Conory’s face was thrust into his, the odd-set eyes narrowed under the traces of paint that still clung to the lids. ‘You shall tell me that!’
Phaedrus made no attempt to break the other’s hold, though with Conory’s arm wound he could have done it without much trouble. For one thing, the cat had stopped licking its flank, and was crouching ready to spring, with laid-back ears, and mask wrinkling in a silent snarl. It made no sound, it did not move, but he knew that at the first movement of his that looked hostile, it would fly at him. The added complication of being attacked by a wildcat, he felt, was more than he could handle just then.
But another kind of recklessness took him like a high wind. He did not know whether or not this was the end of the trail, but he laughed in the other’s face. ‘Sa, sa! I will tell you! My father was a Greek winemerchant, and my mother was his slave who kept his house for him. I was born a slave and bred a slave – you can see now how suitable was my choice of pack to hunt with! I was bought and sold, bought and sold, until I came into the Corstopitum Circus, and was a slave still. Most gladiators are slaves, did you know? That is what you cried “Midir!” for, five nights ago!’
‘And so Sinnoch saw you in your circus and saw the likeness – and the opportunity. Well may men call him “Sinnoch the Fox!” What price did he pay you?’
Phaedrus asked quietly, ‘Was that meant for an insult?’
‘If it seems so to you, then yes. But chiefly, I was asking a question.’
‘One that I cannot answer. I gained my wooden foil on the day he first saw me – that means freedom with honour, for a gladiator. I was free for a whole day after they had pushed me out, until the howling boredom of it drove me into a street brawl, and my freedom ended in the town gaol. If you would know how much it cost in bribes to get me out, you must ask Sinnoch – or Gault.’
‘I
am not interested in the cost of unbarring a prison door. What was your price? And in what kind? Did they buy you, or force you? Or did you come because anything was better than this howling boredom?’
‘Something of all three. Also they called in Midir to their aid. He – was a master of persuasion.’
The hands on his shoulders gave a little jerk, and released their hold. Conory let them drop limply to his sides and half turned away. ‘Midir . . . yes, of course. Nobody but he could have told you about washing off the blood of that beating . . . and the other things – all the other things. He was always thorough.’ Phaedrus saw him swallow. ‘Will you tell me something. If Midir still lives, why did they need another man to take his place?’
‘He is blind,’ Phaedrus said.
‘Blind!’ Conory’s voice sounded sick in his throat, and he made a strange little gesture, pressing the heels of his hands into his own eye-sockets as though for a moment he felt them empty. ‘So that was how she made sure of him . . .Where is he?’
‘He went back to the man he works for, a harness-maker in a Roman city far south of the Southern Wall.’
‘How long have Gault and Sinnoch known all this?’
‘Three years, I believe.’
‘And who else beside?’
‘Tuathal the Wise, Gallgoid – but he’s dead.’ (It was odd, that it had hardly struck home to him until he said the words.) ‘Two or three more.’
‘And never told me; even when the She-Wolf sent me her token last Beltane and the time came to begin sharpening our swords. I that was closer to him than most brothers.’
‘There was a great while still to wait. They are all grey-muzzles except – Gallgoid, and maybe they feared that you might do something hot-headed.’
‘Did they fear the same thing at summer’s end, when they told me the same tale as the rest of the tribe, concerning the Prince Midir come back from the dead?’ Conory’s voice had a bite to it.
‘It seemed to them good that you should be the test. If you did not know that I was not Midir, then nobody would know it. But you knew, and so I have failed.’
They had come a long way from the dangerous mood of so short a while before.
‘No,’ Conory said absently, ‘I’d not be saying that, for the test was not a fair one.’ He looked round at Phaedrus with his gentle, almost sleepy smile. ‘This arm of mine begins to ache. Is there light enough, do you think?’
A few moments later, they had scrambled down the bank and were kneeling among the tangled alder roots at the water’s edge, and Phaedrus had begun easing off the filthy rags that left dark juicy stains on his fingers as though he had been picking overripe blackberries. Conory squinted down to watch him. ‘Ach no, I would not be saying you had failed at all. Unless you make some glaring mistake, you will pass well enough – with everyone else.’
‘What mistake did I make with you?’ The last clotted fold came away, and Phaedrus stooped to cup the icy water in his palm and bathe the stale blood from the wound before he could see how it did.
‘More than one; small things enough. When Gault was ordering away the hunting-bands, it came to you that you did not know these hills, and there was an instant when you did not know what to do. You covered up well, though; to choose Sinnoch’s mongrel pack to hunt with was just the kind of thing Midir would have done. He was always one to take a devil’s delight in seeing how far he could go in outraging the Grey-Muzzles and the customs of the tribe.’
‘As you do in seeing how wild a fashion you can make the young braves follow for their own befoolment?’
‘It is always amusing to see what can be done in that way,’ Conory said, catching his breath a little at Phaedrus’s probing fingers on the wound, and glancing up at the striped cat who had remained at the top of the bank and was now crouching there with her face a little above his. She was staring into some inner distance of her own, but when he put up his hand, she rubbed her broad furry head into his palm. ‘They will tell you it is not possible to tame a wildcat, and most times it will be true, but not – quite always. I found Shân as a kit, before her eyes were well open. Her mother had been killed by an eagle, aiee! a great fight that must have been – and the rest of the litter were dead for lack of her. But there was still a spark of life in this one and so I took her. She bit my thumb to the bone in the hour that she first had teeth enough to bite with, but now – you see?’ He smiled reflectively, and Phaedrus knew that he was taking refuge from the thought of Midir alive and blind, until he had had time to get used to it. ‘Only the first time I put a leash on her and brought her into the Fire Hall on my shoulder, every fool in Dun Monaidh thought that Conory was starting a new fashion . . .The Healer Priests were busy cleansing bites and clawings for the best part of a moon before the thing wore itself out.’
‘You had best take this to the Healer Priest, when we get back,’ Phaedrus said, ‘but it will do for now . . .Well, she proved her ancestry when you flung her in Logiore’s face. Did you think to see her again with the life in her striped hide?’
Conory gave a small, one-shouldered shrug. ‘It was a risk we all took. She is a fighting animal, as we all are. But it was good to hear that wicked triumph-song of hers, afterwards.’
He returned to the thing they had been speaking of before Shân came into it. ‘Only small mistakes. But I would not be needing any mistake at all. Way back in the Cave of the Hunter – what name did you answer to, before you answered to Midir?’
‘In the arena, they called me Red Phaedrus.’ He was tearing a strip from the end of his cloak. It would make a better bandage than that foul rag, anyway.
‘Then, Red Phaedrus, tell me – in the circus, were you wont to draw your weapons from some common store, or did you each have your own?’
‘You do not have anything of your own, in the Gladiators’ School, save the clothes you stand up in, and the gewgaws that your patrons and admirers give you; but as far as maybe, you stick always to the same sword.’
‘Sa. Then you will know how it is with weapons; to the eye they may be as like as one grain of sand is like another, but each comes from the armourer a little different in balance, with some nature of its own that no other weapon has, and your hand grows to know it, so that if you take up another in its stead, though there is no difference to the eye, your hand knows.’
Phaedrus nodded.
‘Midir and I were two halves of the same nut when we were boys. I was not sure at first, that night in the Cave of the Hunter, but when we put our arms round each other and made a show for all those onlookers, then I was sure. The balance of the blade was not right.’
‘Why did you not speak out, then?’
‘It was in my mind to see what would happen – to learn what you were, since you were not Midir. Also it was not in my mind to wreck the uprising we had waited and planned for so long, and perhaps be the death of many friends.’
Phaedrus was binding up the wound, and his eyes and Conory’s were very close together. ‘And now? If you denounce me now, you will split the People of the Horse from top to bottom, and Liadhan will walk back unchecked into the red ruins of her queendom.’
‘If we needed the Prince Midir in throwing off the She-Wolf’s yoke – we will be needing the Prince Midir still.’
Phaedrus tied off the knot. ‘You will stand with me, then?’
‘When a man binds up a gash in my hide for me, I must be counting him as a friend. And most times I stand with my friends. Is it so with you?’
‘Ach, don’t you be putting overmuch trust in my friendship – we learn to take such trifles easily, in the arena,’ Phaedrus said, lightly and harshly. ‘The only man I ever counted for a friend, I killed in winning my wooden foil.’
They looked at each other an instant, and then Conory said, ‘It’s a chance I’ll take.’
They went back towards the camp, with their arms lightly across each other’s shoulders. And this time it was not altogether for show. The striped cat stalked ahead, tail uplifted lik
e a banner.
Gault and his band had just ridden in to the forgathering as they got back to the camp. Well on into the night, Cuirithir and a knot of horsemen came in with word that Dergdian would be in next day. None of them had had any success with their hunting. And later still, when the meagre food had been eaten in dulled silence, and the weary men were already huddling into their cloaks and the heather wind-brakes close about the fires, Gault gathered the leaders about him, and kept them waiting until he was ready to speak, then looked up from drawing in the ash with a bit of stick and said abruptly, ‘We have two moons – three if the spring comes later, but assuredly no more, to have our swords whetted before the Caledones take the war-trail. It is time enough, but no more than time enough. Therefore, the sooner we bring the King to the Crowning Stone, the better, for when that is done—’ The wolf-yellow gaze whipped round, singling Phaedrus from the rest, so that for the first time Gault’s words were directly for him: ‘The sooner that is done, and he has taken the Princess Murna for his woman, the sooner we shall be free for the whetting of our swords.’
Phaedrus had sprung up before the last words were spoken. ‘The Princess Murna?’
The wolf-stare never wavered. ‘Who else?’
‘It was not in the bargain!’
‘What bargain?’ Gault’s voice had the ring of iron. ‘If Liadhan had not escaped to her left-hand kin, the thing might not have been so direly needful, at least not so urgent. As it is, you must take the Royal Daughter for your woman, even as your great grandsire took the Royal Woman of the Epidii, that the two people might become one, and you must take her as soon as you are crowned King. The little Dark People, the Women’s Side, all those who make their foremost prayers to Earth Mother, will accept you the more readily if you hold by the ancient right, as well as by the right of the Sun People, and you must make your claim strong, before any rise to question it.’
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