The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "You are back!" She came round the desk to embrace each of us—Morgan, then me, Arthur last—and secured the tent flap behind us. "Sit, have somewhat to drink, tell me what has passed—"

  "In good time," said Arthur, more curtly than was strictly needful. "There are more pressing matters than travellers' tales just now…" He nodded to Morgan, who took from beneath her cloak the leather-wrapped bundle she had been carrying. "This is sent you by the queen of the Sidhe," he said, ignoring Gweniver's astonished glance from the bundle to his face and back again, as she received the gift from Morgan's hands. "It is called Bratach Ban, you are bidden use it only in the hour of greatest need. It may be waved three times only to summon help in such an hour."

  "But what—"

  "As I was told, so I tell you." Arthur was giving her even less sword-room than was usual with him when they were at odds, and I—who had not known they were at odds just now—wondered why. "And you may come to need that help sooner than we may like, or look for. See now—"

  He shrugged off his cloak and took her place at the desk, where a map had been laid under the transparent writing surface.

  "We cannot come down the Strath to Caerdroia," he said, his finger following the line of the glen on the map. "Too many troops, too many fortresses, not to mention Ratherne—and Edeyrn sitting there like a spider." The finger stopped beside the notation 'Nandruidion.' "Still, there are other ways, and sometimes it will be seen that the surest route is not always the shortest."

  "What in all the hells are you talking about?" Gweniver had regained her self-composure,—besides, she had been 'customed to command of the forces this month past, and it was, after all, her own tent.

  Arthur unbent so far as to favor her with a grin, and she rolled her eyes.

  "You will take the army down to the mouth of the Strath, to come as far into it as ever you can without engaging Edeyrn—or Owein, or whoever else may be sent against you. You may keep Keils with you"—his voice seemed suspiciously devoid of inflection as he said so—"and Tari shall come with me, along with some of the Companions. Oh, and a few thousand horse and foot or so; easily spared."

  "And then?"

  "And then you will sit there in the mouth of the glen—until I join you."

  I was beginning to have a very first inkling of his plan—a slowly dawning and horrible one—and I opened my mouth to protest, and then shut it again. Well, he is Rex Bellomm, after all, not I…

  But Gweniver had not yet had any such glimpsing. "And just where, if I may ask, will you be joining us from? Where will you have been all this time, with Tari and some of the Companions and a few thousand horse and foot—however easily spared?"

  Morgan answered for him. "Taking Caerdroia. From the Loom-ward side." She and her brother met in glance, and he smiled.

  Gweniver did not smile. "Did the Sidhe steal away your wits instead of your soul? Artos"—and that alone was clear indicator of her alarm, almost never did she call him by his shortname—"with very good reason is Caerdroia unguarded from the south: because the Loom cannot be crossed by an army in strength."

  Arthur grinned, and I ran a hand over my face. Oh aye, here we go yet another time…

  "All the more reason Edeyrn will not be thinking to look for us to make a crossing… Any road, he is at Ratherne, and you will be keeping him far too busy for his thoughts to be turning westwards." How busy, none of us just then could have dreamed…

  Morgan had been studying the map. "Well, Arthur; but there are no passes leading south-to-north you may make use of."

  "And none needed, not even at the last." He grinned again at our perplexment, and Gweniver's infuriated stare. "Call the commanders to the King's tent after the nightmeal; I promise I shall tell you all my plan, and you may speak against it to your hearts' content. But now I must go to my uncle, and to Merlynn; there are things they must hear."

  When he had gone, Gweniver stared at the bundle still clutched in her hands, then up at Morgan and myself. I squirmed a bit under that glacial gray stare, but Morgan looked back untroubled.

  "Can he do this?"

  Arthur's sister shrugged. "True it is he has footed trickier measures amid winter hills," she said slowly. "But this is one dance for which I would not myself care to call the tune."

  Gweniver laughed then, a little sourly, a little admiringly. "Nor fee the piper when the reel is ended."

  No need to give you all the boresome themes of that night's meeting: Suffice you to know that Arthur's plan was gone over in most minutest detail, hailed and hated both; and that he had his way in the end—but that you knew already.

  As for Uthyr the King—to whom Arthur had on bended knee presented the holy Sword, and who had held it hiltwise against his chest, folded in his arms like a lover or a child, all that day and evening—he spoke no word of aye or nay, only looked on his nephew with shining eyes. Ygrawn, seated beside her lord as ever, was more vocal—again as ever—and put to her son several questions every bit as edged and pointed as that Sword.

  Arthur answered her as he had answered all his other inquisitors: with a cool, smiling patience—softsauder even, when it was needed—that seemed to show that, to him at least, the thing was already done. And next morning it began, the armies dividing neatly as if he had been a shepherder sending herd-dogs down a line to part his flocks, like the hair either side of a comb.

  Well, more to one side, was that particular parting: Most of the troops were retained by Gweniver and Keils; those who rode with Arthur only a few thousands, as he had said. But for his plan no more were needed; fast and fewer were his watchwords. You must think of a letter Y, lying upon its side—or better still, the three strokes of the Holy Awen—the Center stroke being the line of the Loom, the left-hand stroke the vast open gap called the Pass of the Arrows, and the right-hand one the vale of the Avon Dia itself.

  "Gwennach and Keils will draw Edeyrn's forces down the Strath to engage, but will not engage," Arthur had said, to murmurous agreement. "When the Marbh-draoi sees that some of us have broken off from the main body, he will send reserves down Pass of the Arrows to bar us, thinking that we are thinking to take that way to the sea." His hand moved on the wall-map; that was two arms of the Awen told off…

  "But we will vanish before ever they come in sight of us," he had continued. "We will go up into the Loom and follow the summit ridge, to come down upon Caerdroia from behind. Such garrisons as there are will all be upon the walls and at the gates, and none will be thinking that doom can come also from the hills." His finger traced lovingly the center line of the glyph. "Through here—we shall surprise them."

  Above the tumult, Merlynn's voice carried clear as the hai atton, pitched to Arthur's ear but heard by all.

  "And may yet find our footing on shifting sands."

  And so we did.

  Along the line of the Avon Dia, that great and mighty river, right up against the banks at the nearest and perhaps twenty miles off at the farthest, runs the Loom. Not the highest nor yet the grandest mountains on Tara, the Loom holds a special place in the hearts of Kelts, for it was to these mountains that Brendan, saint and astrogator, first did lead his starfarers, in that wide valley called Strath Mor that the Hui Corra beached her boats.

  The Loom is then a kind of homeplace, even if one has ever been there, never seen it, even, in life but in pictures only: More a tangle of rugged, jagged hills than real mountains, no peak standing more than six or seven thousand feet above the plain save Eryri alone, it is a shaggy, friendly hound of a range. But in winter, the Loom can be as evil as the End-lands of Gwynedd, and that is evil indeed: a very strait country, with little room for ease and none for error.

  So, naturally, it was to be over this appalling ground, in the last days before Brighnasa, that Arthur should choose to lead us. Though I love winter above all other seasons save autumn alone, I hope never again to be in such pass; hear me Goddess! And may a merciful dan forbid it…

  The Dakdak people have a legend of hell as a f
rozen mountain, where even the air is frosted solid; well, I will tell you, the high Loom in winter is not so very far off it. The ground was iron, the glaze on bare tree and rough stone as slick as silver. Any stream that was not solid white ice was racing black water, the trees and low scrub plated with rime, and we had little to eat, and no way to cook it if we had.

  We swarmed up into this dubious safety just as Arthur had planned, barely unseen, only just in time: Our scouts had noted the snow-cloud raised by the oncoming enemy reserves, swift-footing it down Pass of the Arrows, led by one Sennen Vannoch—a competent if none too imaginative captain, one not numbered among Edeyrn's fanatical loyalists; we could probably turn him to our side in time to come… I shook myself. There was a good deal more to be worrying over just now than the loyalties of Theocracy tools…

  For one thing, the horses,—we did not love having to drag the poor beasts on this hell-march—bad enough having to endure it ourselves—but we would need even the few hundred mounts we had brought, once we came in the end to Caerdroia. But I felt sorry for the animals even so.

  A more immediate worry: I had feared, and was by no means alone in my fearing, that the wake we had left of churned and trodden snow could be read by a talpa. But Arthur seemed unconcerned, and, as ever, he was right: No sooner had we vanished into the tangle of dales and fells that marked Loom-end than a storm came up at our backs, a storm that laid down so much snow so very swiftly that an hour after we had passed, by the time Sennen's column had reached where we had been, there was no mark of boot of hoof or paw. Cabal's paw only; no other hound had been permitted to accompany us, and he bounded along through the snow grinning and happy as only a dog can be.

  Not only had the storm risen so auspiciously, but it seemed somehow to halt there, spilling out snow, covering our passage deeper into the Dales: keeping Sennen's troops from turning the Loom-end to hit our own main army, and also delaying Owein (as we heard later) in his march from Ratherne. Strange, that; but Morgan, whom I challenged on this matter, merely smiled.

  It was so cold that I wept as I walked—we all walked as much as we could manage, both to spare our mounts for the battle at journey's end and to keep ourselves warmer by exertion; though I would prefer even now to think it was but the wind drove tears out of my eyes, and not my own self-pity. Beneath our feet, snow squeaked with the dryness of the air, and made small hard lumps in the shoes of the horses. Even the fine hairs within our nostrils froze as we breathed, and if we moved too fast our lungs stuck such sgians into our sides as to bid us slow our pace.

  There was no track what way we were bound, only the sheep-trails; we were relying on guides drawn from the district, stout shepherders of the Dales, who hated Edeyrn for his long cruelties to the folk thereabouts; and they led us along the summit ridge that ran like a knifeback from Skirrid in the east to Mount Eagle that overhung the great bay below Caerdroia, many miles to the west.

  That first night's march was torture, plain and simple. The wind was strong enough to lean on, and in our weariness we longed to do so; far westaways, ahead of the storm, just barely visible on the edge of sight, Eagle's three horns were tipped with fire. Behind us, Skirrid glowed weirdly green in that sunset, the HolyMountain,—all the uplands glowed.

  We camped that next day in Silverdale, went on night after night, dull and hungry and plodding, to the greatest dan of all our time thus far on Tara. For that camp, a week of the march, was in Deepdale, only a valley ridge away from Nandruidion itself, at whose mouth stood Ratherne where Edeyrn dwelled. In clementer weather all that country might well have been alive with the Marbh-draoi's troops, and we stole glances at Morgan, wondering how long her magic could hold round us like a concealing cloak.

  "Long enough, I hope, cariad," she said when I pressed her; she glanced to the north with a distracted air, as if sensing something none of the rest of us could register. "But let us not linger here; I fear time runs short indeed."

  But more than that she would not say.

  So we went hastily on—or as hastily as might be, through snow to our knees and rockfaces even a hill-goat might think twice about tackling; and came into Darkdale on the tenth day of marching, before the sun was up,—there to lie through the day in secrecy, to gather strength for the final pull.

  "Down to Caerdroia from the Loom proper is but one way," said Arthur, as six or eight of us Companions huddled close under the scant shelter of a lichened rock-wall. "And it a narrow and twisting one: the Way of Souls, that leads down from the nemeton of Ni-maen. A small narrow valley with a track passable for horses, and Betwyr, with Tanwen, will lead our horse down that way; some of the foot as well. Tarian will take the most of the foot down beside these Falls of Yarin"—he ran a frost-reddened finger over the line on the map, where, on the far eastern edge of Caerdroia, a stream coming down off Eagle's shoulder falls in leaping cascades over wooded cliffs. "Alannagh and Tryffin, you will second her…" He paused a long moment.

  "And you, Artos?" I prompted, though in truth I dreaded to hear his intent.

  "As for me, and the rest of the foot—we will come down into Turusachan itself."

  "Not possible!" said Tryffin. "There is no way down those cliffs—"

  "Truly,—but there is a way under them." He smiled at the sudden silence that fell; clearly he had our full attention. "Aye, a secret way into the City from the Loom side. It is called the Nantosvelta."

  From out of the mists of my long-ago days at Tinnavardan a memory stirred vaguely.

  "The Nantosvelta—Artos, that is of the very first days of Keltia, it may not even exist anymore! Even if it does, sure it is to have lain unused all these centuries—how can you think you will come through?"

  "Ah. I do not know, then; I can but try."

  "And be entombed under Eagle as the likeliest outcome," I said with some heat.

  Before he could reply Tryffin plucked at his sleeve. "What is this Nantosvelta? I for one have never heard it spoken of."

  Arthur did not look at him. "A tunnel leading under the Loom; one end of it lies somewhere in Wolfdale, just beyond Black Sail and the Ill Step, and the other—well, the other end emerges in the Keep itself."

  A silence even more deathly than before took us all then. I could see why Arthur wished to try this—a band of warriors silently bursting forth in the heart of the Keep of Keltia would shake Turusachan to its roots, and sorely trouble Edeyrn far off in Ratherne—but I misliked it more than I could say. There seemed far too many unknowns for even Arthur's idea of safety…

  "Nay, consider," he said in a voice of purest reason. "Our spies have told us there is only a force in the City sufficient to keep the population in fear and obedience. All the rest are with Edeyrn or Owein or whoever. Now even after such a march as this we Companions should not find that impossible to deal with, nor the auxiliaries who have marched with us thus far, not so? Crossics to cribbins the folk of Caerdroia will throw their lot in with us, once we have liberated them. They know well who we are, believe it, and that we are here on Tara."

  Now this was vintage Arthur, a wine Morgan and Tarian and I, at least, had learned long since to be wary of; too easy could it intoxicate the careless or the willing—and had us, in time past, to our chagrin. But the others were not so proof as we, and I could see how the idea had taken hold of them, firing their minds.

  Well, in for a scantling, in for a score … I heard myself , with astonishing firmness, "That may be, Artos, but you will not be going that way yourself. Morgan and I will take the Nantosvelta; you will come down the Way of Souls with Betwyr. We are not risking you another time beneath the hill."

  Arthur was silent, and that always boded ill. I had made mind to speak again, or to urge Morgan into it, when I heard him sigh and give a little laugh.

  "Merlynn said you would do so, Talyn," he admitted "Though I laid coin you would not win…"

  "Ah well," I said consolingly. "Did I not hear you once say you would never again enter a town save that you had reduced it first?"r />
  He laughed until he choked, then, still grinning, shook his head ruefully.

  "The memory of bards, that my words should so come back upon me—Very well, Talyn, you have me there. Only take Betwyr with you, and Tanwen and I shall manage very well on our own."

  "Well enough, Artos," I said, a little dismayed now that I had won. "But how shall we find the entrance to this road?"

  Morgan stirred beside me. "It shall find us."

  We spoke no more just then, but settled in for the long wait until darkness fell again, stalking such sleep as we might. We dared not light the quartz-hearths, for fear of being caught out by the heat-traces rising. No hearths of course meant no hot supper,—not that there was much left in our packs to serve for supper: only some crumbled pastais, half-hardened cheese-rinds, a little ale. Even the fodder for the horses was all but gone,—only Cabal, who had hunted endless snow-hares along the march, had managed to keep his ribs as well-covered as they were when we had started out. But, beast or warrior, if we wished to fill our bellies for tomorrow's nightmeal we must seek our suppers at the tables of Caerdroia.

  When dawn struck, so too did Arthur; like something out of a fever-dream, save that it was so cold, the attack began.

  We had been moving into our positions since sunset of the previous day: Tarian had brought her forces to the head of the Falls of Yarin, so that by dawn they should have been in position on the water-terraces, hidden deep in the bordering woods. Arthur and Tanwen would by now have begun to lead the horse into the high narrow valley called Calon Eryri, Heart of Eagle, out of which led the Way of Souls, the ancient funeral route of the rulers of Keltia to the harrowing-ground at Ni-maen.

  And Morgan, Betwyr and I stood in Wolfdale at midnight, staring at the valley walls and wondering what to do.

  Morgan appeared unconcerned, however, and we took our cue from her. She sat now a little distance apart from the rest of us, waiting for the moon to rise; when at last it cleared the great bulk of Black Sail to the east, all Wolfdale seemed bathed in silver light, and as if the light had been a summons, Morgan rose to her feet.