Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge

by J. P. Reedman

  Ardhu made a dash for the tethered horses, who were dancing in fright, pulling on their hemp leads. He grabbed Gal’havad by the arm, dragging the youth behind him. “Get on, boy!” he said, roughly shoving the youth onto his mare. “Ride, ride for the East with all speed!”

  “But we… surely we must fight these traitors!” cried Gal’havad.

  “If we must, but only if there is no choice—they outnumber us by many. We must not be stupid and arrogant. Now ride!”

  “But you are the King… !”

  “Just ride, Gal’havad!”

  Ardhu struck the flank of Gal’havad’s steed with the flat of his sword and the horse thundered away into the darkness. Seeing that the mare had reached the gleaming ribbon of the Ridgeway, he flung himself on his own steed and dashed after, with Hwalchmai and Per-Adur galloping madly at his back, shields raised to protect him from spear-casts or arrows. Bohrs lagged behind, having dragged Pelahan onto his steed; the overburdened animal whinnied and fought the bridle, while both men cursed and pummelled its flanks with their heels. Khaw was thundering towards them, his band closing rank around their treacherous lord, their eyes filling with bloodlust as they saw their quarry within reach.

  Suddenly Pelahan whipped his hood back from his face and faced the mob. The moonlight illuminated his skull-like head, made black hollows of his eyes and an unholy cavern of his mouth and ruined cheek. He pointed accusingly at the warriors with skeletal hands and let out the most terrible ear-splitting cry, a high, thin ululation that rose and fell on the wind.

  The superstitious men, not expecting to see such a tormented visage, yelled in fear and flung up their hands to make signs against evil. “It is a grave-wight!” one yelped, pulling his horse back with all his strength. “He has come from the barrow and is guarding the Pendraec and his men!”

  “Don’t be stupid… he is one of them!” snarled Khaw… but the moment’s hesitation gave Bohrs and Pelahan the time they needed to escape. Bohrs got his beast under control and made a mad dash for the Ridgeway path. Pelahan bounced behind him on the straw-stuffed matt bound to the horse, clinging with bony talons to Bohrs’ belt.

  “By the gods, man,” Bohrs yelled over his shoulder, “you did well tonight, unsavoury though you may seem. But… promise me one thing… promise you’ll never scream like that in my ear again! Nud’s Clouds, I nearly shat myself!”

  *****

  The companions thundered along the Ridgeway under the night sky with its cold unblinking stars, the eyes of dispassionate watching Ancestors. Ardhu called out to Gal’havad, and the youth drew on the reins of his steed and fell back alongside his father. “Do you think they will follow us?” the young man asked. His eyes were bright with both fear and excitement; Ardhu could see the stars mirrored on their surfaces, giving them an unworldly silver sheen, and he shuddered and touched the talismans he wore for safety, though not for himself but for the boy.

  “They will follow,” he said gruffly. “And look, down at the bottom of the valley. More of them.”

  Gal’havad stared down from the height of the ridge. In the darkness below he could see a line of flickering torches. “These traitors deserve to die.” His voice was gentle, almost a sigh, but there was a cold finality in it that made Ardhu shudder again.

  “We will try not to engage them,” Ardhu said, “but to outrun them. They are drunk; some will lose interest when the fire of the mead goes cold in their bellies. As for the rest… if we move swiftly we will come to Khiltarna, the Land Beyond the Hills, an area where chiefs are loyal to me. These brigands would not dare step beyond its border for fear of retribution.”

  The group galloped on, keeping a close eye on the torches swarming like angry bees at the lip of the hill. They heard some shouts from behind, but then nothing… no further taunts, no hoof beats.

  Bohrs laughed. “Fools! All show and no guts!” He hawked over the side of the path toward the flickering torches massed below.

  Ardhu looked wary. “Keep your wits about you… and your daggers to hand. Too much confidence is not wise.”

  He had no sooner spoken than Per-Adur uttered an oath and pointed to the slope on the right. The warriors’ gazes were drawn upwards along the top of the ridge, where the stars were dancing over the swell of the ancient land. Six dark shapes loomed there, hard against the stars—mounted men. One moved, ever so slightly—a blade shone out like a tiny sun and then was hidden within a cloak.

  “They have gone up and around us,” whispered Per-Adur. “They know this land better than we do.”

  Ardhu took up his reins and pulled Caladvolc from its scabbard. “Ride!” he cried harshly. “Ride for your lives!”

  The band shouted out to their horses and they resumed a mad gallop along the track. Their enemies atop the crest of the hill screamed war-cries and hammered their heels into their own mounts’ flanks. They flew down the hillside at a frightening, breakneck speed, skidding on the dew-drenched grass. Their horse’s eyes were manic, their mouths foaming, their coats lathered as they sought purchase on the unstable ground.

  “They are madmen!” shouted Hwalchmai. “They will be on us in a few seconds!”

  On the left hand side, over the edge of the Ridgeway, Ardhu caught sight of a great flat-topped hill that rose unexpectedly out of the valley floor. It resembled an enormous barrow, though whether it was the tomb of a once-living man, a monument raised to a mighty Spirit like the Hill of Zhel, or a feature carved purely by the hands of gods when the earth was new, he did not know. Their other assailants were at its foot, milling and waving torches, shouting up to encourage their fellows.

  Ardhu glanced at the enemy riders. They screamed and howled like wolves, gnashing their teeth and foaming like creatures gone mad. Their eyes started from their sockets, as wild as their steeds’; he suspected they were either lost in battle-frenzy or had taken potions to make them mad.

  He looked back to the bald hill. Through the murk, he could just pick out a small narrow causeway joining its summit to the hillside. If his warriors could make their way across the causeway, they could try and make a stand, barring the hilltop against the men galloping from above and keeping the ones massed below where they were.

  It was the only way to avoid a battle against berserkers in the dark.

  “Men, follow!” he yelled, driving his stallion forward. “Quick, before they suspect!”

  He pulled his steed’s head around and scrambled up and over the side of the track. Hwalchmai and Bohrs yelled out in alarm at first, for it looked to the unknowing eye as if he was riding off the edge of the valley, casting himself and his mount out into the night sky. But then they spied the flat hill and Ardhu crouched low over his horse’s neck, picking his way swiftly but carefully down the sharp slope towards it, and they followed without hesitation.

  They heard startled yells on the slope behind them; obviously their assailants had imagined, as they had done with Ardhu, that the men of Kham-El-Ard had made a suicide leap over the trail’s edge to their doom on the valley floor far below.

  The move down the slope gave them the time they needed. By the time the berserkers had reached the lip of the track themselves Ardhu’s men had reached the grassy causeway and were galloping like mad men onto the summit of the barrow-like mound.

  Once on top of the hill, they flung themselves from their straw-padded saddles and sprang to defend the causeway. Axes and knives would not aid them here, not unless their enemies forced their way across; this was the territory of the archer, and like all men of both high and low status in Prydn, they had all learned archery from the time they were small boys. They kneeled on the damp soil, drawing back the strings on their short, composite bows, their deadly flint arrows with their long, tearing barbs aimed at the berserkers as they came thundering down the hillside towards the start of the causeway.

  Hwalchmai’s arrow flew true, striking the foremost in the shoulder. The man screamed and tumbled from his horse, rolling over and over on the ground. He tried to
rise and pluck the arrow from his flesh, but he overbalanced and fell backwards on the sheer slope that overlooked the valley. Screaming, he began to slide on the wet, slippery grass, gathering speed as he rolled toward oblivion, toward the massed torches in the cup of the vale. A moment later he was gone, and the lights below swirled as the assembled warriors parted to avoid being crushed by his descending body.

  “Well shot,” Ardhu murmured to Hwalchmai out of the corner of his mouth.

  “I wish Mordraed was with us.” Gal’havad held his bow in hands that shook ever so slightly despite his best efforts. “He is the best archer at Kham-El-Ard.”

  Ardhu glanced at his son, then turned his attention back to the causeway, his face hard as granite. Yes, Gal’havad, he is that… but could I trust him not to put an arrow through MY heart?

  The remaining enemy horsemen were nearly at the tongue of land that joined the hillside to the mound. Hwalchmai loosed another arrow, followed in quick succession by Ardhu and Gal’havad. The darkness surrounding them made aiming difficult, and this time no rider went down. Per-Adur cursed and fired four arrows in succession; they missed, but struck the earth before the hooves of the assailants’ horses, frightening the animals which neighed and reared and crashed into each other, threatening to unseat their masters.

  “Come closer and next time those four arrows will be buried in your flesh!” yelled Per-Adur. He had become a healer in his later years, but his youth had been spent in war-like pursuits, which he had never forgotten.

  “Per-Adur, Bohrs… look!” Ardhu had crawled to the edge of the platform atop the broad mound. Below, the sea of torches was swaying, surging upward in a fiery tide. “The bastards are trying to climb the hill!”

  Bohrs gave an angry roar. Spotting a large stone partly thrust up from the ground he tore it from its bed. Raising it over his head, he cast it with all his strength into the massed enemy. Several torches dimmed and the sea of flames parted.

  “Keep throwing!” Ardhu barked. “They might be put off. They may not know how few of us there are!”

  Bohrs, Pelahan and Per-Adur rushed around the hilltop, ripping out stones and small shrubs and hurling them down into the valley. They yelled and bellowed, stomping around the barrow-top like wild men, hoping the noise and constant stream of missiles would fool and confuse their foes.

  Ardhu, Hwalchmai, and Gal’havad continued to fire arrows toward the causeway—not wildly now, though, for the riders had drawn rein just out of bowshot, and it would not do well to waste their arrows if they could not reach their target. Ardhu and Gal’havad, being of highest rank, had fifteen arrows each in their quivers, while the other men had only ten.

  “So now I have you, Pendraec.” Khaw loomed out of the shadows, grinning. “Caught like a rat in a trap. I could wait here for days and starve you out, or call for my own archers to pick you off one by one… but the mob will be here soon enough and they will give you no quarter.”

  “You are a coward as well as a traitor!” Bohrs roared at Khaw. “If you weren’t you’d settle this by armed combat, one on one. A man’s battle! Not sitting on your horse, watching a few battle many, and with a boy and a sick man in our company!”

  “Aye!” Hwalchmai cried. “You’re craven! You need your band of drunken oafs to do your bloody deeds! Whatever the outcome of this day, you will live in infamy, and the spirits will curse you as will all true men of Prydn!”

  “Be silent!” roared Khaw. “I am no coward! I wrestled a boar when I was younger than the lad you have with you! I have slain a bear! On one night alone I killed ten men who insulted me!”

  “Then come forth and do battle with me!” shouted Ardhu. “Your grievance is with me, after all. Swear that you will let my men pass on unmolested and I will fight you in single combat!”

  Khaw fell silent. His eyes rested on the unsheathed blade of Caladvolc. He had heard of its powers, of how the Lady of the Lake had guided the Pendraec to it in the Sacred Pool at Kham-El-Ard. He did not want to face its charmed blade.

  Suddenly Gal’havad stepped forward, planting himself near the end of the causeway, his legs apart, his hair a bright banner in the wind on the height. “If you will not fight my father, fight me!” he cried. “You think the Stone Lord an old man—more fool you, Man of Contempt!—but if that is true, you would have no honour in fighting him. Fight me instead!”

  An unwholesome grin split Khaw’s bushy black beard. “From an old one to a boy. But at least your head would look pretty above the door of my hut!”

  Ardhu grabbed at Gal’havad’s sleeve, trying to draw him back. “No, you little fool, you cannot face him! This man is not a noble warrior; he is a brigand and a murderer. You have not fought to the death… you have not fought at all! I must be the one…”

  Gal’havad glanced at his sire, and Ardhu saw his eyes shining silver again, unearthly in his white, intense face. He almost seemed a stranger, suddenly grown up, his youthful naivety fled… and there was something strangely of An’kelet about him too—his composure, his single-mindedness. “It is in the hands of the spirits, father. I feel it is right that I avenge the honour of our house, and cleanse the stains of Khaw’s treachery with the shedding of his blood on this holy hill… which shall be known as the Pendraec’s hill from now until the end of time.”

  Khaw had dismounted his horse and was slowly picking his way across the causeway. His men started to follow but Khaw waved them back with his huge stone war-hammer. “No, I do not want you. This glory is all my own,” he sneered. “I will return before long, victorious, I am sure.”

  Reaching the summit of the mound, the rebel tribesman stood in front of the silent Gal’havad, hands on hips, raking him up and down with a mocking gaze. He flexed his brawny arms and tapped the head of his axe against his palm. “Do you fear me yet, boy?” he snarled. “Are you regretting your idle boastfulness?”

  “I have no regrets.” Gal’havad’s voice was measured, almost without emotion. “The spirits have told me what I must do.”

  His hands moved; a white blur in the shadows. The dagger Kos’garak that he had been given only the day before flashed out and stabbed into Khaw’s knee. The bigger man stumbled forward, roaring in agony, blood black in the moonlight. He had not expected such an attack; he had expected formality, the bragging and boasting of two warriors set to face each other in combat in the old-fashioned manner.

  “You bastard!” he gasped, clutching at his leg. “You’ve maimed me. Dishonourable brat, that was not a man’s move!”

  “Dishonourable? You know all about that!” said Gal’havad. “I fight you as you deserve. You are devious and disloyal… a traitor to the West, and you shall die a traitor’s death!”

  Gal’havad was calm; he pulled his axe from his belt and strode towards Khaw. The hard edge, newly honed, shone blue, the redness of the bronze leached out by the starlight.

  The older man cursed and attempted to hobble away, but his wounded leg buckled under him and he stumbled, lurching heavily to one side. Growling like a maddened beast, he swung out with his massive stone hammer, but its weight unbalanced him and he dropped to a half-crouch on the grass, fumbling with the weapon, trying to aim a good strong blow. Gal’havad took three long strides toward him and slashed down with his axe, striking his opponent’s arm and shattering it at the elbow. Khaw’s great war-hammer thudded uselessly to the ground, as its owner screamed in pain and sudden, overwhelming fear.

  “To the spirits I give this evil man!” cried Gal’havad, raising his weapon. “Upon this dark day, my first blooding, a tribute to you Gods and to the Ancestors in the mounds!” He turned, whirling like a leaf on the wind, wielding his axe Head-of-Thunder two-handed for greater impact. The axehead smashed between Khaw’s eyes, shattering his skull and instantly sending his spirit into Otherness. It drank deep of the traitor’s blood and brain, passing his strength into the bronze blade of the axe and into the youth who wielded it.

  Gal’havad stood with arms and head thrown back, his
face so calm, so collected, it almost frightened Ardhu. Blood from the shattered skull had spattered his tunic and streaked his handsome face like war-paint. Ardhu remember the first man he had killed, a Sea-Pirate on the river Glein, and how he had felt sick and repulsed at the time, hating every moment, despite that the man was an enemy. Gal’havad looked almost… rapturous.

  “Come, we must away now!” he said harshly, nodding towards Khaw’s remaining men, who suddenly broke rank and fled from the edge of the causeway, galloping back down the Ridgeway as if demons were pursuing them. “We don’t know if they will return with reinforcements… or what the men below might do.”

  “No matter what they try, it is a steep climb up—it will take a while” said Bohrs. “Nonetheless, let us depart at once!”

  The companions climbed upon their horses, Pelahan once again riding pillion behind Bohrs. Gal’havad’s mount snorted and shifted, fearful of the blood-smell upon her rider; he stroked her neck with his gore-streaked hand and comforted her with soft words that belied the fact he had just brained a man.

  Ardhu eyed his son as they galloped along the Ridgeway, leaving the crowds of enemies roaring in anger at the foot of the hill that would forever bear the name of Pendraec. “Are you all right, Amhar… Gal’havad?” he asked.

  The youth looked over at him and smiled, teeth white between the streaks of red that crisscrossed his face. “I have never felt better, father. Like you, my role in life is to protect Prydn, and with my axe and dagger I will be as a spirit of vengeance upon the foes of my chief and my land.”

  *****

  As the Sun ascended over the rim of the world, a burning disc that shot hot fire into the waiting heavens, the men of Ardhu crossed the border into the expanse of Khiltarna, the Land Beyond the Hills. Deep green rises, still purple with night-shadows, rolled away toward the horizon like waves. Streams ran between the rills and ruts, shining like strips of molten metal, and mist and low cloud hung white and languorous in the natural hollows of the land.