Bow in hand, he raced toward the North, with his pack of youths running like faithful but ill-trained hounds behind him.
*****
An’kelet and Fynavir rode up to the banks of the Great Enclosure, where up till a Moon’s Year ago the dead priests of Khor Ghor had lain on wooden platforms, awaiting the cleansing of the flesh and the freeing of their spirits. The rite had since fallen out of use as burial customs changed and the dead now went straight to their barrows still clad in flesh.
An’kelet swung down from his horse and let its reins dangle; the animal immediately started to crop the tufted grass. Striding over to Fynavir’s mount he lifted up his arms for her to come to him. She put her hands on his shoulders and let him lift him down onto the ground. She stared around—the low encircling bank, the empty pits where wooden excarnation platforms had stood. As she moved her foot, teeth fallen from the rotting bodies of long ago tinkled in the grass.
“I hate this place,” she breathed. “I can almost smell the scent of decaying flesh… though they are long gone…”
“It is not a nice place,” said An’kelet. “But it is a safe place. No one comes here anymore, and the bank protects from prying eyes.”
“The spirits look on.” She glanced around the site, bleak and unwelcoming, raked by a chill wind that stirred her hair and her fur cloak. “They will know what we have done.”
“But they will not disturb us. Nor will those who have no mortal tongues speak of our joining to others.”
He took off his cloak, spread it on the ground. The teeth were shining, pearlescent, in the grass, precious tokens of death and ending. They were not as bright, though, as the warm amber of An’kelet’s hair, the rings bound in it shining in the muted sunlight. Fynavir sank to her knees, and pressed her hands to her face. “I begged to be alone with you, I cannot deny it,” she said. “But now I feel a great fear in my heart, such as I have not felt before.”
“I will chase that fear away.” He knelt beside her, freeing her hair, his mouth on her neck against the warm pulse of life. She reached up to touch his face, the mane of amber hair. The pale, cloud-swathed blob of Bhel above suddenly picked out strands of silver; she had not noticed them before.
“Seventeen years we have met in secret,” she whispered. “Seventeen years we have betrayed Ardhu. We are growing old, my love. How can we continue as we have in the years to come?”
“That is in the hands of the gods,” he murmured. “Do not think of it now.” He drew her on to his lap, moving her woven skirts aside, his hand questing up her thigh. She stifled a moan as his fingers touched her and she wrapped her legs around his back, pulling herself in against him. She was shivering, both from the cold of the wind and from excitement… and from fear too; no matter his comforting words, a sense of doom and despair and melancholy lay on her like a shroud.
He reached out and unfastened the jet toggles on the front of her kirtle, and pushed her back onto his cloak. His hands were ice-cold as he caressed her. It was always like this, when they could escape from Kham-El-Ard alone… a union in haste, brief rutting like beasts on the ground, then quickly up and back to the fort on the Crooked Hill, with leaves and grass brushed from clothes and smiles of falseness on their lips. That was the price they had to pay for their forbidden love, being forever false and forever fearful…
An’kelet knelt above her and pressed her legs apart, and she felt him slide inside her. Her fear vanished in a shower of pleasure and she writhed against him, drawing him closer. She gazed up into his face, her pupils dilated with her desire… and suddenly she let out a terrible scream.
“An’kelet, someone is here… behind you, on the bank!”
He pulled away from her, cursing, and snatched up Fragarak from where he had tossed it aside on the fur. To his dismay he could see a familiar figure on the bank of the Great Enclosure, staring at him with a shocked, snarling, angry face.
Agravaen son of Morigau.
Their eyes met and held for a moment. Then, Agravaen pulled his war hammer from his belt and rushed towards him uttering a blood-curdling howl, “Traitor! Traitor!”
An’kelet was not afraid—he’d trained this clumsy, over-eager boy, knew Agravaen’s only advantage in any battle was his brute strength. But he was also concerned as to what he should do. Killing the lad was his first instinct. But Agravaen was Ardhu’s nephew and had been taken under his protection; the Stone Lord’s wrath would be terrible… but the boy could not be allowed to tell anyone in the tribe what he had seen.
Dagger in hand, An’kelet stalked Agravaen, who eyed him with both rage and terror. The youth swung his axe from side to side, seeking an opportunity to strike an arm or a leg, shattering the bone and making a cripple of his older, more skilled opponent. An’kelet circled him at a distance, attempting to find a place from where he could dart like a serpent and strike with his honed Ar-moran blade, the hot bronze cutting into kidney, heart or lung, or biting through the great vein in the neck. He would try to make the death quick, because his quarry was Ardhu’s nephew and he would not have his friend’s kinsman suffer overlong.
Suddenly he heard Fynavir cry out behind him. He whirled on his heel just in time to see Mordraed leap over the embankment and circle her throat with his arm, pressing on her windpipe and felling her immediately. The northern Prince dragged her along the ground, his dagger pressed to her neck, his eyes glittering like hard stars. His beautiful face took on an almost demonic look as he grinned at An’kelet, his expression victorious...
“Let her go!” An’kelet felt the first surge of the battle-fury, the Warp-Spasm, come upon him. His head swam, his voice thickened and deepened. He had never trusted this dark, quick-tongued youth from Ynys Yrch, not for one moment since he had arrived. He should have been sent from Kham-El-Ard with his accursed dam—if not sent to the spirit-world. Mordraed was touched by evil like his mother; he was the snake that bit a man’s ankle in the grass; he was the disloyal dog that savaged its master’s hand. He was the Darkness to oppose Ardhu’s Light…
“Let her go?” Mordraed’s fingers reached up to stroke Fynavir’s face; even as she struggled to breathe, she recoiled from his touch as if stung. “A traitor to the Stone Lord? No, An’kelet of Ar-morah, you and she shall both answer to Ardhu Pendraec and to the spirits you have offended with your lust and your deceit.”
An’kelet gave a cry and rushed forward, dagger upraised. He would kill this arrogant youth and then he would take Fynavir, whether she willed it or not, and flee with her to Ar-morah. Many of his kinsmen still dwelt on the long tongue of land that jutted into the Narrow Sea and they would shelter him and show him loyalty. Even in recent years he had traded with them, bringing in daggers with gold pointillé hilts, fancy, prestigious pots with handles and rounded brass helms in continental style. He would have the priestesses of his mother Ailin’s order break Fynavir’s marriage bonds and he would wed her himself as he should have done years ago, before he brought Ardhu to the Dun of Ludegran, her foster-father.
An’kelet’s mad headlong rush brought him within feet of Mordraed. The younger man roughly thrust Fynavir from him and struck out with the flat of his bow, catching An’kelet across the upper face with a whip-like motion. It was a dishonourable battle-move but highly effective, momentarily blinding him, making him see only stars and swirling blots of light. Tears of pain streaming down his cheeks, An’kelet staggered back from his opponent, hands instinctively reaching to his stinging eyes.
Mordraed laughed and struck out again, the top section of the bow cracking down on An’kelet’s exposed right wrist; the Ar-moran was not wearing his archer’s wristguard for he had only brought his daggers with him... This blow, however, was not as accurately aimed as Mordraed’s first and failed to make An’kelet drop Fragarak. Vision slowly recovering, An’kelet lunged at his youthful enemy, sure that once he had his footing he could bring him down rapidly and finish this fight.
He was surprised when a dagger of bronze rose to meet his bla
de, not as long as the near-rapier he carried, but broad, with a deadly gleaming tip. Thrust into flesh and turned, it would wreak terrible damage. The hilt was of dappled horn and had several deep spirals grooved upon it, looking in some aspects like a spirit-face, the eyes of the Watcher. It slammed against Fragarak, and the bronze blades sparked as they sawed on each other. The hand behind the weapon was rock-hard, steady, immoveable…
An’kelet smiled grimly. Had he really expected any less? He had been training Mordraed himself these past months. But when had the youth become so strong of limb and fast? When had he, once the greatest warrior in the known world, begun to weaken and grow slow?
Still, he was not done yet. Suddenly pulling back from his opponent, he drew his other dagger, Arondyt, and made a sharp thrust at Mordraed’s midriff. Fast as the serpent Mordraed recoiled, and then, as the blow went wide, he swung round in a semi-circle, kicking the weapon from An’kelet’s hand with a blow so hard An’kelet felt the muscles tear from his forearm to the shoulder. He staggered and dropped Arondyt, his arm hanging numb and useless at his side.
Mordraed tossed back his raven-hued hair, laughing. He preened himself like the black bird of prey he resembled. “Surely you are not finished already? I am enjoying our little sparring match, Lord An’kelet! Our first real fight.”
“You mock me but by the end of this day you will beg me for mercy…” gasped An’kelet, but even as he spoke the words a terrible sensation of doom and fear came over him, such as he had never experienced before. His words felt hollow, untrue. Pain lanced down his arm; his slashed eyes were still throbbing and blurring. He realised he did not have the heart for these battles any longer, nor the strength of a man less than twenty Sun-turnings.
He was done.
“An’kelet!” he heard Fynavir cry out. Having recovered from Mordraed’s stranglehold, she rushed across the grass toward him, her unbound hair flying out in a white cloud. He grabbed her to him, uncaring now that any man should see them together.
And at the moment many did see… for the banks of the enclosure were full of young men, whooping and shouting, brandishing bronze and copper and stone axes, their faces flushed with misplaced pride and too much mead. He recognised them all, had given training to most, and with despair he realised that they were the displaced and dissatisfied, the youths he had told Ardhu would never be men of the warband—those who liked blood too much, or mistreated women and weaker men; those who imagined themselves stronger and greater than they were.
“You have done this, haven’t you?” he gasped at Mordraed. “These creatures are your curs, eating the scraps of lies you throw them.”
“Curs they may be,” said Mordraed. “But I can assure you, Lord An’kelet, they have the bite of wolves.”
He made a gesture with his hand to the young men on the enclosure bank, and with a frenzied roar they rushed in at their quarry, dragging along an axe-brandishing Agravaen in their mad headlong charge. Thrusting Fynavir behind him, An’kelet shouted a war cry of his own and hurled himself at the first line of youths, his unexpected burst of strength driving the first enemies back and bowling several of them over. He leapt upon the fallen, stabbing one man through the eye with Fragarak, and breaking the other’s spine with a downward hard stamp of his foot. Screams rose to the heavens and blood fed the hungry grass.
Fynavir was screaming, hysterical, frozen to the spot by the horror and unreality of what was happening. Mordraed swung round and struck her across the face to silence her, his blow throwing her to the ground where she lay dazed, redness leaking from her cut lip.
An’kelet shouted in rage to see her struck in such a manner, and vented the full force of his fury on those before him, grabbing two of his assailants and smashing their faces together, hitting them repeatedly as blood spurted and teeth cracked and fell from their red mouths to join the lost teeth of the long-dead in the grass. Casting their limp bodies to one side as a child would hurl a corn-dolly; he once more fought his way towards Mordraed at the edge of the earthwork. “I… will… have you…” he gasped. “You… are the rot in Kham-El-Ard…”
Mordraed cast him a pitying look, deliberately meant to infuriate. The look one might give a fool or simpleton. His eyes flicked across the circle.
In his rage and panic and eagerness to get to Mordraed, An’kelet had failed to notice that he was being stalked…
Agravaen son of Loth was thundering up behind him, wild and hostile, his archaic stone war-hammer upraised.
“Don’t kill him, Agravaen!” Mordraed called out. “I want to see him confess to his crimes before Ardhu and be suitably punished!”
An’kelet whirled around, grappling for the haft of Agravaen’s hammer… but he could not get a grip on the sweat-streaked wood with his damaged hand. If he dropped Fragarak, he might be able to over-power the stockier but less skilled man… but it would be a great risk to attack without any weapon save his own strength. Realising his opponent’s disadvantage, Agravaen bore down on him like some rushing monster, a beast half-man, half-bull, and the youth’s war-hammer smashed into his temple.
Lights exploded in An’kelet’s head and he staggered and fell to his knees, blood running into his eyes. Seeing him fallen, his enemies howled and yelled and piled in on top of him, punching and kicking, tearing away his weapons and pinioning his arms behind his back.
Watching, Mordraed felt a sense of elation so great he thought his heart might burst. He threw back his head and screamed this first victory to the ever-changing skies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE TRIAL OF FYNAVIR
The small party of horsemen cantered down the Harrow Way, the ancient track which crossed the summit of Harrow Hill, wound past the temple of Khor Ghor, and then fared on into the farthest West. Behind their shoulders the sky was the colour of an old bruise, filled with impending storm; a low rumble of thunder filled the charged air, and sullen flashes of lightning crowned the Eastern line of hills—Harrow, Beacon, and Magic Hill, where Bhel’s face first rose at the beginning of the World of Men.
“Nearly home,” said Gal’havad, leaning over his mount’s neck and urging it to greater speed with the pressure of his heels. Despite the company’s failure to heal the Maimed King, the young man’s mood was lightening at the prospects of a homecoming—he wanted to see his mother again, to put things right with her after their last fraught parting, and to see his friend Mordraed, whom he had parted from without even a farewell, and tell him of his adventures as a Man of the Tribe.
Riding ahead of the others, Gal’havad soon reached the foot of Kham-El-Ard, raised like the prow of a sea-going ship that sailed into the Sunrise. He was surprised to see no workers in the surrounding field systems, and no one coming and going about their business on the hill. It was almost as if Kham-El-Ard had been abandoned. He bit his lip fearfully, and let his gaze travel up the earthen ramparts to the timber palisades rising above, but there was no sign of a battle or any destruction; all was as it should be, save for its eerie quietness. One thin streak of smoke came from one hut inside the Dun, to be dispersed in the storm-laden air.
Heart pounding, he slammed his heels into his mount’s flank and drove it up the hill at great speed. Coming to the great gates, many times his height, he was stunned to see no guards on duty, as if they had all been called away elsewhere. He saw a few women in the distance, but they were scuttling between their huts like small beetles, faces downcast, moving rapidly as if terrified.
What was going on?
He glanced toward the Great Hall. He could hear voices now, a low ominous rumble just like the thunder in the distance. It was a different sound from what he remembered—no laughter, no song-singers, and no women chattering. It was a dark sound, an angry sound like disturbed bees buzzing in a hive.
“Ka’hai!” The name was torn from his mouth in almost a scream as he saw Ardhu’s foster-brother suddenly appear in the door of the hall and glance out.
The older man’s heavy brow furrowed and he s
trode forward, waving his arms, waving Gal’havad away. “No! Amhar… Prince Gal’havad… you mustn’t come in here, you must not look! Where is your father? Where is Ardhu?”
Gal’havad flung himself from his steed and rushed toward Ka’hai and the gaping doorway behind him. “What is wrong, Ka’hai? Where are the people? Why do you bar me from my own home?”
Ka’hai caught the youth’s shoulders, swinging him in a semi-circle, trying to turn him aside. “Gal’havad, a terrible thing has happened in your father’s absence. You will be told all… but we must wait for the Stone Lord to arrive before more is said of this evil matter!”
“Tell me, Ka’hai!” Gal’havad wrenched himself free. His face was the colour of the chalk. “I am the Prince of Kham-El-Ard!”
Ka’hai began to weep, great unmanly sobs that made his broad shoulders heave and shake. It was like watching an oak tree fall, felled by an axe. “I cannot speak of it, Gal’havad. I cannot!”
Gal’havad raced past him, leaving Ka’hai bent with his grief. Running into the hall, he pushed through a sea of bodies toward the Eastern end where his father’s high seat stood. As he drew near to the antlered chair, he could see his cousin Mordraed standing separate from the rest of the crowd. He was dressed in his finest warrior’s garb, his hair braided with gold, and in his hand he held a black basalt stone axe of ancient type—a symbol of authority. Two white streaks were painted on each cheekbone—warrior’s face-paint, worn in time of action—and he had darkened round the edges of his eyes with charcoal, making their blue colour stand out even more vividly. Behind him his lumpish brother Agravaen, also carrying a stone hammer and wearing his finest clothes and trinkets, stood like some shaggy and pugnacious hill-troll. Other youths that Gal’havad barely knew were clustered in the rear; they strutted about in unruly fashion, weapons clearly on display, full of pride and overconfidence.
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