He began to slip on leaves, as U’thyr had done, his legs bowing and his cloak billowing and tangling with bushes. The hillside beneath him was tilting, while around him rose the Faeth; its coiling tendrils full of sneering, jeering faces and hooded, accusing figures. “What evil magic is this?” he screamed, and he slashed wildly at the phantoms with his rapier.
Still he was propelled forward, unable to stop himself, toadstools crushing to pulp beneath his boots, branches whipping his cheeks, cobwebs breaking over his eyes and obscuring his vision. He was gathering speed, sliding, slipping, knee-deep in mud and mulch…
And then, suddenly, his feet were free and kicking….
In cold air, with no solid earth below him.
He hung in mid-air for a moment, as if dangled by some giant’s child, and then suddenly he began to fall, to plummet like a stone toward whatever lay below, shrouded in the eerie fog. He shrieked once and the faces in the mist twisted with mirth and anticipation.
Through tearing eyes, he saw the mist opening below him, parting to accept his heavy frame. There was grass, and mud, the bottom of a ditch ... and the fallen trunk of a hoary oak, with bare branches radiating out from it like sharpened spears.
“No!” he shrieked, clawing at the mist, the sky…. and then he hit the fallen tree and lay like a sacrifice upon an altar, head back, eyes wide, the spoke of a huge tree branch jutting up through his belly. Blood pattered on the floor of the ditch.
U’thyr slid down the embankment to the side of his fallen foe. Gorlas was clearly dead, his eyes already glazing. Carefully U’thyr removed his helm with its ugly mask and placed it on his own head. Unfastening the dead man’s cape, he wiped it free of blood spray as best he could and wrapped himself in it.
“May Merlin’s magic make me seem enough like Gorlas!” he muttered, and he began to climb back up to the entrance of Sarlog fort.
He passed through the gates unchallenged. He saw some men looking at him quizzically, and snarled in a gruff voice, the sound distorted by the swirling fog: “He is dead…the fool who mocked me is dead. Go back to your rest.”
“But lord, what of the warriors who went out with you tonight?” asked one old man, his face creased with worry. “Where are they? Why are you alone?”
U’thyr kicked a water bucket over, spraying the man. “I’ve fought a battle for my life and you pester me with questions? They are chasing my enemy’s men, hunting them down. They will not be back for hours yet for I have ordered that they slay every last man.”
Gorlas’s people murmured, nodding, glad at his words, and comforted to think that their enemies were put to flight. U’thyr turned from them and blundered through the sea of hastily thrown up tents, looking for one that seemed as if it might belong to a chieftain. Sweat poured down his face under the reeking helmet of Gorlas.
Up ahead he spied one tent that was larger than the others, its sides painted with chevrons and zigzags. Two small braziers glowed before the doorway and he could smell the scent of burning herbs, sweet on the night air.
She was in there, waiting for him—he knew it.
Breathing heavily, he approached the door and flicked back the entrance flap. Inside a stout woman was poking a fire with a stick, and he felt his stomach knot with anger and disappointment. But then, behind the woman, he spotted Y’gerna lying on a bed of sheepskins. She was slowly, languorously, combing her dark locks with her fingers. Coyly, she looked over at him, and a small smile touched her lips.
The woman by the fire had stopped stoking the flames and was peering nervously at her mistress. Y’gerna flicked a hand at her. “What are you gawking at, drab? Get out, you know my lord is always filled with ardour after his conquests.”
The woman bowed and scurried away. Y’gerna rose, letting the sheepskin round her shoulders drop to the floor. She was lean and lithe; her wiry body scarcely showing any signs that she had born a child nigh on a year ago. “Let me undress you, my lord,” she said hoarsely, reaching out to unfasten his cloak, and as it dropped to the floor: “My lord…U’thyr!”
U’thyr said nothing, he had no flattering words, no pretty lover’s speeches, but that did not anger Y’gerna—she did not want them, this fierce Western princess of the old blood. He jerked her towards him, and she kissed him as fiercely as he had kissed her on the ramparts of Deroweth, drinking of his mouth as if she meant to draw out his very soul.
Maybe she had done exactly that. He had never felt like this before, possessed by a kind of madness.
Gasping, he fell forward, bearing her down into the mounded piles of furs and skins. Her hair streamed out, dark as night-time water, tangling around his arms, flowing over the hard peaks of her high, round breasts. She was like some primeval deity lying there, a goddess of earth and love and war, with her dark eyes glowing and her lips red and wet. She could be his life…or his death.
Outside he could hear Gorlas’s folk beginning a dance round their fires, a victory dance that would soon turn to tears. Drums started slowly and rhythmic, and so too did he move with Y’gerna, twined in the oldest dance of man since time began.
*****
Out in the valley beyond Merlin heard the drums and glanced up at the darkened hilltop. Making his way across the ramparts, he spied the body of Gorlas of Dindagol lying as it had fallen, his blood feeding the hungry earth below him.
“So U’thyr has succeeded!” The shaman glanced up toward the shadowed gateway of the ancient camp. “He must be lying with the woman even as I stand here.”
He clapped his hands and slowly, slowly, the mists receded. A great joy overcame him, as in his mind’s eye he beheld a vision of the future, of the great man that he would mould to his will from childhood. He began to dance and whirl, stamping in time with the drums from the hillfort, calling on the Ancestors to bless this night, to bless U’thyr and Y’gerna’s loins, to bless the child that would be born to give his strength to Albu the White.
CHAPTER SIX
The Sun came up in a cold, watery haze above Sarlog. In the encampment, the folk of Belerion lay sleeping, worn out by their long trek and the dancing of the night before. Even the dogs slumbered, twitching by the remains of the fires.
Only one woman stirred, bleary eyed, her heart filled by an unknown sense of dread. The warriors had not returned.. On silent feet she crossed the centre of the fort to the unmanned gateway and stared down the hill. The fog of the previous night had burned away and the naked branches of trees stuck up like the denuded bones of skeletons.
She cocked her head, trying to focus. There seemed to be something lying in the bottom of one of the mighty defensive ditches, a crumpled bundle of rags slung over a tree. More bundles lay scattered through the woods beyond, empty sacks of clothes. A sick fear suddenly rose in her gut and she strained her eyes into the morning Sun…. and began to scream.
Her shrieks brought instant wakefulness to the rest of the tribesfolk. Leaping up, they ran to the gate and peered down. More women started to wail, and the men rushed down the slope, drawing daggers from their belts. In horror they found their best warriors dead, slain by arrows in the night, and their lord, Gorlas, lying impaled upon the great tree, the birds of carrion already gathering about him, squabbling over the soft morsels of eyes and nose.
They dragged his corpse free and, howling and keening, hauled it back up toward the encampment, his dead weight resting upon their shoulders.
“This is madness!” wept the woman who had first spotted the corpses. “I saw Lord Gorlas enter my lady Y’gerna’s tent last night…saw him with my own eyes! Or maybe it was not a living man I saw, maybe it was an evil wraith out to bring death to us all!”
“No, it was no spirit!”
The folk of Belerion halted in their tracks. The Merlin, high priest of Khor Ghor, was standing in the centre of the camp, leaning heavily upon his shaman’s staff. He looked hard and hawkish, his face tired but triumphant. The hawk’s head in bronze upon his breast glimmered in the strengthening light. “It was
no spirit that wrought this doom upon you—it was the hand of man. But it happened because the Ancestors frowned upon you, for blindly following Gorlas, who consorted with our enemies, and slighted the priests of Khor Ghor just yester eve. Now, because of his folly, you will have a new lord over you, and you will work your tin mines and pay a tithe to Khor Ghor and the spirits to atone for Gorlas’s errors.”
The people murmured, looking at each other with not a little relief. When they found the warriors slain, they had been certain the killers had slated them for a similar end. Gorlas’s death they could come to terms with; he had been feared and honoured, but never loved.
“Who is this great warrior who has killed our chief and will rule us from this day forth?” asked one old woman, her voice high and tremulous.
“I am that man.”
U’thyr stepped from Y’gerna’s tent and stood before the tribesmen. He still wore the helm of his fallen foe, with its curved tusks and harsh bristles, and in his hand he held both dagger and axe as a symbol of his authority. “I am U’thyr Pendraec, the Terrible Head, chief of the Dwri and the great Dragon Path. I have killed treacherous Sea-folk and I have killed your black-hearted chief and taken his woman for my own. You need not fear me—unless you try to raise hand against me, or do me disrespect.”
At that moment Y’gerna herself stepped forward, hair in disarray, wearing only a skin she had hastily wrapped around her. “Listen to him!” she cried. “This man may seem fearsome, but I swear he will treat you all with fairness. He has no wish to harm you, that I know.”
The serving woman whose husband lay dead at the foot of the hill spat at her. “A curse on you…you who are tearless though your husband lies dead! You let him in, didn’t you? You contrived this between you, you bitch-in-heat!”
She stumbled forward, trying to lunge at Y’gerna, but Merlin stepped into the way. “No, it is not the girl’s fault. I spun a glamour that gave U’thyr the semblance of Gorlas. And so he entered Y’gerna’s bed. If she is tearless, it is because she knows what her duty must be. She has no choice but to cleave to U’thyr.”
Y’gerna bowed her head, hiding her smile beneath the curtain of her hair. The old man made her flesh crawl, but she was grateful that he had spared her the tribesfolk’s wrath.
“Now…” Merlin turned to U’thyr. “We should return to Deroweth. You can make preparations to send these poor wretches back to Belerion with one of your men, who can oversee them and get the wealth sent to you in Dwranon.”
U’thyr stepped uncomfortably from foot to foot, his jaw tightening. “No, Merlin, I have thought long into the night, and have other plans. I will go to Belerion and live with Y’gerna in the fort of Dindagol. Think of it…the Sea-folk come most often to those regions; I can make sure they get no more footholds in our land!”
“What of your own lands?” Merlin shot him a dark look. “Who will defend them? The chief of Duvnon’s kingdom lies between Dwranon and Belerion; it will not be so easy to cross between the two without conflict. To say nothing of taking many days.”
U’thyr shook his head. “My mind is made up, Merlin. I will go to Dindagol, and leave the management of Dwranon with men like Kol and my young cousins.”
Merlin poked a bony finger into U’thyr’s chest. “You…you disappoint me! I had such hopes once, but you were always hard-headed and rash. But, be that as it may, I hope you are not trying to escape because of the promise you made me!”
“Promise?” He looked genuinely puzzled.
“The promise about the boy. Your son. Born of your night with Y’gerna.”
U’thyr tried to laugh; it came out a hoarse croak. “What makes you so certain there will be a child? If it were so quick and easy, any young fellow might get half a dozen each new Moon!”
Merlin stared into his face, his eyes black with anger. “There will be a child. And you will give him to me. Just remember that, U’thyr Pendraec. You will give him to me.”
*****
The months rolled by. Winter bloomed into the fairest spring men could remember, then a blazing summer with blue skies and red sunsets. By Autumn the folk of Belerion were bringing in a bumper harvest, and Y’gerna gave birth to a boy-child just after the feast of the Corn-Lord, where men and women bundled together in the furrows as the last sheaf was cut down. There was rejoicing among the folk of Belerion, who had grown loyal to U’thyr Pendraec and his lady, after their initial reservations after the bloody death of Gorlas.
But U’thyr was not happy, though all about him celebrated. He turned his head away from the flower-topped cliffs and the blue sea and looked inland… Waiting…Dreading…
The thing he feared most happened one night when the Moon was full and men could feel the hint of old magic in the air, touching the standing stones, awakening the spirits, drawing back the barrier between the world of men and Otherness. U’thyr woke from a deep sleep in the chieftain’s hut high on the hill at Dindagol with its rampart ring of lichened boulders. He felt strangely uneasy. Outside, at the foot of the cliffs, he could hear the waves crashing, smiting the land as the hammer smote the anvil —a sound that still unnerved him even after all these months. It was an alien realm here, surrounded by the magics of the sea-god Mahn-an, who rode the wave-caps on a seal’s back, and blew fog and storms in on his bitter breath.
Rolling over, he saw that Y’gerna was still fast asleep, her head pillowed on her arm. Whatever it was wakened him had not bothered her in the least.
Quietly he rose and walked over to the cradle of woven birch boughs in the corner, where their infant son slept wrapped in a sheepskin. The baby was silent, also in deep sleep. He had no true name as yet, but his parents called him Art’igen, the bear-that-is-to-be, the Cub, in order to fool passing evil spirits into thinking he was not a human child and hence of no consequence. Call your babe ‘brave’ or ‘fair-face’ at birth, and the old dead ones in their barrow-tombs might become jealous and spirit them away, leaving gnarly, unseelie things in their cradles instead.
“Sleep on, my dark one,” U’thyr said, ruffling the infant’s hair with a finger, and then he left the hut and stepped out into the shadows.
It was a pleasant night, with the warm orange Moon burning over the sea, its light making an enchanted road across the waves. The wind was a warm caress against his face, and the air tasted of salt.
Silently, U’thyr left the confines of the dun and walked along the rugged coastal path atop the cliffs. Sea-grasses whipped his ankles, and his hair was a banner in the breeze. He stopped by the little waterfall that tumbled over the black bastions of the cliff and knelt down, surveying the land and the endless waters before him. For all its beauty, it made him shudder—the cliffs seemed stark, frightening, the sea too deep, too fierce, frothing up like a dog gone mad. Strongly, he felt that there was something out beyond, waiting for him, something that he did not want to face.
He almost hoped it would be another attack by Sea-People, in their long fast ships that darted like fish down the Western coast of the mainland, skimming past the lands of ancient kindred tribes—the Iverri, the Vasca and the Albianis who looked out toward the Isles of Prydn from across the Little Sea.
He could deal with Sea-Pirates. It was a promise made in the heat of lust he could not deal with.
His heart skipped a beat. Down on the beach he caught a glimpse of movement, a greyish shape contrasted against white shingle. The figure was standing in the mouth of a sea-cavern men called Mahn-an’s Maw. An ill-starred place that sucked in dead bodies lost at sea, and where exploring children often drowned in the fast-incoming tides. It was whispered Fhann, wife of Mahn-an, would sing the children into enchanted sleep, then hungry Mahn-an would flood the cave and carry their drowned bodies into the deep.
But it was not the Sea-god he feared tonight.
It was a man. But a man unlike other men.
His fears were realised as the figure below left the cave-mouth and started in his direction, climbing a well-worn path up the cliff-f
ace He could see a flutter of stained robes, flowing silver-streaked hair, and a staff topped with a jawbone.
Like a craven, U’thyr hid in a wind-stunted bush, praying to all the spirits that the old man would stumble and fall down the cliff side.
The gods didn’t listen,
The Merlin reached the top of the cliff and gazed straight at the bush where U’thyr hid, with his hard, black, bird-like eyes. “Come out, U’thyr,” he said mockingly. “It is not fitting that the lord of Belerion and Dwranon hides away like a fearful girl.”
Shamefaced, U’thyr stepped from the shrub to face his old mentor. “So you have come.”
“As I said I would. I speak no lies, U’thyr Pendraec. Are you able to say the same? Are you an honourable man who keeps his bargains?”
U’thyr flushed. “Do not doubt me. You will have what you want…but are you sure you must do this thing? The child…there will be others later, he is my heir….”
“And so he will remain,” said Merlin dryly. “But I will foster him. Many tribes practise fosterage. Now give him to me. I am not here to pass the time, my duties lie elsewhere. Reports have come that both raiders from Ibherna and Sea-People have been harrying the coasts in Duvnon, and I have been trying to rally local chiefs to band together and fight them, although the battles may not be in their own lands. This was a job I had hoped for you, U’thyr, to be the high war-leader of the tribes. But you have lost the fire, between your dark queen’s thighs!”
U’thyr hung his head, angered by Merlin’s words but unable to find any words of his own to answer him. In silence he walked back to his hut, the Merlin walking briskly at his side. Entering the door, he saw Y’gerna sitting by the glowing embers of the fire, feeding the baby Art’igen, the bear-cub. “Merlin!” she said with surprise and some trepidation as the shaman swept into the hut. “What brings you to Belerion unannounced?”
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 11
