Ardhu leaned over the parapet, eyes straining into the dark cup of the valley below. “The wolves are indeed running tonight, with sharp teeth and fierce bite,” he said grimly. “But they are not the kind who runs on four legs! Those voices do not belong to beasts. They belong to men. Loth and Urienz and their mad Northerners have arrived.”
*****
“To the gate!”
The cry went out into the night. Ardhu’s warband and Ludegran’s men assembled in the yard of the fort, while the women, including Fynavir, were hustled off into the roundhouses and placed under guard. Art stood with An’kelet on one side and Ka’hai on the other, Caladvolc in hand, waiting. All around him his men and their allies began igniting torches, filling the dun with a flickering light that spilled over into the shrouded fields beyond. Archers climbed onto the top of the walls, positioning themselves, their painted faces almost inhuman in the sputtering torchlight. War-chants went up, and horns were blown, their mournful tone matching the eerie cries of the false man-wolves skulking in the shadows beyond.
Ludegran climbed up on the barricades in the gateway of the fort and gazed out. Shadows were swirling and leaping in the fields and forests. “Where are you, Loth?” he spat. “I know you’re out there. Show yourself, if you are not craven!”
The shadows parted and two men strode forward. Ardhu, peering over the barricade, recognised Loth of Ynys Yrch and his kinsman Urienz. Loth had been a handsome man once and still had a roguish appeal, despite a scar that ran from the edge of his eye to his chin and a tendency to run to fat. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a short, neat beard and glossy dark brown hair cut bluntly at the shoulder. Blue eyes cold as the seas around his island stronghold gazed out from under heavy brows. Golden sun-whorls were stitched to his studded tunic, while a necklace made of the serrated teeth of some sea-beast clacked around his neck. Over his shoulder was draped a wolf-pelt, the head used as a hood –a trophy he must have acquired far from his homeland—for no wolf-haunted forests grew on the barren, wind-blasted isles of the Northern seas. Ynys Yrch was known as the Isle of Pigs, for those hardy beasts, sacred for their oracular powers, were the only beasts that thrived in Loth’s domain.
Beside Loth stood his brother Urienz, who held territories on the shores across from Ynys Yrch. He had been less favoured in his appearance, a big, barrel-chested man whose hair had receded from his brow and ran down his back in a thin, mud-brown plait. One eye had been lost in some long-ago skirmish; many of his teeth were missing too. He wore a bearskin cape, complete with claws and head, adding to his fearsome appearance.
“I am here, Ludegran!” shouted Loth. “You’re still resisting me, I see, though now from behind walls and wood! What a fool! If you had joined with me and marched on that snot-nosed priest’s puppet who has usurped the kingdom of the Great Stones, you could have shared in the glory, and your people would have lived as free men honoured for their part in our victory! Now you force my hand-I must slay you all down to the last woman and child. Except for the white maid you treat as daughter…” He grinned lasciviously. “If she is as fair as my messengers report, I have other plans for her!”
“Shut your foul mouth, traitor!” Ludegran called back, enraged. Red spots burned on his wrinkled cheeks. “Speaking with an evil tongue is all you are good at, you lord of a petty realm where neither trees nor beasts thrive, where the Summer Sun hides His face, and the cold makes a man’s heart wintry and cruel! You speak ill of the Lord Ardhu, but he brings us peace and freedom from foes from beyond… while you and your like bring death to our own people!”
“Your loyalty to the boy-king is touching,” Loth sneered, his eyes narrowing. “But what good will it do you? Is Pendraec here? Can he help you? No doubt he is tucked up in his warm house being coddled by that conniving old fool, the priest called the Merlin.”
“No, he is here with you now, listening to the words that bring you shame!” Ardhu suddenly leapt high onto the barricade, with the firelight glowing red on his golden breastplate and patterning the face of Wyngurthachar. “I am here, false chief, man of serpent’s tongue, creature of no honour. I will always be ready to defend those who are in need, and who are loyal and true, not just to my rule, but to Prydn. You are not one, and you will pay the price.”
Loth looked startled for a moment but almost instantly regained his composure. “It is you who will pay,” he snapped. “Come down and speak your brave words to my face…boy!”
There was a rush of wind in the dark next to Ardhu. A war cry split the air and a brazen figure flung himself over the barricade and hurtled headlong toward the two rebel chiefs. It was An'kelet, his spear raised on high, his face contorted with the warrior madness known as the ‘warp-spasm.’ Some men got this rage from drinking specially concocted potions wrought in the Moon’s dark, but to others it came naturally, making them as strong as beasts, nigh as powerful as gods, terrible and implacable in their madness.
Whooping, he descended on Loth, thrusting at him with his great barbed spear. Loth shouted an oath and stumbled back, smashing at the spear haft with his big dolerite battle-axe. It was no good; An’kelet was twirling like a mad thing, muscle and fire and the flame of fury. Loth could touch neither him, nor his spear. As the bronze man of Ar-morah drew close, drawing his long bronze blade Fragarak from the sheath at his belt, Loth turned tail and ran into the midst of his milling warriors, vanishing in the sea of skin-draped figures.
On the walls, the men of Ludegran hooted and laughed derisively. Warriors began to pour over the top of the barricade and rush toward the war-party of the traitor chiefs.
Seeing that An’kelet was fixated on finding Loth, Ardhu went after the cousin, Urienz, who was still standing his ground near the entrance to the fort. They locked together in hand to hand battle, slashing at each other with their grooved blades. The edge of Caladvolc sliced Urienz’s knuckles and blood flowed, black in the sickly Moonlight. The older man roared in rage and charged like a maddened bull at his young opponent, throwing both of them onto a patch of trampled, muddy earth. Caladvolc and Wyngurthachar tore free of Art’s hands with the impact, the sword flying across the ground to land several feet away, just out of reach.
Urienz began to laugh, his huge belly wobbling. Mud was daubed on his florid cheeks like war paint. “I will crush you, worm! I am a wrestling champion…and you are nothing. I will smash your spine, then take your head and make your skull into a drinking-cup!”
Violently, he grabbed Ardhu’s shoulders and slammed him against the earth. Art’s head struck the ground and stars showered across his vision. Urienz’s great knee slammed into his gut, knocking the air from his lungs, and then the warrior’s arm pressed down across his windpipe as he sought to pinion him for a final killing blow.
But Urienz was slow and unwieldy, long past first youth and fat from supping on too many tender young pigs for too many years. He had also neglected to see if his young opponent had other weapons.
He had missed Carnwennan—the White Hilt. The Sword from within the Stone.
In a lightning motion, Ardhu drew the small but deadly blade from its hidden spot against his leg, and thrust it into his enemy’s back, just above the kidneys. Urienz screamed, and the blood poured in an awful waterfall from his yawing mouth to spill all over the face and chest of the youth pinned beneath him.
Ardhu heaved Urienz’s bulk to one side and leapt up, gasping, as Urienz flopped and flailed like a fish on a hook. “You saw me take this blade from under the Stone!” he said, holding up the dripping blade. “You knew what it meant, and you swore to honour it. You and your vile brother have angered the Ancestors by your actions, and so you have paid the price. The sword you falsely swore to serve has now taken your life.”
Urienz stared up at him. “Not…a boy…” he mumbled, bloody foam making a strange and horrid red beard on his trembling chin. “Was wrong. You are…a monster!”
“I am my father’s son,” said Ardhu darkly, and suddenly he didn’t seem a boy
at all but some dark god of death, powerful and ruthless. “The Terrible Head. I am also the Dark Bear…and you wear my emblem, the skin of the bear, and that offends me. It also rightly makes you my prey.”
With that, he retrieved the fallen Caladvolc, and in a brutal motion drew it across Urienz’s throat and sent his enemy’s spirit to the otherworld. Then with another downward slash, he took Urienz’s head. Lifting it in a shower of gore, he carried it to the cliff edge and hurled it toward the night-clad sea from whence the traitor had come, dooming his spirit to wander aimlessly forever.
Returning to the sprawled body, he took Urienz’s bearskin cloak as a trophy and wrapped it about his own shoulders, a final insult against the spirit of his vanquished enemy. The great bear’s head, preserved by careful drying, loomed over his own head, while the massive paws hung down with huge nails still intact. He was the bear, not Urienz—the Great Bear of Albu, where even the constellations spoke of his might.
He suddenly felt as one with his namesake animal, almost as if its spirit had entered him. Casting back his head, he roared like a bear into the night, “I am the King! I am the Terrible Head and no foe of Prydn will withstand me!”
Shaking with surges of adrenaline, he hurried back through the trees and up the slope to see how his warriors fared against Loth’s men. Reaching the lower rampart of Ludegran’s dun, he found the battle nearing its end. It had been a short, sharp skirmish, and Loth’s forces had not fared well. Most of the men of the North lay dead, shot with arrows or ridden down by the horsemen of Ardhu’s warband. The air reeked of blood; the rooks and crows and ravens would soon feast.
An’kelet was standing in the centre of the carnage, like the golden effigy of some solar deity, a smile on his face and his right foot firmly planted on the neck of Loth of Ynys Yrch, who lay sprawled on the ground, weaponless and utterly helpless.
Seeing Ardhu, An’kelet beckoned him over. “Lord,” he called, “I have saved him for you…It is you he betrayed so foully, so you must be the one to have the honour of taking his head.”
Ardhu strode up to Loth, staring down into the blood-smirched face of his enemy. “Your brother Urienz is dead,” he stated harshly. “I wear his garb as my own. I have hurled his head into the sea, so his spirit will now wander the misty strands incomplete and lost. What will you say to me that will make me spare you the same fate?”
“You are not what I thought you were!” panted Loth. “Neither the wizard’s pawn nor a jumped-up boy of no skill! I was wrong about you, and I was wrong to doubt the choosing of the old one beneath the stone, whose dagger White-hilt you wear. I have been prideful and foolish…and it has brought me to a sorry pass. Ardhu Pendraec, if you are as merciful as you are powerful…show me clemency this day and let me return to my islands. I will not bother you again; the mainland holds no more attraction for me.”
“Don’t trust him, Art!” cried Ka’hai, staring with hatred at the Northern chief. “He is as slimy as an eel. Kill him and put an end to it.”
Ardhu beckoned to An’kelet. “Get him on his feet. Whatever he has done and whatever I chose to do with him, he will not grovel in the dirt like an earthworm.”
The bronze warrior grabbed Loth by his tunic and dragged him up, forcing him to stand before the young king. Ardhu stepped forward, his face only inches from his opponent’s, the tip of Caladvolc touching his throat. He stared into Loth’s cold eyes for a moment, then lifted his hand and struck him across the face with all the force he could muster.
“Get out of here,” he said as Loth tumbled onto the ground with a thud. “Go, before I change my mind. And if you ever set foot in these lands again, I will not only have your head, but I will march North and set your bleak islands ablaze from end to end, and wipe every one of your clan from the earth and cast down your Ancestor-stones and break your barrows and grind the bones to dust, so that no one ever shall know that your treacherous breed ever existed in the world of men! Spirits, so hear me, and know that I will hold true to this if Loth of the Yrch islands should defy me again!”
Wordlessly, Loth scrambled to his feet and ran blindly for the trees on the hillside, his arms flailing and his teeth bared like a frightened animal. The warriors of Ardhu and Ludegran hooted derisively and called insults after him.
“You should have killed him, I reckon,” said Ka’hai heavily, shaking his head. “He’ll never change. He may never set foot on the mainland again—but I’ll wager he’ll still find a way to cause mischief!”
“We’ll just have to watch his movements.” Ardhu stared into the blackness where his adversary had vanished. “I would not kill him and risk more dissension among the tribes. We spend too much time fighting each other as it is. I do not wish to give some Northern lordling cause to create rebellion in his name. We need some kind of alliance between the Chiefs, even if an uneasy one, if we are ever to defend this island from invaders.”
At the moment Ludegran came up to Ardhu and clasped his shoulder, his fingers trembling. “Mighty is the sword-arm of the Terrible Head! You have surely saved us from what would have been certain doom, even with our stalwart walls and brave bowmen! Chief Ardhu, ask anything of me and I will grant it if I can, in token of my gratitude and endless friendship!”
Art paused, blood rising suddenly to his face. Only one thing interested him in Ludegran’s dun. A girl white as snow, with a goddess for a dam. The Merlin might be angry…but it would be a good alliance, surely the old man could see the wisdom in it. The seas between Albu and Ibherna would be made safe, and a link forged to the goldmines of the fabled green isle.
"I ask for one thing only.” Ardhu folded his arms. “I ask that I might take as wife the Princess Fynavir, daughter of Mevva the Intoxicator.”
Ludegran looked surprised but pleased. “Her mother must be consulted, of course, but I am sure she will agree to this match. Who could be a better husband for her daughter?” Turning around, he motioned to one of the women who had ventured out to view the aftermath of the battle.
“Go, Edel, fetch Fynavir from her chambers!”
The woman ran back into the dun and appeared a few moments later with Fynavir, wrapped in thick furs against the night chill. She glanced around anxiously, not sure why she had been summoned. Seeing her distress, An’kelet smiled at her, and the worried lines on her brow immediately softened at his concern.
“Fynavir.” Ludegran placed his hands upon her shoulders. “In the time you have dwelt with my people, you have become as a daughter to me. I had hoped you would enter my family, but alas, due to the death of Brokvel, it was not to be. I have worried what your fate would be, knowing that you did not wish to return to your mother’s hearth, but now I can assure you that this will never happen, barring any objections from Mevva. The great Chief Ardhu, Bear-chief and Terrible Head of Prydn has brought great honour upon us both—he wishes to take you as his wife.”
Fynavir’s lips parted; no sound came out. Her eyes travelled to An’kelet, who had stopped smiling. “Foster-father, I know not what to say…” she finally managed. Her voice trembled.
“He pleases you, does he not? Girl, I am lord here, and know what went on upon the walls last night! Is there some reason why you should not marry King Ardhu?”
“No, he is a great warrior and a comely chief. But I…I…” Her voice faltered and again her gaze slid towards An’kelet, as if hoping he would speak, finding a reason why this match should not occur. Instead, he stared at the ground, leaning heavily on his spear.
“Then it is settled!” Ludegran clapped his hands. “You will marry King Ardhu. I will send messengers to Queen Mevva and the Ailello on the morrow. Fear not, Ardhu, Fynavir will not bring just her beauty to your marriage bed. She will also bring forty head of cattle and golden treasure from her mother’s hoard.”
Ardhu grinned like a mad thing. “So much the better. Ludegran, if Mevva agrees to the match, have Fynavir sent to me for the Feast of the Rage of Trogran at the Crossroads-of-the-World. That is an auspicious t
ime for fruitful marriages.”
“It will be done,” said Ludegran, clasping hands with the younger man to signify a deal had been made.
The warband then set about celebrating both their victory and the forthcoming marriage of the king. No one even noticed that Fynavir had retired, alone, to her sleeping cubicle, or that the usually ebullient An’kelet had grown suddenly solemn and pensive, drinking from his beaker as if the only solace in the world was to be found within its depths.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Merlin was angry. Ardhu guessed it as soon as he rode into Deroweth, and could see no sign of his mentor, only pale-robed priests flitting to and fro between the houses with countenances sour as unripe apples. “Where is he then?” he said curtly to one priest, as he slid down from Lamrai’s back and flung the reins to Ka’hai.
The man frowned from under the peak of his white linen hood. “He awaits your arrival in his hut, lord Ardhu. He is aware you are home.”
“Is he? Well, not much of a greeting for his king!” Angrily, Art stormed towards the Merlin’s hut, with its grandly decorated doorway facing away from the sharp winds that raked the ridge overlooking Holy Hill.
Flinging aside the deerskin hide that hung in the entrance of the house, he thrust his way inside, blinking in the gloom. “Merlin…why do you shun me? Have I not driven off the invaders? Conquered Loth and killed the treacherous Urienz? What is wrong with you, man? I come home expecting glory and celebration, yet see nothing but grim faces and bowed heads.”
Merlin’s face loomed out of the darkness. He looked wild and fierce, eyes scored by dark rings, lips twisted in a sneer. “Yes, you have done all the deeds I trained you to do. But that’s not all you did, is it, Ardhu Pendraec? You did much more. Yes, much, much more. News came of your victories…but also of you taking a foreign prince into your warrior’s fold. Even worse, it seems that you have arranged a match with the daughter of Mevva of Ibherna! Fool!”
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 20
