“Yes,” said Merlin,” and it was the right thing to do. Look at you, filled with fury. You would have fallen right into Morigau’s trap, and done something you would later regret.”
Ardhu slumped to his knees by the fire-pit. “I have already done things I regret. Merlin, Ana has told me that Morigau has…that there is…”
Merlin nodded gravely. “Yes. There is a child. She has passed him off as the get of Loth.”
“If I could…” Ardhu’s eyes blackened, and for a second Merlin recoiled, for the young man looked so like his half-sister it was disconcerting. “If I could, I would send my warriors throughout the land to kill any man-child born in the month of the Bhel-fires!”
“But that would make you as much a monster as Morigau.”
“I know.” Ardhu bowed his head. “And you know I would never in truth do such a thing.”
Merlin raised his young lord up with a hand. “Now that you have shouted out your anger, we had best gather the warband and hold council. Morigau threatened not only you, but all the people of Prydn. We must be prepared for sudden attacks. It may be all angry bluster and wishful malice—but I fear not.”
*****
More than four months had passed before Ardhu had news of his kinswoman and her malign devices. The warband was gathered in the hall of Kham-El-Ard, drinking and carousing, most well into their cups. Some played foolish games with coloured pebbles, while others dandled their wives on their knees or pinched and pawed the serving women who brought them their beakers of mead and beer. The day was cold, the Winter Solstice gone by nearly a month, and the whole world outside seemed a bleak vista of grey and white—a haze of mist, a touch of frost, a sprinkle of trodden snow. Icicles clattered on the roofline of the hall, while in the valley below tree-boughs clashed together like skeleton bones, tossed on a bitter wind.
As daylight failed, the clouds gaped and it began to rain, an icy flow from the heavens that pattered on the thatching of the great chieftain’s house and beat against the calfskin stretched over the window-slits.
Ardhu sat at the head of the hall, on a raised pile of furs, his legs stretched out before him close to the blazing fire-pit. An’kelet reclined on his right hand side, honing the barbs on the spear Balugaisa, while Merlin squatted on his left, impassive and ever vigilant, one eye fixed on the door, which shuddered in the rising wind, threatening to burst open and flood the hall with wintry chill. Fynavir knelt between Ardhu and An’kelet; eyes locked on the fire’s flames. She wore her frost-pale hair loose like an unwed maiden, instead of in the customary hairnet favoured by married women—it was what Ardhu liked and expected.
And An’kelet too. She could feel his gaze travelling the graceful curves of her body, willing her to turn and face him. To let him know the truth of what she felt towards him…
Eventually she could bear no more, and she turned her head and met his ready smile. A small gasp left her lips and she hastily turned away again, clutching her handled mug with its watered-down beer.
“Fynavir, what ails you?” Ardhu leaned over, hand caressing her shoulder, running over the swell of her breast, past her hip to touch her stomach. “Are you…all right? Should I call a healing woman?”
She knew what he implied; his intimate touch said it all. Tears pricked her eyes. There was still no sign of any child. The only signs visible tonight were of her traitorous desires.
“I am fine, lord husband,” she said. “A moment’s giddiness…the heat…the drink…Perhaps I should go to our chamber.”
Ardhu stared moodily at her. These turns were more and more frequent. She seemed, sometimes, to be drawing away from him, her embraces cold and less frequent, and her expression distant.
“Fynavir, do not shame me here,” he hissed in her ear, suddenly cruel with too much beer and winter boredom. “Men will talk if you leave the hall. You are meant to be at my side. You are my Queen, and the spirit of the land is within you. If it is not right between us, the people will think that it is also not right with the Land itself!”
“And is it?” Tears stung her eyes.
“It would be if you would give the land an heir!” Ardhu snapped, and then, realising he had spoken too freely, wrapped his bearskin around him and glowered furiously into the smoke in the longhouse.
He had done it—spoken the unspeakable out loud before all. Merlin, tapping out a thin beat on a shamanic drum held between his bony knees, smiled a bitter, knowing smile. He didn’t hate the white foreign girl, but she was the worst choice his young king could have made. Maybe, with luck, Art would now see the unhappy truth and put her aside.
Feeling a stab of guilt for his angry outburst, Ardhu reached for Fynavir’s soft arm. She was startlingly beautiful, her hair like the frost on winter trees, her eyes green and stormy as the distant seas. Jet beads shone darkly around her neck and in her ears, startling against her unnatural whiteness. “Why don’t you dance as you did before,” he slurred. “Back in the hall of Ludegran. Dance for me, Fynavir, and show everyone that it is still good between us!”
“I…I can’t... ” she began, hand rising to her throat, but the spasm of anger that crossed her husband’s face silenced her protests.
Reluctantly, she climbed to her feet, swaying as her head reeled. The men of the warband cheered; most secretly found her good to look upon, different in her whiteness to most of the native Prydn women who tended to brown hair or red. Musicians began to play on pipes, while Merlin’s drum sent out a frenzied thumping.
Fynavir closed her eyes, imagining, as she always did when she performed her magic dances that she was other than she was. In her mind’s eye she was a swan, faltering on the wing, trying to fly away over a long, dark lake to join a long-lost mate in the shadows on the other side. She soared and swooped inside her head, and her body took over and mimicked the scene in her mind. On graceful toes she leaped around the fire, her head flung back revealing a long neck as graceful as that of the swan she envisioned.
Ardhu watched, enthralled, the blood running hot in his loins. He had been unkind, but by the gods, he would make it up to her. Blue faience beads, a golden-buttoned gown from over the sea…anything she asked.
Suddenly she ceased dancing. The image in her head lurched. The swan flew into the dark, and suddenly an arrow pierced its breast, and with a dying cry it plummeted down, falling, falling, and falling, toward the icy lake….
“No!” she cried, and toppled forward towards the burning fire.
A serving woman screamed.
Swift as the wind, An’kelet was at her side, catching her before she collapsed into the flames. He lifted her as if she were a child, carrying her away from the heat and the sparks that threatened to ignite her hair.
“An’kelet!”Ardhu leapt to his feet. His voice was harsh. He did not know why he felt angry toward An’kelet, who had done only what a loyal warrior would do. “Leave her be—I shall take care of her!”
An’kelet hesitated. Ardhu’s eyes widened then blackened with fury. What was the fool up to, making him look like some boor who could not be trusted with the wellbeing of his own woman?
At that moment, there came a crash from outside. A huge gust of wind smashed opens the doors of the hall, and extinguished the torches at the entrance and the lamps full of burning fat. Even the fire dimmed down to a pile of sullen embers.
In the sudden blackness, someone shrieked in fear.
There was the sound of daggers being drawn. An’kelet placed Fynavir on a fur and drew Arondyt and Fragarak, while Ardhu unsheathed Caladvolc and snatched up the Face of Evening.
“Who goes?” he demanded.
Raiders he could deal with, but his spies had brought no news for weeks, and the great Ridgeways were empty. So close to Solstice, it was more likely that any unwelcome arrival at the feasting hall would come from the malevolent spirit-world.
The sound of hoof beats answered his shout. The men and women in the hall shrank back, even Bohrs and Ka’hai, as a dark figure on horseback e
ntered the hall and rode boldly across the rush-strewn floor toward the king’s dais.
The stranger looked indeed as if he harkened from the Otherworld; surely, no mortal man had a countenance such as his. He was green from head to foot, in both skin colour and the colour of his tunic. Wild thorns and sprigs of holly jutted from curled hair and beard, and blood-red berries dangled from antlers sprouting from between his snarled locks. Against the green of his face, his eyes seemed large and reddish, monstrous. His teeth were filed sharp and white as the Moon, glowing as he laughed. Above his head he brandished a great double-bladed bronze axe.
Ardhu leapt up, Caladvolc shining like a tongue of flame in the dimness. “Be you man or spirit, I will smite you if you do not leave my hall!”
The green rider ignored him and swung down from the saddle, swaggering arrogantly toward the young king and his men. “Fine words,” he cried. “Fine brave words…but where is your hospitality, O jewel of kings! Ach, the warrior-circle of the famed Ardhu Pendraec is made of naught but mean men, holding their beakers and their dark plots close to their hearts!”
“You speak treasonously!” Hwalchmai, who had been sitting with Ba-lin and Bal-ahn, sprang from his seat and rushed towards the verdant apparition. “The Lord Ardhu is most generous of kings! He offers no hospitality to you, because your countenance is vile… as is your uncouth tongue! You deserve to die for your slurs!”
The Green Man peered down his aquiline nose at the young man before him, at the angry face and fierce grey-green eyes. He then laughed, the sound rising up to shake the rafters. “If you think I have committed such a grave crime, take my head, boy. Look…I will make the deed easy for you!”
He held out his huge, double-bladed axe, its long haft wrapped in oiled leather. Hwalchmai snatched it from him, stumbling as he realised it was heavier than he thought. His dismay at the brief loss of his footing elicited another peel of laughter from the Green Man.
“Surely my weapon is not too much for such a noble youth!” he bellowed. “But behold, I still bow to your great prowess! I will go down on my knees and bare my neck to the kiss of the blade!”
Grinning, he sank down before Hwalchmai and parted his mass of hair with big green hands. His neck shone in the dying embers of the fire—pale green like a corpse’s skin.
Hwalchmai hefted the great axe. Sweat broke out on his brow. The axe’s handle was slippery, sweaty; he fought to position it, to prepare for the lethal blow. With a cry he raised it over his head, and then brought it down with all his might, aiming for the tree-like neck, bulging with knots of veins….
And missed.
As if enchanted, the heavy-headed, foreign weapon dragged forward in his hand, tearing through clawed fingers as if trying to get back to its master’s belt. The axe tumbled in the air, a flash of red, before thudding into the packed earth a few inches from the Green Man’s ferocious head.
“A…ha!” he bellowed, springing to his feet and snatching up his fallen axe. “Brave words, but wavering hand! Can your honour ever be restored, young hothead? Not by ordinary means. Only if you come to my abode in Lud’s hole, and play the axe-game with your head!”
Hwalchmai stared at him, furious yet fearful, eyeing the stranger’s axe as if it were some living creature that might suddenly spring forward and strike him. He could hear the other men in the hall murmuring, some even sniggering—he was not liked in all quarters, for some believed he had risen in Ardhu’s esteem too quickly, and only because he was blood-kin. Well, he would prove them wrong. He would pass the greatest test of them all, or die in the attempt.
“I will seek you out at this Lud’s hole,” he snarled between gritted teeth. “And I will play your axe-game.”
“Good!” shouted the Green Man, with a rapacious grin, “I look to the hour of our meeting!” and he sprang astride his steed and galloped from the hall, out into the driving rain and wild weather beyond. In an eye’s blink, he was gone, lost in the darkness of a storm-wracked winter night.
“Hwalchmai, what have you done?” Ardhu shook his cousin’s shoulder.” You have sworn your life away.”
“I had no choice,” said Hwalchmai, hotly. “To nay-say him would bring dishonour. Already I am looked on as an interloper who rides upon the fame of my kin. I will prove that is not the case and find eternal fame among the singers-of-song. Or else my head will decorate the Green Man’s dwelling in Lud’s Hole.”
*****
Hwalchmai did not go after the green stranger for another week; a terrible winter storm blew in from the frozen reaches of Kalydon, where the painted people dwelt amidst high mountains and uncharted forests, and turned all the land into a vista of white. Ice came with it, not just snow, borne on a screaming gale that gnashed men’s flesh like wolves’ teeth and left the trees and rooftops of Kham-El-Ard rimed with glittering icicles that fell and shattered with an eerie tinkling. Several head of cattle, terrified by the wild weather, broke free of their pens and perished while stampeding over a thinly frozen Abona and several shepherds on the eastern downlands did not return to their homes in the Place-of-Light.
“There is evil afoot in this storm.” Merlin frowned as he leaned on his staff and stared out from the doors of Ardhu’s Great Hall. “It comes from the North, where the devil-woman Morigau dwells. How she must laugh at us, soft in the South, trammelled here like beasts while she wreaks her mischief!”
Head bowed, he murmured invocations to the Sun, to the spirits in the snow-bound stone circle out on the Great Plain. The winds answered him, but they were cold, droning about him with icy malevolence.
As the storm finally died away, and the first hint of blue returned to the sky, Hwalchmai began to prepare for his journey to Lud’s hole, packing a bag and wrapping himself in his thickest furs, stuffing straw inside his boots of felt and skin. Ardhu begged him to let the warband accompany him but he refused. “I must do this deed myself or no respect will be mine,” he stated.
Bow and quiver of arrows strapped to his back, two sturdy daggers at his belt, he began to make his way down from the heights of Kham-El-Ard. It was not long after the Sunrise and the snowdrifts were red-tinted, as if stained from some gory battle. The eastern sky burned with crimson fire as the Sun’s bleeding eye slowly ascended the dark hump of Magic Hill.
Ten steps he took, feet crunching on frozen snow, and then he cried out, “Ardhu! Someone comes to Kham-El-Ard this cold morn! Look!”
The gate-guards sprang into action, running halfway down the hill with bows nocked. Sleepy-eyed, Ardhu appeared on the ramparts, his bearskin wrapped loosely around his shoulders, his black hair storm-tossed. Sure enough a figure could be seen staggering across the fields towards the hillfort, a shambling shape amidst the ghostly fog-tendrils rising from the waters of Abona.
Fleet of foot, Hwalchmai was first to reach the stranger. He skidded to a halt as he realised the man was not alone—in his arms he carried the body of a young boy. A boy, blue-faced and stiff, who had been dead some days. Ash and blood smeared his livid face. He was no more than ten.
Hwalchmai stared in horror. The man stared back, face grimy and besmirched and twisted with grief. His mouth moved but it seemed he had lost the ability for speech.
“What has happened? Where are you from?” Hwalchmai found his own voice. “Who has done this evil deed?”
The man spluttered, and wiped his eyes, before at last finding his tongue. His voice was ragged with sorrow: “I hail from Tarn Wethelen on the borders of the Dwri lands…and I come begging help from the Young King who men say protects the weak and helpless against tyrants and wicked men from afar. A week ago our village and temple were burned to the ground by invaders. They spared no one, not even unarmed children…” He looked at the stiffened corpse in his arms and began a pitiful keening that cut eerily through the morning.
By now Ardhu had reached the foot of the hill, with Merlin and An’kelet following closely behind him. Ardhu approached the man and placed his hand on his shoulder, while Merlin prise
d the rigid child’s body from the man’s grasp and laid it respectfully on the grass, head facing toward the rising Sun.
“If it is vengeance you seek, you have come to the right place,” said Ardhu firmly. “The Warband will ride this very day, and your boy’s death will be made good with foemen’s blood. Who was it that attacked your settlement? The sea-folk? Or other Western chiefs?”
The man spat on the ground. “Neither. They spoke our tongue but with a strange twist. Northerners, I think. With them they had a totem-animal, a monster from the pits of shadow in An—un, the Underworld. A great boar it was, eyes like flame, tusks like knives. It was mad and ran amok, even as they did, goring and biting, and after the battle they fed it on dead men’s livers…T’orc Is-gurth they called the beast, the Chief Boar, and its master who goaded it on was named Rhyttah Bad-adun, the Chief Giant. He was as fearsome as his creature, a hand taller than most men and one-eyed, and he wore a cloak woven from the beards of men he has slain.”
Merlin clutched his staff, face twisting with anguish at the newcomer’s words. “So she did not tell idle tales,” he muttered. “Morigau did not lie, but worked her evil well. But she will not prevail…no, I shall see to it.”
Turning to Ardhu, he caught his arm. “You must go and fight this new danger and crush it utterly. It is the doing of Morigau, your sister.”
Ardhu spat an oath. “So soon! She must truly be a creature of Otherness; she flies around Prydn as no mortal could. What is your counsel, Merlin, to defeat this Boar and its Master? Will axes and arrows be enough? The smell of magic is on this, wrought by the hands of Morigau.”
Merlin’s lips narrowed, tightened. “Ever since she was here, I have thought on this, conferring with my fellow priests and lore-masters at Deroweth. You are warriors, not magic men, and I would that you kept it so, and hunted down this fell beast with the tools of warriors made from sound stone and good, wholesome metal. But if all fails, and Chief Giant and Chief Boar elude you, there are others ways—but they are dark and perilous. If it comes to it, seek the Black Witch daughter of White Witch in her cave in the Uplands of Despair, and take from her the magic razor, tempered in blood, that lies upon her altar. It is will shear both the magic boar’s bristles and the neck of cruel Rhyttah.”
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 27
