Warrior Scarlet

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Other ways branched from the way that they were following; some grassy, some white, making a spider-web of communication along the tawny ridges of the high downs. They passed grazing sheep, who ran into startled huddles as they went by, stamping and staring at the scarlet and the bronze and the dull thunder of hooves and the streaming ponies’ manes; so that the little dark shepherds sent their curses after the Golden People, who crashed by, lordlywise, startling the sheep. They passed the round grave mounds of the forgotten heroes that were strung out along the ridges, helping to mark the way. That night they camped beside one of the ancient, fortified dew-ponds; and about noon of the next day they came in sight of the Royal Dun, high on its vast wave-lift of the Chalk.

  By that time they had become one of several such bands, following their Chiefs and great men, all drawing in by the white trails of the Chalk towards the huge fortress of turf banks that lay like a girdle, like a triple crown, like a coiled snake, about the highest crest of the downs.

  The autumn day was a gleaming one, the hawthorn bushes glowing copper red with berries in the sunlight, against the staring white of the chalk-cut ramparts, and the turf below the Dun fiercely green where the autumn rain had brought it up from the tawny dryness of late summer: a day of sharp edges and colours clear and hard as the enamels on a shield boss. But away towards the Great Water, a long low bank of cloud was creeping inland, and already the distant Marshes were growing blurred as though a grey finger had been smudged across their blue and green and violet.

  ‘Mist,’ Drem said to Vortrix, riding at his shoulder. ‘We shall have cheerless camping tonight, up on these high downs,’ and then, as the Dun drew nearer, forgot about it in the noise and excitement of their arrival.

  Up the white chalk of the ancient track and over the turf on either side, the riders let their ponies out, and they leapt forward with tossing manes, shaking their heads and spilling foam on their breasts; and Midir’s litter bearers, changed many times since the journey started, quickened from their long, swift lope into a run that must have all but shaken the holy man’s head from his shoulders. So they swept forward towards the massive triple gateway, where the silent warriors of the Royal Clan lined the chalk-cut ramparts, their bucklers darkly glinting against the dappled autumn sky. Now they were threading the zigzag causeway that spanned the outer ditch; now the timber facings of the gateway towered on either hand; and the riders poured through. Last of all, Drem and his fellows dug their heels into their ponies’ flanks and swept yelling after them, driving the wild-eyed, sickle-horned bullocks through the narrow-necked entrance.

  Within the Royal Dun was an open space where the whole Tribe could gather in time of trouble, with the cattle driven into the berms between the vast concentric rings of defensive banks; and in the highest part of the stronghold the round turf roofs of the Royal Village clustered about the high hall of the King. But Drem, casting eager glances about him as he dropped from the back of his shaggy little mount, saw that from all the huddled roofs no smoke rose into the air. No hearth fires burned in the Royal Dun, nor would any, until the new King was made. And from the King’s high hall he heard the keening of the women: ‘Ochone! Ochone!’

  When the cattle had been handed over to the men who waited to pen them, he made his way with Maelgan and the rest, down through the swarming encampment where already the horsehide tents were being set up, to picket the ponies in the inner berm. There were many ponies there already, and they were restless, stamping and fretting, made uneasy by the strangers all around them, or by the feeling that lay like a shadow, like the thick heaviness and sense of waiting before thunder, over the Royal Dun. They had almost finished picketing and feeding the ponies, when Vortrix, who had been kept back to attend on his father, came down to join them, leading the Chieftain’s black stallion. They gathered round him as he set about the task that they had just finished, and looked on. But it seemed that the general uneasiness was in Vortrix’s usually easy temper, for he turned on the perfectly unoffending Maelgan, saying, ‘Must you stand there looking like a pig? Give me the other picket rope.’

  Maelgan took up the coiled hide rope and tossed it to him. ‘I do not know about a pig,’ he said peaceably. ‘I wish I was a pony. Nobody expects the ponies to fast until the new King is made!’

  ‘Try pawing the ground and whinneying,’ Gault said, ‘and maybe someone will give you an armful of bracken fodder.’ And he pulled his hair into a forelock between his eyes, and began to prance, playing the fool as he used to do when they were twelve-year-olds; and the others laughed as they had done when they were twelve-year-olds, and Urian thumped him on the head, and suddenly they were in the midst of a rough and tumble—anything to ease the tension, the sense of waiting that was like something twisted too tight in their stomachs.

  A young mare, pied like a wagtail, who was being led by at that moment, chose to play startled at their laughter, and flung up her head with a snort, dancing a little. She would have been quiet again the next instant, but the boy in charge of her struck at her head with the bunched reins in his hand, cursing; and that did the mischief. Squealing between fear and temper the mare went up in a rearing half turn, and began to swing on her hind legs, with the boy hanging on to her headgear. She crashed into the Chieftain’s black stallion, who squealed in his turn and flung round, dragging on the picket rope, and bit at her crest. In an instant all was confusion.

  Vortrix, struggling to quieten his father’s angry pony, shouted furiously over his shoulder. ‘Oh, fool! Who let you loose with anything on four hooves?’

  There was a cry of, ‘Look out, she’s broken free!’ and Drem saw the mare upreared almost above him, and leaping clear of the lashing hooves, sprang for her headgear.

  ‘Well enough—I have her!’

  A few trampling and sweating moments followed, and the mare was down on all four legs again, trembling, but quite docile. The two boys faced each other, both breathing quickly, while the mare swung her head to nuzzle exploringly at Drem’s breast. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to jab at the head of a frightened horse like that?’ Drem said.

  The other boy thrust out his jaw. ‘What frightened her, then? You all yaffling like a treeful of green woodpeckers under her nose!’

  ‘She was well enough until you hit her with the bridle.’

  The other boy flushed crimson. ‘I do not need that the like of you should tell me how to handle a pony!’ He caught back the bridle into his own hand, taking care, however, not to startle the mare again.

  ‘It is in my mind that you sorely need someone to tell you how to handle a pony!’ Drem said, laughing, and turned away to his Spear Brothers.

  Behind him the laugh was caught up by the little crowd that had gathered, and another boy’s voice said, ‘You got the worst of that, Cuneda, and you deserved it! Na, na, come away. There will be trouble if you start a fight here at the King’s Death Feast.’

  And the thing was over; over as swiftly as it had blown up; and Drem thought no more about it as they helped Vortrix to feed and rub down the Chieftain’s still angry stallion; and presently made their way back all together to the encampment below the Royal Dun.

  In the crowd and the enclosed space between the high turf banks, they had not seen how the mist—that far-off mist that had been a cloud bank along the Great Water—came creeping up across the marshes, rising higher and higher like the ghost of a long dead sea. But suddenly, as they came out into the open space in the midst of the camp, it was all about them, wreathing up from the trampled ground in a faint, wet smoke that seemed to gather most thickly about the King’s hall in the highest part of the Dun. And with the mist, it seemed to Drem that there came upon the Royal Dun a deeper sense of waiting—waiting . . .

  The waiting ended at dusk, when the household warriors, their faces and breasts daubed with the charcoal and ochre patterns of mourning, bore the dead King from his hall. Standing with Vortrix and the rest of the brotherhood on the edge of the cleared way from the house-p
lace to the great gate, Drem watched them go by, the dusk seeming to deepen as the flaring torches passed, and the sea mist that drove across the ramparts turning to golden smoke. He saw the half-naked priests, Midir among them; and behind the priests, the body of the King, born by six of his warriors. The King’s face was bare of the great wolfskin mantle that wrapped him round, his red hair fallen back, bright and ragged as the flare of the torches. There was a small, terrible smile on his face, and the same smile was stamped upon the painted face of one of the men who bore him: a very young warrior, with the same bright, ragged hair, the same great beak of a nose, so that Drem knew, though no one had told him, that he was looking at father and son, the old King and the new King, yesterday’s and tomorrow’s.

  The crowd swayed and stirred, catching up the wailing from the women, and behind the King’s body came the warriors of the Royal Clan, with his favourite ponies and hounds, who would go with him beyond the Sunset, and others driving a bull and a ram and a black, bristling boar for the sacrifice.

  The Tribe turned in behind them, Men’s side and New Spears alike, all with their weapons. And so, in a long comet tail of torches, they bore the dead King from his Dun and away over the downs in the mist, while the wailing of the Women’s side fell away behind them.

  It was quite dark when they reached the Holy Place, and the mist was thickening. Drem, far down the long tail of torches, sensed rather than saw the huge, bush-grown mass of the ancient grave-mound on their right, as they carried the dead King Sunwise about it, in a circling snake of torch light, a Sun-snake coiled about the darkness. When they had made the circle, they laid their burden on the tall pyre that had been built on the level hilltop turf. Then the bull and the ram and the boar were sacrificed by the High Priest with his black flint knife, and flayed, and the skins and fat wrapped about the King’s body. Hounds and ponies were slain, though the ponies were mares and therefore almost beyond price, and their carcasses ranged upon the pyre with the flayed carcasses of the beasts of sacrifice. Great two-handled jars of honey and tallow were stacked among the logs and brushwood, and all was ready.

  The High Priest with the gilded horns of the Sun upon his head, stood out with arms upraised, chanting the Invocation. ‘Spear in the Noonday, Lord of Light, Lord of Life, Lord of the Cleansing Fire, take back by fire the warrior whose warring is finished, the hunter whose hunting is done . . .’

  And while he yet chanted, the King’s son stepped out from among his kind, and took a torch from one of the priests, and turning to the pyre, plunged it again and again into the brushwood. Then, with the flames already licking up, he flung the torch into the very heart of the great mass, and setting a foot on one of the projecting logs, mounted lightly to the muffled shape on the crest. For a long moment he crouched there, his arms across his father’s body, bending his head on to the dead man’s breast so that in that last moment of farewell their bright hair flowed together as one. Then he sprang down again, with the blood of the flayed skins on him, and the sparks hanging on the hem of his kirtle.

  At dawn they quenched the sinking flames with barley beer, and when the dark fire scar was cool enough, they gathered the half-burned bones of the King and wrapped them in a cloth of scarlet linen, and put them in a great jar. In the growing light Drem saw that a little chamber had been cut in the flank of the grave mound, and in it the priest kind set the jar, making a singing magic as they did so. They ranged about it all that was left of the ponies and hunting dogs, the weapons and the ornaments of a warrior, and roasted meat and jars of mead and grain for the King’s journey. Then the warriors closed in, and laid back the chalk and the cut turfs over all. And only the black fire scar remained to tell that the King had gone beyond the Sunset.

  And now another waiting was upon the assembled host; and all faces, eager, strained with anticipation in the thin dawn light, were turned up towards the crest of the sacred mound. The mist had thinned a little, growing ragged, and out of the trailing scarves of vapour loomed the low-growing darkness of thorn and yew and juniper that clothed the wide shoulder of the downs and the swelling green breast of the ancient grave-mound. Mist was in the hair of the warriors, a grey-silver bloom of mist clinging to the rough wool of their cloaks and the coats of the hounds who padded among them. And somewhere a bird rose crying, unseen in the drifting greyness of the morning.

  Then that waiting, too, was over, with a hollow booming of bulls’ horns; and there on the crest of the sacred mound, where no man had seen them come, stood the High Priest, and with him the young warrior with the old King’s face. A gasp, a great shout rose from the crowd. ‘The King! The High Chieftain comes again!’ And it seemed to Drem, staring up through the drifting mist wreathes, that the two poised high on the crest of the sacred mound were taller than any mortal man; giants and heroes, not men. The High Priest raised his arms, and his voice came down to the waiting host, thin and piercing as the bird’s cry in the grey morning. ‘The King is gone into the West. The King comes again. The Sun sets and the Sun rises. See and acknowledge the King, O ye warriors of the Tribe.’

  And Drem saw, as he had not seen before, that between his upraised hands, between the golden sweep of the Sun horns on his head, was a twisted circle of red gold that caught a gleam of flame even in that milk-pale morning. In a silence so complete that suddenly it was as though one could hear the mist wreathes trailing through the dark juniper branches, he brought his hands down, slowly, slowly, and pressed the shining circlet low on the young King’s brows.

  Roar on roar of acclamation burst from the assembled warriors; a beating rush of sound, rising to the crescendo of the Royal Salute, as every man brought his spear butt crashing down across his shield. When it was stilled, the High Priest had gone, melted into the mist, no man seeing him go as none had seen him come; and the young King stood alone above them, alone with the mist and the twisted thorn trees, in the sudden isolation of his kingship. The mourning paint had been wiped from his face. He turned slowly, his hands held out, showing himself to his Tribe as the custom demanded; and when the circle was complete, cried out in a hard, clear voice, ‘I am the King!’

  ‘You are the King!’ came back the shouted answer.

  ‘I am the King! Ye who are my warriors, let you now swear faith with me!’

  And the answer came back in a deep chant; in the ancient three-fold oath of the Golden People. ‘You are the King. If we break faith with you, may the green earth gape and swallow us. May the grey sea burst loose and overwhelm us; may the sky of stars fall and crush us out of life for ever!’

  And so the ceremony was over, and the King was made. And the new King, with his priest kind going before, led his warriors back to the Royal Dun.

  VIII

  The Hound Fight

  THERE WAS A smell of roasting in the Royal Dun; the cooking smoke hung low in the mist, and there was firelight again in house-place doorways and the openings of the horse-hide tents; and in a while, when the ponies had been tended, the feasting began. It was such feasting as Drem had never dreamed of: whole baked carcasses of cattle and sheep and pig lifted smoking from the pits of hot stones, black puddings made of blood and fat roasted in the paunches of sheep, great baskets of wheaten cakes and mare’s-milk curds, and jars of mead and barley beer that the slaves and the women carried round. All day it went on, while from time to time the young warriors and the champions would leave feasting around the fires, and betake themselves to wrestling and all kinds of trials of strength or skill, and then return to their feasting again. And all the while the new King sat on his stool of painted wood spread with sheepskin beside the High Fire, the Royal Fire, and with him the Clan Chieftains and the great men of the Tribe, each attended by his New Spears, who served him as cup bearers and ceremonial guard, according to the custom.

  Drem, squatting with the rest of Dumnorix’s New Spears, a little behind their Chieftain, and gloriously full of black pudding, could see the Grandfather and Talore the Hunter both here at the High Fire, and felt the
pride rise in his chest that it should be so. He tore a last mouthful from the piece of rib he had been gnawing, and gave the bone to Whitethroat against his knee; and turned with a sigh of contentment to listen to the blind harper who sat at the King’s feet, strikingmusic like a shower of shining sparks from the slim, five-stringed harp of black bog oak in his hands. Once or twice since he could remember, such a harper had come to the home village, and played beside Dumnorix’s fire, and each time he had been blind. Sometimes the power of song came to a man who was blind in the first place—as though the Sun Lord had reached out to touch him with a bright finger, that he might have another kind of seeing, another kind of light in place of the light he lacked. But if the song came to a sighted man, then as soon as it became clear that he was touched by the Sun Lord’s finger, often while he was still only a child, he was blinded by the priests, that his other kind of seeing might grow the stronger. It was the custom. Drem shut his eyes, hearing the winged notes fly upwards in the darkness, above the deep surf of voices round the fire. And when he opened his eyes again, the firelight seemed brighter than it had done before, and the flower petal shape of Whitethroat’s pricked ears gave him an almost painful stab of pleasure.

  Vortrix, squatting at his shoulder, said, ‘I suppose it is fair enough. Anyone can be a warrior and see the sky and the way the shadows run, but only one in a host can make the Harp Magic.’ It sometimes happened like that between him and Vortrix; they did not talk to each other much, but often they knew what the other one was thinking.

  Dusk was again creeping over the crowded Dun by now, and much mead and barley beer had been drunk since the feasting started; eyes were growing brighter and tongues looser, and there were wild bursts of laughter and swift flaring quarrels as men grew fierce and merry in their cups. The main business of eating was over, and there was a breaking up and shifting all round the great fires; but the drinking would go on for a long while yet. The young King, lounging sideways on his painted stool with the head of a favourite wolf hound on his knee, held up his great cup of wrought red gold, and looked about him at his Chieftains and warriors in the firelight. ‘My Chieftains, my brothers, I drink to you. The Sun and the Moon on your path.’ And flinging back his head he drained off the thick yellow mead.