The Hadassah Covenant

by Robert Holdstock

  Lemanku and his niece, Niiv, now clothed in a white fur cloak and colourful cap, came to officiate at the ceremony.

  * * *

  ‘Hold on! This won’t do! This won’t do!’

  Rubobostes the Dacian had barged through the circle and now laid his sword, compliantly and defencelessly, on the altar. ‘Swans feathers? Bark carvings? Swans? Jason, this won’t do at all. If I’m to sail with my horse, I need to know that Istarta has been propitiated. You must sacrifice to Istarta, otherwise the rivers will run against us, and two-legged wolves will dog our tracks through the forest. We will have no chance at all. Swans feathers? Not good enough.’

  Rubobostes’ claim was translated for the rest of the crew.

  Gebrinagoth of the Germanii stepped forward and laid his sword on the altar. ‘I agree. Though Istarta doesn’t worry me. But we need the protection of Belinus and Belinus is an angry god. Without the dedicating fire receiving the heart of a hare, still beating, this trip will be unsafe.’

  One of the sallow Cymbrii started to raise his voice, and Michovar of the Volkas also tried to be heard. Jason stood, arms folded, watching the assembly.

  I moved away from the gathering as the discussions became more heated. After a while Jason came over to me and sat down on a rock. ‘This will take for ever,’ he said. ‘I need these men, I need their strength and their wiles, but I have no idea how to satisfy their gods.’

  ‘Chop something up and burn the best bits. It happens everywhere.’

  ‘They all want different animals.’

  I sympathised with him. ‘Since there’s no question that you’re leader and captain, why not pull rank and just sacrifice to Apollo and the Lady of the Forest? She’ll be our protecting goddess, after all.’

  ‘Each of them needs his charmed guardian,’ Jason sighed. ‘Rubobostes wants to sacrifice to someone who is bringer of fire, guardian of travellers, and healer of wounds taken in battle. He needs a living bat and the front paws of a wolf! The Cymbrii want to sacrifice to Indirabus, warlike watcher over the traveller and bringer of eloquence. They won’t sail unless we can find a piglet. The Germanii want a snow hare for their fire-god and protector. The Cretan, Tairon, is proposing we sacrifice an infant by roasting it alive inside a metal urn! What madness!’

  ‘Quite commonplace in your time, Jason,’ I reminded him, ‘and for many years after your time. It was gruesome, yes, but hardly madness.’

  ‘Really? And where do you imagine they will find an urn of suitable size in this gods-forsaken place? Madness!’

  I let him take a breath. He leaned forward on his knees, staring at the fires around Argo and the gathering of sailors. ‘I’ll have to sail without them. Perhaps the Lady of the Forest will take pity on me and let Argo move at speed with just six of us at the oars.’

  ‘They’re too keen to go south to argue for long,’ I counselled. ‘Besides, I’ve travelled many times around the world, and I’ve seen loss and death, change and innovation. What strikes me most about your argonauts is that they all want much the same protection, and they all have a Lord or Lady who will supply it. But the same protection. All their gods are the same gods under different names. So raise a new symbol, one for all of you, one who will absorb the protection of Belinus and Istarta and all the rest, and convey it to the argonauts.’

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Jason said, scratching his greying beard. He smiled and slapped my knee. ‘Argo herself, of course. She has fragments in her that are so timeless I can hardly bring myself to think of those long gone days. If the world began in fire, there is still a spark in her prow. If it began in flood, there is mud and moisture down below the deck. If it began in winter, we’ll find a shard of ice deep in her heart! She has been there all the time and I hadn’t seen it. You have a true far sight, my friend. But what image shall I raise to represent her? Whatever I carve, it must have the attributes of fire, healing, navigation, eloquence … and hares, pigs, wolves … bats!…’

  ‘An oar,’ I suggested.

  He frowned. ‘An oar? Why?’

  ‘The oar whispers eloquently through the water…’

  ‘Hah! Not with this bunch of hare-brained wolfpaws…’

  ‘But in practised hands, it whispers. Doesn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And it can be used as a weapon?’

  ‘Cumbersome in the hands of anyone but Heracles—maybe Rubobostes—but yes. It can.’

  ‘And it can keep a man alive if he’s drowning and finds the floating wood? Yes, an oar. It must be an oar!’

  Suddenly, Jason was excited. ‘An oar carved by every man and woman who will sail with us! Yes. This is good, this is right! An oar whose forming has involved the sweat and toil and thoughts and heart and hopes, and a little blood, of every argonaut. Which goes for you too, Antiokus.’

  ‘Merlin,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Merlin. Whatever. You carve it too. This is wonderful! My eyes have been opened to the subtleties of the overworld. The gods come to us in many forms; but every tribe must make its own image of the protector. This is an education!’

  ‘I’m pleased to have been of service.’

  ‘Shall I carve a face on it? On the blade?’

  ‘Whose face will you carve?’ I asked pointedly. ‘Will you make the eyes open or closed? Will it smile or frown? Will you carve a woman’s face, or a man’s? Both? Neither? Painted or unpainted?’

  Jason silenced me with a raised hand. ‘I understand the point. Advise me, Merlin … friend, wise counsel.’

  ‘It’s not necessary to carve a face.’

  Jason was unsure, tugging at his beard again. ‘But we should carve something. All statues have something carved on them. I don’t feel comfortable without a carving.’

  ‘It really isn’t necessary. The idea and your incantation will be enough…’

  ‘What about symbols? We’ll need the sun when we sail, and we’ll need the winds to be fair, and calm seas, and we’ll need to placate rivers, and to avoid landing at strange sanctuaries, which often leads to misunderstanding. I could carve the signs for all of those. I still remember how to do it from my education in Iolkos.’

  ‘We’ll find all those charms along the way, and from the men who row. You have some talented oarsmen among the argonauts.’

  He hesitated. ‘So … nothing carved at all. Just an oar. A plain oar, shaped from oak. Each argonaut to do his or her part. Cut the branch; scrape the bark; chisel the shaft; shape the blade; polish the blade. That’s it. Nothing else.’

  ‘And each argonaut carve their name on it, with the name of their own protector.’

  Jason’s quick glance at me was a mixture of relief and amusement. ‘Well, at last. At last! Excellent suggestion! A carved oar carved with names! You see? I knew I was right to persist on the subject of carving.’

  ‘Anything you say, Jason.’

  ‘Anything I say,’ he agreed with a wry smile.

  And he went back to the ship and persuaded the crew, as I’d known he would. He had an eloquent way with words.

  * * *

  The altar was finished and an oar three times the length of a tall man was carved, whittled, marked, then raised in the fire-pit by the ship. First a dedication was made to Mielikki, the swan from the lake, an offering from lake to forest; then an offering to Enaaki, a yearling reindeer, to pacify the lake-guardian as we crossed his domain. When these respects had been paid, Jason lit the fire. The flames took time to catch on the oar, but soon they licked along the shaft, reaching skywards, hissing, probing, tearing open the new wood, releasing the flame, the warmth, the sap and sinew that would help guide our journey back to the warm seas of the south, and Jason’s time-reaved son.

  * * *

  Now the order went out to ‘stow your clothes and weapons’. Supplies of meat and the fruit liquor that sustained the Pohjoli through the winter were hauled aboard, and skins to make a deckboard cover against hard rain. The Dacian horse would have to clamber aboard from the shal
lows; Rubobostes had already constructed a harness to hold the animal comfortable and steady should the river run hard, or the sea swell dangerously. The creature would have to be fed from what we found along the way, though Lemanku’s people gathered together enough dry forage for a few days at least.

  The Pohjoli, in their tall red hats and voluminous cloaks, stood in a group and sang to us, melancholy tunes that occasionally broke into high-pitched squeals of laughter and teasing. Gifts were exchanged, and Niiv brought me a small, painted tooth. A little comforting sedja, she explained. The tooth was human, one of the chewing teeth, and was hollow and scarred. I had no doubt that it was one of her dead father’s. She kept all his teeth in a small pouch against her breast, below her clothes. This was a very valuable gift that she had given me.

  ‘Jason won’t let me come with you,’ she said with a frown. ‘I’ve argued and argued, and my uncle would like to see the back of me. Well, hear the back of me, now. But I don’t think your defrosted friend trusts me.’

  The girl’s eyes were moist with tears, though her mouth was angry. She watched me for a moment, then leaned forward to kiss my cheek.

  ‘Is this your father’s?’ I asked, holding out the charm.

  She smiled coquettishly. ‘Yes. How clever of you.’

  ‘What can it do for me?’

  ‘You’ll only age a minute finding out. It won’t do you harm, only good.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I wondered what she had done to the rotten piece of ivory, but assumed she had used a simple spell to allow her to see me, occasionally, in her dreams. A little ‘comforting’.

  ‘I’m going to miss you, Merlin.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too,’ I told her, half thinking that indeed I would, since she intrigued me; half thinking that I was glad to be away from those eyes, those lips, that quizzical look, the sense of trickery.

  She tried one more time, asking me to persuade Jason to let her aboard, but I knew Jason: he too had decided that there were already enough tricksters on his new Argo, and whilst he had no objection to a woman at the oar, he certainly didn’t want so beguiling a child as Niiv.

  I refused her request, and she shrugged. ‘Well. Never mind. Sail well, and do wash occasionally.’

  And she was gone, running through the fixed torches, back towards the stronghold.

  Whilst she had been chattering to me, the mast had been raised and the cross-beam lifted aboard. The songs were at fever pitch and Jason had drunk a libation to the journey, a brew so strong that he was choking violently on the afterdeck of Argo, below the sinister leer of Mielikki. When the fit had died down, and he had thrown the flagon to the Germanii, who cheered him and passed the liquor among themselves, he called for two men at the ropes. He and I exchanged a glance across the distance, remembering Argo’s impatience when she sensed her moment of freedom, but the ship was calm. The launch would be quieter, then …

  I had admitted this welcome thought too soon.

  The swans suddenly rose as one from the dawn-lit lake, a huge cloud of wings and flight that filled the sky. A mist had started to form on the water, rolling towards the shore from the centre of the pool. The air turned chill, a winter chill; frost formed on the ground and on my clothes, and on the trees at the edge of the forest.

  Ice formed rapidly on the lake, growing visibly, deepening and thickening with every breath.

  ‘Launch!’ I shouted at Jason. ‘Launch at once!’

  ‘My mind exactly, Antiokus! Cut the ropes!’

  The ropes were struck. On each side of Argo, eight men hauled the ship down the rollers to the lake. The prow cut the ice and the ship made water, but ice like ghostly fingers began to creep across her hull.

  ‘Aboard! Aboard!’ screamed Jason. ‘Get the ramp!’

  Ramp down, the argonauts slipped and crawled their way to their oars. Rubobostes dragged his horse to the womb of the ship, securing the animal. Oars were used to crack the ice, which was rising like a living beast in the middle of the lake, blocking our way to the river to the south.

  Niiv! I thought. This is your doing; your jealous act to keep us here. She was stronger than I’d thought and I looked for her among the silent Pohjoli, then called for her as I reached for the rope that would haul me aboard.

  ‘Is this that damned girl’s doing?’ Jason shouted angrily.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then counter it!’

  I could counter it best by countering the girl. I called for Niiv and she stepped forward from the crowd, a torch held in her hand, a small pack on her shoulder. She called back, asking what I wanted.

  ‘Is this your doing? We’ll never sail through this ice.’

  She was silent, her gaze steady and bright. ‘Am I to come aboard, Merlin?’

  I reflected the question to Jason who was furious. ‘Yes! Yes! All right, bring her aboard.’

  Niiv was on the deck before I could throw her a rope, tossing her pack below and skidding on the ice to a place where she could huddle. Oars were straining, breaking ice and pulling us from the shore, but that monster cliff of white kept rising ahead of us.

  ‘Do something,’ I suggested to her. ‘Break it open.’

  ‘Not my doing,’ she said almost nervously, a half-smile on her lips.

  ‘Then whose?’

  ‘Voytazi. You’re taking Mielikki from them. They won’t let you go.’ ‘Voytazi? I thought they belonged to the lake. Not the forest.’

  ‘The forest roots grow into the lake. They form part of the roof of Enaaki’s castle.’

  I took a moment to absorb this information, then went to the prow and conveyed Niiv’s trickery to Jason. ‘Then it is up to you,’ he said, slapping me on the shoulder and stepping back to take an oar himself.

  The ice parted before us, the prow cutting through the white, Argo progressing in lurching lengths. I reached into my bones and melted a passage for us, aching and sickening as I saw into the heart of the ice, cracked it, shattered it, made it split wide enough for Argo to slip across the freezing water to the far channel which wound south, to the sea. I remembered hearing tales of a man who had parted a whole sea to escape a pursuing army. That must have taken strength of a sort that I could not summon, but this ice was the work of elementals, and I had learned how to deal with them over many circuits of the Path. And everything would have worked out easily had it not been for Jason.

  Behind me, Niiv screamed. I lost my focus, turned to see Jason lift her bodily and fling her into the lake, between the walls of ice.

  He saw me, shouted, ‘Don’t look at me, Merlin. Concentrate on getting us through this winter trickery!’

  But I ran down the deck, shedding cloak and sheepskin jacket. Jason struck me a hard blow. ‘Leave her! You didn’t want her; I didn’t want her; she tricked her way aboard.’

  Niiv was screaming, then went under. The ice closed around us. ‘Quickly, Merlin, back to the prow!’

  ‘I’ll not let her drown. Crack the ice yourself, Jason. See how easy it is!’

  ‘Don’t betray me a second time!’

  ‘I didn’t betray you a first! But now I might! For your cruelty…’

  Whatever Jason screamed at me then I lost as I summoned warmth into my body and leapt overboard, swimming down among the voytazi towards the motionless, sinking form of the girl. Her heavy skirts were raised like dark waterweed above dangling white and naked limbs, a skeletal frame, a girl so gaunt she might have been a corpse. When I reached her she was on the verge of breathing out the last of life. I gave her some of my own life, then kicked to the surface of the lake. She screamed and gagged when we reached the air, then panicked. I held her close, keeping her mouth above the water. The ice had closed around Argo, flowing around her, trapping the ship in a frozen tomb. I could see Jason on the stern, leaning out towards me, timeless and motionless, reaching a hand as if to call me back.

  ‘Let me go, let me go,’ Niiv gasped, struggling again in my arms. ‘Save Argo. Save your friends. I can swim back to the shore.’
>
  She tried to push me away. I had lost concentration and the cold was numbing. Each time my grip loosened on Niiv her waterlogged clothes drew her down into the lake.

  I watched Jason as he began to die for a second time, furious with him, and at the same time terrified of losing him.

  I held Niiv in my arms, determined not to let her go. My life had changed, though I was too cold, too confused, to be aware of it at that moment.

  I began to sink.

  Nipping fingers lifted me. The lake swirled around me, hands held us, pike-faced elementals took the pressure off my legs and arms, holding me afloat as if I were straddled on a floating log.

  The ice around Argo melted. Jason was shouting, ‘Get ropes! Get ropes! Merlin, hold the water, we’re back-oaring to fetch you!’

  Ropes came down and I tied one around Niiv and one around myself, and Urtha and others hauled us, battered and beaten, up the flank of Argo, wrapping us in warm furs.

  Oars were raised, lowered, and the ship lurched southwards again, towards that glowing, watching eye.

  Urtha was all grins and tease as he helped me recover from the lake, his attention half on me and half on the brooding figure of Jason, now at the steering oar. ‘There’s more to you and that girl than meets the eye, then, is there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar. But I’m glad that this has happened. Your friend Jason is more dangerous than I’d realised. I’m telling you this, Merlin,’ he touched a finger to my lips as he spoke, held my gaze, ‘because, friends though you are with him, I wouldn’t want you to think that his oarsmen are expendable according to his whim. We’re in this together, this journey—for our different reasons, yes, but together—and if he tries again to throw away the unwanted, just because it suits him, it’ll be Jason screaming for a spar in the sea while he drowns in our wake. I hope I make myself clear.’

  Urtha spoke softly, a young man with a young voice, but his anger signalled itself clearly, and I nodded appreciation of his sentiment.

  If not Niiv, or the voytazi, that had created this difficult launch, then who? Or what? The answer came as easily as waking from a shallow sleep. I went down into the underdeck, picked my way through the bales and ropes and leather packs, past the softly breathing horse, and came to the forbidden part of the ship, below the figurehead, below Jason, who still held the steering oar.