The Hadassah Covenant

by Robert Holdstock

  Niiv reached a finger and touched my temple. ‘You are older,’ she said, then added teasingly, ‘but you look good for it.’

  This coquettish behaviour infuriated me; I was in a state of panic and shouted, ‘I’ve lost years because of you. You dangerous witch! I ought to kill you now…’

  ‘Why?’ She was outraged. She couldn’t understand why I was angry; she had no idea what she had done.

  All I could think about for a moment was: how had she done it? I had intended to use a little flying magic to go south, to see how far the expedition had journeyed, to eavesdrop and spy on the chieftains; to try to learn their destination. Distance flying is hard, harder than running (as a hound, say), though not as hard as swimming, which in any case I dislike intensely. But distance flying advances age very little, which is why I had agreed to it. Niiv had begged me to let her come on the wing as well, and knowing her origins, and curious to see more of her own skills at work, I had agreed.

  And the cunning little creature had flown us back in time. Her own body could take the ravage of that act (though not on too many occasions). Mine felt shattered by the effort. Somehow she had joined her charms to mine, spied the method of flying through the seasons, and copied it, blinding me to my own inadvertent use of it. There are marks on my bones—so I was told—that key for these dangerous enchantments. She had seen, stroked and copied the signs; she had entered me deeply. And I had not felt her doing so!

  She chased after me for a while, crying out, as I walked and ran in confusion, trying to lose myself in the forest. A horn sounded, and I could hear the dogs barking. I supposed that Jason was as alarmed by my departure as anyone, and was coming to find me. I soon shook off the girl. Those damned dogs, though, Urtha’s faithful hounds. They nosed me out in the narrow overhang where I huddled. Their barking turned to sympathetic whimpering as they stared down at me.

  They seemed pleased to find me safe. And soon Jason’s brawny silhouette towered over them, chasing them away, stepping down to sit beside me, wine-soured breath labouring from the run, chest heaving.

  ‘You run a good race. You look ill, Merlin. You look grey.’

  ‘That bitch stole my soul. Just for a moment, but she stole it. You have my permission to kill her.’

  ‘Last time I tried that, you rescued her. And Argo’s protectress nearly froze our balls!’

  ‘Times have changed.’

  ‘Well, before we discuss the future of the nymph, tell me what you saw. You did see the army, didn’t you?’

  I told him that I had. I decided not to mention that I had seen them shortly before their departure, some weeks ago, from the exact location where Argo was now beached, and the argonauts resting after the long river journey. I described the scene in detail, the three armies, the gathering of champions, the nature of the quest itself, namely that they were on the biggest raid in history, to return the sacred objects of their tribes, their ancestors’ death tribute and totemic presence in the living world. Naturally, there would be a great deal of looting on the way, and there was no doubt at all that the blood fury was close to the surface in just about every man at arms, and the women too.

  This would be a savage journey south, and it would leave a trail so easy to follow I saw no point in searching again for the precise position of the army on this warm, early summer’s day. The faster we moved, the sooner we found them.

  ‘How big is the army, did you say? Jason was asking me.

  ‘Three armies. Brennos leads one, one is led by Bolgios, the third by Achichoros. Some years ago, Brennos had a dream, as far as I can make out. He was tasked, by the angry spirits of his ancestors, with bringing back the sacred objects of their race. They were looted to give as offerings at any and all of your many oracles. In the dream he was charged to raise one hundred times one thousand men-at-arms, champions all. I don’t know who or what sent the dream, but it seems he’s done it. Brennos has a powerful friend behind his dreams.’

  Jason scratched his beard. ‘One hundred times one thousand men. By Apollo’s bright cock, that’s a lot of men. One hundred times one thousand … how many is that in total?’

  ‘One hundred thousand. In total.’

  He held his hands in front of him and wiggled the fingers. ‘That’s ten. Ten fingers. So if ten men sat here, that would make one hundred fingers. So one hundred men makes … one thousand fingers. So to make one hundred thousand … Gods, that’s a lot of fingers.’

  ‘If you’re counting fingers, you need to talk about ten times one hundred thousand.’

  ‘I’m not good at numbers, Merlin.’

  ‘And fingers are the least of our problems. The baggage train is huge, probably half as many women and children again. They’ve saved stores and animals over winter. They’re equipped for a big invasion of Greek Land. Your land, Jason. And there’ll be plenty of forage and pillage on the way. This is well organised.’

  He watched me for a moment, then furrowed his brow.

  ‘And where are they heading?’

  I hesitated before saying, ‘To Apollo’s shrine, at Delphi.’

  I don’t know what reaction I’d expected from Jason—outrage, perhaps, or insult—but I had not anticipated a brief look of astonishment followed by a roar of laughter. He stood up, threw a long stick for one of the dogs to chase, turned and looked down at me.

  ‘To Delphi? Then they’re mad! They’ll have to squeeze through one of the narrowest mountain passes in the known world! The Hot Gates! Thermopylae! Delphi? They’ll fail. Gods or no gods, bronze or iron, they’ll fail! Twenty men can hold that narrow gorge with nothing but pointed twigs and piss. One shout out of place as you tiptoe through its chasm and the walls come tumbling down. Do you remember that hair’s breadth miss when we rowed through the clashing rocks? On our way to Colchis? They crushed the tail feathers of a dove, and clipped the wood from our stern. The Hot Gates are a hundred times as bad!’ He suddenly realised what he was saying. ‘Yes, that’s right. So if we’re going to catch them, we need to catch them before the pass. Otherwise there’ll be nothing to catch, my son included.’

  He dropped to a crouch. ‘On that particular matter … did you see him? Thesokorus?’

  I told him that I had. ‘He’s with the army, and has a rank that brings him close to Brennos himself. The two men seem to be friends.’

  ‘How did he look?’ Jason asked after a moment.

  Like you. So like you. I didn’t see it in Makedonia. The sun was too bright, perhaps. But he is the image in fierceness and far-seeing that you were, when you were young and hungry.

  ‘Strong,’ I said. ‘Young. Eager. Handsome. But he is missing his brother.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course. The little dreamer. But one son at a time, eh?’

  ‘There is something else,’ I went on. ‘Something else that disturbs me. Niiv, in her own hawk form, didn’t see it, or if she saw it, the sight didn’t matter to her. But a raven suddenly dropped to the feasting table. It stole food from one of the commander’s plates, but it seemed to be watching Orgetorix. Your son. Orgetorix. He was sitting at that same table. That raven came from nowhere, just as Niiv and I had come from nowhere. Jason, I know that raven! For the moment, I can’t recognise it. But we are being followed.’

  ‘You’ve told me this before…’

  ‘Then I’m telling you again. We’re being followed, watched … and I suspect we’re all in danger from that follower.’

  Jason agreed with me, then hauled me to my feet. ‘We have twenty-one times ten fingers to poke in old Black Bird’s eye if it tries to scavenge on Argo. That’s a lot of poking.’

  I felt it necessary to point out to him that: ‘If I knew whose eyes we were poking, I might be better able to judge how useful two hundred and ten fingers might be!’

  He responded angrily. ‘It’s just a bird, Merlin. A big black scavenging bird. There is nothing you can teach me about scavengers. Now brighten up. And tell me more about my son. Did he look like me? Did he have a spark in his e
ye? A swagger; a nobility? Did he look like the grandson of Aeson?’

  I walked with Jason back towards the dogs, and to Elkavar and Tairon of Crete who had led the hunt for me. I could not fully comprehend this man, this resurrected man, this dead man living and walking in a land seven hundred years or more distanced from his own. He seemed to have no feeling for the lost time, only concern for a face, a gesture, a wink or grin that would remind him, in one small piece of flesh and blood—his son—of himself! Was it that he was anxious to see no Medea in the boy? Or just that he wished to see the boy and know him as his own. Jason was a struggle within himself, at one moment angry, at another focused; and again, dismissive of everything he believed in, yet a day later a man who would sacrifice to gods long gone.

  He was truly out of time.

  So was Orgetorix.

  And yes: so was I.

  ‘Your son looks nothing like you,’ I lied, and Jason seemed disturbed as we walked.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘He looks like himself. But I have no doubt that he’s yours.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘There is something about him that doesn’t care. He’s bold, brave, foolish and self-centred.’

  Jason laughed. ‘Well, that’s certainly a rich mixture of poisons. But like any medicine, poisons, in small doses and in proportion, can make or break the illness!’

  I stared at Jason for a moment, mystified by a metaphor that seemed quite inappropriate; and yet: I had not told all the truth about Orgetorix; I had not mentioned the feeling of loss and bewilderment in the young man. And I wondered if Jason had intuited that omission, and was simply saying that through the right combination of those strong traits, his son might conquer the fear of his own displacement.

  The young Celt’s face haunted me. Hovering above him, on the wing, I had seen both the shadow and the fire in his eyes as he had gazed up at me. He had known there was more to the hawk than just idle predation. He seemed to call to me across the days that separated us, and I was intrigued.

  And even as I thought this, so the shadow of the raven seemed to darken the sun.

  * * *

  Argo was tied hard to the shore and had been unloaded. Ruvio grazed and cantered among the remains of the great gathering, the earth banks and enclosures with their ragged palisades and ash-stained earth. The argonauts were searching the deserted camp for anything of use that had been left behind or overlooked, whether grain, or salted meat, or canvas or clothing. They scavenged among several packs of dogs, that snarled and growled as they scraped at the ground. Urtha’s two hounds stalked among them, giants among their kin, and the wild dogs kept a respectful distance.

  Rubobostes pointed to the woods, however, where until recently I had hidden. Sure enough, narrow eyes and grey muzzles told of the wolf pack that watched silently from the trees.

  ‘There are more than ten. They are very quiet and very patient. I hope they’re waiting for us to leave rather than waiting for us to sleep.’

  The king’s enclosure, where Brennos had addressed his commanders, had been tidied up, the gates restored and made suitable for the short rest all of Argo’s sailors felt they needed. Rubobostes and Ullanna had prepared a succulent mix of foods from the meagre supplies on board, and from local scavenging. Michovar had created bread out of grass, it seemed.

  ‘Anything can be used to make bread, if it can be ground into powder,’ he instructed us. ‘Even skulls!’

  Elkavar and the two Cymbrii, Conan and Gwyrion, had re-broken seven horses that had been gathered from the forest’s edge and the river bank, older animals that had been long abandoned, had returned slightly to the wild, but which were perfectly usable for the journey south.

  Erdzwulf spent his time poring over the new maps of the land. Tairon of Crete, though unfamiliar with the mountains to the south which led to Greek Land, a country that partly impinged upon his experience, seemed to have a talent for interpreting labyrinths; and since mountain passes and winding river valleys were the oldest labyrinths of all, his slim, gold-tipped fingers traced several routes by which we might pursue and overtake the lumbering mass of men and horse that was seeping through the hills to Makedonia, as floodwater through fields, gentle at first, then overwhelming.

  * * *

  We would now have to abandon Argo. We faced a long trek through increasingly difficult mountain passes until we reached the eastern edges of Illyria; then a winding passage through Makedonia to Thessaly, before the Hot Gates, the narrow gorge, and the tramp across hostile and unwelcoming lowlands to Delphi.

  Jason was torn between a certainty that it would be better to intercept the army before it reached Thermopylae, reasoning that there would be a dreadful slaughter there, and his son would be caught up in that killing, and an instinct to wait until Delphi, which was a much smaller place. But if the Celtic army successfully entered Achaea, the horde would spread out widely, easily arriving at Delphi in a number of swirling formations, falling on the oracle like so many storms. And Orgetorix might become lost among them, perhaps not completing the mission through a memory of affection, or respect, for the sacred place itself.

  Urtha sympathised with the thinking for his own reasons. He did not want Cunomaglos to fall to a Greeklander’s spear. The intercept must occur before Thermopylae. We should hasten our departure.

  The question arose who would tell Mielikki that Argo was to be put under cover, hidden from sight, and deserted for a while.

  ‘I pissed on her,’ Jason said. ‘I dread to think what she’ll do to me if I go to her.’

  All eyes turned on me, but I shook my head. The hawk-flight had been tiring, and I had other things on my mind. But Ullanna reminded me of my own special relationship with Argo. I had no choice but to agree.

  * * *

  She kept me waiting. I hunkered down in the empty ship, conscious of the smell of the horse, whose droppings, scooped and scrubbed away, were still a lingering presence in the air, and called softly and repeatedly for the Old Lady of the Forest. The grim face watched me from the stern, and I felt cold. The smell of winter drove away the smell of horse, and a snowflake settled on my cheek, an icy touch.

  Old Lady Forest was not happy. It turned out she had heard us talking.

  ‘You have sailed me this far, and now intend to leave me!’

  The sudden voice from the Spirit of the Ship startled me. I was encompassed in a frozen woodland, crouched in the thick snow, the sun on the splinters of ice and layers of frost that adorned the landscape so bright that I had to squint.

  Mielikki, clothed in black bear-fur, face hidden below a voluminous red-green cowl, stalked towards me, kicking up snow in angry clouds. Her lynx growled and spat at me. I rose to meet her.

  ‘We have to go south, through mountain passes. We can do it fast, on foot and horse. This is the end of the river journey. You’re not being abandoned, just moored in dry dock for a while.’

  ‘Sail to the sea,’ she said. ‘Then south through the narrow straits, then through the islands to Iolkos, or even to Thessalon. Argo sailed there once before.’

  She was referring to the journey Jason had taken, the straits being the dangerous neck of water at the Hellespont. The ship herself was feeding that memory into its protecting goddess. I remembered the length of that journey as if it were yesterday, the long haul around the coast of the wine-dark sea, to Colchis, and across the wide ocean to the treacherous navigation where the mouth of the Daan spread out through a landscape of mud and reeds; then the heavy rowing against the flow as we had struck inland, towards the mountainous land, south of Hyperborea, where now Brennos and his Celtic kin ruled over the world. And my experience of walking the Path around the world told me that the land journey would be shorter, though this certainty would have to be tempered by an understanding that on the sea we were at risk only from pirates and such of Poseidon’s malformed sea-creations as he should be inclined to send against us. On land, we faced tribal warlords at the least, and the spirited and
well-armed Makedonians if we were unlucky.

  The Greeklanders themselves were weak, and had been for some years. Only at Thermopylae could they hold, and Brennos had already outlined his strategy for storming the pass:

  ‘We move through it like the hot spill from a volcano, burning everything that gets in our way, the living running over the cooling dead! We’ll overwhelm every blade of grass, every blade of iron, every young life that tries to block us.’

  He might just do it. These Celts were less mindful of death than the Persians who had stormed the gates four generations ago, and been held back by a small force of Spartans.

  Times had changed. When a warrior’s death simply meant a continuance of fighting, albeit in the Otherworld, fighting tended to continue after death.

  ‘We will not abandon you,’ I said to Mielikki. ‘But the land journey will be faster. After that, we’ll return to you and sail you home.’

  Mielikki was angry; and as she paced through the snow in front of me, making a strange sound, like a low song, under her breath, I thought she seemed frightened. At length she came back to me and pulled back the cowl. Her face was almost death-white, the eyes like ice, the mouth thin-lipped; lines of age and experience patterned her skin, and crystals of tears gleamed where they had frozen. She was lovely, but I could see how this woman could turn hard and violent.

  ‘The one who was here before,’ she said, ‘only visited. She was not always here. She came at her whim, or when this one you call Jason summoned her.’

  Mielikki was referring to Hera; Hera had only promised limited advice to Jason, on that voyage. She had been part of a bigger, tighter game being played beyond the mortal realm.

  ‘Some of the others who were here before, the very old ones, were like me, bound to the ship. They, like me, had no escape. The ship was their world, and the world they had once belonged to was denied to them. The further I go, away from my land, the colder I become. You cannot simply abandon me. I will freeze you all where you stand if you think of doing such a thing.’