I watched them out of sight and then turned reluctantly to the task of choosing another horse for the slaughter.
The wood gatherers returned early the next morning out of a sodden mist. The moorland squelched to a soggy drizzle brought about by a fresh easterly breeze which had replaced the cold northern wind in the night. The damp moors appeared decidedly bleak and miserable in the leaden gray light.
We greeted them and sent them to warm themselves by the fire. I ordered men to unburden the horses and release them to graze, and then joined Bran at the fire. The Raven Chief gave a terse report. “The land is dead,” he said, shaking out his cloak. “All was as we saw it before. Nothing has changed.”
I called for some of the stew we had prepared the previous day, and left them to their meal. Meanwhile, Tegid and I set to work preparing the pyre for Alun’s cremation. The wood had been dumped in a heap beside the road, and the bard was busy sorting it according to length when I joined him. When the ordering was finished, we carried armloads of selected timber to a large flat rock nearby and began stacking the wood carefully.
I fell in with the task, and we worked together without speaking, carrying and stacking, erecting a sturdy scaffold limb on limb. It was good work—the two of us moving in rhythm—and it put me in mind of the day Tegid and I had begun building Dinas Dwr. I held that memory and basked in its warm glow as we labored side by side. When we finished, the pyre stood on its lonely rock like a small timber fortress. Some of the men had gathered while we worked and now stood looking dolefully at the finished pyre.
Tegid observed them standing there and said, “When the sun sets we will light the fire.”
The mist cleared as the day sped from us, and the sky lightened in the west, allowing us a dazzling glimpse of golden light before dusk closed in once again. I turned from the setting sun to see the warriors coming in twos and threes across the moor to the rock where Tegid and I waited.
When all had gathered, Alun’s body, which had been covered and sewn into an oxhide after his death, was brought by the Ravens and laid carefully upon the pyre. Tegid kindled a fire nearby and prepared torches, giving one to each of the remaining four Ravens and Bran.
The bard mounted the rock and took his place at the head of the pyre. He raised his hands in declamation. “Kinsmen and friends,” he called loudly, “Alun Tringad is dead; his body lies cold upon the pyre. It is time to release the soul of our swordbrother to begin its journey through the High Realms. His body will be burned, but his ashes will not abide in Tir Aflan. When the fire has done its work, I will gather the bones and they will return with us to Albion, for burial on Druim Vran.”
Then, placing a fold of his cloak over his head, the Chief Bard raised his staff and closed his eyes. After a moment, he began to chant gently, tunelessly, a death dirge:
When the mouth shall be closed,
When the eyes shall be shut,
When the breath shall cease to rattle,
When the heart shall cease to throb,
When heart and breath shall cease;
May the Swift Sure Hand uphold you,
And shield you from evil of every kind.
May the Swift Sure Hand uphold you,
And guide your foot along the way,
May the Swift Sure Hand uphold you,
And lead you across the sword-bridge,
May the Swift Sure Hand shield, lead, and guide you across the narrow way
By which you leave this world;
And guard you from all distress and danger,
And place the pure light of joy before you,
And lead you into Courts of Peace,
And the service of a True King in Courts of Peace,
Where Glory and Honor and Majesty delight the Noble King forever.
May the eye of the Great God
Be a pilot star before you,
May the breath of the Good God
Be a smooth way before you,
May the heart of the Kingly God
Be a boon of rich blessing to you.
May the flames of this burning
Light your way . . .
May the flames of this burning
Light your way . . .
May the flames of this burning
Light your way to the world beyond.
So saying, the Chief Bard summoned the Ravens. One by one they stepped forward—Garanaw, Emyr, Niall, and Drustwn—each bearing a torch, which he thrust into the kindling at the base of the pyre. Bran came last and added his torch to the others. The fire ruffled in the wind, caught, and began climbing toward Alun’s body lying so still on his rough wooden bed.
Like those around me, I watched the yellow flames licking up through the latticework to caress the cold flesh of my friend. Grief I felt for myself: I would never again hear his voice lifted in song, nor see him swagger into the hall. I would miss his preposterous bragging, his bold and foolish challenges—like the time he challenged Cynan to a day’s labor plowing land and felling and hauling timber, nearly ruining himself with the exertion, and all for a golden trinket.
I felt the tears welling in my eyes, and I let them fall. It was good to remember, and to weep for what was lost and could not be again.
Farewell, Alun Tringad, I said to myself as the fire hissed and cracked, mounting higher. May it go well with you on your journey hence.
A voice, hoarse with grief, rent the silence: “Fly, Raven! Try your wings over new fields and forests; let your loud voice be heard in lands unknown.” Bran, his noble face shining with tears in the firelight, drew back his arm and lofted his spear skyward. I saw the tip glint in the cold starlight and then it disappeared into the darkness—a fitting image of release for the spirit of a warrior.
The flames grew hot; I felt the heat-sheen on my face and my cloak steamed. The flame-crack grew to a roar; the light danced, flinging shadows back into the teeth of the ever-encroaching darkness. In a little while, the pyre collapsed inward, drawing the hide-covered corpse into the fierce golden heart of the funeral fire, there to be consumed. We watched long—until only embers remained, a glowing red heap upon the rock.
“It is done,” Tegid declared. “Alun Tringad has gone.” Whereupon we turned and made our way back to camp, leaving Tegid to perform the tasks necessary for reclaiming the bones from the fire.
I found myself walking beside Bran. I thought his farewell apt and told him so. “It was a fitting farewell to a Raven who has gone.”
Bran cocked his head to one side and regarded me as if I had suggested that I thought the moon might sleep in the sea. “But Alun has not gone,” Bran observed matter-of-factly. “He has only gone on ahead.”
We walked a little further, and Bran explained: “We have made a vow, we Ravens, to rejoin one another in the world beyond. That way, if any of us should fall in battle, there is a swordbrother waiting to welcome us in the world beyond. Whether in this world or the next, we will still be the Ravens.”
His faith in this arrangement was simple and marvelous. And it was absolute. No shadow of doubt intruded, no qualm shadowed the bright certainty of his confidence. I, who had no such assurance, could only marvel at his trust.
We departed the next morning at dawn. Mist gathered thick, making our world blurred and dull. The sky, dense as wool to every horizon, drooped like a sodden sheepskin over our heads. As the unseen sun rose toward midday, the wind stiffened, rolling the mist in clouds across the darkening moor.
We moved in a ragged double column, shivering beneath our wet cloaks. The horses walked with their heads down, noses almost touching the ground, hooves clopping hollow on the stone-paved high road.
Wet to the skin, my hair plastered to my scalp, I stumped along on numb feet and longed for nothing more than to sit before the fire and bake the creeping cold from my bones. So Tegid’s abrupt revelation, when it came, caught me off guard.
“I saw a beacon last night.”
My head whipped around and I stared up at him, incredulous that
he had not bothered to mention it before. He did not look at me, but rode hunch-shouldered in the saddle, squinting into the drizzle: soggy, but unconcerned.
Bards!
“When the embers had cooled,” he continued placidly, “I gathered Alun’s bones.” My eyes flicked to the tidy bundle behind his saddle wrapped in Alun’s cloak. “I saw the beacon flare when I returned to camp.”
“I see. Any particular reason why you bring this to my attention now?”
“I thought you might like to hear a good word.” At this, my wise bard turned his head to look down on me. I glared up at him, water running down my hair and into my eyes. “You are angry,” he observed. “Why?”
Frozen to the marrow, having eaten nothing but horsemeat for days, and heartsick at Alun’s death, the last thing I expected or wanted was my Chief Bard withholding important information from me. “It is nothing,” I told him, heaving my anger aside with an effort. “What do you think it means?”
“It means,” he replied with an air that suggested the meaning was obvious, “we are nearing our journey’s end.”
His words filled me with a strange elation. The final confrontation would come soon. Anticipation pricked my senses alert; my spirit quickened. The dreariness of the day evaporated as expectation ignited within. The end is near: let Paladyr beware!
We pressed our way deeper into the barren hills. The peat moors gave way to heather and gorse. Day followed day, and the road remained straight and high; we traveled from dim gray dawn to dead gray dusk, stopping only to water the horses and ourselves. We ate only at night around the campfire when we could cook the flesh of yet another horse. We ate, bitterly regretting the loss with every bite; but it was meat, and it warmed an empty belly. No one complained.
Gradually, the land began to lift. The hills grew higher and the valleys deeper, the descents more severe as the hill-country rose toward the mountains. One day we crested a long slope to see the faint shimmer of snow-topped heights in the distance. Then cloud and mist closed in again and we lost the sight for several more days. When we saw them again, the mountains were closer; we could make out individual peaks, sharp and ragged above darkly streaming clouds.
The air grew clearer; and though mists still held us bound and blind by day, nights were often crisp and clear, the stars sharp and bright as spear points in a heaven black as pitch. It was on such a night that Tegid came to me while I slept beside a low-burning fire.
“Llew . . .”
I came awake at the touch of his hand on my shoulder.
“Come with me.”
“Why?”
He made no answer but bade me follow him a little way from camp. A late moon had risen above the horizon, casting a thin light over the land. We climbed to the top of a high hill, and Tegid pointed away to the east. I looked and saw a light burning on a near-distant ridge and, some way beyond it, another. Even as we watched, a third light flickered into existence further off still.
Standing side by side in the night, straining into the darkness, my bard and I waited. The wind prowled over the bare rock of the hilltop, like a hunting animal making low restless noises. In a little while, a fourth fire winked into life like a star alighting on a faraway hill.
I watched the beacons shining in the night and knew that my enemy was near.
“I have seen this in my vision,” Tegid said softly, and I heard again the echo of his voice lifted in song as the storm-frenzied waves hurled our frail boat onto the killing rocks.
The wind growled low, filling the darkness with a dangerous sound. “Alun,” Tegid said deliberately and slow, choosing his words carefully, “was the only one among the Ravens to see Crom Cruach.”
At first I did not catch his implication. “And now Alun is dead,” I replied, supplying the answer to the bard’s unspoken question.
“Yes.”
“Then I am next. Is that what you mean?”
“That is my fear.”
“Then your fear is unfounded,” I told him flatly. “Your own vision should tell you as much. Alun and I—we both saw Yellow Coat. And we both fought the serpent. Alun died, yes. But I am alive. That is the end of it.”
Indicating the string of beacons blazing along the eastern horizon, he said, “The end is out there.”
“Let it come. I welcome it.”
The sky was showing pearly gray when we turned to walk back down the hill to the camp. Bran was awake and waiting for us. We told him about the beacons, and he received the news calmly. “We must advance more warily from now on,” he said. “I advise we send scouts to ride before us.”
“Very well,” I concurred. “See to it.”
Bran touched the back of his hand to his forehead and stepped away. A little while later, Emyr and Niall rode out from the camp. I noticed that they did not ride on the hard surface of the road, but in the long grass beside it. They would go less swiftly, but more silently.
So it begins at last, I thought.
I followed them a short distance from camp and watched the riders disappearing into the pale dawn. “The Swift Sure Hand go with you, brothers!” I called after them; my voice echoed in the barren hills and died away in the heather. The land seemed unsettled by the sound. “The Swift Sure Hand shield us all,” I added and hastened back to camp to face the day’s demands.
30
DEAD VOICES
The hills grudgingly gave way to an endless expanse of rock waste—all sharp-angled, toppling, sliding, bare but for tough thickets of thorny gorse. The land tilted precariously all around, yet the road held firm and good. Rain and wind battered us; mist blinded us for days without end. But the road held good.
And with each day’s march, the cloud-shrouded mountains drew nearer. We watched the wind-carved peaks rise until they crowded the horizon on every side—range upon range, summit upon summit fading into the misty distance. Brooding, fierce, and unwholesome, they were no kindly heights, but loomed stark and threatening over us: white, like splinters of shattered bone or teeth broken in a fight.
Enough grass grew along the roadside to keep the horses fed, and the horses fed us. This meant losing another mount every few days, but the meat kept us going. We drank from mountain runnels and pools, numbing the ache of hunger with cold water.
Gyd, Season of Thaws, drew ever nearer, bringing wet gales to assail us. The snow on the lower slopes began melting and filling the gorges, gullies, and rock canyons with the icy run-off. Day and night, we were battered by the sound of water gushing and smashing, gurgling and splashing, as it rushed to the lowlands now far behind us. Mists rose from deep defiles where waterfalls boomed; clouds hung low over crevices where fast-flowing cataracts clattered and echoed like the clash of battle-crazed war bands.
The bleak monotony of naked rock and the harshness of the wind and crashing water bore constant reminder—if any was needed— that we journeyed through a hostile land. The higher we climbed among the shattered peaks, the greater grew our trepidation. It was not the wind that screamed among the ragged crowns and smashed summits; it was fear, raw and wild. We lay shivering in our cloaks at night and listened to the wind-voices wail. Dawn found us ill-rested and edgy to face the renewed assault.
Twice during each day’s trek, we met with the scouts—once at midday, and then again when they returned at dusk. The Ravens took it in turn to carry out the scouting duty, two at a time, rotating the task among their number so that each day saw a fresh pair ride out. One day, Garanaw and Emyr returned as we were making camp for the night beneath a high overhanging cliff.
“There is a better place just beyond the next turn,” Emyr informed us. “It is not far, and it would prove a much better shelter should the wind and rain come up in the night.”
As we had not yet unsaddled the horses or lit the fires, we agreed to move on to the place they suggested. Garanaw led the way and, when we arrived, said, “This is as good a shelter as these bare bones provide.”
Cynan heard this and replied, “Broken bones
, you mean. I have seen nothing for days that was not fractured to splinters.”
Thus, the mountains became Tor Esgyrnau, the Broken Bones. And what Cynan said was true; through naming them, they became less threatening, less frightening—however slightly. At least, we began looking on them with less apprehension than previously.
“That is the way of things,” Tegid offered when I remarked on this a few days later. “Among the Derwyddi it is taught that to confer a name is to conquer.”
“Then get busy, bard. Find a name with which to conquer Paladyr. And I will shout it from the crown of the highest peak.”
Later, as darkness claimed the heights, I found him standing, peering into the gloom already creeping over the lowlands behind. I stared with him into the distance for a moment, and then asked. “What do you see?”
“I thought I saw something moving on the road down there,” he replied, still scanning the twisted ribbon.
“Where?” I looked hard but could make out nothing in the murk. “I will send someone back to see.”
Tegid declined, saying, “There is no need. It is gone now—if anything was there. It might have been a shadow.”
He walked away, but I stayed, staring into the dull twilight, searching the darkness for any sign of movement. We had climbed a fair distance into the mountains and, though the days were slightly warmer now, the nights were still cold, with biting winds sweeping down from the snow-laden peaks above. Often we woke to frost on our cloaks, and the day’s melt frozen during the night to make the road treacherous until the sun warmed the stone once more.
For warmth we burned the hard-twisted knots of gorse trunks we hacked from their stony beds with our swords. They burned with a foul smell and gave off an acrid, oily smoke, but the embers remained hot long after the fire had gone.
We reached a high mountain pass and crossed the first threshold of the mountains. I looked back to see the land dull and shapeless behind us; a bleak, treeless, mist-obscured moor, colorless, sodden, and drear. It was good to leave it behind at last. I stood long, looking at the road as it stretched into the distance. Ever since Tegid’s suggestion that we might be followed, I had spent a fair amount of time looking back, and this time even managed to convince myself that, yes, there was something, or someone, back there—very faint and far in the distance. Or was it only the fleeting shift of mist or cloud shadow?
The Endless Knot Page 31