The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  They were not pursuing the animals; they seemed to be following a different spoor. In the glade they hesitated, looked around, stared hard along the track where the Mother and I crouched silently, then kicked their horses on, disappearing from sight.

  After a while, the woman rose again and went cautiously forward, darting across the clearing, beckoning me to follow.

  Soon, we left the wood and scrambled through the shallows of a winding stream. To one side of us was the bare ridge of a hill. To the other, an overgrown tangle of grey rocks and stunted trees, and it did not surprise me when the woman scrambled along an almost hidden path through this craggy edge, then through a deep defile, and led me to the haven where the two children lay concealed.

  It was a bright meadow, encircled by a high rocky wall. Five doorways, close together, opened into the rocks, five chambers where the Mothers and the children lived. Close to the narrow entrance into this hiding place was a well, guarded by the tall wooden figures of Brigg and Nodons. The well was decked with holly and ivy and red-berried branches of thorn. The young Mother ran quickly to it, knelt down and dipped a cloth into the water, wiping her hands and face. She encouraged me to do the same. The water was scented with earth and seemed to swell at its surface, as if trying to rise above the rocks that contained it.

  The moment the damp cloth touched my eyes, the charm that guarded the meadow fell away.

  Ten children were playing a game with hurling sticks and a small, leather ball, laughing loudly as they clattered and tripped in pursuit of victory. Four mastiffs lay quietly watching, forepaws folded. Elsewhere, chickens pecked at the ground, and grey-skinned pigs nosed up above their sty. Several fruit trees grew in a small orchard, where another child was trying to reach for an apple. The young Mother shouted at her and she looked startled, darting away into hiding.

  Not all these children were from Urtha’s fortress at Taurovinda. Not all of them were from the world of Urtha and his uthiin, his warrior retinue. The young Mother, as if hearing my inner reflection, glanced at me with a wan smile.

  ‘Yes, they are the forlorn. Some of them have been here a very long time. They are children who once escaped to safety across the river, but were never rescued. Two at least can go home, though how safe they will be is up to you, now.’

  I asked, ‘Can’t I take more? I’d gladly take you all. The boat that brought me here is a friend; she won’t depart until I request her to.’

  ‘That won’t be possible,’ the woman answered pointedly. ‘Please don’t offer it to the children. They simply can’t go. I’m sorry.’ And she told me why, but added, ‘There is one girl, a friend of Munda’s … she has not been here long. Perhaps her.’ She suddenly touched my arm. ‘There are Urtha’s children, over by the orchard. Always looking for magic apples. Go and stop them shaking the tree.’

  She gave me a little push. I did as I was bidden.

  They seemed no older than when I had first encountered them. That was the price they paid for staying in this sanctuary, at the edge of Ghostland. As I approached them, Munda recognised me and smiled broadly. Kymon frowned, looking around, no doubt hoping to see his father.

  Munda was just as I remembered her, freckle-faced and auburn-haired, with little arrows painted on her cheeks. She wore a simple green dress, belted at the waist.

  Kymon, by contrast, was in his little warrior’s outfit, check-trousered, bare-chested, but with a short blue cloak pinned over his left shoulder with a sparkling metal clasp. Over his back was slung a small, bronzed oval shield bearing the image of a hawk riding a horse.

  He stood warily apart from me, one hand resting on the small knife at his belt, the other flexing with nervous energy. His stare was very direct and reminded me of that searching gaze of Urtha’s, as he tried to understand all things that were strange whilst defiantly proclaiming with his eyes that nothing strange in the world would concern him.

  ‘What have you done with my father?’ the boy asked suddenly.

  ‘I have done nothing with him,’ I answered. ‘I journeyed with him, I fought with him, I watched him defeat a great enemy.’

  Both children smiled, their bright eyes widening. ‘He won his combat?’ Kymon demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cunomaglos, that traitor, is dead?’

  ‘Yes. A river combat in the land of the Makedonians.’

  ‘Then where is he? Where is my father?’

  ‘Coming home by land. Slowly. I came by boat. Swiftly. You must have patience. There is a more urgent task for the two of you. I have to take you to your grandfather, Ambaros, back across the river.’

  ‘I am certainly ready to do that!’ the youth declared.

  His sister clapped her hands together, equally keen. But whilst her brother stood and watched me carefully, she ran over to the other children, who were still playing their game of stickball. She stood and talked to them, and there was the sound of excitement and laughter. A moment later they had all scattered to gather objects and plants from around the meadow, within the stone walls, and grouped again in some childish but significant ritual of parting.

  Kymon played no part in this celebration. His hard gaze had softened, but he was urgent to know the details of his father’s triumph. On this side of the river he was very much a child; but like his sister, like all the forlorn, he would age to his true years when he set foot upon his own land.

  That was why most of the happy brood of exiles would never be able to return to the land of the living.

  ‘Is my father wounded?’ he asked unexpectedly. ‘Is that why he’s coming home so slowly?’

  ‘He defeated Cunomaglos magnificently. But his wounds were very severe.’

  The boy thought about this. The man shone through his sudden smile, through his eyes. ‘We’ll all one day die of our wounds,’ he proclaimed, as if rallying a band of skirmishers. ‘But we can all live with them for years!’

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ I agreed, trying to hide my amusement at his precocity. ‘Don’t you want to say goodbye to your friends?’

  He looked coy for a moment, as if coming to a decision. ‘I had a good friend. But he went away. He didn’t live with us here. But come and see what we built together!’

  Glancing at the Mothers, he led me through the trees to a narrow path from the enclosed meadow. ‘We’re not allowed to do this, really, but I always get away with it.’

  He brought me to an overhang of grey stone, deep enough to allow Kymon and myself to crouch inside. On the rock above my head was a crudely chipped image of a ship, the mast more than obviously phallic. The heads of the oarsmen could be seen, little helmeted figures with bulging eyes, though the oars they held were impractically thin. There were other little figures, made from twisted grass, scattered about the place, all of them armed with twigs. And mummified animals: bats and mice.

  Kymon giggled as he saw my frown. ‘This is the Father Calling Place,’ he said.

  ‘Is it, indeed?’

  ‘My friend carved the ship with a piece of granite. I come here to think of my father. I call him home. He must come by sea in the end.’

  ‘He’s closer than you think,’ I informed him. ‘What was your friend’s name?’

  ‘He was a ghost boy. There are lots of them in Ghostland. He talked in a strange language, but I liked him.’

  ‘Back to the land of the living,’ I informed Kymon, and led the way back to the meadow.

  Munda’s closest friend was a younger girl, with spiky copper hair and green eyes, who answered to the name Atanta. The modronae were asked if Atanta could be taken with us as well. Munda was quite desperate to have her friend with her. The Mothers left it up to me. I looked at the younger girl, who waited so earnestly for my answer, and could not fail to agree. The Mothers seemed sad, but agreed that she could go.

  There was something strange about Atanta: down each of her temples ran a line of blue spots, status tattooes that contrasted with the scatter of freckles on her impish face. This design was n
ew to me. She was not from Urtha’s land, or the land of Urtha’s neighbours, the Coritani, whose High King was Vortingoros. I had seen such markings before, but exactly where slipped my mind for the moment. I was concerned more for Kymon and Munda for the present.

  Atanta had packed a very clever sack: she had gathered a handful of elf-shot, those small stone arrow points which the earth disgorges, and had collected a quiver of thin ash shafts to which she might fix them. She had supplied herself for the journey, and for the unknown days ahead, with admirable efficiency.

  I made Kymon and Munda attend to their own supplies with equal care, but all either of them could think to bring were apples!

  The young Mother would take us back to the Nantosuelta. She seemed very frightened and I tried to persuade her that I could easily find my own way through the forest. But perhaps she was required to be our guide in this Otherworld, and what she did she did from necessity. And of course, I had not displayed my abilities with charm and enchantment; to the young woman I was a man of limited powers.

  We had no sooner reached the stream, a spear’s throw from the hidden sanctuary, than we were forced into cover. A long line of riders thundered along the ridge above us, heads low, cloaks flowing, the grey light glancing from their shields. They were a white-faced straggle-haired band, about thirty in number. When one of the horses slipped and brought its rider down, tumbling down the slope towards us, the rest carried on as if unconcerned. The ghostly man recovered from the fall, and dragged his complaining steed by the reins back to the ridge, remounted and continued towards the river.

  It was only then that I noticed Atanta lowering one of her elf-shot throwing arrows.

  ‘I could have stung him,’ she whispered. ‘I’m good with these darts.’

  And without waiting for a comment, she suddenly flexed her arm and sent the little weapon soaring towards the bleak ridge on the hill. To my amazement it seemed to float upon the air, and struck the earth where the riders had passed, quivering and remaining proud where it stuck from the turf.

  I was glad she had reined back her enthusiasm for a kill. She might have alerted the war band to our presence, though their neglect for their fallen friend suggested a more focused pursuit.

  The spirit boat was waiting for us, hidden among rushes. The war band had passed this way, the churned earth suggested as much, but they had not noticed the craft that lay concealed at the river’s edge.

  ‘Where do they cross?’ I asked the young Mother.

  ‘At the Ford of the Miscast Spear. It would take a long time to walk there. But it seems to be their only way across from this hinterland. It’s well guarded by them. They are making the crossing easier.’

  I would investigate that ford at another time.

  The children clambered into the small boat and nestled down excitedly. Munda and Atanta held hands and sang a quiet song together, giggling at some private joke. I took my place in the stern and the little vessel nosed her way out through the reeds and cut across the river, towards the willow-fringed bank on the other side. When I glanced back, to wave to the young Mother, she had disappeared. Perhaps she was still standing there, but her cloak and cowl were camouflaged.

  A short while later, the boat nosed among the drooping branches and came to rest in the shallows. Kymon had already jumped into the water and was wading to the muddy shore. Munda, laughing, followed her brother, scrambling up the slope to the clearing. But Atanta?

  She stepped on to the land, shivering as if with a winter’s chill. The change in her was quite apparent: the hardening of her eyes, the set of her mouth, the tautness of her skin. A child in shape and size, she was ageing rapidly.

  Quickly, she took up her pack, and with a cry of sadness, and an anguished glance at her friend, she turned away from us and ran like the hound, away among the trees and out of sight. Munda called after her, then looked up at me, hurt and questioning. She seemed stunned. ‘Why did she run away?’

  ‘Let her go!’ Kymon said stiffly. The lad was standing straight and staring into his own land. After a moment his tone softened. ‘I expect she has other things on her mind. Sister, we have things to do, to get back to Taurovinda.’

  ‘But why did she run away?’ Munda asked again.

  What could I say to the startled and saddened girl? That Atanta even now was going through the torture of Time’s catching up with her. Isolated in the Otherworld for more than a few years, she was now grown to full womanhood. Those marks on her temples, the tattoo lines, were the markings of a kingdom to the south of here, I now remembered. Atanta had been a child exile from another clan, but a clan that still existed; she would now be going home to face the reality of how the desertion of the land had affected her own family.

  Both Kymon and Munda had grown and matured by a year, taller, heavier, leaner around the face. If it was less apparent in the girl, it was because the girl was younger than her brother. But Kymon showed the first signs of adulthood. The look in his eyes was iron bright, and very determined.

  Neither of them had seemed to notice the transition, the spurt of growth, though they both noticed that their clothes were shorter than before, something that briefly puzzled them.

  ‘We have to go back to our father’s house,’ he said again, with soft but firm encouragement. His glance at me was peculiar. He added, ‘Because our father is still alive … isn’t that so, Merlin?’

  ‘Alive when I saw him last,’ I reminded the boy, and Kymon nodded, accepting my caution.

  It was some time before Ambaros found us, with three of his entourage, all heavily armed, and spare horses, two of them suitable for the youngsters.

  Grandfather and grandchildren embraced, tearfully in Ambaros’s case. He couldn’t believe how tall the children had grown, how strong they looked. Again, I thought of Atanta, and of the pain she must be suffering, somewhere in the woodland.

  Ambaros came over to me. ‘Well done, Merlin. You’ve brought them safely back. By Brigg, that lad has the look of his father. He has the look of a king.’

  I agreed with the proud old man. Then Ambaros added, questioningly, ‘You, on the other hand, have the look of a man with something on his mind.’

  ‘One of the modronae told me where the Shadow host crosses the river. There’s just the one place. The Ford of the Miscast Spear.’

  Ambaros scratched his white beard, his eyes suddenly bright. He had intuited my own train of thought.

  ‘I’ve heard of it. It’s where those who die at peace cross to the Land of the Shadows of Heroes; to the islands. Yes, if we could learn how to block that ford…’

  Did the crow fly over him at that moment? If it did, I failed to see it.

  He spoke again with his grandchildren, then despatched them with the other horsemen back to the valley of the exiles. He and I then rode steadily along the river, keeping to cover, alert for sound and movement. The land was so still it might have been what the Greeklanders called the fields of Elysia, a bright, unspoilt place; or a land called eden, which would have existed during my own life, but which I had never found on my long travel, though I had heard tales of it.

  I became so lulled with the tranquillity and emptiness of this foray through the woodlands and sunny riverside meadows, that when the arrow came out of nowhere it was several moments before I realised what was happening.

  The weapon struck Ambaros squarely in the chest, piercing his bull’s-leather jacket, sending him tumbling back over the haunches of his horse. He crashed to the ground, doubled up, the shaft snapping. A second arrow thudded into my saddle, and a third struck my shoulder, but didn’t penetrate through my own protective clothing.

  I could hear the sound of horses, and gradually the eerie war cries of a skirmishing band. I opened my eyes—I should have done it before—and the tranquillity of the land fell away. And there, before us, was the ford, heavily guarded and very busy.

  In that moment I glimpsed the between-world.

  They had fortified the crossing, throwing up hi
gh banks of earth on each side of Nantosuelta, constructing towers and rings of the hewn trunks of trees, on each of which crouched a menacing figure, staring down at the approach from the land of the living. There was activity in the river herself, and a great bustle of ethereal figures, human and animal.

  From this hive of activity, two men were riding towards us, one with a fourth arrow nocked and ready to shoot, the other with a long spear held ready to throw. I waited for the arrow, but the horseman lowered the bow and drew his sword. Ambaros had risen to his feet and had his own light javelin ready, the other hand on the dreadful wound in his chest.

  I resorted to my own tricks of defence.

  The hawk that stooped and struck at the nearer of the ghost riders knocked him from the saddle. The other man charged down on Ambaros, who ducked below the sword blow and tripped the horse with his spear. Shadow warrior that he was, on our side of the river he was evidently vulnerable, and Ambaros pushed the point of his knife with finality into the gap between helmet and wood-scaled cuirass. A dead man died again. But he had left his world and he would have known the danger.

  It was only then that I realised how very like a Greekland helmet was the headgear of the fallen man; and on his shield: the image of Medusa.

  Ambaros struggled back into the saddle, groaning loudly. He kicked the horse to a gallop, clinging on for his life as he rode back the way he had come.

  I despatched the hawk, took a last look at the ford and the watchtowers that guarded it, curious and concerned by what I had seen, and followed the old warrior, away from danger.

  * * *

  The spirit boat had already gone, returning to the evergroves by Taurovinda, where she would wait either for me or for the return of Argo that the Three of Awful Boding had foreseen.

  Now Ambaros faced a two-day ride to the valley. He was obstinately redoubtable. ‘The breastbone is cracked,’ he announced airily, ‘but the heart still beats. If I ride carefully there will be no further damage.’

  He wouldn’t allow me access to the wound. Better to keep everything in place, he advised. The leather, the cloth, the bronze of the arrow, better not to move them until he could be properly attended to.