The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  The pursuing host spread out in a line, horses breathing hard, hard men sitting low, watching us through masked helmets.

  Kymon returned to the edge of the groves, loosened his britches and urinated on to the turf, watching the enemy with cold eyes.

  * * *

  Angry though he was, Kymon refused to return to the valley. We waited until dusk, then he went to the grove where Urtha’s father and mother lay together, below a low cairn of stones. Kymon’s grandmother, Riamunda, had been a powerful woman in the land. It was through her strength and her cunning that the land of the Cornovidi had stretched as far as it did, and had come to take in the borderland with the Otherworld itself.

  There were many stories of Riamunda. She could still be seen, a silver owl with wings of hazel, flying across the fortress each midwinter, keeping an eye on events down below.

  She had clearly been unable to stop the sacking of her ancestral home.

  But now Kymon sang a song to her, joined by Munda, who followed his lead. It was not a song of summoning, but of courage, of intent. He drew on her sleeping soul for the inner strength to do what he had to do. The cairn was simply the grave, but his voice would echo into whatever part of Ghostland she inhabited. Ghostland was a complex realm. It had its land for queens, separate from its land for heroes.

  ‘Grandmother,’ he finally whispered, ‘even if I am one against an army, your country will never come under bondage. I cannot wait for my father to return. He may never return. I am battle-eager. Send me hawks to strike from the sun and carrion birds to clean up the field. Fly low over me, and screech if I hesitate. But grandmother … come back to MaegCatha, and haunt the plain. I will draw comfort from your shadow.’

  * * *

  Two days later, as we came back to the valley and the camp of the exiles, I was saddened to see a women washing a bloody shirt in the river, thrashing the garment against exposed rocks, not really cleaning it at all, simply manifesting grief. I thought immediately that Ambaros had died, but it turned out to be the death of a child, who had fallen from the cliff while trying to snare one of the small birds which nested there. Since there was no shortage of food for this vanquished society, his intention must have been either magic or propitiation. His parents had both been killed in the last raid on Taurovinda. Now his broken body lay in its tunic on a small bier, away from the dogs, while his guardians discussed burial or a small pyre.

  Ambaros was still very weak. His face had no colour to it, his breath was foul, there were shadows gathered about him. The glitter had gone from his eyes, which were moist and unfocused. That said, he was drawing a little strength from somewhere.

  ‘Do you have any thoughts,’ he asked me weakly, ‘on the consequences of being slaughtered by your own ancestors?’

  I told him, bleakly, that I had no insights, and my ideas would be guesses. I was as puzzled by Ghostland as was he.

  ‘Nevertheless, I’ll promise you this,’ he went on. ‘Whether I live or die, I’ll fight to stop them crossing the river. They don’t belong in this world. You can depend on me. Tell my grandchildren, will you?’

  ‘You can tell them yourself,’ I pointed out, but he laughed cynically.

  ‘Munda, yes. But the boy reminds me of his mother. Impatient and quick to anger. And nothing angered Aylamunda more than an unnecessary death.’

  I could have glanced into Ambaros’s future at that moment, but I declined to do so. He was between the sky and the earth, no more than half dead, no more than half alive. He had seen nearly fifty winters. The time that nestled in those big bones and broad shoulders would either work for him or for his departure to Ghostland.

  It was not my business to interfere.

  Although Munda visited her grandfather, Kymon did not. Instead, the youth summoned a council, in the biggest of the enclosed caves in the valley, and requested a feast. When it was pointed out to him that the community was in mourning for the boy who had fallen from the cliff, he suggested combining the wake with the Call to Battle. This entailed eating prepared food in a different order, and seating the High Women and the warriors in a different place, but Kymon cut through this ritual with the simple exhortation that: ‘I am still a youth; but I am my father’s son, and I will be the first to speak. I will honour the dead boy. I will honour him at his burial. But we are not in the royal lodge, we are in a cave in the wasteland between life and death. Don’t fuss about the orderliness of the dead when all that is necessary is to hear the proposal of the living.’

  I imagine he had worked quite hard on that assertive and pompous little speech.

  He placed the small oval shield, with its hawk and horse, at the centre of the circle of small wooden tables, and placed a cushion, a small bowl and an eating blade beside it. I knew what he was doing. There were palaces in the east where this eccentric action by one so young would have been greeted with amusement and tolerance; others where it would have been greeted with benign intolerance or even mild punishment. But so simple an action as commanding the shield centre of the circle, among the Celts as I will choose to all them, could as easily result in the summary execution of Kymon, for assuming a right in the king’s absence that should have been contested, as it might in the gentle acceptance of his right to occupy this manly space simply because he was his father’s son.

  Munda, being who she was, had the greater right to occupy the centre space. Although I record these stories at a later time than their occurrence, I remember well how high in the society of decision-making and battle-planning were the women of Alba; it changed later, but in Urtha’s day, he was the right arm of power and Aylamunda, while she had lived, had been the left. When dead, they would occupy different territories in the Land of the Shadows of Heroes, though there would be paths to draw them together as need and memory necessitated.

  It was not, therefore, the surviving band of Urtha’s uthiin who posed the danger to Kymon, but the High Women who had survived, and whose ancestors were the modronae who sheltered the exiled children in Ghostland.

  Meat was roasted and fowl was boiled; the smell of sour bread and sweet cakes drifted fragrantly through the valley. Honey was stirred into the coarse ale, and leather flasks were filled and placed at table.

  At the end of the valley, in a small hazel glade, the pit had been dug to take the boy. He was laid there quite without ceremony, but with a little pigmeat, a sword, his cloak and mementoes of his parents. Kymon uttered a brief chant of forlorn hope in a desperate world; he summoned the boy’s ghost back from the Otherworld to help at Taurovinda. The earth was piled above the corpse, and then we went to eat.

  Kymon sat silently in the centre of the ring of tables as the uthiin, the High Women, and the Speakers for the Past, for the Land and for Kings—the druids, in other words—settled on their benches and began to drink. The flesh was cut from the bone and distributed; bread passed round the table. When everyone was eating, busying themselves with conversation and protocol, Kymon stood, fetched meat and bread for himself and filled a cup with water that had been drawn from the spring.

  All eyes were on him, I now realised. He seemed unconcerned by the steady gaze of these rough-bearded, rough-clothed men. He ate quietly and slowly. Two children sang for the host, but Amalgaid, the poet, remained silent. This was not the time to mock or celebrate the past deeds of the men here.

  Suddenly, the oldest of the uthiin tossed the bone from his portion on to the floor next to Kymon. The boy calmly regarded the other man, then picked up the remnant and placed it on his plate. A second bone came from another direction. Kymon placed it on his plate. Then one of the elder women threw a small, red scarf towards him. Kymon wound the fabric round his wrist. The woman smiled at him, then murmured something to the man who sat next to her. He frowned, but drew a small, bronze knife and tossed it carefully in the boy’s direction. Kymon picked it up, gathered up the animal bones and stood, the oval shield balanced before him against his body.

  ‘If this is all you offer me to fight with,
then I will fight with it.’

  Two of the uthiin looked alarmed; they had not offered their services to the youth, they had intended to tease him. Now one of them stood—a man called Gorgodumnos, red-haired and red-bearded, wearing half his battle-harness, scales of leather over a green jacket and a bronze torc round his powerful neck.

  ‘By what right do you take the centre?’

  ‘I was never taught my rights in this sort of matter,’ Kymon answered loudly. ‘When the slaughter happened, I was taken by the neck and carried into Ghostland. I had only just begun to learn. But this shield was Urtha’s, the king’s, my father’s. He carried it when we took the fire to Herne’s Grove at midwinter dusk.’ He slapped the image on the front of the ceremonial shield. ‘The hawk rides the horse through the worst of winter, watching for spring. I was wearing it across my back on the night I was carried to safety. I claim it as mine. There is a message for us all in this bronze and silver symbol. I offer it as the standard that will take us back to Taurovinda.’

  ‘There is a wasteland there,’ Gorgodumnos said sourly. ‘When Urtha left, the druid Sciamath’s ancient prophesy came true. Three wastelands. And the second wasteland is here! The realm was sacked, soiled and deserted. There is nothing there for us to return and claim.’

  Kymon waved the chicken bone in the air. ‘But you have pledged me your sword and spear,’ he said, and there was the merest ripple of laughter at the retort.

  ‘There is nothing to gain by going back,’ Gorgodumnos insisted.

  ‘There is everything to gain,’ Kymon insisted more strongly. ‘The evergroves, the orchards in the fort itself, the springs, the lives of our ancestors; the land that our children will inherit! We are all that is left of the Cornovidi for the moment. But in Ghostland, the Unborn wait to cross into the woods and fields that we have hunted and farmed for longer than I can imagine.’

  ‘My sons lie dead and unburied, somewhere on the Plain of MaegCatha, dragged out by ghosts, but slaughtered by iron.’

  Kymon hesitated for a moment, seeming to struggle for words. Then a small voice, a girl’s voice, murmured, ‘If you will not avenge their deaths, then there is more than one wasteland scourging the land of Cornovidi.’

  Gorgodumnos glanced furiously at Munda, who had risen to her feet, behind the circle of benches. But though his face was set grim and he shook his head, he said nothing.

  Next to him, his heavy-set brother, Morvodugnos, rose to his feet and placed his sword, point inwards, across the table. ‘There are not enough of us to take a heavily defended fort.’

  ‘We must gather an army,’ Kymon said. ‘From the Coratoni, my father’s friends, from the Trinovanda, if they will accept delayed payment for their services; we can scout north for Parisii. We cannot surely be the only survivors.’

  I hesitated to tell Kymon that the lands of the Coritani, to the east as far as the sea coast, were deserted as well, wooden effigies being all that remained of the knights and spearmen who had once formed such effective war bands.

  A wan young man called Drendas then asked, ‘Who will lead the expedition? You are the king’s son, but you are too young.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Kymon said strongly. ‘I will lead the expedition. However, I will expect wise and profound counsel from all of you. This is not a question of glory. It is not a question of cattle. It is not a question of tribute. It is not to extend our hunting territory. It is to reclaim the land inside our walls; and to banish the Dead to beyond our earth, and send the Unborn back to bide their time. I will do it for the memory of my father and mother. My sister here will show as strong a heart. We sit here at the edge of a wasteland, but Munda is right: whilst we do nothing, we are as dead as the land that was once our home.’

  All but Gorgodumnos had warmed to Kymon, perhaps more for the confidence with which he had spoken than for the content of his rallying cry. And Gorgodumnos himself seemed more bemused by what was happening than angry at the proposal.

  Later, Ambaros sent for me. He had been told of his grandson’s address to the uthiin and the High Women.

  He told me of several bands who had escaped from the various scenes of destruction when Taurovinda itself had been sacked. They were settled in the hills to the north, in a winding gorge to the south, and at a lake’s edge in the Forest of Andiarid, the ‘silver horn’.

  Then Ambaros reached for my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. I could feel the beating of his heart. He was still between earth and sky, but he was increasingly urgent for life. Life comes where life is demanded. He was sucking vitality from the humid air of the valley itself!

  ‘You know as well as I,’ he said, ‘that Ghostland is encroaching on us. That the war band will be facing an army of shadows. I’m proud of my children. But I believe that Urtha will return; and if that happens … can you imagine what it would do to him to find all his family dead? Please make sure that whatever happens—whatever!—those children are protected. You can do that, can’t you, Merlin?’

  ‘It’s certainly within my abilities,’ I reassured him.

  The grip on my arm relaxed. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the sprawl of painted animal figures that seemed to flow across the ceiling of this old home, like a herd of horned creatures and horses from some feverish dream. This was a very strange haven.

  ‘Why, I wonder? Why are they doing it?’ he mused. ‘Why cross the river? I have lain here for however long, and I cannot understand why the Dead should be unhappy with their own realm … to me, when I watch it from Mourne Hill, even from the river’s edge, I see the forests and fields of my strongest wish. I’d be happy there. If this split in my heart fails to heal, I’ll be content to ride through the tracks there, hunt the forests, cross to the islands. What has made them so angry? So warlike?’ His eyes met mine for a second. ‘Not a question for the likes of me, I can hear you thinking. Keep your senses alert, Merlin. You see farther than anyone I know.’

  ‘So I keep being told.’

  He drifted away from me. He had achieved what he wanted, with simplicity and candour: that I was to care for the children, and not to neglect my talents when it came to understanding the blighting wasteland beyond this valley.

  But now it was as if the uthiin had woken from a dream. The idea of a ‘quest ride’ set them combatively and competitively at each other. Only four of them could be spared to ride in search of recruits. So they engaged in games and a tournament to win the right to leave the camp of the exiles.

  Gorgodumnos was among the winners, and Cimmenos, and a young knight called Munremur, and his foster brother Cethern. These four then trimmed their beards and tied their hair, waxed their leathers and high boots and the curves and strips of bronze that they used to protect the more vulnerable parts of their bodies. They each selected a ‘full grip’ of the thin-shafted throwing javelins that were useful in all conditions of battle, and the smith keened the edges of their long-bladed iron swords. Lastly, they attached charms to their leather-scaled jackets and trousers.

  Amalgaid the poet was persuaded to pay them tribute in verse, though he clearly found it hard to say anything at all favourable about Gorgodumnos, who merely shrugged off the insult. ‘A poet’s tongue is like a bull’s prick,’ he said indifferently.

  We waited for him to explain, but he seemed to think his meaning was clear enough and turned away.

  Whatever darkness lay between them, no one referred to it. This was not the time to settle enmity between survivors of a greater threat.

  Provisioned, and given the protection of Nemetona after washing at the gushing spring, they rode out in a group at dawn, slowly at first, then at the canter, their wolf-cries echoing back along the valley for half the morning before at last all was silent again.

  * * *

  Later, Kymon sought me out; I was curled up against a rock, close to the stream, a favourite place. He sat down beside me, cross-legged, drawing his cape around his body to protect against the night dew. His hair was unbound, though he now wore a thin tor
c around his neck, signalling that he was taking the role of a warrior in the coming events.

  But he was less triumphal, more thoughtful.

  ‘How can the ghost of my great-grandfather, say, shoot an arrow that can kill me?’

  ‘On our side of Nantosuelta, the Dead are both dangerous and vulnerable.’

  ‘So a dead man can be killed again. Do you understand the rules of the situation, Merlin? Why can we see them one moment and not the next?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m still working it out. Besides, I thought you believed the enemy were opportunists from another clan, claiming a deserted fortress for their own, and not the Dead at all?’

  He shrugged, not responding to the gentle criticism. ‘I can believe in both, I suppose, though renegades are easier to comprehend. But I remember that night very clearly, when Taurovinda fell. It was so confusing. It was so … strange.’

  I didn’t interrupt him. He seemed to need to talk about the night of his mother’s murder.

  ‘I remember being fetched from my foster home by Cunomaglos, my father’s foster brother and dearest friend. He told me to prepare to return to Taurovinda. My brother Urien was to come as well.

  ‘We were training at the time, practising running barefoot, and using slingshot to bring down geese as they fled the surface of a lake. It was summer and we had made friends in our foster home. I wasn’t happy to leave. But when Cunomaglos brought us home it was to find a farewell feast in preparation. Our sister Munda was too young to understand what was happening.

  ‘My mother and grandfather Ambaros made a great fuss of us. We were given horn-hilted knives, and new woollen cloaks, and made to parade up and down before the uthiin horsemen. We were called “the little guardians”. The whole town was singing. Urien and I made mischief. We killed one of my father’s pigs, I remember, and took its bowels and lungs to the sanctuary of Sequana, where we burned them, asking her in exchange to frustrate my father’s journey and send him home.