The Iron Grail

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘My father was furious when he found out. I hadn’t seen him for years and now he raged at my brother and myself. We had abused the protecting spirit of the kingdom; and we had broken one of his geisa. I didn’t understand the law of taboo on the king and his family at that time, even though two had been put on my own life when I was born. On Urien too. Urien died rather than break one of his.

  ‘We were banished for one night and one day to a small house by the tannery, where the air was foul. But our father came to us to say goodbye. He was still angry, but he told us that he was going in search of the shield of Diadara, polished bronze on a disc of oak and ash, in whose reflection could be seen the future. He knew where to find it, in a northern land. He would bring it home. Through Diadara’s shield he would see the answer to a question that had been concerning him greatly. It was to do with succession, and with the holding of the kingdom after his death. He had had a far-seeing dream, and had been disturbed. While he was away we were to treat Ambaros as our father, to behave ourselves and steal neither piglet nor goose, nor chase stray cattle—everything we’d been trained for!—but instead to train in weapons and simple poetry, and to obey one rule absolutely: that whatever Munda decided in a quarrel between the two of us—Urien and me—was to be the decision we would accept.

  ‘I wasn’t happy with that instruction, but Urien was killed before Munda could find a reason to rule us.

  ‘That was a bad night. My father had long since left on his quest. Cunomaglos, his favourite brother, was in charge of everything. But riders had arrived at the fort, weary men from the east. Ambaros was nervous. He made the children stay out of sight. That night there was a good feast, storytelling, and an exchange of news. But in the morning, Cunomaglos and most of my father’s knights left the walls, riding east, riding for fortune. Grandfather Ambaros rode after them, but he returned in a fury. We had been abandoned. Cunomaglos, my father’s friend, had abandoned us.

  ‘And what then? All I know is that we were attacked at night, by a host of men who charged through our gates and set fire to our houses. I couldn’t see them! I saw my mother struck down, and Urien pursued into my father’s house, a great hound following at the leap. The town was in mayhem. We could see horses but not riders, torches but not the men who carried them. I could smell blood, but could not see the blades which drew it.

  ‘Then a hound leapt for me, chewed at my clothes. I tried to kill it, but it used a massive paw to strike the sword from my hand, and then it struck me a blow. The next I knew I was in the marshes behind the hill, being dragged by the dog. Munda was in the jaws of another. For more than a day we were carried by those creatures; they swam the river before they turned and ran from us, and all I remember then is Munda whispering, “They were our own hounds: Maglerd, Gelard … they saved us!”’

  Kymon frowned, threw a stone into the stream, then looked at me sharply. After a moment he leaned back on his elbow. ‘This feels like the right time to hear what happened to my father after he went to find his brother. Will you tell me?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He propped his head on his fist and listened with complete stillness and without interruption as I sketched the river journey aboard Argo, more than the cycle of a moon rowing eastwards, to the shores of a great river dedicated to the goddess Daan, even hauling the ship overland between headwaters.

  I told him how we had followed the trail of waste and destruction of an army of Celts, perhaps fifty thousand strong, and their wagons and cattle, and riders and charioteers. This enormous force was set on raiding and plundering the Oracle at Delphi. Cunomaglos and his men were hidden somewhere in that heaving mass of warriors. It was a long search.

  But in the land of the Makedonians, north of Greek Land, Urtha finally found his foster brother, riding with a cohort of Arvernii, and summoned him to combat.

  ‘They fought waist deep in a river, close to the sea; as I remember it, Cunomaglos called for heavy iron spears, and round shields; then Urtha called for short throwing spears and slim-bladed swords. Two ferocious bouts of fighting ensued. Each man was weakened with loss of blood. But on the third encounter, Cunomaglos called for no weapons at all, only what the river could offer them. They used stones and driftwood as clubs; they wrestled and boxed. Then Cunomaglos struck your father a blow that sent him below the water, and held him down with the last of his strength.

  ‘But suddenly the river was full of blood and broken spears! To the west, a war band of the Celts, foraging inland, had been ambushed by a force of Makedonians and were fighting across the river. The broken dead and their broken weapons came flowing through the scene of combat.

  ‘Cunomaglos grabbed a spear and struck Urtha through the breast, but the strike was weak, though the wound was bad. Then Urtha too grabbed the jagged shaft of a throwing spear as it passed in the stream. He killed his foster brother with a single, savage thrust.

  ‘A moment later, Maglerd, his great hound, leapt into the river and made sure that Cunomaglos stayed below the water, holding him there until his body was swept out into the dusk-dark sea.’

  Kymon’s eyes were alive with pride as he jumped to his feet. Munda was laughing nervously, the images disturbing to her.

  ‘So much for the Dog Lord!’ the boy said loudly. ‘I am not allowed to invoke the gods, but by the strength in my hair, there is no hunter, no haunter more powerful than the betrayed! This is a story that all poets should learn by heart, Merlin! I will call it the Feat of the Shattered Spear. Will you prepare it in verse for me? It should take at least half an evening to tell.’

  I reminded Kymon that I was neither druid nor poet, but assured him that I would recount the story in detail to a more qualified man. He seemed content enough with the proposal.

  * * *

  Within ten days our numbers had increased by twenty men, mostly of older stock, ten youths practised in warfare, and fifteen women very practised in arms and ferociously willing to set their skills against even a supernatural enemy. These recruits had come with Cimmenos and Munremur, and they brought provisions with them, and extra horses, and even four chariots, which were repaired and strengthened.

  Cethern returned later with two Wolf-heads, soothsayers, usually druids who had been banished by the king. They were filthy, pale-fleshed and dressed in the grey and blue skins of feral animals. He also had in tow four slaves who had escaped from the stronghold of Ferdach, king of the Dubnonii, and had been wandering aimlessly for half a year. Their bow fingers had been removed, and their left ankles hobbled. But they demonstrated how they had learned to shoot and throw with left hand and left arm; and like the bestial Erian giants known as fomori they were adept at moving swiftly on one good foot. It was strange to watch, but they were quite determined to win back honour. They had been part of a band of sea-raiders from the Erian kingdom of Meath, across the western sea; they had been the only survivors. One of them was a woman, Caithach, who was related to Scaithach, legendary trainer of champions.

  As for the Wolf-heads, there was something familiar about them. It is to my shame that I didn’t at once recognise them for who they were. The truth was a hound, waiting to spring.

  But where was Gorgodumnos in all of this?

  Two days later, his horse came slowly and wearily up the stream, following its instinct. It was still saddled and bridled. There were no weapons in the sheaths. The horse’s mane was black and matted with blood.

  Ambaros was told the news.

  The man’s mood darkened. ‘We have lost Gorgodumnos? Then we have lost the best of us, in many ways. His caution was one of our strengths. Kymon should certainly now take the counsel of the most experienced among us, from this valley and from the new arrivals. And tell Merlin to throw his own caution to the wind, and his farsight at Ghostland. We will need to know the strength of this invasion.’

  And I’m told that he added, ‘And what it hopes to achieve.’

  When Kymon heard this he ordered the construction of an earth model of Taurovinda f
rom memory, its gates, defences and the surrounding plain. The river systems were drawn in the ground. Bracken served as forest and marsh. The warlords crouched around the display to discuss tactics. They were impressed by the look of the stronghold, as if seen from the eyes of a hawk, high above.

  But at the end of the day it was clear that Urtha’s fortress had been so well constructed, and so well defended, that nothing short of a headlong confrontation through its five main gates would achieve anything at all. The western gate, looking out over a great area of marsh and mere and cut through jagged outcrops of dark rock, heavily swathed in tangles of thorn, was passable only to an army of ghosts, someone said.

  Indeed (this man was courteously reminded) that is how Taurovinda had fallen in the first place.

  Kymon became impatient with the discussion and tried again to assert his authority over the gathering of chiefs.

  ‘Whether there are ten or a hundred of the enemy behind the walls of the fort, the problem is in the seeing. If they truly are the Dead, and not renegades from the south as I half suspect, then we will be fighting thin air. But Merlin can assist us. He is a man of wild talent; he told me so himself. I refuse to believe that he cannot help take the darkness from our eyes, so that we can see the enemy charging down on us. And if I understand you right, Merlin, in our land that enemy, those ghosts, are as vulnerable to us as we are to them!’

  I agreed with him, and he turned away.

  Outside the circle, Munda sought out my shadowy figure. Her eyes asked the question: will you do that for us?

  If I can, I will, I tried to tell her. She seemed satisfied with the silent answer, though I suspect she was only responding to her own intuition about my limitations.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Battle-eager, Ice-hearted

  It was finally agreed that the reclamation of the hill fortress of Taurovinda, either by force or unimpeded entry, would begin at dawn in two days’ time. Munda immediately went in search of omens, with the permission of Rianata, the Thoughtful Woman. A guardian went with her. The uthiin, and men of equivalent rank from the other clans, set up contests for the right to ride in this or that position, or to take one of the few chariots that this small host now possessed.

  Kymon had been training hard in what the Celts called ‘the feats’. These included snatching a spear thrown by an enemy and returning it in one movement; using a shield as an offensive weapon and not just for defence; running along the pole of a chariot, standing on the yoke and casting a weapon before running back to the car; and a gymnastic display that was reminiscent of the Greeklanders in older times, a way of jumping high into the air and somersaulting backwards and forwards, with the thrust or slash of sword or spear incorporated into the movement.

  Under the skilful guidance of the Erian slave, Caithach, Kymon took a final course of training in the feat of Welcoming the Blow, the ways to bend and flex the body when the strike came home, twisting so as to minimise the damage of the blade that enters the flesh, and holding and pressing to slow the deadly wound until safety has been attained.

  Caithach was a sturdy, red-haired woman, easy with the display of her scarred and wounded body, and it was clear that many of the strikes should have been fatal. The worst wound was the hobbling of her left leg, but she had overcome the damage by pure will.

  ‘It’s not all about the attack,’ she repeated over and over again. ‘It’s very much to do about returning to the fight. Like your father, at that foreign river. Hounds could have glutted themselves on the flesh Cunomaglos cut from him. But he was able to fight a third time and vanquish the Dog Lord.’

  At the end of the day, Kymon finally mastered what Caithach called the Feat of the Four Points: four light spears thrown forward, backward and to the sides in a single movement. He was exhausted but triumphant, applauded by several of the uthiin, who scowled when the boy challenged them to demonstrate their own skills. They had once trained, of course, but they had grown lazy and sluggardly in the absence of action.

  ‘Tomorrow!’ Caithach declared in her rich brogue. ‘Tomorrow we will all go through the motions.’

  ‘Include Merlin in that,’ Kymon said with a grin, as he caught his breath. ‘And Munda too,’ he added, looking around, puzzled. ‘Where is she? She should be learning the feats.’

  He shrugged the thought away and discarded his training clothes for more comfortable attire (training was undertaken in sandals, simple tunic and a weighty leather cuirass to simulate the most vigorous of battle conditions) then went to find a little meat, and to talk to frail Ambaros.

  Mention of Munda reminded me that she and her guardian had been gone from the encampment for the better part of the day. I had taken her idea of searching for portents and omens as childish indulgence, since, though she was certainly intuitive, she could not have been skilled in the manner of divination and interpretation of the marks on the land that signified the imminence of events. Where had the girl got to?

  The thought occurred to me that perhaps her stay in Ghostland had sharpened the horizons of her budding skill in charm, but I felt certain that the modronae would have made that fact known to me when they had secured my services in the rescue from the Otherworld.

  How blind I was!

  I followed the stream out of the valley to where it flowed into the broader river. The banks were dense with drooping willow; the river rushed noisily over a shallow, stony bed. Her guardian, no more than a girl herself, was curled up, half asleep, against a spreading oak. Somewhere, hidden from view, I could hear the sound of a girl singing.

  Munda was sitting cross-legged on a rock, trailing the shaft of a thin arrow in the water. Her gaze was on the far bank where a tall woman stood, half obscured by the bushes and her dark cape. Long, luxuriant red hair framed a pale, lean face, but did not hide the vertical lines of pin-point markings on each temple.

  The moment this stranger saw me she raised a hand and withdrew into the undergrowth. Munda stopped singing at once, then looked up at me, her eyes moist. There was an aura around her, a shimmering in the air; she seemed for a moment to be unreal, dreamlike.

  And she uttered words that astonished me. ‘Nothing is hidden,’ she said, almost with a sigh. ‘I see it bleached. I see it bone.’

  I crouched down. Her gaze followed me, but she was focused elsewhere. Then the mood snapped, the shimmering about her body faded, she seemed to see me for the first time and smiled.

  She raised the arrow with its elf-shot flint point. ‘It’s from Atanta,’ she said. ‘She sent it to me. That woman over there brought it from her. It means I’ll meet Atanta again. She said once she’d always look after me.’

  ‘I think she will,’ I said to the girl, then helped her up. She was stiff with sitting for so long in one position.

  ‘Did you see any omens?’ I asked her. ‘About tomorrow?’

  What would she say? Was she aware that she had been possessed a few moments ago? I knew those words, I knew what they signalled. Few women are born to it, and their lives are either blighted by it, or made brilliant. It was known among the High Women and druids as the imbas forasnai, the Light of Foresight. It was a small talent compared to mine, certainly, but it was sinister in that the vision was uncontrollable, unstoppable, sudden, often brutal and told at once—there was no avoiding the expression of what had been seen, no waiting for the right moment.

  Many battles had been lost or won because of the sudden words ‘Nothing is hidden’, followed by a devastating vision.

  I see it bleached. I see it bone.

  She had had a glimpse of something, but did she know it? Apparently not. In answer to my question concerning omens she referred to more simple auguries.

  ‘I saw several. Marise saw them too. She went back to the valley. Didn’t you speak to her?’

  ‘No. Tell me about the omens.’

  As we walked back along the banks of the stream Munda described the encounters:

  ‘At midday, three sparrowhawks flew together from east t
o west. Three sparrows were flying from west to east and the hawks took them, but parted company from each other, feasting in solitary. That was very strange. Then in the middle of the afternoon a pike flung itself from the river on to the grass, thrashing and struggling. It had a small spiny fish caught in its long jaws. The spines had pierced the roof of its mouth. The pike would die, but so would the small fish, so I took the spiny fish from those jaws, and threw both back into the water. To live again; perhaps to die again. That was also very strange.

  ‘Then I heard Atanta calling to me. And this little arrow came over the river from her. But when I looked I could only see another Mother, like the Mothers who protected us after we were taken away by the hounds. I think Atanta has been taken below the earth, but she is telling me that she is alive and well. Those are the only omens, Merlin … do they mean anything to you?’

  ‘What do they mean to you?’ I asked the girl first, and she shrugged.

  ‘Well. The three hawks taking the three sparrows: that could mean that what is together now, the gathering of the warlords, will end in separation after the fort is taken. That’s a bad omen. The pike was wounded badly by the little fish, but an outside hand came to its aid. I think that says that we’ll fail this time, and have to come again against the spirits. The third omen, the arrow from my friend, makes me think that everything can be seen, but what we see is not necessarily the truth. It’s the pike that concerns me. Kymon is very determined to raise an army. But I think we’re missing something important.’

  They were Munda’s omens, and not mine. But three sparrowhawks flying close together? The sign was of unity, not separation. The feeding frenzy, the battle frenzy, would be a solitary act; but the portent signified solidarity not betrayal.