Pendragon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “I cannot eat, Pelleas,” Arthur complained. “I must see to my horse.”

  “Your horse can wait. Now, eat what is before you.”

  “Look! There is Cai! I must speak to him!” He was up and away before either of us could stop him.

  “Let him go, Pelleas,” I advised. “You are trying to hold back the tide with a broom.”

  After eating, we assembled in the foreyard, where the horses were ready and waiting. The day had dawned gray and chill, the mist thick and damp—a raw foretaste of the long bleak winter ahead. The hound handlers—six men, each with four dogs straining to the leash—strove to calm their animals and keep them from getting tangled with the others. The yard stank of wet dog and horse. Everything boiled in a fine, convivial confusion, excitement heightened by keen anticipation.

  The horses stamped and snorted impatiently as the hunters lashed their spears into place. The younger boys darted here and there, teasing the dogs and setting them barking. And the women, who had come to see husbands and sweethearts away, challenged their menfolk with good-natured taunts to bring home the biggest boar or stag, or failing that, a hare for the pot.

  Pelleas and I were to ride with Ectorius, and we found him near the gate, conferring with his master huntsman—a bald crag of a man called Ruddlyn, who, it was said, could scent a stag before the stag could scent him—no mean feat, surely, for even I could smell him quite plainly. The huntsman wore a coarse leather tunic through which two great bare hairy arms were thrust; his legs were stout as stumps in tall, hair-covered boots. Ruddlyn and Ectorius were talking about the weather.

  “Na, na,” Ruddlyn was saying, “this liath will clear before long. This be just a piddling; pay it no mind. The valley runs will be clearing by the time we reach them. The mist will not last, I tell ye.”

  “Then sound the horn, man,” Ectorius told him, making up his mind at once. “It is a sin to keep the hounds back any longer.”

  “Aye,” agreed Ruddlyn, who lumbered off, unslinging the horn from around his neck.

  Our horses were before us, so up we mounted. Ectorius, grinning, his face wet from the misting rain, saluted the eager hunters. “My friends! We are assured of a fine day. We have had a good summer, so the runs are full of game. The day is before you. I give you a good hunt.”

  Just then the master huntsman sounded his horn—a long, low, braying note that set the hounds bawling in reply. The gate swung open and we all surged out onto the track.

  Lord Ectorius’ hunting runs lay hard by Caer Edyn to the northwest, for there the forest crowded close. Beginning in the glen of the Carun River, the runs followed the stream into the forest for a goodly way before dividing.

  On the right hand, the trails continued a slow easy ascent into the hills and bluffs above the Fiorthe and Muir Giudan to the east; the left-hand trails bent westward, rising sharply to meet a steep and treacherous rock ridge that marked the beginning of the harsh and lonely region known as Manau Gododdin.

  The deep-folded land was dense with oak and ash, the undergrowth thorny briar; the uplands and hilltops were gorse and heather clinging to bare stone: a rough land. But the hunting was unmatched.

  We rode to the glen, allowing the more eager parties to speed on ahead. At the entrance to the run the first pack was loosed, and the baying hounds dashed away, slavering, the scent already burning in their nostrils; the first group of hunters raced after them.

  “Let them fly! Let them fly,” shouted Ectorius. “Myrddin, Pelleas! Stay close to Ruddlyn and he will find us a rare prize. You have my word on it.”

  We continued on, the glen ringing with the sound of hounds and hunters. Cai and Arthur passed us, whooping like the bhean sidhe as they plunged headlong through the Carun and galloped into the forest.

  “I used to ride like that,” remarked Ectorius, shaking his head and laughing, “but stare at an empty board once or twice and you soon learn to rein in your high spirits. Oh,” he chuckled again, “but it was great fun.”

  Ruddlyn arrived just then, dismounted, and, taking the leashes of the five dogs he had with him—big, black, square-muzzled brutes all—he wrapped all five leather straps around his hand, saying, “I have seen a fair-sized stag further on. It would be worth saving the hounds for him.”

  With that he was off, running with the dogs, his stout legs carrying him with surprising speed through the brush-choked trails. Curiously, the dogs did not yelp, but trotted stiffly, heads down, tails straight.

  Ectorius saw my wondering glance, and explained, “He has them trained to silence. They never give voice until the animal is sighted. We get much closer that way.” He lashed his horse and started after the huntsman and his hounds.

  Pelleas followed and I came after, leaning close to our mounts’ necks and shoulders to avoid low-hanging branches. The trail was dark and damp; mist seeped along the still air. Gradually, the sound of the other hunting parties receded, muffled and muted by the dense forest growth.

  Ruddlyn, moving with the quickness of his dogs, soon disappeared into the murk of the dim, tunnel-like trail ahead. We rode after him, slashing through the pungent bracken that clung to us as if to hold us back. In no time, our horses were streaming water from the withers down and our clothing was soaked through.

  The trail veered always to the left, and I soon understood that we were following one of the western runs into the craggy hills of Manau Gododdin. On we chased, the sound of our passing muted by the heavy, damp air.

  We caught Ruddlyn in a clearing where he had halted to wait for us. Hardly winded, he stood with his dogs around him, face to the low, leaden clouds above. “It will clear,” he announced.

  “What have you found?” asked Ectorius. “Is it the stag?”

  “Aye.”

  “Will we see it soon?”

  “Right soon, lord.”

  With that, he turned and strode away once more. The ground, I noticed, began to rise and in a little while the forest began to thin somewhat. We were beginning the climb to higher ground; the trail became more uneven.

  The pace was not fast, but I kept my eyes on the trail, alert to any obstacle there. In the chase, even small dangers—a jagged stone, a fallen branch, a hole in the ground—can mean disaster if unheeded.

  I had been lulled by the running rhythm of Ruddlyn’s ground-eating pace when I was jolted by the sudden sharp sounding of the hounds. I jerked my head up and, just ahead, saw Ruddlyn pointing into the brush, the dogs straining at the leather, snouts raised to heaven.

  I looked where he pointed and saw the reddish blur of a disappearing deer. An instant later, the dogs were loosed and flying to the chase, Ruddlyn with them.

  “Hie!” cried Ectorius. “God bless us, we have a fight on our hands! Did you see him?”

  “A very lord of his kind,” shouted Pelleas, snapping the reins. His horse leaped after the dogs.

  I followed, exulting in the chase, the wet wind on my face, the spirited baying of the hounds in my ears. The forest thinned. Trees flashed by. The horse and I moved as one, leaping felled logs and rocks, surging through the brake.

  Once and again I glimpsed one or another ahead—now Pelleas, now Ectorius—as the forest sped by in a gray, mottled haze. The trail rose more steeply now. There were stones and turf-covered hillocks all around. We fairly flew over these, rising all the while.

  All at once we broke cover; the forest fell away behind us. Ahead rose the steep, many-shadowed slopes of the rock ridge. In the selfsame moment, the clouds shifted and, standing in the center of a single shaft of shimmering light, head high, regarding us casually…a magnificent stag—enormous, perhaps the largest I have ever seen. A dozen or more points on his antlers, his mane thick and dark across heavy shoulders, his sides solid and his hindquarters well muscled—a true Forest Lord.

  Ectorius gave a shout. Pelleas hailed the creature with an exclamation of delight. The hounds, seeing their quarry near, howled with renewed vigor. Ruddlyn raised the horn to his lips and sounded a long
rising note.

  The stag swung his head around, lifted his legs, and leaped away, floating up the slope as lightly as the shadow of a cloud. The hounds, ears flat to their heads, dashed after the wonderful beast, their master right behind.

  We galloped straight up the slope. Upon gaining the crest, I discovered it to be but a shoulder of a higher hill, the upper portions of which were still mist-wrapped and obscure. The stag turned and began running easily along this wide, grassy shoulder, which itself rose as it climbed to meet the ridge to the west.

  As I wheeled my mount to follow the others, I saw a movement at the forest’s edge below. I glanced back to the lowlands we had just quitted. Two figures on horseback and a dog had cleared the trees and were driving up the slope for all they were worth. I had no need to look a second time; I knew them for Arthur and Cai, a single hound between them. I paused to allow them to join us.

  “He is ours!” cried Arthur when he caught me up.

  “We saw him first!” Cai informed me. “We have been on the scent since fording the river.”

  Both boys glared at me as if I had conspired to steal their manhood. The dog circled us, yapping, impatient, the scent of the stag rich and heavy in his nostrils.

  “Peace, brothers,” I told them. “No doubt you crossed his scent some way back. But it appears we have sighted him before you.”

  “Unfair!” hollered Cai. “He is ours!”

  “As to that,” I told him, “the prize belongs to the man who makes the kill. And that prize is making good his escape while we stand here flapping our tongues at one another.”

  “Truly!” cried Arthur, whirling in the saddle to view the track ahead. His eyes followed the shoulder of the slope, then traveled up the scree-strewn rise on the right. “This way!” he shouted, lashing his horse to speed once more.

  Cai threw a menacing glance at me and bounded after Arthur. “Wrong way!” I called after them, but they were already beyond hearing. I watched them for a moment and then set about catching Pelleas and Ectorius.

  I found them a short while later in a sheltered upland cove filled with gorse and briar. I could not see Ruddlyn, although I could hear the dogs baying close by. “The beast has vanished,” declared Ectorius as I reined in. “Took my eyes from him for a blink and he is gone.”

  “The hounds will raise the scent again,” Pelleas offered. “He cannot have gone far.”

  “Na, we cannot have lost him,” Ectorius said. “We will have the kill.”

  “Not if Arthur and Cai have their way,” I replied.

  “How so?” Ectorius wondered in surprise.

  “I met them on the trail back there. They have been tracking the stag as well. They claim they saw him first.”

  Ectorius laughed and shook his head. “God love them, the whole forest to hunt and they strike upon our beast. Well, they will have to kill it if they hope to claim it.”

  “That is what I told them,” I replied.

  “Where have they gone?” asked Pelleas, looking behind me.

  “Arthur led them up the slope to higher ground.”

  “It is all rocks and brambles,” Ectorius pointed out. “There is no cover at all up there. The rascals should know better.”

  Ruddlyn returned to us on the run, his broad face sweaty. He had leashed the dogs once more and they pulled at the close-held traces. “Stag was not in there,” he puffed, indicating the gorse-filled hollow behind, “though he has been. There is scent everywhere, we could get no clear mark.”

  “He must have jumped off the track at the bend,” said Ectorius.

  “Oh, aye, could be that,” agreed the huntsman. “A canny creature, he is. We must backtrack as we can go no farther from here.”

  We rode back along the trail, keeping the dogs on a short leash until they could raise a fresh scent. And at the place Ectorius suggested, we crossed the stag’s path once more. The dogs began howling and strained to the trail; it was all Ruddlyn could do to keep them from scrambling up the sheer sides of the hill.

  “Is this the way Arthur and Cai went?” asked Ectorius.

  “Yes,” I told him, “but I met them back there a little, where it is not so steep.”

  “That makes three canny creatures,” observed Pelleas.

  “It seems we will have to follow the lads,” replied Ectorius. “God knows we cannot climb this. We will but break our bones in trying.”

  “Show us the place,” Ruddlyn called, already retreating down the shoulder trail. I wheeled my horse and rode to the spot where I had last seen Arthur and Cai.

  “They started the climb here!” I called and, turning my mount off the trail, began the ascent. It was hard riding to gain the top, and once up the way did not become easier. It was, as Ectorius had said, all rock and briar thickets. The sheer stone cliffs of the ridge loomed above, and loose scree lay all around, making riding difficult. I dismounted and waited for the others.

  “We will have to go on foot from here,” Ectorius observed, swinging down from the saddle. “We dare not risk the horses.”

  “Which way did they go?” wondered Pelleas. He scanned the high crags above us, all black and shining slick with the mist that seeped and spread around them. There was no sign of the boys.

  Just then, one of the dogs gave voice and started jerking on its lead, haunches straining, head low over the track. “This way!” shouted Ruddlyn. With a sharp whistle, he gathered the hounds before him and they trotted away once more.

  We each snatched two spears from behind our saddles and hurried away. The ground was indeed rough with rock, the rubble made slippery by the mist and rain. I tucked the spears under my arm and jogged along as quickly as possible over the treacherous terrain.

  The hounds led us into a narrow defile leading between two humps of stone like misshapen pillars. This passage opened onto a narrow gorge that rose at its end to meet the ridge above. I glanced toward the far end of the gorge and saw, galloping up the scree-covered slope, Cai and Arthur—the stag in full flight just ahead. Even as I watched, the stag cleared the crest and disappeared from view over the top.

  Ectorius and Ruddlyn saw them in the same instant. Ectorius shouted for the boys to wait for us, but they were too far away and could not hear him. “The young fools will kill themselves!” shouted Ectorius. “And the horses, too!”

  There was nothing to be done but press on as quickly as possible, and that we did.

  The slope at the end of the gorge was much steeper than it appeared from a distance. Climbing it on foot was difficult enough. I do not know how Arthur and Cai managed it on horseback.

  The ridge formed a natural causeway between the steep rock slopes falling away on either hand, running east to west. In the lowlands behind us, the forest appeared a dark, rumpled pelt with Caer Edyn rising a little above it some distance away.

  The mist was heavier here, the clouds more dense. Water formed on my brow and ran down the sides of my neck. Despite the chill air of the heights, I was sweating and my clothes were wet; only my feet were dry.

  The hounds led us east along the ridgeway, and we followed—our pace slower now as fatigue began to gnaw at us. Even Ruddlyn’s ground-eating strides became slower, though he pushed on relentlessly.

  The ridgeway snaked along—as uneven and perilous a killing field as I have seen. We ran. The track lifted slightly beneath our feet and ahead loomed a bare granite mound, lifting like a shattered head, blocking the ridgeway. To the right rose a cracked and fissured curtain of stone; to the left, a sheer plunge to a broken ledge below. Directly ahead were Arthur and Cai and the stag.

  This is what I saw:

  Arthur sits tense in the saddle, head down, shoulders square, spine rigid. The spear is gripped in his right hand. Well I know the strength of that grip! Cai is beside him a few paces away, spear leveled. Both are staring at the stag, breathing hard.

  The stag—what a champion! He is even larger than I first thought—fully as large as a horse. Cornered, he has turned at last to meet
his pursuers, and stands facing them, head erect, his sleek sides heaving. Blood-flecked foam streams from his muzzle. The rack of his antlers spreads like the branches of a weathered oak—eighteen points if one.

  Oh, he is a prize!

  Cai’s black hound is circling, barking savagely. The dog seizes an opening and attacks. The stag wheels and lowers its head. The dog yelps and tries to jump away, but is caught and speared by the antlers, and is tossed lightly aside to die on the rocks.

  At this we begin running forward. We approach, but Ruddlyn halts us. “Stop!” he calls. “Let the hounds do their work!”

  He is thinking that it is too dangerous. If we rush in the stag may charge one or the other of the boys and they could be killed. Instead, he will loose the hounds and they will surround the stag, harry it, and wear down its strength.

  Then, when they have wearied the beast and taken some of the fight out of him, we will close in with our spears to make the kill. It is brutal, yes. But this is how it is done with a cornered beast. Any other way is deadly dangerous.

  Loosed, the dogs raise a rattling yelp as they fly.

  But the stag is an old warrior. The wily creature does not wait to be set upon by hounds. He lowers his head and charges!

  I see the head tilt down…the feet planted…shoulders bunching…flanks tightening…hindquarters lowering as the back legs begin churning, driving the animal forward.

  The lethal rack slices the air as it sweeps toward Arthur.

  Cai shouts.

  And Arthur…

  Arthur cradles the spear. He holds it like a fragile reed now. His eyes are hard and level. He is as unflinching as the death hurtling toward him.

  But his mount is not. The animal shies, wheeling at the last instant. Arthur jerks the reins hard to bring the animal round, but it is too late.

  The stag throws his head low, the points of the antlers rake the ground…then up!…Up like a Saecsen blade thrust deep into the horse’s belly.

  The wounded animal screams in agony and terror. The stag is shaking his head. His antlers are caught. The horse is scrambling to keep its legs. Arthur’s knee is pinned against the side of his mount. He cannot leap free of the saddle.