But the challenge was not a thing which could be refused, and Cawdor came forth slowly, taking his sword from Dawid without looking at him. Berec followed, white-faced, to take his cloak and shirt, and to tie Cawdor’s hair back from his face.
Then Galt also leapt lightly across the table, to tie the king’s hair back for him. ‘The Shining One go with you, brother,’ he murmured. ‘I do not think the price he asks will be overhigh.’
‘In any case, it is mine to pay,’ Vortrix said. ‘The more fool I that I did not listen to you earlier.’ He handed Galt the plain bronze fillet from his hair, replacement for the gold one that had gone in payment for time and new blades. Galt took it and moved back among the tables, while on the floor Vortrix and Cawdor circled in deadly silence.
Branwen returned to the hall just then, and Galt caught her in the doorway, leading her out of Vortrix’s line of sight. ‘Hush and be still, lady. He needs no distractions.’
‘And I am not needing you to tell me that,’ she returned, and he half smiled and made a little bow to her.
At the High Table, Brendan and the Caledonian chieftain watched tensely. For himself, Brendan had no wish to make an alliance with Cawdor in the High King’s place. Too much rode on the strength of the leader.
Dergdian watched with a different eye – there was much in this combat that came close to home. But for him, when the time came, the outcome would be foreordained. To fight to hold your throne, and win – there must be a glory in that that he would never know. For a king of the Caledones to do such a thing would surely bring the wrath of the Goddess on them all, and she was the giver of plague and famine as well as fruition and plenty. No, Dergdian’s death would be the life of his tribe, and there was glory in that, too.
‘Vortrix’s time will come,’ Brendan murmured to him, seeing the way his thoughts lay. ‘As it does to us all. But not, I think, tonight.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because we choose our own time, when the need is there – and he does not choose.’
In the circle of the dance floor the two figures, stripped to the waist, with the blue spirals bright against the pale skin over the heart, stepped round each other, measuring, in a pattern that might have come straight from ancient ritual. Then Cawdor lunged and brought his blade down hard toward the base of the king’s neck, and the dance became a deadly, chancy thing that was ritual no longer. Vortrix brought his own blade up against the blow, flinging the man back from him, and drove it straight for Cawdor’s heart. Cawdor too parried and they circled briefly once more, the fire and torch flare shining on their hair and setting their shadows to leaping huge against the wall, like the painted warriors of the old days who danced on the rocks of the Council Mound. The scar on the High King’s forearm flamed as red as the fire, but still the muscles held. Cawdor licked his lips and lunged again, and the High King’s sword flickered up to stop the blade.
‘The God speed thy knife, brother,’ Galt whispered from his place in the corner beside the queen, and she looked up startled at the fervor in his voice.
‘If the God will listen to any man in this thing, I am thinking it will be you,’ she said, and his arm came round and gripped her about the waist, an unexpectedly steadying comfort from a man so lightly built. They had had but a wary regard for one another in the days since Vortrix’s marriage, the High King’s queen and his blood brother, but now suddenly they were one on the outskirts of this battle.
Vortrix moved slowly forward, angling Cawdor back before he had a chance to realize that three more steps would take him to the edge of the hearth with its firepit glowing red and raised a full foot above the floor. Vortrix feinted with his sword and a streak of pain ran down his arm, but there was no lessening of its strength. And Cawdor took another step back.
‘Mine, cousin,’ Vortrix hissed. ‘Did I not say it was mine by right of blood?’
‘You lost that right,’ Cawdor spat at him, breathing hard, ‘the night the Roman healer mended your arm and you forsook your call!’
‘My call was not yet… nor is it now! I choose, Cawdor! And – your own call comes!’ He swung his sword out and down in an arc that flickered past Cawdor’s guard and caught him on the thigh, slicing bone deep before Cawdor could recover.
Cawdor stumbled to his knees, his back against the burning of the hearth fire, as the blood gushed up from his leg. Righting himself unsteadily on his good leg, he raised his sword against the High King’s blow – a second too late. And the blade came down in a wicked, shining arc that took him through the throat.
And it was over. Cawdor lay with his head lolled back in the ashes of the hearth and the fire mirrored in the blood that ran glistening down his breast. Vortrix flung his own sword from him and knelt to pull his kinsman from the flames.
Talhaiere stepped forward, but he shook him off. ‘Give me a moment, old father.’ He turned to face the allied kings.
‘I am thinking that this is a poor welcome to Council, and I am sorry for it. But I must leave you now. If you will but bide in the company of my queen and Galt my spear brother, we may yet speak of our hunting… in three days’ time.’
He nodded to Talhaiere and walked before the old priest to the door, pausing only to speak to Berec as he passed. ‘See that he is well buried, and the grave mound raised aright.’ And then he was gone, and there was only black night to be seen through the door of the hall.
* * *
The next day was the Midwinter Festival, but to Branwen, nursing small Bran in her chambers, it was a desolation of a day. The previous evening’s feasting had limped along after its spectacular interruption, out of courtesy to the allied chieftains, but the empty chairs at the High Table loomed bleakly among the festival makers, and the dancers wove the pattern of the Spear Dance well away from the hearth.
Berec had picked up Cawdor’s body and borne it alone out into the snow and mist. After a moment, Galt shrugged his shoulders and followed him. It was not fitting that Berec should prepare his spear brother’s body for the pyre alone, and it seemed that no one wished to be mentioned to the High King afterward as the man who had helped. Galt, knowing his king better than most, had no such qualms.
Branwen was left alone to play host as best she might, and it was no easy going. The spectre of death – Cawdor’s, and possibly that of the hoped-for alliance – hung over them all, and she was grateful when the warriors began to yawn and beckon for their spear bearers. Galt, leaving Berec to his vigil, returned in time to help her escort Brendan, Dergdian, and their respective entourages to the Guest Hall, and bid them welcome to the next day’s festival.
As if by common consent, when the queen turned toward her own quarters Galt followed and she beckoned him in.
‘Thank you, Merin. I will take him now.’
The brown-haired girl who had played the drum for the women’s dance on the night that Vortrix had come to her laughing and sword in hand put the babe in her arms and withdrew.
‘She is of an age to make some man a fine wife,’ Branwen said. ‘But I’m thinking there will be many of our women who will never see a husband’s hearth when this hunting is over.’
‘Would you have her go to a free lord of the Tribe or to a serf of Rome?’ Galt inquired. She gestured to the chair opposite and he settled himself in it and curled one foot up catwise.
‘A free lord certainly. But I am not so sure that a serf of the Roman kind is not better than no husband at all. Bah! I talk like a woman!’ She laid the babe back in his cradle and curled up in her own chair, facing him. ‘I thought I had learned not to.’
Galt raised an eyebrow. ‘You surprise me.’
‘I surprise myself at times since I was wed to the king. One learns to… adapt.’
He smiled, a flickering cat-smile that matched the fluid grace of his movements. ‘I am thinking that the king’s hound and the king’s woman have yet something to learn of each other. And now, get some sleep if you can.’
But Branwen found sleep a lon
g time in coming.
* * *
Galt came again the next morning and gripped her shoulder in comfort before going to take his place at the Midwinter worship. ‘I am thinking you will have spent an evil night. Rest, lady. The thing was necessary, and he did not grudge the price.’
But she knew little of the Lord of the Shining Spear, even though the women raised their own dance to him when they took the war trail, and the unknown is always the most fearful.
Talhaiere also came to her chambers and, seeing the way her mind went, said gently, ‘There are mysteries that I may not speak of to you, but remember this – he never asks anything of a man without reason, or which that man cannot endure. Come now. Give the small lord to your women and take your place at the gathering. If the king can bear his part, then you must bear yours. That too is part of the price.’
She rose and, calling for Merin to take the child, followed him out to where a trampled path ran through the snow to the field on the far side of the Council Mound. The Midwinter Fires that would be beacon-bright at nightfall shone like pale flowers against the dazzle of the sun. The clans of the Tribe were gathered in a splash of bright plaids and checkered cloaks around an oval track in the meadow, its sides banked high with cleared snow. Already the lithe wickerwork-and-leather chariots were gathered at the starting stone for the high point of the day’s festivities, the Midwinter Race. Race day was flexible, moving with the weather, but this year it had held fine, and the race would be run on Midwinter Day itself.
Her father’s team, steel grey with a flurry of snow-dappling down their rumps, pranced and fidgeted in the crisp air, their breath standing in little puffs about their nostrils. In the chariot, making a last check of the leather bindings that supported the frame, was her brother Donal, resplendent in a blue-bordered cloak of the same russet color as his hair. Brendan’s team, a milk white pair almost invisible against the snow, threw up dainty heads with the small pricked ears that spoke of Arab blood, while the chieftain himself settled into the driver’s place.
Team by team they filed onto the track… Dergdian, also driving his own team of bays… Duncan’s blacks, driven by a blond boy who looked almost too young to be a charioteer. (Galt had said he showed much promise, she remembered, and that his youth was deceiving.)
And then a familiar pair of roans frisked down the narrow ramp that led to the track and she drew in her breath until she caught sight of the driver – Galt, driving the High King’s horses instead of his own.
He frequently served as the king’s charioteer in battle, for the two fought best as a team, but when it came to the race, they had always matched their horses against each other, and Galt’s were accounted a favorite in any race he entered. This, then, was his own gift to his brother… a way perhaps of drawing him up from the dark night that enclosed him.
She turned her head to the white bulk of the Council Mound among the trees on the hill. Somewhere in the cavern beneath it, she knew, the High King made his penance alone.
It seemed harsh payment for a death well deserved, but it was a necessary law of the Tribe, that no man might fear to speak his mind at Council. Without invoking challenge, the payment for Cawdor’s death would have been the killer’s own life, High King or no.
‘Come.’ Talhaiere took her by the arm again and led her to the high-backed chair draped with wolf skins that was the queen’s place at the festival. The teams were lined up across the course now, and the starter raised the long bronze trumpet to his lips, as the horses twitched in anticipation. At the first note, they were off, the whippy little chariots springing like live things under their drivers’ feet at every rise in the ground. Donal, in the inside position, gained the first lead, while Galt, midway down the line between the unknown quantities, Dergdian and Brendan, maneuvered for space to make his move. They rounded the first bend in a flying skein, and the pack began to take shape. Donal, still in the lead, hard-pressed by Duncan’s young charioteer (‘The young fool, he’s pushing them too early!’ she heard Cathuil grumble beside her)… Dergdian drawing forward, his blue-stained arms bright against the snow… and Galt, still feeling his way through the gap between the Caledonian chief and the Lord of the Selgovae who hung close on his flank. Behind and before, the six other teams that made up the race were strung out in a flying V like winter geese.
Into the third turn, the dapple greys were falling back while the black team flew before them like dark smoke… the fourth turn, and the blacks led still, pursued by the triple threat of Galt behind the High King’s roans and the allied chieftains to either side of him. Cathuil’s dapples had fallen behind the black team, and the two drivers between them had seized the chance to move forward, trapping Donal behind them, with the sharp-cut edge of the course on one side and the flying tail of the pack on the other. Cathuil’s curses rang bitterly in the icy air.
At the fifth turn, the second and third teams were slackening, and Duncan’s blacks catapulted forward across their path, into the inside position, with Dergdian’s bays a nose behind. A length behind them thundered the High King’s roans, and on the roans’ right flank still hung the snow-colored team of the War Lord of the Selgovae.
‘Fly then, my beauties, fly then, oh sons of Light!’ Galt, bent forward, whispered to his team and the roans leaned into the traces and flew like the Wild Hunt into the bend.
Then, careening round the sixth turn, the near horse of the black team stumbled on a loose stone, and Dergdian’s bays catapulted past him before he could recover, with the roan team in their wake. Brendan’s Arabs, jockeying for position, ran afoul of a trailing harness strap thrown loose by the jolt to the blacks’ chariot, and before Brendan could pull them up, the two teams were entangled in a snaking coil of leather.
The blond charioteer gave one glance over his shoulder and pulled his team up hard. They slowed, shaking their heads and fighting the pressure on the reins, and the boy leapt out along the pole to hack at the trailing strap with his dagger. Behind him the white team stumbled, panicking, while Brendan strove to keep them aligned with the chariot ahead. If they plunged to the side, they would bring both chariots down.
The trace parted just in time, as the off horse of the Arab team went crashing down, and Brendan hauled back on the near one’s reins with all his strength. The blond charioteer leapt back to his place again and, seeing that the white team was free, shook out the reins and gave the blacks their heads. It was plain that it was too late. The two lead teams were a good six lengths ahead and coming into the next-to-last turn. Duncan, watching, gritted his teeth but kept silent. No charioteer worthy of the name would have risked hurt to his own or another’s team for the sake of a race.
The white team was up again, apparently unhurt, and now all eyes were on the leaders, separated by no more than a head as they rounded the seventh turn. Galt was crooning to the red team in a singsong of encouragement, and they flicked their ears back to the sound and gave one more burst of speed. Slowly, in the last turn, they narrowed the gap to half a head and then less and, coming into the straight, hurled themselves past the flying forefeet of the bays as the racekeeper’s arm flashed down.
There was a roar of approval from the crowd, and jubilant demands for bets to be paid off, as the teams slowed their pace and circled the track at a trot. The roans were first up the ramp, their red tails frisking in the sunlight and looking well pleased with themselves. Galt drove them straight up the aisle to the queen’s chair, where they dipped their heads to her and then spoiled the effect by whuffling against the breast of her gown for the barley cake they knew she sometimes carried for them.
‘No, no, my friends, I am carrying no sticky cakes in my best gown,’ she laughed, putting the winners’ wreaths of evergreen about their necks. ‘Content you with this.’
‘They ran well, considering that Sundown is young and new to the race.’ Galt leapt down from his place and knelt before her for his own wreath, and she smiled as she set it on the pale head. ‘The king’s woman has l
earned another thing of the king’s hound,’ she murmured. ‘There is a great kindness in him.’ He shook his head and looked embarrassed, so she said no more and nodded at him to rise.
He backed the team down the aisle, which was too narrow for the chariot to turn, stopping in the press of congratulations to speak to Duncan’s young driver.
‘That was well driven, lad. I am sorry to have a victory at your expense. We must match old Duncan’s team to my blacks someday, for the sport of it. I’m thinking it would be a rare race.’
The boy’s dejected face split into a grin. ‘Aye, that would be fine.’ He stood back to let the red team pass with worship writ large on his face.
Dergdian also came to offer congratulations, his face more alive than Galt had seen it before, with the joy of the race still in it. The Caledonian chief was a horseman with few equals. Brendan too came forward, having made sure that his team had suffered no hurt.
‘That was an ill piece of luck,’ Galt said.
‘I must find the lad and speak with him,’ Brendan said. ‘If he had not been quick with his dagger, I’d have more than hurt pride to grieve me now.’ He glanced to where the white stallions, legs miraculously unbroken, were being walked cool.
‘There is food for feasting, and far less noise, in my quarters,’ Galt said as the three shouldered their way through the holiday. ‘When I have seen the High King’s horses stabled, I will be the High King’s hound again, at Your Graces’ service.’ He bowed and took his leave.
‘A trusted hound indeed,’ Dergdian said, looking after him.
‘And one to be reckoned with. I’m thinking young Vortrix’s fox-haired kinsman lived as long as he did because that hound was leashed. There’s a danger in that pretty face I’d as soon not have turned toward me.’
The Legions of the Mist Page 27