In this way they moved northward, crossing a range of low mountains and then faring downward through the forest. They passed from one steading to the next, sleeping in sheds or under the stars while the moon waxed from a sliver to nearly full. The country changed as the land sank toward the sea, the trees becoming more sparse, then giving way to bog and heathland except where cuttings and dikes protected rich fields.
WOODPECKER STOPPED SHORT, NOSTRILS flaring, as the changing wind lifted his hair. Fire . . . He had always feared it, but only when Anderle told him how she had rescued him from the burning house had he understood why. The scent faded with the wind, then returned, stronger. With time he had grown accustomed to the smoke from the forge, but this was no charcoal burner’s fire. The reek of burning thatch was unmistakable now . . . the smell of a burning home.
He turned and saw that Velantos, who was leading the pony, had smelled it as well. “A house is burning—” He pointed across the heath, where purple heather covered the rough ground between stands of yew and pine. Now they could see a black plume of smoke beyond the trees. It was leagues away—whatever was happening would be over by the time they reached it. Even with a trail to follow, getting across this country took time.
These days Velantos had a few nightmares about fires as well, and in the past few days they had seen the charred timbers of more than one steading. Despite its apparent state of peace, this was a troubled land. They both kept their swords loose in the sheath and their spears within easy reach as they continued on their way.
Presently the heath began to give way to mingled marsh and pasture and winding channels that bordered isles of trees. It reminded Woodpecker strongly of the Vale of Avalon, and he found himself amusing Velantos with tales of his childhood there. That was not all he was remembering. Spending so much time outdoors had awakened skills he had learned hunting in the marches. And as the sun sank toward the west, he began to have the uncomfortable feeling that they were not alone.
He stopped the pony and leaned over to fiddle with the harness, scanning the heath from beneath the animal’s belly. A clump of buckthorn trembled—was it the wind?
“What is it?” Velantos called.
“The fastening here seems to be loose,” Woodpecker said loudly. “Could you take a look?” As the older man bent beside him he murmured, “I think we’re being stalked. Can you reach your bow?”
The smith’s eyes widened. “You may be right—have to unpack a bit to see . . .” Fortunately they had put the weapons where they would be accessible. Carefully he eased the bow from its place, holding it between his body and the horse to bend and string. He slung the quiver casually over his shoulder.
Woodpecker loosened the ties that held his spear and looked around him. The path wound among scattered clumps of thorn and alder, any one of which could conceal an enemy. Beyond them he glimpsed reeds. He couldn’t see anything that offered good cover near the road. If he had been alone, he would have taken to the water, but that would mean abandoning the pony, and it was probably the gear the beast carried that the wolf’s-heads wanted anyway. The pony’s head lifted, nostrils flaring. He smells them . . .
As he straightened, Woodpecker caught another scent, the smell of baking bread. “They’re out there, but I think there’s a farmstead nearby. Move as fast as you can and be ready.”
Velantos lifted an eyebrow at the decisive tone, but nodded and strode ahead, holding his bow casually under one arm. Woodpecker jerked on the pony’s rein and hurried after him. They passed a tangle of trees and saw ahead a well-built house on its own isle, with a new fence of logs around it and bridges and wooden walkways to connect it to pastures and fields. In the next moment an arrow flicked past his ear and stuck trembling in the box that held the smith’s tools.
“Run!” he yelled, jerking at the ties that held the spear, but Velantos ducked back to the pony’s other side, fitting an arrow to his drawn bow. Right, thought the younger man. He won’t leave the gear. But it was true that the horse was the closest thing to cover they had. The chestnut pony, sensing its danger, tossed its head and jerked diagonally across the road. Woodpecker followed, hoping the beast’s movements were confusing the enemy as well, and grinned as more arrows skittered harmlessly across the path.
“Ho, the house!” Velantos’ deep voice rang out. “Aid! Aid!”
Whether or not the farm had heard him, the call brought the bandits leaping from their hiding places. Another arrow parted Woodpecker’s hair; then it became a race, with the snorting pony in the lead. As the animal, thank the gods, headed toward the gate at the end of the path, he found himself facing a tattered fellow with a spear.
He swung up the shaft to block a thrust as his training with the staff at Avalon came back to him, shifted to horizontal to jab, gulping as he felt the point go in. Not far enough—instinctively he had pulled the blow. The man yelled, but he was still fighting. He heard the dull ring of bronze and knew that Velantos had drawn his sword, but could not turn to see. Woodpecker whirled the spear around to block another blow, the steel shod butt striking with the strength of desperation. The man reeled back and Woodpecker thrust at the first one again, but only managed a slash. Then a third man knocked the spear from his hands and they were all around him.
He got his own sword free and began to swing, with so many targets, connecting more by chance than by design. He felt the sharp sting as a blade scored his arm. What a stupid way to die! Then arrows were falling all around him. The man who had cut him fell back, screaming, an arrow sprouting from his chest like some strange flower. A blur of shouting figures came across the road, led by a monstrous figure shrouded in dark fur.
“Run for the house, fools!”
As Woodpecker forced his limbs to motion, he saw his rescuer advance upon their enemies, a sharp bronze war ax whirling in each hand.
VELANTOS STRETCHED OUT HIS arm, biting his lip as the farm wife poured hot water over it and began to swab the wound. He told himself he should be grateful to have suffered nothing worse. He ought to endure at least as stoically as Woodpecker, who had made not a peep as the woman sewed up the long gash across his thigh.
The house was not so great as Bhagodheunon, but built on much the same plan, with a long central hearth in the middle section, where most of the household slept in beds built against the wall, and private quarters at one end for the master’s family. At the other end was a space that in the winter might shelter the family’s most valuable cows. The fire had been built up, and the merry blaze blessed the room with a warm golden light that reminded him oddly of sunset on the walls of Tiryns. In both cases, it gave a deceptive sense of safety.
He forced his attention back to their rescuer, not the master of the farm, as he had at first supposed, but his uncle, a warrior from the City of Circles who went by the name of Bodovos the Bear.
“The city was never the same since the great storm that struck us twenty-five winters past,” said Bodovos. “But I think now the trouble began before, when the princes who should repair the gates and dikes spent the gold on their fine houses. Or maybe it would have happened anyway. When the gods line up in the heavens and then send a storm against you, there is not much that men may do.”
He upended the elmwood cup from which he was drinking and held it out for more beer. A blond boy called Aelfrix was acting as cupbearer. He was the heir to the steading, if he could hold it. That was looking less likely, as whatever the weather did not destroy, the masterless men who now roamed the heath tried to take away.
“We heard there was work for smiths in the city,” rumbled Velantos.
“Oh, aye, for fixing,” said the older man. “Not so much call for things made new.”
“And for warriors?” asked Woodpecker.
Bodovos fixed him with a sardonic smile. “You have not had your fill of fighting?”
“Was I fighting?” the young man said bitterly. “Seems to me I was about as effective as a maid with a milk ladle out there.”
Vela
ntos suppressed his own smile. After killing the lynx and winning the race, Woodpecker had been thinking himself a hero. It was better to learn sooner than later that he was not invulnerable, so long as the lesson did not prove fatal. Growing up in the shadow of his brothers, the smith had never had any illusions about his own skills.
“ ’ Twas not so bad,” the warrior said kindly. “You got in a few good knocks with the spear.”
“Good knocks—and that was all. I had some training with the staff long ago, but I don’t know what to do with the point.”
“You understand that, do you?” Bodovos’ gaze was suddenly intent. “Then you might make a warrior. Is that what you want to be?”
Woodpecker flushed. “If I am going to carry a sword, I should learn how to use it. I was hoping to find someone to teach me, that’s all.”
Bodovos began to laugh. “Perhaps you have. For my sins, I’ve the task of commanding the City Guard. A recruit who doesn’t think the sun shines out of his arse would be a welcome change.”
“You’ll be leaving us, then?” The woman finished tucking in the bandage on Velantos’ arm and rose.
“Buda, you know I must, and if you’re wise you and the boy will come with me. Today’s exercise should make that much clear. I can’t stay with you, and without your own war band you will not survive.”
The woman cast an anguished glance toward her son, who had brightened at the mention of the city.
“You can come back when times are more secure and Aelfrix is a man. The land will still be here—” Bodovos spoke heartily, but Velantos was not so sure. From what he had seen of this country, if they did not maintain the ditches constantly, the fields might very well be marshes by the time they returned. From the despair in Buda’s eyes, he thought she knew it too. Face set, she turned and made her way to the door at the end of the room.
“We will go with you—” said Woodpecker with a quick look to make sure Velantos approved. The smith nodded. He could not help the woman, and despite Bodovos’ gloomy words, the City of Circles sounded like a civilized place where he might almost think himself at home.
WOODPECKER DREAMED THAT HE was fighting. That was not unusual, since coming to the City of Circles he had trained with Bodovos almost every day. But this was not the exercise ground with its raked gravel and seats cut into the grassy bank around it from which observers could watch the play. He was on a hillside of sheep-cropped turf, where scents of gorse and heather mingled with a briny breeze from the nearby sea. The warriors who fought beside him were the boys with whom he had studied at Avalon, grown now to manhood.
Instead of staves they wielded spears, but even less effectively than he had used his in that fight outside Aelfrix’s farm the spring before. Clumsy, they fell back before the band of wolf’s-heads who were attacking them, and one by one they were brought down. At each death he redoubled his own efforts, but however many he killed, there were always more.
“Help me!” he cried, swinging his spear in a swift circle that repelled his foes, and like an echo, heard another voice that he knew to be Anderle’s.
“Help us—” she called. “You are the only one who can! Mikantor, come home!”
He turned, seeking her, but the woman he saw bore first Redfern’s features and then, for a moment, the bright eyes and red hair of the mother whose face he could remember only in dreams.
“I have no home!” he replied. “You abandoned me!”
At that, his enemies closed in. Someone grabbed his arm and he struck out, heard a yelp. Then cold flooded over him, cold water! As sensation shocked through him, consciousness shifted with a jerk and he opened his eyes.
Aelfrix was standing at the foot of his bed, rubbing his arm. Beside him Velantos held an empty bucket, his grim frown easing as he saw the sanity return to Woodpecker’s eyes.
“Had a bad dream, did you?” asked the smith. Another one. . . Shivering, Woodpecker nodded. Velantos turned to the boy. “Did he hurt you?”
“Not much—” Aelfrix said valiantly. Since they arrived in the City of Circles, he had followed Woodpecker like a puppy.
“Next time, try the water first,” the smith said sardonically. “Much safer.”
“For you . . .” muttered Woodpecker. “Throw me a dry blanket, someone, before I catch an ague standing here.”
“You’ll warm up fast enough on the training field,” Velantos said cheerfully, “or had you forgotten you were scheduled for an early session of spear drill with the guard?”
“Aren’t you due for some more work with the axes?” Woodpecker tucked in the tail of his breechclout and reached for his tunic. Aelfrix was already trying to untangle the sopping bedclothes. Bodovos had judged that the same muscles that swung a hammer so efficiently would swing a war ax as well, and amused himself by tutoring the smith in his own favorite form. Velantos said it was like the war dance of his own country.
“Tomorrow,” said Velantos, handing him his wide belt with the round bronze clasp embossed with the concentric circles that were the emblem of the town. “Today it’s a conference with Lord Loutronix about a new mechanism for working the sea gate.”
The city was built on the more or less circular series of embankments that gave it its name, based on islands dyked and raised by mud dredged out of the channels in between. Like the bank-and-ditch system of a clanhold, they provided successive rings of protection for the central island that housed the homes of the nobility and the temples and the palace of the Tuistos and the Mannos, twin monarchs of the city, and the Sowela, their sister and queen. The channels were linked by staggered openings, but the outermost ring was closed by a massive arrangement of chains and timbers, which could be raised or lowered to keep out enemy vessels or mute the fury of their greatest enemy, the sea.
“Good luck—” he replied. Lord Loutronix was notoriously resistant to any change. But in truth, there were times when Woodpecker wondered if any human ingenuity could stand against the anger of the gods. Not that he would ever have said as much to Velantos. The smith had found powerful patrons here, and, except for his complaining about the cold, he seemed happier than he had been since Woodpecker had known him.
He picked up his cloak, for even at the end of summer, mornings were cold, and started for the stairs. “I’m sorry I hit you,” he said to Aelfrix, tousling the boy’s fair hair.
“What about breakfast?” asked Velantos. “It won’t help your spear work if you faint from hunger on the field.”
“No time—” Woodpecker said cheerfully. “Besides, men have to get used to fighting on short rations in war!” He frowned as his gaze passed across the water on the floor, but the details of the dream were already fading. Shaking it off, he clattered down the stairs.
“MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER,” BARKED Bodovos. “Cuno, get that shield up! You can’t cover each other if you’re wandering all over the field.”
Woodpecker felt his movement mirrored by the man beside him, the slide of muscle beneath the other’s skin as familiar as his own. In close-order drill everything became very simple. Their movements were as ordered as a dance. Of course the row of posts on which they were advancing were not going to do anything to upset that rhythm. The real test of their discipline would be the first time they faced a living enemy.
“Shield up! Sword out! Thrust left, thrust right, that’s the way. Keep together and none of the misbegotten scum can get past your guard!” Bodovos’ voice was already cracked by years of parade-ground bellowing. He never seemed to tire. He had promised to lead them against the lawless men who roamed the coast as soon as summer had dried the roads. Then they would find out how well they had learned the drill.
Beyond the heads of his companions he glimpsed the bright robes of the nobles who had come to watch them. Woodpecker did not mind putting on a show for them—they were paying for the food he ate and the armor he wore. He found himself straightening, head cocked at a more martial angle, and grinned.
The posts seemed to rear up suddenly before the
m. He thrust, felt the vibration of impact all the way up his arm as the blade bit wood, jerked it free, and strode past, two steps forward and then the turn in unison with his fellows, ready to face the foe once more.
“That’s enough!” Bodovos’ call carried above the smattering of applause from the banks where the observers were sitting. From the next field he could hear drumming where the acrobatic dancers who served the temple were practicing.
“Stand down. Red and Blue Files, that will be all for this morning. Greens and Yellows, take your javelins to the butts and see if you can hit them this time.” There were a few good-natured protests and grumbles, but the men knew that their commander was not only tough, but fair.
“Woodpecker, ’tis your day for sword work, yes?” When the younger man nodded, Bodovos grinned. “Just as well—you’ll give a good performance for our audience. The Tuistos himself has come to watch us today.”
Woodpecker suppressed a twitch of nerves as he took his place in the ring. He knew he had improved. The bruise from the last time Bodovos had landed a solid touch to his ribs with the wooden blade had almost disappeared. It did not matter what a king thought of him. As the commander had told him far too often, in a fight, the only person whose opinion mattered was the one coming at you weapon in hand.
“We’ll start with the standard drill, I think. You know the moves, but they don’t know that—we can go a little faster and it will look good—”
Woodpecker gulped, but nodded agreement. Knowing the sequence didn’t always help when Bodovos stepped up the pace, and the older man could swing that wooden blade very fast indeed. He settled into position, slightly angled with his left foot forward, shield up, sword ready.
Sword of Avalon: Avalon Page 22