by Paul Kearney
And he lurched away with the pitchfork slung over his shoulder as if it were an Enfield, humming 'Tipperary' and towing smoke behind him.
WHEN MULLAN HAD gone Michael wandered his way down to the dip of the river in the bottom meadow. Despite the brightness of the day, it was dim there in the shadow of the trees. He stood undecided on the lip of the slope and stared down to where the river plashed and burbled to itself. Hazel stumps stood like square-topped stones in the litter of the wood floor. He began thinking ... What if?
What if there were Little People in the woods, like in the stories Rose told him. What if there were wolves and bears and trolls, wicked witches—and fairies, too? But not ones that lived in flowers. What if they were big and silent and gleeful, more like goblins? They would have a goblin kingdom, castles and mines. And there would be knights in armour with swords and women in towers with long hair. What if it were all real, all true?
And something like a picture entered his mind— someone else's memory, perhaps—something which had happened a long time ago in another place. Or something which had still to occur.
THE HORSES WERE spent, head-hung and exhausted. The stink of their sweat was steaming the air as Michael and Cat dismounted, their own leg muscles trembling in sympathy.
'We've not lost them,' Cat said, pushing the wet hair from her face. Michael nodded. He was almost too tired to care. Fear had carried them far, but tiredness was dulling even that.
'Fire,' he said; 'I'll get a fire going. The light's failing. Night is coming.' There would be a moon again. The full had waxed and was on the wane but it was still thick and silver in the sky. Enough to quicken the blood of the pursuit. Enough to hunt by. Soon the woods would be a dappled maze of moonlight and shadow, a silver chiaroscuro.
'Lord, I'm sick of trees,' he said.
Cat did not reply. She was unsaddling the horses, wiping them down with the sodden saddle blankets. No picket pins would be needed tonight to keep them from straying.
Darkness. It was creeping out of the trunks of the trees, seeping up out of-the leaf mould, bleeding into the snow-leaden clouds. He was sick of darkness, also. Two thirds of every day seemed given to it.
There was dead wood in plenty about the feet of the silent trees, and small drifts of dry leaves in the crook of roots. Elsewhere gobbets of snow marked the wood floor where the canopy was thin. The ground was cold, clay below the humus sucking the heat away. They needed the fire. It was both a defence and a heartener.
He skinned a knuckle on the steel and cursed softly. His weak hand made things awkward. Spark after spark leapt into the tinder, smoked a moment and then died. At last, though, one caught and glowed; He bent his face to the ground and blew with infinite care until he had a flame, fragile as blossom, curling into the leaves and twigs. Bird-nest linings made good tinder, feathers and all, if they were old and sheltered enough.
The flame spread. He eased wire-thin twigs into it, coaxed it around them. And when he straightened, back creaking, he saw with a shock that it was almost fully dark.
Cat unrolled their bedding, and even across the fire he could smell the damp staleness of it. Too many rainy nights, too much clay underfoot. They drew less warmth from it than from each other's bodies. And even with that closeness they had not loved in many days. Someone had to watch, all the time. So they would not both be woken, as had happened three nights ago, by the screams, and sit up to see the eyes in the dark beyond the firelight, hear the grunting snarls that were almost speech.
They had nearly died.
The fire caught well. He could toss wrist-thick branches on it now and watch the sparks spiral into the air like just-forged stars. The warmth was a blessing on his wind-scoured face, soothing the long ache of his scarred limbs.
They ate dried beef and bannock, washing it down with a mouthful of wine. Good red stuff from the tiny vineyards that men had planted in the woods down near the weald, not much spoiled by the skin. From the amphora it had been wondrous. They were down to their last quart, a cause for mourning. When he smelt the stuff it put the fetor of the dank woods out of his nose, and he was thinking of sunpale hillsides heavy with vines —places he had never seen, flagged stone hot to the touch. He smiled at Cat, knowing she too was a summer creature, a warmth lover. She was so white and pinched in the middle of her cloaks that he drew her close, feeling the spare, bird-like build of her. Hollow bones, he thought.
'We'll have peace tonight,' she said, leaning her head into his shoulder; He felt a yawn tighten her jaw.
'How so?'
'They're slow by day. They keep to the deepest woods. They'll be walking five miles for every one in our wake. It is rough country behind us.'
Indeed. They had almost killed their mounts. He wondered how much longer there would be a way for the horses to battle through the lower trees and—the brambles. Their legs were scratched and scored and yesterday the grey had come down on one knee, opening it on a vicious tree root. He was lame, and would not improve whilst their flight continued. The chestnut, Fancy, was not much better off; once a high-stepping, spirited animal, his grandfather's pride and joy, she moved now like a warped clockwork toy. Neither of them had ever fully recovered from the ordeal in the Wolfweald.
'We'll be afoot yet,' he prophesied gloomily.
'Soon, yes, but if we can win clear of the trees and hit upon the first heights of the hills then we have a chance. There are cliffs there, gullies and caves. Something to put our backs against at nights. And they don't like the open sky above them, even at night, much less the bare slopes. It's the woods they love to skulk in.'
'The damn trees.'
'Yes. The damn trees. But they don't go on for ever. And Ringbone is to try and meet us near the edge, take us as far as the Utwyda.'
'What about the Horseman?' Instinctively his voice had lowered as he asked. Cat hesitated.
'We haven't seen him for days.'
'That's why I ask. Will he be waiting for us, you think, when we break free of the trees?'
She lifted her head from his shoulder. 'Ask the moon. I am no oracle.'
'You brought me here.' His tone roughened despite an effort to keep it soft.
'And now I take you home.' Her eyes flashed in the firelight, the flames a little turning hell in each one. 'Besides, you wanted to come. And it was not I who found a quest to follow in this land, a maiden who needed rescuing.'
'I was a boy, a child. I knew nothing of what it would be like.' And I was in love with you, he thought but did not say. He marvelled that the thought had come in the past tense, and wondered if that presaged some future revelation.
'Fairy tales have teeth. Even children know that. The big bad wolf must eat.'
'Yeah, OK.' He rubbed his eyes, too tired to argue. Tension had been flickering between the two of them for days, like far-off summer thunder, and it was a wearisome thing to bear. There was so much they did not talk about, so much pushing them apart. His decision to return home. The events in the Wolfweald. All there, hanging unspoken in the air between them. And he so wanted her warmth pliant in his arms tonight, her arms around him. There were few worse things than her lying there, stiff with resentment. If she had enough energy for even that.
The fire cracked and spat as a faggot collapsed into its molten heart. He drew himself up as slowly as a geriatric.
'Need more wood.'
'Take the sword', she said automatically, eyes still lost in the flames, lids already drooping. It was plain that he would be taking first watch tonight, and the prospect made his face ugly for a second. It was marvellous what the body could bear in the way of wet and wind, injury and agony, but lack of sleep was the worst thing. It had become a physical pain to him at times to keep awake through the nights.
The sword was in its scabbard, beside it the barrel of the shotgun—useless, if it had ever been of any use. Its few remaining cartridges were soaked through and through. He patted the carved wooden stock. His name was there in copperplate, along with the date: 189
9. A lovely weapon. He carried it for sentimental reasons alone now; and the prestige that the iron barrel brought amongst the tribes. Excess baggage. It was beginning to rust. He rasped the sword out of its scabbard instead. It was heavy and cold. He could make out rust on the blade, too, near the hilt, and scraped it with a nail, frowning. The edge had dulled. They had used it to chop wood; an unforgivable thing. It needed work. He knew now the difference between a strike with a sharp blade and a blunt one, the artistry in the swing. His prowess with the blade—an iron blade—was all that had kept them alive. The lead of the shotgun pellets had been good merely for hunting.
I've been well educated of late, he mused. I can doctor a horse and skin a rabbit. I can tan leather and stitch wounds. I can kill men. And a little while ago I was a schoolboy, a squeaker, a dreamer.
He shook his head, wondering how much of his life he had lost in the woods and the hills, the wild places. He would get it back, of course, would walk out of this place the morning he had left—but would he remain the same? Would he walk into the kitchen a hulking savage, scarred and bearded, or would he be a boy again? Would that childhood be returned to him?
His fingers scratched through the white hairs of his beard as he shambled to the edge of the firelight. The years had added themselves to him with every mile deeper they had gone into this place, years piled on to his shoulders in a few months. And Cat had aged, also. She was no longer the girl he had met in the wood. That was his fault, his alone. Mirkady had warned him of that, one night in a fairy howe.
He gathered wood with a wandering mind. He was thinking of his grandfather's farm, the swallows in the stables, a fire in the hearth. Pots of tea and bacon and eggs. Clean sheets – Mother of God!—a bed that was dry and warm with the night beyond a window.
He yawned enormously, the bones in his face cracking. He had an armful. It would do an hour or two. Cat could gather more later. He hungered for the fire. For her, as well. Despite his dog-weariness, the thought of her skin under his hand appealed. The last time they had loved they had both fallen asleep before the finish and had lain like Siamese twins, still connected in the morning.
But no. Too risky to chance it. No time for love when the beasts are on your trail.
She was asleep, as he had known she would be, one hand in a fist at her throat. He set the wood down and covered her, the sword digging into his ribs. First watch. And more than likely he would take the dark one before the dawn too. A long night, but as Cat had said the pursuit would have had a rough time of it today. He had perhaps a few hours of peace.
The damn wound was acting up again. Another day and he would open it, cauterize it for the umpteenth time. It was on the big muscle of the upper thigh, deep and angry. The smaller punctures beside it had already closed. Perhaps there was something of the beast's tooth remaining there. It hardly bore thinking about. He knuckled it savagely, wishing away the deep ache and glow. The wild riding did not help.
'Ach ... ' He stabbed the sword into the fire and watched the dull iron cradled by the flames. The blade needed to be reheated properly, in a forge, and then dipped in urine. Though clay would do, he supposed. The interlacing pattern of the iron writhed and turned like part of the fire and the maker's name was etched in runic lines upon the metal. Ulfberht. An old weapon this, the work of a master. It deserved better. Other, worthier hands had darkened the bone of the grip. It had come a long way to end up in the paw of an Ulsterman.
The Ulsterman had come a long way also. A long way from the valley of the Bann. And an ever farther way back, it seemed. If there was a way back. Now there was something to gnaw on in the long nights, something to keep him awake with a vengeance.
How could he have been such a damn fool?
He turned and looked at Cat's pale face, serene in sleep.
Because he had been only a boy, and he had been in love for the first time in his short life. In love with a girl no one else could see, and the fairy tale she promised him.
Likely enough the fairy tale would end here, in these woods, and the Ulsterman would leave his bones here. He rubbed his forehead and saw that the edges of the sword blade were cherry-red. Damn pattern welding. The thing lost its edge so quickly, and needed to be quenched every so often to harden the carbon-rich iron.
For a moment he thought of a round-faced priest who had tempered it once in a woodland forge. Then he shook his head. Best to forget.
The pressure in his bladder was almost painful. He had been saving it up all day for this. When the deep blush of heat was through the blade he whipped it out of the flames, scattering sparks and swearing at the heat of the hilt. Then he tossed it away and leapt up, gasping at the pain in his thigh. He fumbled with his breeches and an instant later let rip, groaning with relief. A veritable torrent gushed out of him in an unending stream and exploded on to the red-hot metal, billowing at once into clouds of ammoniac steam. He coughed and sputtered. In mid-flow he halted himself—not the easiest of tasks—and toed the blade on to its other side. Then he let fly again.
Next time he would use clay, he promised himself.
MICHAEL DID NOT go down to the river's brink. Now was not the time, he thought obscurely, and that knowledge was both weird and familiar. His own notion, but from another time. A grown-up thought, and thus not one to be questioned. He accepted it without argument, and let his feet take him elsewhere.
In the afternoon he and Rose set off for the bridge with sandwiches, nets and jam jars; their fishing equipment. They sat close to where the old stones were sunk into the bank, and the sun spangled off the water like white flame, spotted every so often with the iridescence of dragonfly. The river was sleepy here, the water brown with depth and slow as syrup. It looked cool and calm. Michael, peering past the unbroken reflection of his own pudgy face, could see weed waving like a faraway forest in a gale, and freshwater shrimps scuttling along the bottom in trails of silt like horses galloping along dusty roads. Maybe there were little countries down there, where eels were dragons and trout great airships hovering above. He looked up again, and saw the black maw of the bridge in front of him. Near the entrance reflected light writhed snake-like along its roof, but farther in there was nothing but darkness. The bridge was not especially wide, but it bent slightly in the middle so that it was impossible to see the light at the other end. Because it had once been below an off-set crossroads, his grandfather had said, but one of the roads had fallen into disrepair and was gone now, its only remnant long ruts in the neighbouring fields and this queerly constructed bridge.
There was a plop beside him, and Rose had set her net in the water. She was kneeling on the bank with her skirt pushed up around her thighs, her free hand tucking hair behind one ear. Her knees were almost as scraped as Michael's.
'Missed the bugger!'
'What? Where?'
'Right below your eyes, dreamer. A trout as long as your hand, but he's made off for the deep water by the bridge. Just as well; he'd never have fitted in the jar... Are you here to fish or to stare at your reflection?'
Hurriedly he sank his own net into the water, twiddling the bamboo pole. He was stirring up a hurricane down there. The shrimps were scattering in all directions and a great whirling cloud of silt was enveloping the weeds.
'Watch it! You're dirtying up the water.'
'Sorry.'
They trolled in silence for a while, Rose stopping once to nudge Michael and point surreptitiously to the kingfisher that was perched on an alder spray just downstream, watching them with his head cocked to one side. He darted off like a cobalt jewel in flight, seeking a less crowded spot. Rose and Michael grinned at one another.
'Ah, you bugger, you wicked little shite, I've got you!'
'What is it?' Michael craned to see.
'An eel, half a foot long if he's an inch. Look how he twists!' Rose's catch was a silver coiling snake in the mud and weed of her net. 'Reach me the jar—no, put water in it first, you fool. Hold it up. He'll have it over. There he is!'
The jam jar was full of brown soup through which they could catch sight of the eel as it pressed itself against the glass in its attempts to get away. A dragon, Michael thought. We've caught a dragon and put it in a magic cage.
They regarded it in silence for a few seconds, until Rose sighed in disgust. 'It's no good. He's too big for it. Chuck him back, Michael.'
He tipped the jar into the river and the eel poured away. The dragon released, soaring through the air above the lands below. It wiggled off and disappeared under a submerged stone. Back to his lair. Perhaps there was gold in there, and he was coiled up on top of it.
'God, it's hot,' Rose said, sitting back and letting her net loll in the water. She watched the mayflies dancing over the surface of the water like gossamerwinged fairies, then started as a trout broke surface to snap one up. In the deep part, by the bridge. She had told Michael that there was a pike in there her father had almost caught a score of times. An old, wily grinning killer fully three feet long. Perhaps he lurked now in the mud of the bottom, biding his time.
'Is there anyone about, Michael?'
He looked up from the muddy broth his net was stirring. 'Don't think so. They're over the other side today.'
'Then I'm for a swim. Coming?'
'All right.'
She took his hand and led him over to the sheltering spray of a riverside oak, and there they threw off their clothes, giggling. Her skin was very white where the sun never touched it, and the sable curl of hair below her belly button drew his gaze for a moment.
'Rose, why-?'
But she tugged his hand, half dragging him along, and with a whoop had plunged into the water, taking him with her. He felt a moment of panic as the coolness covered him, closing over his head. His hands flailed. Then Rose's arms were about him and he was lifted above the surface, the river streaming off his face in blazing sunlight, his ears full of her laughter. The panic trickled away, and he laughed himself, feeling the soft push of her breasts against his chest, nipples hard with the cold water. She kissed him.