A Different Kingdom

by Paul Kearney

  Brother Nennian did not seem disposed to explain farther, but Michael was sure he had not told them everything. There was something else, something more which had led or driven the man here.

  'You too are a long way into the Wolfweald,' the Brother said. 'A long way from home as well, if I do not miss my guess.' His eyes flicked to Michael's sword.

  'Maybe.'

  'Two things keep a man alive in this place. Faith, or the forest magic. I wonder often if the two do not blur together. Our Lord was hung on a tree, after all. And two things bring a man here. Either he is fleeing something, or pursuing it. Those two also have a way of blurring together in the Wolfweald; the hunter becoming the hunted. It is a strange place. The roots of these trees are deep. They go to the centre of the world. There is wisdom here, for those who are hardy enough to look for it, or lucky enough to find it. And power. There is so much power that most of the beasts cannot endure it.'

  'Some endure it,' Cat said unexpectedly. 'Some are born out of it.'

  'Indeed?'

  'The Wyrim say that the forest is the Horseman's bride, and they are children of both him and the trees, part of the land itself.'

  'And you, my child, what do you believe you are?' the Brother asked with great gentleness.

  Cat glared hotly back at him. 'I told you, I am nothing. I am what the Wyrim call a halfling and the villagers call a changeling.'

  'It cannot be easy, being caught between two worlds.'

  Cat did not reply. She ducked her head toward her bowl of buttermilk with surprising docility. The Brother regarded Michael again, and again took in the long length of the Ulfberht.

  'A soldier by the looks of you, and yet something about you tells me you are not. The tribes still have something of the soldier in them: a pride, a hardiness not seen even among the Knights of the Church ... You have encountered them, our Knights Militant?'

  'I know of them,' Michael said curtly. He was beginning to distrust this holy man. 'Are our answers the payment for your hospitality?'

  Brother Nennian seemed genuinely pained. 'Forgive me. I find I am prying. It is a hazard I run when I meet so few folk in this part of the world. I glean what I can from them, to digest when I am alone again.'

  They finished their meal in silence, the blue evening deepening outside and the air loud with the sound of water pittering down from the treetops. The fire lit up their faces, becoming brighter as the light fled. Again Michael heard a wolf call in the gathering dusk. It sounded desolate. A lonely soul, lost in the deep woods.

  Cat helped the Brother to wash up with an odd defiance, as if she dared him to contradict her. She brushed away the trickle of wet that was starting to crawl in the doorway and replaced the wooden sill. Outside the beaten dirt of the clearing was awash with rainwater, puddles shining in the firelight that spilled from the windows. Wind stirred the water into restless rings. Michael saw the two horses standing resting under a lean-to, a line of movement off in the twilight where the goats shifted in their pen and the flutter of the chickens nesting under the eaves of another hut. The coming night seemed peaceful. He might have been in any part of the Wildwood—except for the immenseness of the trees;

  How could a man live here, year after year, with nothing but the seasons and the changing weather to mark the time? He had thought once that this journey would be an idyll of sorts, with castles and knights, fairies and goblins. It had not quite turned out that way.

  He remembered home, the farm. It seemed so long ago.

  Another world.

  For two pins, he thought with sudden vehemence, I'd go back now. Leave the whole thing behind and go home, forget about fairies.

  And Cat? And Rose?

  Things were not as neat and tidy as that. This place lapped over into the world he called his own. That was why he was here, in the end. He was not merely a tourist.

  To his surprise, when he turned back to the interior of the hut, he found Brother Nennian smoking a long clay pipe, much chipped and blackened. The holy man grinned, showing square teeth with black gaps between them.

  'A weakness of mine, the weed. I grow it, though a small, withered offering it is.'

  Michael remembered Mullan's beautiful Peterson, red as fresh blood. The Brother's smoke was surprisingly fragrant. He mixed herbs with it, he told them, and soaked the whole in honey to flavour it. He had skeps of his own farther along the clearing. Bees were one thing the Forest-Folk always respected. Except for the bears, and they were rare here. A troll had sat at the edge of the hallowed ground the whole of one morning and had told him a tale in return for a comb of honey. And the beeswax made the best candles in the world. (Here he gestured to the slim palenesses on a shelf near the low ceiling.) But for some talk the firelight was best.

  'Sitting here alone of an evening, with only the fire and the trees for company,' he mused, 'I know that I am not a good priest. It comes to me. My faith is strong enough to keep the beast at bay, if it is faith indeed. But I wonder sometimes if it is not also a love of the wood, for all its horrors. To live here with no man to speak to, in this deep, black forest, this for me is peace ... Maybe it is even prayer.' He looked keenly at Cat. 'You speak the truth about the place, you and your people. The wood is alive, especially here in the Weald. It remembers things.'

  A picture of Rose asprawl in the leaves, a man atop her.

  Michael lowered his head. The Brother continued:

  'I have seen the end of the Brothers' first expedition here, on gloomy days. I have watched their last stand about the cross as the goblins slew them. I have seen the unholy feast that followed. And I have seen the Horseman watching over it:

  The Brother's face had darkened. Despite the round goodwill of his features, he seemed grim, forbidding, the firelight carving his visage into canyons of brightness and shadow.

  'He comes here now and again, sits on his horse at the edge of the clearing and watches me at my work. No prayer or cross of mine will shift him. I have seen him in the dead of night when the moon is up, and there are werewolves fawning around his steed, goblins black and silent at his back. He sits watching. But then I think of the wood's memories that 1 have seen: my own people butchered like cattle, corpses by the score defiled and mutilated, and it steels me. I can stand there with that faceless stare on me, kneel scant yards from him and pray ... My pipe is out.'

  He bent to relight the long pipe with a twig from the fire, and in the stillness they cocked their heads to listen. Something on the wind, far away. Nennian puffed smoke placidly but his eyes were chiselled glints under his brow.

  'Him,' he said, so low it was almost a whisper.

  Hoofbeats, far away but getting closer. A horse galloping. 'Speak of the Devil and he will surely appear,' Michael murmured, an old saw his grandfather had used.

  Nearer now, and they looked up towards the roof as they realized that the hoofs were beating on the empty air above their heads, on a level with the canopy of the trees. For a moment it seemed as though they were directly overhead, a soft thunder, and Michael thought the roof trembled. Then they were receding again, dying into the wood.

  Nennian chuckled .. 'Most nights he passes by, on the way to his castle. I am a thorn in his flesh, I believe. An itch he cannot yet scratch.'

  'His castle?' Michael repeated. He could feel Cat's stare on him, the green eyes luminous and inhuman.

  'Yes. It is not so very far from here. I saw it, once, through the mists that enshroud it. A black place, high as a small mountain, with the trees thick and tangled round its foot. I tried to approach it, but grew afraid and my faith faltered. I had to retreat. There is a dread sorrow in that place, and power. It is as though the earth were split open there, and all the blackest of its magic were oozing slowly out—and the castle the scab on the wound. And yet... and yet—'

  He stopped.

  'That is where you go, is it not? To the Castle of the Horseman?'

  Cat laid a hand on Michael's arm as if to silence him, but he spoke up.

&nb
sp; 'Yes. That is where we go. We have an errand there.'

  'An errand.' The humour came back into the Brother's eyes. 'A very high one I'm thinking, to bring you this far to the edge of life.'

  'Indeed.'

  The fire cracked and spat, faggots falling into its molten heart.

  Brother Nennian opened his mouth around his pipe.

  'You are welcome to be my guests for as long as you please, to build up your strength for what lies ahead.' But he kept his gaze in the fire, and Michael had the impression that for a moment he had been about to say something else.

  MORNING ARRIVED GREY and dripping, the clearing a bare patch of mud with only the print of Brother Nennian's sandals marking it. Michael felt fuzzyheaded and dull, the results of sleeping under a roof for the first time in weeks. Through the window he could see Nennian feeding his animals, a skin bag slung round his shoulders and a cloud of chickens following him hopefully, the cock crowing the morning in again and again. The horses were nosing at a log trough with gusto, their breath a plume of steam in the cold air. Winter was in full retreat, but here it seemed to be leaving a rearguard behind, fighting for every day.

  Cat nuzzled the back of Michael's neck, tiptoeing to reach.

  Her hand, warm from the furs, slipped down the front of his breeches to cup him there. He swelled at the touch of her fingers, but pulled away.

  'Don't, Cat. Not here.'

  'What's wrong? Is this place too holy for you?'

  'It's not right, with him here. This is his home, and he's a priest.'

  She laughed without humour, patted his bulging crotch and went to pack their things.

  'Are we leaving today?' she asked.

  He stared out at the clearing. A mist hung in the tops of the trees, drifting in swathes as thick as muslin. He could smell more rain in the air, and his body ached with sickness and wounds. He felt old, indecently old, worn as a cast-off shoe. He wanted to slip back into the furs and sleep the grey morning away.

  'No. We'll stay for today. The horses could do with the rest.'

  'The horses,' she repeated sardonically. 'Of course.'

  'Oh, shut up,' he whispered wearily.

  They had honey on their bannock for breakfast, a treat which even Cat savoured. Nennian turned aside for a moment to say grace over his own food whilst Cat wolfed down hers. Michael tried to eat his in a more leisurely fashion, but even so he was long finished when the Brother was still munching. Nennian doled them out fresh bannock without a word, refilling their mugs with foaming buttermilk. The taste brought memories of crowded breakfasts by the warm range in Antrim, the farm hands clumping in and out. But they were distant, like pictures seen through a grimy window.

  'I took the liberty of examining your sword while you slept,' Nennian said through mouthfuls of bannock.

  'What for?'

  'The edges are blue and discoloured. That is because it needs quenching. The iron in it is going soft.'

  'So?'

  'So I will quench it for you. I have a forge here of sorts, and I can get a good flame going.'

  Michael examined the Ulfberht. The lovely lithe lines of the pattern welding were like a swirl of water on its surface. He had read of it a long time ago. Bars of iron were twisted together and heated repeatedly to drive as much carbon as possible out of the metal and to make it similar to steel. But the metal needed occasional 'quenchings' to keep its hardness.

  'All right,' he said.

  Cat would have nothing to do with the forge, and instead wandered about the clearing talking to the animals whilst Michael helped the holy man stoke up a fire out of charcoal. Then Nennian spent half an hour piling up a mound of wet clay—there was plenty after the night's rain—and measuring it against the sword blade.

  'A notch here I could hammer out, and the blade is a little out of true. It has seen hard service, this weapon.' He ran a finger down the edge appreciatively, for a moment wholly a craftsman, the other part of him hidden. His habit was covered by a leather apron and his face was aglow with exertion in the cold, as red-cheeked as Santa Claus.

  'It was a Knight's weapon. I killed him,' Michael said, tired of the game.

  'I know.'

  Nennian set the blade in the charcoals and Michael began pumping the crude leather bellows. The stone hearth became a little sun of white and red heat in the mist of the cold morning and soon Michael was sweating, his forehead hot and the heat soaking through his jerkin. Cat was singing somewhere across the clearing. The coals flared and blazed.

  'Enough.'

  Nennian hooked the blade out of the fire and slapped it down on his stone anvil. He took a surprisingly small bronze hammer and began tapping gently, his face close to the white-hot edges of the blade. Sparks jumped, but he ignored them. He squinted and examined, his face shining with sweat, then replaced the blade in the coals and wiped his temples. Michael began plying the bellows again.

  'How do you know?'

  The Brother smiled: his natural expression, Michael was coming to think. 'No one save the Knights and a few nobles has a weapon as fine as this. Ulfberht died a generation ago. These things become heirlooms, the sword passing from father to son. I could name you perhaps three families with a sword such as this.'

  'You don't seem bothered that I killed a Knight of your church.'

  'I am always bothered by bloodshed, but you do not strike me as the murdering type. Our Knights can be over-zealous at times. You and your lady have the look of people who have lived among the tribes. My guess is that you maybe became embroiled in a tangle that was not your own.'

  'Maybe we did,' Michael admitted.

  Once again the sword was hooked out of the fire, and this time Brother Nennian plunged it into the mound of clay he had built up. There was a hiss and bubble and a small spume of steam rose up. The Brother regarded it with satisfaction.

  'Water forms a barrier of steam too easily, and the metal does not cool down rapidly enough. Clay is better, and urine, also. And some say the best quencher of all is blood.'

  Michael wiped the sweat from his eyes. The forge fire was a blare of heat, shimmering the air.

  'Why did you really come to the Wolfweald?'

  'I might ask you the same question. I might also ask you where you came from.'

  'As far as I can guess'—and this time it was Michael who smiled—'I come from the same place that you Brothers first came from. A place called Ireland.'

  It had taken a while for him to realize, but he was convinced now that it was true. These monks or priests were from his own world, all right, and his own country, too. The angular tonsure, more complete than that of British monks of the period, proved it. A long-past century had bred them—perhaps that of the Viking raids—but they had Slipped through a door as easily as he had, a community of them fleeing the Norsemen, perhaps. The stories he had heard thus far in the Wildwood said that they had been fleeing something or someone.

  Brother Nennian digested this in silence for a long while, retrieving the sword from the day and replacing it in the fire. He tapped his hammer on the stone anvil, his round face closed.

  'What do you hope to do at his castle?'

  'I'm looking for someone from my own world. He took her there, I'm sure. He has her soul.'

  The Brother's eyes quickened at that, but he retrieved the blade without a word and plunged it into the clay again. Cat was still singing, walking with a crowd of chickens at her feet and feeding them with barley grain.

  'So you bear this Horseman no love? You or your lady?'

  Michael was puzzled. 'Of course not. Who does?'

  Nennian stared across at the slim, dark girl singing near the trees, She had stripped off much of her heavy clothing and her arms were bare. She looked like some long-limbed animal, a beautiful gazelle. Her hair had swung to cover the pointed tips of her ears and in the daylight the fire of her eyes was less pronounced.

  'She comes of two worlds, your lady, and the deeper she travels into this wood the more she will be drawn t
o the world of the trees and the Horseman. I have seen things in the wood's memories. The Wyrim and the grymyrch fighting side by side, wolves and TreeFolk at each other's shoulders, to expel what was the first expedition. This near to the centre of things the differences fall away. It is as she said: they are children of the same father. It is what has preserved you both, I think.'

  'I am not one of them. I can't even drink the water in this wood.'

  Nennian smiled his customary smile, warm but faintly condescending. 'Yet the blood of the Wyrim flows in you also. It has not yet taken root, but it is there.'

  Wyr-fire. Michael shook his head helplessly. 'What are you saying? That when we reach the castle we'll be mere minions of the Horseman, glorified goblins?'

  'No. Not you. You have, as I said, an old piety in you that goes deep. But the lady there ... '

  Michael grabbed him by his apron and shook him, but the holy man did not blink. 'What do you want, Brother?'

  'To come with you.'

  Michael released him, not wholly surprised. 'Why?'

  'We can help each other, you and I. Your lady's Wyrim blood will get us to the castle and my faith may help preserve the human side of her when we reach it. We can confront the Devil in his lair. '

  'That's it. That's why you came to the Wolfweald. To confront the Horseman.'

  'Yes. But I am not strong enough on my own, and my novice was a young fool, a coward of little faith.'

  'He's dead.'

  'I don't doubt it.'

  'For a priest, you don't strike me as being too holy.'

  'I am holy enough to have survived in this wood. And I know the way to the castle. I can guide you there. Without me you might wander the wood till you die of old age, or until the Horseman is ready to receive you. He controls the paths of all who walk here, unless they have the faith.'

  'Faith!'

  'Yes. Faith. It has kept me alive here for twelve years, a broken, limping thing at times, but still potent. Let me come with you. It can do no harm, and may do great good.'