Agravain snorted. “You can’t see what I mean. Here, let me show you.” He stooped over, picked up my other spears and hurled them. All three hit the target squarely and cleanly. “That’s the way. Now you try.”
We went and fetched the spears. I stood, and Agravain corrected my stance. “Try again now,” he told me.
I looked at the spear in my hand, heavy, shafted with wood from the dark hills of Pictland, headed with dull iron. The weight of it in my hand was suddenly very great.
“Go on, Gwalchmai,” Agravain said impatiently. “You said that you were better. Show me! Or are you afraid of your own spear again? Not much of a hawk if you are.” Morgawse still called me “her falcon.” Hawk of May. It was such a fine, warrior-like name. It was what I wanted for myself.
I threw the spear, and it flew crooked. Agravain snorted and slapped his thigh. “You may have learned to throw better when you stand like a farmer plowing, but you had better learn to throw standing like a warrior if you want to be one. Or do you want to be a bard? A druid? A horse tamer?”
“No,” I whispered. “Agravain...”
“I’d wager you still spend most of your day on horseback,” he continued, oblivious. “But that’s no use. Horses are a luxury, and no more than that: the real fighting is always done on foot. Horses are like gold brooches and fine clothes, excellent for a warrior to own to show others that he is rich and important, but dispensable to the real business. For that you have to throw spears properly. Try again.”
“Agravain…” I repeated, gathering my courage.
“What’s the matter now? Are you afraid to throw? Stop being foolish.”
I felt foolish. I clutched the spear desperately. I would throw it standing my way. It was not the usual stance, but it did not leave me vulnerable, either. I put my left leg forward, dropped my left arm. I really am good, I told myself. I can hit the target this way. I have to now. I must.
I threw and missed.
Agravain nodded reasonably. “Now will you do it my way? If you want to be a man and a warrior you must listen to…”
“Stop it!” I shouted, furious.
Agravain stopped, astounded.
“You are not helping me. You aren’t trying to help, though you may think you are…”
“I am trying to help you. Are you calling me a liar?”
“No! But I don’t want your help. If I’m no warrior, let me fail in my own way, and don’t bother me with right ways and wrong ways. If I’m not a warrior, perhaps I will be a bard or a druid. Mother is teaching me to read so…”
“She is doing what?” demanded Agravain, aghast.
“Teaching me to read. She’s been doing it all summer, while you were gone…”
“Do you want to be a sorcerer?” Agravain’s eyes blazed and his bright hair glittered like the sun.
“No…I just want to read…” I was confused.
He slapped me across the face, so hard that I fell backwards. His face had gone red with anger. “You want to be better than us! Morgawse is a witch, everyone knows that, and you want to learn from her because you’re such a poor warrior. A word in the dark instead of a sword in the sunlight, that’s what you want. Power, the sort of power fit only for cowards, for traitors and kin-wrecked men and women and clan-murderers…”
“Agravain! I don’t! I only…”
“Stop lying to me!”
I scrambled to my feet, facing my brother. I felt a blind fury descend on me, cold as ice, cold as Morgawse’s eyes. “I am not a liar,” I said, hearing my voice cold and quiet, like someone else’s, “I do not dishonor my clan.”
He laughed at me. “You are always dishonoring our clan. Do you call it no dishonor that the king’s own son can’t throw a spear straight? That he can’t kill as much as a sparrow when hunting? That all he can do is ride horses and play the harp—play the harp! That you want to learn sorcery and the casting of curses so that you won’t have to fight…”
“It’s not true!” I screamed.
“Now you want to make me a liar!” yelled Agravain, and struck out at me.
It is good that I was not right by the spears: if I had been, I believe I would have used one. I jumped on my brother with a fury which surprised him, and struck as hard as I could. I felt cold, deathly cold, filled with a black sea. My fist hit Agra-vain’s face, contacted again. He grunted with pain, and I felt a thrill of exultation. I wanted to hurt him, to hurt everyone who hurt me, who hurt Morgawse, who hurt Medraut, who belonged to a world I could not enter, and hurt, and hurt, and kept on hurting.
Agravain flung me off and fought back, coolly, calmly, not even very excited any more. I realized that he had not really believed his own accusations, had only been angry at my doing something he could not…I tripped and sprawled on the grass. Agravain kicked me, jumped on top of me, and told me to yield.
I thought of Morgawse’s eyes; of Medraut’s, admiring. I thought of my father smiling and imagined praise, of warriors, bright weapons, and swift war-hounds. I tried to fight some more. Agravain became angry and hit harder. I scratched him. He cursed.
“Call you a hawk, but you fight like a woman! Like a witch! Yield, you little bastard—you’re no true brother of mine…”
I tried still, to fight, and was hurt worse. The black wave ebbed a little, taking with it the insane strength it had lent me. I was no warrior, I knew. Not really. I couldn’t fight Agravain. I was no true brother of his anyway, and had no real claim to the honor of our clan, so he and Lot, at least, must believe…I went limp.
“Yield?” asked Agravain. He was panting.
I felt sick. I had no choice. If I didn’t yield, he would only hit me some more, and call me names, and laugh at me.
“I yield.”
Agravain rose, dusted himself off. Two bruises were beginning to blotch his face, but he was otherwise unmarked. I rolled over, got on my hands and knees, stared at the packed earth under the grass of the practice yard, damp from winter rains. I was smeared with it and with blood.
“Remember this, little brother,” said Agravain “and forget about reading. Try to learn how to throw a spear straight, the right way, and maybe you’ll someday make a warrior. I’m willing to forget about this and come and help you some more tomorrow.”
I heard his footsteps going, striding, confident. A warrior, my brother, a sun-bright prince, first-born of a golden warrior king. But I remembered Morgawse, dark and more beautiful than anything on earth, who held Lot’s fate in her slim white hands. Morgawse, who hated. Hate. I realized that the black tide had not left me, but was coiled down within my being, waiting. It was hate, strong hate. I was my mother’s son.
Morgawse knew when she saw me. I had washed myself somewhat before coming to her, but I had clearly been in a fight and it needed no guessing with whom. She saw when I came into her room that I was ready, and she smiled, a slow, triumphant smile.
She said nothing of it at first. She poured me some of the imported wine from a private store, told me to sit on the bed, and spoke to me gently, compassionately, asking what had happened, and I told her of the quarrel with Agravain.
“He said that you were a witch,” I told her. “He accused me of wanting to fight my enemies with curses and magic in the dark of the moon, rather than with honest steel.”
“And you wanted no such thing,” she said.
“That is so. I wanted only…to be a warrior. To bring honor to our clan, to please Father…and even Agravain. Diuran, the warband, everyone. I wanted them not to think that I was worthless. I wanted…” I found my throat constricted, and it hurt with a sudden intensity that all my wants were vain. I sipped the wine, rolled it about my mouth, swallowed. The taste was dry and rich. It was red wine. In the shadows of Morgawse’s room it was dark as blood, not the ruby fire it had been that day with Lot when I heard that the Pendragon was dead.
“I don’t want those things any more,” I said. “I’m not a warrior.”
“Not of their sort,” said Morgawse. She sat beside
me, close. She and the room both smelled of musk, of deep secrets. The pupils of her eyes had expanded, drinking all the light of the room into her sweet darkness.
I sipped the wine again. It was stronger than the ale I was used to. It was good.
“But I want to fight them,” I said. “With knowledge. With things they don’t understand because they are afraid to look at them. I want to show them who I am and make them know I am real.”
“Ah?”
“Is it true that you are a witch?”
“And if it were?” Her voice was soft, softer than an owl’s feathers in the darkness.
“If it were, I’d ask you to teach me…things.”
She smiled again, a secret smile just between the two of us. “There are many sorts of power in the world, Gwalchmai,” she said. “Many powers. They can be used by those who know how to use them, but each sort has its own dangers. Yes, the dangers of some are so great, my hawk, that you could not understand them. Yet the rewards also are great; the greater the power, the greater the reward.” She clutched my hand suddenly. Her grip was cold as winter, strong as hard steel. “Great rewards, my spring-tide falcon. I have paid certain prices…” she laughed. “There will be more to come. But mine is the greatest sort of power. I will gain…immortality. There are none living who can match me in magic now. I have power, my son! I have very great power. I have spoken to the leaders of the wild hunt, to the lord of Yffern, to the kelpies of the deep sea and the demons who dwell in the far keeps of the underworld. I am greater than they. I am a Queen, Gwalchmai, a Queen of a realm which Lot only suspects and is afraid of.
“And I have watched you, my hawk. There is power in you, and strength. Now, at last you have come and asked for teaching. You will receive it.”
I felt fear, but remembered Agravain’s contempt and ignored it. Morgawse spoke of serving Darkness, but what of that? She also spoke of ruling it.
“Then show me,” I said, my voice as low as hers.
“Not so quickly! You forget, I also spoke of dangers. I will teach you, Gwalchmai, but it will be long before you can control the power you seek. But you will learn to. Oh, learn it you will, my hawk, my son…”
Taking a knife from a hidden sheath she made a cut at her wrist, then held her arm so that the blood flowed into the cup of wine. She handed the knife to me and, without being told to, I did the same.
Morgawse took the cup and drank from it, lowered it, the red wine and red blood dark about her mouth. She handed it to me.
It was heavy in my hands, fine copper overlaid with gold, rich, cold, fine and beautiful. I thought of the winter sunlight outside, of Agravain, of the scorn of warriors. For a second the thought returned to me of Llyn Gwalch and the wide purity of the grey sea. No, I thought. That is a lie. I raised the cup slowly and drained it. It was thick, sweet and dark—darker than the deep heart of midnight.
Three
Things were somehow different after that. My mother taught me nothing but more Latin, Agravain “helped” me in weapons practice and I grimly accepted his help, laboring with the rough wood and heavy metal that was so light and flashing in his hands; I rode about the island, practiced my own style of fighting, sometimes on horseback. Agravain quarrelled with me over this, saying that I was ruining myself as a warrior, and that I ought to listen to him—life seemed to have settled into its usual pattern. But there was a difference, a shadow that made all the familiar things seem strange. I had made a pact and was bound to it. A seed had been planted, and I waited sometimes, awake in my bed at night with the soft sleeping breath of the other boys about me in the dark, waited for the plant to grow and blossom with some fantastic black flower.
Agravain noticed nothing. He beat me less hard when we fought, but this was only because I did not fight as hard. I no longer wished to defend an honor I could not understand. Honor belonged to Lot’s world, Agravain’s world. My world had no room for such things.
Medraut, however, noticed almost immediately. I began to catch him staring at me with confused eyes in the middle of some talk or game. He would ask the question plainly some time, I guessed. I wondered how I would answer.
On Medraut’s eighth birthday Lot gave him his choice of any pony in the royal stables. I went with my brother to help him choose one. When Lot named the gift Medraut had been very excited, but on the walk to the stables he calmed down. Together we looked at the ponies—they were all the small shaggy breed common to the northern islands—and discussed the merits of each of them. Medraut listened to my horse-talk in his grave intent way, then, quite suddenly, as I was checking one of the animals’ legs, asked, “Is there something wrong, Gwalchmai?”
I started and looked up from the pony, twisting about on my knees to face him, “No. Not with his legs, but he has no withers at all…”
“No, no, not with the pony. Is there something wrong for you?”
For me? No. What makes you think so?”
He stood facing me in the cold dusty sunlight of the stable, drably dressed, his grey eyes wide and anxious. The light glinted palely on his hair, the only touch of brightness in the place. He looked vulnerable, and very innocent.
“You’ve been so strange,” my brother said nervously. “You go away...”
I smiled. “Well, I’ve always liked to go riding. Now that you have your own horse you can come with me more often.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Medraut’s voice was sharp. “All summer, you’ve been here. You were here, with everyone. You used to go away with Agravain and Lot, but you were here this summer. But now…” Medraut bit his lip and looked away from me. “Now you’re gone. I can’t talk to you any more. You even go away with me.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, though in truth I had a very good idea of what he meant.
“You had a big fight with Agravain,” said Medraut unhappily.
I looked away, shrugged.
“After that, something happened. You went away from everyone after that.”
I had felt, on some of those days, that I watched the world from a great distance behind the mask that had been my face. Went away…
“And you haven’t gone to Llyn Gwalch.”
I thought of Llyn Gwalch, the seaweed gleaming on the rocks, the drops of mist and seaspray on the mossy boulders. Such places have no bearing on the world, I told myself. One must live in the world which is real. “That was a childish game,” I said. “I’m too old for it now.”
“But what happened?” Medraut crossed the space between us and caught my arm. “You must tell me!”
“Why?” I glared at him, aloof as the hawk of my name.
He stared at me for a long moment, then put his arms round me and buried his face in my shoulder. It hurt. I had never deserved his love and trust, and now that I had failed in the path he would follow, now that I would never be a warrior and one that a brave man could honor, now I deserved it less than ever. I could not go on lying to him.
Indeed, I suddenly felt that for too long I had been living a pretence. I had told no one of what had happened, and I had been alone, training and eating and sleeping next to other boys, pretending to be one of them, but alone. The feeling grew in me until I could not bear it. I would tell Medraut, who trusted me, who, alone, might understand.
“I went to Morgawse and asked her to teach me sorcery.” I whispered.
He lifted his head from my shoulder, eyes wide, and went still. I put my arm round his shoulder and we were quiet.
“Why?” he asked at last.
“Because I can never be a warrior.”
He thought for a while. “I wonder…do you think I could learn sorcery?” he asked, finally.
I felt the shock as physically as if someone had kicked me in the belly. Not Medraut. Not the young warrior, the child of light, who was everything I wished I could be: proud without being arrogant, fierce without cruelty, sunlight with the searing heat of Lot or Agravain. He could not follow me into failure and darkness. He must not become to
o close to Morgawse. I thought of her light-drinking eyes.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It is wrong for you. Very wrong, mo chroidh, my heart.”
“But Mother is a sorcerer, and you will be. Why shouldn’t I know something about it too?”
“Morgawse is Morgawse. I am only myself. You are Medraut.”
“Why couldn’t I learn it? I am clever enough…”
“That isn’t the point! It is wrong.”
“Is Mother wrong, then? Are you?”
I stopped in the middle of my reply. Medraut had always trusted and admired me. Still…
“It is wrong for you. You can be a warrior and fight in the sunlight. I can’t, and Mother can’t, and that is why we used this path.”
He argued further, but I argued against him, hard and fast. Eventually he abandoned the subject, cheered up, and chose for his pony a grey with a white mane and tail. He called it Liath Macha, “Grey of Battle,” after CuChulainn’s horse, and was happy.
Spring came slowly, barely noticeable after the mild winter of the Orcades. But the days grew slowly warmer, the sky was occasionally blue, and the great cold grey sea-fogs rolled less frequently up from the west.
Agravain and I had yet another quarrel over my habit of practicing with my weapons on horseback. Lot, however, who happened to be nearby and inquired into the reason for the difference, looked thoughtful.
“Perhaps you are doing ill to punish Gwalchmai for this,” he told Agravain. “True, we do most of our fighting on foot, and to be able to ‘jump about a horse’s back like a juggler at a fair,’ as you were pleased to put it, is no great use to a warrior now. But Arthur the war-leader has taught all his men to fight from horseback, and they say that his victories over the Saxons spring from the strength of his cavalry. Let Gwalchmai be.”
Agravain frowned uncomfortably. He had no liking for the idea of the styles of warfare changing, and less for being told that he was wrong. He found a pretext for another quarrel later that day. But he left me more, though not entirely, alone afterwards, and sometimes watched me with a frown. I think that even he was beginning to notice the change in me, and it puzzled him.
Hawk of May (Down the Long Way 1) Page 4