Oswine’s fair brows knitted together as he considered the question. ‘An eagle perhaps,’ he said, ‘but more likely a seagull or even a wren, for he says eagles are too proud to be easily governed.’ He half smiled. ‘We will have to wait and see,’ he said, to which Gawain replied by spitting more blood into the heather.
The Picts mounted and on we went, northwards now, our own horses led by the youngest amongst them, who were less decorated in the blue symbols than their elders but no less savage-looking. And those young men made a fuss of Gawain’s war horse, which was twice the size of even the largest of their animals.
Lord Arthur tried again, telling the painted men that he was Uther Pendragon’s son and that Uther was the High King of Britain, for he saw no point in admitting that the great king was dead and burnt. He told them that we searched for the sword of Maximus, which bore the names Caliburn and Excalibur and others besides, and he asked the Picts if they knew where the sword might be found.
‘Might as well be talking to the horses, Arthur,’ Gawain said, and after a while even Arthur gave up and resigned himself to trudging along the deer paths whither the painted men would take us, as a watery sun hauled itself into the sky and a thin wind shivered the gorse.
The hill-fort impressed even Arthur, who had fought the Franks in northern Gaul and ridden east as far as Swabia where the Alemanni tribes throng in the shadow of the mighty Frankish warlord Childeric. It was called Dùn Uaine, the green fort, and it was a bastion of turf mounds and wooden ramparts which had been burnt onto slag piles, raising walls which might have been forged of iron, so strong were they. There were deep ditches half full of black water that would suck a man down to a cold dark death, and rows of sharpened stakes pointing at the sky, some crowned with smirking skulls whose wisps of dark hair floated in the breeze.
We had passed larger forts on our way north but few had looked so defensible, and yet we had little opportunity to admire the place, being hauled along the tracks between the dwellings like cattle to the slaughter. Being spat on and grabbed at and molested by women, wild-haired children, old men whose ancient skin patterns were faded and shrunken and misshapen now, and knotty woadless youths who proved their courage by landing blows on us with fists or sticks, despite there being nothing we could do to prevent it.
‘Warriors of the sword, hey?’ Gawain growled at Arthur, as a beardless youth ran alongside us, pulled his member from his trews, drew back the skin and shot an arcing stream of urine at him. ‘I’d keep that worm to myself if I were you, boy,’ Gawain told the youth, nearly managing to avoid the spray.
Most of the townsfolk, however, were marvelling at Lord Arthur’s armour, which our captors had laid over Gawain’s mare so that the effect together of the gleaming bronze scales against her chestnut coat was striking even to me, let alone these Picts, many of whom were more naked than clothed and lacked any iron belongings so far as I could see other than spear blades or axe heads.
‘I’m beginning to think we should have stayed in Gallia,’ Gawain went on, knuckling blood from his eyebrow. Some of the folk were throwing stones at us now and Gawain was receiving the most attention of all of us because he was the biggest and most intimidating-looking, and so hurting him gave the Picts the most satisfaction.
‘I’ll not end up skewered on the end of a stake,’ Bors said, keeping his back straight and his chin high as a pretty little dark-haired girl spat in his face. Then a skinny boy, no more than fourteen summers old, darted in and sprang like a hare to throw a fist against Bors’s cheek.
‘When you have decided how we’ll get ourselves out of this, cousin, be sure to let me know,’ I said, looking up beyond the eastern ramparts to a shoulder of high ground which overlooked the fort. For something had caught my eye. A blur of reddish brown moving against the dark green gorse. A young hind, I realized, running upwind, as such a creature will, even over ridges and unknown ground, knowing it will taste danger as a taint in the air. Nevertheless, this deer played a dangerous game, running along that escarpment against the skyline and so close to the fort that someone with a bow might loose a shaft or two in hope, should they see her. As we were driven at spear-point through the place, painted people chattering around us like birds at dawn song, I watched that hind and I whispered a prayer to Cernunnos, that the horned god might hide her from others’ eyes. Off with you, little deer, I said to her in my mind. Do not let them catch you as they have caught me. But instead of bounding off over that ridge, the hind stopped by a clump of purple heather and stood stiff, ears cupped forward, head high, staring down at us. Watching us.
Our hands still bound, we were thrown into a sheep pen in the middle of the fort and found that we were not the Picts’ only prisoners. Three men cowered in the near corner. They were filthy, beaten and starved, and yet the sight of us seemed to go some way to restoring them, so that before long we knew their names and how they had come, like us, to be guests in the fort, as Arthur put it with a wry smile.
‘We are from Goutodin,’ the most talkative of them told him. Even had Arthur not been the first of us to enquire how they fared, he had that quality which marked him as a leader of men, and so it was to Arthur that they told their tale.
‘Our lord took a raiding party north to pay these bastards back for all their raiding over the years. Thought he would bring back thirty head of cattle and twice that number of painted heads and that the bards would sing of him come winter,’ this Dumnagua said, flashing a cold smile. ‘We came across a raiding band,’ he said, then glanced at his companions as they shared the memory, ‘but the blue bastards wouldn’t fight us.’ He shook his head. ‘We thought they were running scared. We all thought it, so we followed them. Like hounds chasing down a stag, but in the end we didn’t know where in Balor’s balls we were, and dusk was falling. Lost fools we were, arguing amongst ourselves. That’s when they came.’
‘It was as if the heather itself came alive and wanted us dead,’ a sallow-skinned man named Caradog said, his eyes not seeing us but rather the memory of that day.
‘We fought hard, not realizing they were herding us like bloody sheep,’ Dumnagua said. ‘Led us into a stinking bog. Men drowned. Others pleaded for their lives and were slaughtered like beasts.’ He looked at the third man, who had not said a word, then looked back to Arthur and let out a long breath. ‘We’re all that’s left,’ he said.
‘Your lord?’ Arthur asked.
Dumnagua spat. ‘Ran into that bog rather than face the savages,’ he said. ‘Still there, he is. Best place for him, the spineless shit.’
Hearing all this, Lord Arthur did not tell the Goutodin men who he was for fear of raising their hopes that he might somehow get them out of it. Instead he said we were emissaries from Rheged on a druid’s business but had ridden further north than was wise, and the Goutodin men, immersed in their own misfortune, did not question him. Besides which, having been stripped of our war gear and left with only the clothes on our backs, we did not look much. Certainly we would not pass for princes, let alone Arthur’s warriors of the sword seeking to remake Britain.
And so we spent a cold night amongst old droppings and wisps of rancid wool, surrounded by young spearmen who for the most part ignored us. At dawn we were all hauled up and marched out of a small gate in the western palisade onto the cold-shadowed moor, the sun yet to rise above the looming hills. Above us a pair of buzzards claimed their territory, soaring in circles, their wings stiffly outstretched and their mewing cries carrying as far as spears cast by a god. I wondered at that omen but could not think it was anything good.
Many of the Picts came in our wake, some on foot, some riding stout ponies, but most of them daubed in fresh woad, so that by the time we had climbed the tallest of three hills and I looked behind me, it was easy to imagine that we were being stalked by some great serpent which slithered relentlessly through the uplands.
By mid-morning we came to the Picts’ sacred place. From three good arrow-shots away I heard the voice of the fa
lls, like the hiss of a violent rainstorm on the sea around Karrek. But when we came through the pines, birch, rowan and willow, and crossed the slippery rocks and steep banks, and I caught my first glimpse of the gorge, my chest tightened at the sight. Despite there having been little rain these last days, the brown, peaty water spewed over the smooth lip at the summit, hurling itself in relentless, never-ending fury down the rock face. It plunged into the pool some sixty feet below, frothing and turbulent, the roar of it filling my head. But the rest of the pool was calm and flat and dark. In perfect serenity it received its eternal tribute and we all sensed its magic even as we felt the soft spray of water on our skin.
The Picts led us down a treacherous path and we were made to wait by the mouth of a cave at the pool’s edge for a long while as the folk from the fort who had followed us took up positions amongst the trees either side of the gorge and upon rocky ledges, and thronged around the little lake itself. At first I thought our captors were waiting for everyone to arrive, but even when it seemed no more were coming we waited still, so that Gawain was snorting like an angry bull by the time the sun was in the west and dusk was not far away.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he roared at the Pict who had shown himself to be these people’s chieftain. He was a fearsome, battle-scarred warrior who wore long moustaches and hair in two long ponytails which fell down his back. ‘Fight us like men!’ Gawain challenged him. ‘Or do you wait for us to die of boredom?’
The Pict, whose back bore the symbol of a leaping dolphin, regarded Gawain with keen eyes, the green vein throbbing in his neck. It seemed to me that he really wanted to accept Gawain’s challenge and fight him, but another painted warrior cautioned him against it and they both glanced up at the cave. Then the chieftain turned back to Gawain and growled something which we could not understand, though we got the sense of it.
‘I’ll fight your champion, if you’ve got one,’ Gawain challenged him. ‘Your champion and you together. I’ll rip that painted skin off your back and make you eat it, you reeking son of a rancid sow.’
The Pict snapped his fingers and thumb together to show he thought that Gawain talked too much. Grinning, Dumnagua said that he and his Goutodin countrymen could have used Gawain in their fight in the bog, but Gawain told the man that he and his companions, and we too, were fools for letting ourselves be taken alive.
‘We are not dead yet,’ Arthur said, then looked at me. ‘Lancelot, in your heart do you think this will be the last day that you look upon an early autumn sky?’ he asked. Then he lifted his bound hands and pointed at a pale yellow butterfly which careered through the air like a wind-driven petal. ‘Do you think you will never see such a beautiful creature again in this life? After this day?’ The butterfly alighted amongst the trembling leaves of a young aspen at the water’s edge and there spread its wings to bask in the last warmth of the day.
‘No, lord,’ I said.
‘So my uncle has bewitched you, too, Lancelot,’ Gawain said with a resigned weariness. ‘This is how he does it.’
There rose a murmur around the edge of the small lake and the Picts climbed to their feet and next thing we were being yelled at to stand and face the cave.
‘Balor be with us,’ Bors muttered, staring like the rest of us at the creature for whom we had evidently all been waiting. She appeared in the cave’s dark mouth amongst a billow of white smoke, and for a while did not seem to move at all but just stood and stared down at the water. She was naked and lithe and her black hair fell down to the gentle swell of her buttocks, and like the warriors’ her skin was adorned with indelible ink. The swirling symbols coiled up her legs and snaked in between her thighs to the dark bush of hair at her crotch. A wolf’s face covered her taut belly. A salmon stretched up her left side and eagle’s wings spread across her slender shoulders, and even her breasts were decorated with whorls and circles and symbols which none of us could read.
‘They’re going to slaughter us,’ were the first words we’d heard the third Goutodin man speak.
‘Of course they’re going to slaughter us,’ Gawain said.
The priestess made her way down the small hill, from cave’s mouth to water’s edge, then walked barefoot across the rocks towards the Picts’ leader, who bowed his head, as did every other who had come to the falls.
She was young, this priestess, and pretty, and not at all what any of us would have expected to emerge from a cave into the gloaming.
‘I am Arthur ap Uther, whom men call Pendragon,’ Lord Arthur called above the roar of the cascading water. The priestess’s head snapped up amidst hissing from the Picts at Arthur’s impiety. ‘King Uther, my father and High King of Britain, is dead,’ Arthur announced, ‘but with his last breath he named me his heir and King of Dumnonia.’ The Pict chieftain strode across the wet rock and backhanded Arthur across the mouth to shut him up. It did not work. Arthur straightened. ‘I seek the sword of Maximus,’ he called. ‘The sword called Excalibur.’ The Pict struck him again, harder, but Arthur stood tall and noble. ‘I am Arthur ap Uther,’ he said, spitting blood.
I was proud of him. Gawain growled that he was wasting his breath. Oswine, if anything, seemed resigned to whatever fate his gods had spun for him. Or else he was just bored. It was hard to tell.
‘Arthur,’ the priestess said, coming to stand before him. Looking up into his eyes. ‘Arthur ap Uther,’ she said, her voice like a wind-stirred briar scratching a roof. She put a hand between her legs and held it there a moment, then lifted it and pressed her fingers against Arthur’s bleeding lips. He recoiled and she laughed, and still I did not think that we were going to die.
And then the killing started.
At a gesture from their priestess, two big painted warriors took hold of Dumnagua by his arms and dragged him into the dark pool, and the priestess followed them, giving her pale, blue-stained body to the water. I saw a shiver run through her flesh. I could not help but look as the buds on her breasts hardened and stood proud.
‘I will see you again in the next world, Arthur ap Uther,’ Dumnagua called. ‘And we shall drink together.’
Arthur nodded. ‘We shall, Dumnagua of Goutodin,’ he said, his blue-grey eyes hard as granite now because his fury was rising. For the hundredth time I struggled against my own bonds, thinking that if I could only get my hands free I could go for the chieftain or even the priestess. Anything would be better than submitting to whatever murderous ritual these Picts had in store.
Dumnagua did not fight. Perhaps he was too proud to struggle in vain, and the Picts easily thrust his head down into the water, though they stood braced and ready to use their strength. The priestess placed her hand on the back of Dumnagua’s head, which was just visible where it broke the surface, and then there came a splutter of bubbles as Dumnagua let go the breath he had been holding. I realized I had been holding my own breath too, from the moment he went under, and I inhaled sharply, straining against the rope as the priestess chanted and Dumnagua struggled because his body craved air and cared nothing for his pride.
His countrymen looked on with pale dread. Caradog, I saw, was weeping. But it was soon done. Dumnagua went still and the watching Picts murmured a prayer to some god, which might have been Arawn or else some god of their own. Then the warriors dragged Dumnagua’s body from the lake and laid it on the rocks, his neck on a pine log, so that their chief could hack off Dumnagua’s head with his axe. When this was done, their leader snarled his hand amongst Dumnagua’s hair and lifted the dripping head high, like a trophy for all his people to see, at which they cheered from the trees and the rocks, the sound of it lost against the rush of the falls.
Caradog was next and he did not make it easy for them but bucked and bent, twisted and writhed, for all the good it did him. One of the Picts drove a fist into his empty stomach, doubling him over, then they thrust him under, at which the priestess put her own hands into the water to press down upon Caradog’s head. He drowned quickly, having little breath left by the time he
went in, and his head came off easily to the chieftain’s axe.
As they pulled the last of the Goutodin men into the water, his eyes wide and bulging with terror, I looked at Bors. My cousin shook his head, refusing to accept that the same fate awaited us. I saw that his wrists were raw where he had tested his great strength against the ropes. I tried to picture my brother Hector in my mind and I wondered if he were waiting for me in the hereafter. If he would show me the woods and the islands and the secret places under warm blue skies, and the feasting hall where the bounty of the table never diminished. And where the wine flowed like the falls here before me in this life, its mist swirling around a frightened man and a naked young enchantress.
‘Whoever your god is, I will spit in his eye,’ Gawain snarled at the priestess. ‘But before I die I will foul this precious lake of yours. I will defile it in the name of Taranis, god of war. Before your god has me, he or she will have my filth as an offering.’
The last Goutodin warrior went to his death like a man who does not comprehend what is happening to him or why. They drowned him and the priestess chanted and the Picts cheered when, after three strikes, his head came off and the bloody axe glanced off the log and tinked off the rock, throwing sparks which raised a gasp from the congregation, for it was a powerful omen.
‘I am Arthur ap Uther,’ Lord Arthur called, seizing upon the moment and fixing the priestess with a savage glare, as if he had thrown those sparks himself. ‘You will untie us or else my gods, the gods of Britain, will avenge me. My men will ride north on their war horses and they will slaughter you, man, woman and child. They will burn your homes and trample your crops. They will butcher your cattle. The name of your tribe will be lost for ever like smoke carried on the wind.’
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