by Sarah Zettel
“Sir, the men are tired. They are frightened by the enemy they must face, and I think, the absence of the Grey Men will work upon their nerves almost more than their presence would have. It is the enemy you do not see that is the most on your mind.” He paused, letting that sink into the Little King’s thoughts. “They need a good omen,” he went on. “Let me give them one.”
That sparked a smile in the Little King’s pale eyes. “Warrior’s pride, Geraint?”
“Nonetheless.” Yes, look at me. Do you see your chance to be rid of me? If he takes my life, you will have a clean shot at him, and all will be over, and I will have spared you the trouble of murdering me yourself.
For he was fairly certain that once this one enemy was defeated, Gwiffert would have little use for a trained knight among his company. Such men were apt to become bored and discontent when they were not given active employment, and once discontent, they tended to turn on their masters.
“We are in a bad place, Majesty,” said Geraint bluntly. Beside him, the boy holding Donatus looked nervously up the hill. Geraint longed to reassure the lad but it would not do now to show concern for any but Gwiffert. “If we cannot get them down the hill, they will have advantage over us. If I can kill their leader, they may rush us, and we will meet them on level ground.” There, a truth for you to chew over while you consider my pride. “It will also give us time to get our men arrayed on the opposing slope. If they can be goaded into giving away their advantage, we gain in every way.” Gwiffert nodded, his lips pursed in judicious consideration. Geraint wondered if he truly cared, if there was the smallest chance that these rebellious men aligned against him would pose any threat after their king was dead. “Even if they do not, they will be less their leader, and that alone would make the risk worth taking.”
At last, the king said, “Very well.”
“Thank you, Majesty,” replied Geraint ferverently. One victory, he told himself. One only. You will need many more before this day is through.
Geraint swung himself back into the saddle. He tried to give the boy an encouraging glance, but the child was looking down at the ground. Geraint touched up Donatus. If the horse the Lady had bestowed possessed any special properties, he had yet to note them, but it was a steady mount, and it walked him unafraid into the open ground and splashed without hesitation across the fresh, silver stream.
How to do this? How to call down the one king in this land who might be a king by heart and blood as well as fist and fear?
How to do it in a manner that did not give him away to the king who waited behind him.
Geraint reined Donatus up short and squared his shoulders. The whole of the Rhyddid’s army looked down on him. It would not do to seem afraid.
“I call for the one who styles himself the Great King!” he shouted up the hill. “I Sir Geraint, son of Lot Luwddoc, nephew to Arthur the High King at Camelot, knight of the Round Table, I call you here!”
There was silence, and then a confused ripple of men’s voices as in their hundreds they murmured to each other, perhaps cursing him, perhaps wondering what fresh gambit this was.
A man shouted down at him “What would you of the Great King, Sir Geraint?” Probably that was not the king himself. Probably it was some trusted captain. That was one of the dangers. If the Great King would only fight king to king, the remainder of the plan might not work. It was only Gwiffert’s rage which would bring the carelessness Geraint needed.
“A challenge, Great King! Your skill against mine. Let us stand before God and let Him judge which of us has the right cause!”
“And why should the Great King fight any such as you?”
Here it was. “Because word of his fame has reached the High King at Caerleon. They say he is such a grand coward he will not risk one hair of his beard in honest battle, but needs must lead his armies from behind! The High King would not stoop to come before such a one himself, so he sent me to find if the tales were true!” There now, if you are a man that will bring you. And may my uncle forgive me should he ever hear this tale. He took another deep breath. “Refuse me now and I will know what answer to take him!”
The ripple of voices came over him again. He could hear nothing of what was going on behind him. His hands itched at the uncertainty of it. Were Rhys and Taggart arranging the men as they should be, or were they just hiding in the woods, crouching frozen between their fears of their king and the Grey Men?
I must not let this come to a battle.
On the slope in front of him, the mass of men began to shift ponderously. They parted, making a wide lane, like the Red Sea readying itself for Moses and his people. The Great King’s chariot rolled forward. His driver was a slip of a youth, perhaps even a boy still.
“You stand there for your king, Sir Geraint?” called the giant.
“Yes!” Let the ones who hear this think what they will. It is for my king I stand here. My king, my wife, myself.
“It is as Gwiffert’s man you stand here?”
“Yes!” For that is the part I must play.
“I am sorry for you. He is no master for a brave man!”
Be sorry if you will, but not so reasoned, man. “Would you speak against my king? Come down here and speak with me as warriors do, or are you great only in the size of your boasts?” Come down, come down. I am a true man, not like the other you challenge. You cannot allow your men to see you afraid before me.
The Great King’s silence stretched out. Geraint’s heart beat heavy in his chest. The cawing crow had been joined by one of its fellows, and together they gossiped, perhaps laying wagers on the fight to come. Donatus stamped and snorted, impatient with all this standing about.
Then, the Great King touched his charioteer’s shoulder, and the boy in turn touched up the great brown horses, and slowly, carefully walked them down the hill.
The effect was that of a god descending. Geraint had seen the Great King from a distance, and he had seen another giant up close once, a little more than a year ago. He had thought himself ready for the one named Rhyddid ap Gelyn. But what came to him now was nothing like the phantom that had come seeking Gawain. The Great King was a man of flesh and bone, that could be seen in his eyes and his skin and the war-hardened hands, but he was of a stature such as Geraint had never before seen in mortal man. Had he lifted his arm out straight, Geraint could have walked under it without bowing his head. Despite his enormous size, it was easy to see the Great King was still a young man, perhaps even younger than Geraint. Thick, brown hair hair fell to his waist, bound in a leather thong. His beard was scanty yet, and his pale green eyes were wide and unlined as they looked out from under the battered Roman style helmet. He wore armor of boiled leather over his chest, leather trousers on his legs and leather guards on his wrists. In place of sword or spear, he held a great, thick club, nobbed with bronze and scarred and stained from its use. His shield matched it, a relic from the Roman times like his helm, great and square, such as a man might hide his whole body behind, even when the body was the size of the giant before him.
The Great King climbed down from his chariot and planted his feet on the ground. Even on horseback, Geraint felt puny before him.
“Will you meet me on foot, Sir Geraint?” inquired Rhyddid, his voice filled with exaggerated courtesy. “Or are Arthur’s men only brave when they’re mounting?” Geraint ignored the crude joke, but his heart quailed at the challenge. On horseback, he could maneuver more quickly than the chariot. No doubt, the Great King knew that and so made this choice. Young he might be, but he was not unseasoned.
Geraint dismounted. He wished he’d brought one of the boys to take Donatus away with him. Well, the horse was a smart beast and would save itself should the need arise. Rhyddid reached out without taking his eyes from Geraint and tapped the chariot’s side. The boy whistled to the team and turned them around, moving back to the base of the hill, but going no further. He would not desert his king.
Now that they faced each other on level gr
ound, Geraint felt he had indeed shrunk back to a stripling boy. Had they stood side by side, the Great King would have been head and shoulders above Sir Kai, who was called the Tall by the bards. The club might at first seem a crude weapon, but its master carried it as easily as Geraint carried his spear, and probably he knew as much of its use. Geraint’s own arms seemed suddenly flimsy in comparison. Even his shield felt thin as parchment.
“Come then.” Rhyddid swung his club back and forth, and Geraint thought he heard regret in his voice.
In answer, Geraint stepped back and let the Great King come forward.
Slowly, they began to circle one another, the first steps of the dance that might end with life for all, or might end only in death.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Elen waited in the darkness. Behind her, she felt the others rather than heard them. She felt them in the way they made the air stir against her skin and the vibrations of their many hearts that woke again the hunting hunger within her.
Where was Calonnau? Where was Geraint? Had the battle been joined yet? Did he even still live? She did not dare take her mind and will from what was before her.
Angry now, she called out again. “Maius! Maius Smith! Your daughter Elen calls you!”
I cannot have been wrong.
“It would seem your lover has failed you,” came the mocking voice of the mouse-king. “Will you go in search of him, bitter willow bound about your brow?”
But even as he spoke, the darkness around them changed. The red light of the lit forge seeped across the floor, turning the pools of milk to pools of blood. Ahead on her left hand, Elen could make out a doorway limned in the fierce glow. Heat crept across her skin, prickling the fine hairs on her arms and cheeks.
Ching-ching. Ching-ching. The smith’s hammer rang out from behind the door.
Behind Elen, all was still.
Elen walked forward, the precious jug held close against her, as if it might shield her from what was to come. At her approach, the door fell open, and beyond it, she saw the forge. It did not matter that this was not where she had seen this chamber before. Nothing mattered, save the crucible heat of the forge poured out to envelope her, and there was the smith twisted and bent under the disfiguring scars, standing behind his silver anvil, forging yet another link for the golden chain that bound him as tightly as it bound all the others in this cursed place.
It was not the fae you displeased. Oh, Father I am sorry.
Pity drove out fear, and Elen was able to stand at the threshold of the forge. The heat beat down on her wave after wave. She welcomed its first touch, as one welcomes the dawn after the winter’s night, but soon she felt its claws sinking into her skin, seeking the flesh underneath. She could not imagine what it was like for the smith with his so many burns still so raw.
“Maius,” she whispered. She had no doubt he heard her. He lifted his ravaged face, turning the swollen and ragged slits that had once been eyes toward her.
“Daughter?” The word was thick and heavy, for his lips were so twisted by their scars they could scarcely move to help shape the words.
“Yes.” She stepped across the threshold. Heat seared her skin. Perspiration sprang out against her brow, and was gone in a moment. “I am the daughter of your daughters.”
“Ah, gods all!” Maius raised his face as a man might when praying to heaven. To her surprise, Elen saw the tracks of tears running from his burned and ruined eyes. “I did not think there was more he could do to me. Why came you here!” Even as he wailed aloud his hands worked. The hammer fell, again and again, his fingers turned the gold chain.
Ching-ching.
“I am come to free you, Father,” said Elen. “I have come to put out the fire.”
“You cannot,” he said with the conviction of a man speaking of death. “There is not water enough in the world.”
But Elen strode forward. The heat worked down her throat into her lungs. She stood in a stone oven. The coals glowed so brightly her eyes squinted and blurred, but there were no tears for her. The heat had dried them up before they could fall. The stench of burning surrounded her. It filled her mouth and lungs. It was the smell of death, the smell of the ravaged village as she ran through it trying to reach her mother’s corpse. It was the smell that came when she fell onto the ground and saw Bevan, his hand stretched out toward his broken harp.
“Stop, daughter, stop,” lisped the smith, his hammer beating frantically at the gold. He was trying to drop the tool, trying to move, she saw his muscles bunch and strain beneath his skin. “Go back before he finds you. He’ll know.”
His words made her shudder, but all he could do was plead. He must stay where he was, forging the golden chain. It lay snaked across the cracked flagstones. It was piled in loops and heaps, impossibly precious and delicate, infinite and endless, both contained within this one strange chamber, and stretching out beyond it. Elen picked her way over it. The chain caught at her skirt as if it had thorns, and all at once she felt the weight of the walls over her. She was buried. She was bound to the fire, to the stone and the earth. In her mind’s eye she saw the mountains, the narrow valleys, the streams, and the forests spread out before her. She saw the teaming inhabitants, the humans and the beasts, and those who were neither, and around them she saw the shimmering walls of gold. She saw them beating wings and hearts against them. She saw them kneel in prayer with wailing voices that could not reach past the shining walls. She felt the weight of the uncorruptable gold pressing down on her until she could no longer breathe and the fear glided through her that she would smother.
I cannot smother. I cannot die. She stretched out will and mind, and she found Calonnau. She felt the rush of the fresh air, and saw the green and brown spread of the country beneath her. Her heart soared safe. She could only be hurt, she could not be killed, and hurt she could endure. She could still walk forward, and she did, one staggering step at a time until she stood before the forge.
“No!” the smith cried.
It was a rough walled crucible, a curved and open oven with its wide bed of coals burning orange and red. A blue-hearted flame leapt up as if startled by her footfalls. Elen dragged in a deep breath of the searing air and raised the red clay jug.
She poured out the milk. Steam, smoke and ash rose up in a great choking cloud. She could not breathe. She could not see. Her eyes burned as if the fire were in them. Sparks landed on scalp and skin, pin pricks of bright pain. She smelled the horrible stench of burning hair, and knew it was her own. She forced her hands to clamp tightly to the cool, curving sides of the clay jug, and she held it high that the blessed liquid might flow out freely and she held herself strong against the pain.
It was poison, this smoke. No living creature could breathe so much, she knew that as she knew the rush and rasp of it filling her raw throat and lungs. But Elen did not live, and it was only pain, and she endured.
Little by little, the heat began to fail. The smoke began to clear. Elen’s ravaged throat felt the touch of clean air. Little by little, the ash grew heavy and fell to the floor. One-by-one, and the red coals of the forge died and turned black. One coal at a time, darkness fell.
Elen’s arms shook and her grip at last failed. The jug slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor, broken, as any piece of crockery might break, into a hundred red shards.
Filthy, burned, char-covered, ash-choked, wheezing and filled with pain, Elen lifted her grit-caked eyes to see Maius Smith, surrounded by his chain, standing beside his silver anvil. His great arms hung loose at his side. For a long moment, they stood together, and there was only silence.
“It is done,” he breathed. “Done!”
The delicate hammer slipped from his fingers, falling to ring sweet and clear against the stones. In that moment, it was the sound of triumph. Maius stretched out his thick misshapen hands to her. Elen, moving slowly on her trembling legs, stumbled forward to take them. In their grasp, she felt again her mother’s hands, swollen and wracked wi
th their disease, and she wondered at it.
She tried to speak, but only coughed hard. The smith’s strong grip steadied her as she shook. “A boon, Father,” she rasped. “Before you go from here.”
“Anything, daughter.” His voice was gentle now, as if he had already begun to heal from his labors. She looked at him, blinking her own burning eyes, and for a moment, she saw the man beneath the ravaged slave. She saw how his eyes had once been clear and brown, and his hands strong and with clean labor. She saw the pride, the strong, honest, pride that had led him astray to this place.
“Give me the chain,” she said.
Trembling now, those hands reached for the chain they had forged for a hundred lifetimes. They lifted it up, stretching a length of the golden lace between them, he held it out to her. In the center of that length, she saw the little curve of gold wire that was the link he had left unfinished. She saw the little chink in it, the tiny gap where of the ends were not yet sealed.
“It’s yours now. I give it you, daughter, mine. I give it.”
Her hand closed around that precious, unfinished link, enclosing the weight and the warmth of the soft metal. “Be at peace, Maius Smith.”
“I am free,” was all Maius said, and as he did, Elen felt his heart begin to beat.
Then it ceased, and he was gone and Elen stood alone, gripping the golden chain in her burned hand.
It occurred to her slowly that she should have been in the dark. But a golden glow shone before her eyes. It came from the chain. It shimmered and pulsed as it coiled through the chamber, like a snake’s skin beneath the sunlight. It was alive this thing, alive with all the power Maius Smith had poured into it. It was impossibly fine. It might have been a chain of silken ribbon, it was so light. It might have been the stones that made the mountains, it was so terribly heavy. It was so long she could not find its end and it lay in shin-high heaps about the floor. It was so short she could have coiled it up once and held it in the palm of her hand.