by M. K. Hume
Stormbringer lifted the great horn to his lips and drew in a mighty breath. The horn cried out in triumph with a raucous, brazen voice that shook the cliffs and the small coves that sheltered at their feet, sending the gulls into the air to flap and scream in fright. The cliffs sent the sound echoing along the narrow passage of the Limfjord, even as the dragon’s prow of Loki’s Eye turned and the vessel was driven at great speed across the terrible strength of the current.
Just when Arthur was sure that they would be dashed onto huge portals of rough stone that stood like graven sentries along the narrow passage, the vessel dived into a patch of still water. Beyond, the fjord opened up. Against the odds, the great lake on Limfjord, deep within the landmass, had been reached.
“Behold! We have arrived at Heorot!” Stormbringer shouted triumphantly, and blew his horn once more until the echoes answered, causing the air to ring and thrum with brazen war cries. On the left hand, atop one of the stone portals, an indistinct figure raised his axe high into the new sun in welcome, while the winter light struck the edge of his blade with the sudden glitter of ice or iron.
Even in his anxious state, Eamonn felt his heart race with excitement as the sun struck a headland and a long hall that was gleaming in the weak sun. Arthur stood at his side and drew in his breath in wonder. Red blazed in the light like spilled blood. Gold, green, yellow, and orange flared and danced with that crimson, while the great hall of legend seemed to coil with an unnatural life as if a serpent had raised its startled and angry head.
Their long voyage was over. Now, their fates would become clear and Arthur would learn what it was to be a slave.
Chapter VI
THE LAST OF HOME
Audentis Fortuna iuvat!
(Fortune favors the brave!)
—VIRGIL, Aeneid, BOOK 10
Nimue stood on a high knoll of land close to her crooked house with its ruined oaken shell. Along the steep slopes below her, her fields were filled with winter vegetables, sown grain sleeping under the mountain soil, and grazing sheep that were neatly divided among cunning terraces carved out of the slopes of the Caer. With her usual pleasure, she sighed with satisfaction and marveled at what her dead husband had coaxed from his unsleeping brain in a spring which burst from the earth and fed the terraces, so even stony ground became fecund and bore life.
During the night, she had talked with her phantom lover after they had embraced in the old way, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, and mouth to eager mouth. She had wept then, and her black-haired ghost had kissed away her tears. “I know I’m crazed, my love, because my grief has made me insane with the passage of the years I have lived without you. But if having you with me is madness, then I don’t want to be sane. I wish I’d known you in those days when your body was like this strong, young shell your spirit now wears.”
Her black-eyed phantom had smiled at her from their warm nest while he had swept his black hair away from his eyes in the same old way of years gone by.
“You’re not insane, my beloved. Time is a strange thing, and I come to you as I once was so that you needn’t remember the pain of my old, dying flesh. In my vanity, I wanted you to know me as I was when my world was young and green, and I was foolishly angry at my lot in life.”
They had often spoken of her man’s childhood, both when he was living and now that he had passed into the shadows, so Nimue understood. Unafraid, she tried to name the troubles that most concerned her on this dark winter’s night.
Taliesin had returned like the wight he was beginning to resemble as the white streak in his midnight-black hair began to widen. He had materialized at her door only hours after the arrival of Gareth, the strange young man who was now sleeping soundly in one of the old villa’s storerooms.
“Will Taliesin go with Gareth to seek Arthur in the northern wastes?” Nimue asked her husband from the warmth of her bed. “He’s so tired that he can scarcely bear to sing, so I doubt that he possesses the strength to endure a long and arduous journey.” She frowned. “I’m just being selfish, but I long to spoil my boy for a little time.”
Her husband looked down at her still-lovely face with affection and honesty. They had been handfasted at a time when spring had determined to cleave to winter, but they had been friends long before they became lovers, so the shared intensity of the mind was more precious by far than any momentary sexual relief.
“Have no fears for the boy, Nimue. Taliesin will make old bones, although his songs will live even longer. He’s not destined to die in the northern wastes, but he must rest and regain his strength before he leaves your house. Our son is fated to follow the trials and tribulations of the Three Travelers of Yesteryear. Fortuna has brought the trine together again. They have been born anew as different souls, and they must journey into those places where the days are short in winter and the sun still shines at midnight during the endless northern summers. Your son will devise a way for Arthur to be released from his captivity, if that young man hasn’t done it for himself, so that Arthur can return to his homeland. Unfortunately, despite his pleas, the British tribes will never be reunited, so no King Artor will ever return to these isles!”
“But I promised the people that Artor would return. Their songs already speak of a King of Yesteryear who will return to lead them at some future time. I’ve perpetrated a cruel lie!”
Nimue’s face reflected her misery.
Such a long and weary time had passed since she had told Artor’s bruised and battered army that the memory of their king would never die. Once again, she felt the fearsome weight of Caliburn’s terrible blade when she had forced her woman’s muscles to raise the sword high in order to catch the light while the sight of King Artor’s body on Bedwyr’s wagon had filled her heart with a bone-deep misery. With all her wild passion, she had made promises to give heart to her people without realizing their need would translate her simple words of comfort into a paean of hope.
“Hush, sweet girl. You didn’t deceive them, for Artor will return. His face will be legion, and his image will flicker on a wall without full form or substance other than to the eye. Don’t ask me for explanations. I never understood my visions, even when I was alive. However, you can believe me that King Artor will appear in the flesh as Arthur, who is his natural son.”
Myrddion smiled down at her and kissed her throat. “But his return will not be as you expect, even if you should live long enough to see it.”
“Will he become the Dragon King, like his father?” She recalled the first time how, as a young woman, she had knowingly met Artor, and how his bodyguards, Odin and Targo, had stood behind him to guard his back from potential threats.
The High King had seemed tall and strong enough to pluck the sun down from the heavens but, even then, his shark-grey eyes were disillusioned and tired. With a pang, Nimue felt her exultation begin to fray and fall apart like old grave shrouds. Did she really want Artor’s son to suffer as he had?
“No, my Nimue! The tribal kings will never again have the guidance of a Dragon Lord and the Dragon’s Lair will never again come alive to the sound of Artor’s feasting warriors. Cadbury has already become an empty place of ghosts, wild beasts, and dead hopes. The peasants drag away its stones, its timber, and every small treasure they can steal, for they know that what is abandoned will eventually be taken by the Saxons. Cadbury won’t fall to an enemy, but it will be ruined by time. No, Arthur will come again in the guise of an Ice Dragon, and his own kin will not recognize him. On his return, the young man will rule in the northern lands where the Otadini bones lie rotting on the open fields of combat. Gawayne’s spirit will be slaked in northern blood, and it will drink its fill before Arthur is finished with Mercia.”
Nimue shuddered. The Saxons had spewed out of Mercia for several decades and had slain the British tribesmen without a care for what they burned and destroyed so wantonly. Bran and Ector had not ceded an inch of Ordovice soil, but t
he cost to the tribes in young lives had been catastrophic.
“Bran must retreat into the mountains and then make a determined stand in country that can be defended. He must build a shield wall around the remaining British lands in Cymru: a fortress so strong that the earth won’t tolerate the touch of a Saxon foot. He must put away foolish thoughts of past glories, because there is no means by which he can hold the lands that his grandfather ruled. He isn’t an Artor, for no one can fill those boots, no matter how they try.”
After Myrddion’s spirit had left her bed, Nimue often wondered how her imagination had conjured him up in such detail. Perhaps she had been searching for an answer to King Bran’s dilemma. Privately, she doubted that Bran possessed the dour stubbornness to do what must be done as an embattled ruler but, for now, she was content to lie in the remembered shelter of Myrddion’s arms and drown herself in her own private delusions.
“Perhaps we should convince Taliesin to stay here while Gareth leaves for the continent. We should give Gareth the promise of a loving home which will welcome him on his return. The son of Gareth Major withers from within because his father, my old friend, turned selfish and half crazed in his old age. To father a child in his dotage was unfair on any son and served only to retain the hope of glory from his long service to the High King. By insisting that his innocent son should dedicate his life to the service of Prince Arthur, Gareth Major attempted to keep his master, and himself, alive beyond their appointed time. Such a calculated plan of dedicated loyalty left no room for affection. As a consequence, Gareth’s heart now aches for it. Give him yours, my sweetling. The boy will go into dark places on this quest and will lose himself in the shadows, unless he has the memory of the Lady of the Lake to draw him back by the ribbon of her love.”
“You’re speaking in riddles, my love. But you always did,” Nimue had wailed plaintively. “Speak plainly, so I can understand what I must do.”
“But you already know that,” her lover had answered. And then the time for words was over.
Now, with her tiny, self-sufficient kingdom spread out around her, Nimue acknowledged the accuracy of her husband’s assessment. From the moment he had ridden into the villa’s forecourt, leading a tired packhorse and seemingly oblivious to the driving rain, Gareth’s loneliness had been a visible cloak of misery. She could feel his need, hot and desperate, but hesitant like the affections of a mongrel dog kicked away from a warm hearth on too many occasions.
When she returned to the separate kitchen, with its roaring fire and clay ovens, she was surprised to find the object of her concern deep in conversation with her dour serving woman, Gerda of the hill people. His blond head was bent attentively to hear every word of homely wisdom. Gerda was actually laughing at something that the boy had said, so he colored with embarrassment at Nimue’s sudden appearance. Oblivious to the presence of her mistress in the shadows, Gerda was joking with Gareth as if he had been one of Nimue’s strong sons.
“Look at you, Master Gareth! I swear that you’re blushing like a virgin. Hasn’t anyone ever told you how pretty you are, and how all the young maids would spread their legs for you at your most casual glance? No? Heavens, boy, look at your reflection in the rainwater barrel on the next occasion you take a drink. God has made you comely and he has made you strong. I can’t see any fault in you, except that you color up if a body notices how well you look.”
“I’m a fighting man, mistress. I’m not a bright-plumaged bird of the court that can be decked out in fancy-colored ribbons like a pet. I was raised to serve the Dragon King and his kin.” Gareth was trying manfully to control his blushes and the direction of the conversation.
“But what of fun, boy? Didn’t your mother tell you stories? Didn’t you play with the other children? And didn’t a willing girl decide to teach you the nature of love in the hay?” She smiled. “You’re blushing again, Master Gareth.”
Many men would have taken offense at such banter, but Nimue could see the boy opening like a tight, winter-blighted bud under the warmth of Gerda’s teasing.
“No!” Gareth replied sadly. “My father planned out my days with education, exercise, and weapons’ training. Then I took care of his needs once I was free of my other duties. My mother was a simple village girl and wasn’t permitted to share in my childhood.” This last statement was made softly, as if Gareth expected the servant to express some criticism of his dead father.
But Gerda persisted, until two spots of dull scarlet were visible on his cheeks.
She took a deep breath. “How wicked . . . and how cruel! Your mother must have shed many tears if she was forced to be parted from you. Boys can’t live on duty, education, and weapons’ practice. They need fattening up and must be encouraged to run wild—followed by a vigorous scrubbing when they’re covered with dirt. But mostly, they need love.”
“My father was very old when I was born, so he didn’t have time to let me play. I was required to perform my allotted duties, and every moment of his life was dedicated to my training. But he did love me. Truly, he did!” Gareth’s voice had risen in volume and stridency.
Gerda examined the boy’s face as she slowly stirred the contents of a big pot of stew over the open fire.
“Why?” she asked abruptly.
The servant woman was obviously searching for an answer, but Gareth was becoming visibly upset. Concerned for his state of mind, Nimue intervened. The boy had been robbed of any pretense of youth, so it was unkind to make Gareth feel badly about his father’s lack of affection towards him.
“Well, Gareth, I’m pleased to see you’ve met Gerda. She rules this particular roost of chickens and, fortunately, she has more sense than all of us put together. Taliesin is still sleeping, but he’ll want to speak with you when he wakens. For now, young man, you look famished, so let’s get some country food into you.”
“Perhaps I could manage to eat some food, Lady Nimue . . . but I didn’t want to put you to any trouble.” Gareth gratefully concentrated on the delicious smells rising from Gerda’s cooking pot.
Nimue laughed, and the sound reminded Gareth of the silver bells he had once heard in a great church in the Dumnonii lands to the south. Although she was elderly, he was already more than half in love with his beautiful and charming hostess.
“It’s no trouble to me, Gareth, for Gerda presides over the preparation of all food in my kitchens. She does the sweating while I do the eating.”
With a wide grin, Gerda stirred a blackened pot of porridge with a curved spike of wood. “In just a moment, young man, I’ll have some porridge for you that will stick to your ribs.” With a wooden ladle she served a goodly portion into a beautifully shaped pottery bowl. Gareth marveled at the natural beauty of the utilitarian objects scattered throughout this eccentric villa and treated so casually by their owners. The servant pressed honey upon him as a sweetener and, wonder of wonders, a whole box of crystalline salt.
“Porridge without salt is like going to bed with your boots on,” Gerda said with an easy, lecherous smile. “Take as much as you want.”
Gape-mouthed, Gareth obeyed, stirring his porridge until it was flavored exactly to his taste. Although he tried to eat slowly and courteously, he soon reverted to the eating habits of a greedy boy and almost licked the bowl clean in his enjoyment. Two bowls later, he was replete.
Unfortunately for Gareth’s peace of mind, the young man was confused after spending several hours with Nimue and a further half day with Taliesin as they discussed the complexities of his quest. His task had seemed so simple when he had left Arden. Gareth intended to persuade Taliesin to accompany him to the north and to use his magic to deliver Arthur from the hands of the barbarians. The rescuers would then transport the prince and his companions to Britain and the bosoms of their families.
But a blind man could recognize the harper’s bone-deep exhaustion. Taliesin had burned out his energy selflessly as he traveled up
and down the tribal lands to advise, cajole, and threaten the aristocratic British leaders on ways and means of ensuring the survival of their tenant farmers. This task had been the last request asked of Taliesin by the High King, so the young poet had been prepared to squander his life to comply with Artor’s wishes, hopeless as the undertaking appeared to be.
Taliesin could accept the urgent nature of the search for Arthur, despite his belief that Arthur had probably been lost forever. But the young poet’s resolve had been weakened by the sight of burned villages and the dead innocents immolated within them. He had moved through the small, stone fortresses that the Celts inherited from the Roman masters of yesteryear, and he had shed tears over the bodies left to rot on the charred earth. Later, he had forced himself to enter the burned churches where he could sift through the ashes of their scriptoriums to find any scrolls that might have escaped the barbarian thoroughness. He had cried openly at the wanton destruction of libraries and had wept for the priests, monks, and nuns murdered by the Saxons who believed that these pious men and women were cowards who refused to fight back.
Sickened by the Saxon hatred of learning, which they associated with the influence of Rome, Taliesin saved what knowledge he could.
Frequently, Taliesin called himself a fool for wasting so much effort for so little profit. Now, at his mother’s home, his dead king was demanding more of his strength, although Taliesin had nothing left to give.
Taliesin had learned painfully that there was no nobility in dying pointlessly, so he was reluctant to chain the young Prince Arthur to an unwinnable war. But was the poet willing to leave Prince Arthur in slavery in the barbaric north? Ultimately, both Taliesin and Nimue concluded that to sit in relative safety on their small caer would be sinful if Arthur was left in captivity.
“You must understand why you need to travel in company with Father Lorcan and Master Germanus and allow me to follow you into the north at a later time,” Taliesin explained to the earnest young man who stood before him. Such raw hero worship was abhorrent to Taliesin, so his stomach roiled at the look of bitter disappointment on Gareth’s face.