by Jack Whyte
"Truffles?"
He nodded sagely. "The greatest of all fungi. Our swinish visitor was rooting for them when we came along. I found where he was digging, and I found his prize."
"So you think we should stay here tonight and eat like pigs."
He sighed. "Caius Merlyn, I swear you have the gift of reading minds."
I nodded, pretending surliness. "Very well, you have an hour to find the beast. If you don't find it within that time, come back here and we'll eat horse meat. If you do find it, your truffles had better be superb."
XII
It took us until noon on the second day after our encounter with the boar to make contact again with Donuil and his father's galleys, but the weather held fine, with only scattered clouds and one heavy shower, and our progress was uninterrupted. We saw no sign of Feargus's Wild Ones, nor, although we saw ample evidence of the giant deer that had created the route we followed, did we see a single animal.
Our long night's rest and solid food had performed miracles for our well- being, and Rufio, our "flying man," had almost fully recovered from his misadventure, with only an aching in his ribs as a reminder. Ded's truffles had been epicurean, and the wild pig had provided a meal that each of us would remember with fond nostalgia in the years that lay ahead. While waiting for his men to finish scalding the bristles from the haunch that he had butchered, Dedalus had vanished back along the path, returning some time later with a helmet full of tiny, wrinkled, almost dry red apples. What he did to them I do not know, but when he served them with the succulent wild pig in the form of a thick, heavy sauce, they set every man's taste buds reeling with delight. We slept well that night, bloated with wondrous food and cushioned on thick, soft beds of springy moss.
An early start in the dim glow of dawn, begun tentatively with an eye to new and unlooked-for dangers, gave way gradually to a leisurely, carefree trot along our meandering route, following the path of least resistance with only occasional halts to negotiate natural hazards where trees or rocks, and once an entire cliff face, had fallen recently enough to block the way. Only the fallen cliff face caused us grief, forcing us to leave the smooth game trail completely and climb down a slippery, steeply sloping bank to bypass the tumbled obstruction at a crawl, carefully testing each tentative step along the base of the bank before committing to it, then clawing our way back upward to the pathway with much impatient, ill-tempered cursing. The experience reminded us forcibly of the impassability of this primeval forest and the debt we owed to our guiding spirits, the giant, unseen deer. It took us an hour to negotiate the downward slope, far enough away from the debris of the fallen cliff to be safe from loose, rolling boulders, and then as long again to make our way across the short space at the bottom of the sprawling pile that loomed above us. It took us more than twice as long again, however, to regain the pathway from the bottom on the other side, worming our way up sideways with the horses, whose hooves scrabbled and slithered and fell back on the soft, greasy loam.
And then, slightly before midday on the third day of our journey, we emerged without warning at the top of a high cliff and saw the two galleys of Feargus and Logan below us, drawn up onto a stone-grey, sheltered beach. Behind them, an arm of the sea swept inland and out of sight, masked by the high cliffs on which we sat. The cliff that had towered on our left throughout our journey pinched out here, on this high plateau. I waved to the tiny figures on the beach below, and shouted, but received no response. Finally, I nocked an arrow and launched it gently, watching it fall to earth beside one of the fires that burned brightly on the strand. That captured their attention, and they ran outward, staring up at us and waving, gesturing wildly towards our left. Sure enough, there was a downward route where they indicated, but it was terrifying in its steepness. Dedalus, beside me as usual, spoke the words that were in my mind.
"I hope that's not a river estuary behind them, or we're stuck here. Don't think it is. Water's too clear; no silty outflow. Must be a sea arm, what the Celts call a lough. Anyway, that's north, Donuil's country, over there, and we have to get there." He paused and spat over the edge, watching the flying spittle fall away. "You agree?"
I nodded. "So far. What else is in your mind?"
"Well, since you ask, it seems to me that taking the horses down there entails one certainty: we'll have to bring the whoresons up again."
"Why? We might be able to ride right along the beach, as far as the inlet extends."
"Aye, and it might extend for miles and then pinch out, leaving us to ride all the way back and still climb this cliff again . . . I say leave the horses here, hobbled, where they can graze along the fringes of the trees. We can carry our saddlebags and go down on foot. That's not a roadway, and horses have no hands. A man can climb down backwards, if he has to. If there is a way along the beach, and if it's possible to lead them down, we'll come back up and get them. If not, we'll have to come back, either way."
"Done," I said, and wheeled to make the arrangements.
After our perilous descent and the welcome we received from Donuil's Scots, they sat in silence around us while we ate, and listened intently as we told them the story of our meeting with the boar. One of our number, a normally taciturn man called Falvo, grew lyrical in his description of the monster, and his account of the battle fitted strangely with my own recollection of the debacle I had witnessed.
When Falvo had finished his tale, translated in the telling by Donuil and its verity endorsed by the approving murmurs of the rest of my men, Feargus looked at Dedalus, who had found the boar's body afterwards, then turned to me. "How big was this beast, truly?"
As I shrugged my shoulders, Dedalus reached for a blanket-wrapped bundle I had noticed hanging from his saddle earlier. "Big enough." I answered, watching him idly. "He cost us five horses and almost killed Rufio there."
Something large and yellow flew through the air from Dedalus to Feargus, who caught it in an outstretched hand and held it there for everyone to see. It was one of the beast's huge, spiralled tusks and the sight of it brought a concerted hiss of surprise from the assembled Scots. I turned to Dedalus.
"I didn't know you'd taken that."
"I took them both." He tossed the second one to me. "They'll be impressively barbaric once they've been cleaned up and polished."
I hesitated, struck by a thought. "How did you know what Feargus asked me?"
Ded grinned. "I didn't. I guessed from the tone of his voice. It's what anyone would have asked, isn't it?"
Fascinated to see the thing up close, I examined it carefully, aware of the glances of the others moving between me and Feargus who still held its mate. It was heavy, solid ivory, yellow with age and dirt, save where it was worn white towards the tip, and it was thicker than the base of my thumb at the blood- and bone-encrusted end where Ded had chopped it free of the jaw in which it had been set. From there, it swept outward in almost three complete, tapering curls, perfectly round in section save for the last part of the third curl, the width of my hand in length, which was edged with wickedly sharp, blade-like ridges capable, as I knew, of shearing and destroying anything they struck. From end to pointed end, the thing extended almost the full length of my arm from wrist to elbow.
"Dermott, come forward." The voice belonged to Feargus and an old man stepped forward at his bidding. "Show them."
The man, whom I could not remember having seen before, extended his right arm, and I looked with wonder at the bracelet wrapped around it, embracing the entire lower part. It was a tusk like the one I held, but it had been worked into a thing of beauty, polished to a creamy, glowing whiteness and carved, its ends capped with hand-crafted gold.
"Dermott is our bard," Feargus said, his voice solemn and filled with respect. "But in his youth he was a fearsome fighter and the greatest hunter of our clan. His wife, Moira, wears the other tusk, the twin to that. The arms of each of them have shrunk with age, but these symbols of their prowess that they wear with pride do not age. They killed the boar betw
een them, with two spears, before any of you were born. A man-eater it was, ancient and evil and cursed for years. The biggest boar ever seen or known in our lands. Look!"
He held up the new tusk until it was level with Dermott's, and the polished whiteness of the old man's bracelet was dwarfed beside the dirt- smeared mass of the new-killed monster. A murmur of awe rose and fell into silence. Long moments Feargus held the tusk there wordlessly before passing it to me. I felt the solid weight of it matching that of its fellow in my other hand. I handed both tusks back to Dedalus, who rewrapped them in his blanket, and then I led the conversation towards the things I needed most to know.
Dedalus had guessed correctly. The water beside us was a sea lough, stretching inward for two leagues, or six of our Roman miles, and there was no open way along the beach. Half a mile inland, the precipice fell straight into the lough, its bottom lost in the depths. The only route for us to follow was atop the cliffs, where our horses already awaited us, but we were pleased to learn that our journey was more than half complete and we could travel from this point onward without fear of the Wild Ones, whose territories now lay behind us. Not that we should ride carelessly, Feargus added, since the Wild Ones knew no boundaries. When we reached the inner rim of the lough, Logan told us, taking over from Feargus, we should strike out to the north and west where, after another eight leagues, we would come to a river estuary with a road along its bank on our side. To the left, that road would lead us straight into King Athol's stronghold, the heartland of the Celtic Scots. If the galleys arrived there first, as they ought to, he said, they would row upstream to their point of anchorage close to home, and await us there, sending runners on ahead to prepare our welcome.
Having seen the surprise on my face that this "heartland" should lie so close to the domain of the Wild Ones, Donuil interrupted Logan to explain that his father had built his stronghold in the south of his domain because of the richness of the soil and the openness of the country. Fully four fifths of all the land the Scots claimed as their own was either heavy forest or rugged, barren uplands.
I asked next about the giant deer whose prints were everywhere, but of which we had seen no other sign. Elk was their name, a Norse word, Feargus told me, and he went on to explain that the legends told that they had been imported, two hundred years earlier and more, by a Norse king who had settled in Eire but pined for the giant deer of his homeland. He had sent his longships home to bring back breeding pairs of the huge beasts, and they had thrived in Eire's forests, where no predator but man was large enough to stalk them. They lived in the deep forest and preferred marshy land and boggy streams, since that was where they fed. Seldom were they seen beyond the deepest woods, and when they did venture that far they were easily killed. They were gentle creatures, he said, like all deer, but large enough to be dangerous, even lethal, when threatened, for their massive horns were like the horns of no other deer, being heavy, broad and spatulate, sculpted like great, flat spoons and as wide across as a big man's arms, with only tiny, blunted tines around the outer rims to mark them as deer horn. When the rutting males fought for dominance every year at the time of mating, he said, the clatter of their head-butting could be heard echoing through the forest for many leagues.
Dedalus broke the mood, tired of listening to interminable tales in a tongue he could not understand. "Merlyn," he growled, "it's mid-afternoon. Do we stay here tonight and climb that whoreson cliff in the morning, leaving the horses alone up there all night?"
"No, Ded. We'll sleep up there tonight and get an early start."
"Well, we'd better get going soon. I'd hate to attempt that climb without sunlight to guide me."
I sighed, and rose to my feet, and we took our leave again of Donuil and his Scots.
As soon as I set eyes on Athol, High King of the Scots of Eire, standing among his advisers on a raised dais, awaiting our approach, I saw the false presumption in the term Outlander, an expression I had used throughout my life. An Outlander was foreign, alien, someone from another land and therefore barbarian. Athol the King, however, despite his advanced years, would have been unmistakably a king in any land, regal in every aspect, including the stillness with which he watched us come. He seemed to embody his entire race, his upright bearing stamped with that unmistakable air of authority and magisterial presence the Romans had called dignitas. I was immediately thankful that I had called a halt and insisted on my men taking the time to clean themselves up before riding in, for though I knew nothing of this man, I saw at once that he was king in more than name, and while I could have no indication of the thoughts that must be swarming in his mind as he watched our approach I knew they would be far from trivial. He was forming his first impressions of the men and power of Camulod as we advanced. We were the victors who had made a hostage of his son. Now we were escorting that son home, but he must be wondering to what ultimate purpose. I felt sure, somehow, that he must be reassessing the potential worth of the child he held as surety for this return.
We had encountered no difficulties on the route from the shore where we had left Donuil and his party, and we found the road along the side of the river estuary exactly when we had expected to. The wide, shallow river had been deserted, and I had assumed that the two galleys had already passed and were awaiting us somewhere upriver to the east. I was right; we met them about five miles upstream, and they had been awaiting us for no more than a few hours, ready to escort us into the realm of their king.
Now, as we rode slowly towards the king himself, across the flatness of a central court ringed by silent watchers, I sucked in my belly and made an attempt to sit straighter in my saddle, even though I was already straight as a spear, encased in my unyielding parade armour. Donuil rode on my right, half a pace ahead of me as was his right in this, his father's place, and Dedalus was right behind me, in charge of the king's gifts: the pair of horses, their coats burnished to a blaze, and the decorative case that held the Varrus weapons. Athol looked only at Donuil, assessing the difference that five years had wrought, and schooling his features to give no hint of what he was feeling. The rostrum on which he and his advisers stood was set at about the height of a man's chest, on a scaffold of some kind, its entire front shielded by the king's guard, who stood shoulder to shoulder on the ground, facing us, their weapons cutting us off completely from any close approach to their leader. They were impressive, even though there was no hint of uniformity in either their dress or their appearance. Only in the wary watchfulness of their eyes and in their stance was there unity.
When we had approached to within a few paces of the guards, Donuil drew rein and the rest of us, who had been waiting for his signal, followed his lead, stepping down from our saddles and holding our mounts close- reined, their muzzles by our right shoulders. Donuil dropped his reins to the ground and stepped forward; the guards parted silently to give him access to a flight of steps their bodies had concealed. He mounted the steps in silence and went directly to kneel in front of his father, bowing his head and clasping the old king's outstretched hand. I watched only them, taking great care not to allow my eyes to look around. Behind me, my men did the same, I knew, because they had strict orders to do so. Donuil had explained to all of us that idle curiosity would be ill regarded, prior to his father's formal acceptance of our presence.
The old man gazed down at his son's head without speaking or moving for long moments, and then I saw his arm tense as he pulled Donuil upright and stepped forward to embrace him. The younger man, whom I would have expected to tower over his father, was not much taller than he. They spoke together in quiet tones and at the edge of my vision I was aware of several of the men behind the king leaning forward, trying to catch what was said. Eventually Athol nodded and Donuil turned towards me, beckoning me forward. I dropped my own reins and mounted the steps to the rostrum, aware of the king's eyes studying me. I gazed back at him, studying him with equal frankness.
He was slim and erect and, for all his advanced age—I guessed him
to be well beyond sixty summers—his arms and neck were hard and tightly muscled, clearly showing the physical strength these Celts demanded in their kings. His long hair was shining clean, not white but paler than silver, parted in the middle and cut so that it fell bluntly to his shoulders. His eyebrows, however, were thick and snowy white on his sun-browned face above large grey eyes that held the fire of a man half his age. It may have been the greyness of his eyes with the pale grey of his hair, but at first sight from across the courtyard I had defined him as a man of silver, and that impression was heightened and confirmed with nearness. He wore a heavy overgarment, much like a cloak, of rich, hand-worked pale grey wool above a long, equally heavy tunic of darker grey, flecked with white, that was belted at the waist and kilted to his knees. His belt was buckled in silver, and the long sword it supported was hilted in silver, too, housed in a silver-worked scabbard. From the knees down, his legs were sheathed in supple sheepskin, worn fleece inward and bound with silver-decorated thongs, and silver straps gleamed, too, on his sandalled feet. Decorative bosses of the metal covered his breast, and the cloak was held in place at his left shoulder by a massive silver disc pierced with a pin and housing a great purple stone that looked like glass. Only the single filet of metal binding his brows was different. It was of bright gold, fashioned to look like a knotted cord with acorns on each end. Athol the King had dressed for a grand occasion.