Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  From ahead of us there came the eerie tune of the Jaguth, played on the reedy pipes I had heard before. Guiwenneth and I exchanged a quick, delighted glance, and then she said, ‘The Jaguth. They’ve come again!’

  ‘Just in time to finish off our pig,’ I said ruefully. Keeton was frozen to the spot with fear, not liking the stealthy approach through the darkness of these strange men-creatures.

  Guiwenneth walked towards the gate, to greet them, shouting out something in her strange language. I began to step after her, picking up a firebrand from the fire, to hold as they held their torches. The sweet piping continued. Keeton said,

  ‘Who are they?’ And I said, ‘Old friends, new friends. The Jaguth. There’s nothing to fear …’

  And at that moment I realized that the piping had stopped, and Guiwenneth too had stopped, a few paces away from me. She stared around her, at the flickering lights in the darkness. A moment later she looked back at me, her face pale, her eyes wide, her mouth open; from being delighted, she suddenly was terrified. She took a step towards me, my name on her lips, and I was caught in her sudden panic, and reached for her …

  There was a strange sound, like wind, like a hoarse, tuneless whistle, and then the sound of a thump and Keeton’s gasping cry. I glanced at him and he was stepping rapidly backwards, arched back, clutching at the top of his chest, his eyes screwed tight shut with pain. A moment later he fell to the ground, arms outstretched. Three feet of wood shaft jutted from his body. ‘Guin!’ I screamed, tearing my gaze from Keeton. And then all around us the woodland burst into brilliant fire, the trunks catching, the branches, the leaves, so that the garden, was surrounded by a great, roaring wall of flame. Two dark human shapes came bursting through that fire, light glinting on metal armour and the short-bladed weapons held in their hands. For a moment they hesitated, staring at us; one had the golden mask of a hawk, its eyes mere slits, the ears rising like short horns from the crown. The other wore a dull leather helmet, the cheek straps broad. The hawk laughed loudly.

  ‘Oh God no … !’ I cried, but Guiwenneth screamed at me, ‘Arm yourself!’ as she raced past me to where her own weapons were lodged against the back wall of the house.

  I followed her, grabbing up my flintspear and the sword that Magidion had presented to me. And we turned, backs to the wall, and watched the gruesome band of armoured men who emerged, dark silhouettes, through the burning forest, and spread out around the garden.

  The two warriors suddenly ran at us, one at Guiwenneth, one at me. It was the hawk who chose me.

  He came at me so fast that I hardly had time to raise and thrust my spear at him; the events happened in a blur of burnished metal, dark hair, and sweaty flesh, as he deflected my blow with his small round shield, then clubbed me heavily on the side of the head with the blunt pommel of his sword. I staggered to my knees, then struggled to rise, but the shield was struck against my head and the ground hit my face, hard and dry. The next I knew he had tied my arms behind my back, worked my spear under my armpits, and trussed me like a turkeycock.

  For a moment or two I watched Guiwenneth fight, and she fought with a fury that astonished me. I saw her bring her dagger down into her own attacker’s shoulder; then a second hawk ran from the garden’s edge, and she swung to face him, and firelight glinted on metal and the man’s hand seemed to fly towards the woodshed. A third came, and a fourth. Guiwenneth’s war-cry was a screech of indignation. She moved so fast that I became confused watching her.

  And of course, there were too many of them for her. Suddenly she had been bowled over, disarmed, then flung high into the air. She was caught between the hawks, and though she struggled, they tied and trussed her in the same fashion as me.

  Five tall, dark warriors remained at the garden’s edge, crouching, watching the end of the affray.

  My own hawk reached for my hair and dragged me to my feet, hauling me, bent double, across the garden towards the fire. He dropped me to the ground a few feet from Guiwenneth. She looked at me through bloody eyes and the fall of dishevelled hair across her face. Her lips were wet, and I could see tears glistening, bright specks in the fire. ‘Steven,’ she murmured, and I realized that her lips were swollen and painful. ‘Steven …’

  This can’t be happening,’ I whispered, and felt my own tears rise. My head was spinning; everything seemed so unreal. My body was numb, with shock, with anger. The sound of the burning forest was loud, almost deafening.

  Men continued to step through the fire, some leading large, dark-maned horses, which whickered and reared in discomfort. The sharp cries of command were loud against the crackle of burning wood. Brands from our own small fire were taken and used to start a small smithy, close to the house. Others of this band of men began to break wood from the coops and shed. During these brief minutes of confusion, the five dark figures had remained, crouching, just inside the ring of fire. Now they rose to their feet and approached. The oldest, who was the leader, stepped past the fire, where already several of the hawks were crouching, waiting to divide up the spitted pig. This man reached down and with a broad-bladed knife, carved himself a generous portion from the rump, stuffed it into his mouth and wiped his fingers on his heavy cloak. He came towards Guiwenneth, and shrugged the cloak off, revealing a naked upper torso, his belly full and sagging, his arms thick, his chest deep. This was a strong man going to seed in late middle age. The flesh of his body, I noticed, was a latticework of scars and weals. Around his neck he carried a bone pipe, and he trilled on it, mocking us.

  He dropped to a crouch by the girl and reached a hand to lift up her chin. He brushed the hair from her face, and twisted her jaw roughly to look at her, grinning through his greying beard. Guiwenneth spat at him and he laughed; and that laugh …

  I frowned, completely unnerved. I sat in the firelight, in pain, unable to move, and stared at this coarse, ageing warlord.

  ‘I’ve found you at last,’ he said, and the voice sent a long thrill of anguish through me.

  ‘She’s mine!’ I cried through sudden tears.

  And Christian looked at me and slowly rose to his feet.

  He towered over me, an old man, war-worn and ragged. His breeches stank of urine. The sword he wore on his wide, leather belt, hung ominously close to my face. He jerked my head up by the hair, and with his other hand stroked his matted, greying beard.

  ‘It’s been a long time, brother,’ he said, in a hoarse, animal whisper. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

  Behind him, the side of pig had been reduced to nothing, and the hawks chewed vigorously, and spat into the fire while they talked in murmuring voices. From the house came the sounds of hammer on metal. A furious activity of repair was occurring, on weapons and on the harnessing of the great horses, which were tethered close by to me.

  ‘She’s mine,’ I said quietly, staring at him through my tears. ‘Leave us alone, Chris.’

  He kept looking at me for several seconds, a frightening silence. Abruptly he reached down and jerked me to my feet, and ran me backwards until I fetched up hard against the wooden wall of the shed. As he moved he roared with anger, and his stale, fetid breath made me gag. His face, inches from my own as he glared at me, was the face of an animal, not a man, and yet I could now begin to discern the eyes, the nose, the lips of my brother, the handsome youth who had left the house just a year before.

  He shouted something gruffly, and one of his older warriors flung him a length of rope with a noose on the end. The rope was coarse and sharp, and he tugged the noose over my head and tightened it on my neck, tossing the free rope over the shed. A moment later the slack was taken up and the noose tugged me to my toes. I could breathe, but I couldn’t relax. I began to gasp, and Christian smiled, reaching up a stinking hand to block my nostrils and my mouth.

  He ran his finger over my face. It was an almost sensuous touch. When I struggled for breath he released my mouth and I sucked air into my lungs gratefully. All the time he had watched me curiously as if desperately
searching for some memory of friendship between us. His fingers were like a woman’s caressing my brow, my cheeks, my chin, the junction of the rope and the torn skin of my neck. In this way he found the oak leaf amulet that I wore, and he frowned as he saw it. He rested the silver leaf in his hand and stared at it. Without looking at me he said, ‘Where did you get this?’ He sounded quite astonished.

  ‘I found it.’

  He said nothing for a second, then snapped the thong from my neck, and held the oak leaf to his lips. ‘I would have been dead but for this. When I lost it I thought my fate was sealed. I have it back, now. I have everything back …’

  He turned to look at me, then, searching my eyes, my face.

  ‘It’s been many years … ’ he whispered.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ I managed to breathe. The rope tugged at me, irritated me. He watched my discom- fort, the movement of my lips, through gleaming dark eyes that showed no compassion.

  Too much,’ he said. ‘I’ve searched too long. But I’ve found her at last. I’ve run too long … ’ He looked wistful, glancing away from me. ‘Perhaps the running will never end. He still pursues me.’

  ‘Who?’

  He glanced at me again. ‘The beast. The Urscumug. The old man. Damn his eyes. Damn his soul, he follows me like a hound on the scent. He is always there, always in the woodland, always just outside the fort. Always, always the beast. I’m tired, brother. I truly am. At last–’ he glanced at the slumped form of the girl – ‘At last I have the one thing I have sought. Guiwenneth, my Guiwenneth. If I die, we die together. I no longer care if she loves me. I shall have her, I shall use her. She will make the dying good. She will inspire me to make a last effort to kill the beast.’

  ‘I can’t let you take her,’ I said hopelessly, and Christian frowned, then smiled. But he said nothing, moving away from me, back towards the fire. He walked slowly, thoughtfully. He stopped and stared at the house. One of his men, a long-haired, raggedly dressed warrior, moved to the body of Harry Keeton, turned it over and split through the man’s shirt with a knife, raising the blade above Keeton’s breast. He stopped and said something in an alien tongue. Christian looked at me, then spoke back to the man, and the warrior rose angrily to his feet and stalked back to the fire.

  Christian said, ‘The Fenlander is angry. They want to eat his liver. They’re hungry. The pig was small.’ He smiled. ‘I said no. To spare your feelings.’

  He walked to the house then, and vanished inside. It seemed he was gone for a long time. Guiwenneth looked up only once, and her face was wet with tears. She stared at me, and her lips moved, but I could make out no sound, nor what she was trying to say. ‘I love you, Guin,’ I called back to her. ‘I’ll get us out of this. Don’t worry.’

  But my words had no effect on her, and her battered face fell down again as she knelt by the fire, trussed and guarded.

  Around me, the garden was a scene of confusing activity. One of the horses had panicked, and was rearing and kicking against its tether. Men walked to and fro, others were digging a pit, still others crouched by the fires and talked and laughed in loud voices. In the night, the burning woodland was a terrifying sight.

  When Christian emerged from the house again, he had shaved off the ragged grey-black beard, and combed his long, greasy hair back into a pigtail. His face was broad, strong, even if his jowls were slightly loose. He looked uncannily as I remembered our father, in the years before I went to France. But bulkier, harder. He carried his sword and belt in one hand. In the other he held a bottle of wine, the top neatly broken off. Wine?

  He came over to me and drank from the bottle, smacking his lips appreciatively. ‘I didn’t think you’d find the store,’ he said. ‘Forty bottles of the best Bordeaux. A taste more sweet I can’t imagine. Will you have some?’ He waved the broken bottle at me. ‘A drink before dying. A toast to brotherhood, to the past. To a battle won and lost. Drink with me, Steve.’

  I shook my head. Christian seemed momentarily disappointed, then flung back his head and poured the red wine into his mouth, stopping only when he choked, laughing as he choked. He passed the bottle to the most sinister of his compatriots, the Fenlander, the man who had wanted to slit open the corpse of Harry Keeton, and the man drank the remnants down, tossing the bottle into the woodland. The rest of the secret store of wine that I had failed to discover was carried out in improvised sacks, and distributed among the hawks for carriage.

  The woodland fire burned down and began to die out. Whatever had caused it, whatever magic, the spell was waning, and the smell of wood ash was strong on the air. But two very strange figures suddenly appeared at the garden’s edge, and began to run about the perimeter. They were almost naked, their bodies covered with white chalk, except for their faces, which were black. Their hair was long, but held back by a leathery band around the crown. They carried long, bone batons, and waved these at the trees, and where they passed, so the flames sprang up again, the fire rekindled as furious as before.

  At last Christian came back to me, and I realized that the delay, the strange sense of pause, was because he did not know what to do with me. He drew his knife and stuck it hard into the shed beside me, and he leaned on the hilt, taking his weight, resting his chin on his hands, and focusing not upon me, but upon the grain of the pitch-painted wood slats. He was a tired man, a weary man. Everything about him, from his breathing to the shadows around his eyes, told me that.

  ‘You’ve aged,’ I said, pointing out the obvious.

  ‘Have I?’ He smiled wearily, then spoke slowly. ‘Yes. I suppose I have. Many years have passed, for me. I went a long way inwards, trying to escape the beast. But the beast belonged in the heartwoods, and I couldn’t outrun it. It’s a strange world, Steven. A strange and terrible world beyond the hogback glade. The old man knew so much, and he knew so little. He knew of the heartwoods; he had seen, or heard of, or imagined the heartwoods, but his only way to get there … ’ He broke off and looked at me curiously. Then he smiled again and straightened up. Touching me on the cheek, he shook his head. ‘What in the name of the woodnymph Handryama am I going to do with you?’

  ‘What is to stop you leaving me, and leaving Guiwenneth, to live happily for as long as we can? And do whatever you must do, go back, or leave the wood and go abroad. Come back to us, Christian.’

  He leaned back on the knife, so close to me that I could easily have touched his face with my lips, but not looking at me. ‘I could no longer do that,’ he said. ‘For a while, when I journeyed inwards, yes, I might have come back. But I wanted her. I knew she would be somewhere there, somewhere deep. I followed stories of her, ventured to mountains, and valleys, where stories told of her. Always I seemed to be a few days late. The beast stalked me. Twice I battled with it, but the battle was not resolved. I have stood, my brother, upon the hill, the tallest hill, where the stone folly was built, and seen into the heartwoods of the forest, the place where I shall be safe. And now that I have found my Guiwenneth, that is where I shall go. Once there, I have a life to finish, a love to find; but I shall be safe. Safe from the beast. The old man.’

  ‘Go there alone, Chris,’ I said. ‘Guiwenneth loves me, and nothing will change that.’

  ‘Nothing?’ he repeated, and smiled wearily. ‘Time can change anything. With no-one else to love, she will come to love me …’

  ‘Look at her, Chris,’ I said angrily. ‘A captive. Dejected. You care no more for her than you do for your hawks.’

  ‘I care about the having of her,’ he said quietly, menacingly. ‘I have hunted too far, too long to worry about the finer aspects of love. I shall make her love me before dying; I shall enjoy her until then …’

  ‘She is not yours, Chris. She is my mythago – ’

  He reacted with sudden violence, smashing his fist into the side of my face so hard that two of my teeth were buckled inward. Through the pain, blood flooding my mouth, I heard him say, ‘Your mythago is dead! This one is mine. Yours I killed year
s ago. She is mine! If not for that I wouldn’t take her.’

  I spat the blood from my mouth. ‘Perhaps she belongs to neither of us. She has her own life, Chris.’

  He shook his head. ‘I claim her. There is nothing more to be said.’ As I began to speak, he raised a hand and roughly pinched my lips together, silencing me. The spear shaft beneath my arms was so painful that I felt sure my bones would soon break. The noose ate deeper into my skin.

  ‘Shall I let you live?’ he said, almost musingly. I made sounds in my throat, and he pinched my lips tighter. He wrenched the knife from the shed and held it before me, touching my nose with its cold point, then lowering the blade and tapping it gently against my lower belly. ‘I might allow the life to remain in your body … but the cost –’ he tapped me again – ‘the cost would be very high. I couldn’t let you live … as a man … not having known the woman I claim …’

  The idea froze me with the horror of it. I could hardly see him for the sudden pulsing of blood through my head, the sudden shock.

  He let go of my lips, but held his hand over my mouth. Through fear, through pure terror, I had started to cry, and my body shuddered with the sobs that came from deep within me. Christian came close, his eyes narrow, but frowning, unhappy about many things.

  ‘Oh Steve … ’ he said, and repeated the tired, sad statement. ‘It could have been … what could it have been? Good? I don’t suppose it could have been good. But I would have liked to have known you during the last fifteen years. There were times when I yearned for your company, to talk to you, to be … ’He smiled and used his forefinger to wipe the tears from my cheeks. ‘Just to be a normal man among normal company.’

  ‘It could be that way again,’ I whispered, but he shook his head, still sad.

  ‘Alas no.’ And added, after a thoughtful pause, regarding me, ‘And I regret that.’

  Before either of us could speak further, a terrifying sound came from beyond the burning trees. Christian turned from me, and looked towards the woodland. He seemed shocked; almost furious with shock. ‘Not so close … he can’t be so close …’