Mythago Wood

by Robert Holdstock

  The fall of snow grew heavier. I began to feel haunted by it as I pushed on through the forest. Each time a branch shifted and spilled snow on to the ground I jumped out of my skin.

  At some time during the morning a strange compulsion affected me. It was partly fear, I suppose, and partly the memory of that horse, whinnying and complaining in the frozen night. I became convinced I was being followed and started to run.

  I ran easily for a while, cautiously picking my way through the snow-bound forest, careful of roots and covered pot-holes. Each time I stopped and stared back into the silent wood I thought I could hear a furtive movement. The place was a shadowy, confusing mix of white and grey. Nothing moved in those shadows, save the sprinkle of snowflakes that drifted through the branches, a gentle accompaniment to my increasingly panicky flight.

  A few minutes later I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a horse, and the sound of men running. I peered hard through the snow, and into the grey places between the trees. A voice called quietly and was answered from my right. The horse whinnied again. I could hear the whisper of feet on the soft ground.

  Now I turned towards the valley and began to run for my life. Behind me there was soon no attempt to disguise the pursuit. The whickering of the horse was loud and regular. The cries of the men hinted at triumph. When I glanced back I saw shapes weaving through the forest. The rider and his horse loomed large through the white veil.

  I tripped as I ran, and stumbled hard against a tree, turning like an animal at bay and bringing down my flint-bladed spear. To my astonishment, wolves were leaping through the snow on either side of me, some casting nervous glances at me, but running on. Looking round, I saw the tall stag weaving between the trees, pursued by this voracious pack. For a second I was confused. Had the whole sensation of being chased been nothing but the sound of nature?

  But the horseman was there. The beast shook its head as its rider kicked it forward, each step sending the snow flying. The Fenlander sat astride it, cloaked and dark, holding his own lethally-tipped javelin with arrogant ease. He watched me through narrowed eyes, then abruptly urged the horse into a run, bringing up the javelin to strike.

  I darted to one side, tangled in tree roots, my haversack swinging awkwardly. As I moved I blindly swung the spear at my attacker. There was an animal sound of pain, and the spear was jerked roughly in my hands. I had caught the horse in the flank, ripping its flesh. It shook, then reared, and the Fenlander was thrown from its back. He laughed as he sat in the snow, still watching me. Then he began to climb to his feet, reaching for his javelin.

  I reacted without thinking, stabbing at him. The spear broke where Sorthalan had carved his watching eye. The Fenlander stared stupidly at the stump of wood in his breast, then looked up at my shaking figure, the broken shaft of the spear still held towards him. His eyes rolled up and he toppled backwards, mouth open.

  Snow began to coat his features.

  I left him where he lay. What else should I do? I threw the broken shaft aside and walked unsteadily on through the woodland, wondering where the rest of the pack were. And where Christian was hiding.

  And in this way, trembling with the shock of the kill and lost in my nervous thoughts, I emerged from the forest at the top of the valley, where a mournful wind blew.

  Peredur’s stone rose from the snow before me, a huge, wind-scoured pinnacle, towering above the land to a height of at least sixty feet. I walked towards the grey megalith, awestruck and deeply moved by the silent authority of the monument. Undecorated, the stone had been formed from a single hew, and had been roughly dressed with the most primitive of tools. It tapered slightly towards its top, and was leaning slightly towards the wall of fire at the far end of the valley. Snow had drifted against one side of the stone and half obscured the crudely etched shape of a bird, whose species was not clear. This was the earliest symbol representing Peredur, the simple association with the myth of rescue. Here, then, was Peredur’s stone for all the ages of legend: a stone for Peredur by whatever name he had been known, a place of quest for the girl who had been rescued on the wing, in whatever form she had been known through the centuries.

  Guiwenneth. Her face was before me, more beautiful than before, her eyes twinkling with amusement. Wherever I looked I could see her – in the hills, in the white branches, against the distant dark wall of smoke. ‘Inos c’da, Stivv’n,’ she said, and laughed, her hand across her mouth.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said.

  ‘My flintspear,’ she murmured, touching a finger to my nose. ‘You have the strength. My own precious flintspear … ’

  The wind was bitterly cold. It blew from the hills behind, feeding and fanning the flame-talker’s barrier to the innermost realm. Her voice faded, her pale features became lost against the snow. I walked around the stone, wary of surprise by Christian’s Hawks, almost crying out for Guiwenneth to be huddled there, waiting for me.

  The first thing I noticed was the trail of shallow prints, leading towards the trees and the far flame. The snow had almost filled them in, but it was plain enough that someone had been to the stone, and had walked on down the valley.

  I began to follow them, hardly daring to think of the identity of their maker. The trees were densely clustered in the deep valley bottom. The snow was thick for a while, but soon vanished from the ground as the warmth of the fire wall grew intense.

  The crackle and roar of the flames mounted in volume. Soon I could see the fire through the wood. And soon the whole wood ahead of me was a blazing wall, and I stepped through a zone of charred and skeletal trunks, their blackened branches like the stiffened limbs of fire victims. Small, charred remnants of oak and hazel, and all the rest of the primitive wood, were silhouetted against the brilliance of the flame; they looked like twisted human figures.

  One of the figures moved, stepping parallel to the fire and disappearing behind the tall shadow of a tree. I moved quickly into cover and watched, then darted to a closer vantage point, trying to hug the sparse cover and squinting to see against the brilliance of the firelight before me. Again there was furtive movement. A tall shape – too tall for Guiwenneth – it carried something that glinted.

  I dropped to a crouch, then ran to a small boulder and ducked behind it. I saw no more movement and stepped cautiously into the lee of a stooping, carbonized oak.

  He rose from the ground like a wraith, no more than five paces from me, a shadow emerging from the shade. I recognized him at once. He was holding a long-bladed sword. He was dripping with sweat and had stripped down to a saturated dark-grey woollen shirt, opened to the waist, and loose cloth trousers, tied at the calves to stop them flapping. There were two recent cuts on his face, one of which had gashed across his eye. He looked vile and violent, grinning through the dark beard. He held his sword as easily as if it was made of wood, and came slowly towards me as he spoke.

  ‘So you’ve come to kill me, brother. You’ve come to do the deed.’

  ‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

  He stopped, smiled and shrugged. Ramming his sword into the ground he seemed to lean on it. ‘I’m disappointed, though,’ he said evenly. ‘No stone-age spear.’

  ‘I left the sharp end in your right-hand man. The Fenlander. Back in the woods.’

  Christian looked surprised at that, frowning slightly and glancing beyond Peredur’s stone. ‘The Fenlander? I thought I’d sent him to the Underworld myself.’

  ‘Apparently not,’ I said calmly, but my thoughts were racing. What was Christian saying? Was he implying that there had been a civil war within his band? Was he alone, now, alone and abandoned by his troop?

  There was something weary, almost fatalistic, about my brother. He kept glancing at the fire, but when I moved slightly in his direction he reacted promptly, and the red, gleaming blade stabbed towards me. He slowly circled me, the fire becoming bright in his eyes, and on the dried blood of his face.

  ‘I must say, Steven, I’m impressed by your doggedness. I thought
I’d hanged you at Oak Lodge. Then I sent six men back to settle with you by the river. What happened to them, I wonder?’

  ‘They’re all face down in the river, well eaten by fish by now.’

  ‘Shot, I suppose,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Only one,’ I murmured. ‘The rest just weren’t good enough swordsmen.’

  Christian laughed disbelievingly, shaking his head. ‘I like your tone, Steve. Arrogant. That’s a strength. You really are determined to be the avenging Kinsman.’

  ‘I want Guiwenneth. That’s all. Killing you is less important. I’ll do it if I have to. I’d prefer not.’

  Christian’s slow circling motion stopped. I held my Celtic blade menacingly and he cocked his head, examining the weapon. ‘Nice little toy,’ he said with cynicism, scratching his belly through the dark grey material of his shirt. ‘Useful for vegetables, I don’t doubt.’

  ‘And Hawks,’ I lied.

  Christian was surprised. ‘You killed one of my men with that?’

  ‘Two heads, two hearts …’

  For a second my brother was silent, but then he just laughed again. ‘What a liar you are, Steve. What a noble liar. I would do the same myself.’

  ‘Where’s Guiwenneth?’

  ‘Well, now. There’s a question. Where’s Guiwenneth? Where indeed?’

  ‘She escaped from you, then.’

  Relief, like a bird, had begun to flutter in my chest.

  Christian’s smile was sour, however. I felt blood burning in my face, and the heat from the fire wall was almost overwhelming. It roared and hissed as it blazed, a torrent of sound close by. ‘Not exactly,’ Christian said slowly. ‘Not escaped so much as … let go ….’

  ‘Answer me, Chris! Or I swear I’ll cut you down!’ Anger made me sound ridiculous.

  ‘I’ve had a little trouble, Steve. I let her go. I let them all go.’

  ‘Your band turned against you, then.’

  ‘They’re turning in their graves, now.’ He chuckled coldly. ‘They were foolish to think they could overpower me. They hadn’t been reading their folklore. Why, only the Kinsman can kill the Outsider. I’m honoured, brother. Honoured that you’ve come this far to put an end to me.’

  His words were hammer blows. By ‘let go’ he meant killed. Oh God, had he killed Guiwenneth too? The thought overpowered my reason. Already hot enough to drop, I felt only anger, and the red heat of hate. I ran at Christian, swinging my sword wide and hard. He backed away raising his own blade and laughing as iron rang on steel. I struck again, low down. The sound was like the dull tolling of a bell. And again, at his head – and again, a thrusting blow to his belly. My arm ached as each stroke was parried with a jarring, ferocious blow from Christian’s own sword. Exhausted, I stopped, and stared at the flickering shadows cast by the fire across his savage, grinning features. ‘What’s happened to her?’ I said, breathless and aching.

  ‘She’ll be here,’ he said. ‘In her own time. A handy little girl, that … with a knife ….’

  And as he spoke he pulled open his dark shirt and showed me the spreading bloodstain over his belly that I had taken for dark sweat. ‘A good strike. Not fatal, but close to fatal. I’m draining away, but of course … I shan’t die ….’ He growled as he spoke, then. ‘Because only the Kinsman can kill me!’

  As he said the words so an animal look of rage came into his stare and he came at me in a blur of speed, his sword invisible against the fire. I felt it slice the air on each side of my head and a second later my own blade was struck from my hand. It spun across the clearing. I staggered back slightly and tried to duck below the fourth of Christian’s strokes, which cut horizontally towards my neck and stopped dead against the skin.

  I was shaking like a leaf, my lips slack, my mouth dry with shock.

  ‘So this is the great Kinsman,’ he roared, irony and anger tainting the words. ‘This is the warrior who came to kill his brother. Knees knocking, teeth chattering, a pathetic excuse for a soldier!’

  There was nothing useful to be said. The hot blade was gently cutting more deeply into my neck. Christian’s eyes seemed almost literally to blaze.

  ‘I think they’ll have to rewrite the legend,’ he murmured with a smile. ‘You’ve come a long way to be humiliated, Steve. A long way to end up a grinning, fly-blown head on his own sword.’

  In desperation I flung myself away from his blade, ducking down and more than half hoping for a miracle. I faced him again and was shocked at the death mask that was his face, his lips drawn back exposing white teeth that now glowed yellow. He swept his sword from side to side, a blur of speed and wind, as regular as a heartbeat. Each time the point passed by, the tip touched my eyelids, my nose, my lips. I backed steadily away. Christian stepped steadily after me, taunting me with his skill.

  All at once he tripped me with the sword, dealt me a stinging blow to the buttocks, then lifted me to my feet, the sharp edge below my chin. As before, in the garden, he pushed me back against a tree. As before, he had the better of me. As before, the scene was ringed by fire.

  And Christian was an old and weary man.

  ‘I don’t care about legends,’ he said quietly, and again looked at the roaring flames. The bright fire shone on the blood and sweat that caked his features. He turned back to me, speaking slowly, his face close to mine, his breath surprisingly sweet. ‘I’m not going to kill you … Kinsman. I’m beyond killing, now. I’m beyond everything.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Christian hesitated for a moment and then, to my surprise, released me and backed away. He walked a few paces towards the fire. I remained where I was, clutching the tree for support, but aware that my own sword was close by.

  With his back to me, stooping slightly as if in pain, he said, ‘Do you remember the boat, Steve? The Voyager?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  I was astonished. What a time to get nostalgic. But this was no mere soft memory. Christian turned back towards me and now he glowed with a new emotion: excitement. ‘Remember when we found it? The day with the old Aunt? That little ship came out of Ryhope Wood as good as new. Remember that, Steve?’

  ‘As good as new,’ I agreed. ‘And six weeks later.’

  ‘Six weeks,’ Christian said dreamily. ‘The old man knew. Or thought he did.’

  I pushed away from the tree and gingerly stepped towards my brother. ‘He referred to the distortion of time. In his diary. It was one of his first real insights.’

  Christian nodded. He had let his sword relax. The perspiration poured from him. He looked vacant, then in pain. He seemed almost to sway. Then his focus sharpened.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about our little Voyager,’ he said, and looked up and around. ‘There’s more to this realm than Robin Hood and the Twigling.’ His gaze fixed on me. ‘There’s more to legend than heroes. Do you know what’s beyond the fire? Do you know what’s through there?’ With great difficulty he used his sword to point behind him.

  ‘They call it Lavondyss,’ I said.

  He took a difficult step forward, one hand on his side, the other using his sword as a stick.

  ‘They can call it what they like,’ he said. ‘But it’s the Ice Age. The Ice Age that covered Britain more than ten thousand years ago!’

  ‘And beyond the Ice Age, the interglacial, I suppose. And then the Ice Age before that, and so on, back to the Dinosaurs …’

  Christian shook his head, contemplating me with deadly seriousness. ‘Just the Ice Age, Steve. Or so I’m told. After all –’ another grin – ‘Ryhope Wood is a very small wood.’

  ‘What’s your point, Chris?’

  ‘Beyond the fire is the Ice,’ he said. ‘And within the Ice … a secret place. I’ve heard stories about it, rumours. A beginning place … something to do with the Urscumug. And then, beyond the Ice there’s the fire again. Beyond the fire, the wildwood. And then England. Normal time. I’ve been thinking about the Voyager. Was it scarred and damaged as it sailed through the r
ealm? It must have been. It must have been here a lot longer than six weeks! But what happened to that damage? Maybe … maybe it fell away. Maybe as it came through the wood the realm took back the time it had imposed upon it. Do you see what I’m saying? You’ve been here, how long? Three weeks? Four? But outside, only a few days have passed, perhaps. The realm has imposed time upon you. But perhaps it takes back that time if you go through it in the right way.’

  ‘Eternal youth … ’ I said.

  ‘Not in the least!’ he exclaimed, as if frustrated by my failure to understand. ‘Regeneration. Compensation. I’m fourteen, fifteen years older than I would have been if I’d stayed at Oak Lodge. I think the realm will let me shed those years, and the scars, and the pain, and the anger … ’ He suddenly sounded as if he was imploring me. ‘I’ve got to try, Steve. There’s nothing left for me now.’

  ‘You’ve destroyed the realm,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the decay. We have to fight, Chris. You have to be killed.’

  For a moment he said nothing to that, then made a sound halfway between scorn and uncertainty.

  ‘Could you really kill me, Steve?’ he asked, with a quiet tone of menace in his voice.

  I made no answer. He was right, of course. I probably couldn’t. I could have done it in the heat of the moment, but watching this wounded, failing man, I knew I could probably not strike the blow.

  And yet …

  And yet so much depended on me, on my courage, on my resolve.

  I began to feel dizzy. The heat from the fire was exhausting, draining.

  My brother said, ‘In a way you have killed me. All I wanted was Guiwenneth. But I couldn’t have her. She loved you too much. It destroyed me. I’d looked for her for too many years. The pain of finding her was too great. I want to leave the realm, Steve. Let me go – ’

  Surprised by his words, I said, ‘I can’t stop you going.’

  ‘You’ll hunt me. I need peace. I need to find my own peace. I must know that you won’t be behind me.’