Then, too, the Dalriads were all charioteers. It was four years since Phaedrus had handled a chariot, and the first time that he took out Gallgoid’s, he found with disgust that in growing used to the short sword and heavy circus shield his hands had lost much of their old cunning. At least he was thankful that the master who had made him a charioteer before he sold him into the arena had driven a British-built chariot, and not one of the graceful scallop-shells that the Romans called by that name. At least he knew the kind of vehicle he was driving, with its greater weight and different balance, the wider set wheels for stability on a rough hill-side, its open front that gave one a sense of being almost on top of the flying ponies. And little by little, the thing came back to him, in the way of old skills that are seldom quite lost, but only stored deeply away.
By the end of a month he and Gallgoid had grown so used to each other’s ways that one day, up in the hills above the Loch of Swans, reining in from a sweeping gallop, Gallgoid said to him, ‘You’ll do! Didn’t I be telling you you’d make a driver one day, when you stood no taller than a wolf-hound’s shoulder—’ and he checked, and they looked at each other and laughed, though the laughter was awkward in their throats.
Four days before the Midwinter Fires, they set out from the Cave of the Hunter, Phaedrus in a rough plaid with his hair gathered up into his old leather cap, turning for the last time to salute the great horned figure with something of the same grim flourish with which he had been used to salute the Altar of Vengeance before going into the arena, and headed south for the Royal Dun.
It was already dusk when they mounted the waiting ponies in the sheltered hollow inland of the sea-ridge, but there was a young moon sailing behind the hurrying storm-clouds when they came riding like a skein of ghosts past the Serpent’s Mound at the foot of the Loch of Swans, and by the time the full dark closed down, Phaedrus reckoned that they were the best part of ten Roman miles on their way. They found cold shelter for themselves and the ponies for what was left of the night, among the woods of a steep-sided glen; and pushed on again at first light, across ridges where the thin birch woods grew leaning all one way from the western wind, round the heads of grey sea-lochs, where many islands cut the water with yeasty froth and the swirl of tide races. Towards evening, with the wind dying down, they were following a narrow track that snaked along the seaward slopes of the hills, hazel woods bare and black with winter rising sheer on the left hand – dropping like a stone into the broad firth on their right; and at dusk, came down at last into the fringes of a sodden marsh country of reed beds and sear yellow grass and saltings that, in the failing light, seemed sinking away into the sea while one watched. And there, in what shelter a tangle of furze could give them, they settled down to wait for darkness. In all that way they had seen no one save a few herdsmen in the distance, and once a hunting band of the little Dark People jogging along beside the track. But it was well to run as little risk as possible of being seen on the next stage; better that no stray onlookers should know of any link between the little knot of Sun People coming down from the north, and the larger band heading from the south next day. Besides, they must wait for the tide.
It was a long wait while darkness came; a black darkness, for tonight the moon was almost hidden; and then gradually a strange sound stole into the air, a distant, wet roaring that was yet vibrant as a struck harp or a human voice, and Phaedrus, shifting one chilled and soaking knee from the ground, asked under his breath, ‘What is that?’
‘That roaring? That is the Old Woman Who Eats Ships. She always calls when the tide is on the turn.’
‘And who – what is this Old Woman?’
‘The whirlpool – out yonder where the waters dash between two islands. A coracle can pass safely at slack water, but when the tide turns, that is another matter. That is why they say that the Old Woman calls.’
‘The sound of death is in her calling,’ Phaedrus said.
‘She’s far out of your sea-road.’
Phaedrus laughed softly. ‘An old woman who used to tell fortunes outside the circus gates once told me that I should not die until I held out my own hands to death, so assuredly I am safe tonight, for I’ve no wish to go answering the call of the Old Woman Who Eats Ships.’
Gallgoid turned his head quickly to look at him in the dark, as though he had said something startling. But he only said, ‘I’ve known a two-man coracle caught in the pull and escape, all the same. The seamen of these coasts are seamen and no mere paddlers about in pond-water.’ And then, ‘Come, it is time that we were on our way.’
Leaving the ponies and the rest of the band behind them, they went on alone, far out into the maze of sour salting and little winding waterways and banks of blown dune-sand. Stranded on the tide line in the shelter of a sandy spur, a two-man coracle lay tipped sideways like an abandoned cooking-pot, and to Phaedrus’s landsman’s eyes not much larger, and the black shadow of a man rose from beside it, and stood waiting.
He and Gallgoid exchanged a low mutter of greetings and then as the man picked up his small craft and heaved it into the water, Gallgoid spoke quickly to Phaedrus in parting. ‘Now listen, for there is always a chance of betrayal. We have seen no one likely to be a danger to us on the trail south, but that is not to say for sure, that no such one has seen us. Gault may not come himself to meet you on the far side. If you do not know the man you find there, say to him that the flower of four petals is opening in the woods. If he replies that there is promise of an early spring, for the horse-herds are growing restless, you will know that he is to be trusted.’
‘And if not?’
‘You have your dagger,’ Gallgoid said meaningly. ‘Struan the boatman will wait for you a spear’s throw off shore, until he knows that all is well.’
‘Sa. Then if I do not see you again tonight, I will be looking for you tomorrow in Dun Monaidh.’
The boatman was squatting in the stem of the coracle now, and had got out the rowing-pole. ‘As I will be looking for you,’ Gallgoid said. ‘Steady! Don’t rock her. It is easy to see that you have long been among inland folk!’
Phaedrus, splashing through the icy shallows, got himself gingerly over the side of the coracle without shipping more water than, say, a hound would have done, and settled into the bottom of the bowl-shaped craft. He had never been in any kind of boat in his life before, and with an eye on the yeasty water beyond the sand bar, blurring into the dark, he wished that he were a better swimmer.
The boatman grunted something, and pushed off with the rowing-pole, and they were heading out across the mouth of the broad sea-loch that ran inland to lose itself somewhere away eastward in the marshes and the peat moss below Dun Monaidh. The sea took the small, crazy shell of stretched skins and wickerwork as she cleared the sandspit, and she began to dance. Phaedrus would have felt deadly sick, but that he was too numbed with cold to feel anything; it was bitterly cold, and the spindrift burned like white fire on the skin. But crouching there with his cloak huddled to his ears, feeling the little craft lift like a gull to each wave, and noting the skill with which the boatman handled her, he found after a while that he was beginning to enjoy himself. The man never spoke to his passenger, but had begun to sing to himself softly and deeply, in time to his rowing: to himself, or maybe to the coracle, as men will sing and shout and croon to a horse for encouragement and companionship. The crossing, which would have been only a mile or so direct, was made much longer by the run of the sea, and the unseen moon was down, leaving the world, that had been dark enough before, black as a wolf’s belly, when at last the sea gentled and they grounded lightly among more rushes and coarse grass and sand-dunes on the farther shore.
Phaedrus scrambled out, landing knee-deep in the shallows. The lightened coracle bounced high at the bows, and instantly, still crooning to himself, the boatman backed off. A figure uncoiled from among the broom scrub, a darkness on darkness. There was no possibility of seeing whether it was one that he knew or not. Phaedrus spoke softly, with hi
s hand ready on his dagger.
‘The flower of four petals is opening in the woods.’
The voice of one of Gault’s household warriors said as softly, ‘You wouldn’t think it now, but there’s promise of an early spring. Already the horse-herds are growing restless.’
‘Sa, I have no need of my dagger. That is good,’ Phaedrus said.
‘That is most certainly good!’ replied the voice with a quiver of laughter. The man’s shadow turned seaward again, and gave the whistling call of a dunlin, three times repeated. ‘That will tell Struan that all is well.’
A few moments after, as they turned inland, the man asked, ‘Do you remember what he was singing?’
‘How should I? I – I have forgotten our songs in the past seven years – we sang other songs after supper in the Gladiators’ School.’
The other glanced round at him, surprised, but not suspicious. ‘It was the King’s Rowing-song that keeps time for the oars when the King goes seafaring. I’d not think it was ever sung in a two-man coracle before, but he must have been glad to be raising it again.’
‘What about the Queen’s seafaring?’
‘It is a song of the Men’s Side; even Liadhan would be knowing that.’
Again there was that faint note of surprise; and Phaedrus thought, ‘Typhon! I must not be making that kind of mistake too often!’
They walked in silence after that, cross country through birch and heather and bilberry scrub that was ill-going in the dark, and maybe an hour later, hit the old trade road from the south and the mainland crossing. And a short way down it, came upon a small rath or a farmstead within its ring stockade, with a saffron flicker of fire-light shining from an open doorway, and three or four chariots squatting with yokepoles cocked up against the house-place wall.
Someone was waiting to draw aside the dead thorn-bush that stopped the gateway; somebody quieted the baying hounds. Coming in out of the cold and dark of the midwinter night, the blast of fire-light and warmth, the smell of warm animal skins and broiling meat, and the crowding of men in the small, rough hall met them like a buffet. There must have been a score of men there beside the lord of the house and his sons. Gault looked up from the pattern he was tracing among the hearth ashes with a bit of charred stick. ‘So, you come at last. Now we can shut the night out and fill our bellies.’
One of the sons rose and went to slam the heavy timbered door, and the lord of the house rose without a word, and came and dropped to one knee before Phaedrus and took his hands and held them to his forehead as the Chieftains had done in the Cave of the Hunter. His front hair, like that of every man in the house-place, hung in slim braids on either side of his face.
Next morning they slept late – no knowing when they might sleep again – and spent a good while in burnishing their gear and the bronze horse ornaments and whetting their short dirks to a final keenness. And when, well past noon, they headed north again by the old trade road, Gault had a new charioteer.
It was a fine chariot that Phaedrus found himself driving, not so fine to look at as that of the master who had sold him into the arena, for it lacked all ornament that could add a feather’s weight, but so finely balanced that one scarcely realized that it was heavier than Gallgoid’s, and like many British chariots, it was nowhere pinned or dowelled but lashed together with thongs of well-stretched leather, so that the whole structure was lithe and whippy, almost vicious underfoot, giving to every rut in the trackway, every hummock and hole and furze root when a stretch of track washed out by the winter rains turned them aside into the heather, like a living thing, a vixenish mare that one loves for her valour.
Phaedrus, shifting his weight on wide-planted feet, to trim the chariot on the slope of a hill shoulder, felt the vibrating of the woven leather floor under him, felt the proud and willing response of the team flowing back to him through the reins that were like some living filament between them, hearing the wheel-brush through the heather, and the axle-whine, and the softened hoof-beats, and the shouts of the other charioteers behind him, began to whistle softly through his teeth.
He heard a brusque laugh beside him, where Gault sat on the sealskin cushion of the Warrior’s Seat. ‘It begins to be good.’
‘It begins to be good,’ Phaedrus said, with only half his mind, steadying the team down once more to the track ahead. The countryside that had seemed so empty yesterday, was suddenly alive with riders and chariots; even – well clear of the trails – little bands of the Dark People loping along, with paint on their arms and faces, and their full ritual finery of dyed wildcat skins and necklaces of animals’ teeth, and here and there a girl with green woodpecker feathers in her hair. And the track from the south, which had been bad enough before, was rapidly sinking into a quagmire under the passing feet and hooves and chariot wheels, as Earra-Ghyl gathered in to the Royal Dun and the Midwinter Fires and the seven-year King-Slaying and King-Making.
The grey light of the winter’s day was fading into slate colour when they came down from the low grazing hills where the horse-herds ran loose even in the coldest weather, into the sodden flatness of Mhoin Mhor, the Great Moss, and westward a faint, chill mist that had been kept at bay by the wind, now that the wind had dropped was creeping in over the marshes from the loch of last night’s crossing. Northward, the hills rose again, and everywhere was the gleam of water, sky-reflecting pools like tarnished silver bucklers, and winding burnlets that wandered down from the hills to join the broad loop of the river that flowed out through the Mhoin Mhor to the sea. And on the nearside of the river, not much more than a mile away, stood Dun Monaidh, on its fortress hill that rose abrupt and isolated out of the waste wet mosses.
At that distance, and in the fading light, Phaedrus could not make out much more than the crown of ramparts, and a haze of smoke that hung low over the hill-top. But as they drew nearer, the ramparts stood up high, timber-faced, pale with lime-daub against the tawny winter turf; and the faint gleam of torches, strongly yellow as wild wallflowers in the way of torches at first twilight, began to prick out here and there, and the blurred freckling of things no larger than ants along the foot of the slope became chariot ponies grazing, for the most part two by two as they had been loosed from under the yoke, in the narrow infields between fortress hill and the marsh. To judge by the number of teams, especially remembering that the horses of the Chiefs and Captains would be stabled above in the Dun, a huge company must be gathered already, for on the track that Gault and his party followed, and dim-seen on the track from the north, and on foot by the unseen paths of the marsh, men were still drawing in from the farmost ends of the tribal hunting-runs, to Dun Monaidh.
Their own trail ran on into the marsh, paved with logs over a bed of brushwood, winding to follow the firmest ground, to the foot of the fortress hill, giving better travelling than the hill tracks had done – so long as one did not overrun the side.
‘Let them feel the goad, you’re not driving a pack-train now,’ Gault said. But Phaedrus had not waited for the words. If it had not been in his nature in the first place, the circus would have taught him the importance of making a good entrance, and on this entrance, so very much might depend. For afterwards, men would remember, and say to each other, ‘That was the first that we saw of Midir at his home-coming.’
He tickled up the flanks of the team with the goad that he had scarcely used before – he had never been one to drive on the goad – shouting to them, ‘Ya-a-ya! Hi-a-hup! Come up now. Hutt – Hutt – Hutt!’ And the ponies, snorting from the sting, sprang forward with stretched neck and laid back ears into a full gallop. The wind of their going ripped by, filling his dark plaid, the chariot leaped like a demon underfoot, its axles screeching, and the rest of the little band, riders and chariots, came drumming along behind.
There was another chariot on the track ahead of him, and he misliked the sight. It was not for the Prince Midir to enter the Dun Monaidh at the tail of another chariot. He passed it going like an arrow, with an inch to spar
e between hubs and his off wheel skimming the drop to the marsh; and when he was back in the centre of the track again, Gault, who had not moved or spoken, said simply, ‘It is a fine thing to make a hero’s entrance, but I’ll be reminding you that other lives hang on yours – and even on mine.’
‘It was not right that the Prince Midir should come home with his mouth full of another team’s mud. There was no risk; you have good horses.’
The black-browed warrior seemed on the point of choking. ‘And you know how to handle them. Nevertheless, if you fail as a king, do not you be coming to me, to be my charioteer!’
‘If I fail as King, I’ll have no need to come to anybody for anything,’ Phaedrus said, his eyes unswerving on the track that had begun to rise as they reached the first slopes of the fortress hill. He eased the team from their flying gallop, steadying them as the slope steepened. The track turned sharply back on itself where a small rocky stream came leaping down to join its lowest stretch, and yoke-pole and axles groaned as he gentled the team round it and urged them forward again. Not a good place to attack, Phaedrus thought, no reasonable way up, seemingly, save for this one steep hill-side gully that looked as though it would be as much torrent as track, after heavy rain, and which, moreover, was angled so that in the last stretch, the unguarded right side of any man making for the gate must be open to the spears of the defenders. He could see now why Gault and the rest of the Council had been so decided that the rising must have its beginning within the ramparts.
The huge timber-framed gateway was close before him. He caught the dark glint of iron and bronze, saw the dappled red and white of the bull’s-hide bucklers where the warriors and hunters thronged the turf ramparts to watch the late-comers in. The rest of the band behind him, the chariot that he had overtaken still caught among them, he drummed across the ditch causeway. The great carved gate timbers lurched past on either side, the iron tyres howled on the broad lintel stones, the sparks flying from under them as from blade on anvil. He swept through into the broad outer court of the Royal Dun, and brought the team to a plunging halt before the tall, grey Pillar Stone of the Horse Lord.
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