Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge

by J. P. Reedman

  Mordraed crawled onto the bank, shivering, staring at the spot where the corpse had vanished. The unfurling masks from the earlier rites bobbed around it like sinister guardians. Hot and cold shudders ran through him. He had done what he intended, what he knew he had to do. The old man would have destroyed him otherwise; he had always been an enemy. But his last words… a curse and a powerful one, born in blood.

  “But it will not come true!” Mordraed made the symbol to avert evil with his hand, though he knew it was too late for the words had been spoken. “By Bhel and the Everlasting Sky, I will be King!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE SPOILS OF AHN-UN

  Ardhu’s warband left the Crossroads of the World at the rising of the Sun. Horns blew mournfully and drums beaten, dull rumblings bouncing from the enclosures of the Palisades to Zhel’s hill and back. The Sun, to everyone’s surprise, showed its face after days of gloom, the rain-clouds rolling back from the East like great moving bruises staining the arch of the sky.

  It was a good omen. Ardhu sat astride his horse staring up at the brightness, letting the meagre warmth caress his face. The Sun-rays caught on the Breastplate of Heaven and Caladvolc’s gold decorated hilt and turned them to flame. He raised the Lightning Mace in salute to the glowing Face of Bhel and the company began to move, leaving the Palisades and heading uphill in a westerly direction.

  Mordraed stared over his shoulder as the warband moved off. He was white-visaged and twitchy, expecting at any moment to hear screams from the direction of the sacred spring. Perhaps he had not pinned the body down well enough or deep enough… maybe there was bloody residue along the waterline that the priestesses would notice.

  But no sound of discovery came, only the shrill shrieking of the wind as it whipped over the crest of the hill, past the hump of the chambered long barrow on its summit. Mordraed forced himself to look ahead and suddenly smiled grimly, realising the significance of this place. The tomb of the Ancestors… where Ardhu had broken the great taboo and mated with his own sister. Mordraed raised his hand to his forehead and saluted the Old Ones who had gathered around the illicit lovers that night and breathed upon them, ensuring that a spirit would enter Morigau’s womb to be reborn in flesh. Ensuring that he would be—a new powerful life come out of the Unworld of the ancient Dead.

  The huge blocking stone of the mound flashed by, stern and forbidding, and then the company was beyond the boundaries of Suilven and out into fields full of blowing grass and fleeting cloud-shadow. Mordraed clapped his heels into his horse’s flanks and galloped on ahead of the others, even outstripping Ardhu, although it was insulting and inappropriate for him to outride his chief.

  Ardhu frowned as he saw Mordraed race past, a blur of darkness, but decided to hold his peace. Why make trouble, just for the sake of reeling in one invigorated by the high spirits of youth? He had more on his mind that making unfriends with his wayward and trying bastard.

  He had the Imram to think of, his Quest. The journey to the West that would either save his kingdom … or destroy it.

  *****

  The two ships glided across a smooth and silvered sea, under a pale sun enfolded in thin cloud like wisps of a sky-goddess’s hair. Ardhu knelt in the prow of the foremost, that he had named Pridwen, pleased that the weather had been fair and the crossing easy—the sea between Ibherna and Prydn was often treacherous and cruel, swallowing the craft of even the most experienced sailors. He glanced over his shoulder, noting the sea-sick greenness of Gal’havad’s face and the almost rapt, excited expression on Mordraed’s. He felt uneasy and turned back into the spray.

  The lead ship ground ashore in a narrow estuary, its banks lined with drifts of wind-carved pale sand. Ardhu and his men leapt ashore and dragged the boat up onto dry land, then stood knee deep in the tide to take hold of the second boat and haul it in beside the first. When both boats were secured, the companions scanned their surroundings. They were at the mouth of an estuary filled with islets and sandy banks; a river as wide and bright as Abona coiled away into a smoky green distance. There were no signs of any habitation, just a few stark cairns on the nearby hills, their ruined portals gaping at the sky. Seabirds wheeled overhead, wings flashing in the pallid sunlight, their cries mournful as those of barrow-ghosts.

  Ardhu put his hand on the shoulder of Betu’or, one of his oldest companions, whose life he had spared in his manhood rites at Marthodunu. “Will you stay with the boats, my old friend?” and when he saw the warrior look downcast “someone must, Betu’or. We cannot risk that they are stolen or destroyed; if anything should happen to them, it is likely that we will never escape this island.”

  “I will stay,” said Betu’or, “although I would rather be at your side. I want to do more for your cause, Lord Ardhu, than sit on a beach with my feet in the sand.”

  “You will one day, Betu’or, the Knower of Graves,” said Ardhu softly, clasping the warrior’s arm fondly. “Your day will come when you can do more for me.”

  Leaving Betu’or to make camp on the strand, Ardhu led his small warband away from the water and into the hilly lands beyond. Hwalchmai trudged next to his kinsman, loosening the peace-bindings on his axe in case he should need to use it. “Do you have knowledge of where we must go? Although Ibherna is small compared to Prydn, yet I think we should be weary treading all of it!”

  Ardhu nodded. “I spoke for many days with the wise of Deroweth about this very matter. If our calculations are correct, we have come aground at In’var Kolptha, named for a great warrior who drowned here in the tides at the dawn of time. If we proceed inland, following the River of the White Cow past the Stones of Balytra, we should come to the place we seek, that our people name Spiralfort and the God’s Peak, and the men of Ibherna the House of the Good God and Young Sun. What reception we will have there, I cannot say… so we must be careful in all we do and say. The men of Ibherna, it is rumoured, are even fiercer than our own warriors and follow ancient ways that we now shun.”

  “Well, if they start aught with no good reason, they will have a taste of my axe,” grumbled Bohrs, stomping up beside Ardhu and smacking his unsheathed weapon against the palm of his hand.

  “I would have no fighting, unless it is absolutely necessary,” said Ardhu. “We do not come to fight.”

  Bohrs looked disappointed. “Just a few heads to crack, Ardhu… just to show them who is mightiest.”

  “No! Not unless there is no other choice!”

  “Well…” Bohrs scratched his beard,” I cannot see them giving up this Cup of Plenty or whatever it is, just like that. So I am sure there will be head-cracking to be done. And lots of fighting.”

  Walking at Ardhu’s side, Hwalchmai shaded his eyes with a hand. “Maybe you will get your chance soon, Bohrs. I see armed men on the rise up ahead.”

  The warband moved on, grouping together to create the impression of solidarity. On higher ground in the distance stood three standing stones, weirdly whittled by the wind, the tallest aligned with a rocky island out at sea which faced the rising Solstice Sun in Winter. Between these gnarled pillars, dwarfed by their lofty height, stood a group of warriors, not as many as Ardhu’s band, but fierce of visage and strange and magnificent in manner of dress.

  Ardhu was the richest chief in all Prydn, but these men dripped gold as if it were no more precious than clay beads. Huge crescent collars gleamed like Moons around their necks, and twisted, spiralling armbands shone on tattooed arms. Cloak fasteners with terminals the size of a man’s fist glowed in the sunlight. Gold coils hung from earlobes, and dark and fire-hued tresses were bound with scores of golden rings. It was no surprise that they were wealthy though, even those who were not chiefs—Ibherna’s mines exported massive amounts of copper to the mainland coasts all the way to sun-soaked Ibher, and gold was traded as far away as the Middle-lands between the Rivers Rhin and Rhon, and even to the farthest North near the Bheltis Sea.

  Ardhu approached the warriors cautiously, holding out his empty hands to
show that he brought no threat. He knew a little of the tongue of Ibherna, from Fynavir who was daughter of the red Queen Mevva, who still lived, although now a very great age, in vast holdings further North. Not that the language was too difficult to comprehend if spoken slowly; the Tin-men had colonised Ibherna as well as Prydn and brought with them what became the language of trade. Once established, this tongue swiftly became the common speech, with older tongues falling aside and vanishing in its wake.

  One of the men stepped forward; obviously a leader or shaman. He had a face much beaten by the sun, with rheumy blue eyes bright against the leather of his wrinkled skin. A huge red eye was drawn in ochre on his forehead, and on the end of his staff perched a skull that was also daubed with the same eye. He wore a bell-shaped tunic, with zigzag patterns threaded with fine hairs of bronze crossing it many times.

  “I am Kichol, priest of Bal’ahr, he who is the Eye of the Dying Winter Sun,” he announced. “Who are you who come unbidden to Ibherna, bearing weapons of war?”

  “We carry our weapons because we are men and warriors,” replied Ardhu. “Not because we choose to offer battle to the brave and noble folk of our kindred-isle. We come to visit the sacred sanctuary on the River of the White Cow, where it is said the God sleeps in his mound with white swans circling.”

  “The road to that place lies hither.” The shaman of the Red Eye of Bal’ahr pointed with his staff toward the river. “Not just to the Home of the Good God, House of the Sun, but also to Dubad, The Hill of Darkness and Cnobga, mound of Bui the Hag. But there is a toll for foreigners who use the old way to the Palaces of the Ancestors.”

  “And what is this toll?” said Ardhu uneasily. He mistrusted this man, with his silent comrades who had neither smiled nor spoken, but stood still as the stones behind them, glittering in their masses of gold.

  “You must leave one of your companions to be given to Bal’ahr with the turning of the tide,” Kichol replied, almost hungrily. “When the sun rises he will be bled into the waters. It will be an honourable death.”

  Ardhu’s face darkened with anger. “What you ask can never be, old man. I do not give up my sworn warriors lightly, and never to strange gods!”

  “Then you shall not pass my lands!” Kichol struck the butt of his staff against the ground and the warriors beside him drew copper blades from their belts. At the same time a dozen other men sprang up from behind rises and bushes. Men with bows, men with blow-pipes, men with spears and gleaming daggers.

  “I knew they would prove false! They wanted this from the beginning, I could see it in their eyes!” roared Bohrs and he flung himself toward the Shaman of the Red Eye with all the fury of a charging boar, his axe swinging in his hand.

  Kichol’s warriors loosed blood curdling war-cries and circled around Ardhu’s band, spitting and cursing at them, making magical signs against them as if they were demons. But it was these servants of Bal’ahr who resembled demons; these warriors with the lurid red eye of their fierce and ancient solar god daubed upon their foreheads and the skulls of small birds and animals plaited into lime-caked hair—crows, eagles, voles and mice—all making a macabre tinkling as they moved.

  One leapt directly in front of the warband, defiant, hungry for engagement, a red whorl of paint bleeding on his bare chest, a dagger in one upraised hand and a blow-pipe in the other.

  “Take him down!” yelled Ardhu as the man put the reed pipe to his lips and glanced about him seeking a victim. Bohrs was standing on the warrior’s right; the man shifted in his direction and filled his lungs with air.

  Hwalchmai shouted out and hurled himself at the warrior with the blow-pipe, stabbing his flank with his rapier and ripping upwards toward the ribcage. The man staggered and dropped his own knife under the onslaught, but kept a tight grip on his blow-pipe. Shoving Hwalchmai away from him, he blew hard upon the carved tube, showering the men of Ardhu’s warband with deadly spikes like so many thorns...

  Mordraed spat a curse and dived into a nearby bush, dragging Gal’havad with him; he had used the blow-pipe to hunt birds for sport as a boy and guessed the tips were poisoned. Ardhu flung up Wyngurthachar and the spikes struck harmlessly against the bronze surface of Face of Evening.

  Not all were so lucky. Agravaen was struck, a dart protruding from his cheek. He roared in fear and anger, swatting at his face. Staggering, he thudded toward his assailant and smote his head with a dozen frenzied blows of his war-hammer, spilling the man’s brains on the ground before collapsing, hands pressed over his swelling flesh.

  Several other members of the warband likewise fell, rolling in spasms on the ground, froth bubbling on their lips as poison seeped into their blood. Next to Ardhu, Glu Mightygrasp went down with a thud, gurgling as his throat constricted, and a flying spear went into him, pinning him to the earth and finishing him. Arrows whined, killing Anwas and Ellidur outright, going right through their shields of oak and leather, and giving Bal-ahn a scraping wound to the shoulder. The arrowfire was returned by Mordraed and Gal’havad from their position in the bushes. Their lower angle helped them as they fired upwards with lightning speed, their hands a sweaty blur, their white fletched arrows arcing toward the enemy on the rise. Screams rent the air and several of Kichol’s warriors tumbled down the rise—eyes and throats and hearts pierced by the deadly barbs of the arrows of Ardhu’s two sons.

  More warriors arrived, though, running pell-mell from the tangle of birch, elm and alder that grew along the waterway, and they charged toward the Stone Lord’s warband with almost crazed abandon. Ardhu had Caladvolc out and slashed around him, fighting his way toward the Shaman of the Red Eye, who was screaming and dancing and chanting in frenzy, inciting his men to slaughter, calling down the wrath of spirits and gods on the strangers who had set foot upon the blessed island without leave. A warrior leapt out at Ardhu, wielding two long knives of Ibero bronze; Ardhu flung up Wyngurthachar on his left arm and smashed it into the man’s jaw, shattering it until it hung at a strange disjointed angle before cleaving his skull with Caladvolc and kicking the body away.

  “I will kill them all!” Ardhu shouted at Kichol, holding up his dripping blade as proof. “Call them off or they all die this day and your bloody god will have his red tribute!”

  Kichol halted for a moment, and Ardhu, drawing ever nearer, could now see his eyes, blood shot and wild. There was fear in them. Adrenaline shot through Ardhu, the excitement of the hunt, the kill, the anger of being attacked so needlessly. Casting aside Wyngurthachar with reckless abandon so that he could use weapons in both hands, he raced towards his opponent. The shaman’s remaining men saw the shield fall, and rushed in toward Ardhu’s unprotected left side, but Mordraed rose to his knees, all darkness and serpent-grace, and fired a stream of arrows that felled many. Sprawled in the grass at his side, Gal’havad had run out of arrows but grabbed a miscast spear and flung it with all his strength at the bare legs of the opposing warriors, impaling one and tripping others, who went down shrieking like demons from the deepest pits of Ahn-un.

  Ardhu had almost reached Kichol. He still held Caladvolc in his right hand, but now in his left he held the Lightning Mace, symbol of his authority as Lord of the Great Trilithon. With a cry he brought the mace down on his opponent’s skull staff, splitting the pate of the death’s head in twain in one motion, breaking the other man’s symbol of power with his own.

  Kichol fell back, recoiling in terror, but Ardhu launched into him, battering him with many blows from the huge polished fossil head of the mace. One blow struck the man’s brow where the bloody Eye of Bal’ahr was painted and blood spurted out, streaking Ardhu’s tunic and face like war-paint. The priest of the God of the Winter Sun crashed to his knees, and as his head lolled forward, Ardhu brought down Caladvolc with as great a force as he could muster, shearing the head of his enemy from his shoulders. The body fell back, headless, against one of the three tall pillars crowning the slope. Rooks and ravens began to wheel overhead, cawing and cackling as they awaited their me
al.

  In the distance there came the yammer of hounds, eerie howls that grew in intensity. Someone else was coming.

  Ardhu whirled away from Kichol’s corpse and snatched Wyngurthachar from the ground. “Run!” he shouted to his men. “More of our foes are on the way… and they have brought beasts to track us. Leave the dead; we can do no more for them!”

  “And the wounded?” Ba-lin shouted, staunching the bleeding flesh-wound that scored his twin brother’s shoulder.

  “If they can run with us, bring them… if not, drag them if you have the strength. But if their injuries are too great…” Ardhu closed his mouth with a snap, his eyes grown hard and steely. All knew what he meant.

  Bohrs’s big, rough face creased up and he began to weep—he who was as hard as the sarsens of Khor Ghor. “I will do the deed, Stone Lord.”

  “No, I will,” said Ardhu grimly, drawing Carnwennan, his white-hilted dagger, from its sheath against his lower leg. “Turn away, all of you.”

  Mordraed and Gal’havad scrambled over to Agravaen who lay thrashing on the bloodied ground. A purple stain smeared his cheek; his eyes were glazed, unseeing. With a grunt of exertion, Mordraed yanked him up and slung him over his shoulders. He staggered under the dead weight; Agravaen was a good hand taller than him and heavily built.

  “I will help you!” cried Gal’havad, rushing to his side.

  Mordraed scowled at him. “Help me? Why should you help me! Don’t get in my way, boy!”

  “I want to help! He is my kinsman too!” Gal’havad grasped Agravaen’s dangling legs, taking some of his weight. “Let’s run. I can hear the dogs getting closer.”

  The two youths staggered down to the riverside, plunging through the marshy pools that rimed the overgrown banks. The remaining warriors of the warband raced at their heels, followed in the distance by Ardhu, ashen-faced, his hands crimson from his last, lethal gift to those who had served him.