Dru’s mouth worked; he licked his salt-cracked lips. “It… it… is Mordraed, Stone Lord, your kinsman of Ynys Yrch.”
A chill rippled up Ardhu’s spine, despite the balminess of the evening. “What of him? Speak!”
Dru bowed his head; tears stood in his eyes. He blinked them away. “He has… raised men against you and burned Deroweth to the ground. I saw him burn the High Priest alive; I survived only by fleeing like a coward. I made for the coast and heard more news while hiding there; the land is ablaze with it. Mordraed has desecrated the stones of Khor Ghor, toppling the Door into Winter… and he has also taken the dun of Kham-El-Ard as his own. When I heard those tidings, I knew I had to fare across the Narrow Sea to find you.”
“And Fynavir… the Queen?” An’kelet leaned forward, a dangerous light in his eyes. “What news of her?”
Dru choked and coughed, staring at his feet. “Men say Mordraed swore to have her as his own Queen, because she is the White Woman. But it did not come to pass. She is gone.”
“Gone?” There was a dangerous note in An’kelet’s voice.
Dru shrugged. “That is what is whispered. None know where. Pray to the spirits she is safe in hiding.”
Ardhu glanced at An’kelet, his look agonised. “I have been such a fool,” he said hoarsely. “I came to Ar-morah seeking your death… and in my stupid need for vengeance, I left my realm open for evil to take hold. And now the worst has happened. Mordraed! I should have guessed!”
An’kelet was white as bone beneath his golden tan but he managed a tight-lipped smile. “Maybe it was meant to be, Ardhu. Maybe if you had stayed in Prydn he would have come at you at night, stabbed you while you slept. Maybe the Ancestors guided you here not for war that would solve nothing but for us to reconcile so that we can stand together against Mordraed.” Reaching out he clasped Ardhu’s hand in a tight, firm grip. “We will stand as brothers again, fighting side by side… and we will surely win.”
“But your weapons… I took them from you, destroyed them. The Balugaisa…”
An’kelet shook his head. “Do not fret over their loss. More have been made for me by my people. Now…” He leapt to his feet, tall and imposing as a god under the swaying trees. “I must summon the tribes of Ar-morah to join me if they will. Your band is sadly depleted… but I will fill the ranks of your host from the Land of the Sea.” Brow furrowed in concentration, he began to pace. “We have some ships, in which we sail the coasts of the West from here to Ibero, trading tin… and you have a few boats too—but not enough for our purposes. I will sacrifice some of the trees of Bro-khelian to build more, and will have the best wood-carvers employed upon this task. But preparations will take time, even if it is done in all haste and orders given today. Then we must look for the right auguries, divined in the entrails of a bull slain upon the strand, and for the turning of the tide.”
Ardhu bowed his head, resigned, through frustration shone in his eyes. “Although time is doubtless against us, there is no choice in the matter unless we learn how to fly across the Narrow Sea like the gulls. I praise the Ancestors that you are here to help, An’kelet of Ar-morah, my brother in all things, lost to me through our mutual folly and blindness but now returned to me and to my cause.”
Ardhu’s warband began to shout and cheer, beating the hafts of their axes against the earth. “Ardhu! Pendraec!” they chanted over and over and then “An’kelet!” until the magic forest of Bro-khelian rang with the sound, echoing from crystalline spring to mossy dolmen, from solitary standing stone to spreading trees with their leaves aflutter in the nightwind.
Ardhu stood amongst his men with Caladvolc unsheathed and held up to the black vault of the sky, and An’kelet joined him with a new spear whose head burned like fire, raising the weapon until its tip joined with the blade of Hard-Cleft, and both knew in that moment that this was the hour that men must stand together or all they worked for would be lost, and that nothing must ever come between them again lest the Prydn they had striven for fell forever into decay and darkness.
*****
The Feast of the Rage of Trogran had just ended and the earth of Prydn baked in the hot sun. The constant drenching rains that had afflicted the country for so long had ceased, but this was not the normal heat of summer. It was humid warmth, thick and sticky; the wind hot and burning to the eyes and throat of man and beast. The skies were not clear summer-blue but massed with storm-clouds that unleashed their fury every evening, then rolled back to brood on the edges of the horizon like strange, megalithic formations of the heavens. The Sun was a dim blob amid the frowning, twisting trilithons of the clouds, a bleeding and baleful eye that cast lurid light over the Great Plain with both rising and setting.
Mordraed shifted uneasily under the gaze of that dwindling red eye as he stood upon the ramparts of Kham-El-Ard. Crackles of lightning began over Magic and Harrow Hill and a low wind moaned in the trees down by the great river. Mordraed shivered, despite the stormy heat; he felt troubled and alone. Bron Trogran was a celebration of fertility, when the crops were gathered in and thanks given to the Ancestors for the bounty of the earth… but the time it took place was also the month of death, when, in the days of Samothos the first Tin-Lord, the Corn-King would die with the last cut sheaf, a gift to the Corn-Woman whose body incubated the wheat. He did not know why this old rite, now reduced to a play of men and women in masks, wielding sickles that cut only sheaves and not flesh, bothered him so, for it was always the Old King who would fall, be taken back into the earth, his blood and bones feeding the crops for seven Sun-Turnings, while a young newcomer took his place to restore the Land.
The young Challenger never failed, never died…
Nor would Mordraed fail…
Another shudder gripped him and, despite the heat of the day, he felt cold to the bone. At the start of Bron Trogran, Nin-Aeifa the Priestess of the Lake, had left her watery dwellings and made the journey to Kham-El-Ard. Men had stopped and stared and prostrated themselves on the ground, for despite her great age, she was still very fearsome… painted blue and white, her kirtle shining like fish scales, her hair matted with lime and decorated with shells. She had walked into the dun, bold as a she-wolf, and stood before Mordraed’s seat, unafraid, although a naked axe-blade lay across his knee. “I have a message for you from the High Priestess of Suilven and the Nine Ladies of the Lake,” she had intoned, fixing him with her terrible single blind eye, milky and blue, that saw into the Otherworld as well as the hearts of men. “News has reached Suilven and Glas-duin of the murder of the priests of Deroweth and the slighting of Khor Ghor. These deaths, these desecrations, are abhorrent to us and to the Spirits. Neither you nor any of your people may attend—or celebrate—the Feast of Bron Trogran, lest your sins blight the earth and the crops and anger the Ancestors. This Ban, spoken at the Full Moon, in the Great Cove of Suilven, will be for your lifetime and three men’s lifetimes beyond. So it shall be.” She then spat at his feet, and slammed her wizened hawthorn staff on the ground three times to seal the ban.
“I care not,” he had snapped back, half minded to kill the loathsome woman and throw her body into the pig-pens where the perennially hungry swine would devour her stringy frame to the bone.
But he had held back from touching her, as her horrid, damaged eye fixed on him again, unblinking like the eye of a corpse. “Where lie the bones of wise Merlin?” she breathed, so quietly that only he could hear, and he realised that she, half in trance-state, exhaled damning words torn from some unknown realm. “He who had the triple Death that was forbidden to him. Maybe nowhere, maybe everywhere—in the air that surrounds you, the earth below your feet, in the flame that burns, in the water where he was drowned…”
Mordraed had leapt from his seat in alarm at these last words. She knew! Nin-Aeifa and the priestesses of Suilven knew he had killed the Merlin! “Men!” he had shouted, in frenzy “Get this creature from my sight before I kill her with my own hands and feed her to the pigs!”
But Nin-Aeifa had cast him a contemptuous glare and turned and walked proudly away of her own accord, and none, even Mordraed, had been brave enough to touch her as she descended the hill of Kham-El-Ard and headed for the Old Henge and the river. “Remember, Mordraed of Ynys Yrch,” she had called back over her shoulder. “Three lifetimes beyond your own… though I daresay your own life will be a short one. I do not foresee your days being long and fruitful, for darkness is within you.”
Mordraed rubbed his arms at the memory and scowled into the thunderous late afternoon. She had cursed him… or maybe it was just empty words meant to frighten, to take the resolve from his sword-arm. He did not believe in curses, at least when the fires were bright and weapons close to hand. What was wrong with these fools, why were they so against him? Yes, perhaps he had been harsh in his punishment of the priests of Khor Ghor, but they were corrupt, pawns of Ardhu—surely the Priestesses, who were deemed to be wise, could see that the Priests had lost their way? Surely they were aware that the realm was falling into ruin because Ardhu was old, weak, unfit… no true king.
He began to pace, high on the rampart, walking with the ill-controlled tension of a caged beast. He had hardly slept… since she had died, impaled on his dagger. Hardly slept as he waited for news to come from the South. News of Ardhu… was he dead in Ar-morah, fighting An’kelet for lost honour, or was he on his way back to Prydn with anger and vengeance in his heart?
Down by the Abona he caught a slight movement in the trees and saw several of his men running to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. His heart began to hammer against his ribs as he saw a dishevelled rider loom out of the murk, half-falling from his horse in exhaustion. He could see the man gesticulating wildly as the warriors surrounded him and he heard raised voices, though he could not make out the words.
A second later one of the men broke away from the horseman, and ran haphazardly toward the gate. As he approached, legs pumping, Mordraed could see the scaly pallor of his face, the terror in his eyes.
He knew what news he would bring.
Ardhu, his father and his bitter enemy, was on his way back to Kham-El-Ard.
*****
Mordraed gathered his bow and strapped on his quiver of arrows. He lifted his new dagger, which the smith had forged for him after he broke his rapier in Morigau’s body, examining it for balance and sharpness. It was good… he had asked that it be made longer and broader than was the fashion; now it looked almost a twin of Ardhu’s Caladvolc the Hard-Cleft.
He called it King-killer, in hope.
All around him the people of Kham-El-Ard milled; the air was crackling with fear, with tension. Women wept outside their huts; even though they were Ardhu’s people they feared they would be caught between the two opposing forces and killed by either blade or fire. Even Mordraed’s own sworn men looked fearful, their bravado leaving them as they realised they would truly have to face the wrath of the Stone Lord, wielder of Caladvolc, and his sworn companions, who had years of battle experience and an innate discipline and purpose that they lacked.
Khyloq came running, her flame-hued mane a tangle, and flung her arms around Mordraed’s waist. “I hear the cursed one comes! Kill him, my dark Lord. Let me be set up as a true queen of Prydn, with none left to question my right!”
“Get off me!” Mordraed grabbed her wrists and pushed her away from him. “I do not have time to think of you and your wants…” Yet as he looked at her, with her swelling belly and her eyes full of both desire and fear, he suddenly thought, She must go from here… If the day goes wrong, anything could happen. Ardhu would not kill a woman, but I do not trust the motives of my own men… And my brothers, would any spare them?
“Look…” His voice was kinder and his hands slid to her shoulders, squeezing gently. “I am going to send you from here, and I want you to take Ga’haris and Gharith with you. It is not safe in Kham-El-Ard for a woman… particularly my woman. Go down the Abona, into the valley, and seek the Priestesses of the Lake. They are my enemies, but they would not harm or turn away another woman, I think, and I pray they will not turn away innocent children either.”
“I do not like this idea!” Khyloq gasped, clutching his leather jerkin. “It is as if you prepare for your death!”
“I do not prepare for my death,” he said, a dangerous edge in his voice, “but I leave nothing to chance… I am not a fool. Now get my brothers and go, and do not tarry upon the path!”
She left him, tears running down her cheeks, and soon he saw her, wrapped in a woven shawl that covered her bright head, picking her way down the hillside toward the Abona, clutching the hands of his young kinsmen tightly in her own.
Turning from the sight, he cast his gaze over his own men—the stupid, the violent, the malcontent, the idle who only spoke of great deeds and did none. They seemed completely dwindled in his vision, hardly a warband, just a rag-tag bunch of brawling and boastful boys; even if their numbers surpassed his father’s, they would never be able to withstand an onslaught from Ardhu’s experienced warriors for long. If hatred and bloodlust spurred them on at first, their ardour would soon diminish and they would break and scatter, to be hunted down and slaughtered.
Something within him bent, twisted. There had been so much death already. Why needless slaughter, even of such cattle as these? He raised his hand, gesturing for their attention. “Listen, listen, I have made a decision! I will fare to Khor Ghor… on my own. You must all stay here, holding the dun. When Ardhu Pendraec arrives, tell him to stay his hand and swear that you will do the same. Then tell him that I am on the Great Plain, at the Stones, and that I await him there. He must come alone, bringing none of his followers. We will do battle, one on one, as men and chiefs, and the Spirits will decide between us. If I should fall…” he took a deep breath, “I would council you surrender to him, and pray to the Ancestors he gives you mercy. If I win… then you may strike at his men with all your fury, for their spirit will be broken.”
The youths of the warband reacted with horror and an angry murmur went up. They had long wished to engage in battle with their sworn enemy, and had filled the fort with round stones to cast down at their opponents. Their blades were freshly sharpened and their arrows tipped with venom. The idea of hiding behind stout oak walls and waiting for an outcome held no appeal.
Mordraed glared at them, staring them down with eyes of bitter ice. “I do this to save your skins, you brainless fools!” he snarled. “Do you understand nothing? I have given you gold, amber, axes and status as men of the tribe. Now grant me this one bit of loyalty in return, damn you all to Ahn-un!”
They recoiled from him, fearful of his wrath, their anger hidden if not truly quelled. Mordraed turned scornfully from them, almost hating the sight of their hard, stupid faces… “Remember what I have told you,” he said icily, and he strode forward into the storm-laden afternoon seeking the Sacred Avenue that would lead him to his destiny.
*****
Ardhu and An’kelet and their men reached Kham-El-Ard late the next day. The woods and fields were quiet, brooding under the hot sky; it was strange to see no harvesters, no washer-women, no children playing in the river. The landscape seemed almost empty, part of the Deadlands… except for the fort of Kham-El-Ard on the crooked hill, its gates shut and barred, its ditches full of newly-honed wooden stakes, and trails of wood smoke seeping from its many hearths to darken the skies above it.
Ardhu stared at the barricaded dun, his lips thin lines and his jaw tight. Deep anger flooded him, and he longed to charge up the hill and set a great tree trunk against those gates, his gates, but he knew such an action would be counterproductive. Those holed up within his dun would heave rocks upon his head, or boiling water, or animal dung, and with the height and the protection of the stout oak walls, the defenders had the clear advantage.
Seeing his friend’s expression, An’kelet laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. “It would not be wise to act in haste. “I will go up to the gate and speak with them.”
>
Ardhu nodded. “Take care, An’kelet. They may shoot at you before you speak. These are not true warriors; they are rabble corrupted by Mordraed.”
An’kelet raised his round shield of leather and wood. “I will take no risks.” He trudged towards the fort, his spear carried on his back in its sling rather than in his hand. Raising a clenched fist, he pounded on the great wooden gates. He could hear voices muttering behind. “Open the gates!” he shouted. “I am An’kelet, prince of Ar-morah, companion of the Stone Lord. How dare you bar entrance to the King of the West, the lord and builder of this dun?”
A coarse red face popped over the breastwork. “Kham-El-Ard is Ardhu Pendraec’s no longer. Now it is held by Mordraed, lord of the Dark Moon.”
“If that is so, tell Mordraed to come forth and speak to us—if he dares!”
“He is not here,” replied the man.
“Well, where is he?”
“Gone to the Stones,” the warrior shot back. “He has asked that we pass a message on to his adversary, Ardhu Pendraec.”
Hearing these words from his position at the bottom of the hill, Ardhu quickly rode up beside An’kelet. “What message is this? Speak!”
“He says he will fight you man to man in the Stones. Whoever wins will be king of Prydn… the other will be in his barrow. He says that if it is settled in such a manner, we can avoid bloodshed; he has ordered us not to attack you unless you do not agree to these terms. “
An’kelet glanced uneasily at Ardhu. “I do not like this overmuch.”
Ardhu took a deep breath. “I would not have the people inside Kham-El-Ard harmed, nor do I even greatly desire the heads of the dolts who bar our way. I will do as Mordraed asks; maybe it is the best way to settle this forever...”
“I do not trust Mordraed; he is a snake.” An’kelet shook his head darkly. “I will come with you to Khor Ghor.”
Overhead, the gateman leaned further from the parapet, shaking his head. “You must go alone, Pendraec. That is the order of Lord Mordraed. If you try to take men with you, we will ride down from the hill and join battle. Then we will fire this place and burn it to the ground.”
Moon Lord: The Fall of King Arthur - The Ruin of Stonehenge Page 36