Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  By the borders of the Mordei we were to meet with the foot and with the sheep. We had chosen the place. It would take Cynddelig ten days at least to reach the place on the drovers’ road down the coast, where we had caught the Savages on the beach. He would go south beyond that. We of the Household would take only three days to cross the high moorland, too badly watered to risk the herd over; we would head always south-east, to reach Eudav’s Hall under the Wall. Then we would sweep along the Wall, and north again into the Mordei till we had cleared the way for the infantry and their animals.

  The Savages had not yet settled north of the Wall: enough of our men went into the debatable land to tell us that. Only their raiding bands came North, after the wheat harvest, when they felt full of food and beer, and vain enough to think of coming to steal from anyone richer than they were. We were rich enough to stop that when we felt like it, and the time was now. Or they would come in the spring, before the sowing, when they were desperate not only for riches but for very food, and would dare anything to gain even a mouthful of our seed oats or the starved and bony cattle kept alive through the winter. These were the times when, most years, they were most dangerous. Usually they would not raid this time of the year, when the wheat was ripe for the harvest, and every sensible man would be sitting safe at home, sharpening his sickle and mending his barn, treading down the clay on his threshing floor and rehinging his flail. This was the time that Precent had caught them the year before, sweeping down on them from the North without warning, burning the barns over the rats’ heads, and finding a hundred other captives besides myself to bring back to the safe and pleasant North.

  But just because it was this time the year before that Precent had gone to war it was just possible that they would choose this time to raid north into Mordei to meet us. Therefore we would clear the whole land in front of the infantry.

  There had been little ceremony when the infantry marched away, partly because there is not much you can do in dignity when you are driving a thousand sheep, besides oxen and pigs: partly because the infantry, though the most numerous, are the least important part of an army, coming only to support the horsemen of the Household, to consolidate what the cavalry have won. The day that the Household rode out was the real day of the departure of the army.

  Rank on rank we rode out past Mynydog on his throne. As we passed him we cried, ‘Hail to the King, the Commander!’ in the Roman way. Because we were a Roman Army, even though we rode through the Wall into the Empire to make war. Many of us, like Cynrig and Owain and myself, had been born in the Empire, wherever we had been fostered after that. Others had been born outside the Empire, and fostered in it, in great cities like Corinium or Kenfig. So we were as Roman an Army as had ever come out of the North.

  Because we were Romans, also, we passed before the llan in the woods where Mynydog’s hermit had been told to pray for us, and we showed there that we were Romans, because we served the Roman Gods. As we passed we shouted, ‘All hail to the Virgin!’ and we waved our helmets crosswise. Many, too, called on the saints they worshipped, on Josephus or Jesus or Albanus or Spiritus. Gelorwid, who was wise in these things, called on a saint called Veron Icon.

  Between the gate of Mynydog’s Hall, and the llan, all around the Judgement Mound where the King himself sat, we passed the people of Eiddin. Not everyone in the Kingdom was there, of course, although it seemed like it. Besides those who lived close round the Dun there were people who came in from farms even three days’ journey away to see the Household ride out. Oh, yes, that was the day for cheering. A herd of cattle and a flock of sheep and a crowd of farmhands, even with spears in their hands, you could see those any day: but the whole Household, more mounted men than anyone had ever seen, riding out in all their splendour, that was the sight of a lifetime.

  Besides, there was none of us but had a father or a mother or a sweetheart somewhere in the crowd. Clydno waved his staff to Cynon, and led the cheering. People cut the boughs of trees, and threw them before our horses’ hooves, so that the iron shoes rustled in leaves instead of clattering, and struck no sparks from the granite setts.

  My little friend, Mynydog’s nephew, was not sitting at his Uncle’s feet to see us ride. Before we marched, he had come into the courtyard of the Dun to see us saddling up and mounting, and he had wandered round among us, the only child we would have allowed to do such a thing. He tripped over harness and spilled packed bags, and walked fearless under the very bellies of the great horses, and we all thought it clever of him to do things like that. We all made much of him, of course, picking him up and kissing and tossing him from one to another, squealing with delight. Then Precent challenged him with:

  ‘What are you then? Is it a bear you are?’

  ‘Yes, I a bear, I a big brown bear. I eat you!’ And he growled in a most bearlike way.

  ‘No, boy,’ Precent told him. ‘Bears don’t eat trees. Bears eat honey, and I’m a tree. You climb up this tree, and see if you can find any honey.’

  So the little lad climbed up on to Precent’s shoulder, convinced that he was going up by his own efforts, and that Precent had not lifted him at all, and, of course, on the shoulder there was a piece of honeycomb. He ate that. Then he wanted to climb every tree in the wood, and of course on every shoulder he found something good, honeycomb or cheese or dried fruit or meat.

  Suddenly, he began to look very thoughtful. I knew the signs, so I picked him up, which was daring in the circumstances, and carried him out of the Dun, and we hid behind Mynydog’s throne, unoccupied as yet, while he got rid of what he had eaten. I gave him a long drink, then, from my bottle, which pleased him immensely, because it was a man’s bottle. It was, I think, the only bottle of water in the whole army, because all the others were weighed down with bottles not of water: the mead they carried had taken all the honey of a kingdom of beehives.

  When the little lad had rinsed out his mouth of the nasty taste, and then had a long drink of the cool clear water, he was eager to go back and climb all the trees again. Children are quick to recover, and this one would never own that he was beaten. But while I was trying to persuade him that even a bear can eat too much honeycomb (and loth he was to believe it), and that is how they get caught, then caught my little bear was. Gwenllian came round the mound, having consulted Syvno the astrologer to find us, I am sure, and seized him from me. She scolded us both roundly: me for forcing sweets on the child, him for letting me persuade him to eat it, and nothing was further from what we both had done.

  Still, he clung to me, and gave me a long hug and a kiss. I asked him, ‘What shall I bring you back from the wars? Shall it be a bracelet or a collar of gold?’

  ‘Bring me a Savage man,’ he told me.

  ‘To ride on?’ I teased him, ‘Or to eat?’

  ‘I bear – I eat him.’ And he growled and chuckled by turns, and then he threw his arms around me and kissed me again. But Gwenllian whisked him away, and carried him back into the Hall, to wash the honey off his face, since he had got it up to the eyebrows, and to put a clean shirt on him, because the one he had, fresh on that morning, was already as filthy as if he had worn it a month and been a scullion in the kitchen all that time.

  I went back to finish saddling up and found that Aidan had done it for me. I rode my brown gelding that day, because I knew I could depend on him. My strawberry roan mare I would ride in battle, but on the road I had her as a pack beast, not heavily laden, but carrying what I had, and there was not much of that. I took only the two horses, but there were many who took three, to carry all their jars of mead. Precent, like me, had only his charger to lead, though he would have drunk a river of mead, and not been satisfied.

  ‘If you take too much,’ he told me, approvingly, ‘it only gets stolen, or left behind in the chase, and that comes to the same thing. If I want a fresh horse, I will get one easily enough after the first skirmish, and the mead on it too.’

  Owain did not travel as light. He was a Prince, a Prince of Cornwall, an
d Precent was only a Lord of the Picts in the North, and I was nothing but a failed bard and an apprentice Judge, whatever my family might be. But Owain was a Prince. He rode on the biggest horse in the Household, a black, thirteen hands high. The son of a King rode behind him and carried his Raven banner. Cynrig is now himself King in Cardigan, and behind the seven walls of Cardigan he rules that city, with all its massive wealth. But when he rode out with the Gododdin, he owned that Owain was supreme, greater in skill and valour and in pride of family. Never has Cynrig the King been more glorious than the day when he reflected the glory of Owain.

  Cynrain the brother of Cynrig led Owain’s packhorses, six of them, for how could the Commander of a Household hold less state, or travel without his silver cup and his plate, and enough mead to reward his followers for valour? Owain had with him five greyhounds, that ran at his horse’s heels, and made wide circles around him, raising every hare for miles, but being well trained they never gave tongue. And at Owain’s saddle hung his crossbow, the only bow in the Household, because it was Owain’s pleasure to hunt thus, but we would hunt the Savages like deer, with the thrown spear.

  A Prince of Cornwall could never wear helm on such a day or in so important a parade. It was necessary that we should all see him to recognise him, and so it was Caso who carried it in front of him. Owain’s hair curled red upon his shoulders. Over his mail he wore a shirt of red lines; on it Bradwen had embroidered the black ravens of Cornwall, with their long curved bills and legs in a different red. And his shield, too, bore the ravens. A King he looked as he led us out, more kingly than any man before or since who has ever commanded an army in the Island of Britain. Not even Arthur in his empery can look more kingly. And Arthur is not a King.

  Before Owain led us out, when we were mounting, Gwenllian came back with a nice clean boy in her arms, for him to give me another goodbye hug and kiss. She held him up to me, and he squeezed me tight, but keeping his other arm around Gwenllian as children do he pulled her face close against mine. Kissing him I kissed her, and she kissed me. And weeping as women always weep when men go out to war, she wet my face and shoulders. Into my hands she pushed something warm and soft. Then she hid her eyes behind the little boy, and ran from the yard.

  Gwenllian’s gift was a scarf, of soft wool, striped green and white, the colours of my house, the younger branch of the Gododdin, the colours that my brother wears who is King in Mona. It could not have been made for any else but me, could not have been worn by anyone else in the Household.

  So out of the Dun the Household rode, and saluted King Mynydog on his throne. Rank on rank were we of oval shields, each painted as its owner pleased. Precent carried a wolf’s head, and all the little boys and girls who ran alongside us pointed at it and howled horribly, but still they threw flowers at Precent. It was always flowers they threw to him. Other shields were harder to imitate. Horses or crows were not too difficult, but who knows what sounds a dragon makes, or a lion? And there were other beasts shown which are entirely mythical, like the elephant that has two tails and two fundaments, and the tiger striped in yellow and blue. And Morien carried a painted flaming brand, so lifelike that the flames flickered before our eyes and we could almost smell the smoke.

  No one, of course, had painted a bear. Even in those days, as now, the Bear was worn by no one but the House of Uther. And then there was no one of that House of an age to ride with us: if there had been, would not Owain have yielded his place to him? But even if there had been, not all that pride of family could have dimmed Owain’s glory.

  My shield had a ground of white. I had painted it in green, an oxhead. What else for me?

  The boys ran alongside us and howled and barked, and at me they mooed, not telling an ox from a cow. The women and the grown girls stood still to watch. Many of them wept, as women often do when a Household goes out to war, whether it be to battle or to a mere patrol along a peaceful border. Others were silent, tense, thin-lipped. But it was the men, the youths grown enough to watch the sheep on the hills, but not yet old enough to ride with us, the men too old to stand the long days in the saddle, with battle at the end, and it is not very old in years you must be to be too worn out for such a campaign, and between them, the young men of our own age who were not chosen to ride, or even march with the infantry, because some must be left to thresh the oats and barley just harvested, and to bale the wool newly sheared, and to net the fish for drying and to tend the oxen, so that the women will not starve through the next winter – the men, it was the men who shouted and cheered as we went by.

  This did not trouble the horses. Time and time again we had had all these men out with us, and men from farms farther from Eiddin, to shout and clash metal and run about among us waving flags. Now the horses were used to it. They would stand stock still, or run quiet and steady, in the clamour of battle.

  Nor were the horses disturbed at the singing of the Household. First, when we were still close to Eiddin, when the women and children still ran close to us, we sang respectable songs, the songs they expected us to sing. These were marching songs of the days of old, that the armies of the Gododdin had sung when they marched to make war on Rome, and songs too that the Romans had sung when they marched north of the Wall to fight against Eiddin. And this, too, was proper. We were the newest Army of Rome, marching against an enemy who had never owned the might of Rome, nor served the Roman Virgin.

  At last, we left behind even those who were the most loth to lose us to sight. On the flank of the Giant’s Seat, where we had hunted, and lain in the sun to dream, Gwenllian sat her horse with the little lad on her saddle-bow to wave goodbye to us at the last. Clydno was there, too. Not Mynydog. He sat his throne till we had all passed, and gone down the hill, and past his farm, and out of his sight, and out of sound, while he strained at the last to hear what could never again be heard in Eiddin, the sound of the Household. Then, I am told, he wrapped his cloak around his face, and wept, and no one dared to speak to him for the rest of the day. But these our other dearest friends sat still, where we could see them when we looked back, for hours, while our column wound up through the woods and out on to the moors.

  When we had left them behind, the songs changed. The men sang newer songs, or perhaps they were older songs, bawdier songs and bloodier songs anyway, about the short-comings in bed and battle of Bladulf, and Hengist, and of the Kings of the Irish that had come into the Island before, and that we had fought before, and beaten before. These were songs they sang at the nets, and on the sheep walks. You do not sing on the hunt, only after. I thought that singing at this time was too like singing on the edge of the forest, when you may frighten the deer away. Our prey, now, we did not want to frighten away, but rather to gather together to face us. But who was I to object? I was only the Judge.

  At midday, we halted to rest our horses. Now most of us took off our mail shirts and bundled them in our red cloaks to sling across the backs of our spare horses. Mail is too heavy to wear without cause, unless you are fighting or on parade. Our helmets we could sling at our saddles. While our horses cropped the grass, we filled the helms with the ripening whinberries: the blackberries were still red.

  When we remounted, one squadron rode still armed, ahead of the rest of the Household, and spread out in a long line of little groups of three or four, a mile from flank to flank. Here, so close to Eiddin, there was no real need for this, but it was good practice. The squadrons took it in turn and turn about, half a day at a time, to ride in the skirmishing line.

  Owain with his Standard rode between the Skirmishers and the first concentrated squadron. In case of alarm we could see, from his waving Standard, whether we were to form line to right or to left or equally on either side of our Commander.

  Precent always led the Skirmishers. I rode every day with Cynon. His squadron always kept the rear. In an alarm we were not to join the line, but to ride behind it, in the centre, as a reserve. Which is the harder, to lead an army in a massed assault, or to restrain skirmishers
and bring them back into the line when they wish to scatter and pursue, or to hold a squadron ready, watching the fight, till the time is ripe to throw them in? I do not know.

  This first day, however, we had no thought of battle, nor the next. We rode across the high moorlands and between the groves in the quiet valleys as if we were riding for pleasure, or for hunting. Often men let loose their hawks at grouse, or files or even whole squadrons broke from the line to ride shouting after greyhounds that had started a hare.

  Time and again we passed little huts of boughs in the lee of hills or on the edge of little woods, where the youngsters spent the lazy days of summer herding the sheep. The boys we passed out on the hills in groups of two or three. They spurred their rough ponies to ride with us a little, joining in our songs. The girls at the huts looked up from their endless gossiping over the cooking-fires and the spinning-wheels to wave at us, and shout good wishes. One would have thought that huge armies like ours, six whole squadrons, passed every day, we disturbed them so little.

  In the evening we came down to a lonely farm, where Precent had already stored up food for us, sides of smoked bacon, cheeses and butter, oatcakes that the people of the place had spent, all that day baking for us. Best, there was mead for all. We slept in the woods above the farm. Some of us built little huts of boughs, as we had done when we were young and kept the sheep in summer. But most of us heaped beds of cut bracken or heather, and rolled ourselves in our scarlet cloaks. In August it was still warm enough for it to be no hardship for us to sleep with no other blanket in the open air. The horses were tethered in long lines, after they had been watered by squadrons in the stream and fed with oats.

  Next day, we went on with our summer ride, under the blue sky flecked with hardly a cloud. On that morning we rode careless as before across the southern valley of the Kingdom of Eiddin, and now we climbed the hills that were the border between Eiddin and the debatable land of Mordei. In these hills, we did not see boys, or girls. The shepherds, when we met them, were grown men, well mounted and armed at least as well as the worst armed of the Household. They wore jerkins of stiff boiled leather, and capes of mail. Most carried swords. They looked keenly at us, keenly but with pleasure, because they hoped that our passing would mean that they would be free next year from this boys’ work. Under the threat of the Savages, men had to guard the sheep.