Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  But Owain only laughed at me, and because he was Owain, our leader, I laughed with him, and believed him when he said there was no such army, only a tale the women had made up to hide the cowardice of their men. But they had made up the same tale in every village.

  It was the end of the fourth day on which we laid waste the valleys, and we had returned to the place from which we had started. Our squadrons had gone north and east, north to the Border, and east to the sea, almost. Only half a squadron had gone south, probing gently down the road which we would follow, to York and Elmet. The leader of this section was Dyvnwal, whom we called Vrych, the Speckled, because of his freckles, and he had painted his shield white covered with spots of red to match his nickname: and that is all I remember about him, because he was a quiet man. It was on the morning of the fifth day, on which Precent had hoped we would be in Elmet, that we saw this section coming up the Roman Road towards us. Owain rode to meet them, like a King in Venery, with his Judge and his Huntsman and his Standard-bearer, in myself and Precent and Bradwen. When we came near to them, we saw that there were only a dozen red cloaks, instead of forty, and no spare horses, and the chargers they were riding well blown.

  They came rushing to us as we rode down to meet them on the empty road, among the empty blackened fields of burnt wheat, all shouting and talking at once.

  ‘A battle,’ they shouted. ‘We have been in a battle! Against the Savages!’

  Owain shouted at them to be quiet. ‘Where is Dyvnwal?’ he kept on asking. ‘Where are the others?’

  There was a greater hubbub. Geraint, a man from the South, seemed the most coherent, and I tried to follow his voice against the others.

  ‘We came on a village some time after noon. We rode around it and into it. There was no one there. Not a soul. Not a woman, or a child. Still we did not think it unusual. You never know what customs these Savages have. We dismounted—’

  ‘All of you?’ I asked.

  ‘All of us. We went through their houses. They had taken their jewels with them. No silver. We pulled the ploughs together close to the biggest house. We heaped corn on it. And the yeast. We piled the benches over the ploughs. We brought the blankets and clothes out of the houses. We put on the tallow. Then Dyvnwal bent to kindle the fire. There was a shouting in our ears. They were on us.’

  ‘Many of them?’

  ‘They made noise for ten thousand. They were many more than we were. We each had ten to fight. They were in mail. They had those short swords. We had left our shields with our horses. We tried to get back to the horses. We had to cut our way through. I killed two: at least, I struck them and they fell. I think we here are all that reached the horses. If they had stampeded our mounts they would have had us all. We got into line. We charged back into the village. There was nothing we could do for the others. Dead, all of them. A heap of Savages around them. The Savages could not stand up to us mounted. They ran when we returned. We saw that those who had come into the village were the advance guard of an Army. They were in hundreds, thousands. We set the houses alight. We came for you.’

  ‘You returned and left your comrades there?’ Owain was sharp, scornful.

  ‘If we had dismounted to recover the bodies, it would have been a glorious deed. Who would have sung us for it? We would have died ourselves. We came back to warn you.’

  ‘I told you the men had gone away to war,’ I told Owain. ‘It was South they went, and perhaps they have already fought against Elmet. Now they are returning. The road South is blocked. We will not reach Elmet now, or even York.

  ‘The road South may be blocked, but we will still take it.’ Owain turned to Precent. ‘The squadrons are coming in on us now, as we ordered. Meanwhile, push some scouts down the road for a mile or two.’ He ignored Geraint and his comrudes; in fact, he never spoke to them again, as if they had shamed themselves, though no one who saw the hacked shields and the gapped blades, and the blood up to their elbows, could doubt that they had fought.

  That night, we slept spread across the road in an arc, a mile from horn to horn, with our fires burning and tended by sentries who watched for the Savages. But they did not attack that night. So, in the morning, we rode down the Roman Road in our usual order.

  The skirmishers saw the enemy about two hours after dawn. They called back, and Precent and I rode across to where we could see the enemy. They were a little group of men, fifty at most, standing full in the road, waiting. Owain came forward with two squadrons, through the skirmish line, and charged down on them. There was no difficulty there. When the horsemen were within a hundred paces of them, they broke and ran in all directions, and were cut down again as they fled. We re-formed, and moved again down the road.

  We came on more groups like this. ‘Marching north to meet us, all hugger-mugger, every man his own general,’ said Owain. I did not think so, but I held my peace. They had more the look of a rearguard, to keep us off the main army while it found somewhere better to fight. But now I knew better than to contradict Owain, because he was our leader, and always right.

  Sometimes, they would hear us coming first, and then they would get into some kind of order across the road, and try to hold a line when we rode at them. But we always got round the flanks. If we caught them strung out, they would run before we could get at them, scattering all across the country. As we moved South, they stiffened. They stood longer. Once a group ran, as a body, into a wood. Half a dozen horsemen followed them into the trees. Only two returned. They told of men who leapt out of the undergrowth to hamstring the horses, or dropped from the trees on to the riders. Owain did not order anyone to recover the bodies.

  But all this slowed us down. Late in the afternoon, when we had covered barely ten miles, we came in sight of the village where Geraint had fought. Where the road went past the smoking ruins, not through them, there was a stake new set in the ground. On it was the head of Dyvnwal Vrych. It was not freckles now that marked his face but the cuts of knives. His private parts were thrust between his locked teeth. The ravens had already had his eyes.

  There we slept that night. We lay in our armour, waiting an attack. Only half of us slept at any time. Those who lay down nestled close to their horses, and not only for warmth; we knew, those who mounted first would live. Before we slept Owain talked to us.

  ‘Now we know the spirit of the Savages,’ he told us. ‘They will not stand to face us. All we have to do is to show a bold face to them and they will run away. Only remember, do not fight their kind of battle. They want to catch us dismounted in small groups, or lure us into the woods. If you are ready to fight that way, like Savages, then there is no way out, because they are too many for us. We have to use our superior skill and equipment. They cannot ride, and they will not stand up to a man on horseback. Today we have won our first victory. They tried to stop us. They could not. They will never stop us, because we bring civilisation back to the valleys. In two days’ time, we will retake York. In four days, we feast in Elmet.’

  But Precent spoke to me quietly, in the dark, by the horses.

  ‘A victory is when the whole of an Army runs away, not when even the smallest part of it stands and dies where it fights. We have defeated no one, because they were never afraid of us. Even when they ran, they were only taunting us.’ He stood up. ‘Hey, Syvno! Have you read the stars tonight? Will there be a battle tomorrow?’

  ‘No, no battle,’ Syvno cried back, confidently. ‘Tomorrow will be just like today. We will ride through them, and there will be a feast after it, and you and I will toast each other.’

  ‘Then look to all your harness straps,’ Precent warned me quietly, lest Syvno hear. ‘Telling the stars is as easy as telling the weather.’

  12

  Peleidyr en eis en dechreu cat

  hynt am oleu bu godeu beleidryal

  In the first onset his lances penetrate the target,

  And a track of light is made by the aim of the darting of his spears.

  At dawn, we came down from
the fires where we had slept, chewing as we rode on cold bacon and wheat cakes, and drinking from our jars of mead so that we would fight with that last taste of home in our mouths. We crossed the South-flowing river, where the Romans had built a bridge. Now it had fallen, leaving only the columns on the banks, and there were no Magicians in the Island who could raise it again. Behind us, the burning thatch laid low across the land a ceiling of black smoke under a roof of grey cloud. We were not opposed.

  We moved up from the river, Precent and I on the road itself, the skirmishers spread out on either side of us. We saw the town before we saw the enemy who lay in front of it. The old town was there, near the bridge. The houses were roofless. The Savages had built their village a half mile away. They never live in the towns, even when they find them empty and waiting. They prefer to stay outside the walls, or if, very bold, they come within the walls, they place their houses in the pleasant gardens where the real people of the place once grew their leeks and radishes. Savages never live in house of stone. They cannot mend the roofs when tiles fall, or hang doors again on metal hinges. Besides, they believe that all the houses are made by Magicians, and that if they come within doors they will fall a prey to the magic. And better it would be if they did.

  The town had once been surrounded by a wall. It was ruined now, and often collapsed into a continuous mound, rather than a rampart. There was a gentle slope of rubble in the ditch that went round the walls. The weeds came close to the walls on three sides, not on the one that faced the river.

  ‘Gone,’ said Precent, waving towards the town. ‘All gone, the people who lived there once. No one even remembers the name of the place.’

  ‘Oh, yes, they do,’ I told him. ‘The name is clear, where the old road crosses the river. How does it go? I think I remember:

  ‘Constantine here held his court.

  Cold the hearth, hosts unkind.

  Women weep for Cattraeth, silenced.’

  ‘Who first sang that? Did you?’

  ‘No, I do not know who was the first. It is an old song. By the language, it is from before the Savages came. Perhaps the town has been desolate before. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because it is the first verse I have heard you speak for more than a year.’

  I did not answer. I felt that I had been unguarded. What had softened me? The heat of the battle yesterday perhaps, the sight of the dead. And which dead had moved me most? Dyvnwal Vrych, eaten by the crows? The corpses, stiff, thrown into the ponds and wells? Or that first boy, barefoot, in Eudav’s woods?

  But between where we sat and the two places, the town on the one hand and the village on the other, the enemy stood. To our left, the ground sloped down to the river. The pools shining black under the leaden sky, the rushes standing up like clumps of savage spears, showed that this was bogland. It was no ground to ride horses over. To our right, there was another wood, a rare sight in that land, but whether they were afraid again of magic, or whether they left it to feed their swine, or whether perhaps the ground was too poor for wheat, I do not know. At any rate, it was dense wood, with bushes undergrowing the trees. We had had enough of that the day before. Horsemen would not enter that wood. They had taught us that. The space between the wood’s edge and the river swamp was five hundred paces, not less, perhaps seven hundred, certainly not as much as a thousand. Through that space led the road. Through that space we had to go. And in that gap stood Bladulf.

  Oh, yes, I was sure it was Bladulf, even at that distance. I had seen him the once, and that once was enough. A giant, he was. There are giants among the Savages. We count a man tall at seventeen hands: they mostly top eighteen, and only Owain of all the Household came to that. And Bladulf stood half a head taller than any of his army. His yellow hair hung braided to his waist, not cut like a Christian, and he had wound black rags into the braids so that he could be told from behind. He wore a helmet of bronze, not iron, shining red through the gloom of that day. Over the crest of it ran a high ridge, worked to show a wolf’s face above his own. The wolf’s paws reached down to cover his nose and to spread out where they might guard his cheeks. This was no Savage work, but stolen somewhere in Gaul. He wore mail to the thigh, and trousers of stiff leather like ours.

  ‘He will not move quickly in those,’ I told Precent.

  ‘He does not mean to run,’ Precent agreed. ‘That one will stand where he stands, whether his men stay with him or not. Watch that sword. He will try to come up at you under your shield. Do not let him attack you on the shield side.’

  We could see, even from here, that Bladulf had a real sword, long and double-edged and pointed, such as few of his men carried. This was a sword a man could strike with, putting his weight behind the point to thrust. This was no edge that a village smith could beat out, to spoil by cutting hay or splitting wood or cracking lobster claws. I wondered where he had stolen it. It was no Roman work, too long, too big.

  Owain came to us. We three rode forward, close enough to see faces. The Savages did not move, just stood firm. They began to make a noise, beating on their shields, and taking up a rhythmical chanting shout, bellowing in chorus one word again and again, perhaps a hundred times, before they found another word.

  ‘What is the word they cry?’ Owain asked.

  ‘Blood,’ I told him.

  ‘Then the Bloodfield let this place be,’ he told me. But it was Cattraeth, all the same.

  Cynrig joined us, and Peredur Ironarms.

  ‘Eight to one, would you say, or ten?’ asked Precent. He counted nice enough, seeing they were well pressed together all across our front, and three or four lines deep in most places, close on each other’s heels. But Owain replied, ‘Nearer twenty to one, counting us all together, horse-holders and all. Hear that, Aneirin, hear that, twenty to one, and sing it. Oh there shall be glory for us this day, honour and glory for us all.’

  We looked close at the Savages, standing there in line, waiting for us. All giants they were, that is true, all of them far taller than most of us. Many of them in the front rank had a piece or two of mail to hide their shoulders or their breasts. Most of them had the saxes they used on their farms, too long to be called knives, too short for swords, and too useful to be kept only for battle. Besides there was a forest of spears, and axes as well. And every man had a shield, not oval and leather-covered like ours but round and heavy, of limewood planks joined together, with iron-bosses deep and pointed, and iron rims a hand wide. They looked a dirty lot, all dressed in their undyed garments of grey or brown coloured only with grease and dirt, a line of dun ants, frugal as the ants, not knowing what art or poetry or civilisation is, needing only each man his handful of wheat to live. Satisfied with that little, too.

  Behind Bladulf, a mocking parody of Bradwen, a soot-daubed giant carried his banner. It was black, long and narrow, the edges stiffened with willow-canes, so that it stood out for us to see all the day, and never dropped on the staff. It was embroidered with a dragon, in white. His helmet did not, however, show the dragon’s wings, but the horns they liked to wear. In the rear rank, there were men with neither helmet nor even a cap of wool or leather, and these were Aidan’s horned men indeed, because they had twisted their braids in tallow to stand out like stiff horns before their heads. A strange people, among whom a horned man had honour. And we could smell them, too, even at that distance, the strange almost-sweet smell of wheat flour, leavened with yeast.

  ‘How do we take them, Owain?’ Cynrig asked. It was something, that we were able to sit there, within a spear’s cast of the enemy line, and discuss what we would do, as calmly as if we were in the paddocks under the Giant’s Seat.

  ‘As we always planned,’ Owain answered. He did not move, though, but sat still a moment, looking at the long dun line of swaying chanting warriors. The rhythm of their voices was a seductive, diverting thing, numbing thought. But under that strange deliberate assault, not on the body but on the senses, Owain still was able to plan, to change his mind.

  ‘No,
not as we always planned it. Precent, I want you to command the reserve Squadron.’

  ‘That was not what you promised me.’

  ‘I do not break promises lightly. Twenty to one there may be, but it cannot yet be the whole host of the Savages. It may well be that Bladulf has hidden men in the wood, to try to take us in the rear when we attack. If they do, I want my most experienced commander to be ready for them.’

  ‘I take it Bradwen will ride with us, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I cannot ride into battle without my standard. It is my ravens that will drink blood today, and peck out eyes tonight.’

  ‘I will carry your standard,’ Cynrig offered.

  ‘Will you dare to try to take it from her?’ Owain asked him. ‘I have tried to persuade her, but she insists that she will fight. I have told her to ride in the second line, not the first, in case the standard is captured. It is the only argument she will listen to. Gwenabwy and a dozen others will keep close around her. I think she will be safer in the second line than in the reserve, if there should be an attack from the wood. If you want to go and argue yourself, then you can, but I have little hope that you will change her mind.’

  There was no more to say. Only Owain asked, ‘Their shout has changed. What are they saying now?’

  ‘Victory, they are bawling, over and over again, Victory.’

  ‘For whom? Go with God,my friends.’

  We turned again and joined our squadrons. Precent, Cynrig and I rode together to the reserve line. Between us and the leading squadrons rode Bradwen; Gwenabwy rode close at her right hand, and Cynrain at her left. As we rode back, though, I heard Precent ask Owain, ‘Am I to use my own discretion when to throw in the reserve?’

  ‘No! Charge when you see we have broken through, or when you hear me call to you. Otherwise, sit still!’

  Owain rode forward again. We saw him speak to Bradwen before he went to his own place at the centre of the front rank. The chant of the Savages rose louder and louder. From our ranks rose only the voice of Gelorwid, in the words of the Virgin’s Hymn. We were ready to put down this proud Bladulf from his throne.