“Begone from me, woman!” snapped U’thyr. He was beyond reason now, the mead and the day and his passion bringing him almost to the point of what some called the warrior’s madness, where a man might foam in rage like a beast gone mad.
The crowd stirred restlessly, their faces flushed and a strange primal eagerness in eyes that sudden grew bright and small and dangerous, desirous of excitement and blood. They jostled each other, elbowing and pushing to get a better view.
The acolytes rounded the pigs to one side of the white chalk walls, while helpers set up temporary fences, forming a long straight avenue similar in appearance to a spirit-path. The village youths fetched their bows and their most lethal arrows with translucent quartz tips and goose feather fletchings. They hollered and yelled, strutting like peacocks before the village women in bright headdresses and paint, setting arrows on fire and shooting them high above the waters of Abona in brilliant barbarous display.
U’thyr stepped forward, handing his beaker to Kol. Slowly he stripped off his tunic with its rich gold plate, and handed it over, too, followed by his armbands and diadem. Govna ran up with a pot of ground ochre and drew protective designs on his torso, zigzags and whorls, the surprised eyes of the Guardian. When this ritual was completed, U’thyr bound up his long leaf-brown hair with a pin of bone, and unsheathed his dagger.
“I am ready!” he shouted. “I will run with the pigs and be the Winter-King!”
The crowd roared its approval; beakers clashed and clattered. Vaguely U’thyr could hear Gorlas yelling, “Die, die, DIE!”
Face set, U’thyr swung over the fencing and dropped in amongst the pigs. They squealed frantically and dashed in all directions, bashing into walls and each other. U’thyr launched himself forward, his calves slamming into the slower pigs’ bottoms, almost making him fall. Mud and faeces oozed under his feet, as he swayed, struggling to keep his footing as the frightened beasts swarmed around him.
Suddenly he heard a sinister hiss, like the sound of a dozen snakes. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the young men draw and release their arrows.
The race was on.
The first arrow took out a pig just in front of him. The animal fell, stricken, a clean kill. The people watching on the sidelines and the henge bank loosed a roar of unanimous delight. U’thyr leaped over the twitching carcass as the rest of the arrows whistled around him, some hitting the ground, others finding their marks among the terrified pigs, who were now almost screaming in fear, their voice high-pitched and surreal, almost like the shrieks of tortured human beings.
U’thyr darted forward again, zigzagging from side to side of the run as more arrows whistled overhead. One nicked the tip of his shoulder, drawing blood, but he hardly noticed. He just ran faster, weaving in and out of the mass of frightened beasts. Faster came the arrows and more thick, their fletchings momentarily dimming the Moon, but U’thyr eluded their barbs and only the pigs lay dead and dying in the run.
The people began to chant his name, “Pendraec, Pendraec, PENDRAEC!” over and over, and to stamp their feet in rhythm with the chanting of his name. It spurred him on even more. He leaped high into the air now, while arrows whizzed below him, then went into a roll as flint tips thudded into the earth around him...
Leaping back up, he bounded toward the far end of the run. Up on the banks he could see the stout frame of the hated Gorlas silhouetted against the stars, with Y’gerna a smaller silhouette at his side. Merlin was hovering several feet in front of them, his face inscrutable in the flickering torchlight.
Another arrow hissed by, the wind created by its passage caressing his cheek like the cold finger of death. He dropped to all fours, crawling amidst the blood and entrails and shrieking animals, whilst another volley sailed overhead and thudded into pigs near the end of the run. They dropped, twitching in their death-throes.
U’thyr tossed the bodies aside. He was near to completion of his task now, unscathed except for the small wound to his shoulder. Blood streaked his chest but he paid it no heed; it was like protective war paint. He was so close to the finish he could see his men; his mother’s anguished face; the impassive visage of the Merlin. Hands reached over the rails, trying to touch him, the day-king, the Champion of the Winter feast, and to lift him out of the blood and filth to safety and to glory.
But no, he had one more act of courage to perform as Champion of the Feast. He must choose the animal from which the sacred portion would be carved. Glancing around, he saw one particularly large black pig rushing back and forth, grunting and foaming in fear. Its eyes were red, almost mad in its terror. For a moment man and beast looked each other in the eye, and then they came together in brutal conflict, rolling amidst carcasses and steaming dung.
U’thyr reached to his belt and snatched out his dagger. “Brother, you have fought the good fight tonight!” he whispered into the pig’s bristly ear, as he put his knee across the fleshy neck and yanked back the head. “Be pleased that your spirit will be honoured, and that your flesh will go to nourish the people of the Five Cantrevs!”
With that, he slit the pig’s throat and released its life force into the night. Standing up, he grabbed the carcass and raised it over his head like a trophy. Blood showered over him, mingling with the red stream from his own wound.
The crowd cheered again and hurled down boughs of holly and mistletoe, for he was without question the Winter-King, king for a day.
U’thyr heaved the pig’s carcass up, flinging it over the fence toward Gorlas and Y’gerna where they watched on the bank. It fell with a thud before them, split throat showering blood. U’thyr then vaulted over the rail and stalked over to his kill, dragging it up by the head. “I claim the Champion’s portion!” he cried, his voice guttural, almost animalistic. “Does any here gainsay me?”
There was no answer. Gorlas’s face was a twisted mask of rage—and fear. In silence, Merlin strode over and began to paint designs on U’thyr face and shoulders with the warm blood of the pig. Then he flung out his arms and shouted, “Hail the champion, lord of the feast, Midwinter’s King! Let nothing he asks for this eve be denied him!”
A wolfish grin split U’thyr’s bloodied visage. “I ask but one simple thing…” He stepped toward Gorlas and Y’gerna, noticing that the girl was staring at him with dark, admiring eyes. He stretched out his hand, filthy and red. “A kiss from the lips of this queen who has driven the cold of winter from my flesh with her presence.”
The crowd muttered; Gorlas’s face was thunderous, but he knew he could say nothing to the winner of the Champion’s portion. Y’gerna reached out and placed her slim fingers on U’thyr’s bare shoulder. “For the Champion,” she said, and she tilted her face to his, her dark hair raining back like a waterfall, past her slim hips, almost to the backs of her knees.
U’thyr devoured her red mouth like a wolf, tasting his own blood, salt, the mead they had both drunk that night.
The moment was broken by an enraged scream from Gorlas. “This is outrageous! Champion of the feast or no, I won’t be made a fool of by some young idiot! I shall leave at once, and I will never come here again! Khor Ghor is corrupt and the gods will soon speak their anger. And you…you harlot…” He snatched Y’gerna’s arm and yanked her away from U’thyr, “You’ve had too much to drink! Go find your attendants, and make ready for the journey back to Belerion!”
He pushed Y’gerna out into the darkness and followed after, cursing and shoving her to make her go faster.
U’thyr turned to Merlin, eyes wild. “I must kill him now! I cannot let her go…”
“Silence!” The Merlin laid a warning finger to his lips. “You will have what you want, I will see to it, but we will do this my way, so that there will be as little blood spilt as possible, and none here in this holy place of priests. As I said before, we do not want war with the men of Belerion, who have long been allies of Khor Ghor and also of Ar-morah across the Short Sea. Meet me at Moonset, by the Khu stone... and put your trust in me.”
The rest of the night dragged for U’thyr, despite his position as Champion. He feasted, tearing off huge chunks of meat then throwing the half-eaten remains to the hungry dogs, which ran from reveller to reveller, tongues lolling and tails wagging frantically. He drank deep heady brews that made his head spin. He dandled women on his knee, some dark, some fair, some red as fire…but they could not drive out his lust for Y’gerna. It was as if she had bewitched him with some ancient woman’s magic.
At last the fires started to die away and the people disappeared in twos and threes to seek their huts and tents. U’thyr called his warband to him, and, with their weapons concealed under their cloaks, they wandered through the smoke and mist to seek Merlin at the Khu-stone.
The shaman was waiting by the hump-backed menhir, wrapped in a skin cloak with a hood pulled up to hide his face. “Follow me…” he said, and he led the small party out across the night-cloaked expanse of the Great Plain.
“How far has Gorlas got, think you?” U’thyr strode next to the older man, dagger unsheathed and jaw tense.
“His rage carried him swiftly for a few miles,” Merlin smirked, pushing back his hood. He had repainted his face; it looked frightening beneath the Moonglow—skull-like, a symbol of death to come. “But he’s not so young, and his bones ache… and I slipped a sleeping drought into his drink at the feast, and he took three draughts of it!”
U’thyr laughed sharply. “His gluttony may have served me well!”
Merlin’s eyes glimmered. “I then sent a tracker to follow his trail…Gorlas has camped for the night at the old fort of Sarlog, which lies betwixt the plain and the lands of the Willow.”
“Sarlog…never did I think the site of its broken ramparts would be so sweet to me,” murmured U’thyr and he lengthened his strides, knowing that Y’gerna was waiting for him there. Waiting for him to free her from her husband, to take her to his bed, to claim her as his own woman
Soon the crown of Kar Sarlog appeared on the horizon, a whitish blot against an obsidian sky. Vast earth ramparts, partly ruinous, spiralled upward to form a vast black cone. The sides were chalky and strewn with bushes, attesting to the fort’s desolation, but on top tents rustled in the breeze and fires flickered. U’thyr would have rushed for the main gate then and there, but Merlin held him back. “No. That would be folly. Gorlas will be half-expecting you to follow him, and his men will be on guard.”
“We should have brought more warriors!” snarled U’thyr. “Stormed the place, and killed them all…”
Merlin’s eyes flickered. “I told you—no more blood than is necessary! You will get what you desire…I promised I would help you, did I not?”
“Then work your magic, wizard!” snapped U’thyr.
Merlin knelt on the ground, hands splayed on the earth. He closed his eyes and began to chant. He rocked back and forth, teeth grinding, calling on unearthly forces to help him, to help U’thyr. Reaching into his belt-pouch he brought out a switch of rowan and beat himself with him until blood beaded on his flesh—his own sacrifice, himself to himself, on this night of power and destiny.
For a long while nothing happened. U’thyr began to stalk back and forth, his eyes wild as a caged beast’s, the cold wind licking droplets of sweat from his agitated brow. His men looked helplessly one to the other; they did not ken the ways of sorcerers or even of their lust-maddened chief.
Suddenly Merlin leaned back on his heels, panting, drooling, his face-paint smeared. His eyes were black as coal, inhuman, the pupils distended and the whites full of red veins. “It is done!” he rasped. “Look into the valley!”
U’thyr and his men gazed into the vale that swept down from the Western side of the hillfort. A white mist was curling, rising, rolling toward them. Higher and higher its tendrils reached, blotting out the stars, sucking in bushes and trees and rocks. The men huddled close together, warriors or no; for they half fancied they could see faces in that mist—cold dead faces, eyeless skulls, yawing mouths of beings that detested the living that walked beneath the Sun.
“The mist is the Faeth, the fog of Oakseers,” said Merlin. “It will last but a few hours. Go now, U’thyr and call Gorlas to combat. When he is vanquished, take his battle-helm and place it upon your own head. You will seem as Gorlas to his people, and you can go to the Lady Y’gerna without detection.”
U’thyr looked at his mentor, suddenly grateful. “Merlin, my friend, my helpmeet, I have been acid-tongued towards you this eve. What can I give you, to repay all that you have risked for me?”
Merlin inched up to the younger man, his dark gaze locked with U’thyr’s. “I told you before. One thing only will suffice. A child. The child. The first male child that you get on Y’gerna. That is all I ask.”
“Yes, yes, whatever you want, it is yours…”
“Then go…and may the Ancestors smile on you!”
*****
U’thyr scrambled up the hill, tripping on rabbit holes and roots hidden by the sorcerous Faeth.. Ahead, he could see the gateway, undefended, open like a mouth inhaling the unholy mist of Merlin. Fires flickered beyond, hissing in the sudden damp.
“Gorlas of Dindagol!” he shouted, drawing his dagger. “I, U’thyr son of Kustenhin call you out for single combat! You have insulted me, who became Winter’s king through my prowess, and you have shown disrespect to the Temple of Khor Ghor. You are not a man in my eyes, but a beast—a foul, rutting boar that needs to be culled!”
There was a roar of rage from within the encampment, and moments later U’thyr saw the helmeted figure of Gorlas silhouetted against the guttering fires, a huge stone battle-axe in one hand and a bronze rapier in the other. His warriors milled around him, bleary eyed, not sure what or who was attacking.
“Where are you, U’thyr Pendraec?” Gorlas shouted. “Show yourself!”
“No, you come to me—alone!” cried U’thyr. “Or are you so fearful that you must surround yourself with younger, doughtier men!”
Gorlas roared again and launched himself through the gateway. His warriors blundered after him, uttering war cries that fell dead in the mist. They crashed down the slopes of the fort, tripping on stunted shrubs, sliding on winter-rotten leaves as cold and slimy as dead flesh…and then at the bottom, the enchanted fog curled up to engulf them, all arms and legs and twisted faces full or sorrow and hate. There came a soft whirring noise, like the fluttering of a bird’s wings wildly beating—or the wind through the fletchings of an arrow in the dark—followed by a series of muffled shrieks and then deathly silence.
U’thyr and Gorlas found themselves alone on the hillside, the mist forming a circle, an unearthly arena, around them. Purposefully, U’thyr stepped toward his adversary, his dagger held in ready, every muscle tensed. Gorlas dropped into a crouch, growling like a beast, and indeed he looked much like an animal in his rude fur cloak and grotesque helmet fashioned from a boar’s head.
For a few minutes they circled, each getting the measure of the other, and then, uttering an unearthly yell, Gorlas barrelled forward, head lowered, the boar’s tusks on his helm thrust forward like a pair of additional weapons. U’thyr sprang back in surprise; he had expected an axe swing or a slash from the rapier. He stumbled against a tree, and Gorlas rushed past him, the impetus of his attack carrying him beyond his intended quarry. Slipping on leaves, he managed to halt himself and turn around ponderously…in time to see U’thyr bearing down on him, dagger upraised.
Panting, he flung up his axe and U’thyr’s blow smashed against the wooden haft, cutting a great gouge. There was a crack and the wood parted and the black polished axe head thudded to the ground.
Gorlas yelped in fury, but his anger turned to mirth as he saw that his opponent’s weapon had suffered a similar fate. The bronze blade of U’thyr’s knife had bent with the power of his blow and was in danger of breaking in two.
“I have you now, young fool!” he grunted, raising his rapier. “You should have stayed in Deroweth with the wom
anish priests. You would have reigned as chief for another year…but now the Dwr shall have no ruler and I shall make a drinking cup of your skull. I shall make that faithless whore Y’gerna drink from it every night.”
“I am not done, Gorlas,” said U’thyr, falling into a crouch. “I still have one weapon—the strength of my arms!”
Gorlas laughed. “You! Thin as a reed! Know you that I once wrestled a wild boar unarmed and won—hence the head upon my helm!”
“Looking at that mangy token, the battle was many long years ago,” U’thyr retorted. “Once your limbs were doubtless strong… Now they are merely fat!”
Gorlas snarled and leaped at his adversary, his blade making slashing sounds through the chill air. U’thyr ducked and swung a balled fist into his stomach, making the older man double over and gasp for breath. Purple-faced, Gorlas stumbled in his direction, dagger stabbing aimlessly, free hand groping for a handful of cloak, tunic, hair…
U’thyr darted behind him, trying to kick through the banks of sodden leaves on the ramparts of the fort. He slipped and fell heavily amid the slimy mulch. Gorlas made a wild lunge with his knife, thinking his luck was in…but U’thyr grabbed a handful of the mouldering leaves and rammed them into his face.
“You fight unfairly!” screamed Gorlas. “You fight like a maid afraid of being tupped!”
“You are the one who fights like a coward—a man with a weapon against one with none!” U’thyr shouted back.
“I have had enough of your tongue!” Gorlas yelled, and he lunged at U’thyr once more, adrenaline giving him a speed unnatural in one so fat and indolent. Like a maddened ox, he charged at U’thyr, arms flailing madly, pointlessly, his mouth open in a frothing, mad shout.
And U’thyr, with the litheness of youth, once again sprang up into the misty darkness, swinging on the bough of a shrivelled hawthorn tree above the reach of Gorlas’s sword. The fat man, as before, blundered forward, carried along by his mad, headlong rush and the weight of his own corpulent frame.
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 10