Ardhu turned back toward Kham-El-Ard, and ordered the men to go out into the fields and blow on aurochs horns, awakening all in the lands between the Place-of-Light and the circles of Deroweth. The fort on its height sprang to life, youths running here and there to get their masters’ mounts ready and women packing bedrolls and provisions for the long journey. Warriors dashed amongst them, polishing weapons and making high boasts while attaching talismans to tunics or belts. Those to be left behind looked grim, but the warrior’s faces were full of joy—the Solstice was over and they were half-mad with boredom and glad of this new challenge.
Fynavir emerged from her sleeping quarters, feet bare, a sheepskin wrapped around her. “Ardhu, what is happening… I heard the horns blowing!”
“It is time for battle again,” said Ardhu briskly. “Not foreign raiders, this time, but our own kind. In fact…it is the doing of my own sister Morigau.”
“The wife of the northern King? I heard from the jet traders that she recently bore a child…. What harm could a woman fresh from childbed wreak?”
Ardhu stared at his wife, scanning her face to see if she had any knowledge of the truth of Morigau’s child, if any hint of scandal had reached her ears. Her green eyes were guileless. He breathed a sigh of relief. “She is not as a normal woman, Fynavir. A bad spirit resides within her. “
Fynavir pondered this for a minute, and her face clouded. She grasped his wrist. “Ardhu, why must you go? It is far away and you have already done more than any other chief in three hundred years. Wait till spring, when the weather is sweeter and if the trouble is still about, deal with it then.”
Ardhu snatched his wrist away and reached for his mace, tucking it into his belt. “People—my people, are dying. I cannot leave them to their fate, or I would not be worthy of the title of High King.”
“And An’kelet…he will ride with you too?” She hung her head.
“Of course. He is my battle-brother, and the best warrior in my company, though Hwalchmai soon shall be his equal.”
Tears began to leak from Fynavir’s eyes, as they did all too frequently. “I beg you…don’t go! I have seen omens in dreams, and heard dead voices on the wind…I do not wish to be left here alone. Ardhu, let me come with you!”
Art burst into loud, frustrated laughter.“Now that would scare the enemy! Fynavir, the battlefield is no place for you. It is your duty as Queen to stay and attend to the running of Kham-El-Ard in my absence. There is a homeless man at the gate, and a dead child to be barrowed… these shall be among your tasks when I am away.”
“Oh Ardhu, Ardhu…” she wept, pressing her hands to her face, and in embarrassment he pushed past her to gather his shield and the rest of his things. He would never understand the woman; one moment seemingly indifferent, the next weeping if he stepped beyond the hillfort’s gates.
Leaving Fynavir, he proceeded to the entranceway of the fort, thronged by milling warriors and war-steeds, which champed and stamped and threatened to trample the dogs of the settlement as they rushed around in circles in the snow, half-mad with excitement. A few of the larger hounds were on leads, ready to be taken on the long road to hunt Chief Boar T’orc. Ba-lin and Bal-ahn were there, alongside Bohrs with his war-club and An’kelet leaning on his spear. Ka’hai was checking that all supplies for the long road were in place, aided by Betu’or and the brothers Brathac and Nerthac and lanky Cacamuri. Drust Thunderfist, who had a huge war-hammer made of black stone, was shouting a boast, while Glu Mightygrasp, wrestler of great renown, swore that he would tear T’orc into pieces. Hluk Windyhand, famed archer, was inspecting the fletchings on his arrows while sharing a swift joke with Anwas the Winged, fleet-footed scout and messenger. Wadu, Naw and Sberin, youths on their first foray with the warband, jostled each other with ill-concealed excitement, along with Is’govan and Isgowuin from the settlement of An-Dwra in the East. Ohsla Big-knife, Gillah Stagshank, and Ellidur the guide completed the band.
Ardhu gestured to Hwalchmai, whose own departure had been delayed in the drama of the morning. “Cousin, I know you have other journeys on your mind, but I would have you ride with us. I think you will play a part in this exploit before its ending.”
“I have already sworn to go to Lud’s Hole and meet the Green-faced Man.”
“And so you shall. But you will come with us upon the road, at least to a point. Is that not acceptable to you? We may well need the might of your arm.”
Hwalchmai grinned at his cousin. “It is acceptable, lord. I will be glad of the company, and who knows, maybe we can each help the other in our quests.”
*****
The company was ready to depart by the next dawn. The riverbanks were thronged with well-wishers who had come down from Place-of-Light. Mothers held up small children to watch the warriors pass, and old men cheered and shouted, reliving their youths in these bright new champions.
Fynavir stood in silence in the great gateway of Kham-El-Ard, under the carved lintel with its grinning faces of gods and spirits. She looked a being of the underworld herself, wearing her gold pectoral cape with the long linen skirts billowing below like a shroud. Her hair was limed into a fantastic, white coiled shape, and she had chalked her face as a token of her sorrow, turning her soft, lovely face into a surreal, emotionless, mask. Some superstitious folk even made signs against evil at the sight of her, behind their backs; she was their Queen, but she was foreign and different, and although they honoured her as Ardhu’s wife and representative of the land, they did not love her.
Ardhu took her cold hands and kissed her on both cheeks, tasting the chalkiness of her face-paint. It was like kissing the earth of the plain itself, full of the bones of Ancestors… He shivered. He longed to kiss her lips, but she had frozen him out again, had spent the night curled under her furs, weeping. How tired he had grown of the sound, just as he had of the soughing, sighing winds that harassed the walls of Kham-El-Ard, making him long for his upcoming journey, no matter how dangerous.
“I leave my kingdom and all that is in it in your hands, Fynavir,” he said solemnly. “Merlin will be at Deroweth should you need him, and Ech-tor will remain at Kham-El-Ard to assist with the running of the fort. Lads from Place-of-Light have also been recruited as guards.”
“I will do my best to look after your realm, lord husband,” she said softly, inclining her head. And then unexpectedly, she embraced him, anguish in her eyes. “You…and An’kelet, you must take care, do you hear? Don’t take any unnecessary risks; you have both already proved your valour!”
Embarrassed in front of the men, Ardhu gently pushed her away. “Have trust in our skills, wife,” he said, and then he turned to Ka’hai who was leading Lamrai toward him. She whinnied and danced on the half-frozen ground, eager to be away, to stretch legs cramped by the confinement of winter. Ardhu knew exactly how she felt.
Nimbly, he swung up on her back, and his men mounted alongside him, a gaudy crowd in feathers and furs, bronze and gold, with their mounts nearly as brightly decked out as the warriors themselves. Mounted on a mist-grey stallion, An’kelet rode on Ardhu’s right, while Hwalchmai, seated on a beast as black as charcoal, protected his shield arm. As the warband drew ranks behind them, they unfurled the great woven banner of the Head Serpent, with its insignia of a golden lozenge between two spirals. A horn blew and then another and the company moved off toward the fords of Abona.
Fynavir watched them go, uncaring that those around her saw tears track down her dead-white cheeks. She felt their scorn, their eyes harsh as flails on her back. Some of the women were tittering, shaking their heads. “May the spirits bring you safely home,” she murmured into the wind…but she did not know if it was her husband she asked the Old Ones to protect or the Prince from Ar-morah who rode at his side.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The warband moved rapidly across country. Day blended into night and the Moon faded and went dark, leaving only its attendant crown of stars. Dawn came again, slow and sullen, the Sun barely alive as
yet, seeming not to have strengthened since Solstice eve.
At length they came to the settlement of Tarn Wethelen.
Or what remained of it.
All was charcoal and ash. A village turned from a place of light to a place of death and shadow. Not one hut remained, and scarce were the traces that they had ever existed, so thoroughly had they been burned. Corpses of slain villagers lay amid the charred remains; they too had been caught in the conflagration and their cremated bones were scattered in the scant ruins of their homes. At least the wolves would not feast on their flesh.
Turning away from the grisly scene, still emanating the roast-pig scent of the funeral pyre, the company journeyed on toward Tarn Wethelan’s temple, a mile away on a bald broad hilltop visible for leagues around. As they had been warned, it too lay in smouldering ruins, a trail of sullen black smoke spiralling up from its shattered remains to mingle with the sleet-heavy clouds. Dazed, the warriors rode up the hill and stopped before what had been the temple entrance. Some started to moan and keen; a few had visited here in happier times and remembered the magnificence that was now obliterated, never to rise again.
Once, an enormous wooden palisade had run inside a mighty encircling ditch, protecting the sacred area; two entrances had faced East and West, the eastern one with an imposing lintelled gateway that framed the rising Sun. Four circular arrangements of free-standing posts had made an unnatural forest in the centre, guarding a cove of three tall stones where the priests would treat with the spirits and perform rites to ensure the risings and settings of Sun and Moon.
Now that splendour had perished, leaving charred lumps overlaid by a crust of ash-smeared snow. The fire had been so voracious many posts had burnt right down into the chalk pits in which they had been placed. The standing stones of the cove had been toppled into the ditch, and fires deliberately set under them so that they cracked into many pieces.
An’kelet gazed bleakly at the devastation. “How did they dare wreak such evil in a holy place? Surely they feared that the spirits would strike them down for their sacrilege!”
Ardhu’s visage was grey as the surroundings…the smeared snow, the solemn sky, the lifeless winter-bitten hills in the distance. “My evil sister and those under her spell seem to fear nothing, my friend, be it in the sky, or in a barrow, or walking the green earth. I pray you never meet her face to face; she has the Aspect of the Old Gloomy Woman of Winter on her….”
An’kelet shuddered and made a sign against evil behind his back; the Gloomy Woman was a euphemism for the Death Crone, the Guardian, who sucked life from her own Son, the Sun, in Winter
“Where next from here, Art?” Ka-hai rode up, struggling with his horse, which was reacting in fear to the stench and smoke all around it.
Ardhu nodded towards Bohrs and a small knot of men who held the great hounds of the tribe on their tethers. The animals were restive, snapping at each other and tugging on the lead, sniffling and snuffling at the scored and blasted ground, their tails swinging like whips. “The scent of the raiders must be here, somewhere. Loose the hounds.”
Bohrs let go of his dog, with a shout of encouragement. The tan hound bounded away, barking, and the rest of the pack raced after him, crashing through the ash piles, leaping up onto the broken embankments, their noses thrust into the wreckage. Bohrs and other dog-handlers went after them, scanning the ground for traces of footprints or animal spoor from the Chief Boar T’orc
At first Bohrs found nothing, and his wide face became as dark as a thunderhead in frustration. But suddenly his dog, Drudlwyn, gave a sharp bark and sprang on a brownish lump in the grass, clasping it in her jaws and worrying it. “Give that to me!” Bohrs leaned over and wrestled the scrap from his dog’s jaws with much growling and snarling from the hound. “Hmm, Ardhu, what do you make of this?”
Art took the matted clump from Bohrs. It seemed to be a wad of coarse springy hair braided and sewn onto a scrap of cloth that looked as if it may have torn from the hem of a cloak. “I cannot say for sure…but maybe this hair is from the cloak of Rhyttah, which is said to be made from the beards of vanquished chiefs!”
“Just what we needed then,” said Bohrs, and he snatched the clump back from Ardhu and thrust it under Drudlwyn’s wildly working nose. “Find him, my girl!” he ordered the dog. “Bring us to this Rhyttah and his fat Boar…so we can all have boar meat for supper, then shave Rhyttah’s chin as he has done to many others!”
The hound’s ears lifted in excitement and the heavy tail thumped. Then, baying, she loped away, the rest of the dog-pack eagerly following. The men of Ardhu’s warband pursued, riding single file through the steaming, dismal ruins of what had once been the temple of Tarn Wethelen.
The warriors journeyed West then North, then West again, wildly zigzagging across desolate, wintry lands, through hills furled with mist and over rivers frozen solid in their beds. Right up to the peaks of God-of-Bronze they galloped, below the very crags of Kharn Mennyn where the Spirits of Sky dwelt amidst sharp fingers of bluestone, then back across the harsh terrain toward gentler, lower lands that lay further North. They did not come across Chief Boar and Chief Giant, but they found their leavings—ransacked villages, desecrated holy sites, ravaged corpses left for scavengers to feast on. They tried to make decent the bones of those killed, then continued on, ever more determined to wreak justice on Rhyttah and T’orc. But slowly they began to feel an edge of despair, as they crossed endless gloomy expanses by day, and shivered round fires at night with the howls of wind and wolves in their ears. They might call Rhyttah a coward in boastful talk, but they were growing unnerved by both his refusal to meet them, and his continued path of destruction with T’orc. On several occasions, An’kelet brought up the name Merlin had mentioned—Ah-nis the Black Witch, daughter of White Witch, who lived at the Valley of Grief in the Uplands of Despair. But Ardhu refused to seek her out, still putting his trust in keen blades and the smiting of axes against enemies’ skulls rather than sorcery and dark dealings.
Riding with the company, Hwalchmai had almost forgotten his oath to find the Green Man and offer his neck to the axe. His quest seemed almost foolish, with the ruins of once-thriving settlements scattered across the land and widows and orphaned children wailing on the sides of the great Ridgeways that crossed Prydn. Fighting the enemies of his chief and land was surely a better cause than dying at a Moon-mad man’s bidding. After all, what was the Green One, who had entered the king’s hall unbidden that stormy eve? Maybe an evil spirit born from the cold and the darkness, maybe just an enemy seeking to cause mayhem and confusion… Honour in facing him? Maybe. But would the men of Ardhu’s band think Hwalchmai an honourable hero, or just an honourable fool? Breaking his word was not a thing to be proud of, but neither was throwing life away on a whim.
Hwalchmai pulled his horse’s reins and began the decent into a low-slung valley filled with tumbled stones and gnarled thorn trees. Ardhu and An’kelet were riding several paces behind him, discussing heatedly what the best course of action was with Rhyttah seemingly moving like the wind across Prydn. The rest of the warriors massed in the rear, three abreast on the narrow, stony trail that wound towards the valley floor. Hwalchmai could see the hounds in the basin of the vale, sniffing between boulders and skidding over the surface of a frozen brook. They seemed uneasy, almost afraid, their ears press flat against their narrow skulls and their tails down.
Suddenly he caught a glimpse of movement on the far side of the valley. Squinting into the gloom, he spied the figure of an old woman clad in black rags shuffling amid the boulders. As he stared at her, her hooded head swung round and she stared back at him with such malevolence he instinctively made a sign against evil with his hand. He couldn't see her visage clearly, due to the distance, but a brief glimpse had shown him a countenance mottled and twisted, abnormal. He now noticed too that the valley itself was abnormal, with no vegetation, save for thorny black scrub, and rocks that were white as bone, jagged as blades. An air of desolation ros
e from the barren and blasted earth, and by a stunted shrub a flock of crows were pecking at the denuded carcass of some hapless beast.
The place felt foul, worse than anywhere he had ever ventured—could this be the fabled Valley of Despair? It certainly fitted the name!
Without waiting for the others, he drove his mare on into the valley. He heard Ardhu shout to him, his voice raised in annoyance, but a strange rash madness overcame him, and he paid his kinsman no heed. Going into the vale first and facing the hag in her den would surely prove his valour to the Men of the West for once and for all…
And then the mist came down. It came fast and it came suddenly, creeping out of cracks between rocks, from damp earth, from the ice of the frozen river. Cold tendrils swirled round him, rising into sinister shapes and yawing faces that melted in an instant. Chills rippled down his spine, and he drew his dagger and slashed wildly at the fog. He heard sounds deep in its heart…was it laughter?
“Ardhu? My lord?” he shouted to his cousin, but his voice sounded abnormal in that grey amorphous mass, a muffled lifeless groan, a voice out of a barrow.
Pounding his heels against his steed’s flanks, he stumbled on through the thickening greyness. He could see shapes, or so he thought, heard the faint trace of voices shouting his name. Then suddenly he was completely alone in a still grey world. Beneath him his mount was trembling.
Before long the mist lifted slightly. He could see frozen water, a river course leading up to a small waterfall that had turned to ice. It shone blue, beautiful yet cold and perilous in the half-light, its motionless juts of water thrust out like spears in mid-flight. Below the icy prongs, sitting on a rock, was a woman—not the hag he had spied shuffling across the valley, but another. One much more pleasing to the eye…
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 28