“A rare find, Gam-el. I wonder where it came from.” He could now tell that one of the speakers was a woman.
“From some fool who dared to walk uninvited in Melwas’s lands!” the woman’s companion replied. This voice was deep, a male’s “He must have drowned in the bog. A bit of good luck for us—but not such good luck for him!”
The couple laughed raucously, and An’kelet suddenly realised the ‘find’ they were talking about was his horse. He had tethered the animal to a bush last night, but the mare must have broken free while he slept and wandered away.
Carefully, An’kelet shifted his position so that he could view the newcomers. They were standing a few feet away, an older man with a balding head and red beard and a woman whose face had a soft, sucked-in look from a lack of teeth. Both wore crude outfits of tanned hides, old and stained, and smelled very foul indeed. The man held An’kelet’s horse by the rein.
“What should we do with the beast?” the woman eyed the black mare.
“Eat it?”
“Well, it’s big and fat—tempting, I admit. But she ain’t ours; she’s on Melwas’s land, so she belongs to the chief.”
The woman sniffed and stared downheartedly at her grubby bare feet. “Not fair.”
“It might be all right, O-on! Our chief is getting married in one moon, remember? He’ll no doubt have the beast cooked up and we’ll all get a bite anyway! Grand, it’ll be! He might even look on us with favour because we found the animal!”
The woman rubbed her thin arms. “Maybe. But I don’t like that idea of this marriage. It’ll bring bad luck; I feel it in my bones. Why is Melwas so set on that strange whey-faced one? The woman is too white…it ain’t natural.”
“She has fine tits and a royal mother!” retorted the man. “That’s good enough for him. It’s not for us to question!”
The woman screeched and hit out at the man. “You weren’t supposed to be lookin’ at her…” They stumbled away, dragging An’kelet’s mount behind them, the man laughing as the woman batted at him in mock anger.
An’kelet felt his pulse quicken. What was nearly a disaster might prove advantageous in the end. Despite his immediate urge to confront the couple and force them to take him to Melwas, he kept silent and let them go unmolested. Once the sound of their cackles and shrieks had vanished in the distance, he emerged from behind the fallen willow and followed the trail they had made through the reeds across the foetid marsh.
After several miles An’kelet noticed the ground beneath his feet growing more solid. Up ahead, he could see a tract of dry grass-land bordering a clear blue lake. Round houses clustered on the shore, while rows of tethered coracles bobbed in the shallows—the main occupation of the villagers was fishing, since neither farming nor animal husbandry fared well in such watery environs. A protective wall of sharpened stakes surrounded the houses, but there were no other signs of defence; bog and lake made impassable walls against incursions from the outside world.
An’kelet shouldered his spear and hurried toward Melwas’s domain. The retaining wall, which had been left unguarded, shielded him against any spying eyes. Bent almost double, he inched his way along its length down to the lakeshore.
By now the light was failing; the Sun still in winter’s grip, the days still brutally short. Nightjars screamed as they dipped and dived over the water, and the Moon’s ghost appeared, half full. The Western horizon spouted blood as the Sun fell away towards the lands of the Dead.
No one was about, so An’kelet silently slipped thigh-deep into the freezing water and thrust his spear through the bottoms of all the coracles except the largest and most sturdy one. The other craft sank soundlessly, trailing bubbles.
He then turned his attention to the settlement. Only a few hundred yards away women swished by in their long skin skirts, bringing in their weaving looms and drying racks for the night, while husbandmen penned the few scraggly cattle they owned and called in their roving dogs. Warriors staggered toward their hearths, already deep in their cups, unbuckling their dagger-belts and stone wristguards in preparation for drunken slumber. “Selgi! Selgi! Where is that brat of mine?” he heard a woman cry, her voice mixed with annoyance and worry.
The night drew colder and teardrops of ice appeared on the grass where An’kelet crouched. He watched the Moon sail overhead and the stars dance in their nightly procession.
Soon…soon…
A night-guard emerged from one of the huts and squatted beside a guttering fire between the dwellings. He carried an axe but after toying with it for a while, dropped it in exchange for the delights of his drinking beaker. Sighing, he stretched out his stubby legs toward the fading warmth of the fire-pit.
It was the last warmth he ever felt.
Swift as a striking snake, An’kelet leapt from his hiding place and flung himself at the man’s back. Arondyt tore into the sentry’s ribcage and pierced his heart, and he died with not so much as a cry.
An’kelet rose from beside the corpse, his hands and blade bloody. Battle-madness washed over him in dark waves, different from anything he had ever before experienced. His prowess in warfare had come from skill and his measured, thoughtful nature, not from the crazed rage that possessed many others. Yet now he was changing, his body tingling with adrenaline, his very features warped and twisted by the power of his wrath and his desire for the blood of his enemies. He had entered the state the priests called the hero’s warp-spasm; half in the world of men, he was also half in the domain of the gods, his strength greater than ten, his aspect terrible and inhuman— a Sun with blazing eyes and pitiless death-rictus grin, and wild burning hair that blew out in the strengthening breeze.
Throwing back his head, he howled like some fell beast at the ascending Moon.
His cry brought Melwas’s warriors running from their huts. Laughing like a madman, An’kelet charged towards them, slashing with Arondyt, severing arms and piercing legs and unguarded torsos. Screams rang out in the gloom as bodies toppled to the earth and blood fountained. One man leapt on An’kelet’s back, and tried to drive a dagger into his throat; with a cry of amusement, An’kelet grabbed his assailant’s arms and tossed him straight over his head into the fire-pit. The man’s fur cloak touched the glowing embers and he ignited like a torch, and ran shrieking in agony throughout the village, a hideous fireball that eventually collapsed in a heap beside the lake.
“What do you want, bloody-handed stranger?” one of the men cried, trying to set arrow to his bow with trembling fingers.“We do not know you…we have no quarrel with you!”
“Oh, but you do!” shouted An’kelet. “Call Melwas to me and maybe some of you shall see the dawn!”
“I come!” a voice snarled behind An’kelet. Whirling, he saw the door of a large hut bang open, and a naked warrior step forward with a lethal-looking rapier in his hand. His hair coiled like a wild snake around his face, and his mouth was marred by raised scars the colour of raw liver. Yellow wolf-eyes blazed from under scowling brows.
“Are you Melwas, King of the Summer Country?” asked An’kelet brusquely. He shoved his daggers into his belt, and reached to touch the haft of the Balugaisa where it hung in its sling across his back. It seemed to call to him, his favourite weapon, tempered in the poisoned blood of the monster Kon-Khenn.
“I am,” replied Melwas. “Who are you, who attacks my people and disturbs my sleep?”
“Where is the woman…where is Queen Fynavir, wife of the Pendraec?”
Melwas flung his head back and laughed. “So that’s what this is about, is it? The white bitch! But you, with your bright Sun-hair and foreign voice, are not her husband, Ardhu the so-called high king!”
“No, I am not. I am his right-hand man, An’kelet son of Bhan and the Lake Priestess Ailin, greatest warrior of the Western world, wielder of the long spear, Arondyt, sword of Light, and Fragarak the Answerer. Now tell, me, I will not ask again—where is Queen Fynavir?”
“Where do you think the slut is?” snarled Melwa
s. “In my hut, where else?”
The implications of Melwas’s words, in addition to his nakedness, made An’kelet’s growing madness spiral to even greater heights. A red haze clouded his vision; his lips drew back in a dangerous, animalistic grin. He said no more to his adversary, who stood, hands on hips, waiting for some type of formal challenge, a request for hand to hand combat for the possession of the woman.
Instead, in a vicious, purposeful motion, he yanked out the Balugaisa, took three long strides toward Melwas and thrust the spear straight into his belly with all his might. The king of the Summer Country uttered a strangled sound and clutched vainly at the spear. An’kelet continued to push forward, driving the barbs through flesh and bone, till the deadly head tore out of Melwas’s back. An’kelet was almost breast to breast with his adversary, his eyes blazing with the changeling light of the warp-spasm, burning into his enemy’s dying gaze. “When you touched the Lady Fynavir, most perfect of women,” he said, “your life from that moment was forfeit to me. For the evil and dishonour that you have done her, may your spirit be trapped forever in these bogs and never go to the house of your Fathers!”
Melwas tried to speak, but his mouth was gushing blood. An’kelet yanked back the spear-head with its fearsome barbs, and Melwas collapsed, his innards torn to ribbons by the brutal passage of the spear. An’kelet grabbed his opponent’s hair and hauled up the body, slashing the face with Arondyt, before stabbing the blade repeatedly into the dead man’s groin. “There!” he cried, tossing the mutilated corpse at the feet of Melwas’s oncoming men, who stopped abruptly in their tracks, fearful of this man of bronze with his mad eyes and death-wielding arm. “Melwas has no face and he is no longer a man… his spirit will not go into the Otherworld but will stay here unto eternity to pay for the sins of his days! Attend to him and do not raise your hand to me, lest you meet the same doom as your accursed master!”
The villagers started to shriek and wail, even the warriors hesitating to come forward against this wild-visaged foe with his terrible weapons. An’kelet lifted the bleeding corpse of Melwas and as one last indignity to the slain chief hurled the body at his followers. It crashed into them heavily, sending them reeling back, while An’kelet resheathed the Balugaisa and shoved his way into Melwas’s hut. He paused, his throat tightening, as he saw Fynavir dangling from the crossbeam of the roof, her wrists black with caked blood, her only clothing a scrap of skin. Dark bruises marred her skin…cruel finger marks. Her head hung down, hair tangling over a face too thin, too pale, with huge circles underscoring the closed eyes. As he approached, she stirred, her head slowly lifting and her eyes flickering open.
“An’kelet…” her voice was a rasp in her throat. “Where is Ardhu?”
“Not here…” An’kelet could say no more, emotion rising in him.
“But you…you have come for me…” She tried to smile, her dry lips tremulous.
“I would never leave you to such as Melwas.” He strode to her side and slashed through the ropes that bound her wrists.
Her arms fell to her sides and she stumbled forward, weak and fainting. He caught her as she fell, lifting her off the ground in his arms. .
“Melwas…he is dead, isn’t he?” she whispered
“Yes.”
“Good!” she said, with uncharacteristic viciousness. “But his men…they will kill you…us. I cannot flee with you as I am. You must leave me and save yourself.”
“If I were to live and let you die, my own life would be worth nothing!” he said fiercely, brushing her knotted hair away from her bloodless face. “Either we both die here together…or we both live, to whatever end!”
Heading to the back wall of the hut, An’kelet gently set Fynavir down on the ground, where she rubbed her wrists and legs, trying to restore some circulation. While she did this, he cut a large gap in the wall with Arondyt and kicked out the wattle with several sharp blows. “Come, Fynavir,” he said. “Throw your arms around my neck and climb onto my back. Hold on as tight as you can. That way, my arms will be free to fight off Melwas’s men if need be.”
Fynavir staggered up, clasping her shaking arms around him and folding her legs around his middle. With his two Ar-moran daggers in hand, Arondyt in the right and Fragarak in his left, he pushed through the gap in the hut wall and raced out into the night.
The village was a scene of tumult and panic. Women were screaming and keening over the bodies of the dead, while dogs raced around, maddened by the blood-scent and the commotion. Warriors loomed up out of the smoke and the reek, faces grim, leading ordinary farming folk armed with sickles and clubs studded with deadly flint spikes.
“There he is!” one screamed, and An’kelet felt the air ripple as an arrow whirred past his head. “The bastard who killed chief Melwas! He has taken the stranger woman, the white one of ill-luck!”
“Get them!” another voice howled, full of bloodlust and rage. “Sacrifice them both in the lake!”
An’kelet started to run. Fynavir was no great weight, but he was terrified an arrow or other missile might strike her exposed back. He had an awful vision of both of them impaled by a flying spear, bound together like lovers, flesh joined to flesh in the eternity of death. Please, great Ancestors, let her live. Goddess, if she is really a scion of your flesh, protect her now, I beg you…I beg you!
As they reached the edge of the village, a roaring tribesman suddenly jumped out from behind a hut, brandishing one of the lethal clubs An’kelet had spotted earlier. He swung it wildly at the Ar-moran prince, and one of its spines ripped into the muscle of An’kelet’s left arm, drawing a gush of bright blood that drenched his sleeve. An’kelet leaped back, narrowly avoiding another blow from the club, and flung Fragarak at his adversary using his left hand, a move his enemy did not expect, for his gaze was fixed on the longer and more noticeable Arondyt. The blade somersaulted through the air, a spinning wheel of bronze fire, and struck the man firmly in the gut. He shrieked in shocked pain and crumpled to his knees, and An’kelet snatched the man’s own weapon and hastily sent him to whatever gods or spirits he was vowed to.
Retrieving Fragarak, An’kelet began to run with all speed towards the lake. On his back, Fynavir glanced over her shoulder; through the shadows she could see gesticulating figures silhouetted against new-kindled fires and the glint of flame on unsheathed metal. “They are coming! They will not give up until we are dead!”
“They may have no choice,” said An’kelet, panting as he forced his legs to move even more quickly. He was now mere feet from the lakeshore, his keen eyes searching for the single coracle he had left afloat. And there it was, in the reeds, bumping gently against the half-submerged ruins of the coracles he had sabotaged.
An’kelet gestured to Fynavir and she released her hold of his neck. He lifted her into the coracle, and climbed in after her; it was a small craft, intended for only one sailor and their bodies were pressed together, his larger frame covering hers protectively. Pulling the Balugaisa from its sling, he put it to new use and pushed the craft away from the shore with a great thrust, shoving it out toward the centre of the night-shrouded lake.
“Look, they are getting away!” Torch-bearing figures were converging on the shore, running up and down as war-drums began to beat and horns blared in the shadows. Several more arrows whined in the air like angry bees and skittered across the surface of the water. “After them, in the boats… Melwas must be avenged!”
The angry villagers plunged knee-deep into the water, seeking the boats that they used every day for fishing, the craft they knew they could manage like no others in all Albu. Their hands flapped about, groping and grasping in the cold waters…and then they found the sunken coracles, some upended, others sinking into the mud, all damaged beyond repair.
Angry cries went up, rising in intensity until all voices blended into one single voice that trembled and ululated, then fell in a series of wails and shrieks that sounded barely human. It was a dreadful sound and Fynavir covered her ears wit
h her hands, even though she recognised that it was a cry of despair.
A cry of defeat.
The coracle sailed out into the lake, skimming across the wide waters under the Moon
An’kelet and Fynavir had escaped. The gods, it seemed, had smiled on them.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Once An’kelet and Fynavir reached the far side of the lake, they beached the coracle and began to hastily make their way toward the South, using the conical bulk of Hwynn’s Tor, black against the star-speckled mantle of the sky, as a way-marker. Fynavir was weak; her legs threatening to give way with every step, so An’kelet carried her at intervals. His own wounded arm was painful and still bleeding, a slow, dark trickle that soaked his tunic through. It was not a serious wound, but he knew it needed to be washed and bound to avoid an infection that could prove lethal.
But there was no time to attend to such matters; they had to keep moving…The lands around were still hostile territory, and the news of Melwas’s death would spread swiftly as fire, as such news always did. They had to reach the lands of the Dwri to be assured of safe passage to Kham-El-Ard.
“Do you know where we are?” asked Fynavir against his shoulder, her numb, bruised feet dangling over his arm. “How long do you think it will take us to reach home?”
“Two days or slightly more if we were both fit youths blessed with fleetness of foot.” An’kelet smiled grimly. “But neither of us are fit, lady.”
“I know…” She touched his wet sleeve, noting how he flinched. Her fingertips came away stained dark “We need to stop…there must be a safe place where we can make camp for the night.”
“I believe we are travelling near the banks of the River Brui,” said An’kelet. “Another few miles and we should be out of the Summer Lands, and into friendlier places. We must not become too over-confident and let our guard down, however. Enemies and desperate men are everywhere.”
Stone Lord: The Legend of King Arthur (The Era Of Stonehenge) Page 35