And yet even such a spell as this was as delicate as a spider’s silken threads strung amongst heather, and it seemed impossible that the boy could hold the neamh-mairbh much longer. Now that they knew we had come to steal the cauldron, they would surely attack with renewed and desperate savagery.
‘Ready,’ Gawain said. It was not a question. He would lead, with Merlin and Taliesin behind him, then me. Iselle took up position on my right, blades raised to the darkness. Gediens was on my left, paying no heed to the bloody wound in his neck, and Cai would defend our rear.
Gawain hefted his shield. ‘Now,’ he said, and we were moving. And the spell was broken.
Gawain’s sword flashed and something died, and I heard fighting behind me, too, but I kept moving. We hurried back along the narrow tunnel, one line again, the rock walls either side tearing open my knuckles and the backs of my hands because the passage was only just wider than the cauldron itself.
In front of me, Gawain stopped. ‘Which way?’ he yelled, while Cai yelled at us to keep going and my arms trembled with the precious burden. I saw Taliesin’s eyes, wide and luminous amid the gloom.
‘Your left,’ Iselle called. That was good enough for Gawain, who set off down another tunnel, and I felt my back would break, so stooped was I beneath that rock ceiling, my cheek pressed against the cold metal of that cauldron which had cooked the flesh of men. But Cai was keeping our enemies at bay no less than Taliesin had, and we came into the smaller chamber with the bone midden, then into another tunnel, and now I could feel a breath of air, cool against the raw skin of my hands.
‘Nearly there,’ Gawain said. ‘If they follow us out, we’ll slaughter them.’ And we would, because Parcefal and the others were out there beneath the clear sky and when they saw us emerge bloody and fewer than we had been, they would mount their horses and cut the neamh-mairbh down like barley before the scythe.
‘Faster, Galahad!’ Iselle demanded, and at last I could straighten again and my lower back burned with pain and the muscles in my arms were taut and trembling, but I ran, and I would not drop the cauldron.
‘Cai is down!’ Gediens roared, his voice filling the tunnel.
‘Don’t stop!’ Gawain yelled.
‘Go!’ Gediens roared, and I could not breathe but I kept going because there was no room for Iselle and Gediens to pass me and if I was not fast enough, they would die.
Stumbling, half falling, but keeping my feet under me. My shield hammering against my back. Shoulders and arms striking the rock over and over. My blood gushing in my ears, drowning out my curses which were thick on the air because I could not see where I was going but must follow Gawain by the sound of his boots scuffing the ground and his breath and the jangle of his war gear and his helmet’s cheek irons. Then a shaft of light and an incline up which I drove with the last of my strength, roaring with the agony of it and blinded by the day.
Out of the creatures’ lair, and I let go the cauldron, which struck the ground with a hollow clang, rolling and coming to a stop in the tall grass beside the path. I unslung my shield and drew Boar’s Tusk and turned in time to see Gediens and Cai emerge from the cave’s mouth, walking backwards, shields raised, both men sheeted in blood.
‘Galahad!’ Iselle cried. I spun back round and saw Parcefal wheeling his horse, his spear raised to the sky. Medyr, Tarawg, Nabon and Cadwy were all mounted, forming a line facing north, spears gripped in their right hands, shields on their backs, their helmet plumes dancing. Facing them, a spear-throw away amongst the grass and the yellow cowslips, were a score of neamh-mairbh brandishing spears and knives, and some gripping bows to whose strings they were nocking arrows. Even from that distance I saw the green tinge of their skin, and in their ragged clothes and with their white hair they looked like corpses who had clawed their way out of their burial mounds. As if summoned from some story told around the fire to draw an audience and, after, haunt their dreams.
At the centre of this band, standing forward from the rest, was a huge man holding a huge axe. There was a torc of twisted copper, thick as a rope, at his neck, and more copper bands on his wrists, and of course it was copper ore which was in the walls of the caves.
He wore a bear’s fur over his animal skins and looked like a man who had won that pelt wrestling against the bear itself. His long white hair was plastered back over his wide head, his nose was broad and broken, his eyes were deep set and I saw him look at the Cauldron of Anwnn lying where I had dropped it. Saw his lips pull back from his teeth as he said something to the men behind him.
‘We should have blocked the entrance,’ Lord Cai said. He was bent over, breathing hard. ‘Two of us could have held them.’
‘Too late now,’ Gawain said, because the neamh-mairbh whom we had fought were spilling out of the cave’s mouth, as though the sickened earth vomited poison. They came blinking into the day, startled by the brightness, hands shielding their eyes, many of them wounded and bleeding.
‘Shall we mount?’ Gediens asked, gesturing with his bloodied sword at our horses. They stood twitching and tossing their heads nervously, not liking being hobbled. Seeing the other neamh-mairbh coming, Parcefal must have done it to stop them being driven off.
‘No time for that,’ Gawain said. We were all but surrounded now, though the cave-dwellers were keeping their distance, perhaps because they knew that we were dangerous and that many of them would die, or else they were waiting for the big, axe-bearing warrior to command them.
‘We must protect the cauldron.’ Merlin was fierce-eyed, his face blood-spattered and his beard and moustaches frayed. But despite the odds, he was alive, thanks to Oswine who was still in that underground chamber. It was his tomb now.
‘Stand with me!’ Iselle called. She had hurried to retrieve her bow and bag of arrows from her horse and now stood beside the cauldron, the Saxon sword thrust into the ground beside her for when she ran out of arrows or if the neamh-mairbh were too close. She was ready to make a last stand and my heart swelled in my chest to see her defiance. Beside her, Taliesin stood gripping Iselle’s long knife in two hands, meeting his old enemy with those big eyes of his.
Gediens and Lord Cai took positions beside Iselle and in front of the cauldron and I joined them, catching Iselle’s eye for the briefest moment, trying to say in that one fleeting look what could not be spoken aloud if we were to cling to the illusion of hope. But Gawain did not stand with us. He was striding towards the other neamh-mairbh warriors, his back straight and his chin high and a spear in his right hand. He walked past Parcefal and the other mounted men, ignoring his old friend, who growled down at him from his mare, asking what in Balor’s name he was doing.
‘You!’ Gawain roared, left arm outstretched as he walked towards the ragged-looking war band, pointing at their bear-like leader. ‘You!’ Gawain yelled, still walking. He was closer to the neamh-mairbh than he was to Parcefal and the others, so I knew that if the cave-dwellers attacked, Gawain would be dead before the fastest horse and rider could reach him.
Then Gawain pulled his arm back and cast the spear and it flew like I had not seen a spear fly since I was a boy watching my father train. It rose into the sky, the shaft spinning, then fell, gathering speed, and would have impaled the axe man through his chest had he not twisted his upper body at the last, so that the blade buried itself in the ground, the shaft standing there like an insult, as straight as Gawain’s finger pointing at the huge warrior. ‘You and me!’ Gawain said, still striding towards him, but drawing his sword now, giving the leader of the neamh-mairbh no time to consider what he should do, but enough time to know that this was a challenge which he could no more ignore than refuse.
‘You rancid turd of a she-giant!’ Gawain yelled. ‘Fight me, you coward! Fight me, or the horse warriors of Lord Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon and Prince of Battles, will slay your people and scour you from the land.’
Arthur’s warriors, he called them, not King Pelles’s warriors. Yet I saw no disagreement in Lord Cai or in a
ny of the four men mounted beside Parcefal.
Up came the axe. The big man bellowed something in his own tongue and strode out to meet Gawain. He did not break stride but swung the axe with two hands and Gawain danced out of the way like a man half his age. Then the two warriors circled, weighing each other with their eyes, the neamh-mairbh a head taller than Gawain and broader in the chest and shoulders.
‘He was always a fool,’ Merlin said, but there was admiration in his eyes, because he knew that Gawain had seized what might be our only chance. That by killing the leader of the neamh-mairbh in single combat, he might buy us our lives, as champions in the past stood between armies and spilled their own blood to decide the day and prevent a slaughter.
The huge man lowed like a bull and swung his axe again and this time Gawain lifted his shield and the axe struck it with a crack as Gawain pulled the shield back to absorb the blow. He scythed his sword at the giant’s neck, but the man was fast for his size and threw himself back out of the blade’s reach and swung the axe around his head. It smashed Gawain’s shield, sending splinters of limewood flying.
The watching neamh-mairbh hooted and shrieked and Gawain walked backwards, using his sword to hack away the ruined wood from what remained of his shield. Arthur’s bear still stood on the iron boss, but its top half was gone and a long sliver of wood, sharp as a needle, ran with the grain across almost the whole width of the shield.
‘He’s lucky the green-skinned devil didn’t take half his arm too.’ Cai dragged an arm across his sweat-sheened brow as, exulting in his own strength and in the ruin of his enemy’s painted shield, the monstrous warrior lifted his chin and howled at the sky, then came on, swinging the axe as though cutting a swathe through a mass of ghostly warriors only he could see.
Gawain’s red horsehair plume danced as he twisted and ducked, leapt and retreated, sometimes avoiding that flashing axe head by a finger’s length, sometimes by a foot, but always staying close enough to entice the man on. To keep him swinging that heavy weapon. Working the fiend into a slathering frenzy of bloodlust. Making him crave the sensation of cleaving not just limewood but flesh and bone.
‘Take him now,’ Gediens murmured under his breath. The neamh-mairbh around us were as transfixed by the fight as they had been by Taliesin’s singing and had taken up a low chant of ‘Bredbeddle! Bredbeddle! Bredbeddle!’, which I guessed was the giant’s name.
And now Bredbeddle’s axe rasped off Gawain’s shield boss and his next swing bit into the top of Gawain’s shoulder, sending bronze scales flashing in the day and eliciting a cry of pain from Gawain and shouts of triumph from the neamh-mairbh. ‘Bredbeddle! Bredbeddle! Bredbeddle!’ they chanted, louder now, like a drum beat announcing Gawain’s doom, for they thought it was all but finished. They expected to see their champion standing over Gawain’s corpse. They were already imagining a feast the likes of which their kind had not known for many years.
‘Now,’ I said in a low voice which Gawain could never have heard, yet it was as though he had, for the axe head flew and Gawain threw himself back, the blade whispering past his throat stone. But as he planted his rear foot, he suddenly thrust himself forward and now he was inside that long axe’s reach where its wicked blade could not harm him. He threw his head forward, ramming his helmet into Bredbeddle’s face, and I heard the splinter of bone across the distance.
Then as the bigger man stepped back, Gawain swung his half shield across and into Bredbeddle’s neck with enough muscle to send him staggering away. But he only made three careening strides before Gawain, who had turned and dropped to one knee, brought his sword across to slice into the hamstrings of Bredbeddle’s right leg. The giant went down onto his knees, bellowing in fury and pain, and clutching at his neck, and the long sliver of wood which had skewered it. Gawain was up and he gave a flourish with his sword before stepping in and, in one sweeping cut, taking Bredbeddle’s head off his shoulders.
The head fell into the grass and the lifeless body slumped beside it.
We braced, watching the neamh-mairbh. Expecting them to attack. But they did not. They just stood there, looking over towards where Bredbeddle lay. Then, giving us a wide berth, the ones who had followed us from under ground walked over to join the others, who were already moving to recover their champion’s body and head.
‘There was a time Gawain could have slaughtered that ox in the flap of a raven’s wings,’ Merlin said. ‘Truly he’s getting old.’
But Merlin had it wrong. Gawain had known what he was doing. Had he gutted the man in the first exchanges, the neamh-mairbh would have been furious and eager to exact revenge on us. And so Gawain had given them a spectacle. He had let them witness their champion’s courage and strength. He gave them hope and then ripped that hope away from them, leaving them hollow, sagging like an empty wine skin, the fight gone out of them. Maybe he had even let the axe glance his shoulder. Or perhaps he had been too slow in that moment. Merlin was right in that Gawain was older than he had been in Arthur’s day. But I knew he could still have killed Bredbeddle without breaking a sweat. And I knew he had just bought us our lives.
19
Spirit Walkers
WE SAILED BENEATH A sky of iron and rust. Behind us, the Isle of the Dead was slowly consumed by mist and weighed upon by shrouds of sullen cloud which slid inexorably southward, coerced by that same wind which leant into the Calistra’s woollen sail. As before, we stood amongst the horses, only this time we needed them more than they needed us. We leant against them, almost clung to them, needing their strength for we were bone-weary. But also, perhaps, coveting their equine indifference. Hoping it might seep into us and numb us, as ale will numb a wound of the heart, so much did we ache for the loss of our brothers. We had not been able to retrieve Gadran’s dismembered body. Oswine too, who had served Merlin so many years, would never again be touched by sunlight. And Sadoc, who had vanished in the dark, and Myr, whom I had seen fall, remained in the dark still. But we had taken some small satisfaction in recovering Fiacha and Guidan from the old steading where we had left them, and so those two at least would return to Ynys Môn and from there be borne to Anwnn on the smoke of a hero’s pyre.
We had come to the beach rather than linger inland, and found the Calistra anchored offshore in the dusk, waiting for the morning tide to carry her up onto the sand and shingle. Karadas simply raised a hand in greeting, but even across the distance we could see the wide eyes of his crewmen as they stared at the cauldron which we had brought, slung from a pair of spears fixed to the saddle horns of Oswine’s and Sadoc’s horses. They could also see that we numbered fewer than when we had left them, and they knew better than to celebrate our success in the absence of the lost. That night none of us really slept, but kept our eyes on the dunes and rocks, fearful that the eaters of the dead would come, so that in the morning we were tired beyond words when we finally embarked and set sail accompanied by the cries of gulls and the thrashing of the sea upon the strand.
I stood with Seren, beyond weary, my head against his, my body leeching the warmth from his flesh, my hand resting gently behind his eye where I could feel the thump of his heart and know that we both still lived. It was strange but we did not feel that we had won. Karadas barked his orders at the crew and they went about their business of ropes and sail, steering oar and tiller, and the Calistra’s bows churned the sea as we hastened towards Ynys Môn, as though the ship herself sought to put ten thousand grey furrows between her stern and the receding land. But we who had ventured into that land, and under it, were in some way there still. In the valley of the deserted farmstead, peering into the night after lost souls. Or fear-soaked in the cramped blackness of the caves, where hungry things lurked like monsters in the shadows of a dream.
We who had survived looked at the cauldron as one would look upon a curse, if a curse could be seen. I did not blame Merlin. I had seen the anguish in Lord Arthur’s eyes, sharp still after all the years. I had seen the Lady Guinevere, had with my own eyes, lo
ng ago, beheld the dissolution of her body and mind. And so I knew why Merlin sought the cauldron. But Cai and Medyr, Tarawg, Nabon and Cadwy blamed him. They did not say as much, but they did not need to. They stood among the horses, legs braced against the Calistra’s pitch and roll, silent as stones raised in honour of the dead. Stunned from the loss of their spear-brothers. Now and then I caught one of them looking over at the cauldron by the mast with suspicion or disgust, perhaps thinking the price they had paid for it far exceeded its worth.
‘Did you know I found him hiding in an ash?’ Merlin said. I lifted my head from Seren’s neck and looked at him across the gelding’s back. ‘Not an easy tree to climb, the ash,’ he said. I knew he was talking about Oswine. ‘But he had just seen his father run through by Uther’s champion and so I suppose he had good reason to climb it.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘And he was a boy, not yet thirteen summers, and boys can do extraordinary things if they don’t stop to think about them.’
‘You saved his life?’ I asked.
Merlin frowned. ‘Uther’s men were blood-crazed. Killing anything that breathed.’ His brow darkened. ‘And doing worse things too.’ He placed a hand on Seren’s withers, as though he needed to know what comfort I drew from the gelding. ‘I told Uther’s brutes that whichever of them touched the Saxon boy would piss blood for a year.’ He looked up to the grey sky, where a gull sliced in and out of the northerly, its raucous mews offered like a lament for the dead. ‘Men feared me in those days,’ he said. ‘Now, they do not even fear the gods. They fear only for their own small lives. Will the barley grow tall? Will they survive childbirth or plague or famine? Will they stay warm in winter?’
‘Will the Saxons come?’ I added.
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