‘Yes.’
‘Shall I tell you or shall I not?’
‘Tell me.’
‘But shall I?’
‘Please do.’
‘Once I tell you, you are bound to it, so if I tell you, you must stop me quickly if your courage fails you and you become frightened, because I expect my greatest friends to be true to me until the moment of the pyre.’
I ignored the taunt, the insult. ‘I’ll be sure to do that. Truthfully. On Modron’s Heart!’
‘On Modron’s Heart,’ Kylhuk repeated softly, amused and thoughtful, his gaze meeting mine for a long, too-long moment.
And then, without a further word, we went back into the stronghold, where everyone at the funeral party, for reasons no doubt to do with Kylhuk’s cutting of the prime of the pig and the consequent opening of more flagons of a drink stronger than rose-water, was in a rowdy and vibrant mood.
Twelve
The pyre blazed. Manandoun was lost inside its fire. I watched the wind-whipped smoke rise to the stars. I scented the cedar oil as it burned that trimmed beard and hair. I tried to imagine what Manandoun was seeing as he passed through the hinterland, that place of shadows and tricking gates, and approached his chosen realm.
Manandoun’s wife Ellys sat on a stool with her back to the flames, a safe distance away, her arms crossed over her breasts, her husband’s battle-torque over her wrist, his small knife on her lap, a pouch containing the trimmings of his hair around her neck. The wooden head was mounted on a stone beside her. Her two sons, both youths, knelt beside her, scowling at the ground, no doubt thinking of Eletherion and his brothers.
Each woman in the host went over to the widow and stood before her for a while. Then each man in the host went over and gave her a token, kneeling as they did so. Kylhuk watched all this, talking to me so softly and angrily at times that I couldn’t understand him above the roar of fire and the spitting of burning wood. There were moments when I felt the poor woman who had lost her husband would be incinerated herself, but the sons brushed all cinders and flaring shards away, and I could see by the pyre’s light that each was crying.
At last Kylhuk went to the widow and knelt on one knee on the flattened ground before her, his head bowed. Ellys put a circlet of white flowers on his head and he passed her a ring, which she accepted. The two youths, surly in their expression, hugged the big man when he stood and he spoke to them for a few moments, one boy listening, the younger looking angry, and this boy rode away soon after, and I saw that his mother was distressed and being comforted by her elder son.
Kylhuk led me back to the table where Gwyr sat among Kylhuk’s closest retinue, all but one of whom was drunk, all of them wearing short, colourful cloaks, bright torques around their necks and arms, and the white streaks of grieving on their cheeks and breasts. Two of the ten were women, including the hard-faced Raven, who sat apart from the others, adrift in her own thoughts, seemingly unbothered by the chatter and wild laughter that was again rising around her now that the courtesy to Manandoun’s family had been completed.
‘Where’s Guiwenneth?’ I asked Gwyr. ‘I’m worried about her.’
‘Issabeau is with her,’ the Interpreter replied. ‘Not far from here, by a shallow stream. Someone son of Somebody is close to them, keeping watch. The strange oyster-eater too.’ He meant the jarag.
‘Does she know that Manandoun’s pyre is burning?’
‘Of course. While you were elsewhere, she carried the body here herself. She spent time with him, and brought the head to Ellys for the last kiss. Her own father, a man of high rank, was killed a long time ago and Manandoun adopted her. But because of a geisa that Manandoun won when he was a younger man, she cannot be here while he passes to his Island. That is why Issabeau is with her.’
‘I should be with her too,’ I said, and I meant it. Nothing that had happened so far had moved me to tears, but the thought of Guiwenneth being banned from the funeral of a man she had loved made me angry because I could imagine her sadness and I wanted to be by her side, even with Someone and Issabeau, and help her through her grief.
‘She will want you later,’ Kylhuk said through a mouthful of fruit. I hadn’t realised he’d been listening. ‘She’ll be glad of you on her cloak of grass. Have you been there already?’
For a moment I didn’t understand the words. Then the meaning came to me.
‘I am more than fond of Guiwenneth,’ I said to him, standing from the bench. I was incensed at his comment, and my head had started to whirl with drink and rage. ‘And it is none of your business how she feels for me. None of your business at all! All I know is, she is distressed and I feel for her. Your cheap jokes, your callous tongue, your … your fat tongue and your fat wits, you should be ashamed! Gwyr, take me to Guiwenneth. I want to be with her!’
Every warrior in Kylhuk’s retinue was standing, staring at me, none making a move to draw their weapons, every one of them waiting like a hound at the start of the course.
Kylhuk spat out the plum he had been eating, stood and faced me. How hard he now looked, how narrow his gaze, how grim his scarred lips. His breath was slow and even. He towered over me, his gold and bronze funeral decoration rattling on the hair and the ears that held it. He looked very powerful, and he was very angry, and I flinched as he drew his dagger and held it by the blade, handle towards me. But his words were very soft when he spoke them.
‘What was said was wrong. I will have none of what was said. A tongue spoke, but the heart did not mean the words. If you sit back at my table, I will be the richer man for your kindness. As this good man Gwyr will tell you, Guiwenneth asked to be alone with Issabeau, but she will be glad of your company later. And I will be proud to ride behind the two of you when you share one saddle.’
I noticed that his retinue were relieved by this gentle declaration. When I sat, they sat, and when they had sat, Kylhuk sat, and when he was seated, he poured me a cup of sweet-sour honeyed liquor. Gwyr waggled his eyebrows at me, then pretended to be engaged in eating.
I found out soon after that one of Kylhuk’s geisas was that he should always apologise for the first angry words, whether his own or someone else’s, spoken after the death of a friend.
And when Guiwenneth told me this, I wondered what might have happened if that particular geisa had already been ‘called in’?
The offer to ride behind the two of us when we shared one saddle was his self-invitation to be (in whatever terms the society of six hundred years BC thought of it) my ‘best man’. On this subject, I had my reservations.
And when he had said, ‘A tongue spoke, but the heart did not mean the words’, whose tongue was he talking about? Mine or his? Had that been necessary apology or infuriating forgiveness? I decided on ‘courtesy’ and kept the thought to myself.
Legion was at rest, and the wildwood it occupied was alive with fires and the conversations and laughter of many different times, protected by the subtle, concealing magic of twenty thousand years. As Manandoun left us, and Ellys and her companions danced within a ring of thorns to the thunderous beat of bone on skin drums and the wailing and howling of bronze trumpets, so Kylhuk broke his short-lived fast, and with the first intake of meat and the first swallow of beer he too passed on from this funeral, remembering that he had a special guest to whom he had made promises; and in the way of a storyteller, he told me a little of his life, and I’m sure you will not mind if I present it in the formal way that Kylhuk expressed it.
But it was only later that I realised how he had used the story to answer my question: ‘What is a slathan? Why have you marked me?’
Thirteen
THE STORY OF KYLHUK AND OLWEN
(as told by Kylhuk himself)
When the child of a great man is born, and Kylhuk’s father was a king in his land, there is usually a portent: a star falls from the sky, perhaps; or a great storm washes away a fortress on a high cliff, a cow gives birth to a lamb; a poem cannot be made to rhyme.
There w
ere no portents when Kylhuk fought his way to life, though a storm that had been building in the west suddenly vanished, and if this seems remarkable, bear in mind that Kylhuk, even when in the womb, could affect the world around him.
Kylhuk was born with the portents inside him; he had swallowed them by using his mother’s mouth, and they would be useful later.
As the unnamed child lay in its applewood crib, one of the sons of the giant boar Trwch Trwyth burst through the palisade wall and attacked the dogs in the stronghold, killing six on its tusks. Badly wounded by a spear thrust from the child’s father himself, the boar rampaged into the round-house and shook the child from its crib, screeching angrily as it did so, trying to impale the infant but succeeding only in wedging the tiny boy between its tusks.
The boy clung to the tusks as the boar ran from the stronghold and into the forest, pursued by hunters and hounds. The chase lasted for an hour, and though the boar tried to shake the child from its tusks to see where it was going, the boy held on. Eventually the boar ran blindly into an oak and stuck there fast, to be quickly caught and slaughtered.
Seven days later it was roasted, and Eisyllt Cleverthreads, the king’s favourite daughter, cut the hide so skilfully that she made four cloaks and two masks from the skin of the pig.
The valiant child was named Kylhuk, which means ‘running with the pig’, a very great name, greater than CuCullain, which means ‘running with the hound’; though these two heroes would meet one day and become great friends.
When Kylhuk’s beard had begun to itch but not to sprout, his father married another woman, his first wife having died.
At the games to celebrate the marriage, Kei Longthrow challenged Kylhuk to a spear-throwing contest. Kei cast the first spear and after several hours it was seen to strike the side of a distant mountain, seven days ride to the east. Then Kylhuk threw and after several hours his spear was seen to glance off the summit of that same mountain. But Kei cast again and the spear sailed over the summit. It killed an ox that was peacefully grazing on the other side, though this wasn’t known until the complaint arrived, some time later.
‘You will not do better than that,’ said Kei in triumph.
‘I will,’ said Kylhuk, ‘though you think otherwise.’
And Kylhuk circled four times where he stood, summoned the storm he had swallowed as a child, and cast his spear. The spear disappeared into the distance, flying over the summit of the hill.
‘It is a tie,’ said Kei Longthrow, ‘since we have no way of seeing which spear has gone the furthest over those hills.’
‘Be patient,’ Kylhuk said. ‘The throw is not finished.’
The sun set, and the host slept, and in the morning Kylhuk and Kei were still in their places.
‘You are a bad loser if you do not accept the draw,’ said Kei.
‘Be patient. The throw is not finished.’
At dusk, Kylhuk turned his back to the hills. In front of him a flight of geese was suddenly disturbed as a javelin came flying out of the setting sun. He snatched it from the air and tossed it to his challenger.
‘There. I win. Keep the spear, Kei. It is my gift to you. It will come in useful.’
‘I am impressed by that throw!’
But the contest had consequences.
Kylhuk’s stepmother was also impressed by the throw. She was still a young woman herself and fell quickly in love with her stepson. Kylhuk, being the man he was, rejected her interest, but out of kindness to his father kept the betrayal to himself. Angrily, that night his stepmother cursed him.
‘By my head, you will wed no one until you have first won Olwen, the daughter of Uspathadyn, and you will not win her because Uspathadyn is a champion in his country, and a giant besides, and twenty-three severed heads, all brothers, all of them still singing of Olwen’s charms, make up his table decoration! When Olwen is won, he must kill her lover, or be killed, as part of a geisa that he carries, but he is keen to live and has no intention of letting his daughter go. So there. That’s that.’
‘I will win her,’ said Kylhuk coldly, ‘though you think otherwise.’
Kylhuk had accepted his first challenge, but to Kei he confided, ‘I could have wished for a better start to my life of adventure. Olwen’s father is a giant of a man, and will be hard to kill, though I can do it, I’m in no doubt about that. But Olwen herself is half again as tall as me, and though she is certainly shapely, I have heard that her thighs are like Greek columns and can easily crush an ox; when her teeth chatter it might be rocks falling from a mountain. And she makes oak logs into kindling by twisting them into knots! Kei – as a man, and with a man’s passions, I fear those hands more than I fear her father.’
‘By my head, Kylhuk, I’m glad it’s you and not me that must sleep with this woman.’
‘What shall I do?’
‘If it were me, I would chain her hands to the bed-posts!’
‘I mean, what shall I do now?’
Kei scratched his chin. ‘Go to Pwyll. His fort is only ten days’ ride away. Ask for help there. That is my advice.’
‘I shall take that advice, though I’m sure I am wrong to do so.’
So Kylhuk went to Pwyll’s fort, but hesitated at the gates, again reflecting that to ask for help in his first task was a cowardly thing, and might have consequences. But he was too young to think it through clearly, and too eager to win and then dispense with Olwen, so that he could continue his life of adventure.
He begged his way through the gates, then rode to Pwyll’s hall. He was so nervous that he forgot his manners and rode straight into the hall where the meal was being taken.
When he had stepped down and been seated and fed, and had told Pwyll of his quest, the king stood.
‘Kylhuk, you are the son of Kylid, who once took a blow that was intended for me, but that is neither here nor there. There are a hundred men in this fort, and a hundred women, and every one of them is a great man or a great woman.’
And he proceeded to name them all, which took some time.
Then he said, ‘Kylhuk, you are welcome to take one or all of them to help you in your task, since I am bound to grant the wish of any beardless man who rides his horse into this hall without his weapon drawn, which you have done. But if you take more than two I shall know that you are younger in heart than you are in body, and that will not be good for you.’
‘I will take two men only,’ Kylhuk said, but in his heart he knew this was also a grave, mistake. He should have taken no men at all, accepting only the good advice he would have been offered and Pwyll’s hospitality.
He picked one of the older men, and one of the younger, Manandoun and Bedivyr, and some days later Manandoun used his wiles to gain them entrance to the fort on the white hill where Olwen was the favoured daughter of Uspathadyn.
Uspathadyn gave them hospitality and a chance to abandon the quest and keep their heads. When he spoke, the whole of the hall shook from floor to rafter. Olwen looked longingly at Kylhuk, and Kylhuk looked nervously at her hands. But he smiled at her and she smiled back, blushing and lowering her gaze.
Manandoun and Bedivyr teased Kylhuk until he silenced them. On the table, twenty-three oiled heads, their beards trimmed, sang mournfully of their love for Olwen.
Olwen’s father stared at Kylhuk for a long time along the length of the table. Then he said, ‘Of all the men who have come here to ask for my favourite daughter, you have the fairest face and the best manners. Why, you have not even drawn your sword, which is quite unusual for visitors to this household.’
‘Give your consent to my marriage to Olwen and my sword will never reflect the flames of your fire, that great fire over there, where the ox is roasting.’
‘Well said indeed,’ said Olwen’s father, slapping a hand on the table so that all the heads jumped and lost the rhythm of their song. ‘The more you say to me the more I like you. It is a shame, then, that I must ask you for three wedding gifts. And since you will fail to get them, it is a grea
ter disappointment that I must kill you and put your head here, on this table. But I will place you at the top of the table, where I can talk to you like a father to his battle-slaughtered son. Yes! That is how much I have come to admire you.’
‘I will get your wedding gifts, whatever they are, and at the wedding it will be your own head that is at the top of the table and singing, and I will talk to you – as a son to his battle-slaughtered father.’
Uspathadyn roared with laughter. ‘By Olwen’s Hands! The more you speak the greater is my admiration for you, Kylhuk son of Kylid. I have never had so nice a man here. Your manners are impeccable. Your spirit is everything a proud father could wish for. And so it grieves me even more that you will never get the wedding presents that I insist upon, but there we are, that is that, your head will still be a comfort and joy to me and to Olwen.’
‘I will get the gifts, though you think otherwise, just as soon as you tell me what they are.’
Olwen’s father sighed. He was enjoying this company, but now business had to be done, and necks made ready. ‘The first gift is that you will plough and sow the great field that lies to the west of this stronghold. It is bordered by four tall stones, and there are other stones inside it. And a few mounds of earth, as well as trees in groves, and pits with swords and shields and pots … a few bones, some trinkets, other bits and pieces … nothing to concern you. The wheat that you will then grow there will make the bread for Olwen’s wedding, since as her father I must supply the bread for the feast.’
‘Ploughing a field is a task for lesser men than me,’ Kylhuk said. ‘I will find it no hardship at all.’
Olwen’s father stared at his nails, each the size of a dagger. ‘To be done by morning. I forgot to tell you that it must be ploughed and sown by morning.’
‘It will be easy to do that,’ said Kylhuk.
‘I don’t think you will find it easy,’ said the other man.
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