Bard I (12 page)

With less than his usual athleticism. the bard sprang to Myfanwy’s back and caught her flowing mane. ‘Let’s away. then!’ he laughed, his heart beating high with excitement. No matter how reckless it might be, he knew he’d despise himself if he refused such a chance.

The air shimmered about them. distorting their shapes to the watching Kev.

They were gone. . . were gone.

Nine nights had passed in the Forest of Andred when they appeared again. This Felimid found hard to believe when he was told.

‘We were there two nights and days!’ he protested, feeling the growth on his chin for assurance.

‘There is not here. Time is not the same in all places, Felimid–not even in this one world you know.’

‘Ab,’ he said, remembering. ‘Yes. The stories of old tell such things, and the Druids do teach it. My lady, if I haven’t said yet that you are wonderful, it was an oversight.’

For two days he had enjoyed the delights Myfanwy had promised, breathing soft warm air, swimming in a cool lough under blue skies, and eating well at the cost of a little enterprise. The place had appeared to be a lightly wooded isle, lovely and void of people. He supposed he would never know where or what it was. Here in the tangled, harshly primeval Forest of Andred, that other place had already begun to seem like a pretty dream. And he had work to do.

‘I’m unweaponed,’ he said, ‘and I respect Pendor’s prowess with his staff. There’s also Rope, as I fancy I said before. Suppose we two lurk in the forest and catch him unaware when he comes forth. Unless you are weary of doing me favors,’ he added.

‘Not quite yet. I have a mind to see you and your woman safe away from here before I bid you farewell. It was partly my coming that brought you this trouble, and I’ve had a great favor from you.’ Myfanwy’s low laugh sounded disconcertingly human. ‘Yes, let us lurk.’

Thus, when Pendor next came into the forest to gather plants, the bard and the black mare awaited him. He first knew of it when a stone crashed into his side. He fell gasping, sick with pain.

Felimid rushed toward him, twisting the rowan staff from Pendor’s weakened hand and flinging it far into the brush. Felimid smiled at him with uncharitable delight.

‘See you, when we last parted it was not forever, after all.’ he said. ‘Now there’s a thing or two for settling between us.’ Pendor began struggling to his feet. ‘No, stay down,’ Felimid said, pushing him into the mud with his foot.

‘My ribs are cracked,’ Pendor said angrily. ‘You will pay!’

‘Maybe. But any paying that’s done today will be done by you, mirror of hospitality and honor. Do you care to meet the one who helped me out of the trouble you left me in? There she stands.’ He indicated Myfanwy. She played up to him with a pretty curvet.

‘Now I’ll be asking some questions, and what’s more I mean to have answers. How does Regan fare? I take it you’ve hidden away my harp and sword; where can I find them?’

‘I’ll break your back!’ Pendor said thickly, and lunged. One massive hand gripped Felimid’s ankle like a clamp, while the other closed on his kneecap. Pendor heaved, using the bard’s ankle as a lever and his knee for a fulcrum. Felimid went down, flat on his back. Pendor rose, maintaining his hold.

Myfanwy, charging, knocked him down with her shoulder.

‘No more of that, mortal man!’ she commanded, and pranced a little. ‘I’ve killed an angry boar with these hooves. Conduct yourself doucely, and answer what Felimid asks.’

Her hooves! Felimid thought, aghast. He shouted, ‘Run Myfanwy! Get away from him! You stand in fearful danger! Run, as you trust me! I’ll deal with him!’ He sprang upon Pendor. The goddess’s daughter did not fly as he’d ordered her. She moved uncertainly aside, watching from a little distance. What Felimid was raving about, she had no notion.

The bard quickly found ‘dealing’ with Pendor less easy than making the promise. His massive body held a bull’s strength. In the first moments of their bare­handed grapple. Felimid was taught that, apart from his other talents, Pendor was a skilled and mighty wrestler.

The lesson almost cost him a broken arm.

He saved himself by striking Pendor sharply with his elbow in the wizard’s cracked ribs. Breath rattled in Pendor’s throat. His hold lost power. Felimid, who had wrestled now and again himself, twisted free.

Pendor recovered and attacked, grunting with earnest, effortful desire to rend Felimid in fragments. But Felimid too was angry. He remembered lying helpless while crows gathered to pluck out his living eyes; and so inspired, he settled down to some swift dirty fighting of a truly remarkable nastiness.

He dealt Pendor a short jab of a punch to those injured ribs; struck him over an ear with his cupped hand, sending a lance of agony into his head; slipped under the hedge-wizard’s clutching arms. and with his elbow dealt a hammer-blow to Pendor’s kidney. As Pendor staggered, Felimid brought up a knee between his thighs.

The wizard was helpless after that.

Felimid didn’t stop. Urged on by his seething blood, he slammed the bald head against a tree-trunk. And again, and again. Last of all, he administered a throat punch before standing back to let Pendor fall.

The wizard’s face splatted in wet leaf-mould. Blood ran over the back of his head where the scalp was broken. Felimid stood and panted.

Myfanwy came to him. ‘Was there need for that ?’ she asked. ‘In what fearful danger did I stand that couldn’t touch you?’

‘What? Oh.’ Felimid blinked, drew a forearm across his eyes. His sight was blurred. ‘Pendor can’t work his transmutations on living flesh. Or on things which never have lived, like metal or stone. But a horse’s hooves are dead stuff, like a man’s fingernail parings. You were standing in wet leaf-mould to the fetlocks. He might have turned them to . . . I don’t know. Some soft, ugly mush?’ Felimid shivered. ‘He’d have crippled you.’ Myfanwy nuzzled against his breast. He sensed it was a rare thing and a high tribute. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

Looking down at himself, Felimid laughed shortly. His clothes were again what they had been; torn stinking wadmal and fur, walrus-hide boots (one slit to the toe) and a cloak tattered past belief. That had been petty of the magician, or maybe he’d done it involuntarily, in the transport of his rage.

‘I’ve no hooves,’ he said. ‘This was the worst Pendor could do to me . . . by magic, I’m meaning. Ab, well. Easily gained, easily lost. By Cairbre’s fingers! Kev!’

The feral boy had scurried to Pendor’s side. Making inarticulate noises over the prone figure, be strained to roll it over, getting Pendor’s face out of the sodden mould, where he might suffocate or drown. When Felimid made a step toward him, Kev showed his pointed teeth and crooked his hands into talons.

‘He’d stamp and neigh in challenge, were he a horse,’ Myfanwy murmured.

‘I remember. Pendor saved him once, and has fed him often. I did something the same. Kev felt gratitude to both of us, nor did he understand how we were opposed. He probably doesn’t yet.’

‘What, then?’

Felimid looked at the feral boy. He’d have to pry Kev’s teeth out of his throat before he harmed Pendor further. ‘Let it rest here,’ Felimid said. ‘To Pendor’s house with us now.’

As he hastened there, Felimid felt no regrets. Kev had helped him. But for the woodland boy, when Myfanwy arrived at last to save the bard, she’d have found little worth saving. Whatever he’d revealed himself to be, to Kev at least Pendor was a benefactor. Felimid would take nothing from him that he valued so-even that malicious wizard.

Letting the magician live was madness. Oh, true, Pendor had made that very same egregious mistake, by abandoning Felimid to be destroyed by animals instead of striking the blow himself–and look what had happened to him!

It mattered not at all. The bard’s desire was to find Regan, and his harp and sword, and go away from the forest, at once.

‘Regan!’

She met him in the doorway of Pendor’s house. Her face whitened; he threw his arms around her, and for a moment while he held her, she seemed on the verge of fainting. Then she returned his embrace, sobbing,saying his name.

‘Ah, Felimid, Felimid, you’re alive.’ Her mood changed. Drawing back, she demanded like the mother of a tormentingly wayward child, ‘Where have you been?’

‘Nowhere special. Very nearly dying.’ Seeing her appalled look, he explained. ‘Pendor contrived it. He wanted to be rid of me. The luck was running my way, though . . . he didn’t make a thorough job of it.’

‘Pendor? He tried to murder you?’

‘Once on the day your arm was mauled, and again just now. I left him in the forest, and for all I know, or care, he’s very nearly dying! We mustn’t linger here, Regan. Can you travel? Is your arm mending?’

‘Oh, aye! Mending finely! Felimid, what are you talking about? What did Pendor do?’

Succinctly, he told her. Beating the air with upraised fists, she swore with gratifying passion, but the bard scarcely listened. He was searching the house with whirlwind rapidity for his harp and sword.

Golden Singer he found almost at once. She hung openly on a wall in her worn leather carrying-bag. Pendor had told Regan that her lover bad gone hunting in the forest; it made sense that he wouldn’t have taken the harp with him, so there had been no cause to conceal her. Kincaid was a different matter. Had Regan seen the sword lying about, she’d have known something was amiss.

After ransacking the house, including its thatched roof, Felimid discovered a false bottom to a chest he’d previously emptied. Beneath it, Kincaid lay.

‘Let’s be away, darling,’ he said, buckling on the sword. ‘We’ve a horse waiting; the Lord Avraig’s mare.’

‘Food,’ Regan said pragmatically, and gathered some in a satchel.

Felimid was nettled. ‘Never for me could you make a story-teller. You’ve no sense of pace, or color, or the fitness of things at all.’

‘Then, if you’re ever telling the story, leave this bit out.’

They left. Under the thatched porch, they were halted by a sight. Regan muttered, ‘No, no. . .’

A gang of the most ill-looking cutthroats Felimid had seen outside King Oisc’s royal hall were coming through the burned gap in the hedge. He counted eight in a swift glance.

Eight. Even now that he held Kincaid again, too many to fight. Not that he was minded to do so.

‘Look brave, and I’ll try to talk our way past them,’ he said, low. ‘Just follow my lead. We’ve an advantage they know nothing about. Get on the mare’s back when you can.’

Without saddle or bridle? Regan thought. And we cannot just gallop out of this forest. Yon robbers would run us down easily on a game trail.

It wasn’t a time for argument, though, or any show of disunity. She set her teeth and stood straight by Felimid’s side.

‘Oho!’ the leader hailed them. ‘Where’s the wizard?’

‘In the forest, gathering plants for his wizardry,’ Felimid answered. ‘You have a need ?’

‘He promised us ale! We’re here to carry it off. I want something for these bowels o’ mine, what’s more. They’re in flames.’

Plainly, the condition didn’t sweeten his temper. He looked at Felimid and Regan with concentrated ill-will. Then be saw the sack in the woman’s hands, and his scowl changed to a smile even less pleasant.

‘Leaving, are you?’ he said softly. ‘On your way? Well, I’m not for staying you.’

They both discerned his thought. Once beyond the hedge, they’d be legitimate prey.

‘And that’s mighty handsome of you,’ Felimid answered, descending the steps. ‘I wonder about one thing, mind. Why be content with ale and nostrums for your belly, when Pendor might make you richer than kings?’ The robber chief guffawed. A heavy, sandy-haired rogue with a purple wen on his brow, he wore the Lord Avraig’s sword (evidently, a gift from Pendor). His henchmen took up the laughter. Their profusion of dirt, tatters, scabs and scars made them all look much the same. These were men who lived like wild beasts.

‘Him?’ the chief said with scorn. ‘If he can make any of us rich, why’s he not rich himself? Why’s he brewing remedies for the like of us, in a thatched house neighbour to birds?’

‘He’s too cunning to crave wealth he can’t defend, that’s why,’ Felimid answered. ‘Suppose his house were pillared with gold and floored with chalcedony. You’d have plundered it long since and fed him to the crows. Now wouldn’t you? And the kings and great lords beyond this forest are no different.’

The robber’s murky eyes narrowed. ‘I’m interested! Talk on, but let’s have it straight; you are talking for your life, and if I catch you in a lie–’ He made a throat-­cutting gesture, and the appropriate sound. ‘Right ?’

‘I apprehend your meaning,’ the bard said kindly.

‘Now hear me. For days I was Pendor’s guest in his house. I’ve seen him conjure stew out of offal, new-­garments out of old, and do the reverse, too-make leather perish and rot in a moment. Yet when an angry man came at him with the sword you now wear, Pendor had to meet him with a staff, fighting hand to hand as would you! Do you see? His magic is powerless upon living things, and upon things which never have lived, like stone or metal. It extends only to things which lived once, but no longer!

‘Bone, linen, leather, ash, wood, straw, all such as that. He can work whatever transmutations upon them he pleases, so that he change them to other things of the same sort. It’s a fine gift. It means he need never go hungry, or other than warmly clad, or without drink to gladden his veins. But it’s little help against knife or sword in the hands of a determined man.’

The robber pondered this. ‘It agrees with much I’ve seen,’ he agreed at last. ‘But what of it? These be not riches.’

‘Ah, you’re not level with me yet. Thus far I’ve talked of common, homely things, which are all Pendor has ever shown you. Why? Because he dreads the fate of the goose that laid golden eggs! But think, man.’

Felimid’s hands moved, building fanciful mansions, caressing imaginary textures. The sea-green eyes stretched rapturously wide. The trained voice would have tempted an anchorite.

‘Think of ivory, amber, jet. Think of wine! And pearls, man, pearls large as fat hazel nuts, rolling agleam in your palm. Rich rare furs. Silk. You’ve heard of silk? All the precious dyes and gums of the East. The spices, the strange drugs. They haven’t been known in Britain since Rome fell, or hardly. Those who can would pay a hundred times their weight in gold for such.