Bard I (24 page)

While they gaped at him, and someone howled in a corner with his jaw smashed by the flat of Besdath’s axe, Besdath scrabbled among the layers of thatch. Something was hidden there, something long and narrow with a gleaming hilt. Besdath barked a laugh as he pulled it out.

Felimid made a leap and caught the rooftree himself, with some idea of toppling Besdath from his perch. Besdath, feet widely planted on the beam, shoulders braced against the thatch, narrowed his eyes and swung down his axe, aiming to cleave Felimid’s skull. The bard saved himself in the only way be could; by letting go the beam and dropping back to the floor. He was almost too late. The hurtling axe-edge cut a short gash in his scalp.

He landed atop Oban the Strong. They rebounded into a third man. Besdath burst through the roof-thatch with his axe and sprang to the ground. With axe and sword. he killed three men to reach his horse. He left the axe lodged in the spine of a fourth as he fled, galloping over the causey to hide in miles of night and mist.

The dun had gone mad. Men shouted, grabbed weapons, ran to neighing horses. As for Kyle, he’d been promised uproar and confusion to cloak his escape, and this answered the description well. His chestnut and the sorrel stood where Besdath had left them. saddled and bridled. Kyle mounted one, led the other, and crossed the causey with no difficulty. All the men able to ride were hot in pursuit of Besdath, Felimid first among them. Kyle had been quite forgotten, which suited him well.

He never thought of following Besdath or Felimid. In this murky night, he’d no hope of finding them. He had no weapons; he’d all too likely be recaptured, and for nothing.

He turned his chestnut southward. The sorrel on its leading-rein came after.

I go where my craving takes me and lay my head where I can,

Guested at times with honour, at others a hunted man,

For my line have been wandering harpers since ever the world began.

Felimid mac Fal,
Cairbre’s Descendants

B
ESDATH
WAS
NOT
MAD
, only three parts of the way there from fury and frustration. Of fear he felt none. He’d come too far for that. But the understanding that he was trapped without hope or refuge tore at him more cruelly than the newly opened stab-wound in his leg. All that he wanted had seemed delectably within his grasp. Now the Roman lord had turned against him for some simpering idea of honor, and he was riding for his life with nowhere to turn. It was unfair.

As long as he could remember, Besdath had envied Romans and hated the way his own people lived. What had they to be proud of? They– he-endured cold wind and colder rain, went hungry, raided cattle, fought to keep their own beasts and butchered most of them when autumn came, and then began again in the spring, precisely where they had been the year before. As a young boy Besdath had questioned these things, and received no answer but a beating.

He’d have left his clan long ago to live as the Romans did, if he’d known any way to contrive it. The Romans were as clannish in their way as Downsmen. Lacking wealth and the protection of the mighty, he’d be but exchanging one dismal round of days for another.

He’d turned morose and cruel with the years. Marrying Cein by capture had been done more to show he could do it than because he greatly wanted a wife. Once he had Cein, he found he did not care for her.

His finding of the sword had made all things possible. It promised everything, a matchless treasure, the steel tough and fine beyond belief, the workmanship a marvel. Kings would give gold in sacks for it-or take it from him and slay him for a thief. Besdath had held it worth the risk.

With the coming of the horse-lord from Callevan, the friend among the mighty that he needed, the risk had seemed lessened. Why not use Cein to clear the bard Felimid from his path? Gods! The way she had looked at the bard! It justified killing her. Had that accursed Roman not betrayed him– !

Light-headed, Besdath clung to his horse’s mane. Pursuit ravened behind him. Torches made smears of trembling orange across the dark, shifting at random, like vagrant fireflies. They were Besdath’s kindred, expert trackers and cattle-litters and riders under cover of darkness, all. Men whose souls were given to clan loyalty and clan feud. They would hunt him to the drear gates of Hell before they gave him up.

No place to shelter; none to help him. The thought throbbed in his tired brain. His burst of maddened energy with axe and sword had cost him dearly.

Distances and echoes filled his mind. He heard something, and wondered if it was another echo-of his own horse’s racing feet, perhaps.

Dub-a-dub, dub-dub.

It was not. Some other horseman was close behind him, coming on. Without thought or the need to think, Besdath knew who it was.

Felimid.

The bard never knew how he found his man or tracked him down. Besdath knew this country better than he, far better. But Felimid was out of himself, thinking cast completely away, riding by blindest-or most inspired-intuition. Rage covered his brain like a constant dazzle of white sheet lightning. Beyond thought, beyond speech. he had one intention; to catch Besdath.

The big dun gelding gained on Besdath’s black. They galloped over a mist-shrouded crest and down across a dipping ridge. Besdath urged his horse blowing up the far rise, to gain high ground before he turned to fight. He flung a hating look back at Felimid.

Out of the mist a head came a massed rattle of hooves.

The horses followed, a hundred of them, surging like a wave. Besdath’s head swung back. He’d time for one desperate howl. Then he and his black horse went down before the rush like figures of sand. The hooves pounded over them.

Felimid gaped incredulously, even as he wheeled the dun to race before the oncoming storm of flesh. It would catch them, but they could run with it, he hoped. A wild charge, to trample and break . . .

It parted around him like a tide around a rock. The leaders passed him to left and right. within arm’s reach, and a deeper chill than any the fog could bring entered him. He recognised those leading horses. He’d seen them last by the pyres on which their riders had burned. They carried riders now. He glimpsed them not with physical eyes, but with his bardic sight. Naked they rode on their naked horses, gaunt and bone-white, their eyes pits of shadow. One spectre’s head was split, blood and brains clotted darkly in the streaming hair. The other had a deep stab wound in its side.

One glimpse Felimid had. Then they were gone. The other horses streamed after them, down the sides of the ridge; the wild horses, sacred to Epona, whom the Downsmen called their brothers.

Felimid’s dun gelding threw up its head, neighing in fear. It’s trembling was imparted to the bard, even as he stroked it and murmured soothing talk. His unaccustomed wild rage was gone, like a candle-flame blown out by a wind from the Abyss.

The black horse lay with a broken neck. Besdath had been trampled muddily, bloodily, half into the turf. His ribs had been splintered, his legs shattered, his back broken. Doggedly. He struggled to raise himself on his arms. He lifted his head. Seeing Felimid. he greeted the bard with a ghastly smile. The last air vented from lungs pierced by his snapped ribs in a bitter laugh.

Felimid took the sword Kincaid back into his hands with a curious lack of triumph. An iciness remained in his heart. The anger of gods, and their curses . . . why had Ogma ever pronounced his?

‘May it be a thousand years before you run wild on the ridge of the earth again.’ he said to the befouled weapon.

He knew it wouldn’t be that long.

He met the Lord Kyle next day, near the place where Besdath had murdered his two companions, Cas and Marnoc. He hadn’t doubted that Kyle would escape, and hoped only that he’d done it with no slaying. There had been too much death as it was.

‘No harm to any.’ Kyle assured him, ·or not from me!

Ha, Felimid, I see you have your own sword again! Then Besdath—’

‘—has died.’ the bard confirmed, and he told Kyle how.

The Roman horse-lord turned pale. ‘Christ us! But – could it not have been your fancy, Felimid?’

Felimid shrugged, not willing to argue. ‘Believe that, if you’d rather. If it comforts you.’ He handed over Prince Justin’s belt and sword. ‘Poor Cein. She bad little joy in her life. I’ll never know quite what she was about. Or how much she guessed or knew.’

‘She was dead, you know,’ Kyle said. ‘I mean when Oban questioned her. It was a trick to panic Besdath, as God knows it did. From you or me it wouldn’t have undone him, but from Oban–he cannot have imagined that one could be so cunning.’

‘Nor did I,’ Felimid answered, ‘although I might have known it’s more than loud voice and brawny arms maintains him as clan chief. We had better avoid him from now on.’

‘Agreed.’

They continued to ride southward.

An hour later, a huge crow winged through the grey skies to circle above them, raucously crying. Kyle frowned, and Felimid greeted the bird with a wave. Brandubh did not respond. Instead, he flapped back the way he had come.

‘I mislike that demon bird,’ Kyle complained. ‘He did well by us last night, but I’ll be content if I see him no more! What mischief is he up to now?’

‘I wonder,’ Felimid said thoughtfully. ‘He’s done me service, as you say, but only because his mistress commanded him. He’s met the terms of her command now; he was to aid me until I regained Ogma’s sword, and I have.’

Kyle swore glumly. ‘If he’s free now to act as he pleases, he won’t act for our benefit. I’ll wager my shadow on that.’

They were not forced to wonder for long. Brandubh returned, as noisy as before, carking at them. In the distance, light glimmered wanly on casque and weapon. Oban’s riders were out . . . or someone else’s.

‘Fools I named you, fools you are!’ Brandubh croaked. ‘Look yonder and see your deaths! The woman’s death, too, I witnessed. Nay, I put it into Besdath’s thick head to slay her! See how I have played with you all?’

‘You traitor filth!’ raged Kyle.

Raucous and derisive, Brandubh dipped above their heads to drop a clot of dung. It landed in Whitebrow’s mane. Felimid had reached for his sling, and a stone from his pouch, before Brandubh came to the end of his malevolent boasts. Now he whirled it. The air hummed.

Brandubh began to fly away. Felimid’s eye anticipated his course. The tone whistled thinly as it sped.

There was a very short scream and an explosive puff of black feathers. Brandubhs’ body shattered. Limply it fell, one wing sticking up, grotesquely like a blackened autumn leaf twirling its way down.

But it never struck the ground. It vanished with the wind.

‘I warned him,’ Felimid said. He felt ill.

‘That’ll be Oban yonder.’ Kyle absently wiped the muck from his chestnut’s mane. ‘Care to explain to him why we’re riding together? Fancy he’d listen?’

‘No. Name a quick way out of this.’

‘The Kennel won’t be much if any lower than it was.

Riding south and west instead of south direct, we can skirt the source, and Oban’s riders cannot cut us off. But if they know a crossing we do not, we’re done. They’ll trap us in between the Kennel and the great rampart. Talk of the needle’s eye!’

The rampart of which he spoke was a huge defensive earthwork running east from Bath for almost thirty miles. For the last five, it ran roughly parallel with the Kennel. It had been reared in the days before the legions left Britain, to help hold back the Jutes and Saxons, who called it Wotan’s Dyke. It couldn’t stop a force of determined men on foot, and at present was not even manned, but for two hotly pursued riders it might prove a fatal barrier.

‘Do you like it?’ Felimid asked.

‘No.’

‘Nor I. Let’s make straight south for the Gap through the White Horse Hills, and chance finding the Kennet in pate!’

‘I’m for it,’ Kyle said, and laughed.

This had to come, Felimid thought. All things in threes . . . Oban is the third smith. There was one in Calleva, one in the village by the ford. and both times I had to race for the guerdon of a whole skin. I’ll win this race, too. And then I can be easy in my mind about the next smith I meet!

The chase was long and wearing. Oban the Strong kept up a steady pursuit. The two he followed had reason to be glad of their third horse. Switching from saddle to saddle to spell each beast in turn, they rode their mounts hard enough to maintain the lead they had, and no harder. The unrelenting pursuit rasped at their nerves, but they believed their horse were the better ones if not abused. and gambled on it.

The Downsmen tracked them like Fate. They rode the sun across the sky and deep under the earth, and cantered up the faint new moon. They rested as much as necessary, no more.

The chase led up into the White Horse Hills. Kyle Felimid rode through the Gap by the old Roman road leading south, remembering. Here Count Artorius had mashed the greatest Saxon war-host ever seen in the island, two years earlier, deploying his armoured riders from the hill-crest of Badon. All the region was deserted now. The Count of Britain and his followers were somewhere to the eat, or perhaps in the north; where there were Saxon invaders to be fought.

Reeking, stained and craving rest, they passed by the fortress on the hilltop. Coming down to the low ground, they saw the Kennel flowing high. Two clear, rainless days seemed to have made little difference. Yet Felimid was much loathe to try his trick with the harp before Kyle; Kyle was a Christian, and abhorred such magic – and such magic makers.

‘It won’t become gentler for our looking at it,’ Felimid said resignedly. ‘Let’s swim the horses over.’

‘So be it,’ Kyle agreed. ‘But, Christus! If they cross after us, I’ll stand and fight. There’s no more running in me . . .and south of the Kennet it’s my country. Atrebates’ country, not theirs.’

They plunged in, and were washed a mile down the swollen river before they gained the far bank. Pale undines slipped from Felimid’s thighs and his horse’s flanks, disappearing again into the yellow water Kyle, Christian and stolid, had seen nothing of their presence, had heard their siren song as the roar of the surging current. Streaming, gasping, they rode on by devious paths, and saw no more of the Downsmen. And although Felimid made more of it each time he told the story thereafter, that was simply that.