Bard I (5 page)

Regan stirred and climbed stiffly down. ‘You should have booted my bottom out of there,’ she said, making a face of rue. ‘I’ve been half awake for some while, and fighting against it, because I know there are troubles to face.’ She looked around her, at the icy, glittering grottoes of the forest. ‘How beautiful,’ she murmured.

‘Felimid? Can we survive here?’

The bard smiled. His eyes glimmered green as the sea.

‘It’s in my mind that we can. You will see the advantages of being brought up in Erin, and marvel! It’s all forest and bog there . . . and the occasional plain. Even the great chiefs and kings live by the hunt for a month or two at a time, feasting in the open. Why, in the days of the Fianna, they used to forage for themselves-and them numbering hundreds-for half the year!’

‘Fine,’ Regan said dryly, the wave of his enthusiasm shattering upon her as on a rock. ‘Was it the winter half?’

‘No. They were divided into small groups and quartered upon the people, then. It doesn’t matter,’ the bard went on, insouciantly airy. ‘I’ve hunted in winter myself, and slept out when I had to, although I’ll own it was never from choice. I can promise you food and shelter, and that we won’t lose our way. If sickness or accident should strike us– ‘(he shrugged) ‘– why then, we’ll very likely be done for. But you knew as much when you agreed to come with me.’

‘Yes..I did.’

Regan glanced about her again. it’s a desert, she thought, vast and frightening. She had not been reared in a land all forest and bog. She had grown up on a prosperous British farm, where she had believed with her parents and kindred that the nearby forest was a haunt of demons and faeries, and savage men who were almost worse. Nor had that belief been wholly an ignorant one.

Felimid guessed her thoughts. ‘The Jutes are no foresters either, a gradh. They too are mostly farmers, and the aristocrats among them seamen. Here in the forest the advantage is mine, and I ‘ll make them wish they had never seen it if they dare follow me!’

She thought he was bragging to comfort her. ‘I’d rather you used your skill to avoid them entirely!It’s little I know of forest craft, Felimid, but I’ll try to learn:

‘I never doubted it. Be easy, and do not look so worried. Two in a forest have a far better chance than one. You can die because of such a little thing as a tom muscle. if you’re alone. This way, each of us can tend the other at need.’ Felimid slid his fingers into the night-black hair at her temple, cupping her cheek’s smooth curve in his open palm. ‘It’s not as a burden I’m seeing you, Regan! You are brave and you’re bold, and I’m glad to have you here.’

Her cheek was cold. Felimid’s palm was colder. Regan put her own hand on the nape of his neck, and before long their passion made a deal of warmth. Their breath eddied around their heads in a globe of mist.

Regan broke away. ‘No,’ she said, gasping softly.

‘Not without food in my belly, please!’

They ate eagerly, leaving nothing but sucked-dean bones of the hedgehogs. and nothing but crumbs of an entire loaf of hard bread. Although they would have shared the crumbs with the robin, he proved too cautious to come close.

‘He’s a lad after my own heart,’ Felimid remarked.

Regan looked skeptical.

They had gone perhaps a mile deeper into the forest when a wolf howled behind them; the scout for a pack had found their scent. He was answered by his fellows, but Felimid did not fear. It was natural for wolves to give their brethren such news. Even a strong pack would not make a man its prey unless he was feeble or they themselves were starving, and this was a mild winter for Kent.

The rosy light of dawn had faded. The million icy twigs were now dazzling white, blue, grey and palest, most frigid green. Regan walked with her skirt drawn up through her girdle, bunched around her hips to be clear of the snow. The trousers she wore underneath were tied closely around her ankles. She did not care how the arrangement looked; it allowed her to move.

Felimid kept his sling ready and his eyes questing for small game. He saw none. Regan’s noisy movement scared it all into immobility or flight. He didn’t tell her so; it was not her fault that no one had taught her how to move in the forest, and for the present it was more important to make distance than to move quietly. He could begin teaching her his own skills on the morrow. She kept gamely on, despite the hard pace he set.

Only the narrow, winding game trail they followed made it possible for them to move at all. Elsewhere, the undergrowth tangled between the trees made a solid barrier.

A couple of hours after midday, they came to a crag like a clenched granite fist a hundred feet high. Abrupt and somehow menacing it rose from the forest floor. Dense growth tangled about its base; a rough incline led a little way up its side to the dark opening of a cave. The bard decided to risk looking at that cave. If it proved untenanted, he and Regan might shelter there.

‘Stay here,’ he told her. ‘I cannot tell what I may find.’ He drew the sword Kincaid with a cold whisper of steel. The Ogham inscriptions on the blade caught the pale winter sunlight. With the weapon bare in his band, Felimid scrambled up the sloping rock path.

By the cave’s utter blackness, Felimid knew it reached deep into the crag. He trod cautiously within. The warm hairy stench of bear filled his nose, and he backed even more cautiously out. He-bears were bad enough when wakened from hibernation, but she-bears were a thousand times worse, for they often had cubs growing inside them. They slept more lightly, too, as a rule; or so Felimid had heard. There was no wish in him to test that bit of hunter’s lore. Let the beast slumber on!

He was taken aback and not a little angry to find Regan at his elbow. Setting an urgent finger to his lips, he led her further up the crag, helping her to climb the sheer part nearest the top, where they could spy out the land from such a useful coign of vantage.

‘What’s in the cave?’ Regan asked.

‘A bear! By Cairbre’s fingers! You’d have been well served if he’d tom you to bits! The next time I tell you to stay somewhere, you stay! I’m not just ordering you about – I’d a reason, and you just saw it!’

Wind tore chillingly at the summit of the crag. Felimid looked all about him. Westward he saw nothing but the forest roof, leafless and impenetrable to sight even so. East lay the Pevensey marshes. faintly to be glimpsed. They did not attract him. South lay the territory of the Saxon clan known as the Haestingas, and he had no desire to go there, either. As for the north, they had gone to great trouble and risk to leave it. They must continue westward.

The splendid view, and a lurking image of the cave beneath his feet, with its fierce inhabitant, inspired Felimid with a sudden idea. He laughed aloud.

‘Share the joke,’ Regan said.

Felimid led her to the crag’s far side. It fell straight and grim to the snow. ‘We’re climbing down that,’ he said. ‘It’s less bad than it looks; there are plenty of hand­holds, and I don’t want to descend past the cave. We might awaken the bear, this time.’

‘I’d as soon risk it!’

‘Also . . . when Oisc’s men arrive, if they get this far, I want them to see tracks leading up the crag and none coming down. You can guess what they will think! So that is the joke.’

Regan thought about it. Then she laughed, too.

They descended the crag on the sheer side. With effort, they made their way through the heavy brush for a short distance and struck the game trail anew, a furlong from the crag. Then they continued westward.

Late in the afternoon, they found an immense dead oak atop a knoll. A fissure split the trunk, and within it was hollow and dry. Dead leaves had accumulated there through a score of autumns. The oldest and deepest had decayed into mould while the latest rustled softly. Beetles and spiders a-plenty crawled there, but cautious poking and stirring revealed nothing worse. Fire would clear most of the insects out.

‘It’s as good as we’re like to find,’ Regan said. ‘I can make a wattle shield to keep out the worst of the weather. We’ll be snug for a day or two, if we stay that long.’

‘Forget the weather; it will not trouble us,’ Felimid answered, softly. ‘This I bear is the harp of Cairbre; she was one of the treasures of the Tuatha De Danann, long ago, and it is time, I think, we put her to use. The seasons come and go to her music. I’ll sing the growth and warm airs of summer around you, and tonight we’ll lie naked in the open under green leaves . . . do not look like that. I’ll show you soon enough that I’m neither mad nor boasting, but first I must be attending to Oisc’s men.’

‘I suppose they are sure to come.’

‘I’d say so! I slew two men of his. I maimed another, if Tosti’s indeed a man and not a shape-shifting wolf, and Oisc believes I spied upon him for the Britons; your people, Regan. And I stole you. I reckon he raised a hunting party the very morning we guested with Murd. They will be scouring the downs for our trail, and if they haven’t found it yet I ‘ll eat dirt. I must double back and see. I’ll maybe get some hunting done while I’m about it.’ Regan roasted the mutton they had received from Murd. Misgivings assailed her, although she did not voice them. Even if Felimid could truly do what he claimed. he was still taking this business too lightly. She did not want to be stranded in the Forest of Andred without him! Suppose he were inconsiderate enough to get himself killed through recklessness or over-contidence? She couldn’t help having the thought, but when Felimid left, she farewelled him with a mere, ‘Take care.’

‘Surely,’ Felimid said. Then he was gone. Just like that, he was gone. Regan felt absolutely certain she had not blinked. If he could merge into the forest like a magician or a faery, perhaps he would be all right. But nothing could make it other than a long wait until he returned.

In wearisome fact, very little happened. The bard circled widely as he doubled back, not wishing to go near the crag. He discovered no sign of any Jutes, although the hunting improved as the shadows grew longer. Two hares dangled at his belt by sunset. He killed one with a stone hurled hard and low in the instant of sight. The second, in his leaps and sudden changes of direction, obligingly broke his neck on a tree. As Felimid picked up the latter, a fox poked its head from the brambles not ten paces off.

Felimid stared into the bright, black eyes. The fox’s jaws were parted in a mocking grin; its tongue lolled impudently, and its breath smoked in the cold air. Behind its head, Felimid could barely make out the shape of its shoulders with their red, frost-stiffened coat, for the light was fading fast. The fox did not run. Felimid thought it was interested in the hare.

‘Sorry, fellow,’ he said amiably. ‘I’m hungry myself.’

The fox remained motionless, but made a noise that sounded mighty like a snicker. It was so unlike anything that should have come from a vulpine throat that Felimid stared. The black eyes glittered too knowledgeably, even for such a clever beast. Somehow Felimid was put in mind of . . . Kisumola!

Some familiar of the Lappish wizard’s? Or was it even Kisumola’s spirit self in the form of a fox? The impudent head vanished. His wild guess might have signalled it to disappear.

Felimid rhymed a malediction.

‘Fox, fox, go tell your master,

To catch Felimid, he must follow faster;

His cunning is vast, but mint is vaster!

I wish him pain, I wish him fear,

I wish him death and red disaster.’

He meant it all. If the fox was a demon or spirit, an entity in its own right, then its master was Kisumola, but if it was Kisumola’s own spirit, venturing out of his body in that red-furred shape, then the master in question was King Oisc. In either case, Felimid owed him an ill-wishing.

In the deepening dusk, Felimid climbed a tall tree. From its topmost branches, he gazed over the forest. To the east, reaching even above the treetops, he saw a leaping red glow. No mere camp-fire, that. It was a bonfire such as Jutes might build, hacking entire limbs prodigally from trees, hoping to keep the terrors of the nighted forest at bay. They were not happy, Felimid guessed. They feared the unknown as much as most men.

He went cautiously back to the hollow oak, using all his knowledge and cunning-and the bardic sight– to be sure he was not followed, by man, beast, or spirit. He shook Regan awake.

‘What is it?’ she asked, low.

‘The Jutes are in the forest! I’ve seen their fire, and I believe it can be nobody else. They may even have their king’s wizard Kisumola with them. I must learn that for certain before I act. It will be simple, if he’s not there. If he is. . .” Felimid shrugged. ‘If he’s present, I’ll face some danger-though I’d not back his painted drum against the harp of Cairbre.’

‘We could run,’ Regan suggested.

‘Yes. It’s a thought that pleases me, too. Ordinarily I’d say that if I cannot evade any number of blundering sea-wolves in a forest this vast, I’m not trying.’ He caressed her hip and thigh through layers of clothing.

‘But two cannot go swift as one. And if Kisumola is indeed guiding them on our track, all my forest craft won’t be enough to throw them off. No. I must settle it completely, now.’

‘God go with you.’

‘No Christian prayers!’ Felimid said sharply. ‘No offence, but it’s more likely they a re to work against me. Try not to fret, for I’ll come back. My oath as a bard.’

He smiled.

‘Just give me your oath as a bard to come back whole.’

‘I’ll submit me to a most thorough tally of limbs and organs when you see me next,’ Felimid promised; and again he was gone.

The bard moved eagerly through the frosty forest in the light of dawn. A gnarly maze it was. Each thicket and tree looked just like the last. Ninety men and nine out of a hundred who tried to move in it by night became hopelessly lost; but Felimid mac Fal. as a child. had had the little dark people of the hills for playmates. Far from being lost. he was precisely where he wanted to be.

He followed a blatant. trampled trail. Eleven ponies and six hounds had made it. The riders were Jutish sea­wolves, for certain. Felimid’s examination of their last night’s camp-site assured him of that. The way they had roused, evidently before dawn, to doggedly follow the trail of Felimid and Regan made a final proof which the bard did not really need; their blind, stamping ignorance of forest craft and forest ways sufficed.