Celtika (23 page)

‘I did. Eleven of them. A rich dish of ghosts.’

‘Eleven? No wonder there’s blood in your eyes. Who were they?’

What should I say to him? What could I say to him? What would it mean to him, to hear a man like me talk about a time when the world was almost silent, and the earth itself was making forms and shapes that would wander its veins and passages, unknowing, enchanted, and with no other goal, it seemed, than to live and age and watch the passage of the generations.

I had glimpsed where I had come from. I had no idea where I was going. I lived and acted only for the moment through which I passed, rarely venturing elsewhere either for myself or for others. I wore my life like a shroud. The reason I was haunted was not that I had glimpsed the beginning of my days, but that I was now aware of their pointlessness.

With the exception of the one who had gone astray, and now watched me with fierce eyes.

Who was she? Why was she so angry?

‘Never mind,’ said Urtha, seeing that I was confused. He turned back to the river.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Moongleam

Mielikki, Lady of the Forest, was waiting for us close to the river, at the edge of her threshold. When she saw us approach she turned and walked towards ancient Argo, moored fore and aft. The veiled woman stepped among the willows and disappeared for a moment, consumed by the shimmering arms of the trees. Then she stepped briefly into view, watching me, and I said softly, ‘Thank you. For Urtha, and also for myself.’

But the woman said only, ‘Something sour has passed by me and is in the ship, hiding.’

I felt a chill at her words.

Then Urtha and I hauled ourselves aboard the decorated barge. The vessel turned on the water and drifted away from the Land of the Shadows of Heroes, across to the far bank. We came quickly back into twilight, to find Ullanna singing a song, while her fish grilled over burning wood. Ambaros hailed us. We stepped ashore. Niiv embraced me: ‘Tell me what you saw. Tell me everything. Are there really ghosts over there? Ambaros says the ghosts are not only of the dead but also of unborn champions. My child is there perhaps. Did you see my child, Merlin? Was it a boy? Did he look like you? Tell me, tell me…’

I disentangled the pretty leech from my waist and neck. I have seen jewels shine, but none so brightly as that woman’s eyes as she bludgeoned me with her curiosity and her teasing.

‘Later,’ I said.

‘Fish!’ announced Ullanna. ‘Not much left. Not much to begin with, mind you, but we’ve saved you a morsel or two. Eat it quickly, or it’ll scorch to nothing.’

Urtha picked at the fish on the spit. ‘Not bad,’ he said.

‘Better than the fowl. Just feather and bone. How can you bear to live here, Urtha? The hunting in your country is like searching for shit on the tundra!’

‘Hard to find?’ I ventured, picking at the moist flesh of the fish.

‘And days old and dry when you find it,’ Ullanna concluded. ‘Still, the apples here have come into fruit strangely early. We won’t starve.’

Urtha stared at the Scythian woman for an uncomfortably long time. He was clearly annoyed at the insult to his country; I could imagine him seething in his need to tell the woman that the hunting here was normally very good indeed, but we
were
at the very edge of the Otherworld, in the name of Belenos! And besides, there was every indication that one of the three wastelands of the realm had arisen … Though if he had made this case for the poverty of the hunting, no doubt Ullanna would have reminded him of the deer we had seen a few days before, which had seemed perfectly fleshed and easy prey.

He kept his counsel, muttering only, ‘Apples are always in fruit, this close to Ghostland.’ But then asked quite brazenly, ‘I’ve heard a lot about women from your land. Traders bring stories with them, as well as cloth and wine. Is it true you cut off your left breast so that you can draw a bow?’

Ullanna stared at the man with an expression of disdain. After a while she picked at her teeth with her small gutting knife, responding, ‘Is it true you Celts are so clumsy with horses that you have to cut off your balls to make riding easier?’

‘Clumsy with
horses?
Are you mad?’

Ullanna laughed. She unbuckled her leather jacket and drew back her blouse on the left side. A small, red-tattooed, hard-nippled breast was revealed. She cocked her head then quickly covered herself again.

‘Don’t believe everything the Hittites tell you.’

Urtha frowned. ‘The Hittites?’

‘Gossips. Liars. When I met you I was sure you had no balls. You see? Hittite lies. Though you do ride awkwardly,’ she added with a smirk. ‘More fish? Quick. What you don’t eat, I’ll eat. I caught it, after all…’

Urtha picked at the carcass. I noticed he’d adjusted his patterned trousers slightly and that Ullanna was amused. Urtha might have been more responsive to the woman’s smile, but the shadow of his dead family had confined him, now, to a gloom that would not be brightened until he found the men who had abandoned him. Perhaps Ullanna was aware of this too; she turned away from him, occupied by her own thoughts.

*   *   *

In the late evening, after dark, Niiv suddenly stood and said, ‘Argo is going back to the jetty. She wants me to sail with her. Are you coming, Merlin?’

Had Argo spoken to Niiv? I’d heard nothing. Perhaps the two were closer than I’d realised.

I looked quickly at Urtha, thinking of what I had agreed earlier; if the man wanted me to ride back with him, then I’d do so, but he waved his knife dismissively. ‘Go ahead. I’ll see you back at the fort. I have something to do here before I rejoin Argo. Tell Jason I shan’t be long, if he can wait.’

I stepped through the shallows and clambered into the boat. Niiv was snuggled down among the decorated drapes and I lay down beside her, feet to the fore. This eerie, older craft then slipped her mooring and caught the current, rocking slightly as she took the bend in the river. We came below the great sweep of trees that would shade us for at least a day as we sailed back to Jason.

In this moon-streaked silence Niiv worked on me, with all her charms, her laughter especially. Tell me this, tell me that: she wanted to know more about the Path, more about my magic, did it hurt to keep my enchantments so tightly bound inside my skin? Why not share a few simpler charms? And anyway, where had I come from, how could I possibly never age? I should be like a tree, gnarled, broken, lightning-burned and clinging on to life.

She stroked my face, kissed my lips. She took off her clothes in the moonglimmer through the trees and like some silky, silver upright fawn swam in the water, holding on to a mooring rope; I leaned over the hull to watch her glide elegantly in the stream, aroused despite my caution.

‘Come in, come in,’ she cajoled me. ‘You’ll love it. This river runs through everything, mind, body, it’s like
being
the river … it feels so strange! Come in, Merlin, come and taste the water…’

I couldn’t resist. At the end of my own rope I swam naked with her, letting Argo pull us further to the east, holding that cool, vibrant body against my own, Niiv sprawled on my belly, her nose brushing delicately at mine, lips just touching, tongues just touching.

When we clambered back into the boat she shivered, wrapped a drape around our bodies and curled against me, her hands rubbing me dry and warm.

‘Is this the moment?’ she whispered through a kiss. ‘Please let this be the moment.’

If I had weakened for a while, I found my strength again, removed the arousing fingers (kissed them) and separated our bodies in the confining cloth. An owl swooped silently overhead, its wingbeat touching my hair. For a few minutes I could see its gleaming eyes, blinking and watching me from the branches as it followed our gentle course through the night river. I concentrated on the bird and Niiv grew weary of trying to seduce me.

‘This is the perfect opportunity,’ she murmured sulkily.

‘I’m too old for you,’ I answered tiredly, but of course she didn’t see me as such.

‘The child in me longs for a father; are you afraid that some of your charm will escape from you into the child? Or into me? Is that why you hold back?’

Truthfully, I didn’t know. In all my time, in all the worlds of the path I had walked, I had enjoyed myself with abandon, and there were almost certainly many sons and daughters of this roving enchanter, most long dead, but leaving behind sons and daughters of their own. I had never experienced any diminishing of my powers or my insights, only my back and breath. But I had been careful never to fornicate with the mad, moonstruck, overly merry, mysterious or miserable, and whilst the daughters and wives of powerful men held an unhealthy interest for me, I had certainly never wittingly lain with a known enchantress; Niiv’s ancestor, Meerga, had been my only lapse. And it was that thought, yes, that kept me at a distance from the Pohjolan girl. Whatever I might pass on in any act of sex or love would be welcome to die in its
own
time; but I didn’t want it following me through Time itself.

I was reflecting on this at dawn, watching the crows fly through the airy realm between the branches and feeling Niiv’s mouth gentle and sullen on my body, taking a little pleasure now that she had been denied love itself, when the air turned icy, the boat shuddered as if passing over rapids, and I sat up to see the misty shape of a Greek galley before us, prow looming over us, vast in my perception.

The oak barge slid into that hull as easily as dye into water, mist into a forest, absorbed and devoured, leaving Niiv and me wrapped together in the hold of the bigger ship, among the bales and sacks and stowed oars.

Then again we moved on the river, and within a day had come back to the mooring by the track to Urtha’s fortress home, to be greeted by Jason and the rest, who for the time of our absence had been living in the fort, burying bodies and building protective talismans and totems to keep the place safe for the next few months.

*   *   *

Urtha and Ambaros rode to the gates at sunset of the fourth day. Niiv and I were waiting for them. Ullanna was leading a cow that she had poached from the wilderness, and shouldering a spear laden with hares. She had broken taboo, but refused to listen to Ambaros, who was still sulking at the woman’s dismissal of his pleas that hares should not be killed in early spring, when the corn spirit mated with them, and scattered them through the fields, protecting entities until the harvest.

‘Meat is meat,’ she had said to the outraged older man, ‘and a little added “corn spirit” would do no harm either…’

To pacify Ambaros I pointed out that if this was indeed a wasteland, then all taboo was suspended for the duration, since there would
be
no harvest. I tried to sound convincing, but it was hard to remember what had happened so long before when it came to taboo.

‘Is it?’ Ambaros muttered. ‘I suppose that might be right. Brigga’s blood! We need a poet or druid to make this clearer, but they’ve all gone over the river,’ (he meant to the Other-world), ‘so I’ll have to trust your word.’

I believe he was glad to be persuaded.

Urtha had dismounted and stripped to his trousers, flinging down his sword and squeezing the thin gold torque from around his neck. He walked to the two sharpened stakes where the bodies of his mastiffs had been impaled alive. He called out their names, a howl of pain: ‘Maglerd! Gelard! Wait for me where the children play. I’ll follow you and we’ll hunt again, and never again will I doubt you, faithful dogs! I could use you now; there are other dogs to be killed, they walk on two legs, and you would smell them before I could even see the sun on their foulblooded lances!’

It suddenly occurred to him that the stakes were bare; where the shrivelling corpses should have been dangling by the throat, there was just fresh wood.

One of his men told him that the hounds were now in the Shield Lodge.

‘You took them down. I’m glad of that. Now I’ll give them heroes’ funerals, before we leave for the gathering on the river Daan. Help me, Merlin. I’ll need all the Corn Spirits from those hares to do this!’

Grimly he walked to the Shield Lodge. He entered alone and a moment later howled again. And the sound of hounds barking was loud and terrifying. From the noise they made they were struggling with the man, bearing him to the floor, and it was a long time before Urtha staggered from the round house, face wet, hair dishevelled, skin scratched by claws, his eyes, just briefly, alive with delight.

Maglerd and Gelard came after him, pushing at him, standing shoulder high to receive his affection. ‘My hounds!’ Urtha roared. ‘Merlin, they’re back from the dead!’

‘Never went there!’ I shouted at him as again his animals forced him down to a playful struggle. Niiv was laughing, hands covering her mouth. She had been nervous those few days before, when she had used a simple charm to stay the swords of the men who were about to kill the dogs. ‘I couldn’t let them do it. Something about the hounds … I knew they were innocent.’

Sticky and bloody, hair plastered over his eyes and nose, Urtha brought his hunters to heel at last, then walked with them to where Ambaros stood, grinning broadly.

‘I’m taking them with me, father. I’m confident Jason will have them aboard. They can’t row, but they can fight like demons. Though with Cunomaglos gone, I don’t know who will be their guardian.’

‘It was the girl who saved their lives,’ Ambaros said. ‘Merlin has told me everything.’

‘Which girl? The Pojholan? Niiv?’

‘Yes.’

Urtha tossed Niiv the two coiled leashes. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Meglard, Gelard, go to Niiv.’

The huge hounds obediently crossed the ground and dropped to rest, one on each side of the delighted girl.

‘I’ll love them with my life,’ she avowed, resting a hand on each panting head.

‘Time to sail,’ Urtha said, rubbing a hand across his grazes and scratches. ‘Close the gates behind us; if any man not of this clan is living here when we return, we’ll kill him. This is my home. I will not have more of my life stolen! Do you hear that, Scaithach? Morrigan?’ He shouted this to the skies, where the crow-queens flew and watched events below. ‘This is my home. Guard it for me.’