Celtika (35 page)

Orgetorix stared at the fire for a moment, then suddenly sheathed his knife, stood up and walked to a tree that clung to the rock face with three bony roots. In the distance, the summer night was scattered with tiny fires.

‘That anguished man was you, Merlin,’ he said without looking at me. ‘I see that now. And the bearded man—’

‘Yes,’ I agreed before he could say it. ‘Your father.’

I walked over to join him. His arms were crossed and he was staring down the winding path that would take us over the nearest hill and into the bosom of the army again.

‘Rottenbones. A terrible name for a terrible man. He betrayed his family. He caused Little Dreamer and myself to be cast into exile.’

I kept silent for the moment. When hate and anger flushes through a man there is a certain stench; Orgetorix was confused about many things, but hatred for Jason was a rope around his heart, pulled strongly by a heavier horse than I was prepared to break at that moment.

He sighed suddenly, glancing at me. ‘And my mother, I’m sure, was the woman in the sea-cave. Though why she spoke in a strange tongue … I can’t fathom that.’

‘Medea.’

‘Of Colchis.’

‘A different land. With a stranger, older tongue than yours.’

‘Is that right? Then that would explain it. It was never explained to me. She was the daughter of a king called Aeëtes. I could never find anyone who had heard of him. A storyteller talked once of a ram’s fleece that bled gold and had come from that place, that Colchis. I’d thought it was on one of the islands. But a different, older land, you say. Yes, my brother and I must certainly be a long way away from home.’

They had woken from a deep sleep and walked hand in hand from the cave; but the cave was no longer the sea-cave, where Poseidon had tried to destroy them. This was a place in the hills, warm, scented, a system of caverns through which a wind like a gentle voice blew constantly.

And as a man, he had just watched it sacked. The children had emerged from the oracle at Arkamon.

Orgetorix suddenly brightened. He turned away from the valley, hoisted himself into the crook of two branches, and regarded me with interest for a long, lingering moment. Then he nodded, as if something had become plain to him. Indeed, he went on:

‘After that, memory is much clearer. There were fruit trees and olive trees and we fed like mad things, two little scavengers in the middle of nowhere. After the horrors of the sea, and those nightmare days, this was Elysia. We hid in the woods and watched people coming and going and talking to the cave. We thought that was very funny. Sometimes they brought cooked meat and left it there, and after they’d gone, several men came and took it away. We managed to steal some of it before they came, and they left wine as well, though we didn’t know it was wine, and one day we got so drunk we gave ourselves away. A raven dropped on us, a huge creature, and drove us into the woods while these strange men were pursuing us. We got away, but we were out of our heads, and very sick. I recall a man on horseback riding down on us. He had a helmet like burnished gold, with a bird of prey, wings spread, rising from its crown. His horse was masked; a terrifying sight, like a demon. But this man was Belovisus, descended from a great king of the Bituriges, and he took pity on us at once. What he was doing at the oracle I have no idea—we
keltoi
get everywhere, as I’m sure you’ve noticed … but he took us north, to his fort, and we trained and grew up as his foster sons.’

He slipped down from the tree and rubbed his hands together as if chilled, though the evening was warm and still. I had the impression he was glad to have talked to me.

‘And that is that, for the moment … Merlin…’ he said with a half-smile. ‘There are a few questions I’d like to ask of you.’

‘If I have the answers…’

‘I’m curious to know about my brother. You saw me at Arkamon. You are a part of my life, clearly. I just wonder … have you ever seen my brother?’

He searched my eyes, not with suspicion, but with need. He was like the dead, I thought. I decided to lie; I was not sure of what I believed and I saw no point in building some false hope in him. I’d already made the mistake of doing that with Jason.

Jason!

Where in the world was he, I wondered quickly. How long had Elkavar and I been lost in the underworld? Perhaps the other argonauts were already with the army, madly seeking the ghosts and guilty of their lives.

‘If I remember, the oracle told you he was between sea-washed walls; the ruler of his own land—’

‘Though he doesn’t know it! Yes. I remember the words of the oracle. And I
knew
it was you in the rocks, listening that day. I knew I was right.’ He laughed. ‘Though I didn’t know who you were. Are you following me, Merlin?’

‘No. I follow a particular path; don’t ask me why. Sometimes I find it crosses my past. That’s all that has happened here.’

He shook his head, ignorant of my meaning, confused by my words. ‘What an odd man you are. I wonder: did you love my mother?’

‘I never loved Medea,’ I answered truthfully. But his question had been like a blow between the eyes. That look of Fierce Eyes’ in the underworld; that sudden shock; the memories that we shared at that instant, of softer, kinder, closer times. Before Colchis.

Unaware of my confusion, Orgetorix persisted with a sallow smile, ‘Then did you love my father?’

‘Yes. I loved Jason.’

‘You loved the man I hate. How strange. How strange. That we should be standing here like this, knowing now what we know, and I’m still opening my guts to you.’

Should I tell him that I knew where his brother lived? Should I tell him what I suspected about the brother he had hunted with, had ridden-to-raid with, had trained and grown with, under the watchful, caring, yet unseeing eye of Belovisus?

I was put out of my misery by Orgetorix himself, who suddenly said: ‘I lost him. He disappeared. It was so strange, Merlin. Little Dreamer. One day we were riding through a deep valley. It was very quiet. We were recovering from light wounds received on a cattle raid. It had been a good raid; ten head of shorthorn blacks, and a grey bull; and four horses. War trumpets were being sounded, but there would be no retaliation for a while. They weren’t strong enough, a small family on poor land, so a few of us went hunting. My brother thought he’d spotted a fawn, a perfect catch. I saw him ride down through the bushes, and heard his sudden laugh: I’ve seen you! That sort of laugh. And he never came back. I found his horse grazing a short way away, but no rider. I searched the valley for two days. It seems impossible that he could have vanished so completely. If he had been killed, the river could not have carried him far. I am haunted by that loss. No caves, no passages, no twists in the valley, no dreamy orchards or overhanging oaks, no shrine, no stone-mouthed hill … nothing that could have snared him. I missed him and I missed him. We had been exiled together; and to lose him so suddenly, and so mysteriously…’

He watched me carefully, thinking hard, clearly in pain with the memory. Then he added quietly, ‘I suppose that is why there is something dead inside me. This is not my life. I have lost my life. A valley in the land of the Bituriges stole the last fragment of it. Until you…’

I took a deep breath, ordering my thoughts.

But a slow drone on Elkavar’s elbow-pipes stopped me from responding. We looked round to see one of the Iberian mercenaries standing a short way away, spear held low and pointed towards us. His suspicious gaze flickered from Orgetorix to me and back again. Behind him, the other men were mounted, the spare horses on rope leads.

‘What’s this, Madraud?’ Orgetorix asked softly.

‘You do a lot of talking in the night,’ Madraud answered. ‘But you’d stopped to sleep. We wanted to ride on, but you wanted to stop. To sleep. We wanted a fight at that speaking hole. But you wanted to watch from a distance. There is something of the game animal in you, we’ve decided; to be hunted, not to hunt. So this is goodbye.’

‘Then goodbye it is,’ Orgetorix said evenly. ‘But leave those horses.’

‘The horses come with us,’ Madraud murmured with a meaningful shake of his head, the spear lifting in his grip.

Then I found out why young Thesokorus had perhaps earned the name ‘king of killers’.

He moved so fast I was scarcely aware that he had left my side. He pressed suddenly and fatally against the Iberian, using a technique I had seen practised by the Greeklanders themselves, a body charge that risked all and claimed all. Madraud gasped as his leader gripped him by the back of the neck, pushing aside spear, pushing in the lethal, leaf-shaped iron blade that he had slipped from its scabbard with the sound of metal dragged against a sharpening-stone.

At once, one of the other mercenaries jumped from his horse and ran at me, spear raised to throw, eyes like a wild dog’s. He was suddenly struck by a wailing sack. Elkavar had flung his pipes. The man, startled for a moment, staggered back as Orgetorix struck him a lightning blow through the heart.

The other riders turned their mounts and started to canter. Orgetorix raced after them, jumped nimbly on to the trailing horse, ran along its back, on to the back of the Avernian’s horse, knocking aside the spear that was stabbed at him, struck down through the man’s skull, then leaned over the panting head of the animal and grabbed the reins, tugging it aside with the three spare horses. The other riders galloped down the hill. The jerking body of the Avernian was pushed to the ground where it continued to thrash wildly for a few moments. Orgetorix trotted back, leading our mounts, frowning.

‘I wasn’t expecting that,’ he said, with a grim glance at Madraud’s sprawled corpse.

‘I wouldn’t have known,’ I replied. ‘You fight like a cat, but without the screaming.’

‘Screaming wastes breath. Merlin, I’ll ask you to strip these bastards when they’ve stopped twitching. Madraud’s leather jacket looks better for the battle ahead than that filthy sheepskin you’re wearing…’

Once again my clothing was being criticised!

‘And their boots and belts are useful.’

He dismounted and inspected his own clothing for blood.

Elkavar was inspecting his pipes. Two splits in the bag, from my attacker’s sword, had taken away their breath.

‘Like a stuck pig,’ he reflected sadly. ‘No more squealing for a while. But easy enough to repair when there’s a moment, you’ll be pleased to hear.’

*   *   *

We rested, then, until that darkest hour which signals the sudden burst of sun, and a fresh dawn. At some time in the night Orgetorix had hauled the three naked bodies of his erstwhile companions to the trees at the cliff, and hung them from the branches. This was not an act of vengeance, but an expression of hate, it seemed to me; and not hate for these men … Their sad corpses were just the machine by which Orgetorix could cry his silent fury. And it was my own arrival that had opened up the gates.

I watched him move about the rough camp, pale and ghostly, silent and determined. If he was aware of my watching, he didn’t show it.

I was certain I knew, now, not just the nature of his hate, but the source of it; and by implication the falseness of it. But for unfathomable reasons—which is to say, reasons I did not wish to address within myself at the time—this was not the time to talk to this brash, bold, inquisitive and lonely young man.

One reason was not unfathomable at all, however: I was wondering where his mother lay hiding. She might have been watching us now, from some rookery, or crevice in the rocks; from the sky or from the burrow of a subterranean scavenger. I was certain, though, that she would watch us without revealing herself. And I wondered when that revelation might next occur. And why she was allowing me so close to a son she had so jealously protected.

In my heart I felt that she was as shaken as was I by the discovery of our own ancient history. Neither of us knew exactly what to do; and both of us had preoccupations, the consequences of a long life and the occasional lapse into involvement with the more spirited of the men and women that we met along the way.

*   *   *

Wary of ambush by the dead men’s companions, Orgetorix led us down the hill and along a stream, riding hard when the land was open to get ahead of the column. We soon met the silent line of Brennos’s slaughterers, shooting down the panic of game animals that fled ahead of the army, mostly small animals and birds. These men were experts with sling and arrow, and as soon as the earth began to tremble they piled their kill and rode silently and swiftly to the south, to wait again for the disruption of nature by the approach of the vast gathering.

Soon the army appeared, led by twenty heavily armed men on black horses, walking slowly, wary eyes on the hills and surrounding woodland. When they saw us, four of them came galloping forward, spears lowered, shields high. They were helmetless and flaxen-haired; I couldn’t read their clan signs. They barked words at us and Orgetorix understood the language easily. One of them seemed to recognise him, asked the names of his companions, gave Elkavar and myself harsh appraisal before nodding to us curtly, then the four waited for the column to catch up. We were allowed to pass back through the lines, a point of some two hundred men, then the mix of men-at-arms and ox-pulled carts, laden with booty and supplies.

The slaughtered game was gathered enthusiastically. The slow march flowed past us, the eyes that regarded us not so much curious as weary. There was talk of heading for the sea coast, and the thought of it was clearly a source of enthusiasm and relief. Anything to escape these endless mountain passes and boggy woods.

‘I have to go straight to Brennos,’ Orgetorix advised me. ‘I’ll need his protection if those marauding bastards sight me. Enough of them will have seen me strike down one of their chiefs. They might apply for single combat, by way of revenge. I should take him a gift. High Kings like gifts.’ The young man appraised me coolly. ‘I don’t think you’re much of a gift, though he might like Elkavar’s singing. The trouble is, this is silent marching.’

Silent marching? The very hills were shaking with the steady rhythm of their advance. He meant, of course, no war cries, no trumpets, no drum-beating, or shield-beating, no screeching skirmishes at the head of the column. And as few fires as possible. Inasmuch as so many thousands of men and their train could advance noiselessly south into hostile territory, this arrogant, magnificent army was attempting it.