Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (23 page)

To Velantos, he had been a companion.

And he had abandoned him.

Velantos rejected
me
!
He answered that inner accusation. Woodpecker thought he had found a home in Tiryns. To be told he had no right to die in its defense hurt. Was that why he had obeyed Velantos? Or was he afraid? He clasped his long arms around his knees and rocked back and forth. Fear was an old companion. There had always been an undercurrent of anxiety even when he was a child, in the days when he had thought himself free.

For three years he had been at the mercy of his masters. He had learned every gesture of submission, every way by which a slave might placate wrath or evade a blow. For three years all he had remembered was that he must survive. That was what Velantos had told him to do. He grimaced as he realized he was still obeying a master. In the smithy, everything, from the tools on their shelves to the scarred leather apron hanging from its peg on the wall, resonated with the smith’s identity. Velantos was still here, grumbling, teaching, and all too rarely, loosing that deep-throated roar of laughter that seemed to roll up from his toes—Woodpecker had not left him on the watchtower after all.

No . . .
He shivered.
He’s dead.When he sent me away, it was because he meant to die.
His gaze sought the clay figure of the goddess that always reminded him of the image above the forge on the Island of Maidens at home.
Why couldn’t You save him? He loved You!

There was a shift in the light as if a bird had flown by the window, though he saw nothing pass. A phrase repeated itself in his awareness—“
The god gives the power, but we are the tools
. . .
”
He could not, would not, remember who had said that to him. Perhaps it was the goddess herself, Potnia Athana, who in his own land had another name.

Velantos had expected to die, but Woodpecker knew from his own experience that sometimes those who were supposed to die lived. What if the smith had not found death in battle? What would they do to him? Without intending it, the boy unfolded from his fetal crouch, legs tingling as he forced numbed muscles to move.

They will kill him without honor,
he thought grimly,
enslave him to some wretched work that will grind him into the dust.
Woodpecker knew all about the kind of labor that suffocated the spirit and deadened the senses. But such treatment would only goad Velantos to a rebellion that would end in a death more wretched still.

Now that he was standing, cowering until he was hauled off to a new captivity was no longer an option. He looked up at the goddess once more.

“You want me to do something, don’t You?” he said aloud.

Frowning, he took down the leather apron. It would go twice around him, but it might identify him as a skilled craftsman long enough to keep him from being skewered the moment he appeared. And he should take something to demonstrate Velantos’ skill—not a weapon—His gaze fell on an earring in the shape of a pendant lily that Tanit had brought to the smith for repair. He tried not to think about what her fate would be now. He had heard stories from captive women in households where he had served. First rape, then, if they were pretty, service as a whore to the warriors until they were sold. To know that had happened to a girl he had loved must be as great a torment as defeat itself. Woodpecker understood why Velantos would prefer to die.

But perhaps the prince was not dead.

He twitched at the sound of voices in the street outside. They were coming already. A swift step took him to the back entrance that led to the sheds where they stored the charcoal and from there to an alley. After a year of doing errands for Velantos he knew all the back ways and shortcuts, and the ladder, if it was still there, that would get him into the Upper Citadel.

 

 

 

“TAKE HIM OUTSIDE AND kill him—there’s too much blood already on this floor . . .”

The voice seemed to come from a great distance away. The sword whose point was already cutting into Velantos’ breast twisted, and he forced himself not to flinch from the pain. Rope rasped his left wrist as they bound it; he grunted in agony as they grabbed his right. But he had only to endure a few more moments and he would be done.

“Bind him, but do not kill!” A new voice cut across the moans of the dying and the jeers of his captors. Velantos’ head jerked round, his eyes widening as he saw Woodpecker, the leather apron flapping around him, standing beside the hearth. “He’s a master smith, valuable. See, that’s his hammer on the floor. You want him alive.”

“And who may you be, to give orders here?”

Velantos’ relief that Kresfontes’ voice held amusement warred with his own wrath that the boy had disobeyed.

“I help him; I learned from him! I have some skill too. But look—” Gold gleamed in Woodpecker’s hand. “He made this earring—it’s beautiful, yes?”

“Our women are already weighted down by the golden gauds that we have won,” said one of the warriors. “We have all of yours already, and the gold of Mykenae when it falls. We don’t need a smith to make more.”

“You still need swords!” came the swift rejoinder. “He saw your kind of sword last year and learned. That one—” Woodpecker pointed to the leaf-shaped blade that had come to rest against the curb of the hearth. “He made it. Look at it. Keep him and he’ll make more.”

With a detached amusement Velantos noted how the sight of the weapon had changed the expressions of the men who guarded him. Woodpecker had made a good try, but if they thought he would work for them they were mistaken, and he would die after all, in some worse way. The gash where the spear had brought him down was still bleeding and his leg was beginning to grow cold. If they waited much longer, it would not matter anyway, for blood loss would finish him.

Someone had picked up the sword and set it in Kresfontes’ hand.

“A year?” The enemy leader extended the blade, swept it in a circle and brought it down once more. There were a few nicks in the edge, and it would need to be sharpened before it was a really effective weapon again, but Velantos was distantly pleased that it had held up so well.
And killed so many . . .
His lips curved a little as his eyes closed.

“Very well—” The words came from somewhere far away. “Bind up that leg and take him away. You spoke for him, boy—you take care of him. If he lives, we’ll see what he can do.”

Velantos gasped as a rough bandaging woke the wound in his leg to screaming agony. But the fingers that untied the rope from his damaged wrist were precise and sure.

“Soon, I’ll get you water,” came Woodpecker’s whisper. The voice was a line that held him to consciousness through the waves of pain, the long-fingered hands cool as they smoothed the matted hair from his brow. “Don’t die, Velantos. You’ve given me my soul again. Don’t leave me alone. . . .”

 

 

 

“AS BIRD AND BEAST find mates and couple, so it is with men, for none can prosper alone. . . .” Anderle lifted her hands in blessing, and Cimara blushed rosily, casting a swift look at the young man who stood at her side. “May the gods grant that your lives will be long and happy, and your offspring prosper in the land!”

The queen of Azan was old for a first wedding, but her mother had not allowed her to take a husband for fear of Galid’s wrath. Queen Zamara had died just after Midwinter, though it seemed to Anderle that her spirit had succumbed many years before. It had taken some months of secret negotiations to find a suitable bridegroom to sire the next generation of Azani sovereigns. Agraw was from the eastern edge of Azan, where they had not suffered so much from Galid’s depredations. He was a second son, and no doubt his mother had been pleased to settle him so well.

Agraw was not a bad-looking boy. Beneath the wedding crown his brown hair was thick and curly, and the shoulders draped by the leather cape looked strong. Cimara’s worn features had a youthful radiance beneath a felt cap banded with amber beads to which a rectangle of tubular jet beads had been added on each side. Lappets hung down her back, and her brown hair had been intricately braided behind. Necklet and bracelets were of gold, and her shoulder cape was held to her gown by long pins of bronze. Even Galid had not dared to steal the regalia of the queen.

The party assembled to witness their vows was small, but Anderle had persuaded enough representatives of Azan’s noble families to come to the sacred grove to validate the ceremony. And they were almost done. The couple had exchanged bread and salt, and on the stone altar the fire that had witnessed their handfasting still burned. Once they had made their offerings to the gods, they could be put to bed, and if the gods were good, Cimara would conceive.

And what will we do if she bears a son?
Anderle wondered then.
Must I try to hide him as I did Mikantor?
Her heart twisted with the old pain. King Sa kantor’s words had eased her sorrow but brought little hope. It had been nearly three years since Mikantor had been captured. Even if the boy still lived, he was lost to them.

“Come, and we will offer our gifts to the gods in exchange for their blessings.” She gestured, and two of the men picked up the chest that held the offerings. Hand in hand, Cimara and Agraw led the way along the path from the grove to the place where the river had spread wide to form a marshy bog. Planks had been laid across the mud to allow the pair to get closer to the water. As they neared, a pair of mallards flew up, quacking. The dessicated head and hide of a bull dangled from a pole among the reeds, left from the last ritual conducted by the old queen. Today they ought to have offered another, but that would have left evidence that Galid would question. Instead, Cimara was offering her remaining treasures—a bronze bowl with its side beaten in; a gold pin, bent; and then a good bronze blade that Agraw broke over one knee.

Metal flashed pale in the sunlight as the items were tossed into the bog. Anderle closed her eyes and reached out with her other senses, and it seemed to her that she could feel a change in the pressure of the air. The spirits were listening.

To make offerings to the waters was a new thing. Her mother had begun it, in one of the first years when the rains threatened to engulf the land. The sacred stones still got a little milk and bread, but the sight of dark waters closing over something so valuable was clear evidence that a sacrifice had been received. She hoped the gods were pleased. It had been disturbing to feel the land so uneasy as she crossed Azan.

Cimara and her new husband offered the last gold pin and turned. She was smiling with relief and pleasure, he serious, as if only now understanding that although he would not rule, his was the power that made the queen fertile to bless the land. The witnesses set up a cheer as they reached the grass. Startled by the noise, it took Anderle a moment to realize that she was hearing another sound. She bent and felt a vibration in the earth, and recognized it as the rattle of chariot wheels.

Some of the kings in other lands had chariots, but only one man would be driving so furiously here.

The others had heard and were turning. Anderle hurried toward the bride and groom. “Galid is coming! Agraw, take off the crown and cloak and hide yourself among the other men!”

Cimara’s face had gone white. She stood her ground as Anderle bundled the groom’s gear into the box that had held the offerings, but as the chariots surged over the rise, she reached out to take the priestess’s hand.

Galid’s charioteer reined in the ponies, a pair of chestnuts whose coats glowed the same color as his cloak, pinned with a great brooch far finer than anything Cimara had been able to give to the bog. Behind him came five other chariots, each bearing several men. Their bronze spearpoints gleamed in the sun.

“What a fine pair of birds—” he observed with a nasty smile. “And what fine feathers. But why the celebration? Have I somehow forgotten a holiday?”

“Does it require a holiday to make an offering to the spirits of the land?” Anderle replied.

“It does at least require a reason,” he said slowly, scanning the faces of the others. Flushed or pale, they avoided his gaze as if they had been guilty of some crime. “Has there been some disaster of which I was not informed?”

You are the disaster, Galid
, thought Anderle, but she bit back the words as he went on.

“If you wished to make a sacrifice, why was I not invited? I see no beast, no fire, no blood on the ground. Surely you would not insult the gods with a paltry offering.”

“Bring us a bull, if you can find one among your herds that is not someone else’s rightful property, and we will be happy to offer it,” she said evenly. “You have left these people little to celebrate with, or for.”

“Is that so? But I was told that you were planning a very special ceremony.” His lips smiled, but there was venom in his gaze. “A queen’s wedding,” he whispered. “And not witnessed by the protector of this land?”

“You are not my protector,” Cimara said coldly, though Anderle could feel the trembling of her hand. “Not my war-king, nor my husband. You have no authority over me or over this land!”

“Only this!” he hissed, jerking a spear from its holder and swinging it toward her breast. “Here’s a plow for your furrow, if you’re so hot to breed!”

“Even you, Galid the Greedy, know better than to kill a queen,” Anderle cut in.

“I don’t have to kill her, only her heirs . . .” The spear lifted, and swung toward the others, who now stood surrounded by his men. “If she’s wedded, I’ll swear she’s not been bedded, nor will be.” He nodded to his charioteer, and a touch on the reins brought the cart closer to the witnesses. “Seven men stand here, shaking in their sandals like so many girls. And not a one has the stones to step out and face me, much less sire a ruler. Still, to make sure, I suppose I had better kill them all.”

He grinned, letting the spear drift back and forth along the line. Some of the men had knives, and one, a sword, but against those numbers none had dared to draw. As the spearpoint moved, first one, then another, edged away from Agraw, who stood with his eyes tight shut like a man trying to deny a bad dream.