Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (28 page)

He jumped at the sound of voices and turned to see Leta clambering up the slope, followed by a panting maid. He rose politely, wondering why she had dragged the poor woman after her. Since her betrothal the princess had been strictly guarded, but her virginity was hardly in danger here, where no one in his right mind would take off his clothes. They were all wearing northern breeches and leg wrappings, as well as long-sleeved tunics, sheepskin vests, and cloaks of tightly woven wool.

“My lady—” He gestured toward the flat rock. “Will you be seated on your throne?” She had a pretty laugh, which was why he had said it. He grinned and remained standing, leaning against the cliff. “And enjoy this beautiful evening—” He gestured toward the distant peaks, where banners as deeply pink as the flowers that grew in another pocket of soil just below him flew now in a golden sky.

“It is beautiful,” she echoed softly. “I will not forget this. To have seen it almost makes up—” She bit back her next words.

For being sent to the back of beyond to marry a stranger?
He knew better than to say that aloud. The warm light gave her skin some unaccustomed color. She might be almost pretty if she were happy. He hoped her barbarian prince would be kind to her.

“Were you born a slave?” Leta said suddenly.

I was a king’s son, so they say—
thought Woodpecker. But if all the slaves who said they had been nobles before they were snapped up by pirates and sold were telling the truth, there would have been no one left to inherit the land. Anyhow, he supposed she would have thought his own homeland even more barbarous than the place to which they were going.
I must not think of that . . .
He fixed his gaze on the mountains once more.

“I don’t mean to insult you—” she went on. “I used to think that nothing could be worse, but I have no choices either, only a more comfortable captivity.”

Woodpecker cast a quick glance at the maidservant, who was doing her best to pretend deafness. But if she was her mistress’s confidante, she would have heard all this before.

“We always have choices,” he said slowly. Before they left, the king had formally given him his freedom, but their guards still treated him as a slave. “I choose not to think about what I was before, only about what I am going to be.”

She nodded without speaking. The light was fading, the shadowed slopes deepening to purple as the sky turned to rose. The peaks on the other side of the valley were etched in black against that glowing sky. Warmth as well as light was ebbing with the end of day.

He was about to suggest they go back to the fire when a flicker of movement brought him around. The princess screamed as a lithe shape soared from the cliff, but Woodpecker was already in motion. His leap landed him on something with muscles like writhing snakes encased in thick fur. A feline screech assaulted his ears as he clutched with arms and legs, grabbing for a stranglehold. A clawed foot whipped past, searing his thigh. He yelled and tightened his grip convulsively, feeling the impact of each stone as they rolled down the hill.

He heard shouting, a javelin rattled past. A stone scraped his shoulder; another loomed up before them and they crashed to a halt. He could feel the muscles beneath him contracting; he yelled and wrenched and heard the crack of bone. The beast convulsed and then went limp. He collapsed atop it and lay panting as every part of his body began to complain.

“Woodpecker!” Someone had brought a torch. The light flickered over Velantos’ agonized face, the princess behind him, the tall figures of the guard.

“I’m all right . . .” He struggled to sit up, blinking.

“Is it a lion?” asked Leta, leaning over him to see. Woodpecker turned and looked. Stretched out, the cat’s body reached his shoulder; it was longer if you counted the tail, covered in grayish dun fur mottled with black spots. In death the creature was still snarling. There were black tufts on the flattened ears.

“A lynx,” said their guide. “He hunt the chamois on the cliffs. It’s good there’s no cut. The skin will make a fine cape to witness your glory.”

“My glory?” Thinking back, Woodpecker wasn’t at all sure the cat hadn’t broken its head on the rock before he broke its neck, but the men who had been sent as Leta’s escort were grinning. One of them brought up his arm in a salute Woodpecker had never received before.

“Come on, hero,” said Velantos, getting a muscular arm under his shoulders and heaving him upright. “We’d better see to your wounds.”

THIRTEEN

K
ing Aletes had boasted of the forests beyond the great mountains, but not until the travelers left them behind and crossed the plain that rolled away from their feet did Velantos begin to understand. On the other side of Danu’s river the countryside belonged to the trees. Except where humans had hacked them down for field and meadow they flourished, a mixed forest of oak and beech and ash, of chestnut and elm, and the occasional glimmer of white where graceful birches grew. He did not believe the hills of his homeland could ever have been so thickly wooded. Such growth needed deep soil and abundant rain.

At first he had enjoyed the luxuriance, but soon he began to find the thick growth claustrophobic, or perhaps it was the atmosphere at Bhagodheunon, where the king’s smith and the king’s son saw him and Woodpecker as rivals. He had done his best to keep his promise to King Aletes, but he felt a sneaking gratitude for the accusations, however unwarranted, that, after no more than two moons at the Dun had set him and Woodpecker on the road once more.

He heard the boy swear and saw that the pony had stopped short in the path. That was not unusual—the wretched animal had shied at the prospect of crossing streams, stopped short to snatch at every tempting hummock of grass, and spooked each time the wind stirred the trees.

“What is it this time?” asked Velantos wearily. They had been on the road since before dawn, if you could dignify the trail they were following by that name.

“I think the girth is rubbing his side,” came the reply.

“Would it help to loosen it?” Velantos stumped back to see. Neither he nor Woodpecker had much experience with horses, a fact of which the pony, a sturdy chestnut-colored animal with a white blaze down his nose, seemed determined to take advantage.

“Only if you want your tools all over the road,” grumbled the younger man. “I suppose we must be grateful to the king’s smith for packing them, but they do unbalance the load.”

“Yes, we should thank Katuerix—” Velantos said repressively. “Wherever we end up we will need to make a living. Those tools are more valuable than gold.”

“I’m sorry!” Woodpecker burst out, stopping short in the road. “But it’s not my fault! Princess Leta was kind to me because I reminded her of home. I never touched her, never even spoke to her alone! That would have been crazy. What did I ever do to make King Maglocunos doubt my sanity?”

“I know, I know.” Velantos pulled a bit of leather from his pack and set about devising a pad. In truth, he suspected the princess had been attracted by Woodpecker’s broadening shoulders and sweet smile. Now that he was growing into his height, he promised to become an impressive man.

“It is not your fault, lad. He doesn’t know you as I do, and he seems to be one of those who believes in striking first and working out the rights of the matter later on.”

“And I’ve no kin to demand compensation if he had succeeded in killing me,” Woodpecker added bitterly.

Velantos finished adjusting the pad and tugged at the rein. They had left the Dun in a hurry, when Katuerix came with a warning that the king was sending men to kill the boy at dawn.
“Go north,”
the smith had told them.
“You’ll be out of Maglocunos’ territory when you reach the coastal plain. Go to the City of Circles. Rumor is they have had some bad floods, but they should be all the more willing to welcome another good smith there
.
”

“Are you sure he was telling you the truth?” asked the young man. “Maybe this was a clever way to get rid of his competition.”

“I suppose so. I never could convince him I had no ambition to take his place with the king. But I thought he wanted my help experimenting with those bits of bog iron he found.”

“I thought the war band
liked
me!” Woodpecker echoed, suddenly sounding very young.

“The men who came with us from Korinthos like you,” Velantos corrected. “The others, the ones who’ve never traveled past the river, much less the great mountains, are suspicious of anything they don’t understand. Be grateful the dog-king isn’t hunting us with his hounds. His reasons have nothing to do with his feelings. If he decided to remove you, it is because he thought it the most practical way to deal with a threat. If he is not chasing us, it is because we have solved his problem another way.”

“I suppose you would know . . . I may be the son of a king, but I did not grow up in a royal hall.”

“A king’s son?” Velantos looked at him in astonishment, then wondered why he had not recognized the breeding implied by the boy’s manners. “You have never spoken of your history, and I am ashamed to say that I never thought to ask you.”

“Why should you?” Woodpecker looked back with his swift grin. “I was doing my best to forget it myself. He ruled no great city like yours, and he died when I was only a few months old. I grew up in hiding, not that it matters now. Slaves have no history.”

Velantos nodded. “I was beginning to learn that. But in the past year I have also learned that there is a world beyond my forge.” He broke off as a grouse flew up in a clatter of wings and the pony reared. By the time they got the beast calmed, it was almost noon.

They were passing through a grove of mixed oak and ash; bracken grew thickly on the forest floor. Ahead of them sunlight glowed golden through the green leaves. In the next moment they had come out into a clearing where the ferns gave way to grass and summer flowers. In its center grew a group of three silver birches, fair as maidens bending in the dance.

“Potnia!” he breathed, making a gesture of reverence, for surely they were worthy of the goddesses. Clearly he was not the only one to think so. An image braided of straw and ornamented with strips of cloth had been bound to the trunk of the middle tree, its ribbons fluttering in the slight breeze.

“Should we be here?” breathed Woodpecker, his eyes going wide.

Velantos nodded. “We need to eat and let the pony graze. If we are respectful, I don’t think that the Lady will mind. Help me unload the beast. While we are resting, maybe we can devise a better harness as well.”

Katuerix had brought them hard loaves and a mixture of dried meat and fruit for the journey. Velantos laid a little of each at the foot of the tree and poured out some water.

“Potnia Theron, I salute you. Receive this gift, which is all I have, and ward our journey, and if we come safe to a place where I can earn my living, I will make you a better offering.” If their pony kept misbehaving, she might get a horse. He stepped back, wondering if this was like one of the sanctuaries they had at home where the god spoke through the whispering leaves, but the air was still.

When he returned, Woodpecker was still looking anxious, but he had started eating with the appetite of the young and healthy as soon as the offering was set down.

“Have you ever thought of going home?” Velantos asked when he had taken the edge off his own hunger.

“No!” Woodpecker replied—too quickly? “It has been too long. They will all have forgotten me!”

Velantos looked at him from beneath bushy brows. The lad sounded very sure . . . and yet ever since Woodpecker had admitted his lineage the smith had been thinking about what Apollon Paion had said to him.
Where
was he destined to forge the Sword from the Stars? And for the hand of what king?

He had no answers, but when they continued on after their meal he began to suspect that some god had heard his prayer, for the pony settled down and they made good time. They slept that night within the protection of a copse of holly, and the following one in the barn of a farmer who traded them a good meal for mending a cauldron and sharpening his sword.

In this way they moved northward, crossing a range of low mountains and then faring downward through the forest. They passed from one steading to the next, sleeping in sheds or under the stars while the moon waxed from a sliver to nearly full. The country changed as the land sank toward the sea, the trees becoming more sparse, then giving way to bog and heathland except where cuttings and dikes protected rich fields.

 

 

 

WOODPECKER STOPPED SHORT, NOSTRILS flaring, as the changing wind lifted his hair.
Fire . . .
He had always feared it, but only when Anderle told him how she had rescued him from the burning house had he understood why. The scent faded with the wind, then returned, stronger. With time he had grown accustomed to the smoke from the forge, but this was no charcoal burner’s fire. The reek of burning thatch was unmistakable now . . . the smell of a burning home.

He turned and saw that Velantos, who was leading the pony, had smelled it as well. “A house is burning—” He pointed across the heath, where purple heather covered the rough ground between stands of yew and pine. Now they could see a black plume of smoke beyond the trees. It was leagues away—whatever was happening would be over by the time they reached it. Even with a trail to follow, getting across this country took time.

These days Velantos had a few nightmares about fires as well, and in the past few days they had seen the charred timbers of more than one steading. Despite its apparent state of peace, this was a troubled land. They both kept their swords loose in the sheath and their spears within easy reach as they continued on their way.

Presently the heath began to give way to mingled marsh and pasture and winding channels that bordered isles of trees. It reminded Woodpecker strongly of the Vale of Avalon, and he found himself amusing Velantos with tales of his childhood there. That was not all he was remembering. Spending so much time outdoors had awakened skills he had learned hunting in the marches. And as the sun sank toward the west, he began to have the uncomfortable feeling that they were not alone.