The Hallowed Isle Book Two (16 page)

The fleeing survivors of Naitan Morbet's army were out of sight by now, closely pursued by Artor's cavalry. Perhaps he should learn to fight astride, Oesc thought grimly, so he could go with them. It was bad enough to fight a battle, but in the grisly work that came after there was neither excitement nor glory.

Where the land began to rise there was a heap of bodies, as if some desperate band of warriors had chosen it for their last stand. Most of them were Pictish, and all were quite dead. Among the corpses lay a wooden standard, carved and painted in the shape of a red stallion. Oesc frowned, remembering how it had threatened them in the morning light. He dismounted then, and began to pull aside the sprawled limbs of the warriors. Beneath them, as by now he was expecting, lay the body of a thick-bodied man with grizzled hair. Under the jutting beard a golden torque gleamed, and across the broad, naked chest was tattooed a horse and the double disc symbol of a king.

Oesc could see no mark upon him; perhaps the gods had struck him down in the midst of the battle. That happened sometimes with old men. But there was little doubt that this was Naitan Morbet, the lord of Pictland, who had set the lands from the Tava to the Salmaes ablaze. Oesc lifted his horn to his lips and blew, summoning the British captains to come and see.

Leaderless, the Picts fled northward like fallen leaves before the wind. Artor released his infantry and the men who lived farthest away to go home to their harvests while the British cavalry sped after the enemy, disposing of stragglers in a series of brief, bitter engagements that left the enemy dead, or less often, captive. The Picts were not destroyed entirely. Small groups of riders who knew the land could go where the larger, more heavily armed pursuers would never find them. Nonetheless, only a tithe of the great army that Naitan Morbet had led southward at Beltain ever returned to celebrate the feast of Lugus in the Caledonian hills and glens, and an unhappy line of prisoners followed when Artor's army at last reached Dun Eidyn.

From the high ridge of rock and the dun that crowned it to the flat meadow in the cleft below, the air pulsed with the sound of the drumming. From time to time a bitter skirling of pipes would gather the rhythm into their music, but when it ceased, the drums continued, the audible heartbeat of the land. The noise had continued since the beginning of the festival. By now, Betiver was aware of it only intermittently, when some shift in the wind amplified the volume, or when, for no reason that he understood, for a few moments it would stop. Sometimes, when the drums beat softly, he thought that pulsing might be the mead pounding in his brain, for during the past three days food and drink had flowed freely.

Those of Artor's men who had not gone home to help with the grain harvest camped in the meadow; it was a welcome opportunity to relax and recuperate from the long days on the trail. The hay had been cut, and the cattle brought down from the hills. The first fields of grain to ripen had been ceremonially harvested, and the clans of the Votadini, with the cattle they wanted to sell and the daughters they wanted to marry off, had come in. For the princes and lords of the king's household, it was a visit to a more ancient world that had never gone under the yoke of Rome.

“Is it so different?” asked Oesc, leaning back on the spread hides beside him. “My own people also make offerings at harvest time.” Light from the bonfire reddened his fair hair.

Betiver shrugged. “At home in Gallia the priest offers prayers for the success of the harvest and the laborers feast when it is done. Maybe the country folk do other things, but I lived in towns and never saw them. There was never this great gathering.” He sunk his teeth into the flesh that clung to the beef rib he was holding and worried it free.

“That is true. Among the Saxons, the next great feast will not be until autumn's ending, but that is for the family, like Yule. It is at Ostara and sometimes Midsummer that our tribes come together for the sacrifices.”

“In Eriu, Lugos of the Long Arm is still honored,” said Cunorix. “We hold a great festival for him at Taltiu, with a cattle fair.”

Betiver nodded. For a moment it had seemed to him that the three of them, all born elsewhere and brought to Britannia, were equally foreigners. But he came from a land and a way of life long Christian, whereas Oesc and Cunorix were still as pagan as these Celts in their multicolored garments, dancing around the fires.

“Look there—” Oesc pointed. Gualchmai was moving among the feasters, his upper body swathed in a mantle of gold and brown and black checkered wool fastened with a silver penannular brooch. The skirts of a short saffron tunic showed beneath it, with black banding woven into the hem. In his hand he gripped a silver-mounted drinking horn.

He caught sight of the three Companions and made his way towards them, grinning widely.

“See—my father has given me this new horn! Tonight I have leave to stay and drink with the men.”

“I am glad to see that you came through the battle unhurt,” said Betiver. “Will you sit and drink with us, then, and tell us what is going on?”

“I will that—” Gualchmai said something in a dialect too thick for Betiver to follow to the wiry, red-headed tribesman who had been escorting him, and joined them on the cowhide. “Even my mother is agreeing that I am a warrior now I've seen battle. My brothers have to be staying up there with the women—” He pointed at the enclosure of loosely woven brush where the wives of the chieftains were holding their own festival. It was a flimsy barrier, but even a drunken man would not breach that sanctuary.

Not that the rest of them were without female companionship. The tribesmen had brought their families, and many of the girls had volunteered to help serve out the ale and mead. And when one of them, liking the looks of a southern warrior, settled down on the grass with him instead, no one seemed to think the worse of her. Betiver had noticed already that the women of the northern tribes had a freedom that would never have been permitted in a Christian land.

Gualchmai's red-headed servant returned with a pitcher full of mead and refilled their horns.

“Tell me, what is that platform with the fenced space in front of it?” asked Oesc.

“Oh, that is for the ceremony. Do you not have it in the south?” he asked as the men looked inquiring. “When Lugus kills the Black Bull who has carried off the Goddess and is holding back the harvest.”

“Nay,” Betiver said gravely, “I have never seen such a thing.”

“Well, the sun has set,” answered Gualchmai. “You will see something soon.”

Westward, the sky blazed with banners of gold, as if to honor the vanished sun. The last light glowed soft on the rough rock of the cliff and the timbers of the palisade above them, and the thatched roof of Leudonus's high hall. Even as they watched, a spark appeared on the ridge below the eastern gate; in the next moment there were more, a line of torches winding like a fiery serpent down from the dun.

Closer, one saw the white robes of the men who led the procession, ghostly in the half-light.

“Druids!” exclaimed Betiver. “I did not know so many of them remained.”

“in the north they do—” Gualchmai said smugly.

“And in Eriu,” added Cunorix.

“They call Merlin a druid,” observed Oesc.

“Merlin . . .” Betiver shook his head, thinking of the stories. “He has the druid knowledge, but he is something different. Some say the Devil fathered him and gave him his powers.”

“If I believed in your Devil I could believe that was so,” said Oesc somberly. “But my grandfather's wisewoman calls him witega, which means an oracle.”

“My father's druids prophesy, and read omens,” put in Gualchmai. “But they also conduct sacrifices and ceremonies.”

Betiver twitched. He had been raised a Christian and held to that faith. But so had Artor. Whatever was going to happen, they could not insult their hosts by refusing to participate. If there was sin in it, he would simply have to ask Father Fastidius to give him a penance once they were home again.

The druids drew closer, men of middle-age or older, with flowing hair and beards. Upon the breast of their leader gleamed a golden crescent, and he leaned on a staff. Then Oesc drew his breath in sharply, and Betiver saw that behind the druids walked a group of dark-clad women.

“Those are the she-druids, the priestesses—” said Gualchmai. “And my mother . . .”

But Betiver had already noticed that one of the women had covered her dark robe with a mantle of crimson. As she moved towards them, her ornaments cast back the torchlight in running sparks and flickers of red gold. He did not need to be told that this was the queen.

Margause walked as a woman certain of her beauty and secure in her power, shoulders braced against the drag of her trailing mantle, head high. Her hair fell in waves of dark fire across back and shoulders, bound with a golden band. More gold swung from her ears and lay across her breast and weighted her wrists. Men fell silent at her coming; some bent, foreheads touching the earth in reverence.

It seemed irrelevant to call her beautiful. Deep-breasted and wide-hipped, her body was made for bearing. But from her face all the girlish softness had been fined away to reveal the faultless sculpting of bone at cheek and brow. At the entrance to the women's enclosure she paused, gazing across the assembly beneath painted eyelids. Then she disappeared into the shadows within.

Only then did Betiver realize that behind the women marched the warriors escorting Leudonus and the high king. Leudonus wore a plaid of the same hues as his son's; Artor a linen robe the color of the ripening fields. It was the first time since he had first set eyes on Artor as a child of thirteen that he had not been immediately aware when his lord drew near. He blinked, wondering if it was the mead that had dizzied him. Artor and his host were still talking. While the chieftains feasted, the kings had spent the afternoon hearing reports from the couriers sent to Caledonia to arrange for the ransom of prisoners. Men said that Drest Guithinmoch was the Picts' new king.

“And there is my father,” said Gualchmai. “With the lord Artor. When you ride south again, I will be going with you. My mother was against it, but my father thinks it will be good for me to learn about the southern lands.”

Betiver and Oesc exchanged glances, but managed not to smile. Until Artor married and begot a son, this boy had a good claim to be considered his heir.

The royal party ascended the platform and took their places on the benches there. The druids formed a line across the front and one of them lifted a bronze horn with a curious long shaft and blew. The sound did not seem loud, but it echoed from cliff to cliff and vibrated in the bones. When it finished, Betiver realized that every drum in the valley had stilled.

The voice of the druid was thin and clear; Oesc felt the fine hairs on his neck and arms lifting at the sound. The northern intonation made it hard for him to understand some of the words, but it hardly mattered. The dark earth was sown with fire, and the cliffs framed a sky of luminous dark blue, blazing with a harvest of stars. The meaning of the words blossomed in his awareness without need for understanding as the ceremony went on. Woden had given the god-men of the Saxons this power, but until now he had not found its like in the British lands.

The line of druids divided, revealing a throne set at the back of the stage, and upon it the shape of a woman, swathed in dark veils.

The hides nailed across the base of the platform shivered, and a new figure emerged, costumed in golden straw. Plaited and sewn, it formed a helm that covered head and face. Two tiers of straw flared out in a cape and a skirt below it. But his shield was of new wood with a gilded boss, and the head of his spear flashed gold.

For a moment he stood, staring around the circle, then, his voice slightly muffled through the mask, he began to sing.

“That is Lugus,” said Gualchmai. “He is the bright god who can do everything. The ravens teach him wisdom.”

“In my country they say that his spear is so powerful its head must be kept in a cauldron full of water or it would burn up the world,” Cunorix said then.