The Iron Grail (10 page)

‘I saw several. Marise saw them too. She went back to the valley. Didn’t you speak to her?’

‘No. Tell me about the omens.’

As we walked back along the banks of the stream Munda described the encounters:

‘At midday, three sparrowhawks flew together from east to west. Three sparrows were flying from west to east and the hawks took them, but parted company from each other, feasting in solitary. That was very strange. Then in the middle of the afternoon a pike flung itself from the river on to the grass, thrashing and struggling. It had a small spiny fish caught in its long jaws. The spines had pierced the roof of its mouth. The pike would die, but so would the small fish, so I took the spiny fish from those jaws, and threw both back into the water. To live again; perhaps to die again. That was also very strange.

‘Then I heard Atanta calling to me. And this little arrow came over the river from her. But when I looked I could only see another Mother, like the Mothers who protected us after we were taken away by the hounds. I think Atanta has been taken below the earth, but she is telling me that she is alive and well. Those are the only omens, Merlin … do they mean anything to you?’

‘What do they mean to you?’ I asked the girl first, and she shrugged.

‘Well. The three hawks taking the three sparrows: that could mean that what is together now, the gathering of the warlords, will end in separation after the fort is taken. That’s a bad omen. The pike was wounded badly by the little fish, but an outside hand came to its aid. I think that says that we’ll fail this time, and have to come again against the spirits. The third omen, the arrow from my friend, makes me think that everything can be seen, but what we see is not necessarily the truth. It’s the pike that concerns me. Kymon is very determined to raise an army. But I think we’re missing something important.’

They were Munda’s omens, and not mine. But three sparrowhawks flying close together? The sign was of unity, not separation. The feeding frenzy, the battle frenzy, would be a solitary act; but the portent signified solidarity not betrayal.

She was quite canny about the pike and its stickleback prey. But then again: were the Celts the small fish? Or did the stickleback reflect the intruders from Ghostland, tentatively making a footing in our world?

I was sad for her about the loss of Atanta. There was no omen here, just a powerful friendship, now separated by a generation, imposed on Atanta on her return from the Otherworld. I could not find the words to tell Munda that her friend had both gone for ever, and yet was here for the rest of her life. As she grew older in a more natural way, Munda would find her own way to accept that reality.

‘How about you, Merlin?’ she asked suddenly, brightly. ‘What omens have
you
noticed?’

I glanced back towards the valley, letting my face darken. ‘I saw a man, out of breath, leaping twenty times over a shield, backwards and forwards, then struggling to throw five spears in the time it takes to cry “Catch these!” and being mocked each time he failed. It was a dreadful omen.’

Munda seemed alarmed. ‘What does the omen mean?’

‘It means your brother is learning to be a king,’ I replied, ‘and he has empowered a red-haired harridan to bring all fighting men and women up to scratch.’

I was thinking that tomorrow would be a hard, hard day. The breathless man in my joke was me.

‘That’s not an omen,’ Munda laughed, meeting my discomfitted look with one of instant understanding and amusement. ‘That’s necessity.’

‘You’re right, of course. And by the way, you’re to train for the day too. Necessity knows no age.’

‘Nor should it. But young limbs have more spring to them.’

She suddenly broke into a run, then somersaulted three times over fallen branches of trees, bounced high off grey rocks and stood on her hands, head tilted up, watching me. From this ungainly position she spoke to me in the manner of her father.

‘To be able to do this is useful. But to see clearly is the most useful thing of all. And your eyes do more than see, Merlin. So if Kymon asks too much of you when it comes to the feats, just refer him to me!’

‘Why, thank you. I’ll be sure to do that.’

And you, if your Foresight develops, will do it too
.

She came down from the handstand, glanced quickly to where the woman had been standing, watching her, then turned and led us back to the valley.

*   *   *

Two mornings later, in the dark time before dawn, we were roused from sleep by the sharp note of a bull’s horn, sustained and eerie. It was joined by a second, then a third. The valley erupted into startled life, and torches flared. The horns continued to sound. Birds swirled, alarmed, in the darkness. The encampment moved in force to the deepest part of the stream.

There were no sore heads, now; the ritual feast that usually preceded war had been forgone, though perhaps as much because of shortage of supplies as any notion of common sense. The various parties to this small
foedor
that would take Taurovinda again had made their own spirit preparations for the day ahead, each clan to their own hidden lord, each man and woman to the memory of their own ancestors. The final training in the necessary feats was complete—I had learned two of them, and was sore and bruised, though I could at least leap over a chariot, now, and catch a spear in mid-flight!

Now they all lined up on the two sides of the stream, forty-two in all, thirty of them men and youths, and twelve women of dour and dark demean, all leaning on their tall, oval shields, some of which were newly made and undecorated. I stood among them, holding on to a hazel staff that had been cut for me by the Speaker for the Past as a gift. We sang and chanted until the first rays of the sun peeked over the woodland to the east.

With that welcome glimmer of light, Cimmenos stepped towards the stream, lowered his shield on to the ground and washed its surface, brushing the icy water over the inlaid silver stag. He did this three times, then scooped a fourth handful of water and brushed it over his sword arm. Then Munremur washed his shield. The bronze image of the wolf sparkled for a moment, its eyes seeming to come alive. One by one, in silence, the
foedori
washed their shields and made their final, personal invocations for life either here or in the Land of the Shadows of Heroes after, and when this careful ritual had been completed they filed away, to armour themselves for the raid.

There was not one among them who was not aware that, should they die, they would at once go to a land whose spirits, their own ancestors, were now their enemies.

With Gorgodumnos lost, Cimmenos was now the leader of the raiding party, by virtue of his experience; he had fought twenty-four combats, stolen three hundred and eleven head of cattle, and shouted down seven champions without blood being drawn. He did not ask for the position of leader, but it was apparent that the High Women, the Thoughtful Woman Rianata in particular, had discussed the various merits of all the
foedori
and come to the only decision possible.

Cimmenos was a wise enough man to know that Kymon needed to be at his right hand; he was pragmatic enough to know that a skilful warrior should be at his left, and he chose Caithach, the weapons trainer. In Greek Land, or in Illyria, such a decision would have been met with a vociferous challenge. To the great credit of these forlorn and abandoned Celts, they accepted Cimmenos’s decision without demur. Just as well; she was equal to any three of them.

The shields had been washed; later, the battle-harness was displayed, then stacked into two carts. The war band moved slowly out of the valley, a two-day journey ahead of them to reach the evergroves and the Thunder Hill.

*   *   *

We were in the old land, and the places we passed were remembered in the language of the ancestors. We marched from the valley defiles through the Pass of the Forest Brothers, south of the Hill of the Beckoning Woman, where the High Women went twice in their lives to have their mind’s eyes opened. We followed a shallow river to the narrow Plain of Moon-shifting, where hares and hounds took human form once every nineteen years. And then through the valley known as the Rattle of the Chariot, where two champions had fought for eleven years without outcome, and died, still charging their ash-and-wicker-framed cars at each other. When we came to Nantosuelta, and had made a blood-offering to the river, we turned east again, and came to the evergroves at dusk.

Here we spread out, rested the animals, rested ourselves, drank and bathed in the cool river. Then, during the night, the chariots were assembled, dressed and disguised with evergreen leaves and lashing yew-withies. Charioteers were selected, and it fell to me to be one of them. My training in the feat of chariot jumping had persuaded Cimmenos that I could master both the pair of horses and the sharp turns required of the profession.

I was relieved when Drendas, a fine spearman, asked to ride in my car. He knew that he would be in the hands of an amateur. But all I had to do was get him to the point of any combat, drop him, retire and wait for his signal to gallop in and pick him up. An important function, he assured me. And please, he asked with a grin, could I be sure not to run along the pole when the chariot was in full charge!

I gave him my assurance.

I suspect the truth is nearer to the fact that they did not want me fighting, both for my lack of weapons skill and my potential value in other directions.

After the allocation of chariots and positions, we prepared for battle.

Cimmenos was the first to armour. He had taken the wolf-crest from his iron helmet and replaced it with the crest of heron feathers that was so typical of this part of Hyperborea.

He had buckled on his heavy bull’s-hide war harness over the patterned linen shirt that would stop it rubbing through to his bones; four layers thick, this covered shoulder and chest, back and kidneys. It could be slashed twenty times with the ice-forged iron of the Northlanders before it would part completely.

He had attached a bright bronze girdle to protect his midriff, a gullet shield of thin iron round his neck, and a soft, doe-skin kirtle over his blue-and-red-striped trousers. Grey goat-leather boots and pitch-blackened horse-bone greaves completed the armour. He flung his cloak around his shoulders and paraded in the Confident Manner as he yelled the exhortation to us either to win back the fort, or to make good conversation with our fathers and mothers in the Otherworld afterwards.

He was bright and strong. Dawn-light gleamed on red hair and red moustache, and reflected off the five recurved points of his
kaibulg
, the heavy bowel-hooking stabbing spear.

All totem crests had been removed from battle-helms and attached to standards: the tusked boars, the stags, the wolves, the falcons and hawks, the leaping salmon, the foxes, otters, owls and wish-hounds. There were more standards, it seemed to me, than men to carry them. All helmets were now crested with real or bronze feathers, a decoration that signified the readiness of the wearers to fly to their ancestors if they suffered one of the seven mortal blows.

Kymon emerged in his child’s harness, the equal of Cimmenos’s but in softer leather, and with thin, cloth-backed iron shields at his waist and heart.

Munda had armoured similarly, though she would not fight. This was a symbolic gesture only. Her small shield was inlaid in ochre with an image of Braega, the guardian of river crossings. Braega was also the warning spirit who whispered in a girl’s ear during the time she was becoming a woman, though quite what she warned about was a question I had never asked; and she was also the earth spirit to whom these Celts turned at times of transition or decision.

Whether Munda’s choice of shield-guard was conscious or instinctive, it was certainly apt.

Now Kymon went to the edge of Nantosuelta, with Speaker for Kings and Rianata, the Thoughtful Woman. He cried out his blood dirge with all the force of a grown man. Herons rose startled from the rushes. Birds flocked and wheeled above the drooping trees on the farther bank.

‘Dawn chariots racing from the river ford

Sun on helmet

Sun on spear

Sun on sword

Men scatter before the racing chariots

Blood on the plain

Blood on the rich tunics of the dead men

Blood on the sword

Heads cut, proud life, proud men hang from the belts of proud warriors

Life goes to Earth

Life goes to strength

Life goes to the sword

Red on the plain, blood on the green breast of Earth

Blood on the high walls of the fort

Heads hanging from the high walls

The men of the stabbing game are here, strong as iron, keen as wind, bright as sun, swift as birth, sharp as claw!’

The sun was high when we emerged in a line from the grove-wood’s edge, facing the tall-grassed Plain of MaegCatha, and the dark, rising slopes of Taurovinda.

It was clear at once that the Shadows of Heroes had been here in greater force since our last tentative visit. The woodland edge was marked with the tall wooden effigies of men, grotesquely crude, legs braced apart, arms in various positions, each hand holding a blade or a club or a shield. All these blank-faced idols were turned towards the groves. They were saying: this far and no further.

Black and yellow pennants blew in the strong breeze from the high ramparts, signifying the abundant presence of the Dead and Unborn occupying the fortress.

And yet: once again, the main gates were open.

Without hesitation, Kymon in the lead chariot—his charioteer was the bombastic Iala, known proudly as ‘the savager’—sped through the long grass, which was whipped by the flailing withies attached to the car’s sides. He cut a furrow through the field and positioned himself beyond slingshot range of that open main gate. We had formed into three small squads; Kymon’s eight
foedori
followed him and spread out in an arc. I took my chariot and squad to the north, Cethern drove his to the south. Our
foedori
trampled down the pasture, clearing a battle area. Nadcrantail, from Eriu, and Larene of the Parisii, used lengths of chain, slung between them as they galloped, to uproot the thorn and oak thicket that was springing up as the plain was reclaimed by the Scatterer of Forests, Iernos.