The Iron Grail (16 page)

The gates to Taurovinda remained closed against this defiance.

It was Urtha’s intention to make a pyre of them, to set a fire to the memory of Aylamunda. Scarred and silent, the wooden idols were nothing more than firewood, now.

Towards the end of the second day, sudden flights of birds to the west had us running for our weapons. A small band was approaching, cautiously and nervously. In the dusk, it was hard to make out their banners, but the sudden thunder of a golden-wheeled chariot, and a boy’s cry of delight, announced that the arrivals were Kymon and Munda, with the rest of the community from the camp of the exiles.

The children were in the chariot, with Conan, grinning and stripped to the waist, at the reins. He turned the ponies and swept through the gate in the rough wall, then through the trees. The horses snorted and sweated.

Kymon jumped down, wearing his short cloak and dagger. Munda in a swirling dress, her hair braided, rushed to where her father stood and jumped into his arms. She was taller than he remembered and the big man heaved and groaned as he kissed the top of her head.

‘When did you spring so high?’ he said to her. ‘And look at your brother!’

Kymon approached, his eyes glowing, but his demeanour tight with shame. Urtha put his arm round the boy’s shoulder.

‘I made a terrible mistake,’ Kymon said grimly.

‘Yes you did,’ his father agreed. Then he tugged the boy’s hair and grinned fiercely. ‘To be added to the world of mistakes we’ve all made in our lives, giving fighting fodder to the Good God’s cauldron! But we’ll learn from it, as we always do. Lord of Oak! I can’t believe how tall you’ve both grown. Your mother is pushing you to completion; she’s impatient to see the cycle renewed.’

‘What cycle?’ Kymon asked innocently, and Urtha laughed. I noticed that Munda was amused too. I wondered if the High Women had also sensed the Light of Foresight emerging in the girl, and had begun their gentle instruction accordingly.

The tents and enclosures were quickly erected. A flight of swans, beating east along the course of the river, had Ullanna jumping in her skins, ready for the hunt, but Urtha stifled her enthusiasm. Munda had been eyeing the raunchy Scythian with some curiosity and a little disdain. Now Urtha introduced her to his children.

This happened down at the edge of the river, in the belly of one of its more serpentine curves. It was not my business to interfere or pry in this private moment, but I watched from a distance, half expecting Kymon to remonstrate with his father, as Cathabach had done whilst they had waited for the fog to clear.

It was the girl who seemed troubled, however. She seemed to be shaking. After her initial exuberance, she appeared to have lost all jollity and could not meet her father’s eyes.

The smells of cooking and the appalling sound of singing from the retinue had come to invade the peace of this sacred place. If raiders surprised us now, we would be easy prey.

Ullanna left the family group, noticed me and came quickly over. She glanced at the fires and the festival and asked me why I was keeping so aloof.

‘Watching you,’ I answered truthfully. ‘Like everyone, I need to take the returns one step at a time.’

‘Munda reminds me of Niiv,’ the Scythian said, frowning slightly. ‘She neither likes me nor dislikes me. But she sees a shadow from me that disturbs her.’ Ullanna met my careful gaze. ‘She said: nothing is hidden. And as soon as she’d said those words, she drew away from me. What did she mean? Nothing is hidden?’

‘She has what the Hibernians call
imbas forasnai
. It means quite simply that she gets vivid glimpses of the future. The Light of Foresight. The talent is still raw in her, but she saw the killing field out there, on the plain, the bleaching bones left when her brother failed his first feat.’

‘Then what is it that is not hidden?’ the woman asked, crouching down before me. She was pale in the soft light of the moon, her marked face shadowed and concerned.

‘All women with this foresight use those words. It’s a tradition as ingrained as waking and sleeping.
Nothing is hidden
. Meaning: I can glimpse unborn days in my dreams! Munda has seen something about you that has made her uneasy.’

Ullanna pondered this, then asked, ‘What should I do? Persist with her? If she’s seen my death I’m not concerned. I’m not afraid to greet the eighth horse; I’m not afraid of riding the long-grass plain with my father and mother. If she has seen my death, should I ask her to tell me? I’d like her to be content with me, and not apprehensive.’

The ‘eighth horse’ was a fully harnessed horse without a rider. In Ullanna’s part of the world, the steed was led by the seven champions who came to collect the dead.

‘She’s lost a mother. You are not her mother. She must certainly be aware of the closeness between you and her father, though. She may be resentful. Why should it be more than that?’

‘It
is
more than that,’ Ullanna murmured. ‘She feels something else. I wish I knew what.’

And with a quick shrug of her shoulders, she stood and turned away.

*   *   *

Urtha posted two pickets at the edge of the wood, watching the dark fort, but the phantoms who occupied the hill would not come against us in this sacred ground, I was certain of that now.

After we’d eaten, Amalgaid the poet had declaimed a few verses in Urtha’s honour, then wittily and gently criticised the king’s son’s impetuous actions on the Plain of the Battle Crow before celebrating the valour of the men and women who had ridden under his banner. Now we huddled round the king to listen to his account of the journey to and from Makedonia. Kymon listened with the greatest interest, often glancing round at me quizzically and stating, ‘That’s not how Merlin told it.’

In our days in the camp of the exiles I had given a fairly honest account of what had happened.

Uncharacteristically, Urtha was underplaying his role in events. But as soon as he realised that Kymon was searching for some real meat and drink in the adventure, he summoned the spirit of the storyteller and the iron brightened, the horses broke into a sweat, and the air in the extended tent became crimson.

He spared no detail when it came to the combat between himself and his foster brother, Cunomaglos.

‘He had hidden among the great army, almost lost in the legions of men who were riding south, to the oracle at Delphi. But the hounds knew his stink. They followed him for days; I followed the hounds. Merlin was with me. One day Maglerd began to bark very loudly. A man turned in the saddle and looked at me. When a dog whimpers with fear, its face changes. When a man sees his death, his face becomes a fearful dog. The Dog Lord was a frightened skull, a man who saw not a brother coming towards him, but a determined flight of ravens. It cheered me to see it.

‘The warlord Brennos, who commanded this great host of men—a fine king, a fine leader—set the place for the combat at a narrow river, close to the sea. I was armed and advised by Cathabach here, Cunomaglos by the betraying Lexomodos. We exchanged the Three Unavoidable Embraces—you must always do that, Kymon…’

‘I know, father,’ the boy said. ‘For a past shared, for kind words shared, and for a future when we will ride side by side in Ghostland.’

‘Always. No matter what the grievance. You too, Munda, if you take up iron and shield against another for vengeance.’

‘I’ll remember,’ the girl whispered. ‘I doubt I’ll need iron, though. The horns of the moon will cut throats on my behalf.’

‘Will they, indeed?’ Urtha eyed her curiously for a moment, frowning, then continued: ‘First we fought with heavy stabbing spears and shields made of oak covered with calf skin, with studded bronze rims and animal-head bosses. After a morning’s striking at the bastard I was hungry, so I filled my belly with his raw flesh, then washed the blood from my mouth with fresh river water.’

Here we go, I thought to myself. From sublime truth to ridiculous fantasy.

‘We went into a second day,’ Urtha continued. ‘This time we used heavy-bladed swords with ivory hilts and small, light shields of ash covered with goatskin and decorated with silver herons. I was like a salmon, leaping from the water, leaping over his head, striking down at him while he prodded at me like a child poking at apples on a high tree. I made the twenty leaps of Gryffe! One breath and twenty jumps over that screaming man’s armoured head, and with each leap I shaved his beard. You would have been proud of me!

‘Nevertheless, the dog was a difficult foe; he was always a strong man. We went into the third day. The choice of weapons was his. Do you know what he chose?’

‘The two spears that fly back to your hands!’ Kymon shouted, forgetting, in his excitement, what I had already told him. ‘And the singing shields with the sharp scalloped edges that can be thrown like discs.’

Urtha shook his head, his face registering an echo of the astonishment he had felt at the time.

‘He chose “that which the river can give us”. No weapons at all, but rocks, water and the strength of our arms!’

Kymon remembered, now, and clapped his hands together as he listened.

‘A small man’s weight in muscle and bone had been cut from each of us,’ Urtha said grimly. ‘And so we were not at our best. But we wrestled like the famous champion Ferdia at the Ford of the Cheating Blow. I performed the Feat of the Seven Falls, tossing that bastard over my head seven times in the instant it takes an owl to swoop and take a mouse.’

Kymon turned quickly to look at me, his eyes filled with passion and excitement. ‘You didn’t tell me
this
part, Merlin!’

I raised my palms apologetically. ‘Must have slipped my mind.’

Urtha lifted his arms for dramatic effect. The roaring fire cast light and shadows on his face. His own eyes glowed. Even Munda was leaning forward expectantly.

‘But do you know what was happening further up the river? A band of knights, riding with Brennos, encountered an army of Makedonians, fearsome fighters, heavily armoured, their ears cut off so that they couldn’t hear the screams of their friends as they died, their eyes blinkered like a temperamental pony’s so that they could see no more than the man ahead of them in battle, their neck muscles twisted, tied and knotted so that they would be unable to turn and run. There was a great slaughter. The dead came down the river, still clutching their spears and slashing swords; shields floated past with the severed hands still attached. Heads with their teeth chattering and their eyes rolling, begging for help.

‘My back was to this sudden wealth of armoury. Cunomaglos—may his eyes never fail, that the crow may constantly feed on them!—that bastard dog snatched a spear and did this to me!’

He parted his shirt and showed the scar of the terrible wound. ‘He pushed the blade through my father’s treasured breastplate…’

Now he pulled a golden lunula from his small sack; the gold halfmoon was pierced in its centre. ‘A hundred generations have passed this treasure from father to son. It saved my life. When I finally ride away, it will be through this small gate to Avawn, in the realm of the Shadow Heroes.’

He poked his finger through the gash, then continued.

‘I struck back at the dog. Was it friendly spear or enemy spear I used? I have no idea. The blade sank into his neck. Cunomaglos sank into the water. Maglerd jumped upon the body and held it down until it flowed out to the sea. Then that fine hound dragged the whole corpse back from the ocean and nestled it in the rocks, licking the weed and brine from its face to clean it up. I was too weak to do anything myself, but friend Manandoun did the worthy deed, and has allowed me to bring you this special gift…’

He reached again to the leather sack and pulled out a small skin bag. Kymon clapped his hands in anticipation. Munda covered her mouth with her hands. Manandoun was grinning with amusement as he watched his friend’s son.

‘This is for you,’ Urtha said. ‘My thanks for what you tried to do, out on the Plain of the Battle Crow.’

The smell of decay and sweet oil wafted through the air. Urtha was holding the grisly head of Cunomaglos, its hair and beard lank with the drenching fluids. The eyes half stared at the boy. The mouth gaped and dribbled as if in despair.

Kymon said anxiously, ‘You honoured him?’

Heads preserved in this way were generally to be respected.

‘I didn’t honour him,’ Urtha said grimly. ‘I
collected
him. I’ve denied him the road. This bastard will live in darkness for all eternity. Find a stone-hole and wedge him in, face down. Seal the hole with clay and mud. I want to know he’ll be screaming in a thousand times a thousand years, as you and I hunt the forests of the Beautiful Island.’

He returned the trophy to its bag, tied it and tossed it to the waiting boy, who caught it, shook it angrily, then punched it fiercely.

‘I like this gift!’ he proclaimed to the rest of us. ‘And I know just where to bury it.’

Urtha then looked at Munda. He reached into his bag for the final item, producing a small straw doll, clothed in red dress and with a small patterned shawl, pinned at the shoulder with a tiny, gleaming silver brooch. ‘I found this in a deserted town, in the foothills of snow-capped mountains. I thought of you when I saw it, but I see now that you’re older than the games it can play.’

‘I’d like the doll,’ Munda said. ‘I have several of them already.’ Her father gave it to her. But she was clearly disappointed and Urtha noticed the fact. He hesitated only a moment before picking up the pierced, golden lunula and placing it on the ground before him. ‘I’m going to give you each a better gift. This was my father’s as you know; there was a time when a hundred names could have been attached to it. The men who remembered those names are dead, now.’

The druid, Speaker for Kings, coughed pointedly at that, but Urtha ignored him.

‘It saved me from being separated from the two of you. Now I’ll make it hold you together…’

And before anyone could say a word he had drawn his polished, wide-bladed sword from its chevron-patterned sheath where it lay on the floor beside him, and hacked the lunula in two with a single blow, splitting it through the hole that had been made by Cunomaglos’s spear.