The Iron Grail (8 page)

Meat was roasted and fowl was boiled; the smell of sour bread and sweet cakes drifted fragrantly through the valley. Honey was stirred into the coarse ale, and leather flasks were filled and placed at table.

At the end of the valley, in a small hazel glade, the pit had been dug to take the boy. He was laid there quite without ceremony, but with a little pigmeat, a sword, his cloak and mementoes of his parents. Kymon uttered a brief chant of forlorn hope in a desperate world; he summoned the boy’s ghost back from the Otherworld to help at Taurovinda. The earth was piled above the corpse, and then we went to eat.

Kymon sat silently in the centre of the ring of tables as the
uthiin
, the High Women, and the Speakers for the Past, for the Land and for Kings—the druids, in other words—settled on their benches and began to drink. The flesh was cut from the bone and distributed; bread passed round the table. When everyone was eating, busying themselves with conversation and protocol, Kymon stood, fetched meat and bread for himself and filled a cup with water that had been drawn from the spring.

All eyes were on him, I now realised. He seemed unconcerned by the steady gaze of these rough-bearded, rough-clothed men. He ate quietly and slowly. Two children sang for the host, but Amalgaid, the poet, remained silent. This was not the time to mock or celebrate the past deeds of the men here.

Suddenly, the oldest of the
uthiin
tossed the bone from his portion on to the floor next to Kymon. The boy calmly regarded the other man, then picked up the remnant and placed it on his plate. A second bone came from another direction. Kymon placed it on his plate. Then one of the elder women threw a small, red scarf towards him. Kymon wound the fabric round his wrist. The woman smiled at him, then murmured something to the man who sat next to her. He frowned, but drew a small, bronze knife and tossed it carefully in the boy’s direction. Kymon picked it up, gathered up the animal bones and stood, the oval shield balanced before him against his body.

‘If this is all you offer me to fight with, then I will fight with it.’

Two of the
uthiin
looked alarmed; they had not offered their services to the youth, they had intended to tease him. Now one of them stood—a man called Gorgodumnos, red-haired and red-bearded, wearing half his battle-harness, scales of leather over a green jacket and a bronze torc round his powerful neck.

‘By what right do you take the centre?’

‘I was never taught my rights in this sort of matter,’ Kymon answered loudly. ‘When the slaughter happened, I was taken by the neck and carried into Ghostland. I had only just begun to learn. But this shield was Urtha’s, the king’s, my father’s. He carried it when we took the fire to Herne’s Grove at midwinter dusk.’ He slapped the image on the front of the ceremonial shield. ‘The hawk rides the horse through the worst of winter, watching for spring. I was wearing it across my back on the night I was carried to safety. I claim it as mine. There is a message for us all in this bronze and silver symbol. I offer it as the standard that will take us back to Taurovinda.’

‘There is a wasteland there,’ Gorgodumnos said sourly. ‘When Urtha left, the druid Sciamath’s ancient prophesy came true. Three wastelands. And the second wasteland is here! The realm was sacked, soiled and deserted. There is nothing there for us to return and claim.’

Kymon waved the chicken bone in the air. ‘But you have pledged me your sword and spear,’ he said, and there was the merest ripple of laughter at the retort.

‘There is nothing to gain by going back,’ Gorgodumnos insisted.

‘There is everything to gain,’ Kymon insisted more strongly. ‘The evergroves, the orchards in the fort itself, the springs, the lives of our ancestors; the land that our children will inherit! We are all that is left of the Cornovidi for the moment. But in Ghostland, the Unborn wait to cross into the woods and fields that we have hunted and farmed for longer than I can imagine.’

‘My sons lie dead and unburied, somewhere on the Plain of MaegCatha, dragged out by ghosts, but slaughtered by iron.’

Kymon hesitated for a moment, seeming to struggle for words. Then a small voice, a girl’s voice, murmured, ‘If you will not avenge their deaths, then there is more than one wasteland scourging the land of Cornovidi.’

Gorgodumnos glanced furiously at Munda, who had risen to her feet, behind the circle of benches. But though his face was set grim and he shook his head, he said nothing.

Next to him, his heavy-set brother, Morvodugnos, rose to his feet and placed his sword, point inwards, across the table. ‘There are not enough of us to take a heavily defended fort.’

‘We must gather an army,’ Kymon said. ‘From the Coratoni, my father’s friends, from the Trinovanda, if they will accept delayed payment for their services; we can scout north for Parisii. We cannot surely be the only survivors.’

I hesitated to tell Kymon that the lands of the Coritani, to the east as far as the sea coast, were deserted as well, wooden effigies being all that remained of the knights and spearmen who had once formed such effective war bands.

A wan young man called Drendas then asked, ‘Who will lead the expedition? You are the king’s son, but you are too young.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Kymon said strongly. ‘I will lead the expedition. However, I will expect wise and profound counsel from all of you. This is not a question of glory. It is not a question of cattle. It is not a question of tribute. It is not to extend our hunting territory. It is to reclaim the land inside our walls; and to banish the Dead to beyond our earth, and send the Unborn back to bide their time. I will do it for the memory of my father and mother. My sister here will show as strong a heart. We sit here at the edge of a wasteland, but Munda is right: whilst we do nothing, we are as dead as the land that was once our home.’

All but Gorgodumnos had warmed to Kymon, perhaps more for the confidence with which he had spoken than for the content of his rallying cry. And Gorgodumnos himself seemed more bemused by what was happening than angry at the proposal.

Later, Ambaros sent for me. He had been told of his grandson’s address to the
uthiin
and the High Women.

He told me of several bands who had escaped from the various scenes of destruction when Taurovinda itself had been sacked. They were settled in the hills to the north, in a winding gorge to the south, and at a lake’s edge in the Forest of Andiarid, the ‘silver horn’.

Then Ambaros reached for my arm, his grip surprisingly strong. I could feel the beating of his heart. He was still between earth and sky, but he was increasingly urgent for life. Life comes where life is demanded. He was sucking vitality from the humid air of the valley itself!

‘You know as well as I,’ he said, ‘that Ghostland is encroaching on us. That the war band will be facing an army of shadows. I’m proud of my children. But I believe that Urtha
will
return; and if that happens … can you imagine what it would do to him to find
all
his family dead? Please make sure that whatever happens—whatever!—those children are protected. You can do that, can’t you, Merlin?’

‘It’s certainly within my abilities,’ I reassured him.

The grip on my arm relaxed. His eyes narrowed as he stared at the sprawl of painted animal figures that seemed to flow across the ceiling of this old home, like a herd of horned creatures and horses from some feverish dream. This was a very strange haven.

‘Why, I wonder? Why are they doing it?’ he mused. ‘Why cross the river? I have lain here for however long, and I cannot understand why the Dead should be unhappy with their own realm … to me, when I watch it from Mourne Hill, even from the river’s edge, I see the forests and fields of my strongest wish. I’d be happy there. If this split in my heart fails to heal, I’ll be content to ride through the tracks there, hunt the forests, cross to the islands. What has made them so angry? So warlike?’ His eyes met mine for a second. ‘Not a question for the likes of me, I can hear you thinking. Keep your senses alert, Merlin. You see farther than anyone I know.’

‘So I keep being told.’

He drifted away from me. He had achieved what he wanted, with simplicity and candour: that I was to care for the children, and not to neglect my talents when it came to understanding the blighting wasteland beyond this valley.

But now it was as if the
uthiin
had woken from a dream. The idea of a ‘quest ride’ set them combatively and competitively at each other. Only four of them could be spared to ride in search of recruits. So they engaged in games and a tournament to win the right to leave the camp of the exiles.

Gorgodumnos was among the winners, and Cimmenos, and a young knight called Munremur, and his foster brother Cethern. These four then trimmed their beards and tied their hair, waxed their leathers and high boots and the curves and strips of bronze that they used to protect the more vulnerable parts of their bodies. They each selected a ‘full grip’ of the thin-shafted throwing javelins that were useful in all conditions of battle, and the smith keened the edges of their long-bladed iron swords. Lastly, they attached charms to their leather-scaled jackets and trousers.

Amalgaid the poet was persuaded to pay them tribute in verse, though he clearly found it hard to say anything at all favourable about Gorgodumnos, who merely shrugged off the insult. ‘A poet’s tongue is like a bull’s prick,’ he said indifferently.

We waited for him to explain, but he seemed to think his meaning was clear enough and turned away.

Whatever darkness lay between them, no one referred to it. This was not the time to settle enmity between survivors of a greater threat.

Provisioned, and given the protection of Nemetona after washing at the gushing spring, they rode out in a group at dawn, slowly at first, then at the canter, their wolf-cries echoing back along the valley for half the morning before at last all was silent again.

*   *   *

Later, Kymon sought me out; I was curled up against a rock, close to the stream, a favourite place. He sat down beside me, cross-legged, drawing his cape around his body to protect against the night dew. His hair was unbound, though he now wore a thin torc around his neck, signalling that he was taking the role of a warrior in the coming events.

But he was less triumphal, more thoughtful.

‘How can the ghost of my great-grandfather, say, shoot an arrow that can kill me?’

‘On our side of Nantosuelta, the Dead are both dangerous and vulnerable.’

‘So a dead man can be killed again. Do you understand the rules of the situation, Merlin? Why can we see them one moment and not the next?’

‘I don’t know. I’m still working it out. Besides, I thought you believed the enemy were opportunists from another clan, claiming a deserted fortress for their own, and not the Dead at all?’

He shrugged, not responding to the gentle criticism. ‘I can believe in both, I suppose, though renegades are easier to comprehend. But I remember that night very clearly, when Taurovinda fell. It was so confusing. It was so … strange.’

I didn’t interrupt him. He seemed to need to talk about the night of his mother’s murder.

‘I remember being fetched from my foster home by Cunomaglos, my father’s foster brother and dearest friend. He told me to prepare to return to Taurovinda. My brother Urien was to come as well.

‘We were training at the time, practising running barefoot, and using slingshot to bring down geese as they fled the surface of a lake. It was summer and we had made friends in our foster home. I wasn’t happy to leave. But when Cunomaglos brought us home it was to find a farewell feast in preparation. Our sister Munda was too young to understand what was happening.

‘My mother and grandfather Ambaros made a great fuss of us. We were given horn-hilted knives, and new woollen cloaks, and made to parade up and down before the
uthiin
horsemen. We were called “the little guardians”. The whole town was singing. Urien and I made mischief. We killed one of my father’s pigs, I remember, and took its bowels and lungs to the sanctuary of Sequana, where we burned them, asking her in exchange to frustrate my father’s journey and send him home.

‘My father was furious when he found out. I hadn’t seen him for years and now he raged at my brother and myself. We had abused the protecting spirit of the kingdom; and we had broken one of his
geisa
. I didn’t understand the law of taboo on the king and his family at that time, even though two had been put on my own life when I was born. On Urien too. Urien died rather than break one of his.

‘We were banished for one night and one day to a small house by the tannery, where the air was foul. But our father came to us to say goodbye. He was still angry, but he told us that he was going in search of the shield of Diadara, polished bronze on a disc of oak and ash, in whose reflection could be seen the future. He knew where to find it, in a northern land. He would bring it home. Through Diadara’s shield he would see the answer to a question that had been concerning him greatly. It was to do with succession, and with the holding of the kingdom after his death. He had had a far-seeing dream, and had been disturbed. While he was away we were to treat Ambaros as our father, to behave ourselves and steal neither piglet nor goose, nor chase stray cattle—everything we’d been trained for!—but instead to train in weapons and simple poetry, and to obey one rule absolutely: that whatever Munda decided in a quarrel between the two of us—Urien and me—was to be the decision we would accept.

‘I wasn’t happy with that instruction, but Urien was killed before Munda could find a reason to rule us.

‘That was a bad night. My father had long since left on his quest. Cunomaglos, his favourite brother, was in charge of everything. But riders had arrived at the fort, weary men from the east. Ambaros was nervous. He made the children stay out of sight. That night there was a good feast, storytelling, and an exchange of news. But in the morning, Cunomaglos and most of my father’s knights left the walls, riding east, riding for fortune. Grandfather Ambaros rode after them, but he returned in a fury. We had been abandoned. Cunomaglos, my father’s friend, had abandoned us.