The Raven Warrior (35 page)

“Brigands, we run off. Refugees, we accept, if they swear to obey our rules. A column set to dig us out. . . .” Red grinned. “That’s pure profit. Been asked to dinner by any of the girls yet?”

Black Leg took a long pull on the wine. “Um . . . a . . . yes. Two. Does that mean something?”

Red grinned wolfishly. “Who?”

“Well, one wasn’t much. A little dark-haired thing. Mona, she said her name was.”

Red whistled. “Ho, boy. Mona. She doesn’t . . . I mean, that’s the hottest thing on two legs. She can fuck like a . . . I mean, you better be this long.” He placed his hands about a foot apart. “And good for eight hours on your knees and elbows.”

Black Leg turned brick-red and almost choked on a mouthful of pork. Red pounded him on the back until he got the pork down, then gave him another drink of wine.

“I thought . . .” Black Leg gasped. “I thought . . . she was being hospitable.”

“Oh, she’s hospitable all right. She can hump all night. Who was the other one?”

“She was only a child.” Black Leg sounded shrill even to himself. “Her mother, or maybe it was her stepmother, invited me—”

“Ho!” Red yelled. “Let me guess. Magda!”

“Yes. But she’s a young girl.”

“You’re off to a good start, my boy. In a month you’ll have run through all the available women. One time I was hunting high in the rocks. I startled a lioness. My bad luck. She didn’t run. So I took it upon myself to supply the discretion demanded by our mutual situation.”

“You ran,” Black Leg said.

“So fast you wouldn’t believe. She was a hundred and eighty pounds of tawny muscle, with four-inch claws and six-inch teeth. But she treed me.”

“Bad,” Black Leg said.

“Yes. But I still had my spear, and as I kept aiming it at her eyes, she didn’t care to climb up after me. So there I sat whilst she paced up and down beneath until . . .” Red raised his finger. Black Leg cleaned a rib.

“Until the male showed up and I found out why she’d seemed so cranky. Before God, boy, it was a humbling experience. He jumped on her back, seized her by the neck. She screeched at the top of her lungs and they began. The sun went down, the moon rose. Then, sometime later, the moon set, the stars shone brightly. I grew so cold I near froze. My ass did freeze one ball, and my fingers, toes, and upper lip grew numb. But, by God, the two of them never let up.

“Once or twice, the ground being steep there, they braced themselves against the tree and damn near shook me out of it. Up to then, I had believed myself a great man. But that she-cat left me in the dust. Then come dawn, the lion gave out and she raked her claws across his shoulder and bit his ear before he slunk away.

“Then she looked up at me a bit soulfully. I thought . . . my poor wits were close to wandering by then, and just as I was about to break into loud sobs and beg for mercy, I heard the voices of Cregan and his men come to rescue me. They had set out in search of me when they realized I hadn’t returned at nightfall. They scared her off, and I thank God for it! If ever I saw rape in the eyes of creature, it shone in hers.

“A near thing, that. So near that when we got back I crawled under the covers of my bed and sucked my thumb like a three-year-old for four days, until Cregan melted some snow in a pot and poured it over me, bringing me at last into my right senses.

“I only tell you this, my boy, by way of warning you off dangerous females. For there’s some in our camp that could outdo that cat and three more like her. Magda, she has six daughter-in-laws and twelve granddaughters. I wonder which four or five she wants you for.”

Black Leg had cleaned six ribs and was starting on a seventh. “You are the most amazing liar,” he said.

“True!” Red laughed. “Only too true. But it does help pass the time pleasantly, doesn’t it?”

Turned out Red hadn’t described the half of it. At least about Mona, he hadn’t. He’d forgotten to mention she screamed like a catamount every time she came, and that was frequently enough to keep the whole village awake until almost dawn. Black Leg gave it his best shot, or rather shots—he lost count after six. And his prowess at other things besides fighting was duly noted far and wide.

His dinner with the seeress Magda was interesting, to say the least. She gave him the beautiful mantle that she had woven, the mantle that mapped the four worlds.

A very fine meal concluded with a plateful of honey and raisin cakes. The men were away running sheep to the high pastureland. But for Magda’s nodding grandfather, there were no men at the meal, only the ladies, the eldest, Magda, in her sixties, all the way down to the youngest granddaughter of sixteen.

Black Leg sighed and rather reluctantly passed on the last honey cake. But when he looked up, he saw twelve pairs of eyes giving him much the same sort of look that he had bestowed on the honey cakes.

He fled, murmuring incoherent excuses about having to go on patrol in the morning. Cregan and the rest thought his eager and completely voluntary willingness to undertake this duty absolutely hilarious.

And the next morning before daybreak, he found himself moving downhill, armed with a spear and a very old falchion, a vintage but very ugly single-edged sword. It was one no one else wanted because it was a brute of a thing to swing. But once in motion, it was capable of shearing off a man’s head and shoulder with one not very hard whack, and Black Leg liked it.

He was much stronger than most humans, and had a lot more stamina. He could swing the falchion easily for a half hour and kill everything he touched. Besides, he planned to hide it with his clothes and spear near the river and proceed as a wolf.

He did, and he was wolf when he came upon the party of Huns.

Igrane recognized him immediately and smiled like a shark sensing blood in the water. His whole body chilled, and he felt the weakness of an oncoming fever. Her bright beauty drained the vitality of those around her. Uther knew he was in the presence of a powerful, evil magic.

Igrane had been twenty years older than himself when they were married. When they stood before the altar and he’d closed his hand around hers, he had known Merlin was her lover. But he took her because Cornwall came with her, and he knew the dark sorcerer’s powers kept her young . . . young enough to bear him a child, Arthur.

She got what she wanted—permanent power. It was still a man’s world and once firmly in possession of the High Kingship, he might have been able to discard her. But she gave him an heir, one he badly wanted. One he loved. His son, Arthur. So he tolerated her cruelties, her betrayals, her more than occasional treachery with her mentor, Merlin, until the day he found her and her paramour torturing his son.

Storms battered the coast that spring. He had come to Tintigal for an ancient rite. The chiefs of the tribal groupings in Cornwall would gather at that haunted fortress with its ancient spring, and swear fealty to the high king. There is a footprint at Tintigal, a footprint in stone, said to have been made by a god that marked the spot where the high king receives the homage of his chieftains, and through them, his people. They do not kneel, these men, and neither do their women, but beat their swords and spear shafts against their big, leather-covered shields and raise a mighty shout as the high king places his foot in the sacred hollow in the rock stamped out by the ancient, nameless god. Then the women scream in the voices of sea eagles.

Three times the shout is raised . . . three times the eagles scream. For as it is said, one shout for a warrior, two for a chief, and three for a king. The eagle’s whistling cry presages the fate of the king’s enemies and at last the king himself.

There were no exact dates when this was to happen, and the day after his arrival the savage weather and high tides flooding the causeway to the mainland forced a postponement of the rite. On the second day the storm passed, leaving the sky blue and a fresh-washed cleanness to the air. The many visitors managed to reach the fortress and find quarters, but the strong tides kept the causeway flooded and prevented many of the notables from making their way to the rock.

Igrane and Merlin feasted in her chambers and left the king to the drinking hall, where he did his duty and entertained his important followers. The nasty pair thought the rite had been accomplished on the second day and Uther, who took care not to linger in their vicinity any longer than necessary, was believed by them to have departed.

He had not.

Being hailed and shouted at was only part of his duties on such occasions. They were looked on by his supporters as auspicious times to request favors and make complaints. So he spent his evening in the hall listening to long-winded discourses as he was subjected to reams of unsolicited advice, venomous backbiting (they all tried to undercut one another), lengthy bouts of whining and sullen discontent, occasional attempts at extortion, blackmail, and downright unabashed and unconcealed begging and pleading for favors he would not, could not, and occasionally dared not, grant. This was what he got from the men.

The women were worse. They had seduction on the brain. They were—even the most ancient—the most overpainted, overperfumed (his nose ran constantly), underdressed, and dangerously corseted mob he had ever seen. At the feasts, he felt as though he were being confronted by every other pair of breasts and buttocks in his entire realm.

His oath men enjoyed the show, sometimes to the point of drooling delight, or unashamedly scored where and when they could. The disgruntled ladies, having worked themselves into a fury of sexual aggressions, sometimes—a lot of times—said what the hell and made assignations freely. Late in the evening, those not blind drunk crept away to keep these appointments in the many nooks and crannies of the vast fortress.

These experiments in infelicitous infidelity led to altercations—altercations Uther had to settle. Specifically, fifteen fistfights, six knife fights, four sword fights, and a moderate amount of regrettable domestic abuse. Not all the ladies were able to evade discovery by their husbands, and two required the services of Uther’s personal physician.

While both law and custom allowed husbands to discipline wayward wives, many of the ladies’ families were not very tolerant of that behavior.

You did WHAT to my sister?!

And Uther was forced to intervene to prevent a serious blood feud between two very powerful families.

By the time he had contained all this aggression and the participants began to drift back to their homes, Uther was exhausted and somewhat resentful. Most of his oath men were wearing broad smiles, but he hadn’t gotten any. The king decided to rest before beginning his progress to the next of the almost constant crises that demanded his attention, and so he delayed his departure for a day. It was time to fight, and he was old enough to be weary of the endless warfare that was the lot of rulers in his world. It was pirate time.

The Irish would sail toward one coast, the Saxons the other. Serious logistical problems would arise, and he was considering how to deal with them this year when the screaming began.

There is Magic. No one else in the room heard it. His oath men were nearby, many of them dallying with women who had more complacent husbands. The room was filled with talk and laughter.

Uther rose from the table and went outside to the stair. A dreadful foreboding filled his soul. He knew “they,” the witch he’d married and her paramour, were torturing something.

He was wearing soft leather boots; his feet were silent on the stone stair. When he reached the top, he realized the thing they were torturing was his son.

He had very little recollection of the next few minutes. He did remember the pain in his fist when he struck Igrane. Some teeth flew out of her mouth, and he (in that corner of the mind that is rational when the rest of us is not) considered that he might have killed her. He found himself indifferent to the consequences, even though they might be very serious.

He remembered hitting Merlin, the sorcerer, two-handed. The blow to the chin must have lifted him from his feet, because Uther remembered his face rising slightly above his own, distorting as the man’s jaw shattered. Not broke, shattered under the force of that two-handed strike.

He pulled his mantle off to wrap the boy in it, because the child’s clothing was soaked with the filth the complete loss of control of all body orifices creates. He also remembered telling his oath men to kill anyone or anything that barred their way out of the fortress, and he was dimly aware that in a few instances, they had.

Night found him far from Tintigal, riding through the scrub forests that covered the low mountains near the coast. He and his men camped in a valley close to an ancient well. He cleaned the boy up at a stream that he knew originated in the mountains above.

The child didn’t even flinch at the cold water, and Uther took great care to show no anger in front of Arthur. It was clear that the youngster was frightened enough already.

The well where they camped had no known significance; no chief or king lived nearby. But it had a priestess. She had come here long ago. The Christians hereabout accepted her as a saint. The others, who weren’t Christian, understood she filled an ancient office as the keeper of living waters.

He climbed until he saw her house. As it was round, part of the earth, he understood it must be hers. She sat quiet in its pebbled dooryard, watching the sunset turn to twilight. An old woman now, they would place her bones in the house and collapse the roof. It would become a shrine. She would have no successor. The local Christian clergy would make sure of that.

As he emerged from the forest, she gazed at him, and he saw the light glow in her eyes. The boy wasn’t afraid of her. No one old had ever done him any harm.

The old woman in the forest had had none of the spurious youth about her that Igrane and Merlin possessed. Gazing at the impossibly young creature before him now, Uther thought of the honest mantle of time that lay over his shoulders and that of all humans. Somehow Igrane had shrugged it off. So had Merlin. But remembering the suffering of the thing in the dog, he wondered if it had been an unmixed blessing.