The Hallowed Isle Book Four Page 5

  “And that’s another risk . . .” mumured Cai as the younger man rode off.

  “The child is nine years old! Do you fear he will attack me?” exclaimed Artor.

  “He is a fox kit. I am afraid you will love him, and be hurt when he goes back to his wild kin. . . .”

  Artor shut his lips, remembering the incident Cai referred to. He was grateful that his foster-brother had not mentioned Oesc, whom he had also made his hostage, and loved, and at Mons Badonicus been forced to kill. His little son must be almost eight by now.

  He shook off the memory as Goriat returned, the frowning child kicking his pony to keep up with him. Despite his Saxon name, Ceawlin had the look of the Belgic royal house from whom his grandfather Ceretic had come.

  Our blood is already mingling, thought Artor. How long before we will be one in spirit? He thought once more of the other little boy, Oesc’s son, whose mother was Britannic and royal as well.

  “Are you enjoying the journey?”

  The grey glance flickered swiftly upward, then Ceawlin fixed his gaze on the road once more.

  “You will have seen more of Britannia by now than any of the boys at home.” Artor saw the frown began to ease and hid a smile. “But perhaps you miss the southern lands. It is in my mind to send you to stay at Camalot, under the care of my queen.”

  “Does she have a little boy?”

  Artor twitched, momentarily astonished that the question should bring such pain. But Ceawlin could have no idea he had even struck a blow, much less how near to the bone. Would Guendivar learn to love this fox kit he was sending her? Or would she weep in secret because her husband had not been able to give her a child?

  Goriat was telling the boy about Camalot, where the children of the folk who cooked and kept the livestock and stood guard ran laughing along the walls. The princes and chieftains brought their sons when they came visiting, but they were all British. At least Oesc had had Cunorix and Betiver as companions.

  “Perhaps we will send for Eormenric of Cantuware to keep you company—” he said then. “Would you like that?”

  Ceawlin nodded. “His father was my grandfather’s ally.”

  Cai raised an eyebrow. This kit was not going to be easy to tame.

  Eormenric had been raised by his mother to be Artor’s friend. Still, he would need friends among the Saxons as well, and perhaps Ceawlin would be more willing to listen to another boy. They could guard each other’s backs against the British child-pack, and Guendivar would win them over as she did everyone.

  Artor closed his eyes for a moment, seeing against his eyelids the gleam of her amber hair. When he was at home, the knowledge of how he had failed her was sometimes so painful he longed to be away. But when he was far from her, Guendivar haunted his dreams.

  “That is settled, then,” he said briskly. “Goriat, I will give you an escort to take the boy south, and letters to the queen.” Then, as the young man looked mutinous, “Do not fear for my safety—Cai here will be suspicious enough for two. Besides, was there not some story that the Picts wanted you to husband one of their princesses? I fear to let them set eyes on you!”

  At the blush that suffused Goriat’s cheeks everyone began to laugh, and Artor knew that his nephew would not dare to protest again.

  Two more days of travel brought them a glimpse of bright water to the east, where the estuary of the Bodotria cut deeply into the land. Here their ways parted, Goriat and his men to continue on to Dun Eidyn and then south with the boy, and Artor and his party north to seek the headwaters of the Tava and the Pictish clanholds of Fodreu.

  * * *

  “Goriat was right! The fair weather didn’t last,” grumbled Cai. “Damn this Devil’s murk—how are we to see our road?”

  Artor wiped rain from his eyes and peered ahead. The weather had closed in as predicted, and all day they had travelled through a drizzling rain. If they had not come so far already, he might have been tempted to turn around, but at this point he judged them close to Fodreu. If they could find it, he thought gloomily. But they were as likely to get lost going back as keeping on. He could only hope that the Picts kept a good watch on their hunting runs, and would guide them in.

  The track they followed wound between rolling hills. From time to time he glimpsed above them the shadows of higher mountains, as if they had been conjured from the mists for a moment, only to vanish away. Merlin could conjure them back again, he thought wistfully. I wish Merlin were here.

  The black horse stumbled on the rocky path and instinctively he tightened the rein, sending reassurance with knees and hands. Raven collected himself and began, more carefully, to move once more. Artor shifted position on the saddle, whose hard frame was beginning to chafe through the damp leather breeches. The superb steel of his sword, kept oiled and clean, would be all right, but it seemed to him that the lesser metal of his mail shirt, inherited from some barbarian auxiliary, was beginning to rust already.

  Another few steps and the black horse checked again, head up and nostrils flaring.

  “It’s all right, old boy—” The king leaned forward to pat the damp neck, and stilled as the humped shapes of shrub and boulder on the hillside ahead of them began to move. Dim figures of men on shaggy ponies seemed to emerge from the hill.

  Someone shouted a warning, and Cai kicked his mount forward to cover the king, sword hissing from its sheath. He was swearing softly. Artor himself straightened, reaching for the hilt of his own blade. Then he paused. Why weren’t they yelling? And why had there been no preliminary flight of arrows to cut the Britons down?

  Behind him his own men were frantically struggling to string their bows. Artor lifted one hand. “Wait!”

  Quivering with tension, the Britons stared as the Pictish riders emerged from the mist. They rode swathed in lengths of heavy cloth striped and chequered in the natural colors of the wool, to which the moisture beaded and clung. As they came closer, Artor noted that they smelled like sheep too.

  The first riders were small men, wild haired and heavily bearded, but they drew aside for another, tall as a Briton, with the gold torque of a chieftain glinting from beneath his plaid. He halted his pony without appearing to signal and surveyed the strangers from beneath bent brows.

  “Who is leader of the southern men?” His accent was odd, but his speech clear enough.

  The king moved out from behind Cai, hand still lifted in the sign of peace. “It is I, Artor of Britannia. We seek the dun of Drest Gurthinmoch, King of all the Picts. Can you take us there?”

  The Pictish chieftain nodded. “He sent us to find you. Fire and food are waiting, and”—his lips twitched beneath the russet mustache—“dry clothes.”

  That night, as he sat drinking heather ale at the Pict-king’s fire, Artor reflected that Drest Gurthinmoch’s hospitality was certainly preferable to his hostility. Artor’s stiffening muscles made movement painful, but a good fire and a full belly more than compensated. And above all, he was glad, as the Pictish chieftain had promised, to be dry.

  Overhead the peak of the thatched roof rose to unknown distances behind the smoke that veiled it, but at the level of the fire the air was clear. Artor had seen roundhouses in the western parts of Britannia, but never one of such size. In Roman lands, princes preferred the elegant villas, plastered and painted, of the conqueror. The roundhouse that formed the center of King Drest’s dun was nearly as wide as the basilica in Calleva, its concentric uprights carved and painted with zig-zags, crescents and circles and the abstract renderings of boar and salmon, bull and horse and bird that he took to be the totems of the Pictish clans.

  My ancestors lived like this before the Romans came . . . Artor thought then. He felt as if he had gone into a faerie hill where time ran backwards, returning him to the past.

  King Drest was speaking. Artor turned, cupping one ear as if it was the noise, and not his own abstraction, that had made him miss the Pict-king’s words.

  “It is good my men found you,” said Drest in his
gutteral accent. The speech of the Pict-lords was as old-fashioned as their hall, a Brythonic dialect mixed with other words from a language he did not know.

  “Truly—” Artor replied. “It was ill weather to be out on the moors.”

  “Ach—’tis of another danger I’d be warning you,” the Pict replied. “There are worse things than weather, or even the wild beasts that haunt the hills.”

  His voice had lowered to a conspiratorial whisper and Artor leaned back, brows lifting, sensing a story.

  “You’d not be likely to meet Bloody Comb, now, riding in a large and well-armed company. But he’s a fearsome sight to a lone traveler, with his red eyes and his talon nails.”

  “And a bloody head?”

  Drest grimaced. “It is the head of the traveler that grows bloody, when the creature has pelted him with heavy stones, and carries off the blood in his cap to feed.”

  “Bloody Comb is fearsome,” said one of his chieftains, grinning, “but the Hidden People are more dangerous, they that live under the hills.”

  “It is because they look like men,” a big man with fair hair put in. “But old age does not touch them. They steal our women, and change their sickly babes for our own.”

  “Do they have treasure?” asked Artor, remembering some of the tales he had heard. These stories were known everywhere, though the fair folk seemed to dwindle in the Roman lands.

  “Surely, for they have been here since the first mothers of our folk came into this land. They are creatures of night and shadow, but they grow weak and ugly if you catch them in the full light of day. You can kill them then with ease.”

  “And they would liefer die than reveal where their treasure is hid,” said the chieftain. “Like the female we caught two moons past. She screamed, but would say nothing until she died.”

  Artor looked away, trying not to imagine the treatment that had made the woman, whatever she was, scream. Suddenly the barbaric splendor of Drest Gurthinmoch’s dun seemed less attractive. And yet he had to admit that many Romans, if they had believed in the treasure at all, might have done the same.

  “I see that I have had a narrow escape,” he said in a neutral tone, “and bless the fate that led me to Drest Gurthinmoch’s dun. If I had known your hospitality was so generous, I would have come before. . . .”

  Without a sword in your hand? The echo of his words showed clearly in the sardonic gleam of the Pict-king’s eyes.

  “If there has been less than friendship between your people and mine, it was not by my will—” Artor said quietly.

  “Nor by mine—” his host agreed. “But we will speak more of that in the morning. For now, let you drink with me, and we shall see if the Britons can match the Pretani as well at the ale-vats as they do on the battlefield!” He began to laugh.

  Artor awoke with a throbbing head. When he staggered out to the horse trough he saw that it was well past dawn. His memories of the preceding evening were chaotic, culminating in a tide of boozy good fellowship that had borne him to his bed. I hope I may not have sworn away half Britannia . . . what do they put in their beer?

  By the time he had doused his head in the chill water, he was feeling less like a victim of Bloody Comb, and could greet Drest Gurthinmoch, stout, ruddy, and apparently unaffected by the night’s carouse, without wincing as his own words echoed against his skull.

  “Come,” said the Pict, “we will walk, and complete your cure in the sweet air.”

  Artor grimaced. His condition must be more obvious than he had thought. Still it was a good suggestion, and as movement worked the stiffness out of his muscles, he began to feel more like a man, if not yet entirely like a king.

  The royal dun lay on the shore of the Tava, which here ran deep and smoothly between two lines of hills. Beyond the great feasting hall lay the house of the queen, its thatching dyed in patterns of dull red and green and blue. The gate to the palisade was open, and in the meadow horses and cattle were grazing. At first Artor thought he had been brought out here to admire them, but the Pict-king led him along a path that led towards the trees. Seeing the noble stand of oaks that rose before him, Artor understood that he was being taken to the nemeton of the tribe.

  The meadow had been full of sounds—the whicker of a pony and the stamp of hooves, bee song, and the twitter of birds—but the nemeton was very still. The whisper of wind in the upper leaves seemed to intensify the silence below. As they came to the edge of the clearing, Artor felt a change in pressure and stopped short.

  Drest Gurthinmoch turned back, smiling. “Ah, you feel it? That is well, but the guardians will allow you to enter, since you are with me.” He reached out, and after a moment Artor grasped his hand.

  For a moment the shift dizzied him; then he was in, surrounded by trees that seemed to watch him like the standing stones at the Giant’s Dance. And in the center of this circle there also lay a stone.

  “The king stone . . .” said the Pict. “When I stood upon it at my king-making, it cried out, for those who know how to hear. Do you not have the custom in your land?”

  Artor considered the chunk of sandstone, a rough rectangle of a height for a man to sit on, with an indentation that might have been a footprint on its upper side. In the north, he knew, every tribe had its navel stone, the focus of gatherings. There were sacred stones in Britannia as well, but where the Romans ruled, their use had been forgotten.

  “No longer—” he whispered.

  “I come here when I need to think like a king. . . .” Drest motioned him to sit beside him on the fallen log that lay at the edge of the clearing. “Why do you want to cross the narrow sea?”

  The sudden question took Artor by surprise. No point in asking the old wolf how he knew it—no doubt he had an informant in Artor’s household just as there were men in Pictland who carried news to the British king.

  “To fight the Franks,” he said at last.

  “Why? They do not raid your shores.”

  “Not yet. But they are hungry. One day, like the Romans, they will cross the sea. Better to stop them now than wait until they are in our hunting runs—or yours.”

  Drest looked thoughtful. “So this war that you go to will defend us as well?”

  “That is what I believe.” Artor was thinking, he realized, like a Roman, who had protected their borders by conquering what lay beyond them. But the Romans had not known when to stop. He would be wiser.

  The Pict-king grunted. “Then I will guard your back.”

  Artor sat up, skin flushing with the release from tension he had not known he carried until now.

  “Blood seals an alliance better than breath,” Drest said then. “It is a pity that you have no child.”

  I have a son. . . . Medraut’s face sprang suddenly to mind, but Artor kept silent.

  “One of your sister’s sons will be your heir, as is right, but she bore several. It would be well if one of them could be sent here to wed one of our royal women.” He looked at Artor slyly. “One day your blood might rule the Pretani after all . . .”

  Artor licked dry lips. “They are grown men. I . . . cannot choose for them. But I will ask.”

  “Or a man of your Companions, though my people will not see that as so binding. Still, they would value for his own sake any man trained in your war-band.”

  Artor’s lips twitched at the compliment. “I will ask.”

  The Britons took care to delay their departure until the sun returned, but Artor was fast learning that the weather this far north could never be relied on. By the time they reached the firth, a chill wind was gusting in from the sea, driving dark clouds that trailed veils of rain. He only hoped that the Picts were more trustworthy than the sky.

  Across the firth he could see in silhouette the Rock of Dun Eidyn, stark against the clouds. But the water between frothed with foam. Clearly no boat would ply those seas until the wind died down. The king halted his black horse at the edge of the sand, gazing across the heaving waves with a longing that surprised him. He w
anted to be back in his own country!

  Cai was saying something about a wood in whose shelter they could wait out the storm, but Artor shook his head.

  “I’ve never liked boats anyway,” he said crossly. “We’ll ride east, go around.”

  Cai shook his head gloomily, but he turned away and began to give the necessary orders all the same. The king felt a moment’s compunction—he knew that the knee his foster-brother had injured at Mons Badonicus gave him trouble in wet weather, but no doubt it would ache as much sitting still in a damp forest as on the trail.

  Yet for a time it seemed that Artor’s decision had been a good one. Away from the sea the storm’s strength lessened, and the rain diminished to a drizzle as night drew near. Their campsite was damp, but even when wet, the lengths of tightly woven natural wool that King Drest had given them to use as riding cloaks stayed warm.

  In the morning the air seemed warmer, and the rain had almost ceased, but before they had been an hour on the trail they wished it back again, for the rain-soaked earth was giving up its moisture in the form of fog. Heavy and clinging, it weighted the lungs and penetrated to the bone. A trackway seemed to lead away to the right; they turned their mounts uphill, hoping to get above the fog and find shelter. The Picts who had escorted them knew the lay of the land, but none had the intimate local knowledge of each rock and tree that could have guided them now.

  The mist deadened sound. They had dismounted, and Artor could hear the clop and scrape behind him as Raven picked his way over mud and stone. The sounds of the other horses came faintly, and as darkness fell, their shapes faded to shadows more sensed than seen. Something loomed ahead and the black horse threw up his head, snorting in alarm. Artor pulled him down, stroking the sweated neck to soothe him. It was only a big boulder, though in the half-dark it humped like a crouching beast. He led Raven around it, and pulled him gently after the receding shape of the horse ahead of him.

  Or at least that was what he thought he was doing. He had walked for perhaps as long as it takes to boil an egg before he realized that the figure he thought he was following was another boulder. He paused, listening. The heavy whuff of Raven’s breathing was the only sound.