The Hallowed Isle Book One Read online

  Ambros’s steps dragged as he headed homeward, watching the white swans sail the quiet stream. But as he neared the bridge the echo of the smith’s laughter was drowned out by a great clamor from the town. He stopped, staring, as riders clattered over the bridge and set their mounts at a gallop down the road—they belonged to Gerontius of Dumnonia, by the emblem. A few moments later they were followed by a horse-litter surrounded by guards. That was Sulpicius from Deva. What was going on?

  He crossed the bridge between cavalcades and tugged at a shopkeeper’s sleeve.

  “Vitalinus has dismissed the Council!” came the answer. “Or they’ve dismissed him, it’s hard to say. But the great ones are off to their own lands, and talk goes that they’ve sworn to bring Ambrosius Aurelianus and his brother back from Armorica to be our emperors!”

  Vitalinus moved swiftly, marshalling the forces that were left to him. But with the warriors of Dumnonia and Guenet turned against him, and Coelius protesting that the Painted Peoples would attack if he weakened the Army of the North, they were few. Even Amlodius, protesting that after so many years of marriage his wife was about to give birth to a living child at last, refused to come, though he sent a subcommander with some of his men.

  From his own lands around Glevum the Vor-Tigernus had the men he had trained, and some from the south coast, but for the most part his strength lay in the barbarian troops who for the past ten seasons had guarded the land. And where they had come from there were many more.

  While the sons of Ambrosius gathered forces in the west country, Hengest sent swift ships across the channel to bring more warriors from the German lands. While he waited for them to arrive the Over-King evaded Aurelianus’s attempts to bring him to battle, knowing that if he could delay long enough, many of the rebels would go home to help get the harvest in.

  The two forces came together at last just before the festival of Lugos at a place called Uollopum, north of Venta Belgarum. Not all of the Vor-Tigernus’s reinforcements had arrived, but Aurelianus forced the issue, for he was beginning to lose men. Through all one bloody day they struggled, while Ambros and the other noncombatants watched from a hill nearby. And because their numbers were almost even, when darkness fell neither side could claim the victory. The Ambrosian forces withdrew to Dumnonia to lick their wounds, and Vitalinus and his men fell back toward Glevum.

  The sword flares down, slicing through leather armor, cleaving flesh and bone. A man screams as his arm is torn from his body; then blood sprays crimson and the voice is stilled. Others fill the silence, crying out in pain or rage. The clangor of weapons assaults the senses. The smell of blood and sweat and shit fouls the air.

  He whimpers, trying to find a way out of the carnage, but everywhere he turns he finds faces contorted in rage, and the swift flare of bloodied swords. . . . He curls in a ball, trying to get away, away. . . .

  “Ambros!”

  He flinched as a hand gripped his shoulder and jerked upright on the bench, flailing. The fingers let go and someone laughed. Ambros blinked, saw Hengest looming over him and behind the Saxon, Vitalinus.

  “Wake up, boy. Your master needs music to sweeten his mood!” The Saxon laughed again and turned away.

  Ambros rubbed his eyes. The only fighting he could see was the battle between the Greeks and the centaurs painted on the wall of the villa where they had stopped for the night, and the angry voice he heard belonged to the Vor-Tigernus.

  A slave scurried in with a pitcher of spiced wine. Vitalinus took it before the slave could set it down and refilled his cup, drank deeply, coughed, and drank again.

  “Emperor! He dares to take the purple on the strength of one battle which he did not win!” Vitalinus glared around the room.

  As his senses returned, Ambros remembered the messenger who had ridden in just before suppertime. That was what had sent the great ones to council. From the sound of it, nothing had been resolved.

  “Neither did you,” Hengest said drily. “Nor will you, unless you get more men.” Despite the guttural accent, he spoke Latin fluently and could make himself understood in the British tongue. He stood with his back to the fire, his face hidden, but his shadow stretched dark across the room.

  The Vor-Tigernus poured more wine and began to pace up and down. As he passed Ambros he paused.

  “You heard him, child. Take up your harp and see if music will soothe the savage heart of your king!”

  Eyeing his master warily, Ambros reached for the harp, a simple crescent of oakwood joined to a soundbox, with five horsehair strings.

  “Go on—or do you think yourself a David to my Saul? I will not throw a lance at you!” He jerked into motion once more, slopping wine upon the floor.

  No, Ambros thought, I am not David, for I will never be a king. . . .

  He settled the harp against his shoulder. He had learned to play simple chords and accompany the bards when they chanted the old songs, but he did not think that singing was wanted just now. Softly he began to pluck the thirds and fifths of harmony.

  Perhaps the sound did have a soothing effect, for he saw Vitalinus’s high color recede and presently the king sat down. He looked at his magister militum and sighed.

  “You are right. I need more men. Can you conjure them out of the air?”

  “Out of the air?” Hengest’s deep laughter rumbled in his chest. “That I cannot do. But I can bring them out of the water—over the sea—”

  There was a long silence. Ambros clutched the harp, scarcely daring to touch the strings.

  “I know. In your country there are many warriors. But they will not fight for love of me,” Vitalinus said at last. “If I had the gold to pay them—to pay you—I would not be sitting here now.”

  Hengest sat down before the hearth, clasping his knees. Sitting so, his head was still as high as the king’s shoulder, but he no longer loomed over him.

  “When I give the gold you pay me to my men, they send it home so that their kindred can buy food that their sea-soaked land will no longer bear. If you have no gold, you possess what my people hold dearer—black earth from which grows the golden corn.”

  The Vor-Tigernus started, staring down at the other man, but he made no sound. After a moment the soft rumble of Hengest’s voice resumed.

  “Hirelings must be paid, but there is no question of payment between allies. Give us land, Lord of Britannia, as the emperors of Rome gave Germania Prima to the Burgunds, and Aquitanica to the Visigoths. As guest with host we shall dwell, and take our living from the produce of the land.”

  “As feoderati—” said Vitalinus.

  “As allies,” repeated Hengest. “And to seal the bargain I will give you a hostage from my own family. You have seen my daughter—”

  She had come over from Germania just this year, Ambros remembered, a tall woman, with red-gold hair, and beautiful.

  “Reginwynna . . .” breathed Vitalinus.

  “You have no woman. Take Reginwynna as your wife, and give us Cantium.”

  “It cannot work!” Vitalinus jerked out of his chair and began to pace about the room. “The lords of Britannia will never stand for it.”

  “It has worked for the Romans,” Hengest objected. “Are you not the emperor?”

  Vitalinus shrugged. “My fathers were magistrates under Rome, but I do not come of the old princely lines. Aurelianus is kin to the old kings of Demetia and Guenet. If I had something—some symbol of sovereignty that might command men’s allegiance, I could rule as I willed.” For a long moment he stared into the fire. Then he turned.

  Ambros felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he realized that the Vor-Tigernus was looking at him.

  “Your mother comes of the old blood of the North, is it not so? I have heard tales of a Sword. . . .”

  Ambros was shaking his head, but he could feel the pressure of Vitalinus’s will like a fire.

  “Put down your harp, son of Maderun, and speak to me words of truth and prophecy—” the Vor-Tigernus’s words spar
ked through his awareness.

  I cannot. . . . I will not. . . . I swore not to speak of the Sword! thought Ambros, but already his vision was blurring. His will was a fraying tether, and his consciousness a wild thing eager to break free.

  “In the name of God and his holy angels I command you, and in the name of the Old Powers of this land. Four winters I have fed and clothed you, and I am your lord.”

  He was a king, and accustomed to be obeyed. Against the authority in that tone Ambros had no defenses. Desperate, he sought his inner daimon, and as the inrush of her presence released him from himself, faintly he heard a voice that was not quite his own begin to answer the king.

  “Woe to the lord who summons powers he cannot command!” An eerie, tinkling laughter made Vitalinus step back. “You have asked, oh King, but can you understand the answer? I see the White Dragon growing strong; his children flourish in the land. The Red Dragon rises to fight against them, and blood covers the ground. The children of the Red Dragon are slain.”

  “And what of the Sword?” As from a great distance, he heard the Vor-Tigernus ask.

  “The Boar of Dumnonia rages and the White Dragon is brought to bay; but he in turn shall be brought low and his brother shall rule. But the Sword of the God of War is not for him, for he shall be slain. After him shall come the young bear, begotten by a man who is dead upon a secret queen. No man but he may draw the Sword from the Stone.”

  “And what of me? How shall I save this land?”

  “You have sown the teeth of the dragon and you must reap the harvest. . . .”

  The voice came to Ambros like a whisper on the wind. His body was falling, but his spirit fell further, descending forever down a tunnel of night until he knew no more.

  Ambros opened his eyes to darkness. He lay on the bench, and someone had covered him with a cloak, but he was alone in the room. He sat up, rubbing his forehead to relieve the dull ache behind his eyes, and pulled the wool around him. A dim glow from the hearth enabled him to make out his surroundings; from somewhere nearby came a faint snoring.

  What had the daimon that lived within him said to the king? Nothing good, for he could remember someone shouting. If he was still alive and free it must be because the king thought him too weakened by his trance to be worth guarding. But tomorrow the Vor-Tigernus would certainly punish him.

  At the thought, volition came back to his limbs. Ambros wrapped the cloak around him, took a partly eaten loaf of bread from the Vor-Tigernus’s plate and stuffed it down the front of his tunic, and poked his head out the door.

  He heard snores and harsh breathing, but nothing stirred.

  The gods of his people must be protecting him, thought Ambros as he passed through the gate of the villa, for the one guard he had seen had been sleeping. A waning moon showed him his way, and soon he was on the Londinium road. No one would expect him to flee that way, but from there he could double around to the north and then head west to Demetia.

  Though the road was not so well maintained as it had been under the Romans, Ambros made good time, and by dawn he was approaching the White Horse Vale. He paused, gazing southward in wonder, as the first light revealed first the noble curve of the downs against the eastern sky, and then, as the sun rose, the attenuated curves of white that revealed the Horse shape carved into the chalk of the hills.

  Ambros’s breath caught. He remembered suddenly the sculptured curves of bone in the skull of the White Mare that led the procession at Samhain. Swathed in a white horsehide, the Mare was at once the face of Death and the promise of life to come, for she brought the spirits of the ancestors in her train to take flesh once more in the wombs of the women of the tribe. The blood of his mother’s people beat in his temples as he gazed upon that mighty form, bound into the very bones of the land.

  “White Mare, protect me—” he whispered, then glanced behind him. There was nothing there now, but soon, folk would be stirring, and might remember a strange lad hurrying down the road. But if he struck out across country here, he should strike the Ridgeway, that ancient trail that followed the top of the downs east and north. From there he could spot any pursuers long before he could be seen.

  The Vale was bigger than it had looked in the deceptive light of dawn. All that day, the boy struggled to cross it, detouring around meadows whose green hid marshland still soggy from the spring rains. Farm roads petered out in woodlots or pastures, and sometimes he had to hide from men working in the fields. Thus, by the time he began the long climb up to the Ridgeway, dusk was drawing a veil of shadow across the land.

  Ambros found the ancient track more by touch than by eyesight, stumbling even when he reached the summit and the smoother ground. He flinched from a flicker of motion, then saw it was a hunting owl, gliding by on noiseless wings. With nightfall, the downs became a different country. He was acutely aware of the mighty swell of the chalk, as if the bones of the earth were pushing through the soil. And the longer he followed the Ridgeway, the more conscious he became of the many feet that had trod that path before.

  This was an ancient land, where any stone might be an elfbolt lost before the fathers of the British tribes ever came over the sea. Some said that the little dark hunters, or their spirits, wandered here still. Ambros glanced over his shoulder, wondering if they hunted by night or by day. The open expanse that had attracted him in the morning seemed now to impose a terrible vulnerability. Uplifted on the shoulders of the downs, he cowered beneath the huge expanse of sky, seeking, like some small scurrying animal benighted far from its burrow, a place to hide.

  And so, when he saw a stand of beech trees in dark silhouette against the southern sky, he turned off the path.

  Almost at once an odd scent stopped him. Ambros sniffed cautiously, and his nostrils flared at the harsh reek of a charcoal fire. He took a step forward, fancying he saw the glow of flames behind the trees, and then, unmistakably, came the chink of metal on metal, and he recognized the music of the forge.

  “Come warm yourself—” a deep voice called him forth from among the beeches. “I have stew to fill your belly as well.”

  Amazement warred with caution, for this was the same man Ambros had met beside the river at Venta Belgarum. But more powerful still was hunger, for beside the bread he had eaten nothing that day. Licking his lips, he stepped into the light of the blacksmith’s fire.

  The flickering flames showed him the horse and wagon, and behind them a tumble of stone like a fallen wall. But four mighty uprights still stood among them, flanking a dark passage that led into the mound.

  “What are you doing here?” He heard his own voice, stupid with fatigue.

  “Shoeing horses—what else?” The smith grinned. “In this country there are many fine ones. The people will bring them to me when they gather in the old fortress for the fair.”

  There is a fine white mare on the hillside, thought Ambros. Will you set shoes on Her as well?

  But more important than fear or fancy was hunger, and he dug into the bowl of stewed pork which the smith handed him. There was ale as well, stronger than he was used to, with an aftertaste of honey. The smith continued to tap away with his hammer, talking of the the fair with its horse races and peddlers from many lands, when the people scoured away the grass that encroached around the edges of the Horse’s limbs. Ambros could not quite see what he was making, and after a time his eyes grew heavy and he forgot to look.

  The chink of the hammer came regular as a pulsebeat, but as Ambros began to drowse, it seemed to him that what the smith was beating out was not metal but memories, a sequence of bright images that passed before him until he walked among them. The dark hunters of the hills chipped skillfully at the flint to make their arrowheads and axes. They were followed by a bigger, brown-haired folk who tilled the land and dragged great stones from the mountains to entomb their dead, using hand axes to peck cups and spirals into the rock. Ambros saw the first mound made beneath the beech trees, and then the building of the barrow of stones.


  He was sitting in a place of ghosts, he thought dimly, but he sensed a circle of safety in the light of the blacksmith’s fire. In dream he saw the leaves of countless seasons drift down across the stones. A new tribe came who drank their ale from beakers of fired clay banded with patterns made by cord or comb, and after them people whose smiths crafted fine weapons of polished bronze, who brought more stones to set in careful alignments where the dragon power flowed through the land. Circles of shaped stone marked the movements of sun and moon with more precision than any of Maugantius’s formulae. The makers of the old tombs were forgotten, and bronze-smiths plied their craft before the mound.

  And yet these tribes also passed into memory. The weather grew colder, with more rain, and the upland farms were abandoned. Men used new and better weapons of bronze to fight for what arable land remained, and built earth-walled fortresses to defend their territory. Ambros did not understand all that he saw, but he could see a pattern, in which one people succeeded another in lordship of the land.

  And presently there came tall, bright-haired folk from across the sea who carried swords of iron, and worked their ornaments in sinuous spirals varied with palmettes and scrolls. He knew them for British, his mother’s people, but in his dream they seemed no more than another layering of leaves on the mound. The click of stone axe on stone became the ring of bronze, and then the heavy clangor of iron as, generation after generation, the smiths worked their magic, compelling the inert elements of earth to the service of man.

  His head throbbed to the ring of those hammers until he could no longer see, and then it seemed to Ambros that he himself was lifted and laid upon the anvil. The hammer swung, shattering his old form and shaping him anew. He understood at last what the atoms of which the old Greek magi had written must be, for he could feel each atom in his body realigning beneath the blows. And as he looked up, he saw that somehow the gnarled blacksmith had become a radiant goddess, with hair of flame.