Bard I (16 page)

The bard smiled like a fox. Come to your confusion, my bold prince of lackwits! I’m out of your suffocating town, and I’ve been this way before! If you take Felimid mac Fal now, you will have earned it!

Justin spied Felimid on the hill-crest. He shouted in anticipation and anger mixed. The bard lifted a taunting arm to lure him on, then bent over the dun’s neck to whisper maddeningly in its ear.

Down the purple and umber and dark green hillside they went, to clear in a leap the brook at the bottom. They raged up the far side, went slipping and sliding along a scree-covered slope, and rushed along a strait rock-walled vale. A gnarled fallen tree blocked the far end, its broken branches jutting up like stakes.

Felimid urged the dun to the leap. They gathered together like one fiery-blooded creature. The dun sprang like a hart and never took a scratch. Felimid exulted.

‘My brave fellow! Now let’s see Justin match that!’

Justin was coming, and riding like a madman. His grey was bloody from lash and spur, but his friends, who did not have his nerve or rage, were far behind. Felimid knew he could lose them. He’d a horse as good as Justin’s grey; he rode it better, and he was the lighter man.

‘Cairbre and Ogma!’ Felimid said involuntarily. Prince Justin spurred his grey to take the leap. The great beast approached the tree, gathered, rose-yet the beginning was marred, false. The bard felt it in his nerves.

A branch ripped its belly, bringing out blood. The grey crashed down with a rending scream. Justin flew out of the saddle. He landed stunningly hard, although clear of rocks. The grey screamed hideously on.

Turning the dun, Felimid raced back. He wanted a sword; Justin wore one. The prince lurched upright, saw Felimid coming, and instinctively drew his sword, fumbling a Little. Half dazed, he fancied Felimid meant to ride him down. He swung his sword at the dun gelding’s head.

He forgot that Felimid knew him. The bard reined his horse hard back on its haunches in the last instant. Justin missed his stroke. Felimid sprang from the saddle, bearing his enemy down, gripping him by sword-arm and throat.

They rolled over. Justin tried to wrench his sword arm free, and a glitter of angry astonishment came into his eyes as he failed. He’d begun to strangle, what was more. The hand at his throat felt like an edict of Fate. Others had been surprised by the strength in Felimid’s lithe, supply muscled body, and his greatest strength was in his wrists and fingers.

Purpling. Justin struck Felimid’s biceps with a notorious fist. He wrenched his throat from a weakened grasp. Although he knew well that his sword hampered him at such straining close quarters. for pride’s sake he would not relinquish it. Instead, he groped around Felimid’s body with his free hand, for the dagger sheathed at the bard’s left side. He found and drew it with a sharp grunt of triumph.

His attention had shifted for the brief span of time Felimid needed to gain a new purchase for leverage on his sword-arm. Then Justin raised Felimid’s own dagger to drive into his back. and Felimid realised the danger. He twisted, caught the prince’s knife-wrist, felt the point scrape along a rib as the stab lost direction. Then the dagger was questing for Felimid’s heart as he fought to hold it back, while Justin’s other arm, his sword-arm, bent slowly in a direction that did not suit the use, or nature, or function of elbows.

They put forward their strength until their bones cried out. Their faces darkened with blood, their teeth skinned bare and their bodies quivered. Yet Felimid had the advantage of being on top, and of a cruelly simple lock; Justio’s upper arm trapped in the crook of Felimid’s elbow, forearm being pushed inexorably back by the wrist. Justin grunted softly from deep in his throat. The bard levered harder.

The dagger-point touched Felimid’s chest.

Some ligaments of Justin’s popped and tore. The bard heard it; all but felt it. A file across his teeth might have given him a like sensation. But mercy was not possible.

Blood ran slightly. The dagger-point, pricking between ribs, sought the heart beating less than an inch away. Eyes glared into eyes.

Prince Justin’s arm snapped.

His sword fell. He made no sound beyond a harsh, growling gasp. Felimid set a heel on his sound arm, and snatched up the sword. Justin sweated coldly. His face had gone grey.

‘Let fall the dagger,’ Felimid panted, ‘and you may have your life.’

With its pierced belly and smashed leg, the prince’s grey had not stopped screaming. The sound went like a ripsaw along Felimid’s highly-strung nerves.

Justin’s bootlickers came riding up. Too late to help him, they looked uncertainly at the scene. Well they might. It was not in Felimid’s mind that they had been any help to Justin, or that he’d thank them. Lest he advise them recklessly, Felimid struck him on the temple with the flat of his sword. The prince’s shadows had little will without him.

‘Throw your weapons as far as you can!’ Felimid bade them loudly. ‘Then catch me the dun gelding and bring it here, quickly. Your alternative is to face your king and tell him how his son died, with four of you here to prevent it! Are you game for that? Will one of you trust the others not to spin a false yam in hope of favor?’

A telling argument they seemed to find it.

The bard wasn’t half so sure as be tried to sound that King Agloval would regret the loss of his heir, who was useful in war but incapable of ruling the land in peace. He knew Agloval would far sooner have his second son succeed him, and might give a secret sigh of relief were Justin to die. It didn’t matter. For appearances’ sake he’d hunt the slayer to his bitter death, or failing that make his friends pay. The saddler, his wife and sons would be given to that smiling hangman, his daughters and grandchildren sold for slaves. Knowing this, Felimid dared not kill Justin, but he convinced the prince’s hangers-on. None challenged that he meant what he said. He was obeyed.

They fetched back the dun gelding. Mounted upon it, Felimid kept one of their four horses and scattered the rest, leaving the prince to be carried home on a litter by his cronies.

He borrowed the prince’s sword as well. It wasn’t Kincaid, nor did it sing and leap as if alive. Still, it was a fine weapon. The shape and balance made it seem lighter than it was.

He scabbarded it after cleaving the air a few times to sec how it handled. Its richness was apt to cause trouble. The scabbard was adorned with flowing spirals of gold wire, while the sword’s hilt was of yellow gold with a huge dark red garnet set glittering in the top.

The belt too was stiff with patterns of gold wire, and the buckle was of gold, formed like a playful otter gripping a trout with enamelled scales. Throats had been cut for much less. The drawback to a prince’s trappings was that they were worth stealing.

No thief am I, Felimid assured himself. I’ll return all these things, not by another’s hand but in my own person, and the prince will accept them with grace and own me honest, though the words choke him.

He toyed with schemes for achieving this as he rode. He soon discarded them. One task at a time. When he held Kincaid again, he’d think of returning the prince’s gear.

Hag in the hills grieving futile and bitter,

Masterless men in the grip of your greed,

Corpses lie tumbled behind you like litter–

The red sword of Ogma continues to feed!

Because he is mine till another proves fitter,

I’ll follow the dead men as far as they lead.

Felimid mac Fal,
The Seeking of Kincaid

H
E
RODE
THROUGH
A
SPARKLE
AND
GLITTER
OF
RAIN
PUDDLES
, a grumble of racing streams. Gore from the bloody. Painful– but not serious-slash over his ribs glued Sigurnus’s shirt to his flesh. So little, and so nearly the destruction of his life! A trifle swifter here, the length of one finger-joint deeper there, and Justin would have gone home triumphant. Instead, Felimid was free. with a fair lead on the pursuit he knew must come. All sights, scents and sounds became more glorious thereby. He sang for delight, and the rocks listened.

A huge crow suddenly flapped out of the sky with a strident caw. His wings were a yard or more in span. He perched on a stone and cocked a coldly speculative eye at Felimid. His plumage shone like polished jet.

He opened his yellow beak and spoke.

‘Follow! Follow!’

Felimid’s self-possession was jolted hard thereby, although he knew more than most about sendings and familiars. He’d encountered several in his life. He managed to draw rein gracefully and answer with panache.

‘Follow you, spawn of Badb Catha? And where would you lead me? To some robbers’ ambush so that you may pick out my eyes for your reward?’ He scanned the hills.

‘No, indeed, I’ve better things to do. Go haunt battlefields.’

‘I would lead you to the sword you lost,’ the bird croaked. ‘Follow!’

‘Ahh,’ Felimid breathed. ‘I’ve been told of a witch who dwells in these hills, and of a hanged corpse stolen from a gibbet to make an ugly charm called a Devil’s Candle. Are you the witch’s companion, or maybe the witch herself?’

‘Aye.’

‘Then lead. black one. But take care! If you lead me to trouble, it shall be paid for. I’m the surest slinger you will ever see. I’ve knocked over running rabbits and killed grouse on the wing. It’s safer you’d be betraying your mistress than me.’

The crow flapped noisily up, and carked derisively down. He flew northward in a sky that flocked with returning birds. Now and then, he turned back to be sure that Felimid hadn’t lost sight of him.

The precaution was needful. Felimid’s attention was not exclusively fixed on the crow by any means. He watched for enemies on the ground far more warily.

Britain swarmed with such, as a beggar unwashed swarmed with fleas. There were Bacaudae, slaves and peasant workers who had left the land to turn outlaw. Although the days of the villa system, and the mass revolts against it as the province fell away from law, were long over, many small raggle-taggle bands were still abroad.

If the Bacaudae were fewer, long war-boats from over the Narrow Sea were more. Raiders from Erin, Falga and Caledonia were more. War-leaders with their followers, out to conquer a kingdom in which they could live well, were very greatly more. That was how Justin’s father’s father had come to rule in the land of the Atrebates.

They were a danger, too. The king’s riders would soon be out with dogs and scourges and rattling chains, to catch Felimid at any cost. If his friends were wise they had disowned him. In words, at least. He hoped Regan would live well in Calleva.

The crow fluttered down, car king monotonously. Following the sound, the bard came to a grassy, rocky hollow beneath a dead tree.

A hag sat there, moaning. Her hair was neither white nor grey nor brown nor any particular color, and it writhed on her head. The cheekbones and chin of her seamed face made three round knobs. She held a mattock in her deformed fingers.

A dead man, who had seemingly died of a beating with cudgels and stones, lay at her feet.

‘Be welcome, Felimid of Erin!’ she cried. Her white-filmed eyes blinked at him. ‘Yes, yes, I know your name, your quest, and much more about you than you’d like me to know; but to what end? I cannot see you with my eyes. I can barely see this dead man here-oh, oh!—but I saw him foully murdered in my dreams this dawn, and guided by my pet I came to find him.

‘Now I haven’t the strength to dig him a proper grave. But he shall have one and his murderers will not. I see that, too.’

‘I pity your grief,’ Felimid said. ‘This was an ill deed. Who murdered him, and why? And who is he?’

‘Nothing,’ the hag maundered. ‘Nothing, any more. Woe! He was a little man, Felimid of Erin. The least of thieves, but he dreamed of being great. Where do the years go? He had ambition, and it was the death of him.

‘He wanted to perform a theft of note. I must help him; he wouldn’t have it otherwise. As my spirit wandered in a trance, I espied you with the silver-hilted, silver-inlaid sword you bore, you, you! And I told him how the thing might be done. I did ill. This is what it fetched him.’

Felimid felt an urge to laugh. He’d been thinking of Britain’s master thieves, and all the time it bad been only a rat-like pilferer and his witchy grandam! But he slew the chortle out of respect for the old woman’s grief. That much courtesy he could show.

‘Then it was he stole Kincaid from the house of Gavrus, with a Devil’s Candle you made for him?’

‘Yes, yes! He’d come this far when four masterless men killed him at dawn and took the sword. Ill met, ill met. I knew, even in my dreams, and I came to find him, and I sent my pet to guide you hither, and what now? Will you follow the murderers who have your sword now?’

‘I’ll do nothing else! Can you tell me which way they went?’

The witch cackled, ‘I can do better! I can lend you my black darling, my pet! He’ll guide you to them, he’ll serve you faithfully and peck at the curdled blood when you find them. Ha! Ha! He won’t starve on such a trail as you follow, Felimid of Erin, not he! Pursuit behind or ambush ahead, he will give you warnings. Is that not a good friend to have?’

‘An unsettling one entirely,’ the bard said. ‘Is what you’ve told me truly so? How am I to tell? This dead man here . . . who knows but that he meant nothing to you, and this is a trick to set me on a false trail?’

‘He’s my grandson! I reared him!’

Her fury was convincing. Felimid thought of how useful a scout and spy her familiar would make, had already made, for the witch and her grandson. How far Felimid could trust the black crow was another matter.

‘Let him accompany me, then, if the price of his help is one I can pay. And I’ll thank you.’

‘Price? Nothing excessive, no, no! Just you dig my poor grandson a grave in which he can lie straight, and make him a cairn above it. That’s all I ask.’ The crow perched on her humped shoulder, and she stroked him.