Bard I (27 page)

‘Sad and frustrating the fate that allowed not the atheling to try his puissance against the monster,’ Felimid declaimed, ‘but better by far for his comrades.’

King Cerdic himself, in the last boat, had broken two harpoons on unyielding scales. As the awful parted jaws dipped towards him, he seized his last spear and sprang into the monster’s mouth. He jammed the harpoon upright in that stinking, hotly breathing cave, edged about with arm-long teeth, and when the jaws bit down, his barbed harpoon was driven through the ridged palate into the monster’s brain.

As the dragon shrieked its death-cry, Cerdic had writhed from between its teeth to drop fainting into the clean sea, from which his gesiths had plucked him. Yet he recovered, to the wonder of all. So Felimid told it. All men there accepted it as incontestable truth. The king put a coiled gold ring on Felimid’s arm.

The women left the hall not long after. The bard caught Eldrida’s eye as she went, and she closed it slowly. Her mouth curved into a smile worth ten of the Lady Vivayn’s cryptic hints at one.

Felimid left as soon as he could without giving offence, and drank sparingly of the strong royal brew in the meantime. Scabbarded sword in hand, he went back to the barn where he’d stabled the dun gelding.

Eldrida was there, cloaked in wolfskin. She put a palm across his mouth before he could utter a word, then took it away and applied her own mouth in its place. She was in no haste, and enjoyed what she did. The same was true of the man. There were noises in the hay, low gasps and a breathy laugh, and then a happy rhythm that quickened and slowed by turns. Last of all Eldrida shuddered strongly, stretched luxuriously, and yawned as if waking with the dawn on a summer’s day.

‘Umm,’ said she. She had been with other men, she lay with partners of her own choice. There were reasons why she had such liberty, and she did not mean to divulge them.

They lay in each other’s arms, drowsing, touching, stroking. ‘You are the king’s daughter, not so?’ he asked. ‘You have eyes like his and the atheling’s.’

‘I and many another, not to speak of those half-sibs of mine with blue eyes, or brown. Royal bastards are always many, but here they are beyond counting.’

‘Then we have a thing in common, if the stories are true. We be both descended from gods, you from the Victory-Bringer and I from Ogma the Honey-Mouthed.’

‘Mmmm, if the stories are true. What sort of god is this Ogma?’

‘The lord of language and poetry, and he so eloquent it was as though fine chains linked the ears of his hearers to his tongue. He invented writing, too. Nor was he any mean warrior, for he became the battle-champion of the Tuatha De Danann after Nuadu’s hand was cut off . . . his son was Cairbre, who became his people’s chief bard, and my line has been one of bards and harpers ever since.’

They had a thing in common even if the stories were not true, for Felimid was also a bastard by Jutish standards. Not, however, by his own. His tribe reckoned descent through the female line. The notion of bastardy was thus irrelevant to him.

‘Then you’re well born,’ Eldrida said. ‘But it’s not for that I came. It was for what you did. Had you fought for me, well, I’d maybe have valued it less; I’d have known what you wanted. But Glinthi? Only a man of true generosity would have aided that little wart.’ She added, ‘And I liked the look of you.’

‘The liking was on two sides, then,’ Felimid answered, finding play for idle hands, ‘and the touch, and the sound and the scent and the taste of you.’

‘You are one of the Lady Vivayn’s attendant-women, by your garb, and manner, and freedom of tongue,’ said the bard sleepily, when the time for talk had come around again.

‘True,’ Eldrida said against his throat, ‘but I’d rather be here than in any silken bower tonight.’

‘Thank you, sweeting, but what of tomorrow? Is she likely to take a distaff to your back for doing as you please?’

‘If she does it will be worth it. But I think not. She’s not strict in that way.’ She drew blood with a bite, and chuckled softly. ‘That’s for asking after, and not before.’ He smacked her stingingly on the tenderest curve of her backside. ‘Even generosity has its bounds.’

In the morning. she interestedly watched him shave with his knife and a bowl of hot water he’d obtained from the kitchen. ‘That’s a strange habit,’ she said. ‘It’s demeaning and a lot of trouble too. Why perform it? None of the men here do.’

‘Ah, you’re prejudiced,’ the bard said lightly. ‘A beard is only a harbor for lice, and a moustache makes it hard to eat elegantly. I fancy your Jutes and Saxons prize beards as they do because in the killing winters they are used to, it’s the best way to keep a throat warm.’

‘Slither blather. It’s still demeaning.’ She looked at him, naked in the early sunlight. ‘You are too beautiful to go without a beard. A short one, trimmed and barbered like the atheling’s.’

‘On him it looks splendid. On me it would look less so. I’ll decide what demeans me or does not, by your leave.’ As he finished shaving and dried his face, he happened to glance towards the gate of Cerdic’s stockade. A huge man with a white wolfskin over his shoulders was just entering. ‘Cairbre and Ogma!’ The bard had grown motionless and even ceased to breathe. Then, consciously, muscle by muscle, he relaxed. ‘And there entered a huge ungainly dreadful bachlach with a tree, a block and a long axe . . . now there yonder is a fellow who once made the same sort of remarks as you, although it wasn’t my beauty that concerned him at all, and his language was rougher. Glad I am to have seen him first.’ Felimid swiftly donned tunic and buckled on sword. ‘I prophesy trouble.’

‘With that one?’ Eldrida turned pale. ‘I know him.’

‘Tosti Fenrir’s-get. I know him too, and he knows me . . . not with love.’

‘Then best you run for your life!’

‘Now that would be demeaning. Watch. See how a shaven son of Erin handles a bearded beserk.’

Eldrida watched him go, her blood running cold. She cursed her thoughtless tongue. The talk about beards had been silly banter, no more. When she advised Felimid to run for his life she had been desperately sincere, but not because she thought him a coward or esteemed his manhood lightly. She did not. She would never have lain with him if she had. She had spoken in simple horror, the horror Tosti Fenrir’s-get inspired in most. Many men were brutal, many were rash about slaying, and many even relished it. But the fiercest warriors walked as if on eggshells in Tosti’s presence.

Felimid’s belly felt cold. but there was a growing heat of anger in his heart. Four parallel scars left by a bear’s claws slanted across his back, over one shoulder-blade. They burned now. He remembered hanging by the ankles above a pit of hungry wolves. Tosti had a debt to render to Felimid mac Fal.

‘Well met,’ he said. his voice mellow. ‘What brings you among us this fair morning, Tosti?’

The giant turned, with a baring of teeth. The scalp of his frost-white wolfskin, which he wore always, rested on his head like a cap, the muzzle peaking forward to shadow his brow, the forelegs dangling down his chest.

‘And how is your shoulder?’ the bard asked. ‘Does it still pain you?’

‘Oh, this is luck,’ Tosti said beatifically. ‘Oh. but it gives me joy to see you here. I cannot tell you how much I was hoping that no other had killed you.’

‘I’m the guest of King Cerdic,’ Felimid warned.

‘You won’t hide behind that for long, when I’ve spoken with him.’

The terrible Tosti Fenrir’s-get was taking it far too calmly. Felimid had expected him to snarl with rage and spring, bent on ending their quarrel at once. He behaved as if he’d known he would find Felimid in Cerdic’s fortress. As if he’d been savoring this meeting in advance, all the way from Kent. and wished to savor it a while longer before the kill.

The bard wondered how he had come so far. He hadn’t been in Cerdic’s hall or burg the previous night. Instead, he’d arrived with the dawn, out of nowhere and unaccompanied. That wasn’t the way a king’s henchman usually appeared. Maybe the rumors about his werwolf powers were true. Felimid tested that idea with a seeming non sequitur.

‘Ifs disgusting unkempt you are for a king’s man.’ he said. ‘Where is the battle-gear Oisc of Kent gave you?’ Tosti’s pale eyes widened in anger. He didn’t seem to find the bard’s observations empty of meaning. They were true, certainly. He wore clothes far beneath his station, and they fitted his great limbs very poorly. stretching here, splitting there. falling of adequate length in other places. His one weapon was the huge, long-handled bearded axe he bore on his boulder. Felimid wondered about that. too. Although strong enough to handle such a weapon easily. Tosti preferred the sword. He owned one. Where was it?

Felimid’s mind worked quickly. If Tosti was indeed a werwolf and had left Kent on four feet, not two, he’d have been able to take nothing but his wolfskin with him, and would have needed to find garments and weapon at some other’s expense, before he could appear among men again. Yes. That other was doubtless a ghost wailing in the wind even now.

Tosti appeared to follow the bard’s thoughts no less than his meaning. He snarled, ‘I myself will cut the blood-eagle on your back!’

He did nothing, however. He seemed content to wait for Cerdic to hear his case and sanction such mutilation, which again caused the bard to marvel. Tosti was not known for his patience with forms of law. It was astounding, Tosti being Tosti, that he had not brought his great axe whistling into play there in the gateway, and Felimid was very much puzzled. Perhaps the giant was so sure of himself that he could endure waiting.

Cerdic heard both sides of the business, once he had broken fast.

‘This snivelling scut came among us in Kent for the Yule feast, as he’s come sneaking here!‘Tosti said. ‘Oh, he’s all flattery and smooth words, lord. I’ve heard ham. He can deceive a man or charm the heart out of a woman’s breast. for all that he’s neither one himself– the right stuff for a spy! And a spy he was! My master’s wizard Kisumola accused him of it; he’d learned by divination and spirits’ advice. We hung him by the heels above a wolf pit.

‘Somehow he escaped and fled into the Forest of Andred, stealing a kitchen girl to take with him. We hunted him there. but he led us into a trap in which many of us died, and King Oisc your father was almost among them. I had thought the bard dead until now.’

‘Indeed,’ Cerdic murmured, like distant thunder’s first faint rumble. ‘Felimid?’

‘He’s told about half the truth, lord, and more than misled you,’ the bard said boldly. ‘His talk of “we” this and “we” that is nonsense. I was hunted into the forest by men and dogs, but this reeky berserk was not among them, as he makes it sound. He lay abed with a sore shoulder wound I had given him, in a fight his own noisy insults bad provoked! And it’s delighted I’d be to hear him try to deny it.’

With an inarticulate roar, Tosti reached for him. The bard had been expecting that for some while, and he dodged, while at Cerdic’s sharp command a dozen powerful men seized the giant. Then the berserker fit came over him. His limbs contorted, his mouth foamed, and he struggled with preternatural strength. Cerdic’s dozen warriors had all they could do to hold him down until the fit passed, leaving him weak. One man’s hand was almost bitten off, his wrist-bones splintered by Tosti’s powerful teeth. Weeping and cursing by turns as his arm was treated, he begged his lord to be allowed to plunge a spear through Tosti’s heart.

‘Not yet,’ Cerdic said. ‘These are matters for judgement. You, Felimid; I’d say you have been less than frank with me. You said nothing of having been a guest in my father’s burg on Thanet, or of any trouble with him. I can see why you’d rather not. In itself that’s no proof of eveil intentions. You passed between the dragon’s jaws into my hall unscathed, which is strong proof the other way. Still, it doesn’t please me to be lied to.’

‘A matter of omission, mighty lord. If that merits punishment, then I must bear it.’

He’d no intention of bearing any punishment at all.

However. Cerdic had the ships to take him out of Britain, and in the light of that, it behooved him to talk softly.

‘Hmm,’ Cerdic said, looking at him hard. ‘You fought Tosti, and gave him defeat? I’d heard of that fight. News gets around, but even after last night, I didn’t conceive that you could be the man. You are so much smaller than he.’

‘He beat me by trickery!’ Tosti raved. Slaver and blood glistened on his beard. ‘Give me my axe, let me face him again! I will kill him! I will kill, kill!’

‘He speaks of trickery! Lord, it was he who sent the Finnish wizard to accuse me, after he’d lost an honest fight. I’d even let him live! Whether with bribery or threats, he put lies in the mouth of a drumming, dancing fraud—’

‘No fraud is that one,’ Tosti growled. ‘Who told me you survived the forest. and were to be found here, do you suppose? I do not love Kisumola, and I did not have him accuse you! But his power are real.’

‘He told you that I lived yet, and where to find me.

Did he truly? A moment ago you had not known I was alive until you saw me at the stockade’s gates. Fraud or no. Kisumola lied about me, and what other reason could he have had?

‘The woman helped me to escape and dared not then stay in Thanet. nor could I decently leave her. I’ll pay King Oisc compensation for the loss of her, and gladly, if you, my lord Cerdic. will take me raiding with you to raise the price.’ Felimid touched his gold arm-ring. ‘I have this, but it’s a royal gift I will not break, unless my arm breaks first.’

‘Then it were best that you settle this between you,’ Cerdic said thoughtfully. ‘There is nothing else to be done but send to Kent for witnesses, and we’d likely waste much time to get no nearer the truth. Felimid, are you willing to fight Tosti again?’

‘Willing and ready, lord.’ It was the only thing he could say. Anything else would have cost him Cerdic’s goodwill. Although he’d beaten Tosti once, he knew it had been partly because Tosti had despised him as an opponent, taking his easy slaughter for granted. The giant wouldn’t make that mistake again.

‘Willing and ready,’ he said again. ‘And should I, by some wild chance, lose, will you favor me by sending this gold ring by Tosti’s band to your sire, for his kitchen girl? That treachery misled him is not his fault.’ The bard did not by any means feel so forgiving, or hold Oisc of Kent in such regard, but there was no harm in the gesture. ‘And should I win, will you grant me the place in your ship that I’ve asked?’