Bard I (31 page)

‘In lead and in shut mouths.’ Sergius replied. ‘This is useful, but I had about supposed as much for myself. Is there no more you can tell me?’

Felimid knit his brows, thinking, he was well aware, for his life. If he claimed too little knowledge, Sergius would decide that he was useless; if too much, that he was lying.

Felimid said, ‘I did pass by such a villa, half a year since, while travelling to Thanet. There were fire­scorched stone walls, half fallen down, and a litter of broken roof-tiles covered the floors. I remember no pave that pictured a bull. By the divisions of the fields, and they still show though they have been fallow a long time, it must have been a great estate, as you say– but I’m thinking it lay too far over eastward.’

‘You will guide us there and we will look.’

‘Lord, let it be done. But Kent is held now by the Jutes under King Oisc. They do not love intruders. Even the common folk have spears and axes always ready to hand, and they are hard fighters. Their dogs are savage too.’

‘I’ve heard this. But they have had their reverses lately, and they are neither horsemen nor archers. My Bulgars were both from the time they were born-and as for bard fighters, ask them in Thrace! Ask those who man the forts along the Danube!’

A young girl screamed as she ran from behind a hut.

A grinning Bulgar caught her, slapped her head back and forth several times with a stone-hard palm, and dragged her towards shadow. Her brother dared object. The Bulgar instantly slid a foot of curved blade up through his viscera, lungs and heart. The youth fell dead. His sister threw herself upon him, her screams rising to an appalling, grief-stricken pitch.

‘If you dispute him, he will serve you the same,’ Sergius told the horrified bard.

‘They are a – devout band of pilgrims you lead.’ Sergius shrugged. ‘They are pagan, and the villagers half pagan at least. It matters not what they do to each other. I am come to take sanctity’s bones to a proper resting place. Without the Bulgars, I could not have journeyed this far alive.’

‘Can you trust them not to slay you?’ Felimid asked, with a certain hope in his mind.

‘They are my sworn men, bound to me by oaths of blood. For a Bulgar, that is an unbreakable claim. I have tested them in other places than this. Nay, they numbered seventeen when we set out, and eight have fallen by the wayside in no idle sense. Those remaining have not wavered.’

Loosing a sigh, Felimid visibly relaxed. He was unarmed, after all. But in his mind he swore a bloody oath, as the child’s screams echoed in the night.

* * *

The Bulgars sat around a great scorching fire, now fallen into red embers. It had devoured the village store of fuel, and parts of several huts. An ox the people could not spare had been roasted. The Bulgars’ faces shone with grease and contentment. They were in a mood for song. They gave the bard to understand that if he did not please them, perhaps they would roast him too.

Felimid left the fire on the pretext of fetching his harp. It was the opportunity he’d waited for. In the friendly shadows, he gripped the village headman by the arms and said low, ‘Give the word to your people that they must move away from the fire and stop their ears when I play. As a bard of power, I tell you that if they fail it will be their destruction. But if they do this thing, I’ll give them back their village.’

He returned to the fire, cradling the harp Golden Singer in his arms. He felt her whispering, soul to soul, and there was a fey look in his green eyes. Yet the question he put to Sergius was commonplace as could be.

‘Have they Latin?’

‘None of them. Kugal there has foully mangled Greek, but he’s the only one-and of their wolf-barking I’ve a few yelps only.’

‘Then you will have to give him the gist of it, and he them.’

Felimid knew little that could appeal to a bloody­handed Hun, or even what one might call music, but he’d sung of Sigifrid Fafnir’s-bane to the lutes. He knew how the Burgund kingdom had been broken by the Huns under Attila, eighty years before, and with that he hoped to tickle their pride. He expanded the story to the conquest of all Germanic tribes. and the breaking of Rome’s northern frontiers. (He knew nothing of the Hunnic disasters at Chalons and the Nedao, nor would he have mentioned them.) Kugal unbent sufficiently to nod.

The villagers surreptitiously crept out of sight and hearing, a few at a time.

Now!

The enchanted harp could produce three strains; one for laughter, one for sorrow, and a third for sleep. None of the three could be resisted. He might have harped sleep upon these men, but that had been a gentle kindness he felt in no mood to give; nor was there much laughter in his soul, just then. He sat by the fire, and played sorrow.

It began gently, so gently. The harp-strings uttered a sigh, a melancholy breath of sound. It captivated with sadness, made a man think maudlin thoughts and cherish them. Then, without warning, it gripped hard and held hard, tormenting with anguish. Although Felimid never moved from where he sat, he had gone away somewhere distant and enclosed. He was immune to what he did.

The Bulgars shuddered and knew they were nothing.

Their fathers had ridden across the world. From the Caspian to the Baltic the Huns had been absolute masters. What were they now? Where were they? That was the dread of it, the mighty and terrible brought down to the same dust as slaves.

Kugal’s many victims sobbed and groaned in his head. He was they, they were he. Iron, constricting grief covered him, and despair like a shroud. Beyond thought, beneath manhood, he whimpered on his belly.

Felimid’s smile was cruel. He paced around the fire, tearing pain from golden strings. As with Kugal, so it was with the others. Even Sergius ploughed his face through the dirt in slow writhings, and blubbered. His brain shook. His nerves were chilled.

The Bulgars were never out of reach of their weapons.

As he walked, Felimid kicked their bows, their quivers, their lances into the shimmering coals. The weapons smoked briefly. Yellow flames sprang to life and began their meal.

The harp-strain never faltered. Sometimes it cried high and sometimes it wept low, and at last it ceased, but it never faltered.

Felimid made one more circuit of the fire. The Bulgars did not resist as he drew their sabres and flung those, too, on the burning pile. The wood and leather of the grips began to char away. The blades would be too hot to hold and their temper ruined by the time the Bulgars recovered from their trance of sorrow. Last of all, the bard unbuckled his own stolen weapon from around Sergius’s waist. The Greek pawed feebly at him with tear-stained hands.

Sleep, laughter and sorrow. Let them sleep forever; let Arawn laugh when he welcomed them to the House of Cold; let their sorrow be lasting. The villagers would see to them. now that their teeth were drawn.

Felimid saddled and bridled the dun gelding. He no longer wished to stay. His waiting enemy was dreadful, but he was one creature, not a frenzied mob such as the villagers might become when their awe faded somewhat. Their bloodlust could well encompass all strangers among them, even-or perhaps especially-their saviour.

And perhaps, after all, Tosti was nowhere about. In three nine-nights there had been no sign of him. Still, the bard drew the sword Kincaid, and rested him across the dun gelding’s withers as he rode forth in the empty exhaustion that was the price of magic. The villagers watched him go, the awe of what he’d done clinging to him like a mantle of shadow.

Then they recovered their wits.

Then it was time for hate to run free.

A
RAVENING
HOWL
BROKE
ACROSS
THE
DOWNS
. Felimid, two or three miles east of the village by then, felt his skin turn cold and move in ripples on his flesh, despite the balmy night. That was not just any wolf.

Tosti Fenrir’s-get was after him.

He did not even attempt to believe he’d heard some ordinary or even natural wolf. His dun gelding. the trained war-horse from King Agloval’s stables. snorted with fear at the bare sound and lenghtened its stride to run. Felimid drew rein sharply. No use to run. Nothing on four legs could distance a manwolf. or match its endurance.

Felimid tossed up the sword of Ogma in a wheeling flicker of starlight on metal. The weapon turned over, came down, and the staghorn grips fitted neatly into Felimid’s palm as he caught it. Here was their hope. No harp-strain could balk Tosti or stop him – but the silver in the blade made it a potent weapon. The cat’s-head pommel was silver, as were the oghams running down the superlatively crafted blade. On one side they said,
‘I was made by the hand of Goibniu for the hand of Ogma,’ and on the other, ‘See that I slay those who need slaying, ye who wield me.’

The wolf howled again, mindless eager and far closer Nothing was left of the man but hate and purpose.

The dun gelding took the bit in its teeth and bolted. This time, Felimid did not try to hold it back. It would rebel, buck and roll in a frenzy to be rid of his constraint and run freely, far away. Like all animals, it could sense magic.

Points of cold fire above, coarse grass below. Thudding roll of hoofs and dim undulation of land eastward. Bunch and desperate stretch of muscle. Hand on sword and endless roving of eyes.

Then Tosti was there, rough-coated, white as bitterest frost, his eyes pale as water in a dish. lambent and hating. His lip wrinkled back from bone-cracking teeth in a mortal, mirthless grin. Loping he came, with a gait that lurched, touching his right fore-paw but lightly to the ground. He was huge; he seemed half as big as the horse. His lame foot did not perceptibly hinder him. He rushed in––

Felimid’s bright blade flashed down in all its terror. The wolf slid aside, elusive as marshlights. Slay! Bite off that hand! Bring down the horse!

He darted in from behind for a hamstringing bite.

Twisting about from the hips. Felimid cut backhand. Again the raw dazzle of metal, more savage to Tosti than any direct gaze of the Sun’s eye. He was untouched, but the mere proximity of silver sent a fear through his beast-nerves that he couldn’t defy. He melted in retreat for the second time.

And came back.

Again, and again, and again.

The gelding raced, blind in its abysmal terror. Felimid had no concern to spare for it. Nothing mattered but the wolf, the snarling. darting wolf that fell back from his agile weapon-hand time after time, and ever returned. It was the nightmare in which one constantly fends off a thing which cannot be stopped.

When Felimid tried to strike home, the wolf simply wasn’t there. Untiring, unrelenting, he bounded in and out, like one of Arawn’s annihilating white hounds. His color helped the bard to hold him at bay; he was easy to see-but he moved like a flame, like a shadow, like a ghost that couldn’t be touched, and Felimid knew that if his fear-stricken horse fell, or he himself was thrown, it would be the end.

Felimid panted and shuddered with the strain of defence; the wolf was maddened by this endless frustrating of his attacks.

Tear out horse’s throat! Thick hot sail blood! Bring down, screaming . . . dog with hurting bright wand of pain. Make him fall!

Craving never fulfilled; madness. The sword of Ogma sprang and whirled in an endless dance; Felimid’s hand never slowed, though it was long after midnight, and the stars were paling for dawn. If the wolf did not bring down his enemy soon, sunlight would force him out of the skin. He’d be human then and naked, and unweaponed. No! The creature howled a raging protest at the sky.

It lunged for one of the dun’s pounding forelegs. to crack it in massive jaws. Felimid’s eyes and sword flickered down. but an iron-shod hoof struck first, by blindest chance. The wolf hurtled head over tail. Felimid glimpsed its broken skull. He could have sworn he saw it bound to its feet. shattered skull and all. the brains, bones and scalp mending in instants, flowing together. . . and he must have seen it, because almost immediately the wolf returned. No injury was visible.

When a werwolf is out of the skin, it can be killed by anything that would kill a normal man or woman. When it wears the skin in beastly form, nothing can kill it, except silver.

Felimid cut and stabbed incessantly. Pain was heavy and dull in the marrow, ablaze in every joint of weapon­hand, arm and shoulder. His lungs hurt; his legs ached. Gasping and foam-spattered, the poor brute he rode was near foundering. He’d ridden and swung a brand forever. To no gain at all. And the lightening sky was in front of him.

The monster was herding, driving them eastward;

some remnant of human cunning must still inform the beast’s brain. They were surely deep in King Oisc’s undisputed lands. Fclimid seldom hated, but he hated Tosti now, would have killed him at the cost of his own death immediately after.

Where is he? There! Here! Skewer him through! Na, he’s out of reach and laughing, laughing without sound. Have I died? Is this my torment in the House of Cold? Is this Tosti the manwolf, or a hound of Arawn’s death-pack?

Because song and verse came almost as naturally to Felimid as breathing, and because he wanted to defy. to course, he rasped a chant against the ubiquitous white form.

‘The wolf is a hunter deserving of meat;

It fits a poor mongrel to snarl and retreat.

Wolf! Cur! Come lick my feet!

‘Forage for offal in some broken town,

Or walk as a man and pretend to renown.

Wolf! Curl Cringe belly down!

‘Sniff round the hut of some terrified slave,

Bear off a child and think yourself brave!

Wolf! Cur! Tear up a grave!’

Tosti flashed out of the dark like an arrow, in fury too great for even silver to daunt him. Whether a beast’s rage drove him, or the stung pride of King Oisc’s warrior henchman, Felimid never knew. With a gasped, exultant cry, Felimid tensed his arm to drive steel down the gaping red throat-and the dun crashed forward, sobbing from broken lungs.