Celtika (25 page)

Jason threw the remnants of his wine into the darkness. As he stood, Ruvio struggled in his harness, disturbed by the angry mood close by. Above us, clouds rocked against the moon.

‘There’s a libation for you, dear Lady,’ Jason said. ‘Here’s another.’

He opened his britches and pissed against the bulkhead.

He had stepped into the place where even I dared not go except by invitation. He crouched there, below the struts and knotted ropes, and banged his fist against the double hull, but not in anger, more as if summoning.

Lemanku had been blinded because he had breached this threshold, in his enthusiasm to build a new and better ship. Jason, drunk, had entered Argo’s heart with impunity, but Argo remained silent. Had a new threshold been crossed, then? Just as I began to need the ship in a way I had never anticipated, was Jason now signalling his desertion? His words seemed to suggest so:

‘So many old ships are buried here,’ he whispered as he stroked the wood. ‘So much
time
creaks and complains in these old and new timbers. So many forgotten worlds, but worlds still here! Though perhaps not forgotten by you, Merlin,’ he added, glancing at me quickly. ‘But worlds still here, if only in the shadows. Each ship was built with timber, skill, adventure and purpose—and was guarded by a spirit from its age. And they’re all there still, those spirits, that’s my belief. They’re all alive there, behind this birch and oak, and the right words can bring them back. Your new witch doesn’t scare me, Merlin.’

My
new witch? Did Jason think I was responsible for Mielikki’s presence? I’d done nothing more than attend at the forest rite, when the birch was cut.

‘My old witch helped me when I needed her,’ he was rambling bitterly. ‘Hera! She’ll help me again if I call loud enough. This ice-hearted crone has done nothing yet. She’s given me no sign at all of what lies ahead!’ He stared up at the leaning figurehead and Forest Lady stared back, grey and hard-eyed in the moonlight, slash-mouthed and lank-haired, watching Argo’s captain with almost challenging indifference.

I wondered if I should tell him that I believed Hera and her ghostly predecessors had abandoned the ship, so much time having passed as Argo, lay frozen on the bed of the lake. Argo had felt dead on rising through the ice. But I couldn’t be sure. And I was afraid it would cost me too much of my life to make the journey and find out.

‘Have you asked her for help?’

‘Twice. When we were moored by Urtha’s fortress.’

So that’s what he had been doing!

‘What did you ask her for?’

He seemed surprised by the question. ‘A sight of my
son,
of course. Or a direction to someone who might help to find him. Anything! Hope! What else? A dream to hold, to concentrate my mind while we sail.’

‘But you
know
where he is. He’s with Brennos, among the army gathering on the shores of the Daan, waiting for whatever madness Brennos has in mind.’

The empty wine pouch was slapped against my face, a reprimand. ‘I had
two
sons, Merlin. Do you imagine that I’ve forgotten Kinos? My little Kinos? If Thesokorus is still alive, why not him? But you’re right.’

I’d said nothing to be right about, merely watched him.

‘You’re right. One son at a time. Thesokorus should be in my mind first because at least he’s in my grasp.’ He rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘You can have the ship, Merlin. Take over as captain. You have the eyes of a hawk, the ears of an owl, you’re older than mountains, but I know you’re human because I’ve seen the way you look at that girl, half in lust, half in fear. Only men are confused by those two feelings. You can have your little confidences with the Frost Bitch, old Lady Gnarled Wood. Fuck her in her knot-holes, for all I care. I’m sure you’ll find she has more than one. But I’m sorry I pissed on her.’ He turned unsteadily away. ‘I’m sorry I pissed on you!’ he shouted to the figurehead, again disturbing Ruvio and several of the slumbering argonauts. ‘It won’t happen again!’

He slumped down beside me, eyed me carefully, then shook his head.

‘I need to ask. I have to know,’ he whispered. ‘Not knowing claws at me.’

I knew what was coming. This was the real reason for his drunken fury. He had put off asking for too long. Now he needed to know about Medea.

He said, ‘She taunts me in my dreams, running from me, a bloody head in each hand. The image haunts me, Merlin. She turns, laughs, and tosses the trophies to me, and I catch them. Cold, bloody balls of flesh and bone, young faces grimacing at me. A terrible dream—’

‘But just a dream. We can break that dream.’

He turned to me, tearful and anguished, the drink taking its hold on him. ‘What happened to her? Did she have a long life?’

I could only tell him what I’d heard, though the news wouldn’t please him. ‘She lived to a great age. After her father died, she returned to Colchis, safe again, and set up her sanctuary. Her tomb lies in the Valley of the Crow, north of Colchis. Though it has been desecrated several times.’

‘That was me,’ Jason muttered with a hard, bitter smile. ‘Reaching from the lake! Or if it wasn’t, it should have been.’

Then he looked into his empty leather flask. ‘Well. That’s that. Now I know. And it doesn’t help. Perhaps we should find some better wine … less
sour!
’

*   *   *

We rowed on, the days marked as different only by the changing colour of the forests and the rise and fall of the crags and cliffs that towered so silently above us as the river narrowed. We saw fires burning, one day at dusk, and Argo slowed while Jason and Gebrinagoth studied the low island in the water, a long spit of land, heavily wooded, its shores partially stockaded. A line of youths waited there, watching us, some of them armed.

When Gebrinagoth called out, asking if we might put ashore, children of several ages appeared suddenly and curiously, peering round the cloaks and trousers of their elder companions.

‘No!’ came the answering call. Older men appeared now. One of them called to us, ‘If you’re looking for the other ships, they passed by more than a month ago.’

‘I counted more than forty,’ came a second voice. ‘Drumming hard. In a hurry.’

Suddenly Gebrinagoth realised the nature of this island in the river.

‘It’s the Place without Mercy,’ he said. ‘Among the families who rule along the north of the river, when a father suspects the legitimacy of his newly born son, he casts him into the water. Legitimately born children swim ashore, saved by Reinag, Reinu’s dreamy, kindly husband. Illegitimate ones are swept away to the sea and drown. A few, I’ve heard, find the strength to swim against the flow, to this haven. Reinu doesn’t allow them to leave the island, but she keeps them alive. These are those survivors.’

*   *   *

Not long after, we found the forty ships. Most had been drawn up on to the shore, roped down and covered; a few had been scuttled and lay drowned in shallow water. One had been burned. Its charred hulk was set apart from the rest, inside a shallow trench. The blackened corpses of several animals lay within it.

The war bands who had beached these ships had continued their journey to Brennos by cart, chariot and horse over the southern hills, following a wide path through the forest. The route would take them weeks, but they had not thought to drag their vessels as now Jason organised the dragging of Argo.

There was an hour of delight among those of the argonauts who knew about these matters, since the rollers for the ship could be cut from the masts of the beached vessels, saving time and effort in the woods. The covers were thrown off and the stocky masts thrown down, trimmed to make them level along their widths, and of manageable lengths for three or four men to carry them forward as the rolling road was laid.

We would have to follow the forest path for a day, in the wake of the war bands, but then turn east again, ascend and descend a sequence of hills, and cross a dangerous expanse of marsh. On our own, twenty men and women only, we would need a month to haul our boat, our supplies and ourselves across that land.

But we had Ruvio, the Dacian horse, and he would prove to be tireless.

*   *   *

Niiv and Rubobostes returned on Ruvio from their sortie up river, assessing its accessibility to Argo. The Dacian was looking confused.

‘Rocky shallows and rapids is all I can see. I’m not surprised these ships were drawn ashore here. But the girl disagrees.’

Niiv was excited. ‘There are fingers of water everywhere,’ she told me in front of Jason. ‘They fan out. Some of them are deep. I can smell them. They come from the hills and woodlands. All we have to do is find them. I’m sure we can find them—with a little help,’ she added meaningfully.

I thought for a moment she meant from me, but she made it clear she was referring to Argo herself, in particular to Argo’s guardian.

‘Old Lady Forest can open ice and split open the log-jams of rivers. She could
lift
Argo through the shallows. We can get so much further by water. Less dragging,’ she added.

Erdzwulf confirmed that several rivers poured into the flow of the Rein at this point, and that yes, if they
were
navigable, then indeed they could bring us to the edge of the Wolf Marsh, and only one mountain pass away from the headwaters of the Daan.

‘But they’re not. Not navigable, I mean.’

‘Not yet,’ Niiv volunteered, her eyes sparkling. ‘Let me talk to Mielikki. Merlin, come with me? Please? She seems to favour you.’

I agreed, though I felt apprehensive after Jason’s rude rejection of the ship a few nights before. Mielikki had exacted no revenge for the old Achaean’s drunken heresy, but I remembered her sudden violence at our departure from Pohjola as much as I remembered her kindness in showing Urtha his surviving children, and warning me of a shadow presence watching me from the Spirit of the Ship.

Alone, on board, I rested in Ruvio’s harnessing while Niiv sang delightfully to the goddess, her long hair liquid in the torchlight as she weaved her shoulders and head in the rhythm of her song. Frost-faced Mielikki watched her with no softening of the features on the wood, but after a while Niiv was silent. She drew her cloak about her shoulders, her hood over her head, stood and turned to me. When she stepped towards me I saw more bone than flesh in the beautiful face.

‘Put out the torch,’ the girl said. ‘Get them all on board. Row according to my directions.’

The voice was Niiv’s, but her breath, as it reached me, was of stinking swamp.

The argonauts were roused from a sleep induced by feasting. Muttering and complaining they dragged aboard the rollers we would need, then took their places at the oars. But Niiv instructed them to blindfold their eyes.

‘Rowing blind and at night? And in rocky water? This is madness,’ Manandoun complained, but Jason silenced him.

‘You too, Jason,’ Niiv commanded. She had taken the steering oar and stood there, braced against its shaft. Her faced glowed with frost and moonlight. Jason was obedient, a man humbled, perhaps, by the recognition that Argo was going to assist our passage despite his harsh words.

He tied a cloth around his eyes and took over my place at the oar. I went forward. Niiv shouted to me: ‘Don’t look too deeply, Merlin. But you may look a little.’

She knew I would understand what was happening, but she was showing off a little, and there was no harm in that. I’d let her use her own enchantment.

She commanded the moorings loosed and the oars to strike. Argo lurched on the river, then seemed to glide, the oar blades tickling the water almost in silence.

The shore crowded in on us and the river ran fast and white below the prow, but Argo kept moving forward, into the hills, always turning left where two streams joined. Sometimes the vessel shuddered, sometimes shook as we grazed over gravel beds. The branches of alder and willow raked the deck. The men rowed steadily, though, their pull directed by the rhythm in Niiv’s eerie song, which she called a
northsong.
She swayed on the shaft as if the steering oar was as light as a feather.

‘Don’t look back!’ she commanded when I glanced at her, and I obeyed, but not before I had seen the distant glow of sunlight behind her, as if we moved through a tunnel. Above us, the moon was horned and bright. Jupiter gleamed steadily, four tiny golden birds dancing attendance on it. The river narrowed further. Not even a coracle could have floated here now. But Argo slid like a swan in the night, a seemingly endless night, moved by song and guided by magic.

I left her to her own devices.

‘This is a long stretch,’ Elkavar announced after several hours. ‘Has the day come up? Might we rest? Might we sip something?’

‘No rest,’ Niiv said. Again I glanced back. Mielikki loomed above the girl, a frightening silhouette against that ruby sun.

‘Then perhaps a different song,’ the Hibernian insisted, but Niiv hissed, ‘Silence your tongue. A different song is a different spell!’

She picked up the
northsong
again. Argo pressed on, along streams and channels that could not possibly have taken her draft.

Creatures moved through the woods that crowded round us, heads raised curiously against the stars, eyes gleaming as they stared down at us. If the argonauts had not been blindfolded I believe they would have panicked. I saw a wolf’s maw and the muzzle of a stag. Bright-eyed owls blinked as the frail craft passed below them, and for one terrible moment the sky darkened as a crow flew from its nest, swooped low above us and decided that we were too strange to devour.

‘This is as far as we go,’ Niiv suddenly announced. ‘Ship oars!’

This was done, but the exhausted crew remained at their seats, still blindfolded as Niiv instructed. She ordered them ashore and they stumbled from the craft, crawling up the steep bank. Rubobostes, working in the dark, tethered his horse round the stern of Argo and with the rest of us pushing the beast heaved and laboured, drawing the ship from the water, dragging Argo a hundred paces through the undergrowth, where she slipped slightly to the side and rested.