The Bull and the Spear - 05 (17 page)

They had given him hatred, the Mabden, when they slew his family, cut off his hand and tore out his eye. They had given him fear, terror and a thirst for vengeance.

But they had also given him love. They had given him Rhalina. Now they gave him Medhbh.

These thoughts would sustain him a little, even warm him a little, and drive the despair to the edges of his mind so that he would ride on. Ride on for Caer Mahlod, the fortress on the hill, and those whose only hope he remained.

But Caer Mahlod seemed to grow further away. It seemed a year since he had seen the Fhoi Myore war-chariots on the horizon, heard the howling of the hounds. Perhaps Caer Mahlod had already fallen. Perhaps he would find Medhbh frozen as those others had been frozen, in battle posture, unaware that there would be no battle for them to fight, that they had already lost.

Another morning came. Corum's horse was slow now. It staggered sometimes as it caught its foot in a hidden furrow. It breathed with difficulty. Corum would have dismounted, if he could, and walked beside the horse to relieve its load, but he had neither the will nor the energy to get down. He began to regret that he had let Calatin have his scarlet robe. That small amount of extra heat might have saved his life, it now seemed. Had Calatin known this? Was that why Calatin had asked for the coat? An act of revenge?

He heard something. He raised his aching head and peered through his bloodshot, bleary eye. Figures blocking his way. Ghoolegh. He tried to straighten himself in the saddle, fumbling for his sword.

He urged his warhorse into a gallop, feebly waving the spear, Bryionak, a croaking battle-cry breaking from his frost-bitten lips.

And then the horse's forelegs buckled and it fell to the ground, pitching Corum over its head and leaving him exposed to the swords of his enemies.

But, thought Corum, as he sank into a coma, he would not feel the pain of their blades, at least; for a sense of warmth, of oblivion, was sweeping through him.

He smiled and let the darkness come.

THE THIRD CHAPTER

THE ICE PHANTOMS

He dreamed that he sailed a massive ship over an infinity of ice. The ship was raised on runners and had fifty sails. Whales inhabited the ice, and other strange creatures, too. Then he no longer sailed the ship, but rode in a chariot drawn by bears beneath a strange, dull sky. But the ice remained. Worlds bereft of heat. Old, dead worlds in the final stages of entropy. But everywhere was ice—harsh, gleaming ice. Ice which brought death to any who dared it. Ice which was the symbol of ultimate death, the death of the very universe itself. Corum groaned in his sleep.

"It is the one I heard of." The voice was soft, yet intrusive.

"Llaw Ereint?" came another's voice.

“ Aye. Who else could it be? There is the silver hand. And that is a Sidhi face, I'd swear, though I've never seen one."

Corum opened his single eye and glared at the speaker.

“ I am dead," said Corum, “ and would be grateful if you would allow me to be dead in peace."

“ You live," said the youth practically. He was a boy of about sixteen. Though his face and body were thin, starved, his eyes were bright and intelligent and, like most of the Mabden Corum had found here, he was well-formed. He had a great mop of blond hair, kept back from his eyes by a simple leather band. He had a fur cape over his shoulders and the familiar gold and silver collar and bangles on arms and ankles. "I am Bran. This is my brother, Teyrnon. You are Cremm, the god."

"God?" Corum began to realize that the people he had seen ahead of him had been Mabden, not Fhoi Myore. He smiled at the youth. "Do gods fall so easily from exhaustion."

Bran shrugged and ran his fingers through his hair. "I know nothing of the customs of gods. Could you not have been in disguise? Pretending to be a mortal in order to test us?"

"That is a fine way of looking at a rather more ordinary fact," said Corum. He turned to look at Teyrnon and then looked in surprise at Bran again. The two were virtually identical in features, though Bran's fur cloak was from a brown bear and Teyrnon's was from a tawny wolf. Corum looked up and realized that he saw the folds of a small tent in which he lay while Bran and Teyrnon crouched beside him.

"Who are you?" Corum asked. "Where are you from? Do you know aught of the fate of Caer Mahlod?"

"We are the Tuha-na-Ana—or what is left of that folk," the youth replied. "We are from a land to the east of Gwyddneu Garanhir, which in turn lies due south of Cremm Croich, your land. When the Fhoi Myore began to come, some of us fought them and thus perished. The rest of us—youths and old people for the most part—set off for Caer Mahlod, where we heard warriors resisted the Fhoi Myore. We lost our way and had to hide many times from the Fhoi Myore and their dogs, but now we are only a short distance from Caer Mahlod, which lies west of here."

"Caer Mahlod is my destination, too," said Corum, sitting up. "I carry the spear, Bryionak, with me and would tame the Bull of Crinanass."

"That Bull cannot be tamed," said Teyrnon softly. "We saw it less than two weeks since. We were hungry and hunted it for its meat, but it turned on our hunters and slew five of them with its sharp horns before it went away towards the West."

' 'If the Bull cannot be tamed,'' said Corum, accepting the mug of thin soup which Bran handed him and sipping it gratefully, "then Caer Mahlod is lost and you would be wiser to seek some other sanctuary."

"We were looking for Hy-Breasail," Bran told him seriously. "The Enchanted Isle beyond the sea. We thought we might be happy there and safe from the Fhoi Myore."

"Safe from the Fhoi Myore you would be," Corum said, "but not from your own fears. Do not seek Hy-Breasail, Bran of the Tuha-na-Ana, for it means awful death to Mabden folk. No, we shall all go together to Caer Mahlod, if the Fhoi Myore do not find us first, and I will see if I can speak to the Bull of Crinanass and make him see our point of view."

Bran shook his head skeptically. Teyrnon, his twin, echoed the gesture.

"We move on again in a few minutes," Teyrnon told Corum. "Will you be fit to ride again, then?"

"Is my horse still alive?"

"Alive and rested. We found a little grass for him." "Then I am fit to ride," said Comm.

There were less than thirty people in the band which moved slowly across the snow, and of those thirty more than a score were old men and women. There were three other boys like Bran and his brother Teyrnon and there were three girls, one of whom was less than ten years old. The younger children, it was learned, had perished in a sudden raid which the Hounds of Kerenos had made on the camp when the remnants of the tribe had first begun its trek to Caer Mahlod. Snow rimed the hair of all and made it sparkle. Corum joked that they were all kings and queens and wearing diamond crowns. They had been weaponless before he came and now he distributed his gear among them—a sword to one, a dirk to another, a lance each to two more, and his bow and arrow to Bran. He kept only the spear, Bryionak, as he rode at the head of the column or walked beside his horse which would take two or three old people at a time, for few had eaten much in recent months and they were all light enough.

Bran had estimated that they were still two days from Caer Mahlod, but the going began to get easier, the further west they travelled. Corum's spirits had begun to rise considerably and his horse's energy was increasing so that he was able to make short gallops ahead to spy out the land. Judging by the improvement in the weather, the Fhoi Myore had not yet reached the hill fortress.

The little party entered a valley late on the afternoon of what they hoped would be their last full day of travelling. It was not a particularly deep valley, but it offered some shelter from the icy wind which occasionally blew across the moor, and they welcomed any shelter. Corum noticed that on the slopes of the hills on either side of them were gleaming formations of ice which had perhaps been formed from waterfalls blown by a wind coming from the East. They were some distance into the valley and had decided to make camp for the night, although the sun had not yet set, when Corum looked up from watching the youths erecting the tents and saw a movement. He had been sure that one of the ice-shapes had changed its position. He put this down to his own tired vision and the failing light.

And then more of the shapes were moving and it was unmistakable—they were converging on the camp. Corum shouted the alarm and began to run towards his horse. The shapes were like gleaming phantoms, darting down the slopes into the valley. Corum saw an old woman at the far end of the camp throw up her arms in horror and turn to escape, but a shimmering, ghostly figure seemed to absorb her and drag her back up the hill. Hardly before anyone was aware of it, two more old women were seized and dragged away. Now the camp was in a furor. Bran shot two accurate shafts at the ice phantoms, but the arrows merely passed through them. Corum hurled the spear, Bryionak, at another where its head might be, but Bryionak came sailing back to his hand without having harmed the phantom. However, it seemed that the things were timid for, once they had taken their prey, they faded back again into the hills. Corum heard Bran and Teyrnon shout and begin to run together up the steep slopes in pursuit of one of the phantoms. Corum called to them that the chase would be futile and would put them in even greater danger, but they would not listen. Corum paused for a moment and then followed.

The darkness was creeping in now. Shadows fell across the snow. The sky bore only a tinge of sunlight, a smear of blood in milk. At the best of times this was poor light for hunting—and the ice phantoms would be hard to see in the full brightness of noon.

Corum managed to keep Bran and Teyrnon in sight, but only just. Bran had paused to shoot a third arrow at what he thought to be an ice phantom. Teyrnon pointed and they ran off in another direction altogether, Corum still calling to them, though he feared to attract the attention of the strange creatures the two boys pursued.

It grew darker still.

"Bran!" shouted Corum. "Teyrnon!"

And then he found them and they were kneeling in the snow and they were weeping. Corum looked and saw that they knelt beside what was probably the body of one of the old women.

"Is she dead?" he murmured.

"Aye," said Bran, "our mother is dead."

Corum had not known that one of the women had been the youths' mother. He let out a deep, long sigh and turned away, and looked into the shadowy, grinning faces of three of the phantoms.

Corum cried out, raising Bryionak to stab at the things. Silently the phantoms moved upon him. He felt their tendrils touch his skin and his flesh began to freeze. This was how they paralyzed their victim and this was how they fed, drawing his heat into their own bodies. Perhaps this was how those people he had seen before had died, beside the lake. Corum despaired of saving either his life or those of the two boys. There was no means of fighting such intangible foes.

And then the tip of the spear, Bryionak, began to glow a peculiar orange-red, and when the tip touched one of the ice phantoms the creature hissed and disappeared, becoming no more than a cloud of steam in the air; and then the steam dispersed. Corum did not question the power of the spear. He swung it at the other two phantoms, touching them lightly with the glowing tip, and they, too, vanished. It was as if the ice phantoms needed heat to live, but too much heat overloaded them and they perished.

' 'We must make fires,'' Corum told the boys’.' 'Brands. That will keep them away. And we will not camp here. We will march—by torchlight. It does not matter if the Fhoi Myore or any of their servants see us. It would be best to reach Caer Mahlod as soon as possible, for we have no means of knowing what other creatures like these the Fhoi Myore command."

Bran and Teyrnon picked up their mother's corpse between them and began to follow Corum down the hillside. The tip of the spear, Bryionak now faded again until it looked as it had always looked— merely a well-made spearhead.

In the camp Corum told the others of his decision and all were agreed.

And so they moved on, the ice phantoms lurking just beyond the light which the torches cast, making small gasping sounds, little wet, pleading sounds, until they had passed through the valley and were on the other side.

The phantoms did not follow them, but still they marched on, for the wind had turned for the moment and it brought the salty Smell of the sea. They knew that they must surely be close to Caer Mahlod and sanctuary. But they knew, too, that the Fhoi Myore and all whom the Fhoi Myore commanded were nearby, and this gave even the oldest of the folk new energy and speed, and all prayed that they would be spared until the morning when they must surely see Caer Mahlod ahead.