The Buried Giant (37 page)

“Not another word on it, Sir Gawain. I never think well of a warrior who leans on the speedy draw of a blade to take advantage of his opponent. So let’s meet with swords ready drawn, just as you suggest.”

“I thank you, sir. And in return, though I see your arm strapped, I vow not to seek any special advantage of it.”

“I’m grateful, sir, though this injury’s a trivial one.”

“Well then, sir. With your permission.”

The old knight drew his sword—indeed it seemed to take some time—and placed the point into the ground, just as he had done earlier at the giant’s cairn. But instead of leaning on it, he stood there regarding his weapon up and down with a mixture of weariness and affection. Then he took the sword in both hands and raised it—and Gawain’s posture took on an unmistakable grandeur.

“I’ll turn away now, Axl,” Beatrice said. “Tell me when it’s finished, and let it not be long or unclean.”

At first both men held their swords pointing downwards, so as not to exhaust their arms. From his vantage point, Axl could see their positions clearly: at most five strides apart, Wistan’s body angled slightly to the left away from his opponent’s. They held these positions for a time, then Wistan moved three slow steps to his right, so that to all appearances, his outside shoulder was no longer protected by his sword. But to take advantage, Gawain would have had
to close the gap very rapidly, and Axl was hardly surprised when the knight, gazing accusingly at the warrior, himself moved to the right with deliberate strides. Wistan meanwhile changed the grip of both his hands on his sword, and Axl could not be sure Gawain had noticed the change—Wistan’s body possibly obscuring the knight’s view. But now Gawain too was changing his hold, letting the sword’s weight fall from the right arm to the left. Then the two men became fixed in their new positions, and to an innocent spectator, they may have looked, in relation to one another, practically unchanged from before. Yet Axl could sense that these new positions had a different significance. It had been a long time since he had had to consider combat in such detail, and there remained a frustrating sense that he was failing to see half of what was unfolding before him. But he knew somehow the contest had reached a critical point; that things could not be held like this for long without one or the other combatant being forced to commit himself.

Even so, he was taken aback by the suddenness with which Gawain and Wistan met. It was as if they had responded to a signal: the space between them vanished, and the two were suddenly locked in tense embrace. It happened so quickly it appeared to Axl the men had abandoned their swords and were now holding one another in a complicated and mutual armlock. As they did so, they rotated a little, like dancers, and Axl could then see that their two blades, perhaps because of the huge impact of their coming together, had become melded as one. Both men, mortified by this turn of events, were now doing their best to prise the weapons apart. But this was no easy task, and the old knight’s features were contorted with the effort. Wistan’s face, for the moment, was not visible, but Axl could see the warrior’s neck and shoulders shaking as he too did all he could to reverse the calamity. But their efforts were in vain: with each moment, the two swords seemed to fasten more thoroughly, and surely there
was nothing for it but to abandon the weapons and start the contest afresh. Neither man, though, appeared willing to give up, even as the effort threatened to drain them of their strength. Then something gave and the blades came apart. As they did so, some dark grain—perhaps the substance that had caused the blades to fasten together in the first place—flew up into the air between them. Gawain, with a look of astonished relief, reeled halfway round and sank to one knee. Wistan, for his part, had been carried by the momentum into turning a near circle, and had come to a halt pointing his now liberated sword towards the clouds beyond the cliff, his back fully turned to the knight.

“God protect him,” Beatrice said beside him, and Axl realised she had been watching all the while. When he looked down again, Gawain had lowered his other knee to the ground. Then the tall figure of the knight fell slowly, twistingly, onto the dark grass. There he struggled a moment, like a man in his sleep trying to make himself more comfortable, and when his face was turned to the sky, even though his legs were still folded untidily beneath him, Gawain seemed content. As Wistan approached with a concerned stride, the old knight appeared to say something, but Axl was too far to hear. The warrior remained standing over his opponent for some time, his sword held forgotten at his side, and Axl could see dark drops falling from the tip of the blade onto the soil.

Beatrice pressed herself against him. “He was the she-dragon’s defender,” she said, “yet showed us kindness. Who knows where we’d be now without him, Axl, and I’m sorry to see him fallen.”

He pressed Beatrice close to him. Then releasing her, he climbed down a little way to where he could see better Gawain’s body lying on the earth. Wistan had been correct: the blood had flowed only to where the ground rose in a kind of lip at the cliff’s edge, and was pooling there with no danger of spilling over. The sight caused a
melancholy to sweep over him, but also—though it was a distant and vague one—the feeling that some great anger within him had at long last been answered.

“Bravo, sir,” Axl called down. “Now there’s nothing stands between you and the she-dragon.”

Wistan, who had all the while been staring down at the fallen knight, now came slowly, somewhat giddily, to the foot of the mound, and when he looked up appeared to be in something of a dream.

“I learned long ago,” he said, “not to fear Death as I fought. Yet I thought I heard his soft tread behind me as I faced this knight. Long in years, yet he was close to getting the better of me.”

The warrior seemed then to notice the sword still in his hand, and made as though to thrust it into the soft earth at the foot of the mound. But at the last moment he stopped himself, the blade almost at the soil, and straightening, said: “Why clean this sword yet? Why not let this knight’s blood mingle with the she-dragon’s?”

He came up the side of the mound, his gait still somewhat like a drunkard’s. Brushing past them, he leant over a rock and gazed down into the pit, his shoulders moving with each breath.

“Master Wistan,” Beatrice said gently. “We’re now impatient to see you slay Querig. But will you bury the poor knight after? My husband here’s weary and must save his strength for what remains of our journey.”

“He was a kin of the hated Arthur,” Wistan said, turning to her, “yet I’ll not leave him to the crows. Rest assured, mistress, I’ll see to him, and may even lay him down in this pit, beside the creature he so long defended.”

“Then hurry, sir,” Beatrice said, “and finish the task. For though she’s feeble, we’ll not be easy till we know she’s slain.”

But Wistan seemed no longer to hear her, for he was now gazing at Axl with a faraway expression.

“Are you well, sir?” Axl asked eventually.

“Master Axl,” the warrior said, “we may not meet again. So let me ask one last time. Could you be that gentle Briton from my boyhood who once moved like a wise prince through our village, making men dream of ways to keep innocents beyond the reach of war? If you have a remembrance of it, I ask you to confide in me before we part.”

“If I was that man, sir, I see him today only through the haze of this creature’s breath, and he looks a fool and a dreamer, yet one who meant well, and suffered to see solemn oaths undone in cruel slaughter. There were others spread the treaty through the Saxon villages, but if my face stirs something in you, why suppose it was another’s?”

“I thought it when we first met, sir, but couldn’t be sure. I thank you for your frankness.”

“Then speak frankly to me in turn, for it’s a thing shifts within me since our meeting yesterday, and perhaps, in truth, for far longer. This man you remember, Master Wistan. Is he one of whom you would seek vengeance?”

“What are you saying, husband?” Beatrice pushed forward, placing herself between Axl and the warrior. “What quarrel can there be between you and this warrior? If there is one, he’ll need strike me first.”

“Master Wistan talks of a skin I shed before we two ever met, princess. One I hoped had long crumbled on a forgotten path.” Then to Wistan: “What do you say, sir? Your sword still drips. If it’s vengeance you crave, it’s a thing easily found, though I beg you protect my dear wife who trembles for me.”

“That man was one I once adored from afar, and it’s true there were times later I wished him cruelly punished for his part in the betrayal. Yet I see today he may have acted with no cunning, wishing well for his own kin and ours alike. If I met him again, sir, I’d bid him go in peace, even though I know peace now can’t hold for long. But excuse me, friends, and let me go down and end my errand.”

Down in the pit, neither the dragon’s position nor posture had changed: if her senses were warning her of the proximity of strangers—and of one in particular making his way down the steep side of the pit—Querig gave no indication of it. Or could it be the rise and fall of her spine had become a little more pronounced? And was there a new urgency in the hooded eye as it opened and shut? Axl could not be sure. But as he continued to gaze down at the creature, the idea came to him that the hawthorn bush—the only other thing alive in the pit—had become a source of great comfort to her, and that even now, in her mind’s eye, she was reaching for it. Axl realised the idea was fanciful, yet the more he watched, the more credible it seemed. For how was it a solitary bush was growing in a place like this? Could it not be that Merlin himself had allowed it to grow here, so that the dragon would have a companion?

Wistan was continuing his descent, his sword still unsheathed. His gaze rarely strayed from the spot where the creature lay, as if he half expected her to rise suddenly, transformed into a formidable demon. At one stage he slipped, and dug his sword into the ground to avoid sliding some way down on his backside. This episode sent stones and gravel cascading down the slope, but Querig still gave no response.

Then Wistan was safely on the ground. He wiped his forehead, glanced up at Axl and Beatrice, then moved towards the dragon, stopping several strides away. He then raised his sword and began to scrutinise the blade, apparently taken aback to discover it streaked with blood. For several moments, Wistan remained like this, not moving, so that Axl wondered if the strange mood that had overtaken the warrior since his victory had momentarily made him forget his reason for entering the pit.

But then with something of the unexpectedness that had characterised his contest with the old knight, Wistan suddenly moved forward. He did not run, but walked briskly, stepping over the dragon’s
body without breaking stride, and hurried on as though anxious to reach the other side of the pit. But his sword had described a swift, low arc in passing, and Axl saw the dragon’s head spin into the air and roll a little way before coming to rest on the stony ground. It did not remain there long, however, for it was soon engulfed by the rich tide that first parted around it, then buoyed it up till it swam glidingly across the floor of the pit. It came to a stop at the hawthorn, where it lodged, the throat up to the sky. The sight brought back to Axl the head of the monster dog Gawain had severed in the tunnel, and again a melancholy threatened to sweep over him. He made himself look away from the dragon, and watch instead the figure of Wistan, who had not stopped walking. The warrior was now circling back, avoiding the ever-spreading pool, and then with his sword still unsheathed, began the climb out of the pit.

“It’s done, Axl,” Beatrice said.

“It is, princess. Yet there’s still a question I wish to ask this warrior.”

Wistan took a surprisingly long time to climb out of the pit. When at last he appeared before them again, he looked overwhelmed and not in the least triumphant. Without a word, he sat down on the blackened ground right on the rim of the pit, and at last thrust his sword deep into the earth. Then he gazed emptily, not into the pit, but beyond, at the clouds and the pale hills in the distance.

After a moment, Beatrice went over to him and touched his arm gently. “We thank you for this deed, Master Wistan,” she said. “And there’ll be many more across the land would thank you if they were here. Why look so despondent?”

“Despondent? No matter, I’ll regain my spirit soon, mistress. Yet just at this moment …” Wistan turned away from Beatrice and once more gazed at the clouds. Then he said: “Perhaps I’ve been too long
among you Britons. Despised the cowardly among you, admired and loved the best of you, and all from a tender age. And now I sit here, shaking not from weariness, but at the very thought of what my own hands have done. I must soon steel my heart or be a frail warrior for my king in what’s to come.”

“What is this you speak of, sir?” Beatrice asked. “What further task awaits you now?”

“It’s justice and vengeance await, mistress. And they’ll soon hurry this way, for both are much delayed. Yet now the hour’s almost upon us, I find my heart trembles like a maid’s. It can only be I’ve been too long among you.”