The Endless Knot (40 page)

Bran raised his head, nodded, and hastened away at once. Alun, still gripping my hand, though less tightly now, held me. “Lord Silver Hand,” he said, “I would make but one last request.”

“Anything,” I said, tears brimming in my eyes. “Anything, Alun; speak the word and it is yours.”

“Lord, do not bury me in this land,” he said softly. “Tir Aflan is no honorable place for a warrior.”

“I will do as you ask,” I assured him.

But he clutched desperately at my hand. “Do not leave me here alone. Please!” he implored; and then added more gently, “Please.” He swallowed and his features clenched with pain. “When you are finished here, take me back with you. Let me lie on Druim Vran.”

That such a noble warrior should have to beg so broke my heart. Tears began rolling down my cheeks, and I smeared them away with my sleeve. “It will be done, brother.”

This cheered him. “My heart belongs in Albion,” he whispered. “If I may not see that fair land again, I will go easier knowing that my bones return.”

“It will be done, Alun. I vow it.”

His hand relaxed and fell back. Scatha gave him another drink. Bran returned just then, bringing the rest of the Raven Flight with him: Garanaw, Emyr, Drustwn, and Niall. One by one, they knelt at the side of their swordbrother and made their farewells. Bran roused Cynan, too, who made his way to Alun's side. All the while, Tegid stood looking on, head bent low, watching with mournful eyes, but saying nothing.

Bran was the last, speaking earnestly and low; he placed his hand on Alun's forehead, then touched his own in salute. When he rose, he announced, “This Raven has flown.”

29
F
LY,
R
AVEN!

S
omber in his brown cloak, Tegid scanned with dark eyes the far hillscape. Dun-colored, but for the bleached white rocks, endlessly austere and desperately empty—nothing but sparse heather and peat bogs surrounding outcropped stones rising like bone-bare islands in a rusty sea—the moorland stretched vacant and forlorn as far as the eye could see. Humps of barren hills, hunched like shoulders, jostled one another to the horizon in all directions.

He did not look at me as I came to stand beside him. “You should not have promised Alun to take him home.”

“I made a vow, bard. I mean to keep it.”

His lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line. “We cannot travel with his body, and there is no way to return him to Albion. We must bury him here.”

Regarding the dismal moorland waste, I replied, “Alun deserves better, and he will have it.”

“Then I suggest you think of a way.”

“What about burning the body? I know it is not the most honorable way, but it could be done with dignity and respect.”

Tegid turned his frown on me, thinking. I understood Tegid's reluctance: burning a corpse was reserved only for enemies, outcasts, and criminals. “It is not unknown in Albion,” he admitted finally. “There have been times when such a thing was necessary.”

“Might this be one of those times?” I queried lightly. “Our need is on us.”

“Yes,” the bard relented, “our need is on us, and we are bound by a king's vow. This is such a time. But the fire must be tended properly so that the bones are not burned. For they must be gathered and preserved. I will see to it.”

“And when we return to Albion,” I added, “they will be buried on Druim Vran.”

“So be it.”

“Good. We will gather wood to make the pyre.”

I sent eight men with extra horses back to the forest to collect the required timber. They rode under Bran's command because, once I had explained what I intended doing, the Chief Raven insisted on leading the party himself. “It is not necessary, Bran. Another can serve in this.”

“If Alun's body is to be burned,” he replied stiffly, “then I will choose the wood myself. Alun saved me from the Red Wyrm; it is the least I can do for him.”

Since he would have it no other way, I gave him leave to go. The forest was no great distance behind us, and the horses were fed and rested; the party would, I reckoned, return by dusk the next day. The day was young yet, and they left as soon as the horses were saddled. We saw them away, sending them with the small amount of horsemeat we had left over.

I watched them out of sight and then turned reluctantly to the task of choosing another horse for the slaughter.

The wood gatherers returned early the next morning out of a sodden mist. The moorland squelched to a soggy drizzle brought about by a fresh easterly breeze which had replaced the cold northern wind in the night. The damp moors appeared decidedly bleak and miserable in the leaden gray light.

We greeted them and sent them to warm themselves by the fire. I ordered men to unburden the horses and release them to graze, and then joined Bran at the fire. The Raven Chief gave a terse report. “The land is dead,” he said, shaking out his cloak. “All was as we saw it before. Nothing has changed.”

I called for some of the stew we had prepared the previous day, and left them to their meal. Meanwhile, Tegid and I set to work preparing the pyre for Alun's cremation. The wood had been dumped in a heap beside the road, and the bard was busy sorting it according to length when I joined him. When the ordering was finished, we carried armloads of selected timber to a large flat rock nearby and began stacking the wood carefully.

I fell in with the task, and we worked together without speaking, carrying and stacking, erecting a sturdy scaffold limb on limb. It was good work—the two of us moving in rhythm—and it put me in mind of the day Tegid and I had begun building Dinas Dwr. I held that memory and basked in its warm glow as we labored side by side. When we finished, the pyre stood on its lonely rock like a small timber fortress. Some of the men had gathered while we worked and now stood looking dolefully at the finished pyre.

Tegid observed them standing there and said, “When the sun sets we will light the fire.”

The mist cleared as the day sped from us, and the sky lightened in the west, allowing us a dazzling glimpse of golden light before dusk closed in once again. I turned from the setting sun to see the warriors coming in twos and threes across the moor to the rock where Tegid and I waited.

When all had gathered, Alun's body, which had been covered and sewn into an oxhide after his death, was brought by the Ravens and laid carefully upon the pyre. Tegid kindled a fire nearby and prepared torches, giving one to each of the remaining four Ravens and Bran.

The bard mounted the rock and took his place at the head of the pyre. He raised his hands in declamation. “Kinsmen and friends,” he called loudly, “Alun Tringad is dead; his body lies cold upon the pyre. It is time to release the soul of our swordbrother to begin its journey through the High Realms. His body will be burned, but his ashes will not abide in Tir Aflan. When the fire has done its work, I will gather the bones and they will return with us to Albion, for burial on Druim Vran.”

Then, placing a fold of his cloak over his head, the Chief Bard raised his staff and closed his eyes. After a moment, he began to chant gently, tunelessly, a death dirge:

When the mouth shall be closed,
When the eyes shall be shut,
When the breath shall cease to rattle,
When the heart shall cease to throb,
When heart and breath shall cease;

May the Swift Sure Hand uphold you,
And shield you from evil of every kind.
May the Swift Sure Hand uphold you,
And guide your foot along the way,
May the Swift Sure Hand uphold you,
And lead you across the sword-bridge,
May the Swift Sure Hand shield, lead, and guide you across the narrow way
By which you leave this world;
And guard you from all distress and danger,
And place the pure light of joy before you,
And lead you into Courts of Peace,
And the service of a True King in Courts of Peace,
Where Glory and Honor and Majesty delight the Noble King forever.

May the eye of the Great God
Be a pilot star before you,
May the breath of the Good God
Be a smooth way before you,
May the heart of the Kingly God
Be a boon of rich blessing to you.

May the flames of this burning
Light your way . . .
May the flames of this burning
Light your way . . .
May the flames of this burning
Light your way to the world beyond.

So saying, the Chief Bard summoned the Ravens. One by one they stepped forward—Garanaw, Emyr, Niall, and Drustwn—each bearing a torch, which he thrust into the kindling at the base of the pyre. Bran came last and added his torch to the others. The fire ruffled in the wind, caught, and began climbing toward Alun's body lying so still on his rough wooden bed.

Like those around me, I watched the yellow flames licking up through the latticework to caress the cold flesh of my friend. Grief I felt for myself: I would never again hear his voice lifted in song, nor see him swagger into the hall. I would miss his preposterous bragging, his bold and foolish challenges—like the time he challenged Cynan to a day's labor plowing land and felling and hauling timber, nearly ruining himself with the exertion, and all for a golden trinket.

I felt the tears welling in my eyes, and I let them fall. It was good to remember, and to weep for what was lost and could not be again.

Farewell, Alun Tringad
, I said to myself as the fire hissed and cracked, mounting higher.
May it go well with you on your journey hence.

A voice, hoarse with grief, rent the silence: “Fly, Raven! Try your wings over new fields and forests; let your loud voice be heard in lands unknown.” Bran, his noble face shining with tears in the firelight, drew back his arm and lofted his spear skyward. I saw the tip glint in the cold starlight and then it disappeared into the darkness—a fitting image of release for the spirit of a warrior.

The flames grew hot; I felt the heat-sheen on my face and my cloak steamed. The flame-crack grew to a roar; the light danced, flinging shadows back into the teeth of the ever-encroaching darkness. In a little while, the pyre collapsed inward, drawing the hide-covered corpse into the fierce golden heart of the funeral fire, there to be consumed. We watched long—until only embers remained, a glowing red heap upon the rock.

“It is done,” Tegid declared. “Alun Tringad has gone.” Whereupon we turned and made our way back to camp, leaving Tegid to perform the tasks necessary for reclaiming the bones from the fire.

I found myself walking beside Bran. I thought his farewell apt and told him so. “It was a fitting farewell to a Raven who has gone.”

Bran cocked his head to one side and regarded me as if I had suggested that I thought the moon might sleep in the sea. “But Alun has not gone,” Bran observed matter-of-factly. “He has only gone on ahead.”

We walked a little further, and Bran explained: “We have made a vow, we Ravens, to rejoin one another in the world beyond. That way, if any of us should fall in battle, there is a swordbrother waiting to welcome us in the world beyond. Whether in this world or the next, we will still be the Ravens.”

His faith in this arrangement was simple and marvelous. And it was absolute. No shadow of doubt intruded, no qualm shadowed the bright certainty of his confidence. I, who had no such assurance, could only marvel at his trust.

We departed the next morning at dawn. Mist gathered thick, making our world blurred and dull. The sky, dense as wool to every horizon, drooped like a sodden sheepskin over our heads. As the unseen sun rose toward midday, the wind stiffened, rolling the mist in clouds across the darkening moor.

We moved in a ragged double column, shivering beneath our wet cloaks. The horses walked with their heads down, noses almost touching the ground, hooves clopping hollow on the stone-paved high road.

Wet to the skin, my hair plastered to my scalp, I stumped along on numb feet and longed for nothing more than to sit before the fire and bake the creeping cold from my bones. So Tegid's abrupt revelation, when it came, caught me off guard.

“I saw a beacon last night.”

My head whipped around and I stared up at him, incredulous that he had not bothered to mention it before. He did not look at me, but rode hunch-shouldered in the saddle, squinting into the drizzle: soggy, but unconcerned.

Bards!

“When the embers had cooled,” he continued placidly, “I gathered Alun's bones.” My eyes flicked to the tidy bundle behind his saddle wrapped in Alun's cloak. “I saw the beacon flare when I returned to camp.”

“I see. Any particular reason why you bring this to my attention now?”

“I thought you might like to hear a good word.” At this, my wise bard turned his head to look down on me. I glared up at him, water running down my hair and into my eyes. “You are angry,” he observed. “Why?”

Frozen to the marrow, having eaten nothing but horsemeat for days, and heartsick at Alun's death, the last thing I expected or wanted was my Chief Bard withholding important information from me. “It is nothing,” I told him, heaving my anger aside with an effort. “What do you think it means?”

“It means,” he replied with an air that suggested the meaning was obvious, “we are nearing our journey's end.”

His words filled me with a strange elation. The final confrontation would come soon. Anticipation pricked my senses alert; my spirit quickened. The dreariness of the day evaporated as expectation ignited within. The end is near: let Paladyr beware!

We pressed our way deeper into the barren hills. The peat moors gave way to heather and gorse. Day followed day, and the road remained straight and high; we traveled from dim gray dawn to dead gray dusk, stopping only to water the horses and ourselves. We ate only at night around the campfire when we could cook the flesh of yet another horse. We ate, bitterly regretting the loss with every bite; but it was meat, and it warmed an empty belly. No one complained.

Gradually, the land began to lift. The hills grew higher and the valleys deeper, the descents more severe as the hill-country rose toward the mountains. One day we crested a long slope to see the faint shimmer of snow-topped heights in the distance. Then cloud and mist closed in again and we lost the sight for several more days. When we saw them again, the mountains were closer; we could make out individual peaks, sharp and ragged above darkly streaming clouds.