The Iron Grail (12 page)

‘This is a grim sea. This is a desolate stretch of water. There is no warmth in it at all.’

‘I’ve seen it brighter. I’ve seen it calmer,’ Urtha shouted back down. ‘But it’s not here to please you. It’s here to guard that island and its kingdoms, including mine!’

‘This is a dreadful wind. It’s blowing through my bones!’

‘The good thing about winds,’ Urtha replied through his cupped hands, ‘is that they blow themselves out.’

Ullanna’s eyes narrowed as she stared up at the king on the cliff. ‘You’re in a fine mood despite this storm.’

‘I should be. I’m on the boundary of my homeland at last. Too far south, I’ll admit to that. But home is in sight.’

‘Only when the wind drops,’ the Scythian reminded him, her voice almost carried away in the gale.

‘Nothing lasts, however strong.’

‘Nothing? Not even love?’ she bellowed back, folding her arms and cocking her head.

‘Can’t hear you!’ Urtha shouted down with a smile.

He drew away from the cliff’s edge and followed the rough track to the small village which had given them hospitality and the offer of the boats, one for Urtha, his retinue and the two hounds, the other for the horses and chariot. Cathabach and Manandoun, Urtha’s
uthiin
, were crouched by the fire. Their cloaks were slung from the rafters to make a windbreak. There was fresh straw and horse-blankets on the ground.

‘A real palace,’ Cathabach muttered as Urtha entered. It was a crude community, behind a wind-broken enclosing wall, and Urtha had chosen an animal shelter as his camp rather than share the delights of the communal round-house.

Cathabach was slowly turning the spitted carcass of a chicken over the wood fire. It was warm, at least, in this grim house. ‘Someone doesn’t want you home,’ he went on dryly. ‘Wrong river, wrong weather.’

He was alluding to the fact that Urtha, with reckless and false confidence, had guided them along the wrong tributary some days ago; instead of reaching the muddy estuary of the river inhabited by Soma, flowing into the sea close to its narrow strait with Alba, they had travelled along broad and beautiful Sequana, far to the south, and had spent the best part of seven days in dangerous territory reaching this cliff-lined beach, in sight of the island.

‘After the journey we’ve just made,’ Urtha said, looking hungrily at the food, ‘nothing will stop me. Not even the bastards who live beyond the white cliffs of my own country.’

Manadoun muttered grimly, ‘It’s not those bastards who worry me. All they do is shout at the sea and show off at the river crossings. It’s the bastards to the north: the Trinovanda. They collect heads like most of us collect eggs; they gather hostages as we would gather forage. And their forests are the stalking ground of some very strange gods.’

‘Nothing as strange as we’ve seen in recent seasons,’ Urtha reminded him. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

Manandoun shrugged. He was tired; they were all tired. The journey from Makedonia had been arduous and long. Urtha had been between life and death for a good part of it, the wounds in his body healing slowly. But now that he was healed, he seemed to have boundless energy.

His knights were weary, though. They were impatient to be home, and apprehensive: they held no real hope of finding anything other than wasteland. They both knew their families were dead. But they also knew that two of the king’s children were alive. They were Urtha’s
uthiin
, and honour bound to bring the king safely home.

‘We should steal the boats the moment we’ve made the crossing,’ Manandoun grumbled on. ‘Sail them north along the coast.’

Cathabach shook his head in disbelief. ‘Do you know how many ships have foundered north of here? The land comes up suddenly from the bed of the sea, a sucking sand that swallows them down, like a fish gulping a fly! I’ve heard their masts can be seen at low tide, the rigging slapping against the broken wood. Screaming men are tied to the masts by weed and wrack. Where did you learn to navigate?’

‘When did you get so superstitious?’ Manandoun asked dryly. ‘Oh yes. I forgot. You were once a druid. Well, the sucking sand is just legend. The creatures of the Trinovandan forest are old and dangerous. Not legend at all.’

The two men looked at Urtha, who smiled. ‘To get to the point,’ he said, ‘I don’t fancy the sea journey north, sucking sands or no. Nor the forests, stalking boars and mad-eyed hounds or no. So I agree with Manandoun: we’ll certainly steal the boats when we get to the other side. And then we’ll navigate the river channels, west and north until we’re at the borders of our own realm. It will have its own dangers, of course. But we have a good hunter in Ullanna, and she has a nose and an eye for direction.’

Manandoun and Cathabach exchanged a meaningful glance.

Urtha said quietly, ‘Explain that look between you.’

Manandoun said, ‘The look meant only that I’m not sure of Ullanna’s sense of direction on the sea. But if you trust her skills, that’s good enough for me.’

Cathabach said, ‘The look meant only that I doubt Ullanna is familiar with our land, Alba, its forests, valleys, rivers, mountains, plains, clans, dangers and delights. But if you trust her skills, that’s good enough for me. You perhaps know something we don’t.’

‘I don’t trust her skills,’ Urtha said bluntly, ignoring the sour tone in the other man’s voice. ‘But we’ve brought that chariot, two horses and the four of us on a journey of two seasons and over more hills and dales, and plains, and woodland edges than I can imagine: from north of Greek Land, over those snow peaks, those ice peaks, those frozen rivers, and then that boar-rich forest, and the angry tribes, and the refugees from the wasteland; and my own mistake at the river junction which brought us too far south. In all of that, you, Manandoun, watched at our back and you, Cathabach, watched at our front. And I hunted, to get back my strength. And Ullanna, whom I love—I’ll not hide the fact, I love her!—Ullanna kept our horses cleaned and fed; she kept the chariot greased and mobile; she sniffed wind, rain, spoor and blossom. She plucked food in mid-flight for us. She, like you, did her part in getting us here. All of that said, I agree with you. Once in Alba, she’ll be as lost as all of us.’

‘It’s on the matter of the way you live with the Scythian woman that I’ve been meaning to speak to you,’ Cathabach murmured.

‘Yes. I’ve had the feeling since we crossed the mountains north of Makedonia that you had a thorn speared in your chest.’

Cathabach went pale at the insult, his green eyes narrowing with hostility. ‘Aylamunda, your wife, is dead, but has not been given the honour and tribute due to her. It is unsanctionable that you share your blanket with the Scythian! My heart is heavy as I say this, but you are in breach of the code of kings! Until Aylamunda’s living spirit has been sent on its journey to the Island of Women, you should be in what the Eberianii call “the condition of the long face and the howling heart”.’

‘We call it “mourning”, old friend, and I
am
in mourning. I just don’t have time to howl.’

‘It defies the law that you love the Scythian—’

‘Ullanna! Daughter of King Androgon, descendant of Atalanta.’

‘The
Scythian
! It defies our law that you
pillow-talk
with her. You will bring hardship and a long sigh on the clan unless you pay proper tribute to the mother of your children. Ambaros’s daughter. Your consort in arms and wisdom. You have not washed at the spring. You have not made the shield to protect her. You have not walked for the three days of remembering. You have not sung the Three Noble Strains.’

‘I intend to do all of it,’ Urtha said calmly. ‘The Good God knows, I miss Aylamunda.’

‘You don’t show it!’

‘That is discourteous.’

‘It is you who behaves with discourtesy.’

For a moment the two men sat and stared at the ground between them, each regretting his angry words. Then Urtha asked, ‘Cathabach—what should I do if my favourite horse dies suddenly?’

‘Follow the law. Then take and train a new horse.’

‘What if the horse is killed during battle?’

Cathabach shook his head, understanding the king’s simple meaning. ‘Of
course
you’ll find a new mount on the field. This comparison is unworthy. Of me and of Ullanna…’

‘The
Scythian
?’ Urtha goaded. ‘Need defines worthiness, Cathabach. Need decides strategy. The law is all very well when all is in its place. I was not in the kingdom of my ancestors when Ullanna stepped into my life. I
will
honour Aylamunda. Cathabach, old friend—I
ache
to do it. Lord of Forests, hear my pledge!’

Manandoun said bluntly, ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. If Ullanna’s warmth keeps the king a king, we will all triumph at the end of the day. We can follow west, and we have an idea of north! Gods! Ullanna is skilled at finding trails and tracks. As long as we head in the general direction of Taurovinda, we’re bound to fetch up somewhere close to home.’

*   *   *

Though the high winds faded away during the night, and the sea calmed, Urtha’s optimism proved unfounded. A dense fog formed over the ocean and the land, sitting still and silent. Urtha and Manandoun walked along the shingle beach to where the men of the village waited by the two ships. Their beards and hair glistened with damp.

‘Can we row in this?’ Urtha asked, but they shook their heads. The Prowler of the Sea, whom they called Kraaknor, sent this fog whenever his daughters rose from the sea bed to swim. Their backs were covered in sand, and any ship that struck them would be held fast and dragged down.

Manandoun was sceptical, but Urtha suspected that the sand banks might have shifted in the storm, and the villagers were exercising a very real caution.

Besides which, it would be very easy to get turned round in this low visibility. Lode-stone metal, which would help steer a straight course, was not among the possessions of either Urtha’s
uthiin
or their Atrebatian hosts.

Those hosts were growing restless too. They were not happy with the exchange arrangements for the risk of their lives, crossing the channel: two horses which Urtha was confident he could replace on the other side. They had their eyes on the solidly built, iron-rimmed chariot that Urtha had been given in Makedonia, after his combat. They had asked twice, in the courteous fashion, and been bluntly refused. They had offered to take the
uthiin
north along the coast, thus avoiding the Trinovanda, but they had been refused. Urtha and Manandoun kept their swords unthreateningly across their hips, and not their thighs, though they had loosened the fastenings of their heavy woollen cloaks.

But if tensions were beginning to rise on the beach, shortly after dawn they were dispelled when the low call of a horn droned through the sea fog from the south.

A slow drum beat and the swish of oars told of a ship pulling cautiously along the coast. Urtha went down to the surf, letting the sluggish waves roll over his boots. Manandoun at his shoulder, he peered hard through the mist. If someone was navigating the channel, they must have a direction finder; the two small boats, with their passengers, might then row in convoy.

The ship passed them by, the strike of the drum slow and relentless, the creaking of boards and ropes in rhythm with the dip and rise of the oars on the still water. Urtha was about to hail the vessel when one of the villagers stopped him

‘They are almost certainly coastal raiders,’ he said urgently. ‘This weather is their preying weather. They count distance by oar strikes. Watch: they’ll pull into the mouth of the river when they’ve navigated the sand flats.’

Urtha followed along the beach to where the cliffs dropped away and the muddy estuary of the small river was lined with wooden jetties. The drum beat had stopped; only the gentle rush of the waves against the shallow moorings and the reed beds could be heard. The fog shifted, thinning one moment then closing in.

And the ship appeared, drifting lazily across the mouth of the river, the eyes of the man who stood by the massive figurehead at the stern and the woman who was braced at the high prow looking to the land, searching hard.

Urtha recognised the ship at once: the narrow, sinister painted eyes on the hull at its prow, the carved image of the Northland’s Forest Lady, Mielikki, the protecting goddess of the vessel, her face leering forward across the deck, her long, straggling hair appearing to blow in a strong wind. Shields of all descriptions were slung from its rails. Ten oars rested gently in the swell on the landward side. A low, sleek, beautiful ship, a ship from another age.

Argo.

Urtha met Jason’s gaze, the big man, the dark-bearded man who stood in black cloak and copper-sheened Greek Land helmet below the face of the growling wooden goddess. But Jason appeared not to see him. The woman at the prow, her cloak brightly patterned with gold and crimson chevrons, her hair a loose flow of auburn-tinged black, called out something in her own language, and the drum took up the strike again, and the oars dipped and heaved.

Urtha recognised Niiv, the Northlands enchantress who had so taunted and charmed Merlin on their long journey to Delphi.

Who else was aboard Argo, Urtha wondered. Which other of those argonauts? Certainly, if there were twenty rowers, ten each side, then Jason must have made new recruits along the way. Was that giant Dacian aboard? Rubobostes? With his ship-dragging horse, Ruvio? And perhaps Merlin too was hunkered down at his rowing bench, the young man who used his gifts of enchantment as Urtha used his skills with weapons: with cautious, controlled facility. Merlin, ageless but kept youthful by his own reluctance to practise his skills. Merlin, who had recognised something in Urtha of Alba, just as the High King of the Cornovidi had intuited a fateful interweaving of his life with the unwashed, lice-ridden creature on that occasion—how many years ago was it now?—when the charmed man had been given winter quarters in the same tent as the warlord and his
uthiin
.

On the eerie ship, Niiv suddenly made a birdlike call, a strange sound that seemed to echo up the river, between the low chalk cliffs. Urtha felt his body chill, the hair on his neck prickle. Had she seen him? Or was she in that same trance, the journey-trance, which had once allowed her to guide Argo to the narrow, shallow headwaters of the great river Reinus?