The Iron Grail (19 page)

For a moment I was too stunned to react. Then I gripped her by the shoulders and shook her gently but forcefully. ‘Never do that!’ I admonished her. ‘It’s a dangerous thing, to see into a friend’s future.’

‘I couldn’t help it!’ she said in alarm, eyes widening as she looked up at me. ‘I didn’t
look
for it. The sights just come. Why is that wrong?’

It would have taken too long to explain. As she had said the words I had been powerfully and unwelcomely reminded of Niiv, the Northlands enchantress, waving a dead swan at me, shouting defiantly:
I have seen you wear forests like a cloak
.

Niiv had prowled and probed my future and used her knowledge in a sinister and devious way. Now she was coming back to Alba. Urtha had seen her in the sea-mist; and the swans were confirmation!

I was uneasy to say the least.

The last thing I needed was a
brace
of visionaries prying ahead into my time on the earth.

I reassured the girl and left her sitting by the prow of the boat, singing quietly as she stared at the grass effigy.

Ullanna and her entourage—now extended—rode noisily and colourfully from the north later that day, arriving at the other side of the river, driving before them over thirty head of whites and browns, plump cattle that had grazed widely in the years of the Desertion. They had two deer slung on a white pony, and had found five wild horses, which kicked and reared as they were led to the water’s edge and penned in crude corrals. Seven new men were in the troop, leather-armoured, without helmets, heavily armed and coarse-feathered. But they seemed in awe of Ullanna and obeyed her every direction.

The Scythian woman could see that the funeral had not yet occurred. She raised a hand to me, in greeting and farewell, then kicked away again, towards the woodland, Conan and Gwyrion with her, always anxious for more hectic adventure. The rest of the troop set up camp across the river, to watch over their plunder and wait for the invitation to cross to the groves and discuss payment for their services.

*   *   *

Night embraced the land; the horns of the moon were fattening. It was low in the west, its gleam illuminating the dark ridges of the wooded hills and the rise of Taurovinda.

Drums began a low, steady beat. Horns sounded harshly. Metal tambours rattled. Pipes wailed.

The groves became alive with torchlight. The curl of the river seemed set on fire. The boat was hauled to the shore and eight men lifted it to their shoulders. Torches burned on prow and stern. The men walked slowly, stepping side to side at a steady pace, up the slope to where the stones waited. A hooded and masked figure walked ahead of them, using his staff to mark the rhythm of their progress.

The funeral boat was carried through the gate in the willow fence, to the heart of the grey stone ring. The drumbeat stopped, the wailing horns and rattling tambours were silenced. The boat was lowered to the ground. Nothing could be heard but the crackle of fire.

The long silence ended with the ringing of a small bronze bell. The drums struck a single thunderous beat and the boat was hoisted again.

Now the horns sounded their droning music in harmony, and the shrill pipes played a lament of singular beauty, punctuated by the dramatic striking of the calf-skin drums. The procession moved beyond the stones and through the groves, then out on to the plain. It snaked its way through the long grass, following the ancient ceremonial way, still marked by the humped backs of fallen stones.

This winding route across the plain was a reflection of the river journey that the spirit of Aylamunda had made to arrive at her birth. She would go back to death with Tauraun, the Thunder Bull.

Three times the procession stopped in dead silence, the boat lowered to the ground, the masked man who led the line of mourners standing facing them. The sky swirled with moonlit cloud; horses at the back of the column whiskered nervously; the grass rolled and rustled in the breeze.

Then again the sound of the bell, the strike of drum, and the boat was up. The horns wailed, deep and forlorn, as the step began again.

In this way we arrived before the rising slope of the hill, and the heavy Bull Gate that marked the first entrance to the fortified enclosure.

Were the Shadows of Heroes watching from those fortifications? Only their banners, streaming black and silver in the night, told me they were there.

All sound drained from the air. The horses were kicked forward, dragging the broken totems of Ghostland, grim-carved trees that were stacked in a low pile. The boat was gently placed on top of the fallen symbols of the Dead, a challenge to them. Urtha gently removed the broken lunula from the ‘corpse’. Hazel faggots were pushed below the trunks and quickly lit; flames licked high into the night. As the boat caught, and the grass effigy began to burn, the horns and drums sounded again.

Urtha stood before the pyre. He was in his battle-harness. The fire gleamed on his helmet and cuirass, and on the narrow blades of the heavy-shafted ash spear he held in his right hand. He stared at the fire, but I thought
through
the fire, his eyes focused on the dark ramparts of his citadel.

He began to shout; the shout was a chant, though the words were lost to me against the noise of the horns, but I heard the name Tauraun repeated; the great Donn was being summoned.

I had thought that the creature would emerge from the forest behind us, to walk steadily across the plain, and several times I glanced that way, curious as to how it would make itself manifest in the real world. In fact, it rose through the hill, something I should have expected, considering the name of the fortress.

The earth shook below our feet and the pile of burning trunks slipped, scattering a whirlwind of bright sparks into the night sky. The moon itself seemed to brighten and thicken, the clouds forming a swirling storm pattern above the ramparts.

Urtha’s voice rose in aggression and volume. I suddenly heard the words he was using, and thrilled to recognise a language far older than the lilting tongue of these Hyperboreans. The words he used were a dialect of the language of my own time, fatal and vital in their use of charms and enchantment, the pacifying, celebrating and summoning chants for the first and greatest forms of life on the earth itself.

‘Ka-scaragath, raa-Dauroch, Cuum Cawlaud, Nuath-Raydunfray, Odonn Tauraun…’

Winter-scavenging Wolf, Green-faced wildwood Hunter, Oldest Owl, Silver-hoofed, velvet-bannered Stag, Brown burnished, sun-draped Bull
 …

But of all of these praised, Tauraun alone was called; Urtha offered his life and his grandchildren’s lives to the Great Bull in service after death for the span of two bull-lives, two generations of man himself.

Tauraun had answered the call.

The sun began to rise inside the fortress. Two wide, curved horns rose behind the highest ramparts. The sun glowed between them. The air filled with the stink of the creature’s breath. Behind those highest walls, the gates of the citadel were opened and the forces of the Land of Shadow Heroes rode in fear and disarray from the stronghold they had won by stealth and defended with vigour. They suddenly poured out of the gate at the bottom of the steep embankments, spreading left and right, a force of one hundred or more. Again the earth was shaken as the Great Bull pounded its hooves above them, its broad, dark face peering out across the plain, the sun-disc swirling like fire between its horns.

The army of the Dead and Unborn lowered lances and drew swords and charged in a line against us. A horse was galloped up to Urtha and he jumped into its high-backed saddle, taking the reins from Manandoun. Cathabach and others galloped in front of the pyre, weapons gleaming, their faces bright with the pleasure of imminent combat. Kymon, harnessed and helmeted, was among them.

But there were not enough of us!

Then the shaking of the earth took on a different rhythm. I turned in time to see the charge of an army of horsemen from the forest at the edge of the plain, a wild, screaming ride of armed and bare-headed men, spreading out to circle round the base of the hill. At the same time, Conan pulled up in the gold-wheeled chariot beside me. ‘Jump in! Grab a spear!’ he shouted, sweat streaming from his face. ‘Quickly!’

I did as I was bidden. Javelins split the air, a sword crashed down through the wicker frame, remaining embedded there. Conan had whipped the ponies into the centre of the fray. My spear was wrenched from my hand and thrown back at me, but I used the jumping feat to avoid it and snatch it back.

‘Well
done
!’ my driver cried with enthusiasm. ‘My brother will soon be looking for another partner! I like the way you jump!’

‘Where did those riders come from?’

‘A trick up Urtha’s sleeve!’ was all the response I got, except that he added, ‘Cornovidians! We met them on the way back here!’

We had galloped through the fray. Now Conan turned the chariot and tore around the edge of the struggle, screaming like a Fury. Manandoun and Urtha fell in on horse behind us, then Cathabach, then Ullanna and her recruits. We rode in an encircling column, striking down to the left, leaping over the bodies of men and fallen horses. The horsemen from the forest streamed into the muddle, some jumping down to fight on foot below the stamping hooves of the Dead. Conan was screaming and laughing as he whipped his ponies, giving them their head. His hair streamed, long and golden. His torso, ridged with muscle, gleamed with sweat. The man was possessed!

I had thought we were a small party finding the right moment to re-enter the battle, but Conan suddenly turned the chariot towards the Bull Gate, a sudden charge, the king and his retinue alongside us now, acting according to a plan that took us through the gate and up the winding street, between the stockaded walls, and again into the heart of Taurovinda.

Triumphant cries, and delighted screams, accompanied our entrance into Urtha’s home. Then sudden silence.

At the far end of the enclosure towered the shimmering image of the bull Tauraun, its legs braced apart, the sun-disc faint, now, like a starlit wheel spinning between its horns. The breath from its nostrils steamed in the suddenly frigid air. It watched us through huge eyes, but made no move towards us. Standing quite still between its front legs, watching us as he leaned on a radiant, oval shield, was a tall man with long yellow hair and beard.

When the ponies that drew Conan’s chariot reared nervously it was not because they were afraid of the gigantic creature that faced them, but because their driver had been startled by the apparition of the figure below its maw.

The young man, until now so cheerful and reckless, had become ashen and tense with fear. ‘Get down, Merlin,’ he said quietly. ‘Get down! Quickly!’

When I hesitated, he reached a hand to push at me, his eyes not straying from the lounging, golden figure at the far end of the fort.

I could still hear the battle-screams of men and horses and the ringing of iron. Urtha was shouting with triumph. More horsemen, bloodied and lathering, came riding through the inner gate, dismounting and running to the battlements to tear down the streaming banners of the fallen kings of Ghostland. I heard someone cry that the Ghostlanders were fleeing back through the marshes to the river.

Then Gwyrion came riding through the gate, Munda on the saddle behind him clinging on to his arms. His horse, too, reared up as he saw the Bull and its sun-haired master. The girl fell to the ground and Gwyrion slipped down from the saddle and helped her up, apologising profusely.

Though there was mayhem and shouting all around us, Cathabach and wise Manandoun watched in silence, aware that the young Cymbrii were in trouble.

Conan glanced at me, almost tearful. ‘Well, Merlin,’ he said, ‘it’s been a long journey, and more fun than pain. I wish I’d got to know you better.’

‘What’s happening?’ I asked him, but he simply smiled and shrugged.

‘Reckoning time.’

The man between the bull’s legs had raised his spear and was using it to beckon the boys. I began to grasp a truth that should have been obvious.

‘We stole his chariot,’ Conan said forlornly. ‘Remember? It was decorated in gold that had been spun by a Greek Land god called Haephestus, and had iron worked into its wicker frame to make it stronger than a stone wall. That man there was very proud of his chariot. Very angry when we stole it, even though he’d stolen it himself in the first place. Alas, we managed to crash it in a race, though only because the other team cheated: swords attached to their wheels. Bastards! Anyway, I don’t think this bit of copper-varnished wicker will satisfy him, even with its gold-rimmed wheels.’

‘Who is he?’

‘My god-father,’ Conan muttered sadly. ‘Who else? The great god Llew himself. That’s his Sun Bull. He always arrives with it when it surfaces from the dark. We won’t get out of this one lightly. He has other bright sons to cherish, more obedient ones—little arse-lickers!—so he’ll certainly have our heads. Goodbye, Merlin.’

Gwyrion, looking equally anguished, smiled wanly at me as he came over, then stepped into the car, gripping the rail. ‘Fun while it lasted, though,’ Conan shouted at me with a last burst of youthful bravado. ‘And you
will
make a great chariot-warrior!’

Then he gave the ponies their heads and the small chariot was drawn towards the waiting man. The great god Llew stepped into the car and took the reins, turning his back on his sons. Their faces became silver in hue, in contrast to his radiant gold. Frozen, unsmiling and unfocused, gripping the rails with both hands, shadows in their father’s angry eyes, they seemed to watch the end of their mortal adventure with sadness.

With a powerful lash of his whip, Llew turned the panicking horses and rode the chariot below the body of the Bull, soon disappearing into the gloom of the hill. The Bull gave a mighty shake of its head, suddenly coming alive again, and turned, to lumber back into the darkness, descending into shadow, and continue its slow walk through the underworld.

But it had done its job. Though we had lost two youthful friends, Aylamunda’s ghost was now alive again, and she was in her proper place in the most appropriate land among the Shadows of Heroes. And Urtha had reclaimed his fortress. Already, the massive gates were closed, and the banners and standards of Ghostland were being nailed to a ‘mocking tree’, made from dead wood hewn from hazel and ash. This would be hung over the north wall, permanently out of sight of the passage of the sun.