The Iron Grail (24 page)

Then her voice whispered to me:
Stay back from the river. There is danger at the river. Stay back.

Was this another trick? I kept running, weaving through the windlashed woodland. Again, her voice whispered:
Be careful. Danger is closer than you think.

I had to believe that this was no trick, but my friend urgently warning me off. I slowed my pace and cautiously approached the enclosed meadow where the children had played. The grass in the meadow had grown high. On the other side, the narrow defile that led towards the river was murmuring with the sound of voices.

I drew back into the cover of a rock overhang. The voices grew louder, then abruptly fell silent. Whoever was approaching had seen the open space and stopped talking.

A few moments later three figures emerged from the defile, spreading out swiftly and crouching down, half concealed below the high grass.

‘This is the place,’ a woman’s voice said, her accent strong. ‘This is the place I came to in my dream. But it’s abandoned. No one has been here for years.’

‘I don’t trust it,’ a man replied gruffly. ‘Rubobostes! Bring the others.’

Five more figures slipped into the open, crouching down, light catching their blades and the decorations on their oval shields. Three were from among the group of grim demeanour that I had glimpsed as Argo had reached on the coast of Alba.

Dark-haired, big-limbed Rubobostes towered above the grass, his rough eyes scouring the field for danger. I had assumed no mortal man could enter even the hinterland, so either I was wrong, or Rubobostes was indeed Otherworldly, a part of myth, as I had long suspected.

‘This
is
the place,’ the young woman repeated. I sensed the way she probed the glade; she was suspicious; she sensed danger; but she could not identify the source of her concern.

Ah, Niiv! So much to learn despite the fact that she had used her gifts for enchantment to excess and with relish.

I had hidden myself from her the moment I’d recognised her, cowled and caped though she was, her hair now black, her face striped with disguising mud. She wouldn’t spot me, and it took very little effort to divert her attention.

Jason, mortal man, touched by the gods, was another matter. He wasn’t looking for me; but his eyes saw beyond simple defences, even though he often failed to recognise what he was seeing. He was a warrior, a mercenary, and his wits were so sharp that he could outwit charm itself, as long as he didn’t think too hard about what he was doing. I might be transparent to him, though it would take him moments to recog-nise me.

‘There is nothing here. Just grass and memories,’ Niiv whispered to Jason.

‘Are you sure?’ the cautious man asked.

‘I hear echoes of a raid; I hear screams and sorrow; this all happened a long time ago.’

Slowly, the argonauts rose to their feet, shields still to the fore, swords held behind their backs ready for a quick strike. Then they began to approach me, moving through the grass silently, spreading out in a line. Niiv seemed to be watching the sky. Jason seemed focused on my concealing rock. Rubobostes was frowning, glancing left and right, unnerved by something that not even I could see.

They rose out of the grass like a sudden flight of birds, ten or so armoured men, all on horseback, the animals kicking the air as they struggled from their hiding places. They seemed to emerge from the earth itself. The argonauts shouted with one voice, raising shields, bringing swords to the front. Niiv fled back towards the defile. Rubobostes ran forward to stand side by side with Jason as the Ghostlanders rode down on their prey.

Their helmets were high-crested, copper-tinged, the faces blank. The riders were all bare-armed, chests and backs protected with leather battle-harness, waist protected by brightly coloured tunic, shins with strips of leather as greaves. They carried thin, wide-bladed stabbing spears.

They looked like Greeklanders!

Iron on iron, iron on leather, the clang and thud of the skirmish was frantic, noisy and bloody. A woman’s voice screamed from the Ghostland host. One of the horsemen, the leader I surmised from the flash of gold on his helmet, rode around Jason, hacking down at him with a long, leaf-bladed sword, grim and determined as he tried to cut his way to Jason’s head. I heard him grunting the words, ‘You are
not
the one! You are
not
the one! Are you the one? No! You are
not
!’

This was a strange encounter.

Jason moved as if in a dream, his face blank, effortlessly parrying the cutting, slashing blows, but making no effort to slice at the exposed legs of either rider or horse, neither using his shield for offence, nor pushing forward, only cowering below the assault, anticipating the direction of the attack and responding to it. The rider hesitated only once, glancing in my direction, before returning to his singular task.

Two of Jason’s men were cut down, two of the grim-faced, but they crawled back towards the defile before collapsing quietly. Then Rubobostes took one of the horses by its front legs, upturned the beast, crushing its rider, and swung its heavy carcass in a wide arc, unnerving the nearer warriors, including Jason’s determined opponent, though that particular horseman was already in nervous retreat. Sword held out before him, point towards Jason, he was making his mount step awkwardly backward through the long grass. His words, hissed like a wildcat at bay, were suddenly meaningless, but full of fear and fury. Whatever he had suddenly seen, it had upset him.

The Dacian’s brawny intervention gave Jason and the others time to withdraw into the defile. Rubobostes bounded after them, his shield held defensively behind his head and upper body as three javelins thudded into the hide-covered oval of oak.

As quickly as the attack had happened, the horsemen, all but the leader, streamed away through the grass, becoming tenuous in form as they wound through the orchard, before kicking into a canter and turning inland, towards the mountain fastnesses. Two of their number lay silent in the meadow.

The singular rider came slowly over to where I crouched in cover. His body dripped with the sweat of the effort he’d made to cut down Jason. There was blood on his chin; he’d bitten through his lip. Dark, cold eyes stared at me searchingly through the gold-flecked Greekland helmet, skull-like and gleaming as it moved this way and that, the rider scanning the overhang.

I noticed that on the left cheek guard was the image of a ship; on the right, the image of a ram. And on the brow: the unmistakable image of Medusa.

‘This is my place,’ the young man whispered in the ancient Greekland tongue. ‘You’re in my place. That’s the Father Calling Place.’

His words were spoken without expression. Then he turned his horse and suddenly, with no further glance at me, sped away across the field, following his troop. I looked up at the overhang of rock and saw for the first time a ship, a phallus, a hound, and several little stick men carved on the grey surface. But this was not the Father Calling Place to which Kymon had taken me, when I came to collect the royal children. Could it have been Munda’s?

I had no energy to think. I was still stunned by the sight of the vicious attack on Jason; still cold with the recognition of that screaming, feral, female voice. It had been Medea’s, of course. I had not seen where she was hiding. Indeed, she may have been one of the riders. She was trying to end Jason’s quest there and then, but had been frustrated by the big-boned Dacian, the Heracles of the new argonauts, who had pitched brawn against the supernatural and won the day.

As I have said before, this hinterland was a strange place, equally alien to Ghostland as to the mortal realm. There were no true rules here, no true paths to guide the inadvertent traveller. This was unknown territory.

Time passed. I stayed in the cover of the rocks, gathering my wits.

After dark, Rubobostes came cautiously back to the meadow in the valley, a torch held high above his head, as if he were nevertheless unafraid to advertise his approach. The shadowy, slinking figure of Niiv crept after him. He gathered the two wounded argonauts in his fist, holding them by the hands—their eyes were open and alive, but they remained quite silent—and dragged them back to the river.

Niiv stayed, standing boldly above the grass, her eyes glinting like a lynx’s.

‘I know you’re here,’ she whispered. ‘I can smell you. I knew you’d be here. Why don’t you show yourself, Merlin? You know you want to.’

I stayed exactly where I was. The wind murmured through the defile, and the breeze chased across my skin like a ghostly finger.

‘I know you’ve been watching me,’ she called softly. ‘I was keenly aware of you watching me: first from your crow eyes; then from your gull eyes. Did you think I didn’t notice? I noticed! I watched you too, Merlin. First from my swan eyes; then from my spirit eyes, do you remember? Don’t try to deny it!’ she added with a little laugh. ‘You and I have
eyes
for each other!

‘I want you so much. You have no idea how much I want you. I would do nothing to harm you. When I first met you, I fell for you. We could be so strong together. I’ll walk your path with you. It’s not about
spells
and
trickery
—I don’t want to steal your magic. Just your heart! I forgive you for what you did with Medea.’

With that ambiguous last comment, she turned and scampered back along the valley, following the fading torch wielded by the Dacian. Had she been spying on me even here, when I was beguiled by Medea? Or was she referring to something that had happened a long time in the past? Where
had
the girl been prying?

Shortly after this disturbing encounter, I walked cautiously to the defile, followed along its narrow passage. When sinuous Nantosuelta came in sight, I could see pure, beautiful Argo moored against the bank, held strong against the powerful river. Her sail was furled, though the mast was still upright. Her colours were enchanting, the emblems and shades of her original crew painted on her hull as good luck and good voyage.

Caped figures crouched on the shore of the inlet around a blazing fire. Rubobostes was standing guard, a small pile of spears at his feet, a large axe in his hand, his gaze restlessly shifting between the river and the defile where I crouched. I could see neither Niiv nor Jason. Mielikki, the goddess in the ship, scowled from her painted effigy in the stern, icy features, highlighted by flame, reaching forward as if she struggled to draw herself from the wood.

The land across the river, the entrance to Urtha’s realm, was enfolded in night and mist. I needed to return there. And to do that, I needed Argo.

I distracted the watchful Rubobostes with a cat’s cry, close behind him, and slipped past the ship to the reed-bed where the small boat should have been secured. She had been waiting for me, whispered that I should
get in quickly
, and as I hunkered down on the damp furs in her bilges she rocked away from the shore. I was startled to see a figure crouched before me, featureless for the moment. The boat passed like owl-shadow to the farther bank and spilled me out into the shallows.

Then, turning stern-on, the hard face of the Forest Lady suddenly loomed greyly at me; the icy breath of Pohjola, in the far north, chilled my skin. Those slanting, fate-filled eyes blinked at me, but the thin lips stretched into a smile I’d known before. Mielikki, goddess of the northern woods, was very fond of me.

‘Well, Merlin, it’s time to leave you. I’m glad you found your way back here; I’m glad you found your feet again, after Delphi and that hot, unpleasant land.’

Ah, Greek Land! How much I missed that heat, that fragrance, that dryness. But for this snow-wasted beauty, this stalker of ice-sheened birch forest, those sun-drenched climes had been a curse. I sympathised and thanked the guardian spirit of sleek-keeled Argo.

She blew me a mocking, knowing kiss, adding, ‘Niiv will not let you go.’

‘I know. I’ll be on my guard.’

She said, ‘I am her protector. What you do to avoid her is up to you. What you do to dissuade her is up to you. But if you try to harm her…’

To illustrate the implied threat, a
voytazi
of bull-like proportions loomed out of the water and snapped its gigantic jaws in front of my face before sinking back, gloating, into the shallows.

‘I will not harm her,’ I promised Mielikki. ‘But I will match beguilement with beguilement. And I will not stand in the way of her death.’

Mielikki scowled; moonlight flashed on her teeth. Her eyes went blank with anger, but she accepted my words.

‘Your life is in her,’ she reminded me. ‘I can still smell the love in the lodge where you filled and thrilled her ancestor, generations ago when you visited Pohjola; I can still smell the sick on your breath as you tried to drown that woman, only to come to your senses; I can still taste the salt in your tears as you watched her child born, great-mother-to-be of your little Niiv. Like salt in diluted water, she is still potent with your own charm, so just remember: what you do to her you do to yourself!’

As the little boat slipped away, Mielikki’s features becoming young and lean and beautiful as she smiled from the stern, I called, ‘She wants to strip the magic from my bones.’

‘You’d better fatten up, then,’ the goddess laughed.

‘She will gnaw me like a jackal, given half a chance. I shan’t let her do that, no matter what you say to me.’

‘It will be a long struggle for you,’ the goddess whispered back. ‘Whoever ages first will be the loser!’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Under Siege

The little boat, the comforting companion, slipped away from the shore and was drawn into Argo, timber into timber, old time into the present. I felt sad to see her go, but I knew that Argo would be glad to have her back. Jason loomed darkly at the stern, peering across Nantosuelta, flint eyes seeking the shadow of the man he half suspected was watching him. Then he gave the order and Argo was cast free of the bank. Nantosuelta took her and shifted her to the side closer to life and the living; the oars rose and dipped; my old friend Rubobostes grunted the rhythm as he took charge of the steering oar, and in the prow the small, sleek dark shape of Niiv hunched like some cat, ready to pounce, staying still, as still as death, waiting for her moment.