The Iron Grail (42 page)

‘Your father. Jason. He’s on the beach at this very moment. You know so much. You surely know that!’

‘That is not my father on the beach,’ Kinos replied coldly. ‘He is not the one. My father would never have played with life and lives like that man on the beach. That man on the beach steals lives. You have six lives in your scabbard. Return them.’

The anger in his voice allowed no argument. He was so quick to deny the possibility of truth. It was as if he couldn’t even bear to
think
of his father being close. Perhaps the man on the ship did not fit the memory of the man. Perhaps memory was all that mattered.

I asked quietly, ‘And Munda?’

‘The girl? As I said, you were close enough to hear her breathing. Close enough to hear her breathing.’

And with that he walked away, back to the iron shrine, his last and most desperate place of calling, waving a hand to me, summoning me to follow.

He closed the small door. We again faced the rusting iron statues of his parents. And again he said, ‘When we go through, go away from me. Please, Antiokus. You were a friend to me when I was a child—I loved to have your company. To lose you in the way I did was also very difficult. It has been wonderful to find you again. Goodbye, Antiokus. Don’t judge me only by my dreams.’

The iron figures split apart. Sunlight spilled from a cloudless sky. A chariot thundered up to the exit and Kinos climbed into the car. Below us, on the wide beach, a battle was raging.

The air was full of screaming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

And yet to yield

On the narrow plain below the steep slopes of the citadel, bordering the silver gleam of the ocean, two armies were drawn up facing each other, chariots, horsemen, men on foot, all striking their shields with their swords, all restless below the billowing banners caught in the strong wind from the sea. The horses were nervous, the charioteers struggling to hold position. I could see at once that Kinos drove down among the forces of the Dead. The attacking army—five hundred strong, I estimated—was a legion of the Unborn.

The clamour rose as Kinos was driven along the ranks, his sword held high, his hair streaming from below his gleaming helmet.

He was Hector. This was his Troy. He had created the great siege from the stories his father had told him. He was living a dream in the world of the Dead. He was truly mad.

I had hardly had time to take in the vision below me when the Dead began their attacking run, chariots to the fore, horsemen spreading out to the flanks, squadrons of spearmen marching in columns behind. The Unborn, spread out, remained on their ground, ready to receive the charge. I could see tall men in rich armour, riding huge horses. I recognised Pendragon as one of them, but a moment later the flash of gold distracted me.

As the two armies met with the din of metal on metal and that sustained gull-scream of fury, so a golden-sided chariot was whipped up the winding path to the ramparts, a young man bent low over the reins, urging the white horses to take the slope, his companion, stripped to the waist, hair streaming, holding firmly to the rails, a short spear held defensively. He was staring up at the ramparts, and when he saw me he grinned, raising the spear in salute.

The Cymbrii! The sons of the great god Llew, Conan and Gwyrion. I had thought them long since strangled and deposited in the cold earth by their angry father. But here they were, approaching me.

Conan drew on the reins so hard that Gwyrion was thrown from the car, and for a moment he was furious with his brother. The horses steamed in the bright air, the dust settling around them. This chariot was magnificent, gold leaf on the wicker sides, and iron rims on the perfect wheels.

‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ Conan exclaimed as he saw my admiring glances.

‘Your father’s?’

The two youths burst out laughing, Gwyrion dabbing at his bleeding nose with his finger. ‘By the time he notices it’s missing, we’ll have it back. He sleeps so much these days, he’s hardly aware of the world around him.’

‘I thought he was going to punish you!’

‘He did,’ said Conan. ‘But the twenty years is up. When he let us out, it was as if Time had stood still. Have we aged?’

Twenty years?
I had been with them less than two seasons ago.

I looked at the two brash sons of the god and only human insight pointed out the shadows in their eyes. Fair-haired and fine-featured, with smiles that dazzled, these two youths had been subjected to a torment that no hero could have withstood. They had a sheen about them that was the armour of immortality. They had been hurt, now they could not wait to get on with what they did best.

Stealing chariots!

‘Get in. We have to get you down to your friends.’

‘How did you know I was here?’ I shouted as Conan slewed the chariot round and Gwyrion shoved me into the car.

‘The mad man who rules here. He sent a messenger to us. He seems to regard you as a friend.’

The wild youths drove me around the battle, towards the line of tents behind the lines. Urtha’s pennant fluttered from one of them. Indeed, Urtha sat inside, scowling and sulking, his weapons laid out before him. Niiv stood behind him, arms crossed. Her face brightened when I entered the enclosure.

‘That man! That Unborn bastard. How dare he confine me to the tent! But he says it’s necessary. Why is it necessary, Merlin? Who in the name of Thunder is he?’

He was talking about Pendragon. As Urtha rose to his feet, strapping on his sword, the resemblance between the two men flashed again, from his eyes, from the set of his mouth, from the iron look.

‘I believe he needs you to survive. He’ll want to tell tales of you in times to come.’

Urtha nodded sagely, the mood lifting. ‘Yes. Merlin, you have a sharp eye, even if your wits have deserted you for the moment. Which son of which of my grandsons will he be, I wonder.’

A future king, I told him; it was all I could tell him. It was too costly to look so far ahead, and I had resisted the temptation whilst in Taurovinda. But I added, ‘And a king who will never forget his ancestor, not if I’m around to remind him.’

Urtha looked at me from the corner of his eye. Chariots thundered past outside the tent, axles screeching; the stink of sweat lay heavy on the air. Urtha was deciding whether I was flattering him or appeasing him. He clearly liked the idea of being remembered. It was in the nature of these rough warriors to enjoy the thought of future notoriety.

‘Don’t tell him
everything
you know about me.’

‘Of course not.’

‘The shield of Diadara…’

‘You found it. The quest was well done.’

‘As indeed it might yet be. There is still time. But never mind that. What of Munda? Is she a captive of this warped man? Is she alive?’

When I told him that she was the pain in his face blew away like a breeze. There was a sparkle in his eyes again. ‘Is she in the palace?’

I told him what I knew; I used the words that Kinos had used. Urtha stepped outside the tent and stared across the ocean. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘when you first went ashore, I could have sworn I heard her calling. I should have gone with you.’

A spear sliced through the air, piercing the canvas of the tent, and all three of us flung ourselves to the ground. ‘I knew these were pitched too close,’ the chieftain muttered as we stood again. But a shadow fell over us, the harsh breathing of a tired horse. A broad-shouldered man, protected in leather and iron, towered over us, staring down. It was hard to see his face against the brilliant azure of the sky, but a moment later he smiled. It was not the Pendragon, as I’d first suspected.

‘Is my brother well?’ Gorgodumnos asked. ‘I’ve not seen him here, so I imagine he survived the siege. There are others who didn’t.’

‘Morvodugnos is brash, loud and feeding well,’ Urtha retorted. ‘His is a good sword hand to have in Taurovinda. As was yours. What happened to you?’

‘A spear in the back happened to me,’ Gorgodumnos replied. ‘I’m particularly keen to meet up with
that
bastard again. My horse came back without me, I hope. You should have known I had not deserted.’

‘Yes,’ I said to him. ‘We knew that you had died. You were missed very much. Ambaros called you the best of us. So are you fighting with the Dead?’

He shook his head, adjusting his position on the broad saddle. ‘No. Too recently dead to have been recruited by the madman. There are many of us here who followed the Greeklander, but who are not in his control. But we are not Unborn either, so we have no status.’

‘Mercenaries?’

‘Not even that. Scavengers. Followers. This world is upside down. We follow the smell of the afterlife, even if we don’t understand it.’

He turned his mount left side on. ‘This is a strange world, my lord Urtha. Delay your crossing for as long as you can.’

‘I shall. Be in no doubt of that.’

‘And the same message to that younger brother of mine, that great bull, Morvodugnos. When it comes to his time to cross at the Ford of the Last Farewell, I’ll be waiting for him. But tell him: not until he has achieved the Feat of the Nine Whirling Women!’

Gorgodumnos laughed, saluted us and cantered heavily towards the sea. He joined a small, sorry band of riders, and they all raised their weapons towards us. They were the fallen of Urtha’s Cornovidi and of the Coritani who had come to his assistance during the siege of Taurovinda. Where they rode after that, and for whom they fought, if they fought at all, I couldn’t tell.

Kinos’s ‘Trojans’, far outnumbering the ranks of the Unborn, made a sudden push and the forces under the various commanders, Pendragon included, wheeled about and repositioned further down the dunes, towards the sea. Men and horses swarmed through the lines of tents, scattering canvas and stores of spears. Urtha, Niiv and I fled along with the retreat, pausing only in our flight when the clans turned back to the hill and formed a solid line again, using shields and the gut-wrenching spears with five sets of recurved teeth to make a stabbing wall that turned the tide of the battle. As the flow of fighting moved back towards the palace of green marble, the shuddering corpses of both Dead and Unborn were revealed, so many thrashing, bleeding fish after a cruel catch.

I had imagined that Jason and his argonauts were in the thick of the fray, pushing forward to pierce the defensive lines and seek out Kinos. But the man and his war band appeared out of the sun’s glare from the direction of the ocean, Tisaminas carrying the flopping body of Atalanta. The broken shaft of a thin dart was stuck in her chest, but her eyes were still aware. Jason, in his dark cloak, looked dreadful, his long hair matted with sweat and blood, his tunic spattered with gore.

‘There you are, Antiokus! We need all the help we can get if we’re to storm the palace.’ He grinned without humour, glancing up at the rising walls. ‘A familiar sight, if you remember. And this time, no Medea to bar our entry. Kinos is in there, and I’ll fetch him out.’

‘Kinos is on the battlefield. He’s the only Greeklander you’ll see, the argonauts apart.’

‘I’ve seen the
sciamach
,’ Jason said with a shake of his head. ‘He was also on the plain beyond the Thunder Hill. Medea’s trickery, no doubt. A good likeness, but not the man himself.’

I would have laughed had it not been so tragic; twice Jason had been in his living son’s presence, and twice he had rejected the young man’s identity, preferring to think of him as a shadow warrior, a
sciamath
. Their eyes were blinded to the truth, both father and son.

Yes, that was Medea’s doing.

And where
was
Medea?

And then, like Pallas Athena on the plains of Troy, she seemed to whisper to me, as the goddess had whispered to her favoured champions,
You were close enough to hear me breathing
.

‘You look alarmed, Antiokus,’ Jason said, frowning. The sweat ran from him and his breathing was heavy. ‘Gather your wits, and your weapons. The good, golden boys will take us to the gates.’

The Cymbrii were waiting restlessly close by, watching the ebb and flow of the siege war. Their chariot was only sufficient for two of us; the rest, Jason suggested, should follow on foot.

‘The palace will be heavily defended,’ someone said, and I heard myself say: ‘It’s empty. There’s nothing there but dreams.’

Except in the war room
.

‘Dreams, and my son,’ Jason corrected out of ignorance. ‘My son’s dreams. I’ll know him when I see him. He’ll know me as well. Medea did a good job of hiding him, Antiokus. But seven hundred years is collapsing to a few moments only. Come with me, old friend. Come and search the palace with me.’

I held back; Jason watched me, disappointed, perhaps remembering his vow to kill me, a promise made in pain and anger, suddenly forgotten as he strove to clutch the last straw of his life and happiness in Iolkos. Perhaps he sensed in my hesitation a moment’s fear and assumed I would keep my distance. He strode past me to the reckless youths, his head lowered, cloak swirling.

‘He has no intention of killing you now,’ Urtha whispered. ‘He has the lust for life again.’

Whatever the High King was implying, I walked swiftly after the old argonaut, wrenching a spear from the ground on my way, and jumped into the crowded car just as Conan turned the chariot and whipped the horses. Even with the weight of four men, the beasts seemed to fly across the ground, swinging round to avoid the edge of the fighting, plunging through thin woodland and finding the rough path that wound across the side of the hill to the gates above. Bones jarred and teeth rattled as we climbed to the palace, Jason and I clinging to the rope loops on the sides of the car and watching each other impassively.

As we came to the deserted and unguarded open gates from the iron sanctuary, I saw the flash of light on bronze below. A chariot detached itself from the fray, working its way back to the hill, a lone Greeklander bent low as he thrashed with the reins.

Kinos was withdrawing.

Jason laughed as he jumped to the ground, staring up at the gleaming façade of the palace, hair blowing in the dry wind that streamed from within. He recognised this enlarged and elaborate construction, familiar as Medea’s palace, the home where he and the enchantress had lived for a few years, at least, in harmony and happiness. Niiv, Hylas and Tisaminas came panting up the road. All young, they had run almost as fast as the horses. The rest of Jason’s band had stayed behind. Niiv’s eyes sparkled. She had never experienced anything like this: alive and fighting in the world of ghosts; discovering what she imagined to be the secret landscapes of the dead. She clutched my arm as we entered the iron sanctuary, but she had her mind on the sight and smell of the place, only the child in her clutching at the familiar and comforting skin of the man she loved and needed.