The Iron Grail (7 page)

Kymon and Munda, slightly built and riding energetic chariot ponies, covered a great deal of ground as I lumbered along, riding the best of Ambaros’s war-horses, but uncomfortable even with a canter.

This was unknown territory to Kymon, though he knew to ride east, and I led them along the wooded edge of the river, whose crossing places, between the northern lands and the south, Urtha’s fortress guarded. After a day we reached the evergroves and the mounds that had been raised over the honoured dead, including Urien, Urtha’s younger son. This sacred wood was still untouched by the reivers from Ghostland, and my instinct told me that it would stay that way. It would be a haven close to home. But the Dead had certainly occupied the hill, though to Kymon’s eyes the stronghold looked deserted.

Munda was more aware. She led her pony to the edge of the plain, frowning as she surveyed the great rise of the fort and its winding battlements. ‘The place is haunted,’ she said, but Kymon just laughed. ‘The ghosts our own people,’ he suggested. ‘Those who haven’t yet gone to the Land of Shadow Heroes.’

‘It doesn’t feel right,’ the girl insisted and glanced at me, looking for an answer. She had more intuition than her brother, I suspected; or perhaps just more sense.

‘The fortress is occupied,’ I agreed with her.

‘By what people?’ Kymon asked gruffly. ‘I don’t see their banners. I don’t see their guards. Do you?’

This last was addressed to his sister. Munda nodded. ‘They are watching us,’ she advised. ‘They are still strangers in our land.’

I watched her as she said this. She had gone into a daze, though it lasted only a moment.

‘Now you sound like those women who guarded us!’ Kymon snapped angrily. ‘You are too dreamy, sister. Fill your sling and balance your javelin. We’ll be back here to repair what those moondogs have done to our home!’

The last Kymon had seen of his home it had been burning fiercely, and the ground between houses, corrals, shrines and forges had been littered with the dead; and there had been no visible evidence of the skirmishers who were inflicting the destruction on the Fort of the White Hill.

The last he remembered was when Maglerd, his father’s mastiff, had dragged him down, then pulled him to safety, Gelard, carrying Munda, following. Those hounds had run for all their worth, leaping the barricades, sliding down the ramparted slopes, slinking through bush and woodland, following the rivers and streams until, charged by some inner fury, some silent guide, they had brought these children to safety, ironically in the very kingdom of the Dead that had raided the fort.

‘We can return and rebuild,’ Kymon announced loudly again.

‘The intention is admirable,’ I suggested to him, ‘but you are outnumbered.’

‘Outnumbered by what? By dark clouds? By burned thatch roofs?’ He was flushed with pride and fury.

‘By the Dead. By the Unborn. They’re in there now, in force.’

‘I’ve lived in the Land of the Dead,’ he said arrogantly. ‘They ride proudly. But what harm can they do here?’

‘Harm enough to have sacked this fort, and sent you into exile.’

‘They were not the Dead,’ Kymon snapped. ‘They were Trinovanda, bull-stealers and slave-takers, mercenaries, disguised as the Dead!’

‘How would you know?’ I asked the proud youth. ‘You were fallen, dazed, and dragged by hounds. How do you know who raided Taurovinda?’

‘I’ve had time to think about it,’ he said, leaning on the shield, watching me through eyes that were narrowed with inquisitiveness. ‘The Trinovanda are the worst of our enemies. It makes sense to me.’ Then he teased me with a look. ‘Are you afraid of the Dead, Merlin?’

‘Yes. I find them unpredictable.’

The answer bemused him. He glanced at Munda. ‘And what about you, sister? Does this damage look like the work of wraiths, or the work of raiders?’

‘Merlin is right,’ Munda said softly. ‘You weren’t in the house when Urien died. I was. I saw the whole thing.’

For the first time, Kymon’s resolve weakened. He frowned, straightened and glanced back at the silent ruins on the plain. But he would not be shaken from his goal. I heard him mutter, ‘This place is ours. It’s what my father would want, and what my mother would want, and what grandfather would want … this place is ours.’

If I’d thought for a moment that he was signalling it was time to return to the camp, I was wrong. He swung himself across the low saddle of his copper mare, then kicked the pony viciously in the flanks, whipping the reins so that the animal foamed round its bit, reared up then bolted through the edge of the grove and out into the scrub of the plain, towards the tall outer gate with its bleached skulls of bulls. He screamed as he rode, his right fist held high.

And before I could say a word, the girl had followed him, making the sound of a crow:
krah, krah, krah
. She rode, head low, small spear held across the girth of her pony. What impulse made her follow her brother like this I can only imagine.

Kymon rode furiously up and down before the Bull Gate, shouting abuse at the unseen, unseeable enemy.

‘You Dead! You Unborn!’ He sneered the words, several times, turning them into a rich and juicy insult, surprising from his unbroken voice. Then he added, to Munda’s great amusement—she cheered as he shouted—‘You bastards! You are the sons of men who ran from combat! And hid below their cowls, exposing their backsides like dogs in submission! Suckled on tits that were no more than old leather wine pouches! Suckled by mothers who never had a chance to wash their backs because they were never off them! Fostered with mange-riddled dogs and foot-rotten sheep because no king’s sons would be seen
alive
with you!’

Munda rode nervously out of arrow range as this diatribe proceeded, calling, ‘Enough now, brother. Save your anger for when you can get at their guts and do some cutting.’

He ignored his sister, standing up on his horse, balanced on the narrow saddle, arms spread wide. ‘I will
not
be evicted from my father’s house,’ he screamed again, and his words started to echo from the sheer walls of Taurovinda.

Now he waved the oval shield above his head. Sunlight caught the image of the horse and hawk. I saw light reflected on ghostly eyes, high above, beyond the steep earthen walls, a line of men listening carefully to every word that this brash and dangerous youth had uttered, taunting and challenging the occupying force.

I had thought this would be the end, that he would ride back to safety, but to my amazement Kymon suddenly went into warp-spasm, still standing on his calm pony. Fists clenched to his chest, face distorted, skin as white as ash and sucked in against the flesh, he shouted the old curse, the curse of challenge.

‘I will make you endure hardship and the long sigh!’ he howled at the men above the gate. ‘Your own blood a red plague, your women red-eyed. I will play you at the stabbing game! My face, blood-filled, rage-filled, my eyes, ice-filled, hate-filled! I will be weary after triumph, a crow that scours the ploughed ground of your flesh. My sword, the thorn that pricks the rose-bloom of your hopes and dreams, your blood the blossom, blossoming on your breast, on your shield the blossom of your brother, clotting rose, petal-scattered crimson! I will be the plucking man, your bloom at my mercy!’

This was too much for the Dead, those who remembered issuing and defending against this proud boast. A boy was challenging them; tempers could flare, even after death.

The gates were flung open and five heavy horsemen pounded towards Kymon. The spasm left the boy at once and he dropped into the saddle, kicked his pony round, whipped it with the reins and streaked back across the plain towards the evergroves. He laughed as he rode, his sister by his side, crouched low over the withers of her own mount. Slingshot whistled past them, striking into the cover of the haven where I watched, but the two of them galloped into safety, each horse stumbling and throwing its rider but without serious injury.

The pursuing host spread out in a line, horses breathing hard, hard men sitting low, watching us through masked helmets.

Kymon returned to the edge of the groves, loosened his britches and urinated on to the turf, watching the enemy with cold eyes.

*   *   *

Angry though he was, Kymon refused to return to the valley. We waited until dusk, then he went to the grove where Urtha’s father and mother lay together, below a low cairn of stones. Kymon’s grandmother, Riamunda, had been a powerful woman in the land. It was through her strength and her cunning that the land of the Cornovidi had stretched as far as it did, and had come to take in the borderland with the Otherworld itself.

There were many stories of Riamunda. She could still be seen, a silver owl with wings of hazel, flying across the fortress each midwinter, keeping an eye on events down below.

She had clearly been unable to stop the sacking of her ancestral home.

But now Kymon sang a song to her, joined by Munda, who followed his lead. It was not a song of summoning, but of courage, of intent. He drew on her sleeping soul for the inner strength to do what he had to do. The cairn was simply the grave, but his voice would echo into whatever part of Ghostland she inhabited. Ghostland was a complex realm. It had its land for queens, separate from its land for heroes.

‘Grandmother,’ he finally whispered, ‘even if I am one against an army, your country will never come under bondage. I cannot wait for my father to return. He may never return. I am battle-eager. Send me hawks to strike from the sun and carrion birds to clean up the field. Fly low over me, and screech if I hesitate. But grandmother … come back to MaegCatha, and haunt the plain. I will draw comfort from your shadow.’

*   *   *

Two days later, as we came back to the valley and the camp of the exiles, I was saddened to see a women washing a bloody shirt in the river, thrashing the garment against exposed rocks, not really cleaning it at all, simply manifesting grief. I thought immediately that Ambaros had died, but it turned out to be the death of a child, who had fallen from the cliff while trying to snare one of the small birds which nested there. Since there was no shortage of food for this vanquished society, his intention must have been either magic or propitiation. His parents had both been killed in the last raid on Taurovinda. Now his broken body lay in its tunic on a small bier, away from the dogs, while his guardians discussed burial or a small pyre.

Ambaros was still very weak. His face had no colour to it, his breath was foul, there were shadows gathered about him. The glitter had gone from his eyes, which were moist and unfocused. That said, he was drawing a little strength from somewhere.

‘Do you have any thoughts,’ he asked me weakly, ‘on the consequences of being slaughtered by your own ancestors?’

I told him, bleakly, that I had no insights, and my ideas would be guesses. I was as puzzled by Ghostland as was he.

‘Nevertheless, I’ll promise you this,’ he went on. ‘Whether I live or die, I’ll fight to stop them crossing the river. They don’t belong in this world. You can depend on me. Tell my grandchildren, will you?’

‘You can tell them yourself,’ I pointed out, but he laughed cynically.

‘Munda, yes. But the boy reminds me of his mother. Impatient and quick to anger. And nothing angered Aylamunda more than an unnecessary death.’

I could have glanced into Ambaros’s future at that moment, but I declined to do so. He was between the sky and the earth, no more than half dead, no more than half alive. He had seen nearly fifty winters. The time that nestled in those big bones and broad shoulders would either work for him or for his departure to Ghostland.

It was not my business to interfere.

Although Munda visited her grandfather, Kymon did not. Instead, the youth summoned a council, in the biggest of the enclosed caves in the valley, and requested a feast. When it was pointed out to him that the community was in mourning for the boy who had fallen from the cliff, he suggested combining the wake with the Call to Battle. This entailed eating prepared food in a different order, and seating the High Women and the warriors in a different place, but Kymon cut through this ritual with the simple exhortation that: ‘I am still a youth; but I am my father’s son, and I will be the first to speak. I will honour the dead boy. I will honour him at his burial. But we are not in the royal lodge, we are in a cave in the wasteland between life and death. Don’t fuss about the orderliness of the dead when all that is necessary is to hear the proposal of the living.’

I imagine he had worked quite hard on that assertive and pompous little speech.

He placed the small oval shield, with its hawk and horse, at the centre of the circle of small wooden tables, and placed a cushion, a small bowl and an eating blade beside it. I knew what he was doing. There were palaces in the east where this eccentric action by one so young would have been greeted with amusement and tolerance; others where it would have been greeted with benign intolerance or even mild punishment. But so simple an action as commanding the shield centre of the circle, among the Celts as I will choose to all them, could as easily result in the summary execution of Kymon, for assuming a right in the king’s absence that should have been contested, as it might in the gentle acceptance of his right to occupy this manly space simply because he was his father’s son.

Munda, being who she was, had the greater right to occupy the centre space. Although I record these stories at a later time than their occurrence, I remember well how high in the society of decision-making and battle-planning were the women of Alba; it changed later, but in Urtha’s day, he was the right arm of power and Aylamunda, while she had lived, had been the left. When dead, they would occupy different territories in the Land of the Shadows of Heroes, though there would be paths to draw them together as need and memory necessitated.

It was not, therefore, the surviving band of Urtha’s
uthiin
who posed the danger to Kymon, but the High Women who had survived, and whose ancestors were the
modronae
who sheltered the exiled children in Ghostland.