Warrior Scarlet (25 page)

Here there was a kind of low bier of turfs spread with a huge red oxhide, and still without a word, they took the youngest of the New Spears and laid him upon it as for sacrifice. One with the head of a badger took up something that lay beside the bier, and for an instant Drem’s breath caught in his throat. Then he saw that it was only a wooden haft set with slim bright pins of bronze, and realized that this must be the time and place to receive the warrior tattooing of the Men’s side.

It was a long time before it came, last of all, to Drem’s turn; and when he flung back the wolfskin from his shoulder and gave himself proudly into the hands of the tattooers, it had grown quite dark, and looking up past the tawny flare of the torches and the snarling masks of those who bent over him, he saw the stars very far off and uncaring, and already, behind the Hill of Gathering, the silvery snail-shine spreading before the rising moon. The man with the badger’s mask took up his tools for the seventh time, and began to paint the zigzag and flowing lines on the skin of his breast and shoulders with a wisp of sheep’s wool dipped in his woad pot, and then to prick along them with the sharp bronze pins, grinding in more woad as he went. It felt like being stung by a crawling trail of insects, and where the lines crossed the newly healed scars the insects became hornets, and it was all he could do, lying there with shut teeth, not to flinch under the small, merciless, stinging points. And all the while he was knowing that this was the easy part; that the real thing, the dark and terrible and shining thing was yet to come.

Save for that first blaring of a war horn as they drew near the Holy Place, complete silence had held the scene; not even a night bird’s call or the whisper of a little wind over the turf to break the stillness; but now Drem became aware of a sound—no, a sensation rather than a sound, a rhythmic pulsing that might almost have been his own heart. But even as he listened, it grew and strengthened, changing—changing—from a pulse beat to a fierce, confusing rhythm that made Drem think of that harvest magic of the Dark People, beaten out with an open hand on the sheepskin drums. It never grew loud, that drumming, but moment by moment it became more intense, more potent, until it seemed to Drem to be inside himself, in his head, in his heart, so that he could no longer think clearly, like a man who was drunk with much mead.

He was vaguely aware of getting up from the bier and standing with the other New Spears, the proud new patterns smarting like fire on his breast—on all their breasts, for while the drumming lasted they all seemed to be part of each other, so that each felt the sting of the others’ wounds and the sharp, confused fear in the others’ hearts—and then, suddenly, as though it had been cut by the swift downward flash of a sword-blade, the drumming stopped, and there was silence again; silence that was more potent, more clearly and irresistibly a call than any blare of war horns could have been.

The New Spears looked at each other, their blood jumping oddly within them. And while the silence yet seemed to tingle, two of the beast-headed figures took the youngest of the New Spears and led him to the shielded entrance of the sacred circle, and in a while came back alone.

Then the drumming started again.

Again and again came the tingling silence, and each time another of the New Spears went away into the sacred circle, and none of them ever came back.

And then the drumming ceased for the last time of all, and the call was for Drem. He stepped forward, with a sense of moving in a dream, the two beast-headed figures on either side
of him, out from the shelter of the brushwood curve, and turned to the entrance of the sacred circle. There was light, a smoky dazzle of torchlight among the thorn trees; he glimpsed figures like the figures of a dream—beast-headed as the others had been, striped badger mask and upreared antlers and snarling grey wolf muzzle—and the torchlight under the thorn trees making the white blossom shine against the moony darkness, and the sparks flying upwards. But his whole awareness was caught and held by the tall figure of Midir the Priest, naked as the rest, and crested with the folded wings of the golden eagle, standing in the midst of the circle, in the very heart of the brightness. He was no longer aware of the men on either side of him, not aware of walking forward, until suddenly he was close before Midir; not aware of anything but Midir’s eyes.

But Midir’s eyes, that were like dark sunlight, were no longer eyes at all. They had contracted to two pin points of intense yellowish light, and the light ate into his very soul . . . Yet even as he gazed and gazed, his whole spirit caught up and held powerless, they were eyes again; yet such eyes as he had never seen before. Eyes that burned with a fire beyond fire, a blasting and shrivelling glory; and he was aware of a face growing up around them, and a figure, but not Midir’s. He had forgotten Midir. This was One who leaned on a spear as vast as the shaft of light when the sun strikes through storm clouds. And the face—? Afterward Drem only remembered that looking into it was like trying to look into the sun at noonday. He was aware of a shining and unbearable glory, a power that seemed to beat about him in fiery waves; and he knew in a moment of terror and ecstasy that he was looking into the face of the Sun Lord himself, which no man might see and live. The voice of a thousand war horns rang in his ears, and he was flying forward, plunging, swooping like a hawk, like a shooting star, into the heart of the singing brightness, the heart of all things.

THE WARMTH OF
the sun was on his body, and above him great grey and white clouds were drifting across a sky that had in it already a hint of evening. There was a lazy, blustering wind blowing—a south wind, it must be, for there was the salt of the sea in it: the honey of hawthorn flowers in it too, and garlic, which was odd and did not seem to fit with the rest. He felt as though he had been on a very long journey; so weary that he wanted to do nothing ever again but go on lying on his back and staring up past the lazy clouds into the blue heights of heaven. But he had a feeling that somebody had called him by name, and he stirred himself to look about him.

He was lying at the heart of the ancient circle, and the other New Spears with him; lying with their feet to the centre and their heads towards the ring of thorn trees, like the rays of a seven pointed star. And instantly he remembered the splendour and the terror that had been. The warrior patterns on his breast and shoulders were sore and stiff, and as he moved, a knot of dried garlic flowers fell from his breast, where they must have been set to keep his body safe while he was away from it.

The others were stirring now, sitting up one by one and looking about them. Nothing remained of last night’s mystery; no beast- and bird-headed figures among the thorn trees; no smoky blaze of torches; nothing left of the supremely beautiful and terrible moment when each had looked into the face of the
Shining One—only Midir the Priest, sitting peacefully under one of the thorn trees and gone away small inside himself, with his bull’s-hide robe about him and his thin, grey hair wisping out in the wind from under the eagle head-dress, and the amber sun cross on his breast catching and losing the light with his old, quiet breathing, and a few fallen hawthorn petals lying in his lap, as though he had sat there unmoving all night.

Then as they stirred and rubbed their eyes and looked about them with an air of having lost something, the old Priest stirred also, looking out of his eyes again, and brought out from under his cloak a bowl of black lathe-turned shale. ‘Sa, it is over,’ he said, and smiled a little, the bowl between his hands. ‘Come now to me, ye who return again out of the West, new and weak as thy mothers brought thee into the world afore-time. Come now and drink, and grow strong again.’

One after another, still a little dazed, they got themselves to their feet and went to him, and took the bowl he held up, passing it among themselves from one to another. There was milk in the bowl, and other things in the milk. What they were Drem never knew, things that tasted bitter, with an under-taste that clung evilly to the back of one’s throat after the milk was swallowed—but new strength ran through him as he drank, and some of the weariness fell away.

‘Now ye are warriors and men of the Clan, and of the Tribe,’ Midir said when they had all drunk. ‘Now ye have seen those things which are forbidden to all save the Priest kind and the warrior at his initiation, and which none may speak of afterwards. Therefore now ye shall swear the silence, by the ancient threefold oath of the Golden People, that no boy not yet come to his manhood shall ever learn from you the things that lie before him.’

And so, each in turn, kneeling before the old priest, they swore, just as the warriors had sworn fealty to the new King. ‘If I break faith, may the green earth gape and swallow me, may the grey seas burst out and overwhelm me, may the sky of stars fall and crush me out of life for ever.’

It was near to sunset again when they came down the last sloping shoulder of the Chalk towards the village, following Midir, one behind another; and their long shadows ran away before them, pointing the way home.

The village was swarming with life, the poor thin sheep and cattle left from the famine winter all driven in close to wait for the Beltane fires. As the New Spears drew nearer, suddenly the voice of a war horn rang to and fro between the hills, and a throng of young warriors burst out from among the huts and came, tossing up their weapons as they ran, to close around the New Spears and swing back with them, shouting and chanting, towards the village.

How often Drem had seen this triumphal return of the New Spears that was the start of the Beltane Festival. How often he had looked forward to the fierce and shining day when he would be one of those for whom the Clan roared in their rejoicing. Then had come last year; last year that was not good to think about; and now, after all, against all seeming possibility the fierce and shining day had come, and he was returning out of the Sunset like a warrior from victory. And he cried out inside himself, ‘It is real, it is true! I am a warrior like my brothers,’ and could not quite believe it.

Afterwards, that sunset time, the final ceremonies of his initiation remained with Drem only as a blur, shining but without form; but out of it stood up small, clear-edged memories. He remembered the heat of the Council Fire on his cheek as he stood beside it to receive his weapons. He remembered the Grandfather towering over him as he towered over most people when he cared to stand erect, setting the great new war spear in his hand with a grumbling, ‘There, take it. Did I not always say that the boy would make a warrior?’ and a golden glare under his eyebrows for anyone who dared to contradict him. He remembered Talore’s swift, dark smile lifting his lip over the strong dog-teeth as he raised the ancient bronze and bull’s-hide shield. ‘Small fierce cub, was it well that I found you under the oak tree, seven summers ago?’ And the proud smart of the
shoulder harness as the heavy shield dragged its straps down on the lately healed wolf scars and the sore new lines of tattooing. He remembered the flash of his spear blade as he tossed it up in salute to the setting sun, and brought it crashing across his shield. He remembered Whitethroat’s growling song of gladness at finding him again, and the taste of the piece of rib that he and Vortrix shared between them, sitting shoulder to shoulder, when the ceremonies were over, and the cooking pits had been opened, and the feasting began.

But Drem was to remember the day of his Warrior Scarlet for another thing; a thing that he did not as yet dream of, as the dusk deepened into the dark, and the Council Fire sank to red embers.

Save for the Council Fire, all the fires in the village had been quenched before the feasting started, and when that too had sunk, and the last red embers been scattered and stamped out under the heels of the young warriors, the village was a village without fire, dark save for the glow of a great, broom-yellow moon just shaking clear of the Chalk.

With the dying of the last fire, the Feast of New Spears was over, and the Feast of Beltane was begun; and it was time to raise the New Fire, the Living Fire. A strangeness came over the village, as it came every year between the fires; and it was in silence and a breath-caught expectancy and something very like fear that presently they laid aside their weapons and Clan and Half People together wound their way out of the village and up the Hill of Gathering, driving with them a young red bull garlanded for sacrifice with vervain and green broom and whitethorn blossom.

They thronged the crest of the hill, a crowd of shadows touched by the silver of the moon, no sound among them save the wind hushing through the furze and whitethorn bushes; and in their midst the twin stacks of the Beltane fires, dark on one side, brushed on the other with that same silver of the moon, waiting as the whole night waited, for the Wonder.

Now the red bull who must die for the rest of the herd had
played his part, and certain of the warriors were laying aside their cloaks and stepping forward to the trailing raw-hide ropes of the fire drill that stood reared beside the stacks.

On and on, as the moon rose higher into the glimmering, wind-streaked sky, they worked the fire drill, one team of nine taking over as another tired, while Midir, with the blood of the red bull on his breast and forehead, stood by to add his magic to their labour. Team followed team, while the whole awareness of the watching crowd, blent into one spearhead of intense concentration, was fixed upon the dark point where the sharpened spindle whirled in its socket, every soul waiting, waiting for the Wonder, half fearful, as they were half fearful every year, that this year the Wonder would not come.

Always the New Spears and the youngest warriors tried to hang back till towards the end, each eager to be in the team that actually woke the spark; and several teams had followed each other, when Drem, standing by among his own year, felt Vortrix’s hand on his shoulder. ‘See, they are beginning to tire,’ Vortrix said, ‘and it is in my mind that the fire is not far off. Our turn now, my brother. Urian—Maelgan—’