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Authors: Keith Taylor

Bard I (34 page)

BOOK: Bard I
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Felimid broke the lid from an iron-bound casket, tucked it under one arm and climbed. His head and shoulders emerged into torchlit chaos. Mail-shirted men struck and hacked with useless swords at a snowy monster which laughed at their efforts. Two had fallen before him. Thick dark streams of blood wandered glistening across the slippery mosaic tiles. Horses stamped and shrieked. The wolf was elusive as running water, implacable as a
geas
. He killed again while Felimid watched.

The bard swung the box about his head, spilling the contents widely. Coins rained everywhere, shining in the torchlight, bounding, ringing, rolling. Some struck the wolf’s pelt. He spasmed as if stung by wasps. For an instant he stood very still among the detested pieces of silver, trapped and baffled. Then he made a desperate, deadly leap at the bard.

They tumbled into the rude vault together. The wolf voiced an improbably naive yelp of surprise as they fell. They hit bottom with a brutal jolt. Felimid landed atop the beast and heard lupine ribs crack. They knit, healing, even as he moved to clap a wrestling hug around them. Gareth let out a war-yell and swung the torch. Man and man-beast rolled over. Felimid clung madly to the shaggy back, inflicting dagger-wounds that did not bleed and closed at once when the stabbing blade was withdrawn.

Gareth dropped his useless sword as the bard struggled, and groping about the floor, he touched a round flat object with its surface figured in relief; a silver tableplate, satisfyingly heavy. He threw it spinning with all his strength.

It stuck in the monster’s hairy side, edge-on between two ribs. He raised a howl of agony that shook the vault. Felimid had lost his dagger; he clung to the wolfs snout with hooked fingers, while his other hand searched blindly for a weapon. His fingers caught a short, chunky ingot.

With desperate strength, he smashed it through the wolfs skull. Into the shallow brain-pan it drove and stuck there, spattering grey, pink and red up his arm. The wolf jerked epileptically, dislodging the thrown plate from his side, and lay feebly twisting like a beheaded snake.

Like a snake, too, he writhed out of his skin.

Dark-haired, olive-skinned, Sergius lay on the bloodstained hide. There was a gash between his ribs, and the chunky silver ingot was driven into the back of his head like a wedge. Felimid turned him over with a foot, breathing harshly, and felt of the wolfskin. It was the same. It had been Tosti’s, while the huge Jute had been alive.

‘Sergius found Tosti’s cairn,’ the bard said, his eyes locked with Gareth’s.

‘If he wasn’t above robbing graves,’ Gareth replied, ‘he got what be deserved.’

The torch on the floor guttered out. When Palamides and Gaheris came down the ladder with new ones, they wasted little time assuring themselves the pair were unhurt, and even less marvelling over the transformation of Sergius, for the contents of the vault held them dumbfounded. Not Palamide at his most optimistic had come near the truth.

There was household silver in masses, including plates, trays, candelabra, bowls, wine-cups, sauce-boats and dishes. Tarnished black and draped in cobwebs though they were. the weight and feel of them spoke for their genuineness. There were other caskets of coins, and there had been leather bags, long since rotted away. their contents in piles on the floor, or scattered by the struggle just ended. There were denarii of fine and impure metal, worn clipped siliquae, Treviri coins from Gaul, and great numbers bearing the head and name of Magnus Maximus. There were stacks of flattish or chunky ingots, some stamped with marks of authority. others more crudely moulded and bearing no mark, doubtless cupellated on the sly and smuggled to this estate. Someone had thought to make a profit out of the final confusion in the province. It was not a king’s ransom, because no king in Britain could have paid it.

 

‘I was wrong to think you superstitious when you warned me of the manwolf,’ Palamides remarked later, ‘but it seems you were wrong to believe the manwolf was Tosti Fenrir’s-get.’

‘Not so,’ the bard contradicted. ‘Until two nights since, the manwolf was Tosti. He came from his mother’s womb as a wolf cub, they say, but he could shed the skin or assume it as he pleased, as long as he did it by night. Because I knew the story. I dared not bury the skin with him. I spread it atop his cairn instead, and then Sergius came by-and stole it.’ With a faint thickening of blood Felimid thought again of Tosti’s curse. Such things are potent in the West. ‘I hazard he slept with it by him last night– no, the night before that–and the curse of the wolf descended on him. He became a beast and savaged his own men; then he trailed us, to gain the silver or to be sure it stayed hidden forever, who knows? He’s dead now and cannot tell us. As for the skin—’ Felimid built a fire and flung it in. ‘I ought to have done this when I first had the chance.’

The wolfskin moved, squirmed, then flapped like a rag in a gale. Felimid pinned it down among the flames with the crowbar, and endured the stink while it burned.

 

In the morning, he found Kincaid where the wolf had dropped him, a dazzle of sunlight on pommel and belt-buckle signalling where he lay. The sword hadn’t been carried far.

For his share of the treasure. Felimid clenched both his fists full of silver coins and was content. ‘I must travel light and fast,’ he told them, ·and I’m bound homeward, to Ireland.’

‘Not immediately, I fear.’

Mild though it was, the Thracian’s tone halted Felimid in his tracks. ‘What’s this?’

Palamides gestured at the courtyard pave, which his men had restored as best they could, to cover the vault again. They had even replaced the strips of turf Kehydi had removed.

·we cannot bear the tenth part of that treasure away with us. It must remain until Artorius is told, and can send a strong force to get it. We here are the only ones who know it exists-at present. We stay together until it is safe in the Count’s war-chests. That means riding to Verulamium.’

‘Verulamium? Away north of the Thames. north of London?’

‘It’s no such cause for dismay,’ Palamides said, smiling faintly. ·one can ride from Verulamium to the coast with ease in less than a day. and thence take ship ‘round to your own country.’

‘Palamides, please understand. I must leave Britain at once. There are friends of mine who will suffer greatly if it becomes known that I live. I’ve had setbacks and changes of plan enough now.’

‘Then I’m sorry to present you with another, but you need not fret. I’m as fixed upon keeping this business secret as you are. Ride with us hooded and cloaked so that none will recognise you, if you wish. I’d rather you did. You haven’t been to Verulamium? It’s a deserted, abandoned city like many another; the Count has made it his base for this summer’s work. There’ll be no difficulty finding you decent quarters, even luxurious ones, where you can bide unnoticed. You needn’t so much as set foot outside them if you don’t wish to.’

‘You’d prefer that, too,’ Felimid said slowly.

‘Be reasonable! Felimid, you showed three years ago that you understand what the Count is doing. You know what this hoard will mean; money to pay armorers. to pasture the horses, to buy supplies, gifts to smooth over differences between bickering kings and princes who seem determined to let the sea-wolves have Britain! And it’s here, in Kent! Do you wonder that I dare not take the slightest chance? King Oisc would have an army here within three days, if he knew!’

‘I’m not likely to tell him. He’d kill me on sight.’

‘All right. Forgive me, but you might tell someone else, and seek to ransack this place before us. Once you were at large you’d find any number of greedy rascals eager to listen to a story of treasure. Why, now that I think of it, I hardly trust myself.’

The bard said explosively, ‘Your brains have rotted!

Tell anybody else, I? And be killed once I’d led them here, as Sergius would have killed me? I’m a bard, man! I shall go home to Ireland and I shall be wealthy there! Come back to this loathly slaughteryard? I’ll never set foot in the kingdom of Kent again as long as free choice is mine!’

Palamides. the saturnine and aloof, burst into unfeigned laughter. ‘By Peter, what a flow of speech! My friend, you’ve convinced me and won me quite-but I must have your company on the road to Verulamium, none the less. My duty demands it.’ His laughter ended; iron rang in his voice. ‘And we will forgo the delights of your music on the way.’

Swiftly, he caught the harp Golden Singer from where she Jay among Felimid’s gear. Handing her to Gareth, he said in the tone of a soldier giving orders to a soldier, ‘Hold this in safety for him.’

For all hi!. vehement protests, Felimid had known in his heart that he would Jet Palamides persuade him, that he would acquiesce in the end and ride to Verulami urn . . . until now. He whitened with anger.

‘Never touch the harp of a bard,’ he said with quiet menace.

‘Easy, Felimid. You cannot fight seven seasoned warmen. all in mail. Even if we be all friends here.’ Sighing. the bard relaxed. His hand had been at his sword-hilt, unwilled by him. ‘Do I look so foolish as to try?’

‘For an instant there, you did.’

The bard grew thoughtful. No. He couldn’t fight seven men in mail and full battle-gear, and he in mere cloth-but his battle instincts had not assessed it that way. His instincts had cried that there was only Palamides to deal with. He saddled the grey mare and tied his few belongings in a neat bundle behind the saddle.

In a way, it was true. Palamides was not a Celt. Felimid and the others were. The Thracian’s men came from the west and north of Britain, where Roman values were superficial at best; they did not think of themselves as soldiers in the Roman sense so much as warriors of one man’s personal war-band. They led personal honor and individual whim more than discipline. And of course they reverenced bards as the sons of Erin did. Maybe Palamides had never really understood that.

Over the grey mare’s back. Felimid caught Gareth’s eye, and held it-unconsciously assuming the almost regal pose his bardic powers entitled him to. They mounted to ride. Directly he was in the saddle, Felimid held out his hand confidently toward Gareth. Gareth handed him the harp, without hesitation. Felimid caught the harp-bag’s broad strap and settled it in its accustomed place on his back.

‘Farewell, Palamides!’ he smiled, and kicked the grey mare to a gallop.

 

There was hot panting pursuit that breathed after him – Palamides in a transport of fury. riding a war-horse bred for weight and power, not speed. Felimid had neither mail nor casque nor shield nor lance to cumber him; the bard rode lightly as thistledown, singing to the bright, clear sky.

Before very long, Palamides realised how useless it was to follow; seething, he turned for Verulamium instead. When be arrived, he would wax passionate, no doubt, in his denunciation of Gareth’s irresponsibility, but Gareth would bear his punishment with a carefree heart, his honor untainted. When the Thracian returned with a strong force to bear the great cache of silver away, he would find it untouched. Felimid’s claim that he wasn’t interested in the wealth of kings had been the truth. The wealth of a bard was in the harp on his back, in the magic of his song, and in the honor that his own people held him in.

Felimid settled his horse to an easy walk on the road to the coast, free at last of the nightmares of werwolves and Jutish halls, of dark forests and dark magics. The world lay before him, and he could think of nothing more he wanted than that. He was a bard after all, Felimid mac Fal of Erin, a poet and a wanderer-and he had never really wanted to be a warrior.

 

THE
END

 

BOOK: Bard I
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