Celtika (30 page)

‘I wasn’t being serious,’ Urtha said softly, half smiling, then looking away. ‘I was simply curious. Like you, I have other things on my mind. I’ve been thinking a lot about my boys, and Munda, and what comes after me now that…’

He stopped speaking, scratching at his newly trimmed whiskers. He was thinking of Kymon. And I was sure he was thinking how things had changed, now, how his concerns for the future had been based on a false dream. He had imagined a squabble between his sons, developing into a war that would divide the ancestral land. Fear of that had driven his passage north. The event could no longer occur, since one of his sons was dead. His fears for the future had come through that mouth from Hel which the Greeklanders called the Ivory Gate.

Nevertheless, those dreams that came through the Ivory Gate—by tradition, lies, falsehoods, deceptions—usually had a twist about them. Nothing was ever as it seemed. Urtha might one day have a third son by another woman; or young Urien, dog-feasted, might come back from the dead. Nothing could be discounted. Only Time herself could answer for the truth or falsity of dreams, and I was not in any mood to enter into a costly bargain with Time for a glimpse of Urtha’s future.

My skin was loose, my beard showed flecks of grey, my eyes were tired, my self was sorry for itself, and all because of bright-smiling, smile-caressing Niiv. Like a worm, she had burrowed down to my bones and grazed the pulp of magic; like a wolf, she had howled her triumph after the feast; like a cat, she had realised her mistake and watched me carefully, with cat-wide, cautious eyes. And with all of this hovering over me, I was not, now, in a generous frame of mind.

And besides, I was only guessing.

‘Why have you come to find me?’

Urtha struggled to his feet, brushed the winter decay from his trousers, snapped the mastiffs into silent obedience again, and helped me up, a firm hand on my wrist. He looked me in the eye. ‘Because I’ve found something. I wanted someone else to see it. Come on, let me show you.’

We struggled out of the hollow. I took hold of Gelard, Urtha wound Maglerd’s leash around his wrist, and we ran with the hounds through the sparse trees. There was a warm and fragrant scent of wood smoke on the air, and the sound of building. I glimpsed activity among the argonauts. They were preparing for the long haul in pursuit of Brennos and the horde.

The dogs led us to the steep bank down to the grey flow of the Daan. In the high sun, in this crisp day, the water gleamed. The dogs struggled and whimpered, looking nervously to the west.

‘They have a nose for death,’ Urtha said, and after a few minutes’ trotting along the ridge above the water, we came to the open grave where two grey-faced corpses lay in awkward rigor, bodies turned down. There were no weapons with them. Each half-exposed back showed blood. The dirt had been clawed from them, no doubt by Urtha’s hounds. It was hard to see clearly.

Urtha said, ‘These were two fine men. They were my friends. They were my
uthiin.
They betrayed me. And Cunomaglos betrayed them in turn.’

He reached down and tugged at the split fabric of one of their shirts. ‘Stabbed in the back.’

‘Who were they?’ I asked.

‘I know them, but I’ll not tell you their names.’ He threw a handful of cold turf on to each of them. ‘They deserve to rot with the beasts. I’ll remember them, though. They were once friends. And I’ll remember them for the good fights and the wild rides. Cunomaglos has done this. I imagine he doubted these two men’s solidarity. He was right. I can imagine they had grave doubts about what they were doing.’ Urtha looked at me, steely-eyed. ‘That leaves nine. Nine in all.’

‘A lot of men to challenge.’

‘I’ll only challenge one, Merlin. Dog Face himself. If I lose, that’s an end to it. If I win? That’s when the difficulty begins. They’ll come for me one at a time. They’ll be fresh and fierce. By about the sixth I’ll be quite tired. It won’t be easy.’

I squeezed his shoulder like an old friend, hiding my smile. ‘Well, at least you have arrogance on your side, and that will help.’

He nodded. ‘I do hope so. But the first is all that matters.’

*   *   *

‘Merlin.
Merlin!
’

There are times when I feel like a tree, rooted to the ground amidst a swirling flock of chattering crows; they nestle and fight in my branches, flap and feed, and I can do nothing to chase them away.

Jason, Mielikki, Urtha … and now Niiv, challenging me from a mound at the edge of the camp, arms crossed, pale skin flushed, her frown making her seem to pout, though it was only her eyes that flashed such irritation.

‘Merlin! What have I done? You mustn’t ignore me. Is it true that you told Jason to kill me? Why?’

My anger returned. ‘Stay away from me. Latch on to Tairon; he’s as twisty as you.’

‘Twisty? What’s twisty?’ she screamed in frustration. ‘I don’t even understand you any more. What did I do to make you so angry?’

‘You know what you did! You stole knowledge from me! You weakened me!’

‘I did
not
steal from you,’ she shouted, wagging a finger for a moment as if addressing a child. ‘You were
always
in the saddle,
always
holding the reins. I just … I just jumped up behind you. And held on to you. I felt safe with you…’

She was pleading with me, trying to warm my heart. She thought I was simply angry with her. How could she know that I was terrified of her?

‘You charmed me,’ I countered. ‘And you stole from me.’

‘That’s not true. You’re a liar!’

‘I don’t need to lie when it comes to tricky whores like you.’

‘What? What did you call me? How dare you!’

‘Do you think I’ve not met your kind before? You carry a half-child. You’re the worst kind of witch! Do you imagine your many times great-grandmother Meerga wasn’t into the same game? I fucked her and she tricked me. She tricked me and I had her killed.’

Shocked for an instant, Niiv said grimly, ‘She died in the lake, trying to contact an ancestor. She didn’t take the right precautions and was taken by Enaaki. The same thing would have happened to you if I hadn’t warned you.’

‘She died
on
the lake. In a boat. Naked. Bruised around the neck. She paid the price of prying! Enaaki gobbled her remains. I ate the half-child. I took it back. I rowed back to shore.’

‘Liar …
Liar!
’

‘I know what you carry, Niiv. I know you have a half-child inside you. Don’t come near me. What more can I say to you? How much more can I give you?’

‘Everything! You can give me everything!’

I took unexpected pleasure in staring at her for a long time before saying, with calculated coldness: ‘Leave me alone, Niiv. I’m too old, too careful to let a frost-sprite like you, a nothingness like you, a breeze in the storm of charm like you—too wise to let you trick me twice.’

‘Nothingness?’ she echoed, and for a moment she couldn’t speak, upset or outraged, it was hard to tell. ‘If I’d tricked you once, I’d be able to trick you again,’ she complained. ‘But I didn’t trick you once. And I promise I’ll never try. And I don’t believe you killed Meerga. And I don’t believe you want Jason to kill me. Tell me it isn’t true.’

How wonderful to see such beauty dancing to my tune. How like her ancestor Meerga she was, but without that woman’s bitter selfishness. Meerga had been carrion in my hands, though it had not been my own hands that had killed her. I couldn’t see Niiv with the same hawk’s eye.

‘Believe what you want,’ I taunted. ‘If Jason lets you live, just stay at the other end of the ship to me.’

‘This is all to do with that other one, the one who came ashore! Isn’t it? The one who smelled of blood and burning leaves.’

Blood and burning leaves?

Now it was my turn to be shocked. I’d heard the expression before. Perhaps Niiv took my sudden silence as disbelief. She elaborated, angrily:

‘The one who rattled with green-bright metal. Knife-eyes!’

‘Mielikki?’ I asked cautiously, though I didn’t mean the Forest Lady at all. ‘Mielikki has left the ship?’

‘Not her. The other one!’ she cried. ‘The one who went ashore while you were preparing to hawk-fly. She didn’t know I was watching. If you look for her you can’t see her. But it’s her, isn’t it? You’re hiding her; and you don’t want me to know.’

Niiv’s voice was like a howling wind. She stood at the centre of her own storm, angry and abandoned, intuitively jealous of an affectionate friendship from my past. The activity at the camp, and around Argo, might have been at the other end of the world.

Blood and burning leaves?

It couldn’t be!

I said to Niiv, ‘Were you hiding in the ship, then, when this knife-eyed woman went ashore?’

‘Mielikki is my spirit-mother,’ the girl reminded me. ‘Which is why you’ll never have me killed. I am her
child.
She would never let me come to danger.’

She had been in the Spirit of the Ship! Mielikki had protected her. Why was I so surprised? Forest Lady and young
shamanka
were of a single heart. It was only natural that Mielikki would wrap her cloak around her kin.

But what had Niiv seen? And how much would she tell me?

‘I don’t know this knife-eyed woman,’ I shouted. ‘Did you hear her name?’

‘I only glimpsed her. She was like cloud shadow. But she was predatory.
Terrifying.
I hope she didn’t see me. And you
do
know her. I can tell.’

‘Perhaps you’re right. But for the moment, leave me alone!’

‘No!’

I turned away from her. She screamed at me:
who is she, then?

She screamed my name, then crossed her arms, dropped her head and wailed bitter curses, which bounced off my skin, green acorns striking the hide of a mule.

What to do?

*   *   *

Jason was running towards me, sword in hand, alarmed at the sound of shouting. I could see Elkavar and Conan the Cymbrian trotting cautiously in the same direction, looking nervously at the black-robed girl standing on the slope above me.

‘What is it, Merlin? What help do you need?’

‘None,’ I called to him. He looked at Niiv and the sword flashed in his hand. She shouted in fury and indignation, turned and vanished down the other side of the rampart.

I looked at Jason, saw the curiosity and concern in his strong features. He was waiting for me to speak to him, but I could think of nothing else but
where has she gone? Where is she hiding? It can’t possibly be true
 …

And I could not tell Jason what was in my heart. Not yet. Not yet.

‘Keep that girl away from me!

He said pointedly, ‘Permanently?’

‘No. Not permanently. I wouldn’t try harming her. She has a powerful friend in Argo.’

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Hollow Hill

I needed to find Fierce Eyes. I needed to know the face behind that veil. But where to look? Where had she gone when she had slipped ashore? How to call her to me? This time I took precautions.

I must have made a strange sight in my filthy sheepskin jacket and baggy woollen trousers, long hair unkempt, running, running to the edge of the woodland, then along it, avoiding those watching wolves, smelling and searching for some path, some passage, any hole or nook in the forest through which the woman might have slipped after her escape from the ship.

I ran and walked for several hours, towards the south, along the side of the wide road that Brennos’s army had ploughed through the land. I came to a stone-walled house, its roof fallen in, its door ripped off for use as firewood, no doubt. It had long since been ransacked and abandoned, but there was a pile of coarse sacking in one corner and I drew this around me as I hunkered down and summoned my skills in dream travelling. I entered the Death Sleep.

First I flew. I am most adept at flying as a hawk. I soared and swooped, rose above the land, saw the spread of forest, the huge clearing with its smouldering fire and patterns of enclosures, the glitter of the river, the rolling hills to the north, the rising mountains to the south where soon Jason would have to ride hard and fast. I called for Fierce Eyes, for the girl from the waterfall. I hovered on the wind, calling, waiting …

And she answered my call. Suddenly! She came out of the sun, a broad-winged raptor, claws out, dropping on me with a screech of fury. I stooped to avoid her, but her wing struck me. She turned and came for me again, savage eyes, bright eyes studying me, curved beak slightly open and ready to tear out my throat.

I dropped again and flew fast down to the forest. She followed for a few terrifying breaths, then turned effortlessly on the wing, rising back against the sun, and in so doing became lost to me.

I summoned the hound next. I nosed my way through the woodland, through thicket and along cold, leaf-clogged streams. I howled for her. Again she heard me and came to me in hound form, but again she surprised me.

She growled from a high rock. As I looked up, catching the star-gleam in her eyes, the flaring of nostrils, the opening of the muzzle, so she leapt on to me. I bounded backwards. She fell hard, struggled to her feet, then came for me in two elegant and powerful bounds. We struggled and snarled, claws taking their toll, canines bloody but managing to tear only thick-furred hide, not throats.

And this time it was she who broke the struggle,
hounding
away along the stream, a quick glance backwards, then gone into the gloom of the wood.

Below the sacking, in the ruined house, I licked my wounds.

One thing I knew, now: wherever she was, she knew I was looking for her. And she was answering my calls.

More hurt than tired, aware of being hungry—how long had I been here? I had lost track of time for the moment—I tried a softer form. The child I had once been, that part of us all that is
sinisalo,
the child in the land, the child that never goes away but always walks with the man or woman the child becomes.

I sent my ghostly child back through the wood, running until he came to the stream where the hounds had fought. The rivulet ran into the Daan, its shallow flow taking it through the area where the army had camped, close to the king’s enclosure where Brennos had addressed his warlords. But I went deeper into the wood, until I found a place where the stream curved round a small hill. Here, a rocky outcrop concealed a narrow, sheltering cave. I called for the Other and perhaps she had been waiting for me.