Hawk of May (13 page)

A shadow seemed to gather about the hanged man's head, and the body swung back and forth more rapidly, sending the shadows spinning across the wall. Aldwulf cast the runes. He had summoned no great power, I saw, but merely a messenger. “A bargain,” Aldwulf said aloud, speaking in the language of the runes as he cast them, the ancient, cold language of sorcery. His voice was no longer drawling and soft, but harsh and deadly. He arranged the sticks for his message. “Give a message. To your master. I wish, a bargain.”

The body swung more slowly. Aldwulf cast the runes, read the reply silently, scarcely moving his lips, then arranged the sticks again. “Death,” he read out. For…Arthur, the High King. For his death, death. An offering. Acceptable.” The body ceased to swing, but the shadow remained crouched upon it. Again Aldwulf cast the runes, this time reading the reply aloud. “Not acceptable. Mortal life little. Impossible. Release.” Just below the threshold of hearing a faint keening began, thin as a knife blade, venomous, terrible to hear. Aldwulf placed his hand over the runes and spoke aloud, still in the old language: “It is no ordinary mortal life. We hold one who must be of the race of the Sidhe, at least in part, a servant of the Light, whose name is Gwalchmai. He carries a sword which is powerful for Light, of use to you.”

I closed my eyes, leaning against the door frame, sickness on me like a great cold hand.

The keening stopped. The body began to swing again, this time in a circle which grew more and more violent. Aldwulf cast the runes. “Possible,” he read. “With sword, possible. Kill…offering first…No,” he added, covering the runes and looking up again. “First kill the Pendragon, and you will have your offering.”

The keening began again, and the body jerked on the rope, as though it were trying to come to life again. Aldwulf tossed down the runesticks. “Impossible. Need sword. For sword, need killing. Kill.”

“Very well,” said Aldwulf. “But tell your master that, if he does not kill the High King Arthur after I have given him his offering and the sword, I, the Flame-bearer, will seek out as many of his kind as I may and destroy them until he will regret that he cheated me; and I will destroy you first. Do you doubt me, demon?”

The runes themselves jerked into a new pattern. “The bargain…will be fulfilled.”

“In two weeks, then,” said Aldwulf and, rising abruptly, he snuffed out the candle. At once the shadow vanished. The body swung slowly to a halt. Aldwulf walked over to one wall, out of my sight, and I heard him striking a flint. Presently a torch flared up, and Aldwulf walked across the room with it to light another torch on the other wall. He surveyed the body and the pattern on the floor, then looked up at Cerdic and smiled. “You see, King of the West Saxons?” he asked, his voice again pleasant and drawling.

“Your power is real, Aldwulf,” replied Cerdic. “But you had proved that to me already. You have arranged with Woden for Arthur to die?”

“Arthur will die when we have made the offering.”

“Woden seems to have a great taste for dead men.” Cerdic commented, eyeing the corpse. “Will you fetch that self-professed thrall from the stables now, or wait until tomorrow?”

Aldwulf shrugged, and began to scuff out the pattern with his foot. “Not tonight and not tomorrow. It will be difficult work, and it is important to choose the best time for it, when all things will aid us.” Bending over, he picked up the rune sticks, wiped each one with a cloth before putting it away in a small bag of black leather. “In two weeks it will be the dark of the moon. It would be best to do it then.”

“Two weeks!” said Cerdic. “I must keep this youth a prisoner here for two weeks, and only kill him when he begins to think himself safe? No, no, we must do it sooner.”

Aldwulf drew tight the string on his little bag, abruptly so that the rune sticks clicked together sharply. “If you are afraid, King of the West Saxons, or if you think the price too great, say so.”

“You would do well to think before you say that word, ‘afraid,' to me, Aldwulf of Bernicia. But I do not like this killing of thralls, and like it less if they are to be men of my own household. And I would sooner kill ten men in fair combat than…” He left the sentence unfinished, contemplating the hanging body with disgust.

Aldwulf glanced at it, then pulled out his belt knife and began to cut it down. “You have become very honorable of a sudden. Shall I return to my own kingdom, then, and leave you to kill Arthur—in fair combat?”

Cerdic said nothing. The rope suspending the body parted, and it fell heavily to the floor. Aldwulf stepped back, sheathing his knife, and looked across it at Cerdic.

“I wish Arthur dead,” the king of the West Saxons said slowly. “And because I cannot kill him by fair means, I will use what means I may. Very well, in two weeks time.”

Aldwulf smiled. “Brave and ambitious! Good. You must think, as well, that this young fool who is asleep in your stables is not what he pretends to be. He is no thrall, and is probably not even a mortal man such as ourselves. Who knows why he has come here? Certainly he means no good to you and yours. And the gods I worship want his sword, and he must be dead, I think, to get it from him. We were very lucky in finding him.”

Cerdic grunted. “So you say. When Arthur is dead, then I will believe.”

“What? All that I have done, and still you disbelieve me? What of the flood? What of the horse I gave you? And speaking of that horse…”

“He is not yet broken,” Cerdic said harshly. “Very well, I believe in your powers well enough. I admitted as much. But it is said that Arthur has some Christian or druidical magics to protect him. When he is dead, and only when he is dead, will I believe that your god is stronger.”

“He is strong,” said Aldwulf confidently. “He is very strong.”

Yes, the Darkness is very strong, I thought as I walked back to my place by the stables. Oh Light, protect me. I am afraid.

Not, I thought, as I lay down in the stable again, that Aldwulf's demon was likely to succeed in killing Arthur where Morgawse had failed. I did not see how they could use the sword for that. Aldwulf might be powerful, but still weaker than the Queen of Darkness. Aldwulf was still mortal, and Morgawse was not.

But knowing that Aldwulf's bargain would not be fulfilled would do me little good if Cerdic and Aldwulf offered me to their demon.

I held my lower lip with my teeth, stifling a desire to jump up and run screaming away from the place. Offer me. Put the rope around my neck and set my body swinging back and forth by the candlelight, possessed by demons. I could almost feel the cord around my neck, see the terrible darkness. Sacrifice me? Why? Because I served the Light, owned a sword, and…

And was not fully human.

So Aldwulf thought. And suddenly I realized what the expression on Wulf's face and on the faces of his kinsmen had been, the same look with which Cerdic's servants had greeted me. It was the great fear, the fear of the unknown thing from the dark, the unnatural, the supernatural.

I sat up in the darkness, clutching Caledvwlch's hilt.

“I am human,” I said out loud. My blood beat in my ears, I was sick with weariness and fear, my legs ached, my feet were sore and blistered, and my clothes itched and were too tight. I was human, I thought, clinging to these things. How could they believe differently?

But they did. They all had, at the first meeting at least. I looked at the ruby in Caledvwlch's hilt, dark in the night as my own fear.

Who am I? I asked myself desperately. Gwalchmai. Gwalchmai ap Lot, a warrior of the Light, yes. But human! What has happened to me?

My king, I said in my heart, My king, I am afraid. The Darkness is very strong, and I who am to fight it do not even know who I am, and fear even myself. How can I escape? Even if I can match Aldwulf, Cerdic has an army, hundreds of warriors, thousands of soldiers, ranks of steel, and set minds all afraid of the supernatural: solid, worldly power, unarguable blood and iron. And they do not think that I am human, and my mother is Queen of Darkness and desires my death.

My mother. I thought of her again, and of all that she had taught me. How deeply had it marked me? Deeply enough for Aldwulf to suspect me, deeply enough to unnerve anyone who so much as looked at me. Or perhaps that one day or three years in the Isles of the Blessed had changed me without my noticing it into something completely different, something unalterably alien from my fellow men.

And what land is this, I asked myself. Far, far from home. Far from my kinsmen and my clan, people who knew me and laughed at me and would protect me, and who must all of them think me dead. And I would be better dead than alone as a thrall in a strange kingdom, fated to be hanged as a sacrifice to an alien god, as Connall almost was…

Connall of Dalriada, my knife bringing him a quick death. Morgawse's demon, and the escape. Lugh's Hall, the song in it, the fire of Caledvwlch, and the light behind the sunset…

I cried, shaking silently in the dark stable. I am sorry, my lord High King, for doubting you. You would not abandon your warriors to die, and I have no right to flee from the battle after you rescued me once.

The light rose slowly into Caledvwlch, glowed, burned, blazed. I held the crosspieces, leaning my forehead against the pommel and feeling the light move within me, rising upward like a flood of music. Have faith. Do not wonder at what happens.

It was late when I awoke the next day, past mid morning. Cerdic's thralls were pleased when I finally woke, for I was in their way, but strangely they had been unwilling to wake me. When I was up, though, I was told to go to the well to wash and, after I had done so, the chief thrall brought me some clothes. They were worn, but clean, and they fitted well, as did the new pair of boots and the cloak. I felt slightly more human when I had put these on, and I slung Caledvwlch over my shoulder.

At this, the chief thrall frowned. “What are you doing with that?” he asked. “You've no right to bear weapons. You must know that.”

I shrugged. “No one's taken it from me yet, and until they do, I'll keep it.”

He shook his head. “You can be beaten for that, even killed. Are you new to thraldom?”

I nodded.

“Well then, take my word for it, you had better not keep that sword. Give it to the master.”

“I think that I will keep it, nonetheless,” I said quietly. “It means something to me.”

The old man looked distressed, then shrugged. “Well, it is your back risking the whip, not mine. Would you like something to eat?”

“Very much.”

He gave me oatcakes with honey and milk, which I devoured in a very short time. The thrall grinned at me.

“You've had little to eat recently
,
haven't you? Those warriors the master bought you from must have travelled a fair way. Tell me…” A glint came into his eyes. “Were you with the Pendragon? How goes the war?”

With the coming of daylight and my appetite, he seemed to have forgotten whatever he had felt about me the night before. I smiled, but regretfully shook my head in answer to his question. “I don't know. I have come from over the sea. I hoped that you could tell me.”

He shook his head. “They tell us nothing. We have ways of knowing: we hear from farmers, or overhear—but we're never sure whether what we hear is true or only a rumor. Sometimes we never do know.” He stood and began clearing the dishes. “My name is Llemyndd ap Llwch, from what used to be eastern Ebrauc. I am the chief thrall here, the steward of Cerdic's house. It was my father who was captured from Ebrauc: I was born Cerdic's thrall. And you? You said that your name is Gwalchmai, but what of your kinsmen and country?”

I was about to answer truthfully, when I felt a sudden uncertainty. This Llemyndd might be other than he seemed. “How strange,” I said. “My father's name is Llwch, too.” (Which it was, if one put it into British.) “But I am from Gododdin.” I was willing to wager that there would be no thralls from such a distant kingdom in Cerdic's house who could give me the lie, and I had heard something of that country in Dun Fionn.

Llemyndd whistled. “That is a long way distant.”

I nodded. “I came south with my elder brother three years ago, by sea. We went to Gaul to buy some of those Gaulish war-horses for breeding. My clan deals in horses, and, as you must know, the Gaulish breed is the best. All the warriors were wanting horses like those the Pendragon has, and my clan thought that there should be a fine profit in it. And there would have been, too, if our ship had not been found by a Saxon longship off the coast of East Anglia.”

“Anglia? That's a long way north. How did you come down here among the Franks and Saxons?”

“Ach, we were not bested by that pirate,” I improvised quickly. “Mine is a noble clan, and we fought back. But our ship was badly damaged, and we decided to go about to Dumnonia, down the Saxon Shore, and travel to Gododdin by land. But our bad luck turned worse: a storm arose, and we foundered against the cliffs of the Cantii. My brother and I found the keel of the ship and clung to it, praying. The next morning, when the waves stilled, we managed to swim ashore, but we were taken by a Saxon of the land thereabouts.”

Llemyndd nodded wisely and drew the rest of my story from me with great care. I told him what I had told Wulf and Eduin the day before, adding details of how kind my “master” had been to us, and how I had come to like him, despite resenting the slavery, and how treacherously his enemies had killed him. It was a good story, and a few of the other thralls came in to listen while I was telling it. All were sympathetic, though all looked at me with a searching hesitancy, questioning what they had seen the night before.

My suspicions of Llemyndd proved justified. He tried to trap me, subtly, testing my story with unexpected questions. It is fortunate that he knew less of Gododdin than I did, or I would have been caught at once. But, finally satisfied, he went off, and I suspected that he went to tell Cerdic what I had told him. I doubted, remembering Cerdic's sharp green eyes, that the Saxon would believe the tale.

One of the other household thralls watched Llemyndd leave with a half-concealed bitterness that confirmed what I had suspected. Llemyndd was Cerdic's, mind, spirit, and body.

“Now the master will know everything,” said the thrall.

“So that is the way of it, then,” I replied.

“It is indeed.”

The other thralls looked uneasy. “Hush,” said one. “You talk too much, Gwawl.”

Gwawl hushed. A few more questions revealed to me that the thralls hated and feared Llemyndd, though most of them did not dislike their master Cerdic, to whom Llemyndd reported, and who would punish them for speaking disloyally. “The master is fair,” I was told. “Do your job and he will treat you well.” I nodded and settled to trying to discover what my situation actually was.

It took time. The thralls would not talk to me freely the first day, or the second either. They might never have done so but for the music. They were sick for familiar songs. The British are the most civilized people in the West, and they love music as only civilized
men can. They sing to themselves constantly, as the men of the Orcades or the Irish do, and any wandering bard is assured of a welcome among them. In Erin or the Orcades it is easy to see why bards and druids are so important, for in those lands it is the trained bards who memorize the laws and recite them to the kings, and who can chant the genealogies and histories and say when it is time for planting corn and such. But the British bards have no other job but to sing songs, while the rest of the work is done by books, and yet they are no less honored than the Irish
fillidh.
These thralls of Cerdic's could sing as they worked, and a few knew harping, but proper bardic music they had missed for years. The first time I played for them they wept for joy. For a song they would tell me anything I wanted to know of their master's secrets, and not reckon the punishment for telling.

Aldwulf's name was familiar to them. Aldwulf Fflamddwyn, Aldwulf Flame-bearer, they called him. Somehow his private sorcerous name had become the property of all Britain. He was feared by his own men, while Cerdic was loved and admired. Because of this, beyond his own clan he had few warriors in his warband, and when he raised an army from the farmers of his kingdom, more than the ordinary number of men never showed up. Nonetheless, Aldwulf was wealthy and powerful and, allied to Cerdic, he was much to be feared. The alliance between the West Saxons and distant Bernicia, a thing surprising on the face of it, had in fact begun nearly two years before. Cerdic had been bested by Arthur in a series of engagements, and had responded by forming treaties with all the other Saxon kingdoms. It was not a proper military alliance, however, merely an agreement between the Saxon kings to lay aside private differences, and to render aid and sanctuary to any other Saxon who happened to be in difficulties with the British in their territory—“Saxon territory” being defined as more than half of Britain. A few of the Saxon kings had entered into armed alliance as well, mainly in the south. Aldwulf was not of this number, but had come south, with most of his warband, to give aid and counsel to Cerdic. He wished to prevent the British High King from coming north. He had arrived at the beginning of April and had wormed his way into Cerdic's confidence with gifts and—so the thralls added in whispers—by magic. They were extremely unwilling to speak of the magic to me, but they were sure he was a witch, and one or two of them—including one of Cerdic's few Saxon thralls—told me various tales about his witchcraft, some of which were certainly false. None of the thralls liked Aldwulf, and those that liked Cerdic bewailed the day their master had met the Bernician king.

Cerdic had been fighting the High King Arthur for nearly three years now, and the war had become more difficult for him with each month. He had had great success when first he invaded, but Arthur's first move after establishing himself in power had been to outflank Cerdic's invasion force and plunder his base, the old Saxon Shore fort of Anderida. Cerdic had kept most of his supplies and all his plunder there, and the loss had been great. The Saxon was forced to retreat to Anderida, and Arthur had gone on to win victories against some other Saxon kings, one on a surprise raid as far north as Deira. Cerdic had heard of the last and moved against his British enemies while he thought the High King was staying in the north, only to be caught by Arthur's over-rapid return. It was at this point that Cerdic had arranged his treaties with the other Saxons.

Cerdic's problem was that Arthur had no regular army. He could command the allegiance of any British kingdom, and hence was able to request the king of whatever land he wished to visit to raise the farmers and clansmen of his territory, and most of the kings would comply. Arthur's strength lay in his warband, the largest and finest of any king in Britain. Half of this warband consisted of the infamous cavalry which had caused such grief to my father, but all of the warband owned several horses apiece and could borrow more when Arthur needed to hurry across Britain. This gave the Pendragon a kind of speed and mobility which Cerdic could not hope to equal: Cerdic had no cavalry at all, and, while he could raise a very large army, most of the men in it were clansmen and farmers, who could not fight in the harvest or sowing seasons, and who were ill-trained and ill-equipped, and worst of all, ill-disciplined. Movement of such a force took a long time. Cerdic had also his own warband, of course, those professional warriors who depended upon him alone for their support, but this alone, or even this in alliance with the warbands of several other kings, was no match for the High King Arthur.

Cerdic's thralls had a great deal to say about Arthur. The British thralls, even those who had been born to slavery, admired the High King with great passion and delighted in recounting the ways and occasions on which he had bested the Saxons, in spite of the fact that Cerdic had forbidden anyone to mention Arthur's name within his house without his permission. It seemed to me as I listened that Arthur's warband must be increasing in power, even allowing for the accumulation of legends and the exaggeration of the thralls.

It was reasonable to suppose it: if a king is victorious in battle and generous in his Hall, warriors will flock to him from over all the Western world. Even some notable Saxon warriors had joined the High King's warband. Two and a half years after beginning his war against the Saxons, Arthur must have a band of men unequalled in the West—probably unequalled in the world. They could and regularly did, it seemed, defeat four times their number.

“But the past two years,” one thrall complained to me, “there's been little to do. The master raises the
fyrd
and gathers his warband, then sits here in Sorviodunum—your pardon, Searisbyrig—sending out raiding parties and spies; and the Emperor just sends raiding parties and spies back.”

It was a sensible move on Cerdic's part, I thought. A large warband, like Arthur's, is expensive to keep. Since he had no kingdom of his own, Arthur relied on tribute from all the kings of Britain. But he had gained the purple by defeating those very kings he exacted the tribute from, and they had not forgotten it. He needed their support and their armies against the Saxons; he could not antagonize them further by demanding vast amounts of tribute. While he fought and defeated the Saxons, he could support himself from plunder and sweeten his subjects' tempers by sharing the booty, but when the Saxons retreated and sat firm in a strong fortified position, content with guarding their borders, Arthur had to rely upon his subjects. They would be the less inclined to support him when they could see no tangible tokens of victory. Cerdic was hoping to provoke the British kingdoms into another civil war, and I learned from one thrall that there were kings in Britain who were willing to overthrow “the usurping bastard,” and that messages had been sent to and from some of these men into this fortress, Sorviodunum or Searisbyrig. Cerdic understood statecraft. Unfortunately, most of his followers did not, and many, to whom he had promised land, felt cheated and muttered angrily that Cerdic was afraid. The war had become a race between Cerdic and Arthur over who would first be forced to raise the full armies and offer a pitched battle. At the moment it seemed that Arthur might win the race, and Cerdic was desperately angry. It was probably because of this that he was willing to employ Aldwulf's sorcery to kill Arthur. Cerdic left to himself was honorable and generous, but ambition was his ruling passion, and honor was sacrificed to the end of obtaining a kingdom. Still, I think, it troubled him. He did not like the thought of killing me after I had served him, and because of it treated me harshly himself, while at the same time commanding his household to allow me great liberties. I think that the idea of killing Arthur by such a means troubled him still more, for he wished frequently to hear songs of the Pendragon's battles, privately, yet grew angry after only a verse or so, and had to be left, brooding over the song and his thoughts. But he remained resolute.

For my part, I came to admire the Pendragon in those weeks. He sounded more than ever to be a lord worth following. At the same time, though, my worries increased. Arthur would have no use for unskilled warriors like myself, who would do nothing but drain his already strained resources.