The Shining Company (15 page)

The day had been filled like the other two with hunting and sport. Down on the practice ground, softened a little by an overnight thaw, there had been a splendidly bloody game of ‘Cattle Raiding’, the pick of our horsemen against the pick of the household warriors while the rest of us yelled ourselves hoarse on the side-lines. And we had won, getting the calf’s head back through our own garlanded gateposts nine times ahead of the Teulu, and came to that night’s feasting already a little drunk with our own victory. Mynyddog himself was not in his Hall that night, but had gone, wrapped in furs and carried in a litter, to celebrate the birth of the White Kristani with the Holy Brothers according to his custom, summoning the Fosterling, the Captain of his bodyguard, to go with him; and the bard Aneirin was shut in his own quarters with the kind of fever that comes with a cough and a streaming nose. And but for our own sense
of victory and for those three empty places, I think that maybe the thing would not have happened …

It began when the great bowls of meat stew and dried salmon-char had been emptied and the first keen edge was gone from our hunger, and the sizzling carcasses of roasted boar - the fruits of yesterday’s hunting - were borne in on huge chargers, each carried by four men, decked and garlanded with holly and fir and juniper, to be the crowning splendour of the midwinter feast. The horns of feasting sounded again at their coming, and a roar of greeting went up from the warrior benches, men tossing up their mead cups as they were borne up the Hall.

One after another the charges were set down, the full length of the High Table before the King’s empty seat, and the King’s carvers stepped forward with their long knives to break up the still sizzling carcasses. The tumult quietened somewhat, every head turning towards the High Table as the good work began. And in the quiet, Amalgoid, one of the Teulu, rose in his place and demanded the Champion’s Portion, the first slice from the left shoulder of the kill - in this case when there were more beasts than one, that must mean the first of them to be carved. I had heard of the claim being made in ancient times, as in the song of Bricrue’s Feast, but I had thought of it as belonging to the world before the Romans came. Certainly I had never known it in my father’s Hall. Maybe old customs lingered on more strongly north of the Romans’ Wall, I thought. But there seemed to be something of surprise in the moment’s stillness that greeted his claim.

From where I was standing far down the Hall I could not see much of what was happening, but I heard clearly enough - the old dry voice of Bleddfach the King’s steward making formal reply, ‘By what right, Amalgoid, do you make claim to the Champion’s Portion?’

‘By this right,’ Amalgoid replied, ‘that my spear was first at the kill of yesterday’s king boar. There is no hunter like to me under the King’s roof this night. So do I claim the Champion’s Portion!’

And the old tired voice said, ‘The Champion’s Portion is yours.’

A murmur ran down along the crowded benches, and at our end of the Hall the Companions looked at each other. Then Tydfwlch the Tall, who always found delight in a battle of any kind, sprang to his feet and shouted up towards the High Table, ‘Not so fast! I also claim the Champion’s Portion, I Tydfwlch from the eagle haunts of Yr Widdfa!’

But we knew that he made the claim as it were for all of us, out of the rivalry that was between Companions and Teulu. At the High Table by the Royal Fire, the old steward, trying to keep the thing from taking hold, protested, ‘Your claim comes too late -’

‘How so? It was not told me that the claim was to be made, therefore I did not make it earlier.’

Bleddfach the steward was silent a moment, while the murmuring along the warrior benches rose and fell. Then craning, I saw him spread his hands in a gesture that was like a defeat. He said, clinging to his dignity, ‘By what right, Tydfwlch, do you make claim to the Champion’s Portion?’

Tydfwlch was already striding up the Hall. ‘By the right that in today’s game of Cattle Raid I bore the calf’s head back for the ninth time through our gateposts, leading the Companions to victory.’

It was as good a reason as any to put forward on the spur of the moment.

Amalgoid began shouting a furious protest about green untried warriors laying claim to honours that were for better men. Tydfwlch countered that so far as he was aware there were no better men in the High Hall of Dyn Eidin that night, chanting his victories against boarder raiders and the Water Horse of Pwl Ddu to prove it.

The thing was half in jest at that stage, but no more than half and the jest beginning to wear thin. Quite cheerfully, but with purpose, the Companions rose from their benches and began to move forward up the Hall towards the Royal Fire and the High Table and the shouting match that was going on there. And in the upper Hall, the men of the Teulu, backing Amalgoid, rose also and stood ready to receive them. We, the shieldbearers, pressed at the heels of our own warriors, and through the broad doorways opening on to the snowy night, others of us who had been hanging around the cookhouses and baking pits came thrusting in to join the rest as sound of what was afoot spilled out and spread abroad.

Lleyn and I pushed our way up behind Prince Gorthyn, shoulder against shoulder amid the surge of others all around us. Somewhere up ahead the shouting of personal insults had given way to the sound of fighting, and then the full joyful roar of battle as Teulu and Companions came together; and
the voice of the old steward desperately trying to keep order, which we had heard distantly without paying the least heed to it, was lost in the general uproar.

The memory comes to me now through a haze that was only partly of mead, for we were drunk also with the knowledge that we were the Companions and their shieldbearers, the Shining Company who would be unleashed presently against the Saxon kind, and the Teulu were goaded with the sour knowledge that though they had the glory of being the King’s bodyguard they would remain leashed at home when we came to the shining hour. At the moment we had quite forgotten, as I think they had too, that many of the Three Hundred, Cynan and his brothers among them, had been of the Teulu before the Companions came into being.

The roar of battle burst upwards to the rafters and surged to and fro between the walls of the Mead Hall; but in that enclosed space we were too close-packed for serious and enjoyable fighting, and only the foremost from each side could come at each other, while the rest shouted and thrust at their own kind to get through, pushing up tighter and tighter from behind. I mind thrusting head-down in Gorthyn’s wake, and being carried sideways by a sudden crosssurge of the mob, and finding myself trampling among the outer embers of the central fire. I mind something of myself that seemed to be outside the rest of me, thinking that if the thing went on much longer, someone was going to get killed; for in that mob one would only have to go down to be trampled underfoot.

Yet the battle smell was in the back of my nose, and
the joy of the fight within me kept me yelling and thrusting with the rest. But the sideways surge that had carried me through the fringes of the fire continued and whether others had the same thought as myself and enough sense left to act on it, or whether it was just a blind instinct to burst out and gain more elbow room for the fighting, I suddenly found myself being swept out through one of the side doorways into the winter night.

Through side doors and great main doors and even through the high windows, bursting the shutters open as they came, the battle was spilling out into the forecourt. Some had thought to bring the wall torches with them, and the sleet that was falling again fell spitting and hissing into the flames that gave us a ragged fighting-light. I had lost Gorthyn and Lleyn, but it did not matter; out in the broad court there was room for all of us to find our enemy. I found mine almost at once. One of the Teulu’s calf s-head team earlier that day, and bloodied his nose for him even while I spat out blood of my own and a broken tooth.

Then I heard Prince Gorthyn’s shout: that splendid trumpet shout of his carrying clear across the turmoil, ‘Lleyn! Prosper! To me!’ and I drove in a final blow that sent my opponent reeling, and got my head down and butted through in the direction from which it came. Dodging random blows, and narrowly escaping falling over the hounds who had spilled out with the rest of us and started a dozen dog-fights of their own among the legs of the battle, I came up alongside my lord only a few moments after Lleyn got there. Gorthyn was locked in a wrestling grip with one of the Teulu, and almost in the same instant, twisted and
threw him on his hip; a juddering tooth-shattering fall, and turned to us, panting a little, his smile wide and happy. ‘This is a night for keeping close together!’

The size of our warhost was swelling as others of the Companions and their shieldbearers, getting wind in one way or another of what was happening, came roaring up from the hostels along the royal road to join us. Soon the Teulu would be outnumbered. Meanwhile a knot of them came at us with heads down and flaying fists. Lleyn thrust out a leg and tripped the foremost of them and I went down after him and got him by the ears and banged his head a few times on the half-thawed half-frozen ground to cool his hero-light. But Gorthyn’s hand was twisted in the neckband of my tunic, hauling me to my feet, and suddenly the press about us seemed to be slackening, the surf-roar of battle beginning to sink. I snatched a glance at his face and saw that he was looking across the heads of the mob towards something on the far side of the court; and craning the same way, I saw on the edge of the torchlight and by the white radiance of the moon which swam clear of the snowclouds at that moment, the shapes of four women in the gateway from the inner courtyard, and the women’s house. They were cloaked against the cold, but their hoods lay back on their shoulders and their faces were clear in the mingled light that struck sparks from the goldwork in their hair.

The Queen and her daughters had come to put an end to our rioting before blood was spilled or Dyn Eidin went up in flames. They made no movement, only stood there, letting themselves be seen, and little
by little the quiet began and spread, as more and more of us became aware of them.

But in the middle of the court around the weapon-stone where the fighting had been hottest, men had not yet seen them, and were too busy about their own affairs to hear someone’s upraised voice shouting ‘Break off! The Queen is here!’ And to the battling dogs, of course, their coming meant nothing at all. Then a frenzied yapping broke out above the deeper tumult that was still going on. One of the little creamy lapdogs which the royal women kept for playthings and which were seldom allowed in the outer court must have slipped out after them, and seeing and hearing and smelling the nearest hound-fight, had hurled itself joyfully to join in. And next instant the Princess Niamh came swooping after it, calling its name on a high seabird note.

‘Cannaid! Cannaid!’

I saw her for a splinter of time poised by the weapon-stone in the reeling heart of things, and then, and then - I do not know what happened, I could not see, a knot of warriors maybe somewhat drunker than the rest of us, and close-locked still in conflict, came spilling in from the side, and the battle closed once more around her.

‘Lleyn! Prosper! With me!’ Gorthyn shouted, and we were with him, butting and thrusting our way through and shouting as we went. She had caught up the little dog and was clutching it high against her, her back against the weapon-stone when she came in sight again, and we had almost reached her when a couple of fighting hounds crashed into her, and she lost her footing on the icy slush and went down. We got to her in
only a few moments more. It was all so quick, the whole thing had been so quick since we first saw the royal women standing in the gateway that a score of heartbeats could have covered it from first to last. But we were not the first, for Cynan was already there, standing over her as I have seen him since then standing over a wounded comrade, and thrusting back the tangle of men and hounds.

She was up again at once, and tried to take a step and almost fell with a sharp cry, ‘Ah, my foot!’

The little dog had run shivering and yelping against my feet, and I scooped it into safety. Cynan had caught up the Princess high against his shoulder, and turned with her towards the gateway where her sisters had started forward to meet them. We closed round them, his brothers also and a few more of the Companions as they realized what had happened, and shielded them from any buffeting as he carried her back to the waiting Queen.

Behind us the tumult was sinking as we went, and men were beginning to haul apart the still snapping and snarling hounds.

The women closed round her, supporting her as Cynan set her down, but she looked back, calling still, ‘Cannaid? Please, Cannaid?’ I set the shivering little thing in her arms, though one of her sisters took it from her so that they could help her away. The noise had sunk so low that her voice was clear as she tried to thank us all over her shoulder at the same time. And into the quiet came the sudden clash of hooves as the Fosterling, with his cloak flying, clattered in through the open gate from the royal road and pulled his horse up all standing on the edge of the crowd. I suppose the
steward must have sent word to him in the house of the Holy Brothers, and clearly he knew what the battle had been about and had no need to ask the meaning of that night’s work.

The last of the tumult had died away; only the snarling of a stray dog-fight still fretted at the stillness. And Teulu and Companions alike, battered and somewhat bloody, we turned to face the Fosterling’s chilly gaze that raked us through and through.

‘So, it seems that I come somewhat late upon the scene,’ he said, and there was a flicker of amusement in his voice. ‘I am a truthful man, and therefore I cannot claim that the devil’s uproar you have been raising here reached me before the altar and interrupted my devotions; but certainly, returning in answer to Bleddfach’s summons, it met me half way!’

We scuffed our feet in the frozen slush and mumbled like boys caught stealing apples; suddenly aware of the bitter cold. And the Fosterling’s mouth twitched. ‘Since it seems that the royal ladies have quelled this riot for me, it is my mind that now you should return to the Hall that we may continue our interrupted supper.’ He swung down from the saddle, somebody coming quickly to take his horse, and his eye lit on the knot of hounds still battling over something - a ragged lump of baked meat I suddenly saw it was. ‘What remains of supper, at all events. I imagine that the question of the Champion’s Portion is now well and truly settled.’ And laughter took us like a gale.