Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (100 page)

I looked at Precent. Cynrig came to us.

‘How many left?’ I asked.

‘Not many,’ Cynrig told us. ‘Not a hundred, now. Most are Picts, or men from the West, or Cardi men who came north with me. The Cornishmen that live, or men of Eiddin, will none of them live long. They are the ones who were too hurt to follow Bradwen. They will follow her soon.’

‘How soon?’ asked Precent. He looked down the slope. There was no movement now in the wood. ‘Will they come at us again now, do you think?’

‘No,’ Cynrig told him. ‘I cannot see them facing us on the walls again. If they thought they could ever take the place that way, they would not have tried treachery. What shall we do now, my Chieftain?’

Cynrig’s blood was as good as Precent’s, in war he was as experienced. In those words of his, I knew there would be no quarrel. Such disputes about blood and precedence it was that first let the Savages into the Island, and tempted Hengist to enter Britain.

‘What shall we do, then?’ Cynrig asked again.

‘There is no Household that ever kept in the field when the Captain was dead, was there, Aneirin?’ Precent asked me. It was true.

‘Let us go home, then,’ said Cynrig. He looked around him at the soldiers who remained, whole and wounded. ‘Those who can reach Eiddin, do so. We can do no good here.’

‘We must leave here nothing that the Savages can use,’ directed Precent. ‘But if we are to reach Eiddin before the Savages turn their wrath north against the Dun, we must take nothing that will hinder us on the march.’ He turned to me, ‘Can you walk, Aneirin?’

I tried to stand. When the weight fell on my ankle, the pain scalded up my leg and into my body, and my ribs seared me like the white hot iron. I was able not to scream as I fell again to the ground. The other men who were wounded looked at me. I called on the Virgin to help me. Then I looked up at Precent, and said loudly, ‘I will stay.’

The Picts and Cardi men who could still walk brought together those men who still lived though wounded, and laid them round me, against the walls of a house where I could see through the gateway. No one spoke. We knew, now, all of us, what was to be done. Bitter was defeat that clipped our tongues. We who were to stay stripped off our mail, or others took it from us. Our swords were snapped, the edges of our axes blunted, the points of our spears turned back on the stones of the wall. All these arms were carried to the dry well and thrown down. I still held Owain’s crossbow. I had one bolt. I made them leave me that. The rain fell on us: I kept the string dry as well as I could under my cloak.

Four men climbed on to the wall and brought in the body of Owain. The other bodies, it was too dangerous to fetch, that we agreed. Even Bradwen, the glorious Bradwen, we must leave to the wolf and the bear. But not Owain. The three of us wept above his body.

‘There was an end to Dyvnwal Vrych,’ Cynrig reminded us. ‘We saw his head on a pole, because they thought he was a leader. How much more will they dishonour the head of Owain?’

‘There is but one thing to do,’ Precent agreed, without a discussion, knowing what he was being asked. ‘Aneirin has sung us often the song of Bran the Blessed.’

He fetched an axe, whetting it as he came. The men of the
Household gathered around us, silent. Only the rasping strokes of the whetstone sounded harsh in our ears. Precent turned on them suddenly, savage, strained to a thread.

‘Have you no voices? Will you let the Savages think they have cut all our throats with this one? Sing, all of you, sing! Sing, my children, and let them hear that we are here to fight them still!’

The voices rose in the old songs, the songs of bloody and successful wars. ‘The Hunting of the Black Pig’ we sang, and ‘Heads on the Gate’, ‘The Toad’s Ride’ and ‘Blood in the Marshes’. A defeated army we were, the remnant of the Household of the King of Eiddin, Mynydog the Magnanimous, and we did not care how many Savages stood to resist our going. Under the music, Precent stood and balanced the axe in his hand. He hesitated.

‘I cannot. I loved him too much.’

‘Nor I,’ said Cynrig. ‘Can a King strike a King?’

‘I loved him,’ I told them. ‘He treated me as a man. Not as a Bard, not as a prodigy, not as a marvel of nature, but as a man who loved and hated and felt, as a man who could weep and laugh and kill for himself, and not only in words for others. He loved me as a man who could do things, and in this Household do things no other man could do. For that love, I will not see him dishonoured.’

I took the axe. I could still kneel beside the body. I struck once: with the broad-edged axe, new sharpened, it was enough. The body some of the Picts took and threw down the dry well, with the weapons. Then they heaped stones in the well, jamming great slabs, the work of past ages, the bases of columns, into its mouth, so that it would be beyond the work of a thousand Savages to clear it again. No Savage would dig up his body, or use the iron again.

Cynrig tore the edge of his cloak and washed the head with mead from his flask, cleaning away the blood, closing the eyes. Graid brought a bag of soft leather he had picked up in some village. Cynrig wrapped the head in a cloth, the shirt taken from a dead Cornishman, and slid it into the bag. He drew the string tightly at the mouth and tied it. He offered the bag to Precent.

‘No,’ Precent told him, ‘the honour shall be yours.’ I looked at the two faces. Precent had always been a ruddy-faced man,
Cynrig sallow and brown. Now both were the same colour, the white that comes from fatigue and desperation. They looked along the line of the men left who could still stand. There was not a man unwounded in the town. Many of them had thrown off their armour, as too heavy, and hidden it. Precent talked to them, to us who would remain, roughly, cheerfully, to hide what we all knew.

‘Well, now, who’s coming with me, and who’s off with the Cardi? He jerked his thumb at Cynrig. ‘Most of you will go with him, and go quietly. Cast away north-west there, and make for the river. Then you can get back to Eiddin, in small groups. But I want some of you to come with me the other way, to have a last fling at them. With any luck, we can get down to Elmet in three days. Aidan, will you come and keep my back?’

The boy stepped forward, brave-faced. I was grateful to Precent for that. But I knew that he had been struck in the back with the buttend of a pike in the morning, and although it had then seemed to be no more than a bruise, yet now he was vomiting blood at intervals.

‘And Caso?’ Precent called.

‘Might as well with you as anywhere else,’ Caso grunted. How he could stand I could not think. A slash at his waist had near let out his gut: it was only held in by a bandage. So Precent chose twenty men. wounded men, who had not long to live wherever they went. There were sixty others who would go with Cynrig. More than a score of us lay on the ground to watch them make ready. Those who had buried their helmets had kept the plumes to stick in their hair with tallow, so that they would have some Roman thing about them at last. The Picts painted their faces, Precent among them. They separated into little groups of four or five. Men from the squadrons were now mixed up, seeking their own cousins, men from their native Kingdoms. At the last, the great Household of Mynydog, the first Household of all the Isle of Britain, was breaking up.

There was silence again. Nobody had the heart to sing. Only sometimes, from the edge of the wood, came the hoot of the owl or the howl of the wolf. Were they really animals? Or were the Savages signalling to one another? Or were they still there,
waiting for us? Or had they all fled, appalled by that last slaughter below the walls? There was no knowing.

‘Perhaps,’ Precent suggested, ‘they are waiting for the dark, to rush us from two sides at once.’

‘Then we dodge aside,’ said Cynrig, determined that he would be cheerful, ‘and let them fight each other.’ He pressed my hand. ‘The Virgin keep you, Aneirin. One day, come to my Hall in Cardigan, and sing to us of this battle. There will always be a chair for you there, Aneirin, Preeminent Bard of the Island, red-speared battle ravager, war-diademed enemy-subduer.’

I never went there. Men have told me that he still keeps a chair for me, with my name carved on it, in which no other man, no, not even any other bard may sit. But I have never been to Cardigan. I knew then that we would never meet again.

‘The Virgin keep your head, Cynrig,’ I answered, but he only jested again, ‘Which one? I have two to worry about.’

Precent knelt to embrace me.

‘Do not weep for Bradwen,’ I told him. ‘She had her love, and did not live to regret him. Do not weep for me, for my songs live for me. Rather weep for yourself, and for the North, that shall be defeated now we have left it defenceless. Weep for Eiddin, that has spent so much treasure for the sake of the Island, and all for nothing.’

‘Not all for nothing.’ Precent corrected me. ‘What we have done, others will do again, and waste all the North till it is a land fit for hunting again. Every stag that grazes, every moorhen that nests where we have burnt the farms and blocked the ditches is our memorial. It was not in vain. It is not yet over. Cheer up, Aneirin, I brought you out of prison among the Savages once, and I will do it again. We will drink in Eiddin again before the year is out.’

He spoke loud for the other men to hear. But he did weep. I could hardly see him now in the evening light, but I could feel his tears on my face. Or my tears. They were warmer than the rain. The Savages do not weep. They were there somewhere beyond the walls, waiting for us, in the dark. The Household drank the last of their mead. Cynrig put his bottle by my side. I pressed it back into his hand. He would need it more than I. He said nothing more, only went in silence into the dark.

Only when all was silent did I realise that there had been sound. As long as the Household were still in Cattraeth, there was still a rustle of movement. Even men who do not speak and are careful not to make a noise still make a great noise. You notice it only when it stops. We who were left knew when Cattraeth was empty. We lay in soaking rain and listened. For a long time, there was no sound at all, not even the hooting of the owls or the howling of the wolves. Then, all of a sudden, between us and the village, we heard a voice shouting.

‘Here am I, Precent, King of the North, Lord of the Picts! Come and face me, if you dare!’

And at once, from that direction, there was the noise of shouting men, and of running, the clatter of armour and the clash of arms, the sogging sound of swords on leather shields. I could hear the noise as men crossed the field before the gate to go towards the village. The noise went on for some time. Then, very suddenly, it died away. There was silence. It was all over, there. There was a long time of quiet. Then far away to the west, the sound of fighting, the blowing of horns and the beating of spears on shields as men tried to call for help. And silence again.

So it went on all night. We lay in silence and listened to fight after fight, some near, some far. None lasted long. How many skirmishes I could not count, nor recognise any voices. Dawn came, a gradual lightening of the cloudy sky over the ceaseless rain. About an hour after dawn, I heard a voice in the woods, screaming.

‘Oh, Mam, Mam! Oh, fy Mam i!’

Then it stopped. It was Aidan calling for his mother. He was the last of the Household to fight before Cattraeth.

We lay in Cattraeth in silence through the long day, under the thin and drenching rain. We waited to die. Death did not come quickly, or easily. We tore off the bandages from our wounds. My thigh would not bleed again, though I scratched at the scab with my nails. The Virgin forbids a man to kill himself: but to seek death is not the same. Death was near to us all, in any case, as we sweated in our fevers, and coughed up our lungs out of our chests, but no one groaned or cried, to give comfort to the Savages who must still lurk outside. When thirst was too terrible to bear, we sucked the rain form our clothes. Hunger is easier to withstand: there was no food left in the town, nothing to eat within our broken walls.

And it was the silence that made me break silence. All these men who had sung so merrily on the road, or riding into battle, now lay dead, or awaiting death, in silence. At last I said, bitterly:

For a while, no one spoke in answer. Then Gwanar asked, ‘Is that all our death song, Aneirin?’

‘What other death song do we deserve?’ I asked in reply. ‘There will be no one to sing it, if there is.’

‘A song lives,’ groaned Angor, ‘even if no one hears it. Sing us our death song, Aneirin. Sing us a lament for us all, for those who have died beyond these walls, and those who are dying here.’

‘Sing, Aneirin,’ said someone else, in his agony. ‘Sing and remind us why we are here, and how we came to our end.’

‘How did we come?’ I asked. I thought a while, and then:

When a man is dying, he is a miser of his words, and careful with his breath. He takes a long time to frame his speeches, and says nothing he does not mean. It was, therefore, a long time before Gwanar said, in reproof, ‘It was not all feasting, though glad we were of it.’

‘But it is better to remember laughter than sorrow,’ I answered him. It took some time to compose, and then I sang: