Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (101 page)

A voice I could scarcely hear above the song of the thrush asked, ‘Was it only Gwanar, then, who did well?’

I knew the voice. I had heard it raised in song as he danced on Bladulf’s table. Now he lay with both legs broken. No more would I hear his voice in the hunting-field, or in battle. For him, when I could, I sang:

After a time, he answered, fainter still:

‘I shall live though I die. I have a song.’

Sick men think slowly. But soon another voice, close to me, said, ‘If Aneirin dies, how shall our songs live?’

And thin and high-pitched as the twittering of the sparrows in the roof I heard them ask all together, cry, plead:

‘Live, Aneirin, live and sing our death songs all across the Island. If you live, then we shall live, though we die.’

‘I am here with you,’ I told them. ‘I will live no longer than you do. What good is it to sing?’

But still they whispered in their drying throats:

‘Sing us our death songs, Aneirin, sing us to death as our mothers sang us to sleep.’ And Gwanar said, and it was the last time he spoke, ‘Poetry is the crown of the nation, and the chief product of the Kingdom. If we have died only that a poem is made, then we have died for a better thing than ever we lived for.’

And no one contradicted him, because it was a self-evident truth, as clear to the eye as is the difference between black and white, or the truth that the many is more than the one. This was the truth we proclaimed against all the world, that there is more in life than the mere growing of wheat, and breeding till the whole land is covered by the soles of men’s feet, and the blue sky is blackened by the smoke of the smiths’ fires, and the song of the little birds is drowned by the harsh voices of men talking in dead-footed prose. Our open, wild land is a poem in itself, even if no man sings in it: and thus we had died to keep it.

The darkness was closing in on us. As night came, then I began the task that has filled all the rest of my life, to sing the death songs of all the Household of the Kingdom of the Gododdin. But that night, I thought only of those who lay around me, and how to give them some happiness, some pride, to take with them when they passed into the hands of the Virgin and all her saints. The nearest man to me rattled in his throat; as he died he heard:

And yet, dying, he had the strength to say, ‘All is well done. In dying, we have made the Pre-eminent Bard of the Island sing again. Our battle was not lost.’

I sang through the night. As I sang, men answered. At first I wondered that there were so many still alive in the town, so many who called their names and demanded a last song while they still could hear it. But as the Plough revolved above the clouds, the voices were fainter than the owl. Still the rain fell softly on us, chilling to our backbones. And still no Savages came.

With the day, I looked around. The scarlet cloaks did not move, scattered in mounds around me. I lay and shivered, coughing, hot with fever and cold with dying, my bones aching, my breath stabbing me as if it were hot iron in my lungs, my leg numb. I watched the kite and the crow settle on the stones, flutter closer. I did nothing. I needed my little strength for what now I knew only I could do. I could crown and complete all we had done in battle. Suddenly, one arm waved, one weak voice was raised, to drive away the approaching birds. Mirain, with his last strength, guarded us. Now I had time to think of those who had died outside the walls of Cattraeth, who would never hear the death songs.

Because I thought, then, that he had been the first to die.

At last, even Mirain was still. I sang no more. I waited. I could not die yet: the work was not over. And I was rewarded for all my
effort, in keeping off death, in refusing to go, at last, to my peace in the Virgin’s arms. What had I to do with peace? It was at noon that they came.

I knew they were there, however silent they were, for even after Mirain ceased to wave his arms the birds still kept their distance. And this was an offence to me. These were our kites, our buzzards: why should we not feed them? I too lay as if dead. This was a thicket no hunter entered while the beast lived. There was no matter of courage here, or lack of it: only a common prudence. I knew they would not come too soon. But I knew, too, that they would come, and that only one man could lead them, for shame’s sake, if he lived, if Precent had not settled him in the night. And, at last, he came.

I sat upright, propped where Precent had left me, against a pillar, and watched the Savages come to the gap in the wall. Weary men, bloodstained and filthy with two nights and a day of hunting their enemies in the woods and bogs. Huge men, yellow-haired and stinking with sweat and mud, who had fought a long battle, and won it. But they waited at the gap in the wall, till
he
came. Bladulf came, taller than any of them, wearier than any. He stepped, delicately, over Owain’s blood in the gap, and stood within Cattraeth, the first of all the Savages to stand there so long and live. He looked about him warily, expecting attack from one side or the other. He muttered charms and spells, and his wizard broke eggs before him, and poured out blood, more blood on that bloody ground, the blood of an ox, to chase away the magic of the Romans. And still I waited, huddled, still as death to the eye, my fingers busy beneath my cloak, my lashes a screen before my sight. I let him come.

He walked forward. His men came behind him. One by one, they turned over the bodies of the Household with the butts of their spears, seeking life and finding none. And at last, he was two spears’ length from me. I slipped aside the cloak, and he saw the crossbow, cranked back, the string still taut and dry, my last bolt in the groove, a heavy bolt, fit for bear at this range, or wild boar.

Bladulf did not flinch. He did not move in haste, or cry out. He only said, in a mild surprise, ‘There is one still alive.’

‘And one to die,’ I answered him. And as I jerked my finger to
loose the quarrel, someone I could not see, round to my right flank, flung a handful of pebbles in my face, and another on the other side, with a long pole, knocked up the bow.

I sat, in fury and shame, and looked at Bladulf, alive where he, or I, should have been dead. Weaponless, powerless, I had nothing left me but my hate for him. No sword, no long spear, no knife to throw, nothing left to touch him with. He looked at me, and said, ‘I know you. You killed my brother.’

The man at his elbow spoke too. He said, ‘He killed my brother, too. And my father. And my son.’

‘I yield to you, Ingwy,’ said Bladulf. ‘He is yours. Shall he live or die? And if die, how shall he die?’

Ingwy looked down at me. He was a fat man, streaked with dirt and sweat. He wore a string of amber beads around his neck and copper rings in his ears. He had been weeping, and the tears had made runnels on his face. Black blood was clotted on his arms, and on the naked saxe in his hand. His left ear was cut almost away from his head, and hung by a shred of skin. He hesitated a little. Then:

‘What is one more dead among so many? Let him live.’

‘I do not want to live,’ I replied. ‘Let me die.’

‘Death is a reward for victory,’ said Bladulf. ‘Those who are defeated must live, and regret it. Go back and thank your King for me. Where are you hurt?’

I did not answer him. I still do not know whom he counted the victors at Cattraeth. He waved his hand. A number of his men came to me. Ingwy held a horn of beer to my lips, and Bladulf himself offered me a piece of wheat-bread and a piece of cold meat. The wizard knelt down and felt along my leg. He saw first the swollen, misshapen knee. He jabbered like an angry squirrel, and suddenly the men around me held my arms to my sides. I thought that Bladulf had relented, and would give me the death I asked. But the wizard jerked at my leg, and I bit my lips rather than scream at the pain and the sound of grating bone and twisting sinew. But after the sudden pang, the ache was now different in quality, the throb of twisted tissues resting, returning to their proper place, not the strain of muscles under tension, hauled from their proper path by misplaced bones.

Then he looked at the gash in my thigh. He unrolled the bandage, and Gwenllian’s scarf fell into the mud, and was disregarded, trodden in. He mumbled his spells, and rubbed the cut with stones and bones and a sword that a man of Bladulf’s brought. Then he smeared the wound with grease out of a pot, and wrapped the whole leg in cloth.

Bladulf looked down again at me where I lay and sweated with pain, and he asked me, ‘Can you walk?’

I tried to stand. My sides were fire. I could not keep on my feet. Two young men lifted me. They supported me with their arms under my shoulders, pressing on my broken ribs, but I would not cry, even though I wanted to vomit. Slowly they helped me through the gaps in the wall, out on to the green field.

This was a place of blood and death indeed. Here lay the Dwarf, and those who were killed with him: and not only those. From all sides, men were carrying in the dead, Savages and Romans, and laying them in lines, ours near the wall, theirs further away. Other men were working in the wood, cutting down trees. Bladulf asked me, ‘How do you burn your dead? What rites do you use?’

‘We do not burn. We bury them.’

‘Then we will dig for you.’

He called Ingwy and gave him orders. He in turn collected a body of young warriors, and they with axes and spades deepened and widened the ditch beneath the wall, making a long trench. Then, as I watched, they carried into it the bodies of the Household, or those whom they had found.

Precent I saw them bring, and Caso, Graid and Aidan, and put them carefully into the earth they had fought for. Bodies they brought from the Bloodfield, three days before, Gelorwid and Gwion. Bodies were carried wrapped in oxhide, that I could not recognise, from fights in earlier days, on the road. Caradog they brought out of Cattraeth, Angor and Geraint and Mirain. Morien they could not bring. Owain they would never find.

There were others, more important, that I could not see. Arthgi was not there, nor Gwyres, or any of the Cardi men who had gone with Cynrig. Perhaps there were twenty men, at most, who had not been killed. No more.

As each of the Household was brought to the long grave, the Savages, of course, stripped him of his mail. Why else had they searched for the dead? At least, of this we had often cheated them. Each of us, then, they wrapped in his own red cloak: or, if he had no cloak, then in a cloak of their own, of cloth or fur. Precent they wrapped in a cloak of sable, ermine-edged.

At the last, they took up Bradwen. As a man began to pull the mail shirt from her shoulders, Bladulf shouted, ‘Stop! Let her keep it. That at least she has deserved.’

I asked him, ‘You knew there was a woman?’

‘We expected it. You are ruled by women. We were not surprised that you let a woman taste the luxury of battle. Among us, it has only been allowed, and that seldom, to Goddesses. She was mortal. She did not dishonour you. We will not dishonour her.’

They laid her in the grave, still mailed. All was complete. The rain still fell.

‘What sacrifices do you make for the dead?’ Bladulf asked me.

‘We make no sacrifices. Has there not been sacrifice enough? We commend them to the Virgin, and lament their passing.’

‘Then do so!’

I stood a moment, silent. The horde of the Savages gathered round me, looked at me, silent too. I collected myself. I sang:

I wrapped my cloak around my face. The young men filled in the ditch. I could not weep. Then Bladulf said, ‘Turn and see how a warrior ends.’

They had brought their dead together. If we had lost three hundred, as I feared, then they had lost three thousand. I had never seen so many dead men. No battle in this Island, since the beginning of time, had brought so many to a bloody end. They had cut down all the green wood that stood before the walls of Cattraeth. Because the timber was fresh and full of sap, they brought weathered beams and stakes, wagons of dry fir branches and brushwood, barrels of tar from the pine trees, and casks of tallow. They stacked the wood, and laid the bodies on it, layer after layer of timber and dead men. There were as many dead men as living in that place, and there had come, now, crowds of women and children to weep. Besides this, I knew that we had killed almost as many women, and children too young to burn.

When the pyre was complete, there was a noise of trampling. The Savages drove into the place a herd of horses, our horses. They brought only mares, and of these all were either white or near enough to white not be any other colour for certain. And among them, I saw my own strawberry roan. They were of no use to the savages, who cannot ride, and who use ploughs so heavy only an ox can pull them. The wizard, then, cut the throats of all our horses with a spear, and dashed the blood over the dead men. They piled the horses on the wood, and the wizard knocked fire with his spear out of the walls of Cattraeth. And from this he kindled the pyres, the one on which the horses, the ones in which the men lay.