Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (103 page)

‘I will go, then,’ I replied, and stood. It was dark, and far across the river the wolves were howling. Bladulf seized my wrist, and pressed me down again to sit beside him.

‘You must go, and take my thanks back to your King.’

‘Your thanks?’

‘My thanks.’

‘For what? Have we then killed the rival who would have supplanted you? Did you send him into the forefront of the battle, as David did among the Romans of old? Or have we thinned out
for you a rebellious people who now have no more to do but follow you or die?’

He remained calm, although I taunted him.

‘I send you back to thank your King for what he told me.’

This was what I had heard from the Dwarf, but I hardened my face and looked at Bladulf blankly.

‘He sent a messenger, a wild man, an Irishman, to tell the men of Elmet to march north against us when you rode south. But that messenger he sent to me also. He told me when you would come. To meet the onslaught of Eiddin and Elmet together we brought down all our people from across the upland moors, and even from Carlisle, that late we won. But we heard that Elmet would come first, and so we marched first against them. When we struck deep into their country, we found that they were not mustered for war. Then, when we were far away, we heard of your raid, and we marched back as fast as we could. We had not thought that so few men could do so much damage. We needed all the men from the uplands to hold you. If we had not marched to Elmet, we would have settled with you sooner: if we had not known you were coming, we could never have gathered, you would have ridden clear to York. For that we thank your King.’

‘But it was only treachery that won the day for you,’ I reminded him.

‘There is no treachery when a man fights for the life of his people, for the future of his Kingdom. Nor was there treachery to which we stooped as low as Mynydog’s, who told me that you came, and when. You asked me why I thanked him – ask him why he betrayed you.’

Next day, I set out from Ingwy’s village to walk back into the hills. They gave me a spear in case I met wolves, and a knife, and a few loaves of wheat bread. I still had my own cloak. I went west, first, till I could climb up the edge of the high hills. I could look east from the edge of the moorland, into the valleys we had devastated. Where coming south we had seen a hundred pillars of smoke, now there were not ten. The valleys were laid waste. The trees would grow again, the deer and the duck come back, the fields would flood and merge and vanish as if the wheat had never grown. Our sons would hunt again over that land: Mordred
hunts there now. But at what a price, I thought. I wept for the Household.

I went slowly along the edge of the old road, where I could find it. When I came to a wood, I threw away the wheat-bread they had given me. I would not soil my mouth with it again. The wood-pigeons came to it, and I made a sling out of the edge of my cloak and a small stone. I killed two, and that was enough. I made a fire, and ate again as a free man, a civilised Roman, should; I ate fresh meat, game of my own hunting, my own killing, food gained not by sweat and labour of hands but by guile and skill. The fire I lit kept away the bears. It had stopped raining. The corn had rotted in the fields, where there were not enough Savages left alive to cut it and bring it in. Now, too late, the autumn had turned sunny and warm.

A sick man, recovering from a wound, or a wounded man, cannot walk far in one day. What is shelter to the one is shelter to the other. On the third day, I came downwind to a copse, and stalked a deer, inch by inch crawling for an hour till I could cast the spear. Oh, I had meat that night, roasted to eat hot, and to carry away cold. I found a hollow to sleep in, well away from the rest of my kill, and I lit a fire in the dusk to guard me. In the morning I woke shivering, the dew wet on my clothes, and I looked round. On the far side of the hollow where I had not looked in the dusk, I saw a low heap. I went closer. The mail was rusty, the leather green with mildew. Still the bones had not been scattered by the beasts, the rotting flesh still clung to the jaws, the row of even teeth would have told me, even if I had not seen the shield. I wept. Then I sang for him, since there was nothing else I could do:

He was the first I found. He was not the last. They were Cardi men, mostly, and a few Picts, who had struggled thus far, either alone or in a band, and had died as they marched. One or two
had been buried, and I found the shields set upright to mark the shallow graves. Others had crawled, it seemed, into holes and crannies to die, hiding their pain from their comrades. There were two by the walls of Din Drei, their arms around each other, their swords drawn across their knees. One, by the blue on his face, was a Pict: the other, from the yellow and black of his shield, I knew to be from Menevia, though who I could not tell. Over were the days when I knew every man of the Household by sight, to tell him at a thousand paces. They had died sitting together, men from the opposite ends of the Island, come together to fight against the invader. Now, their backs to the Roman Wall, they still looked to the South, into the lost land of Bernicia. They were the last.

I walked down from the Wall, to the Hall of Eudav the Tall, the Hall of Bradwen, the house where I had grown up, the paddocks where I had learned to ride, the woods where I had first gone to frame in solitude the songs I would sing in Kings’ Halls. The old house had burnt. A few weeks ago we had rebuilt it. Now, the work of the Household was undone and all was desolate again. No one lived there. The thatch had kept the house dry, but already the poles of the frame were rotting, since we had never tarred them. We had made it for Bradwen and the men of Mordei, and these last had never come. Would they ever come now? I hoped that they might still come, now that we of the Household had weakened the Savages. But I knew that the hope was in vain. We had not given them that freedom from fear which they had asked. I did not sleep in the Hall. I lay on the ground, under the eye of the stars. My back was to the Dwarf Stone, the friendly Dwarf of our youth, and I faced the dead wood beyond the Wall.

The next day, I climbed the slope beyond, up on to the high ground beyond the woods. A little after noon, I saw before me the white sheep spread from horizon to horizon, a blessed sight, where there are sheep, there are shepherds. Before night I saw smoke, and I came to a hut of boughs. There I slept, as I had so often in my youth, and I had men of my own race, who spoke my own tongue, to look after me. I had returned from Cattraeth.

I walked the road between King Mynydog’s farm and the gate of the Dun. The road was silent. The smiths no longer worked at their anvils, except a man here and there who beat out the iron tyres for carts and shoes for the horses. The sword-makers were gone, the sharpeners of iron points, the men who hammered strips for shield-rims and helmet-brims.

I passed the longhouses where the Household had slept. No longer were there little groups of men sitting at the doors, throwing dice or jackstones, playing on the pipes, drinking and telling stories, boasting of how well they rode, how well they fought, would fight. The time for boasting had passed. We had ridden. We had fought. The Household was dead.

I walked between the houses. The children peeped out at me from the doorways, hiding behind the leather curtains. They were silent. No one came out to me with flowers to throw before my feet: Precent would return no more. The parents did not look at me. They turned their faces aside. Without singing the women bent at the querns; silent, the men swung the flails on the threshing-floor. The Kingdom was in mourning for the Household. I felt a dead man, sitting at his own wake.

King Mynydog sat on his throne, on the Judgement Mound before the gate of his Dun. No man came now to seek his law. Clydno stood behind him now, as before. But how should any decisions be enforced without Gwanar? Mynydog sat alone and
silent, and looked, for ever looked, towards the South, towards the notch below the Giant’s Seat where he had seen the Household pass away. I stood before him. I leaned on the Savage spear, and I spat upon his feet before anyone who cared to see.

‘Is there Peace?’ the King asked.

I said nothing. I looked him in the face. I looked down the first. The Mynydog I had known had been a man in his prime. This man was old, his face lined, his hair streaked with grey. Clydno alone answered him, at last:

‘There is peace.’

King Mynydog rose from his throne, and came down from his Judgement Mound. He did not offer to embrace me: a rebuff here, in the face of the sun, in the eye of all, would have been too brutal for him to receive, for me to deal. But how otherwise could I have acted? He led me through the gate of the Dun, across the courtyard, into the Hall, in silence.

Dark was Mynydog’s Hall. He sat alone at the High Table. Before him burned one tallow dip. The hangings were gone from the walls, to make cloaks for the farm people, to see them through the winter. The arms were gone from the pillars where they had hung; gone, lost at Cattraeth. There were no weapons in the Kingdom, and few on the Rock of Dumbarton. The Kingdoms were defenceless.

Of the merry crowd who had feasted in the Hall through the summer, only Clydno remained. He sat on the side-table, at Mynydog’s right. I sat at the foot of the Hall, far from them. I, only I of all the Household, had returned from Cattraeth, to feast with the King who had sent us.

‘The mead is in the cup,’ said Clydno, low, his voice weak and broken with long weeping, ‘and the knife is in the meat. If there is anyone of pre-eminent skill, or anyone who has a tale of marvels to tell, let him speak now.’

I said nothing. Mynydog’s cook put food before me, a true Roman meal: a manchet of oatcake, and porridge of oatmeal, salmon dried in the sun and venison roasted on a spit, mutton stewed with onions, blackberries and hazel-nuts and mushrooms, cheese and butter and heather honey from the mountain hives. I did not touch it, nor the mead in a silver cup. I watched
the King eat. And when his third cup was poured, I asked him. ‘Why, my Kinsman and my King? Why?’

He did not answer. He only looked at me in wonder, as if he did not know what I was talking about. I spoke again.

‘Why, Mynydog, why? There
is
a tale I could tell, of a great Household that was entirely destroyed. It was the Household of all the Kings of Britain, and every Kingdom sent men to serve in it. You spent all the wealth of your Kingdom on it, Mynydog, till there is nothing left, nothing left at all,and there is no more in your house than there is in the house of King Cormac in the empty North. You have ruined your Kingdom, King Mynydog, and all your subjects; and you killed all the men who trusted in you.’

‘Cynon returned,’ said Clydno. ‘Cynrig came back, and two Cardi men and a Pict with him. All were wounded. Three died. Cynrig has gone to the South. Cynon went with him. Three, then, have returned, out of the Household.’

‘And Cynddelig?’

‘It is said that Cynrig killed him. In Carlisle.’

I asked Mynydog again, ‘Why, my King? But why?’

He looked down into his cup. He murmured an epigram I had first sung, years before, when I had made a poem on Vortigern the Great, the Magnificent, the Wise, the Proud, the Unhappy:

He looked up at me.

‘Do you think there has been one day, one hour, since the Household rode out that I have not looked around the Hall and seen you, every one? I can tell you where every man sits, every man. From the moment you gathered together, I knew the end. There was no end possible for you all but death.’

‘And yet you sent us out?’

‘I could not let you all go. I told Cynddelig, that if he could find an excuse to turn back with honour then he might save one troop. Even Owain would have saved Cynon’s squadron, if
Cynon had been willing. But I knew, whatever I did, all who rode out would die.’

‘But, knowing that, you sent us.’

‘I sent you.’

‘Out to meet the men of Elmet, who did not come.’

‘I knew they would not come. They would not follow a Prince of Cornwall. There was always jealousy.’

‘And that you knew?’

‘I knew.’

‘And above that, you betrayed us?’

‘I found the means to tell Bladulf that he was threatened from each flank; and when.’

‘And after that, you sent us out. You sent the greatest Army that has ever been gathered here, a Household that any of the Kings of Britain would have been proud of. And you sent us all, deliberately, deceitfully, to a useless death.’

‘But it was
my
Household. It was me alone, they came to serve. Even though they followed Owain into battle, it was the Household of Mynydog that rode out. It was not the Household of all the Isle of Britain. Elmet was not there, nor Wight, Ciren or Anderida. Think, Aneirin, what would come if there
were
one Household of all the Island, if all the Kings let their soldiers follow one General, to sweep the Savages back into the sea. But where would there be such a General, to be leader of such a Household?’

‘Owain,’ I said. ‘Owain could have done it. Owain could have led them.’

‘Not Owain. Owain was to be King of Cornwall. Would the other Kings have given a mere King such power? The man who will lead the household of the Island must be one with no claim to any throne, but of good blood, nevertheless.

‘And all his life, Owain knew he would be a King. That was how he behaved. He knew that you would do whatever he said. And you did, whether what he wanted had any sense in it or not. You followed him, partly, because it never occurred to him that you would do anything else but follow him, and because he had no doubts, you had no doubts. And so you followed him, even though you knew that nothing but death lay ahead. You knew that, did you not? You knew it before you rode out of Eiddin.’