Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (91 page)

It was half a lifetime ago she said that. Now we have certainty. The Savages are put down all over the land of Britain. Mordei was the last land to be reconquered. Arthur with the Army of the South pinned the hateful ones there between themselves and the Armies of the North, Picts and Strathclyde men, in the wood of Caledon. Now he has resettled all Mordei, and given it to Mordred to rule. There will be peace in Britain for ever.

‘They went back,’ Bradwen said. She was not bitter, not rancorous, she did not raise her voice or let any emotion cloud it. She did not judge them, she merely said what they had done, and that was judgement enough. ‘They did not go back singly. That would have been easier to accept, the flight of single men, frightened, weak, not daring to tell their comrades who will wake with the sun to find the familiar mounds of blankets gone from their sides, slipped away from the dying fire Just before the morning. They look back from the edge of the woods just when the birds begin to sing. They half regret what they have done, and think there is still time to go back, to tell how they were taken short
and went into the bushes, or to find some other tale, and they wonder what tale of the many will sound the best. But they never do go back. And they go home alone. A wise Commander does not count his troops at night.

‘But this was worse. The sun would rise, and whole companies would go. They would awake, and without a word would form up as if to advance, and, instead, would march the other way, into the North. Other companies, regiments, turned back at the noon halts, or even in the middle of the morning. Always they took the beasts they had driven so far. What they told the farmers they repassed I cannot think. What they told Mynydog I do not care.

‘Then we came into the region of the dead forests. Now the men of Eiddin began to turn back. The men of Mordei had come to reconquer Mordei, and when they saw Mordei, and it was not what they remembered, they left reconquest to others. But the men of Eiddin expected to see a conquered land. They did not come to win it back for themselves, and they did not care if anyone lived there or not. They had come to clear the Savages from what should be now dead ground, a belt of space for armour. They had come to fight, and to destroy the Savages before they came further.

‘Iron the men of Eiddin were willing to face, and the strength of humans, the shock of shields and the agony of battle, where some are brave and some flee and every man is different, and each man, in the end, fights alone and dies alone. But then they saw the dead forest. All across our front, from the hills to the sea, stretched the line of withered trees. A man may fell an apple-tree in spite, or even, demented by fury, hack at a rowan. It takes more than fury, it takes time and patience to ring a tree, and strip the bark away as high as a man can reach. And this was not one tree, but a thousand thousand trees. It was blind malice that stopped the Mordei men. It was the care and patience of all that witless horde, working for weeks on end, all across Mordei, like the spread of a blight. They had quietly, thoroughly killed the kind forest, that shelters our beasts, that gives us nuts and berries and hides the deer we eat. They killed the trees that should have given us fuel and house timbers for a hundred years. All this they destroyed in malice. And the Eiddin men turned back, all in one night.

‘The sight of the wasted farms turned back the men of Mordei. The sight of the dead forest turned back the men of Eiddin. But it was the burnt forest that was the end of Cynddelig and his sixty horsemen. They endured till then.

‘After the trees die, and the leaves wither, when the trunks are dried through and through, the Savages set light to the forest. We came out of the dead forest into the burnt land. The charred stumps still stood, sometimes knee high. The ground was covered deep in wood ash. It had been grey after the fire; now it was blackened with rain. It was too deep, the ash, for even the coarsest grass to sprout. Now the wood is cleared, the Savages will come, next year, to heave out the stumps and plough the ground to plant their filthy wheat.’ She looked around her. ‘These brambles have not long to live.

‘There were no brambles in the burnt forest, no food for man nor horse. Neither grass nor berries nor mushrooms, neither deer nor squirrels. That was why Cynddelig turned back. He said to me, “Mynydog gave me these warriors and all their armour, costly beyond belief. If we go farther and the horses founder, then it will all be lost. I will take the squadron back.” Three days ago, he went. We have had little food from then till now.’

‘But you did not go back?’ My voice showed it was the reason, not the fact, that I questioned.

‘I had said that I would meet Owain at this place, and ride with him to my father’s Hall, the Hall that was my father’s, and is mine, and will be his.’

‘And you, Gwenabwy? Why did you not turn back?’

‘I don’t know, boy. I just came on, like I said I would, to the old Hall.’ A heavy slow man, Gwenabwy, not a fast thinker, but one it was always good to have at your back. I turned again to Bradwen.

‘Where did you get this mail?’

I ran my hand over the shirt, lying over the log on which we sat. Most men wear mail made of rings that might slip on to a girl’s little finger. The mail I wore was counted fine: the rings would have been tight on the fingers of a month-old baby. The rings of Bradwen’s mail would have slipped on to the leg of a thrush, and been a snug fit there. Such mail, they say, all the
front rank of Arthur’s Household wear now, but it was rare in those days. It was foreign work, made by Goths or Persians far in Africa. The leather beneath the mail was boiled hard and ridged and crested like a stickle-back. A point would not pierce the iron: a blow would be broken by the leather.

‘This,’ she told us, proudly, ‘was a shirt that King Majorian of Rome sent as a gift to my father Eudav, one that he stripped from the body of Attil, King of the Scyths, after he killed him with his own hand. Eudav thought it was too new-fashioned for him to wear, and sent it to Mynydog to hang in his Hall as a trophy, till someone worthy of it should come to claim it. But I thought to bring it back so that someone could wear it to defend my Hall.’

Some of the Household made a hut for Bradwen out of dead boughs and withered leaves. We others slept in our cloaks on the bare ground. We took turns about to watch the horses. I drew the turn before dawn. Down on the river meadow, where we had lit our fire, far from the dead trees, I saw Owain still sitting on the log, thinking what next to do.

The next day, Owain led us west again, up the valley the way we had come, and then on to the High Moors, towards Eudav’s Hall, that I supposed we must now call Bradwen’s Hall, or perhaps even Owain’s Hall. I rode, for preference, with Precent, in the van.

‘Go back, then, we must,’ Precent grumbled to me. ‘There is no going on this campaign without the foot. Sorry it is I am to be going home without blooding my spear, but there it is. We will have to do it next year. You did well enough, Aneirin, you did more damage to the Savages than all the rest of us put together. Next time, we shall have a champion in you.’

‘We shall see,’ I told him. We jogged along. We might easily have made Eudav’s Hall before the evening, but a little after noon, the flank guard on the right sighted a whole herd of deer, and a squadron went off on to the hunt. They cast round up-wind of them, and drove the whole herd down on to our spears. We singled out twenty-six fat bucks, and that was enough for the Household: the rest we let run against next time some Roman felt hungry. It is only a Savage who kills except to eat at once.

This took up time, and by sunset we were nowhere near the Hall. We halted for the night on the old Roman road, looking across to the way through the Wall. We ate well of roasted venison, even though it had not been hung, and there was enough
for us all. What with the thrill of the hunt and the smell of the meat cooking, there was a holiday air about the whole Household, more now than ever before. They sat in circles around the fires, and as always, when they were gravy up to the eyebrows, they passed around the mead jars and sang the old songs, one circle singing against another. We the leaders sat around Owain, to hear him, and not, at that, to hear him sing. But he only wanted to hear us. At last Peredur Ironarms asked him, straight out, ‘Only one question now, Owain. Do Bradwen stay here on her farm, or do she go back to Eiddin now?’

‘I will not go back.’ She was firm. We ignored her.

‘Someone will have to stay here with her if the men of Mordei do not come. I’ll call for volunteers among the squadrons. Hard it will be to find them, I’m sure.’ Precent laughed broadly. But Owain said thoughtfully, ‘Hard it will be to find men who will give up the glory.’

‘What glory is there in riding back tamely to Eiddin with nothing done?’ asked Gwion. ‘Braver surely it is to stay here on the very edge of the Savages’ land, and I am thinking there is not a man who will not stay.’

‘Aye,’ countered Owain. ‘What glory indeed?’

‘What will you do, then?’ we all asked him together.

‘I swore an oath to King Mynydog, that I would go into Bernicia and fight against the Savages. I have not yet entered Bernicia, and I have not fought.’

‘But not this year,’ insisted Precent. ‘Next year, perhaps.’

‘Why not this year?’

‘There are no infantry. It would be pointless to fight against the Savages with no foot.’

‘I have fought the Irish with no foot to back me. And we won.’

‘You will not chase these like Irish pirates,’ I warned him.

‘They will stand to fight, whether we ride or march against them. I have seen them, and I have heard them.’

‘Oh, you have only seen a few of them,’ Owain pushed me aside. ‘Perhaps you heard them, but they were boasting to terrify you. I saw the ones you killed a few days ago, and I saw that there will be no trouble. You settled four yourself, before anyone came to help you.’

‘Did I? I only remember twisting and turning where I could and striking out whether I could see anything to hit or not. And in the end, it took a score of us, in armour, to settle a score of them, naked. And Cynon is dead now, most likely.’

‘We bought twenty dead, cheap enough, at that price.’

‘They were charcoal-burners, not soldiers.’

‘All these Savages are warriors, they are brought up to nothing else. Among us, our mothers pray that we will grow up to be poets and the pride of our families and our Kingdoms. Savage mothers only pray their sons will be good fighters. And they live on a handful of wheat a day. So underfed, it is no wonder that though they are all ready to fight, any of us is as good as a dozen of them, and that on foot. Mounted, this Household can destroy any army they can bring.’

‘So it is your opinion,’ Precent asked him, ‘that we ought to go on against the Savages?’

‘I have no opinions. I only say what I know.’

‘And what do you know?’

‘I know that I swore an oath to King Mynydog, that I would go into Bernicia and fight with the Savages.’ He did not say ‘and you swore too’. He only went on, ‘Nothing was said about the infantry. Much was said about the King of Elmet. Shall we leave him to fight alone?’

There was silence for a little while. Then Gwion, from his corner, said, ‘So we ride on.’

‘Aye,’ said Precent. ‘So we ride on.’

‘So we ride on,’ Owain confirmed. ‘Tomorrow we will go down the old road through the Wall, and burn their havods on the moors above the valleys. Then we will sweep down into the valleys, and burn their farms before they can call their men together. We shall leave the country a desert and ride through them to Elmet.’

‘They do not build havods,’ I told them. ‘Their young men and women do not go up to the hills in summer to tend the sheep. And they do not live in single farms. They cluster their houses together, and live in crowds of a hundred people and more in one place.’ I was unwise enough to add, ‘I have seen them.’

‘Perhaps they did so live,
where
you saw them,’ Owain
answered me, whom he had brought because I had knowledge beyond his own. ‘But you were only in one place, in a Dun. No man could bear to live as near as that to his neighbours, except in the Dun of a King who can force them not to quarrel with him. If farms are close together, then their owners are enemies: it is a law of nature, we know it well enough. We will burn their farms in the valleys and be in York before they know we are on them.’

‘So we ride on,’ said Cynrig.

‘I will tell them.’ Owain, Bradwen with him, walked across to the nearest fire. We sat silent, listening to the shout from the men there, and the bursts of laughter after it. Owain went on to the next fire.

‘And if Owain would not ride on,’ I asked those left with me. ‘Would any of us go alone?’

‘I would go, if I went alone,’ said Cynrig. ‘Because Cynddelig turned back.’

‘I came for a fight,’ Peredur Ironarms laughed about it. ‘I will go on till I have one, and then I can tell Evrog the Wealthy about it, and keep the arms he gave me.’

‘Turn back?’ This was Gwenabwy. ‘Never thought of it till now, boy.’

I looked at Precent. He answered, ‘So we ride on. Now we are all dead men. But it is what we came for.’

‘I sang of war enough,’ I told them, ‘and mourned over my betters who fell. Now I will feel death for myself, and let who will sing my elegy.’

Owain returned. All the fires were blazing up high as the songs and laughter that mocked the summer stars. Syvno looked up, and read the planets for us. Victory he prophesied from them, and booty, and no loss. Owain listened, and then said, ‘True it is, good things lie ahead: the best of our lives is to come. And because of that, not all should sing. Some there are that will have to stay behind, to guard Bradwen.’