Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (93 page)

‘Ah, the summer game that was here.’ Gwion had heard this. ‘Elk lived here, the size of two horses, with horns that would have served as oars for a ten-man boat. Elks like that would feed a whole village. And stags of twenty points. Red deer and roe deer you could find too—’

‘And wild boar as well.’ That was Gwenabwy. ‘The taste of a wild sucking-pig! And where there was all that game, there would be wolf too, and bear, all the fur you could want.’

‘Birds of all kinds, too, winter and summer. You would never fly your hawk for nothing, in a place like this. And in the winter, with the streams in a sullen flood, and the whole valley a marsh – pike in the deep pools, roach and gudgeon ….’ Even Precent was drawn in, against his will.

‘Now, look what they have done to it. It is enough to make a man weep.’ Owain could sound as bitter as you liked, when he wanted to, and it was not all pretence. ‘All our lovely marshes they have drained away, to leave the ground as dry as the top of a table. And cut down are all our trees, and the groves where we used to wander. And what do they do, when they have killed the trees, and burned them, as we have seen them do this year in Mordei? They pull out the stumps and they plough the ground level, to turn the fruitful forest into barren wheatfields. And that is how they can live, on a handful of wheat a day, a swarm of brown ants, witless,
blind, toiling away with no art, no poetry. It is a sin against the Virgin and against God, to multiply cattle, or people, or crops, without heed. For the earth is the Lord’s, and he gave it to us to keep, and not to destroy. It is only Christians who protect even the wolf.

‘And how else do they live? They do not keep sheep, nor do they spare any space for the gentle cow, that gives milk, and cheese. They only keep as few as they can to raise oxen to drag the plough. And when they have worn out the ox, they kill him for the tallow and the hide only, because they eat no meat, ask Aneirin if it is not true. And that is how they manage to live here, and to grow, so that in two generations they multiply from one boatload to a nation. They will swamp us if we do not stop them. We have to undo all they have done. After that, we must bring the Army of their nation to battle, so that we can destroy them utterly in one place. And, in a few years, we and our sons will hunt in this valley again.’

For four days, then, we raged in the valleys, the one that runs East to the sea, and the one that goes South to York. We treated every village as we treated the first one. When we left that first village, we burnt every house. We had thrown the ploughshares and every weapon and tool that we found into the fire where we cooked our meat, and that not only destroyed the costly work of the wheelwright – ask Mynydog’s men how difficult is the wheelwright’s task – but it also spoiled the temper of the iron. What metal we could pick out of the ashes, the next morning, we dropped into the well, and threw in as many bodies as we could find, to pollute it. Others we flung into the pond where they watered the cattle. We burnt the corn in the barns, and smashed the querns with hammers – their hammers.

Most of this was Morien’s work. After he had set the houses on fire, he made a bundle of clothes he had found in a house, and smeared them in tallow, and tied them behind his horse with a long, long rope. Then we lit the cloths, and he galloped, the flaming torch behind him, through the corn fields, and set the the evil wheat alight where it grew.

We kept the spades that were in the houses, though, and we blocked up all the ditches along the edges of the fields, and broke in all the banks. We made the women work at this before we killed them in case they should breed, and for the sake of all
the women the Savages had killed in the Mordei and Bernicia, in our time and in our fathers’, and who had had no sons.

When Morien had shown how best to do all this, and he had given lonely thought to this in the woods by his kilns, we spread out by squadrons and did the same all across the land, till I grew tired of the sight of smoke and the taste of half-cooked beef and of wheat cakes, and the sight of the square houses in their long fields. In four days, a hundred villages burnt, and in none of them did we leave more than a few wailing children. The wolf and the bear, the kite and the buzzard came flocking into the houses for easy meat. Why should they not feast, and why should we not feed them? They were
our
wolves,
our
kites.

We left a trail of death and destruction everywhere the Household of Mynydog rode, and there was no one more hard in vengeance, more cruel, more thorough in searching out anything that could be of value to destroy it, than Bradwen. She led us to make a ruin of fruitful fields and happy villages for the sake of the Virgin. In ten years, or five, when the trees and the grass had grown again, and the waters of the winter floods had passed across them, the ugly straight fields would be changed to pleasant marsh, a land that Romans could hunt in and make their home. But first, what we did would be more hideous than anything the wheat-growers had accomplished. Before beauty could return, we had to make devastation.

What people we found we killed, with their livestock, and showed them no mercy. Mostly we found that when they saw the smoke of the next village rise in the still hot air they would flee, hiding in the little woods they had left, seeking refuge in what they had wanted to destroy. They did not resist. There was a thing that puzzled me, though it did not seem of any importance to Owain.

‘There are no men,’ I told him, ‘or very few, and those either very old or very young, like those we left behind when the Army marched out of Eiddin.’

‘The men heard us coming and went away without waiting for urging, running faster than the women,’ he answered lightly. ‘Or else there are few men among the Savages, as we have few whole rams among the flock of sheep, because one male of them can serve a whole flock of females.’

‘This not to laugh at,’ I insisted. ‘No men, and, in the houses I have seen, never a spear, and not one shield or mail coat. And seldom even an axe or a hedging-knife.’

‘They are not used to proper arms. They fight naked, like the animals.’

I was stung at last. ‘Perhaps that is how the Irish fight, and how you won your famous victories. I tell you, these Savages are as well armed as we are, and fight as well, and that you will find out soon enough. I have been asking the women where the men have gone.’

‘You got no answer. These witless brutes have no memory of anything that happened longer ago than yesterday.’

‘They said all the men have gone off to a war. Somewhere, Owain, the Savages have gathered a great many. It is true, the women don’t know where, North or South, but somewhere there is a horde of Savages on the march. Let us hope that they have gone south against Elmet, because if they have gone into Mordei by the coast road, and missed us, then we will never feast in Eiddin again.’

But Owain only laughed at me, and because he
was
Owain, our leader, I laughed with him, and believed him when he said there was no such army, only a tale the women had made up to hide the cowardice of their men. But they had made up the same tale in every village.

It was the end of the fourth day on which we laid waste the valleys, and we had returned to the place from which we had started. Our squadrons had gone north and east, north to the Border, and east to the sea, almost. Only half a squadron had gone south, probing gently down the road which we would follow, to York and Elmet. The leader of this section was Dyvnwal, whom we called Vrych, the Speckled, because of his freckles, and he had painted his shield white covered with spots of red to match his nickname: and that is all I remember about him, because he was a quiet man. It was on the morning of the fifth day, on which Precent had hoped we would be in Elmet, that we saw this section coming up the Roman Road towards us. Owain rode to meet them, like a King in Venery, with his Judge and his Huntsman and his Standard-bearer, in myself and Precent and Bradwen. When we came near to them, we saw that there were only a dozen red cloaks, instead of forty, and no spare horses, and the chargers they were riding well blown.

They came rushing to us as we rode down to meet them on the empty road, among the empty blackened fields of burnt wheat, all shouting and talking at once.

‘A battle,’ they shouted. ‘We have been in a battle! Against the Savages!’

Owain shouted at them to be quiet. ‘Where is Dyvnwal?’ he kept on asking. ‘Where are the others?’

There was a greater hubbub. Geraint, a man from the South, seemed the most coherent, and I tried to follow his voice against the others.

‘We came on a village some time after noon. We rode around it and into it. There was no one there. Not a soul. Not a woman, or a child. Still we did not think it unusual. You never know what customs these Savages have. We dismounted—’

‘All of you?’ I asked.

‘All of us. We went through their houses. They had taken their jewels with them. No silver. We pulled the ploughs together close to the biggest house. We heaped corn on it. And the yeast. We piled the benches over the ploughs. We brought the blankets and clothes out of the houses. We put on the tallow. Then Dyvnwal bent to kindle the fire. There was a shouting in our ears. They were on us.’

‘Many of them?’

‘They made noise for ten thousand. They were many more than we were. We each had ten to fight. They were in mail. They had those short swords. We had left our shields with our horses. We tried to get back to the horses. We had to cut our way through. I killed two: at least, I struck them and they fell. I think we here are all that reached the horses. If they had stampeded our mounts they would have had us all. We got into line. We charged back into the village. There was nothing we could do for the others. Dead, all of them. A heap of Savages around them. The Savages could not stand up to us mounted. They ran when we returned. We saw that those who had come into the village were the advance guard of an Army. They were in hundreds, thousands. We set the houses alight. We came for you.’

‘You returned and left your comrades there?’ Owain was sharp, scornful.

‘If we had dismounted to recover the bodies, it would have been a glorious deed. Who would have sung us for it? We would have died ourselves. We came back to warn you.’

‘I told you the men had gone away to war,’ I told Owain. ‘It was South they went, and perhaps they have already fought against Elmet. Now they are returning. The road South is blocked. We will not reach Elmet now, or even York.

‘The road South may be blocked, but we will still take it.’ Owain turned to Precent. ‘The squadrons are coming in on us now, as we ordered. Meanwhile, push some scouts down the road for a mile or two.’ He ignored Geraint and his comrudes; in fact, he never spoke to them again, as if they had shamed themselves, though no one who saw the hacked shields and the gapped blades, and the blood up to their elbows, could doubt that they had fought.

That night, we slept spread across the road in an arc, a mile from horn to horn, with our fires burning and tended by sentries who watched for the Savages. But they did not attack that night. So, in the morning, we rode down the Roman Road in our usual order.

The skirmishers saw the enemy about two hours after dawn. They called back, and Precent and I rode across to where we could see the enemy. They were a little group of men, fifty at most, standing full in the road, waiting. Owain came forward with two squadrons, through the skirmish line, and charged down on them. There was no difficulty there. When the horsemen were within a hundred paces of them, they broke and ran in all directions, and were cut down again as they fled. We re-formed, and moved again down the road.

We came on more groups like this. ‘Marching north to meet us, all hugger-mugger, every man his own general,’ said Owain. I did not think so, but I held my peace. They had more the look of a rearguard, to keep us off the main army while it found somewhere better to fight. But now I knew better than to contradict Owain, because he was our leader, and always right.

Sometimes, they would hear us coming first, and then they would get into some kind of order across the road, and try to hold a line when we rode at them. But we always got round the flanks. If we caught them strung out, they would run before we could get at them, scattering all across the country. As we moved South,
they stiffened. They stood longer. Once a group ran, as a body, into a wood. Half a dozen horsemen followed them into the trees. Only two returned. They told of men who leapt out of the undergrowth to hamstring the horses, or dropped from the trees on to the riders. Owain did not order anyone to recover the bodies.

But all this slowed us down. Late in the afternoon, when we had covered barely ten miles, we came in sight of the village where Geraint had fought. Where the road went past the smoking ruins, not through them, there was a stake new set in the ground. On it was the head of Dyvnwal Vrych. It was not freckles now that marked his face but the cuts of knives. His private parts were thrust between his locked teeth. The ravens had already had his eyes.

There we slept that night. We lay in our armour, waiting an attack. Only half of us slept at any time. Those who lay down nestled close to their horses, and not only for warmth; we knew, those who mounted first would live. Before we slept Owain talked to us.

‘Now we know the spirit of the Savages,’ he told us. ‘They will not stand to face us. All we have to do is to show a bold face to them and they will run away. Only remember, do not fight their kind of battle. They want to catch us dismounted in small groups, or lure us into the woods. If you are ready to fight that way, like Savages, then there is no way out, because they are too many for us. We have to use our superior skill and equipment. They cannot ride, and they will not stand up to a man on horseback. Today we have won our first victory. They tried to stop us. They could not. They will never stop us, because we bring civilisation back to the valleys. In two days’ time, we will retake York. In four days, we feast in Elmet.’

But Precent spoke to me quietly, in the dark, by the horses.