The fog lifted. Niall rode on, conscious of dusk approaching. The land rolled ahead of him, almost featureless, barren but for the dark grass and the scattered knots of trees. There were no animals, here, no habitations, no warmth.
On the horizons around him he saw tumuli, low hummocks similar to those he remembered from Eriu. He could sense the presence of previous ages, the intangible ghosts of greater races than now possessed the land.
At once his excitement grew. He had followed Grania to protect her – now he remembered that they were in the area of the ruined henge, and that the henge had lain to the south of the battle!
Perhaps he was close already. Should he cease to pursue Fergus and start to search instead for the ancient place that the Fomorion had mentioned?
Ahead of him, carrying loud and shrill through the stillness, came the sound of metal clashing with metal, the unmistakeable song of combat! Niall urged his horse forward and rode through a thin woodland where birds scattered before him, their wingbeats rustling the heavy foliage. He emerged on to the slopes of a gentle hill and stared down at such a sight that his cry of surprise drifted for miles in the dusk!
Before him, resting on a part of the hill where the ground levelled for a while, stood the ring of stones – the circle of stone henges! Ruined and yet vast, silent as time, yet ringing with the cries and clashes of a duel. It was substantially collapsed in upon itself, this vast ancient structure, and yet it was an unmistakeable relic of some majestic and enigmatic past, unarguably a gateway back into a mist laden time when the creatures that now lay within the deep earth had wandered abroad, and co-existed with man.
A haven, a gateway to the Dark Ones, those dawn creatures whose magic would surely save Niall Swiftaxe, the Berserker!
Niall rode towards it, aware both of the rising splendour of these giant stones, which still stood firmly rooted in the ground, and of the ferocious combat that was occurring in and among them. The sharp striking of sword blade against rock was an uncouth and jarring sound in the mystic stillness; the laboured breathing of the combatants, their cries and curses, dispelled the peaceful ghosts of the race who had built this place.
Niall was awed by the stone henges. Even as he came in sight and smell of Grania’s blood streaked breasts, he found himself gazing at the enigmatic monoliths, stones that towered high above him, capped by massive lintels, and scarred and etched with the untranslatable marks of wind and rain and other gods.
Grania screamed and Niall saw her stumble across a half buried stone. Fergus’ blade flashed down with increasing force and she was hard put to parry the enormous blows.
‘Fergus!’ cried Niall, and the bearded man stepped back a moment, and glanced across his shoulder.
‘Niall!’ he shouted. ‘By the Queen of War, I’d thought you dead!’
He returned to the task of breaking through Grania’s weakening defence. ‘I shall slay this bitch for once and for all. I need no help.’
Grania let her arm fall and Fergus’ blade ate into her shoulder so that she screamed. Again Fergus struck, this time deeply into her breast as Niall, still struggling to dismount, watched in horror.
Grania slipped away from Fergus and crawled over the stone, then staggered upright, clutching her breasts where blood flowed free and ugly from the wound.
‘Help me,’ she screamed. Fergus laughed, followed her slowly and as she staggered away from him so he raised his sword to strike off her head.
Niall had drawn the massive Saxon pilum from its saddle slings. As Fergus made to complete the killing blow, Niall hurled the spear and drove his old friend to the blood soaked earth, pinned through heart and lung.
Fergus’ left hand raised, fingers spread, reaching towards Niall as the Berserker, strangely calm, walked towards him and stood, staring down at the man he had once regarded almost as a brother. He realised what he had done, how he had betrayed the fiana’s trust in him, and yet – he was cold, unemotional about his deed.
Grania choked up blood and fell heavily against the dark face of one of the stones, her sword held limply in her hand, her eyes tear-filled as they watched Niall running towards her.
Niall took her in his arms and gently eased her to the ground. The sword, chipped and smeared with Fergus’ blood, slipped from her grasp.
‘I’m done for, Niall,’ she said, and reached out to touch his face.
‘Now you’ll never keep that promise,’ said the Erisman; he choked on the words, feeling sadness overwhelm him. The war queen smiled and closed her eyes. Quietly, then, she breathed her last.
As Niall let her go, straightening her limbs by her side and wiping the unsightly blood from her face, so – in the dusk light – he saw the shapes that were carved into the stone towering above Grania. It made his heart miss a beat, for he remembered what she had told him of the augur’s prophecy.
A sword from the past moves close. A dagger points at me.
Carved in an earlier heroic age, perhaps to mark an heroic death, a thin dagger had been drawn there, so shallowly etched into the stone that only when the light was at its most oblique could it be seen. The blade pointed towards the dead body of the Eriswoman.
Niall rose stiffly to his feet and went to drag Fergus’ body across to the same stone. He jerked the spear from the corpse, and stripped the Saxon rags
from the man. In death Fergus was peaceful, so unlike the fierce and bitter warrior he had been in life.
Niall laid him next to Grania, countrymen together, united in the darkness of death where no motive or quest of revenge was recognised.
Then he squatted down beside them and let the darkness of night envelop the stones, and the sad sight of his dead friends.
He was here, in the dead stones of another time, at the gateway to the Dark One’s help.
Strange memories flashed through his mind, memories drawn from another time, from another life.
There was a flame-haired girl, a girl who had quested through time, just as he, for release from a terrible spell. She it was who had first spoken of the Dark Ones.
And he remembered a warlock, a vague memory of a vague old man. When he had lived before he had ridden through high mountains at the start of his seemingly endless quest. That warlock, too, had spoken of the enigmatic beings that might control the power and the whim of Odin.
And now Niall was here, among the stones, among the Dark Ones, and he needed only to call upon them.
Strangely, knowing how close he was to release from Odin’s curse, Niall remained calm, mourning his dead friends, feeling in no great hurry to call the Dark Ones to him. Even though the Bear in his head prowled restlessly, roared and snarled at him and tried to make his eyes see red and his mouth taste blood, even so young Niall remained calm, and grieved the loss of Grania. He was in full and complete control of his body for the moment, the spiritual strength of his possessor having been waned by its earlier feast of blood.
There was ample time for everything that the Berserker wished to do that night. Ample time.
A torch was struck in the darkness. The night was moonless, and the torch was an enigmatic flare that moved around outside the sombre ring of stones. It was carried by a tall man, dark and featureless, and the flame bobbed as he walked, the yellow flare streaming and flickering as the man explored this bizarre temple to some ancient god.
At length the torch was held steady. The man who walked there had seen Niall, crouched by the stone, above the body of Grania.
He came forward, through the stones, until the torchlight showed Niall who it was. Arthur, battle weary and blooded, his face, now, a solemn mask of anger.
Niall said, ‘I thought it must be you.’ He turned his gaze back to the bodies,
reached out to brush stray hair from Grania’s face. He shook his head sadly. ‘They killed each other. There was nothing I could do.’
Arthur walked slowly towards him, his sword held tightly in his hand. Niall rose, sensing the menace in Arthur’s whole bearing. His left hand rested lightly on the hilt of his sword, ready to twist the weapon from its scabbard at the slightest hint of attack. But the menace faded, Arthur’s gaze lowering so that he contemplated the Erisman and his dead queen. His sword drooped in his grasp and the red-stained blade burned bright in the torch light.
‘Was the battle won?’ asked Niall.
‘Neither won nor lost,’ said Arthur tonelessly. ‘There will be many such.’
‘Alas,’ said Niall, ‘I shall not be with you to shift the odds. This place, this stone henge, is the place of my destiny. Here, somewhere beyond the mortal veil, there lies the answer to my quest for release. I must take advantage of that. At dawn, friend Arthur, I shall summon the Dark Ones, and rid myself of this Bear forever, and of this impossible strength, and this frightening power.’
Arthur stared at him, his dark eyes intense with interest. A slight smile touched his lips. He struck his sword into the ground, then, and drew an amulet from his belt, passed it to Niall. He seemed brighter, somehow, as if the momentary shock at seeing Grania dead had passed. ‘You should be wearing this when you realise your destiny,’ he said. ‘It is only right.’
Niall accepted the bull amulet and felt a surge of warmth and confidence as he recognised the amulet he had carved so many years before. He slung the ivory carving about his neck, caressed the smooth curves of the beast and smiled.
He looked up at Arthur, who held the torch to one side, while with his other hand he leaned upon his broad sword. ‘Owain, then, is dead?’
Arthur shook his head. His leather armour creaked as he moved, and Niall found his eyes drawn to the smears and streaks of blood and dirt upon the overlapping strips of hide. He wondered if Arthur was wounded.
The warlord said, ‘No. He survived the battle. He fought well and will be a valuable warrior to me. I asked him for the amulet since it was I who gave it to him. Somehow it meant less to him, since his sister’s death, than it had before. Owain came to me with his head full of legend. Suddenly he is just another bloody fighter, struggling against a common enemy. ’Tis a shame in one sense, but in another it’s far more practical. A man who knows that his death will go unremarked will fight the harder to stay alive; martyrs, on the other hand, men full of their own importance after death, they will struggle less intensively to remain alive, because of their pretension.’
‘Your Christian warriors, then, are less valuable to you than a pagan such as myself.’
Arthur shrugged. ‘All men who believe in the gods, any gods, will believe
in their own semi-godhead after death. It is not the belief but the manner of the belief. All Christian warriors believe in life after death, but it will be no life at all worth living if they die in battle when, with a little more effort, they might have survived. There is good and bad in all the supernatural.’
Niall could not deny it. He turned from Arthur, fingering the amulet and staring into the darkness to where the dark shapes of the stone rose into the night, dimly lit by Arthur’s firebrand.
‘This, then, is where we say goodbye, friend Arthur. This is where we part our ways.’
‘Regrettably yes,’ said Arthur, but something in his voice …
Betrayal!
Niall froze, still staring into the darkness. The hair on his neck pricked and tingled. His heart beat fast and hard.
He realised what Arthur was about to do.
There was a sound like wind passing through a narrow crevice in rock, the sound of a blade being swept up for a blow.
Niall screamed, and drew his sword, crying, ‘By all the gods, Arthur,
no
!’
And an instant later Arthur’s blade thrust through Niall’s body, driving the Erisman to the ground with a blow that sent an arm’s length of blood-stained iron probing from his chest.
He clutched the blade as he sank to his knees, and sobbed. ‘Why?’ he cried, and gasping, ‘Arthur … why … what do you gain?’
Behind him Arthur’s voice rose shrill and triumphant, a bizarre animal cry that Niall recognised so well.
The blackness took him, a dark vortex sucked him down.
So unfair … so unfair … so close, so close … why did he do it? … why?
Arthur’s cry of triumph faded into the darkest night imaginable and for Niall Swiftaxe, the Berserker, the Mad Bear, there were spinning stars, and the spinning void between the ages.
His cry, then, was the first cry of a new born baby. But for what seemed like an eternity, the soul of the Erisman, cheated again of its release from Odin’s curse, floated in the emptiness of death. He sensed nothing, yet a memory remained … the memory of a ring of stones, a circle of stone henges, standing in a barren plain and concealing a secret greater than the greatest magic the earth possessed. It was a memory that would be reborn with him, that would direct his life when he began his quest again, in whatever world the gods saw fit to bring him to.
Kei Ironhand and other of the élite horse warriors of the Britons, came to the ring of stones as the pale autumn sun was beginning to show through the rising dawn mist.
As the battle-weary man rode between two of the great standing stones, he
saw Arthur squatting on the ground, leaning on his sword and gazing across three prone bodies stretched out side by side.
‘Arthur …?’
The warlord glanced up, then rose to his feet.
‘I am ashamed,’ he said, staring down at Niall’s body.
‘For all the knowledge that I possess, I do not know how to honour a man who has done me more service than he ever knew. I can’t honour him as a Briton – it would be an insult. But the way that the Erismen prepare their dead warriors is something I have never observed.’
‘I have,’ said Kei. He rode around the bodies, then trotted back to the edge of the circle of stones. ‘You must sever his head and place it on a small mound of earth, facing towards the sunset.’
Arthur tugged his sword from the ground and did this deed.
Kei brought his warlord’s horse towards him and after a moment spent contemplating the blindly staring eyes of Niall Swiftaxe, Arthur jumped into the saddle and threw back his head to laugh heavenwards.