Kei was taken by surprise and watched the man, puzzled.
Arthur finally ceased to laugh, but he remained staring into the sky, as if he saw some sign there, some token that boded well for him.
He said, ‘By all the gods, Kei! By all the gods that live in our sky, and in our earth, and in our wind and rain, and in our swords and our breasts … by all those gods, and all the great wonders they have brought to the people of this land, I feel that I am invincible! At the moment of his death … of Niail’s death … I felt … possessed, yes, possessed! As if some great god had entered me, as if … as if some all powerful being had slipped along the blade of my sword and entered me, bringing power and invincibility! By the gods, Kei, by
all
the gods, I believe I am the most powerful man on Earth, the most powerful man that ever lived; I am invulnerable and invincible, Kei … I do believe, by the gods, that I am God Himself! Does that appal you, Ironhand? It appals me too. But I feel it! Damn the Saxons, by all that’s Holy; damn the world! I am Warlord of the Britons, and I shall live forever! I
shall
, Kei … I shall live forever!’
Kei shook his head and grinned, waited for Arthur to calm down before he said, ‘By those same gods, my friend, but you’ve become one hell of a braggard!’
He turned, laughing, and rode back to the waiting horsemen. Arthur looked once more at the staring head of Niall Swiftaxe. Then he laughed and twisted in his saddle, shouting after Kei, into the wind, into the crisp and misty dawn, ‘Time will tell, Kei, by the gods! Time will tell all!’
For Rosemary
,
who wins all her battles.
In 60
AD
, those Celtic tribal kingdoms mentioned in this book were broadly distributed as follows:
The tribes of the
Iceni
in the area of Norfolk.
The tribes of the
Trinovantes
in the area of Suffolk and North Essex.
The tribes of the
Catuvellauni
in the area of Bedford and Hertfordshire.
The tribes of the
Ordovices
in North Wales.
The tribes of the
Deceangli
along the coastal valleys of North Wales.
The tribes of the
Silures
in South Wales.
The tribes of the
Cornovii
in Cheshire and Staffordshire.
The tribes of the
Belgae
in Wiltshire,
and the tribes of the
Coritani
, to which my hero belongs, in the area of
Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.
The island of
Mona
is the Isle of Anglesey.
As fast and sleek as a hound racing across the moor, as difficult to see as a forest sprite, the boy darted through the edge of the wood, circling the strange figure that stood on top of the knoll.
Out of breath, wet with sweat and fear, the youngster finally dropped to his belly in the leafy undergrowth and stared through the fern and bracken at the clear grassland, sunlit and bright, and the motionless man who quietly, solemnly watched the distant river, and the bare ground where the village and the fort lay concealed behind Llug’s Wall.
The boy grinned, knowing that it would take more than eyes to see the town. Not even the Earth Gods could spot the defended settlement of Bragdanobus. Not even the Crow Queen, screeching in her battle anger, could see the town clearly enough behind its veil of mist to drop her bloody corpses on to the houses and claim the spirits of the warriors who lived there.
That sudden thought of gods made the boy’s skin grow chill. Nothing about the man who stood on the knoll was familiar, not his clothes, not his helmet, not his wrist decorations, not his sword … he was not even tattooed, or painted, or even smeared with some abusive colouration, telling nature with his blues or reds or greens that he was his
own
colour, the colour of man, and not to be interfered with by the colour spirits of the woods and grass.
The man, the boy realised guiltily, was not a man at all. He was a god. But what sort of a god?
He walked out of hiding, wiping the sweat from his blue-streaked face, brushing the leaf and twig from his blond hair. He felt ashamed to be greeting a god without lime and clay stiffening his hair to hedgehog spikiness. He felt naked after his long, luxurious swim in the winding river, upstream from the lair of the river goddess Banua who so liked to seduce young boys, and then to wash out their skulls with the icy water of her domain.
Hoping the god would not object to his irreverence, hoping that his simple trousers and checked cloth-shirt were sufficiently clean to be pleasing to the god’s eye, the boy dropped to one knee and touched his lips and forehead with his left hand, speaking the divine greeting: ‘Shade and sun, wind and rain, may your fearless stride carry you from one to the other without pause, without breath.’
The god turned to stare at the boy, and a narrow smile touched his human-like lips.
The boy looked up, afraid now, for the god had not responded. The boy’s neck tickled. He hoped he would not have to offer his head to dangle from the god’s belt. He glanced sideways, to where he could see the thatched roundhouses grouped, like river snails clustered on a rotting branch, about the steep slopes of the fort that had been built on higher ground. It all seemed very peaceful down in the valley. The god turned to follow his gaze, frowning as his eyes saw no more than river and woodland.
The god was a fearsome sight. He was dressed in bright silver and dulled bronze armour; his kirtle was of leather strips, hanging loose against an undertunic of red cotton. His legs were bare to the knee, but his calves were sheathed in carved and patterned bronze greaves. His head was encased in a brightly polished metal helmet, from which a plume of red fabric rose proudly, god-like, above his head. He wore a thick leather belt, from which hung a short and square-hilted sword. He was a powerfully built god, in this human manifestation, and he seemed angry, and yet thoughtful.
The boy stared at the sword and realised that this was a
glaimda
, a sword demon. He felt cold again, the cold of fear, of apprehension. But the
glaimda
turned to him and smiled. ‘Are you afraid of me, boy?’ he said, in an accent richly strange, and strangely attractive.
‘My neck is in fear of you,’ answered the boy with all the bravado he could muster. He realised that this, a simple challenge, would result either in his immediate decapitation, or else in his survival, for if the demon let him live, then to kill the boy at a later date would be to invite engulfing by the Queen of the Dead, the black-skirted crow that the boy could see hovering, watching, in the nearby woodlands.
The
glaimda
laughed. ‘You believe me to be a sword demon?’
‘Are you not?’
The strange man shook his head, sat down awkwardly on the grass and patted the turf next to him, inviting the boy to sit too. As the boy knelt uneasily by the heavily armoured man, so the man drew his sword and showed it to his young acquaintance. ‘Have you seen a sword like this before?’
The boy shook his head, reached out to touch the straight blade, the highly silvered surface, the precise point of it, and the square and ugly pommel and hilt. It was an unpleasant sword to touch, and to feel, not at all like the subtle, smooth-bladed swords of his own people. He was not surprised that it carried no lock of hair sewn into the wood of the hilt, nor was it engraved with a personal and secret name at the base of the blade. He drew back his hand, looked up into the clear blue eyes of the man.
Another thought was vying for position in his mind. He must have looked
worried because the man said, ‘What ails you, boy? Have you seen a ghost? And what’s your name by the way?’
‘I am called Caylen. I am also called Swiftaxe, because I am swift and skilled with the single-bladed axe of my people.’
‘Well, Swiftaxe, who do you imagine I am?’
‘Our bards talk of dark-haired invaders from across the great sea that have conquered the lands to the south and east of here. They are ferocious animals disguised as men, half-human, half-dog, with short-cropped black hair and a merciless way with the weak and defenceless. They stand more than twenty feet tall; most of them have just one leg, one eye and one ear. They say their leaders have forty rows of teeth, all of which must taste flesh each day to keep them satisfied.’
The strange man laughed, exposing twin rows of sparkling white teeth. ‘I have just a man’s complement of fangs,’ he said. ‘And two legs, two arms, two eyes, as have all men. Do I take it, then, that you do not believe me to be one of these horrendous invaders?’
The boy shrugged uncomfortably, kept a wary eye on his acquaintance. ‘They are just stories,’ he said. ‘No one really believes that the invaders are so frightening. But they are … dark-haired … I have never seen black hair on a man, so I think I would know an invader instantly.’
Again the man smiled. ‘You are a boy with a fine, strong heart, and a man’s courage. You virtually challenge me direct, knowing that should I be such an invader I would be here to kill you and your people.’
Caylen’s hair stood on end, and his heart thundered. Was he being a little too brave for his own good?
Before he could speak, or even move, the man had reached up and removed his helmet. Blond hair, greaseless and unlimed, fell to his shoulders. It smelled of sweat. ‘There,’ said the man. ‘As blond as you. In fact, I come from a village that lies no more than four days’ ride south of here. I am, Caylen, a countryman of yours. Are you happier now?’
Caylen grinned broadly. ‘Much happier. It is your strange dress that scared me.’
‘The people of whom I am a part, now, have been in these lands for the best part of a generation. In our search for
your
people, to make friends with them, we had never believed that you had not actually
seen
us a few times. But then …’ his eyes took in the high hills and the dense forests that seemed to contain this wide bend of the river like some natural cage. ‘But then, you are well hidden from all strange eyes.’
‘And have been so for many generations,’ said Caylen with a smile and a wink. ‘Llug’s Wall protects us, held in place by the three Cave Hags.’
‘Now of these Cave Hags I have heard much,’ said the blond stranger with genuine interest. The false note in his voice passed the boy’s awareness
without registering. The man patted Caylen on the leg. ‘I am much in need of seeing them, for it is said that they are earthly forms of the Mother herself, of Scaladd the war-like, and Vana the fertile, and Brigedd the wise one. Where I come from the witches and hags of the rocks have all been slain or passed on to the wind by invaders.’
A wind, now, chilled the boy’s body, blowing sudden and cold about the knoll; the trees waved in that breeze, rustled and agonised him to silence. The great black crow that was the Queen of the Dead flapped hard and shrieked noisy and angry, but the boy thought no more than that a shadow had passed across the sun. And besides, he was looking enviously at the strange man’s sword. Ugly though it was, the boy felt drawn to its metal. It would be good to be the only one in the village with such a strange weapon.
Greed destroys integrity; desire can drown lesser compassions. He reached to the sword and touched its strange and strangely lifeless hilt. The man watched him, then drew the blade from its scabbard and let the boy hold it. ‘The sword is precious to me,’ said the man. ‘But not so precious that it cannot be replaced. It has killed men, who died bravely. It is a strong sword.’ He leaned close to the boy. ‘It is yours, Caylen, for a small favour. Direct me to the three Cave Hags so I may ease my particular misery. I wish only to consult them. I am a man in great need of help.’
The sun appeared again, but the cold wind remained. The man’s breastplate gleamed, symbols of wolves and cat-like creatures, of eagles and hawks … and runes, square-edged and ugly. The man gleamed in armour from head to foot, and his leather smelled sharp, the sharpness of some strange polish and not the hide itself.
‘The sword is mine?’ Caylen waved it, bright and straight and sharp in the air. ‘An axe is my weapon,’ he said. ‘I am Swiftaxe, who will be Swiftaxe the Terrible, Swiftaxe the Bear …’ A cloud passed across his face and he frowned. ‘A bear,’ he repeated, and shivered, some inner secret thought making him frightened for a moment. ‘But a man needs a sword as well,’ he said loudly, suddenly. ‘An axe and a sword I shall have then, and I am not yet fourteen summers. I shall be a proud warrior at Lugnasid. I shall pass through the smoke in triumph!’
And he pointed the sword to the far hills, to where craggy slopes and toppled trees marked the passageway across the mountain; dimly, difficult to see with distance and the sun’s glare, there were scattered caves.
Caylen told his friend where the Hags lived.
The man uttered a yell of triumph and scrambled to his feet; it frightened Caylen, and he rolled out of the man’s grasp, panicking, as the armoured warrior reached for him. He stood quickly, and watched in horror as across the knoll a great army of men began to march forward, towards the grinning figure of the man who had tricked the boy.
‘Archers … shoot him, quick!’
The command, given abruptly, staggered Caylen for a moment. He failed to comprehend for an instant that he was about to be killed. Then an arrow streaked past his face, drawing blood, drawing fury …
red fury
!
A great bear, that had lived in his mind for all his life, roared with anger and with pain, reared up, claws gleaming as it reached forward, through Caylen’s arms, to strike the treacherous man before it. It wanted blood, the taste of blood, the mindless spilling of it …
But the boy was in control, and knew that he was lost, and so was his village unless he could warn the Hags of his terrible mistake.