Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (67 page)

‘And you came to the gate of the pass, and what found you there?’

And who was it, then, that answered:

‘I found the flesh of a thigh, and the marrow of a bone.’

For Those Below now stood beside me on the mound. First came those who had gone below and returned, before they died
for ever. Ulysses and Aeneas, who spoke with the dead across the stream, my kinsmen both – the same blood ran in our veins and one flesh, living and dead, we stood upon the mound.

Next, but farther off, stood Orpheus who went below to seek his love, and lost her again, through love, and Gilgamesh, who was before him, and Persephone who stands half of every year before the throne below, and Pwyll the Old, Pryderi’s forefather, who ruled a year in Hell in Arawn’s place. They all came, and stood beside me on the mound. They held up my arms, and with me cursed the host of the High King.

To bring the friendly dead was one thing. To bring the just Gods was another, those who favour no man, who cannot be persuaded. Thoth and Adeimantus. But all the night I stood upon the mound in the cold dark, the worst May frost in a man’s life, and the sweat upon my skin froze within my clothes. I sang the words I may not here repeat in the language none may know I speak, and at last the great Judges of the Dead stood beside me to judge the High King and all the host and condemn them for all the evil they had done. But they judged the host of the North, also, and they judged me. But that I did not know.

Last I sang up the named and the nameless Gods Below, the gods who do not care for justice or for right or for any man, and it is these gods above all who rule the world from their place below, rule the Sun and the Earth and all the other gods. They hate all things living, and they seek only to draw us down to themselves and suck out our life. These are the gods that no man worships, but the gods do: that men and gods fear, and will never tell their fear. They feed on souls. I promised them food in plenty.

And at last, they too came to me on the mound, and the ice crackled in my eyebrows as they came past. It was the last frost of a mild winter, and it blasted all the fruit blossom throughout Ireland, so that there was no cider pressed that year. And who ever before knew of frost out of a starless sky?

There came a gleam of light over my right shoulder, and I heard a rustling and a scraping before me. The light became stronger, and the cloud faded from the sky, and at last the sun shone full over the horizon behind me, and all the cocks of Ireland crew, as they had done under the Glass Mountain on Mid-winter’s
eve. Before the cock at my feet could crow, I bit off his head with my teeth, and I tossed the struggling body into the hole in the mound. And then those in front of me saw and heard the head in my hands crow louder than ever a whole bird sang. And then the head too I threw into the hole, and I pushed the earth back over it with my feet.

Behind me, I knew, there lay the host of the North in a drunken sleep. They would not stir for all the ghosts of the world. But in front of me, men came gently forward over the frost-white grass. The High King was a wise man, wise as I, and a worthy enemy, for he knew what war was about. He had thought, as I thought, that a determined rush by a few determined men would settle the matter for good and all, and so it would have done. If the Setanta were to die, who would stand here?

There were about two hundred of them, young men and strong, the High King’s household troops. They came steadily and stealthily on, looking up at me as I stood before them on the mound, my arms stretched in prayer, so that they knew well enough what I was about. I sang my hymns to the Gods Below as loudly as I had done throughout the night, and yet they took no notice of me, they did not so much as throw a spear. They would see to me later.

But when they were well within a spear’s cast from me, when their line stretched out to lap round the mound on both sides – then I stopped singing, and I dropped my arms. Their whole line stopped as if they saw another line rise up from the ground to meet them. And so they did. Had I not worked all night for it?

Each man of the household looked at the line that rose before him, and each man cowered behind his painted shield. Each man looked into the face of the man who stood against him, a sword’s reach before him, shield to shield. And each man saw himself not as he was, as he might see his image in a pool, or even in a mirror if any man could cast and polish a sheet of bronze large enough to reflect a whole man. No, each man saw himself as he would end. This man saw his own ribs thrust up and out from a spear stabbing from the ground, and that one saw his own gut pour out on the earth from a slashing sword. Men saw their own skulls smashed by axe blows, their eyeballs hanging down on their
cheeks, and their brains grey in their hair. They saw their faces shorn away, they saw severed arms held in good arms, they saw themselves try to hop on one leg and the stump of a thigh.

Now many a man, and a brave man too, is sickened by the sight and smell of his own blood steaming on his arm, or at seeing a limb of his, or even a finger, warm on the ground. But hot blood is one thing. Stale blood is another. The High King’s household did not see themselves as they would be that night, fresh dead. They saw themselves as they would be in a week ahead. The clay of the grave clotted on their rusted mail, those that had not been rudely stripped. Their rings were torn from their fingers and their ears. Their clothing hung in stinking rags. Maggots teemed in their gaping wounds. Worms writhed in their empty eye-sockets, those that still had their heads. Their bellies swelled, and their navels showed the green spot of corruption. The stench of the grave hung like a curtain before them. And worst of all, it was not only the edge of the iron that had emptied those eye-sockets or laid bare the teeth within the cheek, or cracked the marrowbones. The wolves howled in the woods, and the crows hung in great cawing crowds above us and filled the trees. The household of the High King looked at themselves, and they knew themselves by their painted shields, and by their garments, what was left, and by the scars on their bodies. They looked at themselves, and they did not stay to look twice.

If I then had had a hundred men ready to follow, there would have been no battle that day. The household rushed back through the ranks of their own army, and spread the tale of terror, and not a man of them struck a blow in the battle that day, though all of them died before the sun set.

Then the crows rose from the grass and circled above us, and from the South and the East there came in the kite and the buzzard, the souls of those who have done evil and are condemned now to live on carrion. And there was only one who could have sent the birds, and it was for her that I did battle. I would not have raised Those Below on the mound for all the Gold in Ireland: I did it because only thus could I conquer all the land and find the mistress of the birds, the Lady of Those Below. And with Rhiannon’s birds, my own wolves came howling on the
flanks. All the birds and beasts were working their way towards the rear of the High King’s army, so as to have a shorter way to go for their dinner. And the host of the West saw this, and it did not make them more eager to fight.

The noise and clatter of all this, the cawing of the birds, the shouts of terrified men, a dawn chorus of a kind we seldom hear, woke all our army as nothing else could have done. There was a great shouting and blowing of horns, and in less time that it would take a stammering man who was not very sure of his arithmetic to count to a couple of thousand or so, they had formed a line of sorts, but well behind me, leaving me alone on the mound. And there I stayed.

Our warriors did not look very well, most of them. That is one reason why Barbarians fight so savagely. Usually they have been drunk the night before, and there is nothing like a raging headache to put venom into your sword strokes. Or so they tell me. I don’t have headaches. Going into a fight drunk is quite another thing. I’ll fight a drunken man any day, but a man who is sobering up – never!

The line of foot soldiers was not very straight or very steady, I looked for the men who had come in the ship, especially for Heilyn and the Gauls, but they were nowhere to be seen. I decided that they had deserted, as Barbarians often do, and mercenaries usually do, before a battle. But, if our army had formed a line, so had the High King’s, and what a line. It overlapped ours at both ends, not because there were many more men in it than ours, but because their men were spreading out so as to have room to run away, while ours, having nowhere to run to, were clinging together for warmth. But that was the enemy’s first line, and there were three more of the same strength behind that.

Later they made songs about that day which claimed that we were outnumbered by twenty or thirty to one. It always feels like that, even if they’re only three to two, because all the spare men go loose and you never know where they’re going to come from next. At my best count, they were four to one at most, and fifty chariots to our forty, and we were better off for chariots because we had all the trained horses. Men were running about, pulling off the covers to show the painted sides, and harnessing the
horses and fitting the scythe blades to the sides – not to the wheels, of course – which discourage anyone from getting close enough in to hamstring the horses. Of course, someone always tries it and ends up in seventeen pieces.

The few chariots we had ready were already out in front of the foot, and to my surprise they were singing the old song we so often hear at the Circus before a race, when the charioteers are trying to get their spirits up. The words were a reasonable translation of what we are used to:

These were nothing like the racing chariots you bet on, though. They had two men, one small and light to drive, and the other big and strong to do the fighting. It was he who needed the big shield, to cover him from shoulder to calf – his shins were behind the low wicker sides. He had a long-edged sword for slashing at anyone who got near enough, though the scythe blades made sure that nobody did, so he had for his main weapon a bundle of javelins. If you have ever tried throwing a spear from a moving chariot, you will realise that the vehicle’s main effect is on morale. The charioteers were thinking of their own morale; they sang:

And all our line of foot screamed, ‘Yarahoo!!’ to keep up their spirits, and they needed it, with the High King’s chariots riding out in front of his line, and getting their dressing straight, no
fuss, no sweat, very careful, as if they were riding in a triumph, not going into action.

A fine sight it is, a line of chariots, and lucky you are that you will never see it the way I saw it, coming on at you at the trot, very earnest and deadly and full of all the confidence in the world. There I stood on the mound, and I could see the line of them rolling on, the hooves very quiet in the ground soft still after the previous day’s rain. They were spreading out on my right and my left and obviously going to lap around me on either side.

The High King’s chariots covered the half-mile between the two hosts quite slowly, when you consider they were all eager to fight, but they were saving their horses for that last dash, when you can let them strain as they will against the rope loops about their necks and it does not matter if they half-strangle themselves now. Our little group, twenty ready now against their fifty, came forward in a bunch on our left. They hoped there at least to stop the enemy curling round to come against our foot from the flank. They were very steady, waiting to be loosed at the last moment in a spoiling death ride in the hope of slowing the enemy down before they crashed into our infantry. Some of the latter were already drifting away: the others were none too steady.

Then suddenly, out of the willow scrub on my right, a group of men stood up, shouting and screaming some kind of challenge, mother naked most of them, except for their swords and helmets. Oh, yes, I knew who these were. I did not only recognise Heilyn and Callum, my fellow rowers, and all the other men from the ship: these, I knew, were the Gesatae that Caesar and Tacitus tell us about, warriors vowed to death and so fighting with no protection, to ensure it comes. But an opponent who is not defending himself, but intent on killing you, is very hard to deal with, and if you can kill one of them, then it is clear that you are a hero yourself. So it was no wonder that the chariot line carried out a manoeuvre which does not sound impressive till you try it, remembering now it was being done at the canter, and the whole squadron moving faster and faster, with each warrior wanting to be the first to draw blood and every driver wanting to satisfy him. The whole line of fifty chariots changed front half-left and swept towards the right of the mound, leaving our
chariots facing nothing and all our infantry on the right exposed to the full fury of the charge which twenty Gesatae would do nothing to halt, however hard they died.

And then, as the first chariots, because the line was ragged now and had lost its dressing, entered the scrub of dwarf willow, one of them tipped over on a broken wheel, and the horse of another fell, and a third swerved hard left and crashed into a fourth. And into the jumble of smashed chariots the rest hurtled, and in the twinkling of an eye the scrub was full of broken wheels and snapped poles, of kicking horses rolling on their backs tangled in their harnesses, and men trying to get free and throwing down their swords and shields as they dodged the flailing hooves. And the Gesatae were among them at once, and a hundred or more of the foot from our line. In that moment, whatever happened later, the battle was won, and it was Heilyn who had done it, Heilyn and the Gauls from the ship, and Callum the Hairy, the only Irishman among them. They had stretched ropes among the scrub, to trip the horses, and thrown down spikes to hurt their feet, and dug deep holes to break their legs, and scattered big stones to break the chariot wheels. Like all battles, it was won the night before by men who thought: I was not the only sober man that night, nor the only sleepless one.