Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (68 page)

The few chariots that survived went west like the wind, the drivers urging on the horses in terror. Into the ranks of the High King’s army they swept, unstoppable, and before they could be slowed down they had caused as much damage as if they had been enemies, not friends in distress. They punched a wide hole in the line, and now it was the Westerners who were beginning to slip away. The crows cawed impatiently. The Gods Below had begun to taste their feast. They would not rest, now, till they had had their fill of lives. There were few men on that field who saw Beltain again. Few men on either side.

I waited for our own chariots, and now there were thirty of them, to charge in their turn, but they hesitated. Out from the turmoil of the High King’s line came a single chariot. I looked at it with the keen sight of the one-eyed man. It was the High King himself, there was no doubt of it. Tall in his chariot, with his long black hair trailing behind him in the wind from beneath his shining helm, Gold
gleaming on his neck and wrists, his mail flashing where it caught the sun, his great bronze shield shining red, he came charging alone towards us, and our chariots hung waiting there. Out from our line to meet him rode the Setanta, the Champion of the North.

It was like something out of Homer, and I saw it all from where I stood on the mound. The two chariots rolled on towards each other. The men in the lines were shouting and screaming. I had half a mind to try and get back to start some betting going, but then I reflected, if the North lost who would there be to pay me?

Round and round the mound the chariots raced, in opposite directions, the Setanta with the sun, the High King widdershins. Each driver kept the other on his left as they passed twice on each circuit. Twice on each circuit they passed and each time they passed the warriors threw their spears. Five times the spears were cast, and five times both missed.

Then, on the sixth pass, each man threw his last spear. I was watching the Setanta, and as the horses nearly collided and then swerved violently apart, I saw him stagger as a spear bit deep into his shoulder. I followed him on, but when I looked back to the High King, I saw that his driver was spitted, and he fell forward over the front of the chariot among the horses’ feet. The beasts kicked and stumbled, and the chariot overturned, and the High King of all Ireland rolled in the dust.

In the time it takes to tell, the Setanta’s chariot was all the way around the mound again, and when he saw the wreck, the Setanta clapped his driver on the back, and the little man pulled up the horses in their own length, and that takes strength. The Setanta leapt down, pulling out the spear and throwing it away, any way; it nearly skewered
me
.

The Setanta was white with passion, and his hair, stiffened and streaked with dye and grease and whitewash, stuck out behind him like a horse’s mane. The veins were big on his forehead, his eyes almost started out of his head, his mouth was distorted into that square shape you see on the statues of the Furies, and his limbs were flailing like an octopus’s: you’d have sworn there was never a bone in his body. Blood was running down his arm, but if he was in pain, the High King was worse.
He
was half stunned still from his fall, but he groped for his sword
and shield on the ground, and then he came to his feet. But as soon as he put his weight on his left ankle, it gave under him, for he must have twisted it hitting the ground all in a bundle as he had. He staggered again, trying to hop on his right leg, and the Setanta was on him at once smashing his shield into the King’s face, and hacking and chopping at him as he went down.

The King squirmed on the soft grass, all cut up with hooves and already splashed with the Setanta’s blood. The Setanta danced over him, screaming like a wild thing, and hacking and stabbing at him aimlessly, tearing through leather and mail, almost for the mere sake of hurting the man. But this man could not be hurt any more. The body turned into a bloody mess as the Setanta hit it again and again, with edge and with point, in full view of both armies, who all stood still and silent as the grave. Even the crows had ceased to caw.

At last, the Setanta bent down and cut once, carefully. He stood up, holding the High King’s head, all gashed and bleeding, and took it to his chariot and tied it by the long black hair to the pole. Why else does a warrior wear his hair so long? While this had been going on, the driver had taken no notice but had calmly changed the horses. The Setanta stepped again into his chariot. And then all his army shouted, and for the first time I heard his name. He was safe now, no withcraft could hurt him, I could hear it and remember it, as they all bellowed:

‘Cuchullain! Hero of the North, Cuchullain!’

The charioteers were now all in line, all forty of them. They began to sing:

The chariot line began to move forward, Cuchullain the Champion of Ulster in the centre, slowly at first. The whole area where they had waited sparkled as if covered with dew. Every man had indeed thrown down some jewel of Gold or silver, a cloak-pin or a kilt-pin, a necklace or an armlet, jewelled and shining, as an earnest for his safe return.

There wasn’t much of a battle, if you are thinking of a civilised battle, where two armies clash in a long line of fighting men, pushing and striking at each other, till one line goes back and back, dwindling and shrinking and the last of them die where they are because they have nowhere that their honour will allow them to go back to any more. In Barbarians’ wars, the real business of a battle is over beforehand. By some means or other, a duel between witches or between leaders, one side is convinced by the other that it has lost, before ever a blow is struck by the rank and file. Then the losing side runs away, and very sensibly too. Their enemies run after them and kill all they can catch, and that is not many. Most men who die in battle are struck in the back. Any man who is willing to turn and fight when he has to will be let alone.

Before our chariots were within spear throw of the army of the West, their front line broke and ran, and so did the support lines when they saw there was no protection in front of them. The chariots ran into the shapeless mob and right through them. The scythe blades caught a few men, and the warriors in the chariots stabbed as far as their spears would reach and occasionally threw them at a tempting target if it stood still, but not often because they were afraid of running out of spears. Our foot followed them, almost as much of a mob as the defeated enemy, but going more slowly as soon as they reached where the front line had been, because they kept on bending down to pick up weapons thrown away, and to rob the few bodies. As this undisciplined mass came level with the mound, they drew me with them, waving my axe. Such is the power of a crowd.

I found myself running shoulder to shoulder with Heilyn, who had, sensibly, not stayed naked any longer than it had taken
to tempt the chariots against him. I looked at him through the tangle of hair and whiskers and the grease of a winter in the hills. After a few paces, I said to him in Greek:

‘Are we running all the way? This mail is heavy.’

‘Slow down, then,’ replied Aristarchos. We did, and watched both armies disappearing into the distance. We paused to look at the body of the High King. He still had all his jewels: Cuchullain would return to strip him later. His sword lay near him. I looked at that. The weapons we had brought from Britain in the ship had been old-fashioned, native work a century old. This sword was far older in design, whoever had made it, and whenever. It was long and two-edged, pointless or hardly pointed, the sides running parallel almost down to the tip. The hilt was topped by a pommel of Gold, a Golden ball through which the iron tang protruded, to be turned over and hammered down again. The iron, though, was poor, not even as good as Roman, let alone as good as the fine metal the Germans use. Any good iron in the islands, I had been told, was kept for chariot tyres. The High King had fallen at the last on his sword: the blade bent under his weight.

I might have taken a few souvenirs, for Cuchullian owed them to me, but old women were already coming out to crouch around the body, old women in dusty black, their white hair streaming down their blacks, with the lice moving in it like a ceaseless wave. They sang the death song, in a high reedy tune, the tune that the witches had sung to us on the sea shore. I watched them a little: then I thought, ‘Even Rhiannon will come to this’. And it was a death song I too had sung all night on the mound. I left the women to the dead I had made.

Other corpses were scattered over the plain. This was no Cannae, but it was enough. All had been struck in the back. Most had been robbed of their weapons already, and some of their heads. Those men of the North who had not been armed out of the ship had gone into battle armed only with their thick cudgels pulled out of the hedge and with their knives. Now everyone had a sword, and there were shields and to spare, and even a few mail shirts cast off by those who felt that the time taken to strip was worth exchanging against the extra speed after it.

The crows were already busy on the dead. These souls of evil men found no famine for their wicked beaks. They could afford now to take the eyes alone, and be filled. The rest would be eaten soon enough. The wolves were slinking out of the woods on the edge of the rout, tearing at the men who lay, living or dead where the armies had passed. When night fell the mangy starving beasts would come further. I looked at my companion. We had both seen battlefields before. We had no need to rob: we had no wish to stay. I asked:

‘Which way is Tara?’

‘The way nobody is going,’ Aristarchos answered, pointing a little north of west. ‘I’ve never captured a city by myself.’

‘No more have I,’ I agreed. ‘Do you think we could sack it? You might even get a mural crown.’

We turned half right and made for the cluster of huts a mile or so away. There was nobody to stop us. I stuck my axe through my belt. Aristarchos sheathed his sword. We slung our shields on our backs. He asked me, casually:

‘How was Africanus when last seen?’

‘Thriving. The ships should be nearly all ready by now. The Second will embark by the end of June, and the Twentieth will be here in August, weather permitting.’

‘Splendid. Now we have scattered the armies of the West and South. By midsummer I shall have the army of the North spread over half the island, with concentration impossible. Before the end of the year, the whole island will be part of the Empire.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘It will be this year in Tara for the Second, at last.’

We swaggered into Tara. Not alone. A dozen or so of the winded, or windier, footmen had fallen in behind us. Entry into Tara at the head even of this bedraggled little vanguard of a victorious army would have been impressive if only there had been a city for us to enter. When we came close the cluster of huts became a scattering of houses, spread over a mile of country, all mixed up with barrows and mounds and earthworks of doubtful purpose, middens and manure heaps and furnaces, smithies and fields of barley and vegetable plots, and animals grazing, pigs and cows, and dogs and children running everywhere.

There were a lot of people around, men and women too, most of them busy at one thing or another, weaving or beating iron or bronze, or chipping away at wood, and one or two bards, sitting with what looked a little like lyres but weren’t, obviously practising their spontaneous improvisations for a feast to come. Our miserable little army killed the first two lads they came to, minding pigs, but all the other people around looked so shocked that they stopped killing at once and clung together in a little group and looked embarrassed.

Aristarchos and I went up to a large and comfortable woman who was boiling soup over an open fire.

‘And a fine day it is indeed,’ Aristarchos said to her, in a conversational manner.

‘It is that: but it was raining it was yesterday, to be sure.’ She straightened up and looked at us. ‘And who was it that won, then?’

‘Us, of course. The North.’

‘Indeed. I was thinking, I was, that that was how it would be.’ I wondered whether she had had a bet on it, but I remembered that the Irish are very little given to gambling, which was why the King of Leinster’s Gesa must weigh so hard on him. She asked:

‘And what was it became of the High King?’

‘Cuchullain cut his head off.’

‘Indeed, and improve him vastly I’m sure it would, for it was a face like a bladder of lard he had on him. And if he lost the battle and lived, then it would be dreadful bad luck for him for the rest of his life, and he might have lived for many years.’

The logic confused me. Still, there seemed method in it. I asked:

‘Does this happen often?’

‘Constantly. Isn’t it the three High Kings we’ve had in the one year, and never a grain of sense among the three of them? And none of them properly consecrated, although when I think of it although the rite is so well known there is never a king that has followed it so exactly that there is arguing he can ever be that he is High King with no shadow of doubt. And when it does happen, it is a terrible time we have finding the horses, and it is white mares they have to be, pure white, every time.’

‘You have to find the horses every time?’ I didn’t find it possible to believe what they told me about the way the High King wedded his kingdom, I still preferred to think of the bridal chase I had seen among the Britons.

‘And who else would there to be doing it? Why, do we not live here rent free for that very purpose, to be finding the horses for the High King, and to be making the Feast of Tara for him, and to be forging his sword, and to be making his coffin if indeed there is enough of him left to need a coffin. Mind you, whenever there is a battle, there are usually one or two of us that do get killed, but it is by accident only and not through malice, and it is worth a little risk, you will agree, thinking of all the other advantages of living here.’