Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (99 page)

‘If he were a thousand devils, I would not be afraid of him. The Virgin will protect us. Let him come.’

Owain waved at the dwarf. He came forward, still hesitant, dainty on his feet as a faun. Caso and Graid helped me to move along the broken stones so that I might sit beside Owain, my head and shoulders above the parapet. Owain leaned over the broken wall, his elbows on the stone. I was there only to be a mouthpiece, to talk between the two.

The Red Dwarf looked at me, where I could have touched him with my sword-point. He looked close at me, and sneered.

‘When we made you dance for us, we did not know that you could sing. We’ll have you singing for us soon. The knife it was we took to you the last time. This time it will be the white-hot iron. It sears, the hot iron, it hisses on the skin, and you see the smoke of your own burning and smell yourself roast. Oh, we will hear you sing at the winter feast.’

‘Are you trying to frighten me? Think of something else to say, because you are wasting your breath on this.’

‘You will be less bold when you hear my message. Ah, you are sweating already from fear, and panting. Too soon my words will come for your comfort.’

I was sweating, it was true, and my face was pale, but it was the pain of my ribs, stabbing at me as I breathed, that made me pant, that caught at my stomach till I wanted to vomit. I turned to Owain.

‘He is taunting me. Next, I think he will taunt you, and all of us. We must not show anger, or take offence. He is only a dwarf.’ I said this loudly, so that all could hear.

‘What does he want?’ asked Owain. ‘Has he any authority to treat with us, or has he only come to jest?’

‘It is a high price he will pay for jesting,’ I answered, and my hands beneath the wall trembled on the crossbow. But Precent growled, ‘If I were shaped like that, then I would welcome death, and want nothing more than to hurt whole men in dying.’

‘Life, Precent, is dear to all,’ Bradwen reminded him. Owain bade me, ‘Ask him!’

‘It may be difficult to find out what he means, rather than what he says.’ I turned back to the Dwarf, who had been watching us speak, turning his head from one to another, trying to read our meaning from our eyes, and finding small comfort there. ‘What have you come to ask of us? Mind you make your requests politely, now.’

‘And mind you tell your master true,’ he squealed back at me.

‘I serve no master,’ I answered him proudly. ‘I am a free man and I do what I like.’

‘But do you not follow this copper-headed meal-sack?’

‘I follow Owain of my own free will. I obey him because I promised to do so – and I did not make that promise to him, or
to a King, or to the Virgin. I made it to myself. In obeying Owain, I obey myself. I choose to follow him. After this campaign, I may choose to follow any other chieftain into battle, where ever it takes my fancy, and I will do it so long as it means killing your people.’

‘That is the mark of the coward, to pick and choose whom you will follow. The brave man follows the King he is born to serve, and does not ask whether the King be brave or cowardly, wise or foolish. Would you choose to follow a coward? Or a fool?’

‘And who are you to talk of courage or of wisdom? Or even of men?’

He bridled, his face paled, he spat venom at me in his words.

‘And whose fault is it that I am what I am? Not mine, not any man’s. My manhood is this, that by land and sea I follow the King my brother, and my wisdom that by the stars I can tell where we are, and when, and my courage that I stand here alone before you all.’

‘Your brother?’ and I laughed. This surely, was no more than a figure of speech. All free men are brothers within one nation. And the Savages, all herded together coupling at random at their winter feasts, they could never know who was brother to whom. But yet – the tone of that squeaking voice … I was Aneirin, the Pre-eminent Bard. I was used, over years, to listening to voices, to judging changes of meaning in the tone. For a winter I had been a Judge in the North. In those months I had heard more truth and more lies than most men in all their lifetime. I asked, not laughing, ‘Bladulf is your brother?’

‘His was my father, his my mother. So he has sent me, terms you to offer.’

I spoke again to Owain. ‘He has authority. This turd is the King’s brother. He has terms to offer.’

‘No terms,’ said Owain shortly. ‘This is our land. Tell the Savages to go back where they came from.’

‘If they were to try to cross the sea,’ objected Precent, ‘their numbers would fill it, and more would come walking across on their dead bodies. They breed on their damned wheat like rats in the oat-stack. There is no such simple way out, Owain.’ He jerked his head at the Dwarf. ‘Ask him his terms.’

Owain did not forbid me again. I asked, trying to frame in the Savages’ language the rounded speech I would have made in the tongues of human beings, ‘And have you come to offer us a rent of money for your farms, a tale of silver for our ruined pastures, a toll of corn for our lost marshes, and ox-flesh in payment for our lost forests?’

‘Better than silver the burden I bear.’

‘Gold, then, to bind in our hair and pin in our cloaks?’

‘Better than gold to the poor, and sweeter than ale to the thirsty, better than cheers to the minstrel, and fairer than women.’

‘What, clown?’

‘What, singer? What, what?’ He laughed in my face, the wheat-stinking, ale-stinking breath stirred in my hair. ‘Life, singer, life is sweeter than all.’

‘Offer us what is in your power to give. Here we are and here we stay.’

‘Do you still think, then, that others will follow? Do you hope Elmet will come to your rescue? Your King sent a wild man to tell us, that Elmet and Eiddin would march into Deira. First we went south, to the borders of Elmet, wasted a day’s march into the country. But the army of Elmet was not in the field, there was no coming against us in battle. That border was safe, we wasted our journey. Then we came North, and settled with you. Do not look for help: there is none coming.’

I looked at him in hate. There was no truth in this. I did not repeat it. I said, ‘Our lives are our own. Do you think you can give them to us? And after all this, after so many dead, you expect us to ride away with all undone that we came to do, that we came so far for and have not yet finished?’

‘Life, singer, life. Not to ride away. Life only.’

‘Life only?’ I could not for the moment follow him.

‘Life only. There are enough dead men.’ We looked at each other closer now. He leaned closer, confidentially, to explain, as if it were some detail in a market, about a horse or a hunting-dog he was selling. ‘Men we want to dig out our ditches and clean out our wells, for all are filled in. We want men to reap and to thresh, men to carry and men to pull, men to sweat, to sweat …. You know that, singer, you know that.’

I knew it. He saw my face change.

‘Our men are dead, singer, our men are dead. We did not think ever to meet an army like yours. Nothing has satisfied you but blood, nothing but senseless destruction. Too many men are dead, and there is work to do. Axes we have in plenty, trees to cut down. Swords will beat into saxes and sickles, reeds to bundle for thatch. Spearheads will edge spades or spread into pitchforks. Now it is men we lack, fields to clear.’

I turned back to Owain. All the Household were silent to hear. The rain began to fall, began at that moment, light and thin, the rain of summer heat from a grey sky into a steamy day. So silent was the Household that we might have heard the drizzle on the stones.

‘No terms,’ I said. ‘No terms. Slavery only. Nothing else. No terms.’

‘Slavery?’ Owain looked around him, looked at all the Household, at the men old in wars with the hair worn thin by the helmets, like Precent and Cynrig, at the boys like Aidan and Graid. Last of all he looked, long, at Bradwen. ‘Slavery? To these Savages? That is all they offer?’

‘You can see why they are so confident and proud,’ I reminded him. ‘They are all around us, and there are still ten times as many of them as there are of us.’

‘Even alive,’ he smiled. ‘And as many dead, Aneirin. Slavery? To these devils, these demon-worshippers? They have no mercy, no pity. Aneirin, there is more than confidence here, and less. They are anxious to have us disarmed quickly. An army is approaching from Elmet. These monsters do not want to have to fight us on two fronts at once. They want to frighten us into surrender, and into impotence.’

‘Slavery, they say, or they will kill us here.’

‘Or try to. If they were willing to face the fight, they would attack now, not waste their time offering impossible terms. They say they will kill us? Let them, if they can.’

‘What shall I say, then?’

‘Let them kill us if they can.’ Owain laughed aloud, and so did we all to see him. Oh, there was never a King on his throne had half the majesty of Owain on the walls of Cattraeth, no Queen
that ever had half the beauty of Bradwen, dusty and bloodstained, sweating in her mail. ‘I will tell him.’

‘Don’t go too near him.’

‘No nearer than I can spit in his face.’ Owain leaned over and down past me, down towards the Dwarf.

‘Non potest,’ he said in Latin, for he spoke that language well as must any ruler of Cornwall; ‘numquam.’ And in our own language, the tongue of the Angels, that was spoken in the Garden at the beginning of the World, ‘Nage! Dim erioed!’ And at last, in the few words I had taught him of the speech of the Savages, ‘No, no! Never!’

Have you seen an adder strike? The neck that moves, thrusting forward, the forked tongue stabbing, stinging, pouring venom that will bring low man and horse – so struck the Dwarf. The arm that moved from beneath the cloak, the left hand thrusting forward, the knife not stabbing but cutting, slashing, tearing open the throat – an adder is not so swift, so evil, so silent, so final. A short sax, not two spans long, heavy as an axe, pointless, single-edged, hidden in his ragged sleeve: it did the business.

Thus died Owain, King Mark of Cornwall’s son, the hope and strength of all the Isle of Britain. His blood ran down the shining walls of Cattraeth, and stained with new death the dead Roman stones. Mark died with him, and Tristan – Cornwall died. His body fell into the Roman ditch. He never spoke again.

He was a man in years, in mind a youth, and gallant in the din of cruel war. It shall be not my part to tell thy failings, or to reproach thee with our dismal end. Rather shall I make thee live in song, until Rome fades and the world ends. Why did I see thee on thy bloody bier, before I lit thee to thy wedding-couch? My Owain, my beloved friend, my chieftain – at least, thy Ravens will not peck out thy eyes.

Owain’s blood poured on my sleeve, and his body tumbled into the ditch. All the Household cried out in sorrow and in horror at the treachery. For a moment, in our bewilderment, all our eyes followed our Leader, our hero, as he died. And no one watched the Dwarf. He ran away down the slope.

After the first cry, there was silence inside the walls of Cattraeth.
Then it was Bradwen who led. She had not cried, she did not weep, for Owain her love that died. Bradwen the Wise, she wasted no time, no effort, on mourning. She needed only the time to set his helmet on her head, the raven plumes gleaming blue-black in the sunless light. Then she leapt over the rubble in the gateway. Gwenabwy followed her, as always.

‘Kill the Dwarf!’ he shouted. ‘Vengeance! Kill the betrayer!’

‘No!’ answered Precent. ‘Stand fast! Stand here within the walls. Do not go outside, where they are waiting for us. That is what they want. Stand fast!’

But there were many men who did not hear him, or, if they did hear him, took no notice. They jumped from the walls or scrambled over the rubble in the gate, sword or axe ready.

‘Stop, stop!’ Precent shouted. He flung wide his arms in the gate. ‘Hold together!’

They took no notice. But I raised the crossbow. I had a heavy quarrel, one fit for bear, with a dropping flight. Aim off, I remembered, two fingers to the right for the wind. The target was plain enough. The Dwarf stood there, stock still, a red shape on the green grass, where he had stopped first. He had no green branch now. He stood, his arms spread wide, an echo of Precent, and waited while Bradwen came down the slope at him, and Gwenabwy, and Geraint, and others, too many others. All were eager to avenge Owain. But that was my task, my duty, my joy.

The Dwarf stood still, and laughed at us, laughed at the death that came at him, helmed and plumed. I found it hard to hold the bow level and steady, my eyes blurred the red shape hard against the green grass, men crossed my sight, red plumes bobbed in the track of my bolt. There was no hurry – he would stand. The only danger now was Bradwen, that she would reach him first. She did not. I slipped the string, the bolt flew. Before the wise woman struck the Dwarf, the iron split his chest, the feathers stood out from the cloak. It was the bolt that killed him, not the blade, though before he touched the ground a dozen swords sank in him.

He died, then. All our hope died with him. With him, and not with Owain. Precent and I looked from the wall, and watched half a hundred of the Household strung out in a long single line across the field. The Red Dwarf did not die in vain, did not stand
still in the middle of the field for nothing, that tempted them out of the walls, tempted them out to stand, each man alone, against the horde of Savages that came at them from the woods on every side. Bradwen I saw fall first, a dozen came at her from all sides, and it was Bladulf himself who struck her deathblow, I saw him. Gwenabwy stood above her body, sweeping his sword in wide swathes, as if it were he who held a flail, till he too fell, though when it happened I did not see for the crowd. There was no seeing single men any more in that press. Geraint died then, and Gwydien, and others too many to name. I shot three bolts into the throng, slowly because of my ribs. Before I had hooked the string to my belt for the last bolt, we saw the enemy fall back, at a signal from a horn, to the edge of the wood. Many limped or crawled. More did neither. All the field was covered with dead or dying. Some were ours: most were theirs. The silence came back, the moaning died away.