‘Drop it!’ he panted. ‘Drop it, Bryni! Remember where you are!’
For to draw weapon at such a gathering was one of the things for which there was no forgiveness.
It was all over. Bryni stood panting, with the blood dripping from a shallow gash in his upper arm. Vadir stood still and unresisting in the grip of a man on either side of him; he breathed through nostrils that flared and trembled like those of a stallion, and his eyes glittered between half-shut lids; but he had control of himself again. He said quite quietly, the words falling small and deadly chill, ‘I will have your heart’s blood for that.’
‘But not here, and not now,’ put in a huge man of Aethelbert’s following, whose very size seemed to give his word some weight among the rest. ‘The High King’s feast-fire is no place for the settling of blood debts.’
Owain flashed him a quick look of gratitude. But voices were rising from the men about the fire, the hush was passing from them and the mead in their veins leaping up again. They were in a mood for anything that offered excitement, and they came crowding in on the two who stood hackles up in their midst. Then one of the Britons struck in, stumbling a little over the Saxon tongue. ‘In my tribe, when a quarrel rises at a time or a place such as this, where it is forbidden to draw blade, we have a way of settling the matter, all the same.’
Instantly a dozen voices together were demanding more. ‘And what way is that? Tell us, then—’ while both Vadir and Bryni, breaking their narrowed gaze from each other’s faces, turned towards him.
‘The two whose quarrel it is, draw lots,’ said the Briton, ‘and he who draws the shorter corn-stalk is accounted clear, but he who draws the longer corn-stalk must put his own life to some chosen hazard before the next sunrise, or be called coward henceforth by the men who were his brothers.’ He looked about him at the faces in the leaping firelight. ‘It is an old custom, and it is a good one. When the thing is ended, it is ended. There is no place left for a blood feud.’
Owain felt suddenly a little sick, but the others were crowding round, eager as young hounds on a scent, and Bryni, his eyes suddenly at their most blazing green, cried out, ‘Well, what is there to wait for? We’ve no corn-stalks to hand, but grass-stems will serve just as well.’
‘Here, then.’ Osric, who had asked the badger riddle, stooped without more ado and plucked up half a dozen stems from the trampled grass beside the fire. He handed the grass-stems over to the dark Briton, who arranged them with care in his closed fist, the heads sticking out between his thumb and forefinger, and held them forward into the firelight.
‘Now, draw.’
Bryni drew first, scarce looking what he did, and held up a grass-stem that ended about three finger-breadths below the feathery brown head. Then Vadir took a limping pace forward and chose his stem with deliberate care; and held it up also. Owain saw with sharp relief that it was almost twice as long as Bryni’s. ‘It’s Vadir!’ the shout went up. ‘Vadir has it!’ Bryni gave a cry of disgust, and tossed his grass-stem to the breeze which carried it to the fire’s heart; and Vadir stood looking about him with an odd smile on his thin lips, holding his grass-stem as though it were a flower.
At that moment, above the quick rise and fall of voices, they heard again the angry neigh of the God’s Horse.
Vadir flung up his head and laughed, wildly and recklessly. ‘So. To me falls the hazard, and most welcomely; but I’ll choose my own. Brothers, I’ll ride you Frey’s Horse, that has never known mortal man on his back before.’
For the second time that evening, and more deeply than before, a hush fell on the warriors about the fire. Even Bryni was silent. And looking at Vadir standing there, a little sideways as he always stood, his eyes bright and the lees of the wild laughter making thin lines about his mouth, Owain, who hated him, paid tribute within himself to the man’s insane courage. For this was a terrible thing that he was taking to himself; it was not alone to pit his magnificent horsemanship against a virtually wild stallion, but to pit himself against his Gods, if he believed in any Gods at all. If he had not been drunk, surely not even Vadir would have claimed that particular hazard.
‘So be it,’ said Aethelbert’s man, while the dark Briton opened his hand and let the grass-stems drift into the flames. ‘And your blood be not on the hands of any here, but on your own head.’
And the hush was lost in a roar of voices. Men were pulling brands from the fire to serve as torches; with Vadir borne in their midst and the firebrands whirled aloft they began to stream off towards the hind part of the camp.
Frey’s Horse was tethered by a strong flaxen halter to an ancient thorn tree such as grew here and thereon the higher ground of the marsh. He was standing alert, his head turned towards their coming as though he waited for them. He stamped and snorted at the torches, tossing his head so that his mane flew up like the crest of a breaking wave; but he was not afraid. He had never, save once, been afraid of anything in all his proud life, and Owain, remembering the tottering grey foal that he had brought into the world, was pierced by his beauty as by a sword.
His ears were pricked forward in curiosity, his eyes bright in the torch-flare that was staining his whiteness with gold as the young warriors crowded closer; and again, pawing the ground with one round hoof, he flung up his head and neighed defiance at them.
Vadir said, ‘Get back, you fools, unless you want your brains dashed out. Somebody get me a lick of salt.’
One of the men ran back towards the cooking-fires, and returned with a palmful of greyish salt. Vadir held out his hand for it, and then without a glance at the men around him, he limped forward alone.
‘A whip,’ somebody said quietly, out of the dark between the torches—it was odd how quiet they had all become. ‘You’ll need a whip.’
‘The pommel of my dagger will serve as well, if I have a hand to spare,’ Vadir said, still without looking round. He halted at arm’s length from the stallion who watched him as though with scornful interest, and held out the salt on his palm. Frey’s Horse advanced his head, snuffed at the man’s hand, and dropped his muzzle into the salt. Men had brought him licks of salt before, and he knew the sound of their voices in his ears, and even perhaps remembered dimly a time when he had not been so terrible, and men had dared to draw their hands down his nose as this man was doing now.
‘Don’t do it, Vadir,’ somebody cried out sharply. ‘You haven’t a chance!’
But if Vadir heard him, he paid no heed.
He was moving slowly, quietly, round to the horse’s side, and there was a strangeness on him, a kind of exultation, the look of a man face to face with something that he has been waiting for all his life. ‘Two of you come here and hold him,’ he ordered coolly, ‘and be ready to cut the halter when I say.’
After a moment’s hesitation first a Saxon and then a Briton ran out to him and caught the white stallion by mane and halter rope, and even as he began to snort and rear, Vadir made a perfect steed-leap. He seemed to barely touch the quivering white shoulders with his hands, and next instant he was astride his mount. ‘Now!’ It was like a shout of triumph.
A blade flashed in the torchlight, once, twice, and the halter leapt apart. The two men sprang back and ran for their lives as Frey’s Horse reared free.
This had never happened to him before, this Thing, this Terror on his back. Fear was on him as it had never been before even in the winter of his breaking, but more than fear was fury. Screaming with rage he reared up and up until it seemed to the men watching that the stars in the green summer sky were no more than the sparks struck from his lashing hooves; then he plunged earthward, whirling and bucking, mane and tail flying in a white spume as he sought to fling off and break and pound into nothingness the thing that clung to his back as though it were a part of himself.
Vadir clung as though indeed he were part of Frey’s Horse; with clenched knees, and hands twisted into the roots of the flying mane. The watching men would have been roaring him on to victory, but a kind of
awe held them, and the wild excitement swept through them silently like a soundless wind. Frey’s Horse was rearing and plunging, the ground shivered under his hooves and his screams of fury seemed to tear the night in two. And all the while the whirling moon-storm of battling horse and man remained in one place. More than once the God’s Horse would have broken out of the torchlit circle and gone thundering into the night, but the ruthless hands on his mane and head-gear wrenched his head further and further round and up, until he could only swing in a circle, far back on his haunches.
Afterwards, Owain wondered why Vadir did not let him go, trusting to his own horsemanship to be able to hang on until the horse had run himself to a standstill and exhaustion gave him the mastery. Maybe it was because he was determined that he and not his mount should choose the moment. If so, he delayed too long. Suddenly, so suddenly that for the first time it seemed that Vadir was not prepared for him, the stallion whirled about and plunged towards the thorn tree.
The low-hanging branches seemed to swoop to meet him. Owain heard the brute’s terrible scream of triumph, and a sharp human cry cut off hideously short; and Frey’s Horse plunged on riderless, then, trampling and shrieking, swung back to come at something that lay still on the ground.
Conscious of a vague surprise at himself, Owain found that he was running, flinging himself forward to come between Vadir and the trampling hooves. He heard a roar of voices all about him, men were closing in with flaring torches, and in their midst, he had sprung for the short end of the severed halter, and hung on. If he lost his hold and went down under the murderous hooves, he would be not only trampled on but savaged into wet red rags. He knew that, and he knew that swung and shaken like this, he could not hang on long. His one hope was that, even now, through the killer rage in the great savage heart, he might be able to reach Frey’s Horse and make him remember, and with the last breath almost gone from him, putting out the whole strength both of his body and the love that he had felt for the long-legged colt, he cried his foal-name over and over again. ‘Teitri! Teitri!’
He saw the wild white head upreared above him, fiendish against the darkness, and then Bryni was beside him with, of all mad weapons, a bundled-up cloak in his arms, and as the great head came down with flaming eyes and bared teeth towards Owain’s straining shoulder, he thrust the bundle into the horse’s open jaws.
The folds clogging his teeth and half choking him seemed to give him a moment’s pause, and break, as it were, the bright circle of his rage.
Screaming again, he went up in a rearing half turn, swinging dizzily on his hind legs; he shook his head, savaging at the thick folds and flinging them aside. But the fire of his panic fury seemed sinking, and all at once it was as though the familiar voice crying his foal-name pierced through to him. Slowly the great lashing forefeet came down, and Frey’s Horse gave one last convulsive plunge, and stood still.
He was trembling from crest to tail, his milky hide black with sweat, the whites of his eyes wild in the fierce light of the fire-brands, and his breath snorting through nostrils that seemed as though they brimmed with blood. But the ears that had been laid viciously back were swivelling forward to catch the tones of a dim-remembered voice.
‘Teitri! Back then! Sa sa, get back, my bold heart!’ Owain was sobbing for breath, talking to the trembling stallion pantingly, in the British tongue, as he had talked to him when he was a foal. ‘Softly, softly now, get back—back I say!’ And all the while, with his hand on the arched nose, he was urging him away from the man who lay so still under the low-hanging thorn branches.
Suddenly, like a child that is very tired, the God’s Horse ducked his head and muzzled against Owain’s heaving breast.
After that the thing was quickly over. Someone had brought one of the God’s Horse’s mares to lead him away, and Owain watched him go, then turned back to join the knot of men round Vadir Cedricson. He was quite dead; from the look of him his neck had been broken by the branches, and he must have been dead before he hit the ground. Bryni was there also, no longer drunk as a hero, but stone cold sober, as he knelt beside Vadir’s body. ‘I always said I’d kill him, didn’t I, and I suppose in a way I have,’ he said, looking up at Owain with a face nearly as white as the dead man’s.
‘It was Frey that killed him,’ another man said, and there was a mutter of agreement.
But Owain did not hear him. ‘You and I, as surely as Teitri; but himself most of all.’
He was aware suddenly of a voice that asked questions in a tone like a fox’s bark, and other voices that answered the questions. But it all seemed far off and meaningless, outside some barrier, and for the moment, even Bryni shut out, he was alone with the broken body of his enemy. He saw with a piercing vividness the white dead face, he heard the sea wind in the thorn branches and smelled the saltness in it, and the sweetness of bruised marsh grasses.
He had hated Vadir Cedricson, and now the man was dead, and because he was dead, Owain himself was free. But in those first moments he remembered the bond of the shared task that had been between them on the night that the silver foal was born.
A hand came down on his shoulder, and someone was bending over him. ‘Come—up with you. It is the High King.’ He stumbled to his feet and turned about. There within arm’s length stood Aethelbert of Kent, a knot of his hearth-companions behind him, and at his side, tall and austere, the stranger monk, Augustine.
Aethelbert spoke no word, and nothing moved about him but his beard stirring in the wind. And looking into the veiled eyes Owain felt the anger in him, for though it might be in his mind to abandon the faith of his forefathers for a faith that could be more use to him, he had not quite abandoned it yet, or he would not have felt the need to bring Frey’s Horse with him to this meeting. But at the same time he saw that the King would not deal with the affront to the God, as doubtless he would have liked to do, because of his wish to stand well with the Emissaries of Rome, whose God was one day to drive out Woden and Thor and Frey of the White Horse.
Clearly he had asked all that he needed to ask, and had already said all that he could allow himself to say on that matter, for when he spoke at last, it was only to demand, with a glance towards the body under the elder tree, ‘Was he a friend of yours?’
‘No,’ Owain said.
‘The more fool were you, then, to risk an ugly death for him. But it seems that you have some power over the horse-kind. I never yet saw any man handle the God’s Horse in his rage, and win him to quietness, let alone live to tell of it after.’
‘I knew him in his colt days, and he remembered me again. There is no more to it than that.’
Aethelbert nodded, and turning to the man who stood beside him looking on, began to say something; then with an exclamation of impatience, looked about for someone to translate for him. But at the moment, Bishop Lindhard was nowhere to be seen. Owain said quickly, ‘I have yet something of the Latin tongue. Tell me what you would say to the Holy Man.’
‘I would have spoken only some foolishness concerning the wisdom of making friendship with the mighty. If you can indeed speak his tongue, tell him the meaning of what he has seen, for he is a curious man who asks many questions.’
Owain turned to the man at the High King’s side, and found the cold masterful gaze already on his face. He began in careful Latin, ‘Holy Father--’
But before he could get farther the other leapt in. ‘Ah, you speak the Tongue! I thought from the first moment that you were no Saxon.’
‘I am British, of the Roman stock. My Latin has rusted for we used it seldom in daily speech, even when I was a boy; but our priests still use it for the services.’
‘Of the Faith too, then, as well as the Tongue.’
Owain met the imperious gaze a little challengingly. ‘The faith of our fathers has not so utterly perished from Britain as maybe Rome believes,’ and felt, when he had said it, like a small boy who has loosed a bird-bolt at a man in armour.
Augustine merely bent his head in
answer, and said, ‘Now tell me the meaning of all this that I have just seen.’
‘So the High King bade me do,’ Owain said. He gathered his thoughts together, and in as few words as might be, he told Augustine what he asked, while Aethelbert looked on, fingering his beard.
When he spoke of Vadir drawing the longer grass, the monk broke in again, with a gesture of one hand towards the crumpled body. ‘And this was the hazard chosen for him?’
‘No, it was the hazard he chose for himself. He knew the stallion as I did from the day he was foaled. There was a link between them always—I believe—’ He fumbled for the words he wanted; his head felt thick. ‘I think he was fated.’
Augustine was silent for a moment, and his eyes had the look of a man gazing into a far distance. ‘Fated, yes,’ he said at last. ‘The High King was telling me a while since, how in the elder Saxon-kind, whenever the people sought new pastures, they would send a white horse ahead to lead them. And now the White Horse leads them again, out of old things, into the new.’ His gaze flashed back to Owain’s face. ‘Say to Aethelbert of Kent for me that I have seen Frey’s Horse who was as far beyond all other men’s handling as though he were the North Wind, bend his neck in acceptance under a Christian hand; and I take it joyfully as a sign from my God.’
But when they had taken Vadir up, his head hanging, and carried him away, and the young warriors went back to the fires, they threw mead into the blaze for Frey, before they returned to their drinking again.
For as Einon Hen had said, the time for the Queen’s multitude was not yet.
23
Three Women
WHERE the old paved road plunged into the woods, Owain checked and looked back over open country. The Intake was shining with the pale gold of stubble under a high tumbled sky. He had stayed to help them get the harvest in; but now harvest was over and it was time to go.