And then it was upon us. The ground heaved beneath our feet, and I smelled the rank scent of animal filth. But though we stood steadfast with our spears at the ready, there was nothing substantial to fight.
The shadowshape charged through our midst and I received the distinct impression of a massive beast with the sharp spine and high-humped shoulder of a boar, its foul hair long and flowing in matted shreds like the tatters of a rotten cloak. I imagined two huge yellow eyes glaring balefully out from a flattened piglike face, beneath which bulged a massive jaw from which two great, curved brown tusks jutted in upward-sweeping arcs like a pair of barley scythes. Short, powerful, stumplike legs pummeled the earth, driving the creature forward on the cloven hooves of a stag.
This, as I say, was merely an impression, an image that burned itself into my mind. There was no actual creature, nothing corporeal at all—just a dark-gathered mist of churning shadow and motion.
Some of the warriors let slip their weapons, and one or two dropped to their knees.
“Courage!” shouted Arthur, his voice a steady rock amidst the rising flood of fear. “Stand firm!”
The vile thing drove down on us with the speed of a falling mountain, shaking the ground with every flying step. I gripped my spear and hunkered down, ready to let fly should anything tangible present itself.
The beast came on. The monster loosed its earsplitting scream. The chill air shivered to the sound of a thousand slavering hounds and the belling of a hundred stags at bay.
The cry carried the creature into our midst.
“Hold!” called Arthur. “Hold, men…stand your ground.”
Beneath my feet, the ground rumbled hollow like a drum.
“Stand firm…” Arthur called, straining to be heard above the sound of the onrushing beast. “Stand…”
My stomach tightened in anticipation of the terrible impact. The air shuddered and I had the explicit sensation of a great hairy flank heaving past me—like a rippling black wall of muscle.
Spear poised, I drew back my arm and prepared to strike.
The warrior opposite me let fly—too soon! The spear sailed over my head; I ducked under it and in the same instant heard a short, sharp cry as the creature whirled in mid-flight and struck. I saw merely a sudden surge, a quickening of the darkness, and the monster thundered past.
I leapt to the stricken warrior’s aid, and a stink like that of rotting meat struck me like the blow of a fist. The gorge rose in my throat and I gagged on the stench. I put a hand over my nose and mouth to keep from vomiting. The Cymbrogi round about groaned, coughed, and spat, and the wounded man writhed on the ground.
His side had been laid open from chest to hip, and blood gushed dark and hot from the wound. “Help me!” he screamed. “Help me!”
“Tallaght?” I said. In the dim light, his features twisted with pain, I did not recognize him at first. “Lie still, brother. Help is coming.
“Myrddin!” I shouted. “Over here! Hurry!”
Tallaght clutched my hand; his grip was slippery with blood, but he clung to me as if to life itself. “I am sorry, lord,” he said, his voice already growing weaker. “I did not mean to disgrace…”
“Shh,” I said gently. “It does not matter. Just rest easy.”
“Tell Arthur I am sorry…” he whispered, and fell to coughing and could not catch his breath. He died, choking on his blood before Myrddin could reach him. “Go with God, my friend,” I said, and lay his hand upon his chest.
Just as swiftly as it had come, the apparition vanished. The ground continued to drum and tremble for a time, but the creature was gone. Myrddin appeared at my side and bent over the fallen warrior. “It is Tallaght,” I said as the Emrys stretched his hand towards the young man’s face.
“He is dead.”
Some of the warriors nearby repeated this pronouncement, and it was passed along the ranks. A moment later, there came a cry from farther up the trail. “Stop him!” one of the warriors shouted. “Someone stop him!”
Glancing up, I saw a mounted warrior burst forth from among the horses. Rhys shouted for the man to stop at once, and several others tried to head off the horse, but the rider was too quick and the horse had already reached its stride. He gained the trail at a gallop, and disappeared into the shadows.
Arthur quickly ordered men to go after him, but Myrddin counseled against it. “It is too late now,” he said. “Let him go.”
“We can catch him still,” the king protested.
“We have just lost one warrior to the beast,” the Emrys informed Arthur. “How many more will you risk?”
Arthur frowned, but accepted his counselor’s advice. “Did you see who it was?”
“No.” Myrddin shook his head slowly.
“I saw him,” I told them. “It was Peredur. No doubt he has gone to avenge his kinsman’s death.”
“The young fool,” Arthur muttered.
“He is God’s concern now,” Myrddin said. “Put him from your thoughts, and instead think how to find your missing warriors.”
Night was hard upon us, and rather than risk losing the rest of the warband in the dark, Arthur decided to make camp and wait until morning. We buried Tallaght’s body where he had fallen, and Myrddin spoke a prayer over the grave. I would have liked to do more for the boy, but that is the way of it sometimes. The Pendragon ordered the remaining Cymbrogi to gather fuel for a fire. What with the dense wood all around us, the men had a great heap of dead timber piled up, and in less time than it takes to tell, the first snakes of flame were slithering up the tangle of old branches.
Once the horses were settled, we gathered to warm ourselves and, in crowding close, to console one another. The fellowship of loyal men is not to be slighted; it is a thing of great solace and is therefore sacred. Accordingly, the Pendragon, in ordering the fire, meant not only to warm us, but to help us to restore our confidence, which had been badly shaken. No one could have imagined that it would turn out as it did.
Comforted by the fire, the men began to talk, and some wondered aloud what manner of creature it was that they had driven off; others voiced surprise that they should have chased it away at all. Speculation proved futile and as one suggestion after another foundered, everyone turned to Myrddin, who was squatting on his haunches at the edge of the fire, arms crossed over knees, staring bleakly into the flames.
“Here, now, Myrddin,” called Arthur genially. “Have you ever heard tell of such a beast?”
At first it seemed Myrddin had not heard the king’s question. He made no move, but continued staring into the red heart of the fire.
“What say you, bard?” the king said, his voice loud in the sudden quiet of the wood.
The Cymbrogi watched in silent expectation as the Emrys, without taking his eyes from the flames, slowly drew the hood of his cloak over his head and rose. He stood for a moment as if entranced by the flames, then stooped and reached into the fire. Several of the Cymbrogi cried out instinctively at the act, but Myrddin calmly withdrew a fistful of hot ashes. Despite the heat, he held the embers in his hand, blew on them, and then gazed upon the coals.
We watched in astonished silence as he held the burning embers in his hand, his face illumined in the ruddy glow. Suddenly he cast the coals back into the flames. He stood for a moment clutching his hand—whether from pain or the shock of what he had seen, I cannot say—then, as if in a trance, he raised his hand and licked the palm with his tongue.
No one moved or said a word as the Bard of Britain took up his staff and raised it over his head. Slowly, he turned to face us. My heart clenched in my chest, for his face was as rigid and pale as death.
The eyes gazing out from beneath the hood were no longer those of a man, but of a preying hawk, farseeing, keen, and golden. Stretching forth his hand, he held his palm level to the ground and, opening his mouth, began to speak. Or perhaps it was some other speaking through him, for the voice seemed to come from the Otherworld.
“Hear, Men of
Britain, Valiant Ones,” he said in the strange, hollow voice, “the Head of Wisdom speaks. Heed and take warning. The Black Beast sent among you this day was but a foretaste of the power arrayed against you. The battle is joined, and every man who would achieve the quest must face many ordeals. Be not dismayed, neither be afraid, but face the trials to follow with all forbearance, for the Swift Sure Hand upholds you, and the Holy Grail awaits those who endure to the end.”
Having delivered himself of this decree, he lowered his staff and sat down again. Almost at once, he began to shake and tremble all over. Thinking to aid him, the warrior nearest reached out and took hold of the Emrys to steady him. Instantly, the man yelped and fell back as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt.
Others reached to help the man. “Let him be,” advised Arthur sternly. “It will pass.”
The stricken warrior quickly recovered, and the Cymbrogi set themselves the task of settling the horses for the night before lying down to rest. Though I tried to sleep, the weird events of this fraught day conspired to overthrow my best resolve and I found myself thinking about Morgian instead, and wondering when the next attack would come, and what form it would take.
Chapter Thirty
It was still dark when I awoke. Judging by the deep darkness of the forest, dawn was still very far away. At first I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but then I heard again what must have roused me: the horses were awake and whickering restively to one another, so I roused myself, thinking to see what might be done to calm them.
The fire had burned itself to a heap of ashes, and I had to stumble over the sleeping bodies of my swordbrothers, waking a few of them, who joined me at the picket with the horses. “I feel as if I have slept an age,” remarked one of the warriors. “But it looks as though dawn is still far off.” He gazed around warily. “Indeed, if I did not know better, I would say the darkness has only increased.”
As he spoke, a thin trickle of fear snaked along my ribs. I raised my eyes to the darkness above, dense and heavy as iron. Others joined us and began offering their observations. Some held that the night had passed and we would soon see the sunrise; more maintained that the time for sunrise had passed without bringing the light.
Before the disputation could become contentious, however, Arthur brought an end to the speculation by putting the question to Myrddin directly. “Is this the enemy’s doing?”
Myrddin hesitated, then glanced quickly at the warriors, who stood awaiting his answer. “Yes,” he said simply.
The king nodded. “It makes no difference.” Turning to the Cymbrogi, he said, “Our swordbrothers should have reached us by now. We are going back for them.” He ordered the horses to be saddled and all idle talk to cease; he commanded torches to be prepared, and once we were saddled and ready to depart, the torches were lit.
Thus, we took up the search for the lost Cymbrogi, returning along the trail by which we had come the day before. Whether the sun shone beyond the cover of the forest, I cannot say. All I know is that the light of day did not reach us, and we rode in darkness as complete as that which covers the earth on the stormiest of nights.
Without the sun, however feeble, to mark time’s slow passing, it seemed we journeyed an eternity, stopping only to rest and water the horses and to renew the torches, continually alert to the wood around us all the while. We traveled what must have passed for a day in the wider world, slept a little, and continued on, never knowing where one night left off and another began, moving from one march to the next without speaking more than a dozen words to anyone. And all the time the darkness wore on us; a grindstone it was, covered in darkest silk, perhaps, but a stone nonetheless, grinding and grinding us down to dust.
See, now: fear stalked the bold Dragon Flight—fear like the immense shadow beast loosed to rampage through our anxious ranks. Stouthearted men started at the smallest sound, and sained themselves with the cross whenever they thought no one else was looking.
Arthur—alas, even Arthur—who feared no earthly foe, found reason to be afraid—not for himself, mind, but for his queen. Her name was never far from his lips. From time to time he roused himself from his bleak meditations and made an effort to lift the spirits of his warband—he called encouragement to those who appeared to be struggling, and offered conversation to those who seemed most in need of distraction—but his labors went unrewarded.
At times the forest trail seemed to twist around upon itself and, occasionally, another path might be seen to diverge from the main—although there was never any question about which way we should go. The Pendragon led without wavering. Even so, it grew increasingly apparent that we would not gain our destination no matter how long or far we rode.
“Only a little farther,” Arthur argued. “We must be nearing the end.”
“Arthur,” Myrddin replied gently, “we should have reached it long since.”
“We go on,” Arthur insisted, and so we did.
So unvarying was the trail, and the darkness so unrelenting and complete—and our fortitude stretched so thin and fine—that the clearing came as a shock to our benighted senses.
Without warning or sign, we simply rode out from the rooflike cover of the trees and onto a wide river mead. Even in the darkness we could tell that it was a clearing of considerable extent. The sound of rushing water could be heard from the other side of the mead, and the damp, chill closeness of the wood gave way to the sudden gusts of a cold winter wind.
As we had ridden some way since our last resting place, the king thought best to make camp, water the horses, and refresh our own water supply. Accordingly, we found a place beside the encircling stream to picket the horses and began dragging dead limbs from the surrounding wood. Glad for this change, such as it was, we fell to with a will and soon had a large campfire burning with the brightness of a beacon on the edge of the clearing.
Far better for us if we had endured the darkness and cold, our accustomed misery. Far better, indeed, if we had never set foot in the Wasteland at all!
For, as the campfire reached its height and we gathered to warm ourselves around it, the flamelight revealed a great oak tree a short distance away. At first we knew nothing of it but that it was a true monarch of the wood, ancient and lordly, supreme ruler in its domain, and that it stood alone in the center of the clearing, which, bounded by the encircling stream, formed an almost perfect ring around it.
But then, as we drew closer and looked up into those huge gnarled boughs, we glimpsed strange, elongated shapes twisting in the wind. We looked and courage, already rattled from the long, grinding darkness, took flight. With nothing to halt the rout, our beleaguered imaginations fled instantly to the worst.
Ah, but the truth awaiting us in those misshapen boughs was far, far worse than anything we could have imagined.
We looked to where Arthur stood, Myrddin at his side, gazing towards the great oak. The king stooped and took a brand from the fire, drew himself up, and then started for the tree. Taking up brands, we hastened after him, crowding in close to one another so as not to be the hindmost.
Closer, I could see the strange shapes dangling in clusters from the lower limbs like enormous bats. It was not until we stepped almost directly underneath the foremost bough that I realized what it was we were seeing.
Terrible silence crushed hard upon us. I could not breathe. I could not speak. My strength flowed away like water. A fearful drumming filled my ears and boomed in my head. I staggered back and, God help me, I vomited bile over my feet.
Then, forcing myself to a courage I did not possess, I wiped my mouth on my arm and stood, taking my place once more beside my king. Myrddin stood beside him, his hand on the king’s shoulder and the other to his eyes, as if to shield them from the sight of that tree’s terrible fruit.
Only Arthur, firebrand in his hand, yet stared up into the tree at the naked corpses of his brave Cymbrogi.
“Come away, Bear,” I heard Myrddin mutter. “There is nothing to be done here.
”
Arthur made no reply, but shrugged off Myrddin’s hand and gazed full on the grisly display before us. Each of the lower boughs bore the corpses of at least four warriors—bound singly, or in groups of two or three—and there were more hung high in the upper branches, and yet still more beyond these. From what I could see in the shifting light, most of them had died in battle. Many had lost limbs and several had been disemboweled. Every corpse had been shorn of both hands and feet, and these we discovered placed in a ghastly ring around the roots of the tree. Some few must have been alive when they were hung, for I saw bloated blue faces of men I had once known as swordbrothers among the dead: Cai and Cador and Bedwyr.
Brave Cai, his tongue protruding, swollen in his mouth, his scalp hanging loose on his skull…Cador, friend and stalwart companion, his arms bloody stumps and his legs broken and limp, his mouth gaping in a last, silent scream…and Bedwyr, hero and champion, his smashed jaw dangling on his chest, one eye gouged out, the remains of a spear jutting broken from his stomach….
Tears rose in my eyes then, and I had to look away. My God! my spirit cried out in grief and anguish. God, why? Why these?
Myrddin tried again to get the king to leave, and again the Pendragon refused. “My men are here,” he said, his voice grating in the deathly silence. “My place is with my men.”
“You can do nothing for them,” Myrddin said, almost harshly.
“I can bury them,” Arthur snapped.
“No, Bear,” Myrddin counseled. “It is the living you must think of now.” I wondered at this answer, but trusted the Emrys would have a sound reason.
Thrusting a helpless hand towards the tree, Arthur said, “I cannot leave them like this and still call myself king. Go, if you must, and take the men with you. I will stay.”
The Emrys frowned, glancing at the dread oak.
“Well?” Arthur demanded, forcing the Emrys’ choice.
Myrddin hesitated, and a light came up in his eyes. “There may yet be a way to preserve some small scrap of dignity and courage.” His voice quickened as he spoke. “Hear me, Proud King. We will not abandon our loyal swordbrothers in death. We will send them on their journey hence with all honor, in sharp defiance of the wickedness that has so cruelly slain them. Are you willing?”