‘It is, when it pleases them,’ said Phaedrus.
‘It is in my mind that I would gladly see your women dance. It would be interesting to me to see how they compare for skill with the women of my own people. Will you send word to the women’s quarters, that maybe it will please them now?’
Phaedrus was suddenly furious at the cool demand so thinly masked as a request. The Women’s Side did indeed dance when it pleased them, but for a stranger within the gates to demand it of them was an insult, and he very much doubted if this Caledonian noble with the full mouth and insolent dark eyes was ignorant of the fact. But before he could speak, Murna, who had led the other women all evening in keeping the mead-horns filled, and now sat at his other side, erect and indrawn as usual under the moon head-dress, said in a clear, high voice, ‘It is not for my Lord the King to send such a message to the women’s quarters. But since our guest would have it so, I will send the word.’ She looked across the great, round Hall to where the few women who yet remained – old ones for the most part – had gathered in a little knot before the doorway. Grania, one of the women, came at her call, and was given some murmured instructions, and went out. And the young warriors lounged back to the places and pastimes they had left earlier: to fondle a hound’s ears or start a game of knuckle-bones with a comrade. Phaedrus sat coldly raging behind his best arena smile. That this Envoy should have dared . . .That Murna should have made it impossible for him to thrust the insult back down the man’s throat . . . But of course she would have been eager to avoid that, she was Liadhan’s daughter, part Caledonian herself; probably the man was her kin.
There was a sound of women’s voices and running feet outside and a knot of girls came in through the foreporch, flinging off hastily donned cloaks. Their skirts were already hitched knee-high and each girl carried a dirk in her left hand and another thrust into her belt or girdle. The woman who Murna had sent, had returned with them, and she also carried two dirks; but clearly she was not going to dance, for her gown still fell in straight folds to her ankles, and in her free hand she held a long elder-pipe.
Murna rose in her place, and called in a clear, hard tone to the girls by the door: ‘The guests in our Hall would have us dance for them, my sisters. So – let us dance.’
One of the girls, a dark, fierce creature, laughed, as though sharing a harsh jest that their hearers did not understand as yet. ‘We will dance for them, Murna the Queen – as we used to dance when we called ourselves the Wildcats, and went to the practice grounds together.’
As they came forward between the crowding warriors, Murna walked out, kilting her skirts through her bronze-studded belt as she went, to join them on the dancing-floor.
For a long moment the silence in the Hall was so intense that all men could plainly hear the faint chiming of the row upon row of tiny, hanging silver scales that, stitched on to the tall, leather head-dress, made up the Moon Diadem. Murna held out her hands, and the older woman came and put the two dirks into them, before she moved aside with her pipe, and settled down with her back against one of the seven great roof trees.
The dancers formed a wide-spaced ring about the fire, each girl with the blade of her left-hand dirk lying across the blade of her neighbour’s right, and as the first notes of the elder-pipe thrilled out, began to move slowly round the fire, with little short weaving steps. So far it all seemed very childish and pretty, Phaedrus thought, still coldly angry, though one might have expected the girls to be linked by a garland or a coloured ribbon rather than by crossed daggers, and he wondered why every man in the Hall caught a quick breath and sat more upright; why Conory just behind him, muttered, ‘Gods! The Wildcats indeed!’ He had not seen this particular dance before.
At first there had been no sound but the piping and the light pad of the dancers’ feet on the flagstones; then, one after another, the men began to pick up the rhythm as they had done before, and the rhythm itself was changing from white to red, growing fiercer, more urgent. The dirk-blades pointed now up, now down, began to nuzzle each other, blade licking round blade as though each had a life of its own. Faster and faster, the blades flickered and leaped, the shadows spun . . . and then the circle seemed to break off its own spinning, and instead of a ring of dancing girls, there were seven pairs of young warriors. And Phaedrus understood the sudden tensing in the Hall. He was watching a war-dance of the Women’s Side.
He was watching, too, a Murna whom he had never seen before, whom he had never known existed. Murna with her face come to life, and a tense laughter in every line of her, dancing out her mimic battle with the dark girl so close to where he sat, that he could have reached her in one stride and pulled her out of the dance. He wondered for a passing moment if she would turn those leaping daggers on him if he did, then knew that far more likely she would simply change back into the Murna he knew, the cold, unreachable Royal Woman between his hands. And another kind of anger sprang up in him, a raging helplessness that he did not understand; but then he understood scarcely anything that had to do with Murna.
All round the circle the long knives whirled and darted, flashing their deadly interlacing patterns in the flame-light; the pipes shrilled higher and higher against the throbbing rhythm that the men were stamping out from the shadows, and the ring of blade on blade. And then at last, in each pair of warriors, one girl dropped to her knees and flung herself round and backward, to lie with outspread arms, radiating like the petals of some great dagger-tipped flower from the fire that was its heart, while the other made the victory leap high across her body; and the dance was over.
The vanquished sprang to their feet again, the dark girl picking a stray bracken-frond out of her hair. And Murna tossed her two dirks back to the woman who had piped for them, and left the dancing-floor without a backward glance, freeing her skirts as she did so. She was the cold Queen again; even the Moon Diadem, held secure by the thongs that knotted it into her braids, was not a hair’s breadth out of place. To the Envoy she said, still breathing quickly, ‘Can your women do better, across Druim Alban?’
The Envoy also was breathing quickly, and there was a curious line of whiteness round his nostrils. ‘Beyond Druim Alban it is not usual for women to dance the War-Dance, for a guest who comes in peace.’
‘And on this side of Druim Alban, it is not usual for a guest to demand that the women should dance for him at all,’ Murna said gently.
‘There are those, among my people, who might count such a choice of dance for an insult.’ The man rose to his feet, drawing his cat-skin mantle about him, and stood flicking the peace bough of green juniper as an angry cat flicks the tip of its tail.
But Phaedrus was up in the same instant. ‘An insult for an insult, shall we say, and cry quits?’ And before the man could answer, he reached out and caught Murna by the wrist. ‘Come, my Queen. It grows deep into the night, and we must remember that our guests have had long journeying and will be taking the home-trail tomorrow. My Lord of the Green Branch, may you and your Companions have sound sleeping in the guesthuts; we meet here again in the morning.’
With the general sound of rising and breaking up, behind them, he said again, ‘Come, my Queen,’ though, indeed, there was little need of the order for his hold was still on her wrist; and for the first time since he had pulled the red mare’s-skin mask from her face, they left the Fire Hall together, and by the curtained doorway giving on to the huddle of linked huts that made up the women’s quarters.
In the empty Queen’s Place, when he had roughly ordered out the Queen’s bond women who waited for her there, Murna said, ‘And now, will you be letting go my wrist, Midir?’
She had left the Hall with him as though his hold on her wrist had been only the lightest touch, and he had not realized until that moment that he was still gripping it, and gripping it with an angry strength.
He let go instantly, and as she drew away, he saw in the light of the seal-oil lamp, the darkening bruises that his fingers had left. Any other woman, he thought
, would have been cherishing her wrist, but not Murna. And most of his anger went out, leaving only the baffled helplessness behind.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I did not mean to hurt you.’
‘Did you not?’ she said, without interest, and turned from the subject. ‘There is something you would be saying to me?’
‘Murna, why did you do that?’
‘Make our dance for the Lord Envoy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because he called for the Women’s Side to dance. Would you have me refuse the demands of an honoured guest within the gates of Dun Monaidh?’
‘Maybe not. But need you dance yourself? You, who are the Queen?’
‘I could not be asking the other women to dance at his call, and myself refuging behind my queenship.’
‘Sa, you have an answer for everything. But why in the name of Thunder, choose the War-Dance?’
Her eyes widened gravely. ‘Oh my Lord, would you have me accept his insult for the Women’s Side? “An insult for an insult.” You said as much yourself . . . Ah now, it will make no difference to the terms they offer. The Caledones do not bargain. That man will have come over our borders already knowing to the last word what it is that he will say tomorrow.’ Her voice was scornfully consoling. ‘We have nothing to lose, my Lord of the Horse People, by spitting an insult or so back at them.’
‘That I know well enough, no need that you should speak me gently like a child afraid of the dark. However long they talk tomorrow, with spring they will take the war-trail, and so shall we.’ He laughed. ‘Na, it was a fine war-dance, and you are as skilled with the dirk as your mother with poison. I did not know the danger I was in, when I pulled the bridal mask from your face, my Royal Woman!’
Maybe that would get through her guard, make her drop the mask again. But nothing moved behind her face, only a waft of blue peat-smoke, side-driven by the wind through the smoke-hole, fronded across between them, and she avoided his jibe with the cool skill of a swordsman. ‘I was afraid that the skill would have left me, for it is long since I danced the dirk-dance with my Wildcat sisters. But it came back to me well enough. None the less, it is in my mind that I shall go down to the practice grounds again, tomorrow.’
He looked at her, frowning, not quite sure of her meaning, and she half smiled. ‘There will be many of the Women’s Side brushing the rust off their spear-throw, in the next moon or so. Did you not say that when the spring came, the Caledones and the Dalriads would both be taking the war-trail?’
‘The war-trail is for the Men’s Side,’ Phaedrus said quickly.
‘When there are men enough. The Caledones are a great tribe and the overlord of other tribes; we are a small people, still. You will need the women on this war-trail.’
‘None the less, we shall ride without them as long as may be. If a warrior chooses to take his own woman with him into battle, that is his affair, and hers; I shall not call out the Wildcats, or any other of their kind.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why go against the custom when you have most need of it?’
‘In the world I come from—’ Phaedrus began, and caught back the slip. ‘In the world where I have been these seven years, war is men’s work, and the women bide at home.’
‘You allow them to bear the sons for it, of course? That is generous of you. But otherwise – the sword for you, and the loom and the cooking-pot are all that concern the women. How glad I am that I do not belong to the world where you have lived these seven years!’
She had begun to unfasten the thongs that secured the moon head-dress, and it seemed that she had only half her attention to spare from the fastenings. Phaedrus, watching her, thought, in the way that one does think of small unlikely things in the middle of something else, that they must have cut the thongs on the night that she took the diadem from her mother and wore it in her stead. And the thought of that night hardened him against her. He said, ‘Be very sure of this – if the time does come that I must send the Cran-Tara among the war bands of the Women’s Side after all, still I shall not call for the Royal Woman – remembering that she is Liadhan’s daughter!’
Her eyes, dilated like Shân’s when she was angry, became enormous and full of light. ‘How dare you speak so to me!’ she whispered. ‘To me, the Queen!’
‘Do not be forgetting it was I that made you the Queen.’
‘Was it? To me it seemed rather that by marrying me, the Royal Woman, you gained the kingship that you could not have held without me!’
Phaedrus’s hands shot out to catch and shake her. ‘You cursed vixen—’
But he never began the shaking. She stood quite still, the cool, brilliant stare meeting his. ‘Yes, that is much better, much more the man I should have expected to flower from the Midir I knew!’
And Phaedrus dropped his hands to his sides, turned with a curse, and strode out of the Queen’s Place.
Next morning, in the Fire Hall, the demands of the Caledonian Envoy were clear and simple. Liadhan the Queen was to be set back in her rightful place, to rule as Goddess-on-Earth over all Earra-Ghyl. Conory, the Chosen One, was to take his rightful place also, at her side. The tribe was to turn again to the Old Ways and the old worship.
‘And myself?’ Phaedrus inquired, interested. ‘Liadhan the She-Wolf, and Conory the Captain of my Guard have both their places made ready for them; what place then, in all this, for me?’
‘For yourself, the word of King Bruide is this; that you go free, so long as you go far from here. If you set foot again in the hunting-runs of the Dalriads, then death, for you and for those who raised you to the place where you sit now,’ the Envoy said insolently.
Phaedrus wondered with a detached interest just how far he would get on his way into exile, before he met with a fatal accident or simply disappeared. He looked Forgall in the eyes, and laughed; it was a laugh that surprised himself, short in the throat, and cold. ‘For myself, I am the Horse Lord! I have seen enough of wandering, these past seven years, and have no mind to turn wanderer again. For Conory my Captain, if he chooses, he is free to go back with you to this Goddess-on-Earth and be her Seven-year King; but he shall not be Seven-year King among the Dalriads!’
Conory, standing just behind him, with Shân in her favourite position curled across his shoulder like a fur collar, bent forward with lazy grace and spat into the fire, and the cat, startled at the sudden movement, dug in all her claws, her ears laid back and her pink mouth open in a soundless snarl. ‘Sa, sa, we are generally of one mind, you and I,’ Conory murmured to her, gently detaching a claw that had drawn blood.
‘As for Liadhan, once the Royal Woman of the tribe, who without right calls herself Queen: death on the day she sets foot in the hunting-runs of Earra-Ghyl.’ Midir’s anger was rising in Phaedrus’s throat, and he had lost all sense of playing a part, as he leaned forward to stare contemptuously into the dark face before him. ‘That is the answer that you may carry back to Bruide your King – and to the She-Wolf who calls herself Queen of the Dalriads!’
The eyes of Forgall the Envoy were dark and opaque, as those of the Old People, whose blood ran strong in the Caledones; but little red sparks glowed far back in them, and his face was beginning to have the same pinched whiteness round the nostrils that had been there last night in the Fire Hall. ‘The claim of Liadhan the Queen holds good according to the Ancient Law. It is yourself, Midir Mac Levin, no more than the son of a son of a son, who sit where you have no right to be! You have forsaken the Mother and the True Way, to follow strange Gods, and the curse of the Cailleach lies on such as you – on all the Dalriads who would seek to drive her from her rightful place in the heart of men!’
‘Listen,’ Phaedrus said. ‘Listen, little man: for the Epidii, and the Old People before them, the way was the Old Way; but it is we, the Dalriads, who rule now in Earra-Ghyl, and for us the way is a different one. Before ever we came over the Western Sea, we made the Noon Prayer to Lugh Shining Spear, and called to him on the trumpet of the Sun; a
nd our kings were the sons of kings, and not merely the mates of Royal Women. For us, that is the way. Shall we therefore come to you and say, “You shall turn away from the Mother – you shall cast out your King Bruide who rules only because he wedded the Queen’s daughter, and set in his place Conal Caenneth, who is your last king’s son; and you shall follow our way because it is ours?” The Caledones are a free people; and so are the Dalriads, and being a free people they ask no leave to breathe under the sky, from the dwellers beyond Druim Alban!’
‘Bold words,’ the Envoy said. ‘Bold words from a small people to a great one!’
‘Whoever came away whole by bowing his head to the wolf,’ Phaedrus quoted roughly. ‘Listen again – it would be a fine thing for the Caledones, that you set your kinswoman back in the High Place of the Dalriads and keep her there with your swords, and a fine hold it would be giving you over this tribe for so long as the Sun rises in the East and the wheat springs in the ground. You have gained other vassals so. But the Dalriads are not minded to be vassals of yours, and we are a stubborn people, little like to change our minds.’
‘And that is the last word you have to say?’
Phaedrus had meant to consult with the Council and the Kindred before making an end. But he scarcely remembered even that they were there in the great Fire Hall. ‘That is my last word. Yes.’
There was a long silence. Then the Envoy took one step back, and ceremoniously broke the green branch, and threw the pieces into the fire.
‘Whet your spears then, Midir of the Dalriads.’
‘The spears are already whetted.’
14
CHARIOTS IN THE PASS
THE STORM THAT had burst upon them in the night had cleared the air, and high overhead the clouds drifted against a sky of clear rain-washed blue, trailing their shadows after them across the mountains. But here in the low-lying stretch between the river and the alder woods, with Beinn Na Stroine heaving its slow height out of the woods ahead of them, and Cruachan still white-maned with snow in the high corries, filling all the world north-eastward, the air barely stirred. The heat shimmered over the ground though spring had scarcely turned yet to summer, and the gad-flies fidgeted weary men and still more weary horses unbearably. Head after head was tossed impatiently, hooves stamped, and tails swished all down the chariot line. Brys spoke soothingly to his team, holding them on a light rein. ‘Softly! Softly, my children! It will not be long – soon there will be a wind of our going that shall blow the biters clean over Cruachan! Softly now! Softly, I say!’