Jason watched me from the huddle of men who surrounded him. The weather was poor, a steady rain falling into Argo, running off our sheepskin covers. We were not watertight. We were miserable as Argo found passage north. Bollullos at the oar scowled as he kept the ship steady. Rubobostes waited his turn. Kymon crouched with his father below a canopy slung between the rails, each of them thinking of Munda: the one with hopes for a fatherly reunion; the other, from the scowl on his face, with thoughts of subjugation.
“What did you do with the Shaping Man?” I asked Jason.
He looked up at me, the greying hair plastered to his face, the grizzle in his beard saturated and dripping water. But that intensity of gaze! It had never deserted him. And it was a gaze that was now inflamed by memory, the memory of a second great adventure.
“It’s not what Jason did,” he said, oddly referring to himself in the third person. “It was the witch. She had scoured him, scourged him, broken him, drawn the essence of his bone. She had consumed him as a dragonfly consumes a smaller member of its kind, eating him from the head downwards. And the more she ate, the more she hated. The more she consumed, the more fury consumed her. And why?”
“Why?” Urtha asked when a long silence had passed from Jason’s last, enigmatic statement.
Jason stared at the king for a long time, thinking hard. A sour smile touched his lips. Then he glanced at me.
“Because that man knew how to hide his talent. And Medea ate nothing of his heart. She learned nothing. All he would say to her was: ‘Brightness falls from the air.’ She knew he referred to the bronze discs that were flung from somewhere nearer than the stars, but he would never explain what they were or from where they had come. She became frantic. She clawed her own breast with impatience. She was betrayed by impatience. She destroyed the wedding gift because that man, or whatever nature of being he was, dispatched himself—in terms of his abilities, at least—before my good, dread wife could find a hole in his defences and tug out the tough tendon of his invention.
“She spat him out, cast him out, rejected him. His guts, chewed and undigested, she spat on the floor. The bones, after she had cracked them between her jaws, she then pounded into flour and cast them to the wind. I don’t speak literally, of course—”
“Of course.”
“But I remember how she kissed his eyes before she plunged her nails into them. And I remember how he laughed.”
“She learned nothing from him?”
“Nothing of consequence.”
“And so she killed him.”
“No,” Jason said quickly. “Not at all. She gave him back to me.” He frowned at the memory, shaking his head. Then he laughed quietly. “Yes. She gave back the gift. I didn’t realise it at the time, but that was the end of us, the end of the union. Love had long since fled. She abandoned me as quickly as she abandoned Shaper. I didn’t see it at the time. He had been her plaything. I was still entranced by her, and welcomed inside her. I hadn’t noticed how her taste had turned sour. Or if I did, I put it down to Moon-change, or some such transience. It was only later when, abandoned by her, I’d found a brief happiness with Glauce, that she turned the dagger on the table, to point to me, to insinuate that I was the wrongdoer. And went on to kill everything I loved—my sons, my beautiful sons. I was her plaything, too. But by then, she was tiring of the game.”
* * *
We trussed him up in canvas (Jason continued), this broken man, Daidalos, half metal, half flesh, star-crazed, dreaming-strange, the discarded flesh of enchantment, the discarded gift of love, crying in strange tongues, descrying misfortune for the wolf-hearted sailors who were now taking him away from Iolkos for trade. We had heard of strange countries, unusual wealth, far to the north, where five rivers rose, two flowing east and west, two north and south, and one that beguiled.
This was the second great adventure with Argo.
But Shaper foretold disaster for us, summoning the vision of his magic. He didn’t reckon with the callousness of men. We found him amusing. We hoped others, strangers, would be more beguiled.
One of us was dedicated to making sure he wasn’t ill, or his limbs dying with the tightness of the bonds. We put a blindfold round his eyes, just in case: even blinded eyes can do more than see; and plugged his ears. That is how much we were afraid of him. We fed him and watered him. We had taken hellebore to help with any pain he suffered. We paid attention to his need to piss, and the rest. We turned him regularly to avoid the black blood that can kill a prisoner like this. We fed him and kept him comforted with water and rough wine.
And we rowed on our adventure. He was tradable, if we could find the right kingdom with the right goods to exchange and the right degree of simple-mindedness that we could leave this Shaper to work what we regarded as his feeble magic.
And we found such a place, and such a man. I forget his name. He was a king of the land, an arrogant man, obsessed with wealth and wine, horses and wives. His priests were a cruel bunch, scarred and silver-haired, secretive and given to brutal sacrifice.
They greeted the offer of Shaper with a scavenger’s greed and ferocity. So we traded him, up there, close to the river I now know is called the Rein. They took him to their enclosure, and that was the last we saw of him. In exchange? Amber! Some of the strangest amber we had ever seen. That was the reason for our voyage up the rivers and over the land. Creatures imprisoned in the soft jewel of amber. We knew we could trade such pieces for a greater wealth to the sanctuaries of the islands of our own homeland.
Jason shrugged, raised his hands. That was that. What happened to our inventor afterwards? I suppose he died. I forgot about him quickly. A season later, back in my palace, Medea tried to kill me. I tried to kill her. Arms were no match for sorcery, and I withdrew from her compound, leaving her there to rot. I hadn’t realised how easily she could reach my sons, to sacrifice them. And the rest you know. At least: Merlin knows.
* * *
He said no more and I asked him no more. We had the most difficult part of the voyage home ahead of us, and we bent our backs and our skills to the task.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Wraiths
“We’ve got company.”
Niiv’s whisper awoke me. She had her hands on my face, watching me in earnest. I had been sleeping below several skins, exhausted from a long stint at the oars. There was the smell of fresh, moist dawn about Argo, and I could see, by the slow movement of branches above me, that she was being taken slowly into the region where Nantosuelta narrowed before entering the main land of the Coritonian king, Vortingoros.
“Company?”
“Riders. Mist riders. Urtha is anxious.”
Not so much mist riders as riders in this misty early morning. The river was still wide here, and lined by willows and alders, all of them green despite this autumnal season. They shimmered with moisture. Where there were gaps in their dense growth, the fog-shrouded landscape was clearly being tracked by bands of riders, keeping a slow pace with us. They were moving on both sides of the river. The occasional flash of light on helmet and spear-point was startling and threatening.
All the men were at the oars, save for myself. Niiv and the youths had also been sleeping, after crossing the sea. Bollullos and Rubobostes, next to each other, were stripped to the waist and putting a massive heave into their strokes, four brawny arms keeping Argo moving at her sluggish pace. Now we all moved to our benches and added speed to her progress.
The riders in the mist increased their pace to keep alongside us. Their horses snorted loudly. Harnessing jangled.
“What do you make of them, Merlin?” Urtha asked as he strained at his oar.
Insubstantial, nebulous, I suspected those on the southern bank were from the Shadow Hero Realm. Those on the north were strangers. They felt wrong.
Even as I gently probed our silent escort, they seemed to sense my presence. Those to the north galloped swiftly ahead, soon lost to filmy sight and awareness. Almost at once the southe
rn riders also turned away from the river, melting into the haze.
The sun began to rise above the horizon behind us, burning off the damp fog.
We rowed and rested, hoisted the sail whenever there was even a breath of wind from the east. The boys hunted for small game; Niiv swam in the river and fished in the fashion of her own people. But progress upriver was slow, and we were a weary crew.
When at last we came to the moorings, close to the Coritonian fortress, we sent Colcu to his uncle. The lad returned with three men and three more youths of his own age to help us row, but Vortingoros had closed his gates and was lurking in shame and insecurity behind his walls. With the three men he had sent five shields, five spears, five swords, all of them showing signs of past use.
Colcu was furious. He was silent and pale, hardly able to look the older crew of Argo in the eye. Urtha himself was not so angry as I’d expected him to be. “He might at least have lent us horses,” he muttered.
Jason laughed. “We could take them. Rubobostes and I are good horse-thieves in our own ways.”
“Vortingoros did enough for us in the past. That’s my judgement,” the king said dryly, staring into the distance, to the hill now defended even against its friends. He was a king in difficulty who understood the difficulties of a king. “Let’s leave him to his misery. Just knowing that we’re back may be his best counsel. And besides—whether he likes it or not, there will be more mutual help needed before our lives—all of our lives—are done with.”
“There are horses to the south of the fortress,” Colcu whispered suddenly and eagerly. “I saw them. Forty or so. Wild-breed, nervous. And twenty cattle. He’s been raiding to the north, my uncle: I know his style. I’ll fetch them for you with pleasure. Horses and cattle. I can get them. Riding them down to obedience ready for harnessing can be done easily. We’re experts! You’ll need Rubobostes’s arms for the rowing. We’re ready for raiding.”
“You’d steal from the man who has become your father?” Urtha stared hard at the tall lad.
But Colcu was not intimidated. “Think of it as borrowing. And as you have just said, Warlord Urtha, in the end we will be two kingdoms fighting for the same life.”
It didn’t take long: Urtha agreed. He wouldn’t allow Kymon to go on the raid, however, despite his son’s protestations. Kymon was keen to stay with his own uthiin, still keen to contest leadership with his friend. And he pointed out to his father that with a horse beneath him, he could leap the river, crash through the hostels, and ride to Taurovinda faster than he could run, or row.
“This is about your sister,” his father reprimanded him. “You are thinking only of how to throw your sister from the walls.”
Kymon bristled at that, challenging his father’s gaze. “I would have thought you were thinking of my stepmother.”
“Ullanna? I dream of her every night. I think about her every moment of the day. We are all a family, and we all, in our own ways, rule at the Hill of the Bull. A great man lies in its depths. A great dynasty has followed him. That is my view, at least. And my daughter is part of the line of kings that began with a broken king, but went on to become a great land. You and Munda must be reconciled.”
Kymon laughed sourly. “From the moment she entered the Hostel of the Red Shield Riders, she changed. I can see it. You cannot. I don’t want to see you a broken king. I will not inherit a broken kingdom.”
“Then trust me to know better than you. You will not skirmish with Colcu.”
Kymon finally accepted his father’s decision.
Colcu and his three young recruits spoke with the three older men from the fortress, not wishing to compromise these new volunteers. They, too, agreed that Vortingoros could spare his own plunder. They, too, were disillusioned with the Coritanian warlord.
It was as well these three men stayed on Argo.
Another mist-shrouded dawn. The river was alive with fish and the overhanging trees nervous with the movement of deer that had everyone at the oars watching for the opportunity to hurl a javelin and win a good supper. Above us, cranes flew in circles, twenty or so, disturbed from their high perches. Crows, invisible to us, were raucous.
The nets came up from the water so suddenly that for a moment we all imagined we were dreaming. Argo was snagged; she lurched; we fell across her bowels, oars in chaos. And then the wild shouts!
We were in the shallows, and the horsemen emerged from the northern screen of willow, plunging their dark-maned beasts into the water to fore and aft of us. Heavily cloaked, dark-masked, short spears and arrows bristling from quivers on their backs, they came around us like wolves. Two of the riders flung themselves onto the ship. Jason hacked down the first, and Bollullos drove the second back into the river with a powerful lunge of his body, but sustained a deep and crippling blow to his shoulder in the process.
Arrows hissed past. Argo whistled with their flights. A short spear seemed to curve in towards Kymon, who leaned with the lithe of youth to the left and snatched the shaft, sending it singing back to the man who had hurled it, finding only a shield.
The screaming of the horses was no louder than the wailing war cry of these attackers. Above all, the river churned noisily as they circled us and tried to board us. They were murderous and fast. One of Vortingoros’s men fell below a blade as the man who attacked him leapt from horse to ship, then back to horse.
Niiv cowered below skins.
Tairon produced a sling from his belt, stone-shot from his pack, and calmly swung at the attackers. Then an arrow caught him in the chest and he was flung backwards, jerking and scrabbling at the entry wound, his lips blood-foamed. I saw Kymon haul him below the growling figurehead of Mielikki, and Niiv rushing to tend the wound.
“Who are these bastards?” Jason cried above the confusion. He and Rubobostes were crouched, Greek-style, jabbing and slashing, an organised two-man army against the chaos of these masked horsemen.
“Dhiiv arrigi!” Urtha called back. “Vengeful Outcasts!”
“Then you’ve made a lot of enemies,” Jason roared. There was laughter in his voice, tempered by the grunting of his blows. He was a man born for this sort of fight.
They had been waiting for us, these “vengeful outcasts.” But how had they known we were coming? This was opportunism of the crudest sort, an attack on Urtha governed by no more than the basic instinct to which these once-friends, once-champions, these men who had betrayed the king and were made to live wild, had been reduced: a moment to claim back their pride by assassinating the man who had cast them out.
They were savage, but they were nothing of importance, though their weapons were inflicting severe damage on us.
I suddenly realised that Jason was yelling my name. As Argo was hauled by the net, listing dangerously, my old friend was asking for my intervention. Niiv, too, seemed to be screaming at me. Her face was a distressed mask of tears and anger. But Tairon, embraced in her arms, was waving a hand towards me: No, he seemed to be saying. Do nothing.
Had he seen or sensed what I had failed to see or sense?
Suddenly, out of the trees, out of the haze, other riders came, ethereal men on big horses, man and beast spectacularly armoured. If this band had been ready to assault us, no one among us would have survived the river encounter. But the Unborn were here as guardians. It was they who had shadowed us from the south of the river, perhaps keeping a wary eye on the band to the north. They powered into the river, engaging in brutal combat.
Again I heard my name cried, from one of these new arrivals. And I glimpsed, through the metal faceplate of his helmet, the grinning features of Pendragon. He and twenty others routed the dhiiv arrigi, hacking them down, grabbing their steeds and hauling the screaming animals towards the shore. The river ran red for a while, but not for long.
As Kymon and his father cut through the snagging net at Argo’s prow, releasing the ship, which lurched violently in the water, Pendragon and his wraith-riders splashed noisily from the river, pushing through the drap
ing willows, hooves seeking a firm grip on the muddy bank. The horses of the Outcasts struggled after them, caught by tethers, and this rescuing band were gone as abruptly as they had appeared.
Then Pendragon’s voice could be heard: “We’ll wait for you where you camped when the river swamped you.”
And that was that.
* * *
Later, Argo abruptly turned in the river, a move so sudden that we were caught by surprise as our oars snagged the water. Half-thrown from our benches, we quickly hauled and stowed the oars, and Argo nosed into the gentle slope of the bank, a place where cattle clearly came down to water.
This was her way of saying good-bye for the moment, and we quickly offloaded our stowage, taking care with the honey child in her many-layered shroud. Bollullos, his arm bandaged and in a sling, was the first onto the land, and he ran quickly to where he could survey the scene beyond the river, a natural gesture of protection for his king. When he signalled that everything was quiet, Urtha and Rubobostes jumped down into the shallows and received the limp but living body of Tairon. Niiv had performed wonders on him, but his breathing was strained and shallow, and he had turned paler than the corpse he had almost become. No one believed he could live much longer. “My night will be sooner than yours,” he had whispered to Niiv, but Niiv had put a finger to his lips.
“Not if I can find what I need to find. If I could only get you North! But I’ll sniff out the root I’m interested in, and you’ll eat it, and be ready again to die another day.”
By evening we had marched through the forest and come to a wide grove where five rose-briar-covered stones stood, all of them in a line, all patterned in different ways, the different emblems of an older age. They each rose from a shallow mound. This was the Sanctuary of the Five Sisters, and was one of those places sacred to the priests that was used at certain times of the year. It was also one of the markers that divided Urtha’s territory from that of Vortingoros.