Lleyn and I pushed our way up behind Prince Gorthyn, shoulder against shoulder amid the surge of others all around us. Somewhere up ahead the shouting of personal insults had given way to the sound of fighting, and then the full joyful roar of battle as Teulu and Companions came together; and the voice of the old steward desperately trying to keep order, which we had heard distantly without paying the least heed to it, was lost in the general uproar.
The memory comes to me now through a haze that was only partly of mead, for we were drunk also with the knowledge that we were the Companions and their shieldbearers, the Shining Company who would be unleashed presently against the Saxon kind, and the Teulu were goaded with the sour knowledge that though they had the glory of being the King’s bodyguard they would remain leashed at home when we came to the shining hour. At the moment we had quite forgotten, as I think they had too, that many of the Three Hundred, Cynan and his brothers among them, had been of the Teulu before the Companions came into being.
The roar of battle burst upwards to the rafters and surged to and fro between the walls of the Mead Hall; but in that enclosed space we were too close-packed for serious and enjoyable fighting, and only the foremost from each side could come at each other, while the rest shouted and thrust at their own kind to get through, pushing up tighter and tighter from behind. I mind thrusting head-down in Gorthyn’s wake, and being carried sideways by a sudden crosssurge of the mob, and finding myself trampling among the outer embers of the central fire. I mind something of myself that seemed to be outside the rest of me, thinking that if the thing went on much longer, someone was going to get killed; for in that mob one would only have to go down to be trampled underfoot.
Yet the battle smell was in the back of my nose, and the joy of the fight within me kept me yelling and thrusting with the rest. But the sideways surge that had carried me through the fringes of the fire continued and whether others had the same thought as myself and enough sense left to act on it, or whether it was just a blind instinct to burst out and gain more elbow room for the fighting, I suddenly found myself being swept out through one of the side doorways into the winter night.
Through side doors and great main doors and even through the high windows, bursting the shutters open as they came, the battle was spilling out into the forecourt. Some had thought to bring the wall torches with them, and the sleet that was falling again fell spitting and hissing into the flames that gave us a ragged fighting-light. I had lost Gorthyn and Lleyn, but it did not matter; out in the broad court there was room for all of us to find our enemy. I found mine almost at once. One of the Teulu’s calf s-head team earlier that day, and bloodied his nose for him even while I spat out blood of my own and a broken tooth.
Then I heard Prince Gorthyn’s shout: that splendid trumpet shout of his carrying clear across the turmoil, ‘Lleyn! Prosper! To me!’ and I drove in a final blow that sent my opponent reeling, and got my head down and butted through in the direction from which it came. Dodging random blows, and narrowly escaping falling over the hounds who had spilled out with the rest of us and started a dozen dog-fights of their own among the legs of the battle, I came up alongside my lord only a few moments after Lleyn got there. Gorthyn was locked in a wrestling grip with one of the Teulu, and almost in the same instant, twisted and threw him on his hip; a juddering tooth-shattering fall, and turned to us, panting a little, his smile wide and happy. ‘This is a night for keeping close together!’
The size of our warhost was swelling as others of the Companions and their shieldbearers, getting wind in one way or another of what was happening, came roaring up from the hostels along the royal road to join us. Soon the Teulu would be outnumbered. Meanwhile a knot of them came at us with heads down and flaying fists. Lleyn thrust out a leg and tripped the foremost of them and I went down after him and got him by the ears and banged his head a few times on the half-thawed half-frozen ground to cool his hero-light. But Gorthyn’s hand was twisted in the neckband of my tunic, hauling me to my feet, and suddenly the press about us seemed to be slackening, the surf-roar of battle beginning to sink. I snatched a glance at his face and saw that he was looking across the heads of the mob towards something on the far side of the court; and craning the same way, I saw on the edge of the torchlight and by the white radiance of the moon which swam clear of the snowclouds at that moment, the shapes of four women in the gateway from the inner courtyard, and the women’s house. They were cloaked against the cold, but their hoods lay back on their shoulders and their faces were clear in the mingled light that struck sparks from the goldwork in their hair.
The Queen and her daughters had come to put an end to our rioting before blood was spilled or Dyn Eidin went up in flames. They made no movement, only stood there, letting themselves be seen, and little by little the quiet began and spread, as more and more of us became aware of them.
But in the middle of the court around the weapon-stone where the fighting had been hottest, men had not yet seen them, and were too busy about their own affairs to hear someone’s upraised voice shouting ‘Break off! The Queen is here!’ And to the battling dogs, of course, their coming meant nothing at all. Then a frenzied yapping broke out above the deeper tumult that was still going on. One of the little creamy lapdogs which the royal women kept for playthings and which were seldom allowed in the outer court must have slipped out after them, and seeing and hearing and smelling the nearest hound-fight, had hurled itself joyfully to join in. And next instant the Princess Niamh came swooping after it, calling its name on a high seabird note.
‘Cannaid! Cannaid!’
I saw her for a splinter of time poised by the weapon-stone in the reeling heart of things, and then, and then - I do not know what happened, I could not see, a knot of warriors maybe somewhat drunker than the rest of us, and close-locked still in conflict, came spilling in from the side, and the battle closed once more around her.
‘Lleyn! Prosper! With me!’ Gorthyn shouted, and we were with him, butting and thrusting our way through and shouting as we went. She had caught up the little dog and was clutching it high against her, her back against the weapon-stone when she came in sight again, and we had almost reached her when a couple of fighting hounds crashed into her, and she lost her footing on the icy slush and went down. We got to her in only a few moments more. It was all so quick, the whole thing had been so quick since we first saw the royal women standing in the gateway that a score of heartbeats could have covered it from first to last. But we were not the first, for Cynan was already there, standing over her as I have seen him since then standing over a wounded comrade, and thrusting back the tangle of men and hounds.
She was up again at once, and tried to take a step and almost fell with a sharp cry, ‘Ah, my foot!’
The little dog had run shivering and yelping against my feet, and I scooped it into safety. Cynan had caught up the Princess high against his shoulder, and turned with her towards the gateway where her sisters had started forward to meet them. We closed round them, his brothers also and a few more of the Companions as they realized what had happened, and shielded them from any buffeting as he carried her back to the waiting Queen.
Behind us the tumult was sinking as we went, and men were beginning to haul apart the still snapping and snarling hounds.
The women closed round her, supporting her as Cynan set her down, but she looked back, calling still, ‘Cannaid? Please, Cannaid?’ I set the shivering little thing in her arms, though one of her sisters took it from her so that they could help her away. The noise had sunk so low that her voice was clear as she tried to thank us all over her shoulder at the same time. And into the quiet came the sudden clash of hooves as the Fosterling, with his cloak flying, clattered in through the open gate from the royal road and pulled his horse up all standing on the edge of the crowd. I suppose the steward must have sent word to him in the house of the Holy Brothers, and clearly he knew what the battle had been about and had no need to ask the meaning of that night’s work.
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The last of the tumult had died away; only the snarling of a stray dog-fight still fretted at the stillness. And Teulu and Companions alike, battered and somewhat bloody, we turned to face the Fosterling’s chilly gaze that raked us through and through.
‘So, it seems that I come somewhat late upon the scene,’ he said, and there was a flicker of amusement in his voice. ‘I am a truthful man, and therefore I cannot claim that the devil’s uproar you have been raising here reached me before the altar and interrupted my devotions; but certainly, returning in answer to Bleddfach’s summons, it met me half way!’
We scuffed our feet in the frozen slush and mumbled like boys caught stealing apples; suddenly aware of the bitter cold. And the Fosterling’s mouth twitched. ‘Since it seems that the royal ladies have quelled this riot for me, it is my mind that now you should return to the Hall that we may continue our interrupted supper.’ He swung down from the saddle, somebody coming quickly to take his horse, and his eye lit on the knot of hounds still battling over something - a ragged lump of baked meat I suddenly saw it was. ‘What remains of supper, at all events. I imagine that the question of the Champion’s Portion is now well and truly settled.’ And laughter took us like a gale.
But next morning in the grey chill of the thaw, we were all stone-cold sober, still battered, but sober, when we gathered again to the King’s forecourt, in answer to the summons that had called us there, Teulu and Companions alike with the shieldbearers hanging on the outskirts.
The King half sat, half lay in his great chair that had been brought out into the foreporch of the Hall, swathed in soft skin robes to his bearded chin, with the Fosterling standing at his side and the closest of his household warriors ranged about him.
The Fosterling stood with his thumbs in his sword belt and looked us over at leisure with those strange two-coloured eyes of his, while we waited, looking back. ‘God’s greeting to you, my heroes,’ he said, pleasantly, when he had looked enough. ‘Now let you tell me, why this sudden hunger for the Champion’s Portion, which no warrior has claimed in Dyn Eidin in the lifetime of a man?’
Amalgoid said. ‘It was for a jest as much as anything. Also it was for the honour of the Teulu.’
‘So. A jest that had a sharp edge to it.’ The Fosterling flicked his gaze to Tydfwlch the Tall. ‘And you? This claim is still the custom among your own hills?’
Tydfwlch shook his head. ‘Not in the lifetimes of three men.’
‘Then why now?’
‘Because Amalgoid of the Teulu made it first; and the Companions also have an honour to maintain.’
I mind the silence that followed; and in the silence, the sense of oneness that had been growing within us almost unknown for a long while, enclosing us like a rampart.
Then the Fosterling hitched at his sword belt in the way that he had, and turned to the King, but pitching his voice for all of us to hear. ‘My Lord the King, it is true, as our forefathers told, that no man may for long handle two teams at the same time. It is in my mind that now the time has come, as we knew that it must, for you to choose a new captain for the Teulu, for the Companions have become their own thing and must have their own captain.’
‘And you are that captain?’
‘So it was agreed between us.’
‘Sa, sa, sa … Meaning that you want them all to yourself,’ said Mynydogg rather surprisingly; and the shadow of a smile on his gaunt face, echoing the smile on the Fosterling’s own, made it clearer than ever that they were father and son.
‘I do not think that anyone else can handle them,’ said our new captain. ‘But yes, I want them all to myself.’
The roar that we sent up might have lifted the roof off the King’s Hall if we had been within it.
Only the Teulu, losing their old captain, were silent.
12
Epona’s Leap
The winter months wore on; bitter months that brought the wolves in out of the wildwood to hunt close about the living places of men, so that men must mount guard over the sheep folds by day as well as through the long nights. Day after day the wind drove snow or freezing rain across the great whale-backed mass of Eidin Ridge; and when the snow clouds cleared for a while and the iron frosts set in, there were nights when the whole sky northward was flickering with strange lights. I had seen such lights faintly from the high hills above my home valley, but never such a show as this, that sent rippling tongues and ribbons of cold fire far up the sky. I knew now why men called them ‘The Crown of the North’ and also why it was said that they foretold great happenings for good or ill, victory or pestilence, the birth of heroes or the death of kings.
But a day came when the wind went round to the south and had a new smell to it, promising a world still there after all, beyond the lowland hills, promising afar off the return of spring.
As soon as the mirey ways were in any sort fit for travelling, while the burns ran green with thaw-water from the melting snows, before even the salmon began to come up from the sea, Mynyddog’s embassies were going to and fro once more between himself and his fellow kings of the north. On an evening of squalls and sunbursts, with the cloud shadows flying like a charge of cavalry across the moors, an embassy from Aidan of Dalriada rode into Dyn Eidin: three tall men cloaked in magnificent skins; the leader, who looked to be long past his own warrior days, the tallest of them all, with a small fierce eye and a mouth like a wolf trap.
On the day after they rode in, they were shut away in the King’s private lodging with Mynyddog himself, the Fosterling, and Cenau who was now Captain of the Teulu in his place, and Aneirin who as chief bard to the King must always be present at such meetings.
For the rest of us life went on as usual. A good part of the day was passed in practising for the great display with which we were to dazzle and impress the Lords of Dalriada on the morrow.
Towards evening Gorthyn’s big sorrel cast a shoe; and when I took him over to the shoe-smith at the far side of the Royal Farm, I heard a great bell-clashing of hammer on anvil and thought that some other horse was being shod. But when I hitched Bryth to the ring beside the doorpost and looked inside, there was no horse there, and the men sweating in the red firelight were making horseshoes to add to an orderly stack of them against the wall. That did not surprise me, for as the swordsmiths and armourers had been busy all that winter mending old weapons and war gear and making new, so the blacksmiths, in between their usual work, had been beating out horseshoes against the time that the Company would be needing them.
‘Can you spare one of those?’ I asked, flicking a thumb at the stack. ‘My lord’s horse has cast a shoe at the practice.’
One of the smiths looked up from a half formed shoe on the nearest of the three anvils, and I saw - in the red gloom of the smithy and the smoke and the flying sparks I had not known him until I saw his face that it was Conn. And that did surprise me.
‘Conn! What brings you here? I thought it was a swordsmith you were.’
He rubbed the back of his hand across his sweating forehead, leaving a black smear. ‘Fercos’s ruling is that a smith should learn every branch of his craft on the way up, and that even a high king’s swordsmith should be able to shoe a horse or forge a ploughshare. Just now the need is for horseshoes.’
‘Then let you re-shoe Bryth, and make sure that his other shoes are secure for this fool’s frolic the King has decreed tomorrow for the impressing of Dalriada.’
He glanced towards the Master Smith who nodded without looking up from his own work, and a short while later when the shoe before him was finished, he replaced the cast shoe and tested the rest, picking up each round hoof in turn while Bryth slobbered at his shoulder. And afterwards, Conn standing with one shoulder propped against the doorpost, I with an arm over the sorrel’s neck, we lingered for a short while. It was some while since we had had the chance of a few words together.
‘Is it well?’ I asked. I always asked that, I still felt oddly responsible for Conn.
And he loo
ked at me with that slow grave smile of his. ‘Why would it not be?’
‘It doesn’t irk you to be spending your time and skill down here?’ I knew how much I should hate it, if I were on the way to being a swordsmith, no matter what Fercos’ ruling might be.
‘Did I not say? No need of ploughshares, maybe, but any smith who goes with the field-forge must be able to shoe a horse as well as sharpen a sword or beat the dint out of a war-cap.’
Goes with the field forge … I had known, I suppose, that there must be a field-forge. No cavalry force, once away from home, could function without one, but I had not thought to wonder who its smiths would be.
‘You?’ I said. ‘Conn, that makes good hearing!’
He shook his head quickly. ‘I’d not be knowing. But Fercos is too old for such rough work, and he must send one at least of his family.’
‘And the one might be you!’
‘I shall try for it!’ he said; then turning the subject almost as Luned used to do, ‘Will you be needing Shadow’s shoes checked for tomorrow?’
‘No. It is a thing only for the Companions, praise be to Epona.’
‘Not champing at the bit to show off your own skills?’
‘I don’t see much point in it,’ I said. ‘Not for those men.’
‘They are Dalriada,’ Conn said.
I knew what he meant. The King’s purpose was clear, to show off to this embassy his fine new war-bands drawn from all the northern kingdoms, hoping that they would go back and persuade Aidan their king that men of different tribes could stand together, and that in the face of a strong enemy it is better so than to stand alone. The old story of the sticks which, singly, may be snapped between the fingers of one hand, but which bound into a faggot, are beyond the breaking of the strongest man.