All round the fire men were giving tongue, a hoarse and ragged outcry that the Captain quieted with an upraised arm. ‘My brothers, I will tell you what it is that we do now. It is for that that I have called you together. We have waited for a warhost that has not come, and truly I believe that it will not come now. We could hold on, waiting a few more days - not many, for even if we begin to eat the horses, the wells are running dry. Our numbers are sinking fast. We are too few, and the Saxon circle drawn too tight about us for any more raiding. The Saxons know this, and they also will wait, until we are too weak to lift sword against them; and at the end of those few days we shall die like a badger in its holt when they send in the ground-dogs. That is no end for this shining company.
‘Therefore, not tonight but tomorrow night when we have had time to prepare all things fittingly, let us make an end of our own choosing. Let us make one last charge against the Saxons, where their spear-wall is thickest, and where to judge by their horsetail standard, Aethelfrith himself should have his battle-stand. We shall not break through; it is not for that we make our charge. We shall go down. But we shall take down with us such a harvest of the Saxon kind that it shall be long and long before their war hordes can gather full strength again.’
He broke off, and stared round at us in the spitting firelight. But we kept the silence, knowing that there was something more to come.
‘Yet this is a last ride that should be made only with willing hearts,’ he said at last, his voice suddenly hoarse. ‘Tomorrow night after moonrise, I shall make it. I shall rejoice if you ride with me. I am a man who likes to choose with care the company he dies in, and I should be full fain to die in yours. Nevertheless, the choice is for you to make, each one for himself. And if I ride alone, I shall not therefore forget that I have loved you, and had, I think, your love in return.’
For a moment longer the silence held us, then we rose to him as one man, shouting round the fire that we were his, that we would ride with him, all of us, all-all.
‘Not quite all,’ the Fosterling said when we were quiet once more. ‘One must go back to Dyn Eidin, and others for his escort.’
And we waited, in a new silence that made the stamp and whinny of a restless horse in the picket lines sound very loud.
‘For the escort riders, Conn and Credne and Flamn of the field-forge, who can best be spared, because our need of them will be over. To guide them Garym who knows these hills and has scouted for us all this while. And for the one-’ he looked down at Aneirin. ‘Prince of Bards, this you will do for us.’
Aneirin lifted his gaze slowly from the heart of the fire. ‘How if I refuse?’
‘One must go, to carry word of our end back to the King. And who but the one who, living, can sing our passing so that men may remember us for a thousand years?’
Aneirin said, ‘This is a hard thing that you ask of me. I was a fighting man in my youth, and for these bright and bitter days I have had something of my youth again.’
And Cynan leaned forward beside the fire. ‘Harper dear, it is a hard thing we ask of you, but you must leave your youth with us, and live on without it, for if you die, we shall die unsung and unhonoured. Remember the Great Song you promised us, on the day the orders came.’
I mind thinking that the song he had promised that day had been a triumph song, not a lament. But I suppose that also is not without triumph in its way. We all added our voices to Cynan’s and Ceredig the Fosterling had the final word.
‘To be a bard is a greater thing than to be a warrior. If you win back living to my father’s Hall, count yourself ransomed by your power of poetry, and make us our Great Song for men to remember us by. No man likes to die unsung, and we shall have earned a shining song, Harp-Lord.’
Aneirin was s lent a moment, his eyes half-closed, gazing once more into the fire, then he opened them wide and turned his hawk-yellow stare upon us, ‘You shall not die unsung, if I win back to Dyn Eidin,’ he said.
So the thing was settled and made sure, and when the little food that there was had been eaten, he tuned his harp and sang to us, the first time that he had done that thing since we rode south; not the old songs that we knew, but another that he must have begun to make in the ruined signal tower during the past days; rough-edged as yet, not honed and tempered as it would be in later days.
‘The men went to Catraeth, fierce in their laughter, Pale mead was their feast drink, a year in Eidin’s Hall, Their spears bright as the wings of dawning …’
He sang snatches of half-formed song as they came to him, for this man and that. He sang of Gwenabwy and his wolf, of Llif still living and Gorthyn dead. He sang deep into the night, of the three hundred men wearing golden torques and bearing swords that were the King’s gift. Not of us, the shieldbearers, of course; we did not expect it. I do not suppose the men of other states who stood with the Spartans at Thermopylae expected it, either.
That night I slept well in the few hours we were allowed, lightly and quietly, and woke to the first ashen light of tjye dawn that would be the last we saw.
It was an odd day; nothing felt quite real, and yet all things had slightly clearer edges and more luminous colours than was usual. Friends tended to drift into twos and threes and little groups, holding together as we went about the ready-making for the last fight that would come after moonrise.
All the details of that day remain with me yet. But the order in which things happened was hazy to me even at the time, so that the day remains a tumble of clear-cut scenes and images that can be taken out and looked at separately, and dropped back again wherever they chance to fall.
Faelinn and I were still together, not friends, but held together by our lost-dog state. Together we gathered up the armour and weapons that had belonged to our lords, and together we found an unclaimed corner and settled down to burnish it and make all ready for the night. I mind rubbing up Gorthyn’s sword and looking to the rivets that secured the hilt; I mind grooming his grey wolfskin cloak as one grooms a living hound, burnishing the rust spots from his battle-shirt and the fine linkmail coif with its strangely beautiful mask. His war-cap had gone when his horse came down, and without the mail would not be much protection against a sword cut. But I think it was not so much for the protection, that I made it ready, as for the sake of the man who had worn it last. I had washed the blood from the shirt on the day that the axe gash was made, and now I mended it as best I could with a leather thong, for the same reason.
I mind coming upon Llif in a patch of sunlight, stripped naked and with a little pot of woad in one hand and a stick with the end chewed soft in the other, tracing warrior patterns wherever there was space among the tattooing on his breast and shoulders and thighs.
I checked beside him for a few moments, watching, then asked, ‘Why the beauty work?’
‘It is the custom of my people to wear such patterns when we go into battle,’ he said.
‘That I understand, when you go into battle naked. But in leather and ringmail, who will know?’
‘I shall know,’ Llif said, squinting at the blue spiral growing below his shoulder.
Most of us combed our hair at some time in that day, before we armed up. We groomed the horses too, as best we could in such close-picketing. It was all part of the same ritual, I suppose, the making of all things worthy … the horses were in a sorry state by that time, famine-drained as ourselves and with all condition lost; gaunt ghosts of the proud high-crested animals we had ridden out from Dyn Eidin a few short weeks ago. Shadow turned her head and nuzzled at my breast with delicately working lops, still hoping for the honey-crusts I had been used to give her, and I pressed my forehead against the white blaze on hers, knowing the familiar hard warmth and the smell of her, hoping that she would not be afraid when the time came; hoping that I should not be afraid, either.
I mind Ceredig the Captain, once more in the roofless mess hall, with the troop leaders close about him. Two who had been leaders all along, four who had stepped up to take the place of friends now f
allen. Aneirin was there too, standing back a little from the rest, with the long folds of his cloak that was the colour of spilled wine gathered close about him.
The Captain spoke to us kindly, almost gently, that last time of all, making sure that even the least of us knew the plan for the night, and what was before us. He was like one or two generals, not many, who I have known since, merciless on the training ground but gentle before battle.
‘The waiting time is over, and an hour after moonrise when the shadows are still long, we ride out. We shall charge at full gallop, remembering always that we come to kill Saxons, not to break through the siege-ring. They, not knowing that, will thicken their battle mass to hold us at the point of our attack, and to do that they must thin the shield-ring elsewhere. And that, Lord of the Harpers, will be your chance.’ He turned a little to Aneirin, ‘Garym the scout will have five horses waiting at the west gate where the moon shadows will be longest and most deep. Our last charge will cover you until you are clear of Catraeth. Sing us nobly in the King’s Hall.’
‘That I will do,’ Aneirin said, ‘though with a bitter heart.’ He gathered the weatherworn folds of his cloak more closely round him, and half turned as though to be away, then checked and stood waiting till the Captain, who had turned back to us, should be done.
‘There is one thing more,’ the Fosterling said. ‘In the year behind us we trained as Arrowheads. Here in Catraeth the fighting has been of another kind, and we have for the most part laid the Arrowhead aside; but men’s hearts are easiest and their weapon-hands most sure when they follow the ways in which they were first trained. Therefore tonight we shall return at least in part to the old way, though since there are swords enough for all who still live, we shall go armed alike on this ride. Therefore let all shieldbearers whose lords yet live go to them now; and let all Companions who lack one shieldbearer or both, take from among the lordless ones standing by.’ He looked round at us with a kindly eye. ‘There is no more, my brothers.’
But Aneirin said, ‘One thing more. A small thing. Give me leave to speak, Fosterling.’
‘Speak, then,’ the Captain said.
The King’s bard looked us over. ‘When the choosing is done with, let some among you bring me dry stuff, anything to make a fire, up to the signal tower, and above all, seven branches of the rowan tree that yet stands at the south-western corner of the fort.’
There was a small surprised silence, and we waited for more, but there was no more. And suddenly I was remembering his words among the broom bushes below Dyn Eidin; something about a fire of rowan wood, and a mist all across Roscommon. I had thought at the time that it was only a thing spoken in jest. Now I was not so sure.
‘Seven rowan branches you shall have,’ someone called out. I think it was Morien, rising as usual to anything that had to do with fire.
It took a little while for Companions and shield- bearers to sort out their Arrowheads, and Faelinn and I were still together and still unclaimed when Cynan came by and stopped in front of us. ‘Prosper, come you.’
‘I come, Lord,’ I said, and stepped forward, and then as he would have turned away, ‘Sir, Faelinn who was shieldbearer to Peredur is lordless, also.’
He checked and turned back and looked Faelinn up and down. ‘Not any more. Come you also,’ he said tersely.
I cast a hasty glance at Faelinn. The thing that had grown between us in those past few days was too shadowy and still too prickly to be called friendship, and I was afraid that maybe I had taken too much into my own hand; but I saw that he was glad, as I was, that we should make the last ride together.
‘Now go, fetch Aneirin his rowan branches,’ said our new lord. Several of us went down to the southwestern corner of the fort together. The rowan tree which grew there was young and sappy, which was why it had not been cut long since, the leaf buds unfurling, feathering on the twigs. We hacked off seven branches and carried them back to the signal tower, where others of our kind had arrived before us with dead branches and brushwood that had been gathered for fires in earlier days. We carried it all up the narrow stone stairway that led round the inside wall, and dropped it on the half-rotten timber baulks that yet made a kind of floor; Aneirin, like some great brooding bird of prey in his weatherwarm cloak watching us the while. A flash a blue deeper than any kingfisher at the breast showed where under the dim folds he was wearing his singing-robe, and his harp in its mare-skin bag lay nearby; and we paused for a moment, all of us hoping there might be a song, though a small one.
‘Shall we build you a hearth?’ someone said.
He put out his hand to a big block of stone thrusting out from the wall just above floor level. ‘I have my hearth already.’
‘Then shall we make the fire?’ Faelinn asked.
And someone else, ‘Have you the means to light it?’
‘Make us a good mist, harper dear,’ I said.
He smiled in his ragged beard, ‘Nay, children, I will build the fire, I have the means to light it. It may be that the gods will send us a mist. Now go your ways.’
Clearly what came after was not for our eyes, and if there was singing it would not be for us. We bowed our heads one by one to the old man who we should not see again, and went back down the stairway.
At the foot of the stair I checked and the others went on without me. There were house martins darting to and fro overhead, their shadows darting after them in the evening light, about the business of nest building in the wall holes where tie beams had rotted away. Presently there would be new life in the old dead signal tower. I found the thought vaguely comforting, though I was not sure why. And as I looked up at them, they brought the memory of other house martins in the doorway of the bath house at home, and with it the thought of Conn. Oh, I should see him when we gathered to eat, but I wanted something else, a few quiet moments for saying goodbye …
I had used my sword - Gorthyn’s sword - to cut rowan branches, and the keenness might have suffered. A good blade should take such service without much harm, but it could maybe do with a few strokes of the whetstone; and that would make good enough reason for my absence if Cynan asked for me - I was no longer free and lordless as I had been since Gorthyn’s death.
‘Tell Cynan I have taken my sword to the smithy. Not long I’ll be,’ I called after Faelinn.
And sword in hand I took my way to the armourer’s shop. Surprisingly, firelight met me on the threshold. Conn and his mates had got together the fuel for one last fire, and were working steadily, plunging weapons into the red heart of it. Mostly captured Saxon weapons, but any of our own that we should not be carrying with us tonight. Iron that is forged and tempered by fire can be made useless by fire also.
The boy looked up first and saw me in the doorway, and said something over his shoulder to Conn whose back was towards me. And Conn turned, flinging a ruined sword blade on to the pile in the corner.
‘One less for the Sea-wolves’ taking,’ he said.
I held Gorthyn’s sword out to him. ‘Has the whetstone gone the same way yet? I have been cutting rowan branches -’
He took it from me and crossed into the furthest part of the smithy, and I heard the ‘whet-whet-whet’ of the sharpening stone. In a little he came back, feeling the edge with his thumb. ‘That should serve its purpose well enough.’
I took it and slid it home into the wolfskin sheath.
Neither of us knew what to say to each other. But standing there in the smoke-blackened mouth of the smithy we put our arms round each other’s shoulders and strained close. ‘It is but five springs since my father gave us to each other,’ I said after a few moments, ‘yet it seems as though we came into life together.’
‘And the grief is on me that we may not go out of it together also.’
I forced a kind of laugh, not a very good one for it cracked in my throat. ‘Somebody has to get Aneirin back to the King, and it will take the four of you at least, for his heart is not in it.’
And he laughed also, and step
ped back so that only the tips of our fingers rested on each other’s shoulders.
‘When you get back to Dyn Eidin-’ I began.
‘If I get back to Dyn Eidin.’
‘You will.’ I knew that, because suddenly I saw the pattern that was forming for Conn; and when the Fates set their pattern on your forehead it does not melt away. ‘When you get back to Dyn Eidin, go you to Fercos - glad he will be to have you back - and work for him until you may call yourself a sword- smith; then go back to the valley.’
‘No bondman may become a smith.’
‘And you are a smith, and therefore no longer a bondman. If you are a swordsmith, then you will be able to take Loban’s place when he is past swinging a hammer - which cannot be long now - seeing that he has no son to follow him. Meanwhile, carry my love back to Luned and-Old Nurse, and anyone else who you think may care to have it, and rub Gelert behind the ears for me.’
‘You were always one to make patterns of other people’s lives for them,’ Conn said.
‘Can you think of any better pattern for the following?’
He shook his head. ‘Not really, no - unless it be to ride with you an hour after moonrise.’
So we parted, and I went to find Cynan.
The light was beginning to thicken, and as I passed the foot of the old signal tower, a waft of wood smoke came trailing downward from its ragged crest, and I thought I caught the sound of singing. So faint that I was not really sure that I heard it at all; faint as the sea in a shell, but oddly potent. A high sweet singing, that had nothing human in it - and that seemed to be made by more than one voice.
And the hair lifted a little on the back of my neck.
18
The Shining Company
We ate meat that evening as men should do before battle, for there were a few more horses than there were men to ride them, and we ate with our war-harness - dead men’s harness for the shieldbearers - already on, and dead men’s weapons lying beside us. The other horses had already been watered and fed - with a mere handful of fodder each, the last scraping of the Saxon forage store. If any man had asked me a few days since if I could chew my way through half raw horseflesh and enjoy it, knowing that within an hour I should almost certainly be dead, I should have thought them mad; but a fierce lightness of heart was upon us, and we shared the half raw meat among us, aye, and the laughter, too, and only wished that we might have had harpsong for our feasting. But Aneirin had matters of his own to see to, and still the faint waft of burning rowan wood drifted across the fort from the crest of the old signal tower.