All the while Midir the Priest sat hunched in his bull’s-hide robe, seemingly oblivious of all that went on around him. When you saw him so, Drem thought, it was hard to believe that he was that Other One, the One red with bull’s blood at the sacred slaying when the Need Fires burned on the Hill of Gathering; whose voice was like a storm wind when he spoke from the Sun Lord to the people on Midsummer mornings. He was just a tired old man making little breath-puffings in his beard, Drem thought, and then hurriedly made the sign to avert evil, because it was dangerous to think such things.
‘And is this, then, the last of the things that you have to show?’ Dumnorix asked at last, handing back a pony’s breast ornament that had the curve of a breaking wave.
There was a little silence, and then the smith said, ‘Na, there is one thing more, though not of my forging—and maybe a strange thing for a bronze-smith to be carrying in his bales.’
He took up something wrapped by itself in a piece of woollen cloth, and unwrapped it and set it in the Chieftain’s broad hands.
Dumnorix the Chieftain looked up swiftly. ‘The light fades, and I must see this thing. Bring a torch.’
Vortrix slid from his place at his father’s feet, and disappeared into the house-place, returning in a few moments with a smoking torch that he must have taken down from its sconce against the roof tree, for there was a faint sound of protest from within, as of a woman left to weave by firelight. With the coming of the torch, the misty twilight seemed to deepen behind the shoulders of the tribesmen, though it had still been almost daylight the moment before. As the whole circle gathered closer, Drem saw that there was something strange, something very strange indeed, about the dagger in the Chieftain’s hands. It was the wrong colour: not the familiar sun-colour of bronze, but a kind of dim moon-colour, fish-scale colour, as the Chieftain tipped it towards the torch, and the light ran like water along the blade.
‘Sa, what is this thing—this grey metal?’ said Dumnorix, testing the blade gingerly with a finger.
‘It is called iron,’ said the stranger.
A murmur ran round the circle. They had heard of iron. It was strong magic.
‘So this is iron. I have heard of it, but never held it in my hand until today,’ Dumnorix said.
‘Nor I, until three moons since, and I paid a heavy price for it to the yellow-haired giant out of the land of Mist-forests across the Great Water, for this one piece to carry away with me.’
‘How is it greater than bronze?’ someone asked, out of the torch-lit circle.
‘How? It is much harder, it remains keen when bronze grows blunted, therefore it calls less often for the sharpening stone and does not dull in the midst of battle. It is to bronze what bronze is to copper, what copper is to flint. See now, and I will show you.’ The stranger held out his hand. ‘Let Dumnorix the Chieftain give me back my dagger, and draw his own as for battle—so.’
Dumnorix laughed, and flashed the slim bronze dagger from his belt. The stranger’s blow was as swift and fierce as the strike of a viper. Bronze and iron rang together, and the smith, with a thin, triumphant smile on his dark face, and no glance at the dagger in his hand, held it out to Dumnorix again, saying, ‘Take it, and look now at both blades.’
Frowningly, the Chieftain did so. Then he gave a low exclamation, half of wonder, half of disgust.
‘You see?’ said the smith.
‘I see. Aye, I see well enough.’ Dumnorix frowned at the blade a moment longer, then to his tribesmen, ‘Look you, and see also.’
The two daggers were passing from hand to hand, heads bent over them, men turning to look at each other, and the murmur running from one to another, ‘Ha! This is a strange thing! A strange thing indeed!’
Talore leaned forward and took first one and then the other into his hand; and Drem, peering over his arm, saw that there was a great notch in the edge of the bronze blade; but the moon-coloured blade was unmarked. Lying across Talore’s thigh, it had a look of power, a lean, dark look of meance; this strange new beast that had bitten a piece out of the Chieftain’s dagger. Greatly daring, he reached out and touched it; and felt that it was strong magic under his hand.
‘This is a thing and a most wonderful thing, my brothers,’ Talore said. ‘Surely in the time to come, men armed with weapons such as this will be the masters of men whose weapons are of bronze.’
Suddenly Midir the Priest stirred in his bull’s-hide robe, and leaned forward, his eyes—narrow dark eyes with a gleam of gold behind them, like dark sunlight—turned upon the strange grey dagger. Talore laid it before him with a deep courtesy; and the old man put out a thin, blue-veined hand and touched it as it lay, but did not take it up. He shook his head. ‘I like not this strange new magic. The God forfend that this cold grey metal should ever master bronze. Aye, aye, I see the notch. I hear what ye all hear and see what ye all see. Yet we are the Sun People, and it is in my heart that bronze is of the Sun, and this cold iron only of the earth. As the little Dark People are the people of the blue flint, so we are the people of the shining bronze; our day is the day of bronze as theirs was the day of flint; and in a world where iron rules, we shall rule no longer. Aiee, Aiee! It will be a cold grey world, and the kings and the heroes will be dead.’
‘But if we can come by such weapons as that—’ began the Chieftain, pointing.
The stranger bronze-smith shook his head, answering them both. ‘The man who carries an iron dagger will be the lord of the man who carries a bronze one; but it is in my mind that there will never be many such men, nor many such weapons.’
‘Why so, then?’ Dumnorix demanded.
‘For this reason: that it is only in the Mist-forests across the Great Water that they have the secret of the fire—ah, many times hotter than the fire we raise to work our bronze—that will melt the grey metal and make it workable. It is only the giants of the Mist-forests who have the magic of the fire and the magic of the grey metal.’
‘Yet to be one of the few would be a fine thing,’ Dumnorix said. ‘A fine thing indeed,’ and he looked up suddenly. ‘I will give you the price of three bronze daggers for the grey blade.’
The smith shook his head, and took up the dagger again. ‘Can strong magic be bought for the price of three bronze daggers? The thing is not for sale.’
‘Yet you spoke of a heavy price that you gave for it, to the man of the Mist-forests.’
‘Aye—of a sort.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘A woman,’ said the bronze-smith. ‘And I was not yet tired of her.’ He saw the idea in the Chieftain’s face, and laughed. ‘Na, na, I want none of your little dark slave women. If the dagger was worth more to me than one woman, why should I now trade it for another?’
Midir spoke again. ‘Why indeed? Let you take your dagger on towards the Sunset, friend; it is in my mind that we do better without its cold grey magic.’
The bronze-smith checked in the act of reaching for the piece of yellow cloth in which the thing had been wrapped, and cast one of his dark, mocking glances at the old Priest. ‘None so cold and none so grey is the magic of this dagger of mine, Holy One. See, I will show you—’ Still holding the dagger, he slipped a hand into his mantle, and brought out from somewhere about himself the flint of his strike-a-light, and struck it upon the blade. They all saw the sparks fly out, golden and fiercely bright from the moon-grey blade, and again a murmur, a marvelling ran through the circle.
‘See you? It is not the warm bronze of the sun, but there is fire at the heart of it, none the less, this cold grey metal. Did I not say that it was strong magic? Who shall say what strange thing it can do?’ The bronze-smith glanced about him, triumphantly, at the eager, torch-lit faces; and as he did so, it seemed that his eyes were caught and held—held so that he could not look away.
A sudden stillness took him; and his hand slackened on the dagger so that it dropped from his fingers, and stood quivering in the turf before him. ‘Surely the cold iron is indeed a strong magic,?
?? he said, as though he found it difficult to speak. ‘But even I did not know that it could raise ghosts.’
Drem craned round with all the rest in the direction of the bronze-smith’s startled gaze and saw that a knot of girls, returned from the bramble picking, had come to hover on the outskirts of the little crowd, eager as the others to see what treasures the stranger bronze-smith had spread before the Chieftain’s door. And among them was Blai; Blai, not hanging back as she generally did when she was with the other girls, but pressing boldly to the fore, her dark gaze fixed on his face, as his was fixed on hers.
It was the time of evening, between the lights, not full dusk yet no longer daylight, when all things seem a little insubstantial; and standing there almost beyond the reach of the torchlight, Blai with her wan, narrow face and huge, dark eyes did indeed look like something not of the day-time world—as though if the wind blew she might waver in it like weed in flowing water.
But almost in the same instant before the dagger had ceased to quiver where it fell, the bronze-smith seemed to have recovered himself, and crooked a finger to her as a man might crook a finger to a hound. ‘You—if you are there in truth—come you here to me.’
And amid a sudden hush, Blai came and stood before him. She carried a rush basket half full of blackberries on her hip, and there were stains of blackberry juice about her mouth that somehow made her look more transparent than ever.
‘What do they call you?’ said the bronze-smith.
‘I am called Blai.’ The stillness that had been in him seemed to have crossed into her; only suddenly she smiled.
‘From whose house-place?’
‘From the house-place of Cathlan the Old, away yonder where the cattle way comes up through the Chalk from the Marshes and the Great Water.’
‘So, the track inland. I remember the track,’ the stranger said, half under his breath.
Midir, who, it seemed, had not gone so far away inside himself as usual, leaned forward, his gaze narrowed on the stranger’s face. ‘Maybe you also remember the house-place? And the woman who died there? Were you tired of her, too?’
And suddenly Drem understood. They all understood, the big golden Chieftain and the hunters gathered in the torchlight, and the children who had crowded up to see what came out of the yellow pack bales; and Blai.
But as Drem cast a startled look at Blai, he saw that somehow she had known, even before the stranger called her out to him. This was the thing that she had clung to all her years, all those many times when she had cried out defiantly in the face of all ills. ‘One day—my father will come back for me!’ Now it had happened, and something about it was wrong—horribly wrong.
The bronze-smith glanced aside at the Priest, a mocking and a challenging look. ‘Aye, I remember the house-place,’ he said. ‘But I did not know that it was so near.’ He knelt upon one knee, and reaching out, set a long forefinger under Blai’s chin, and tipped her face to the torchlight. But there was no gentleness in the finger, and none in his face as he stared long and hard into hers; so that slowly the smile grew uncertain, became a pathetic little grimace, and died. ‘Now by the Song of the Silver Branch, here’s a strange thing to come about!’ he said at last. ‘Aye, you’re like the woman your mother; the same whey face and goggle eyes; but at least there was fire in her—like the secret fire within the heart of this grey dagger of mine; and a man might warm his hands at it—aye, and burn his fingers too! But you—faugh! You’re like a damp cobweb.’
Abruptly he dropped his hand. ‘So, it is enough. Away with you and carry your blackberries home.’
Blai did not move. She stood as though she had struck root, still carefully holding the basket of blackberries, staring into his face as though she were trying to understand. There was a crimson mark on her jaw bone, where his finger had been.
‘Well, what do you wait for?’ the stranger said; and then, as he stared, his mouth curled into a slow, cruel smile. ‘Ah, so, that is the way of it? You thought that I had come for you? You small fool, I had forgotten your existence until this twilight! And if I had indeed come so, what should I want with such a whey-faced thing as you are?’ And he flung up his head in laughter; dark, flashing, wicked laughter.
Blai drew back very slowly, like one walking in her sleep, her eyes still fixed on his face; and there were shadows under them the colour of the blackberry stains about her mouth. As she did so, he leaned forward, laughing still, and caught up a bronze ring-brooch from the shining tumble on the yellow bale-cloth, and tossed it towards her like one tossing a bone to a dog. ‘Never let it be said that I failed to furnish a dowry for my own daughter, though I’m thinking it would take a bigger dowry than that—I’m thinking it would take a whole herd of milch mares, to tempt any man to take such a grey thing to his hearth. There—take it, you poor, pale moth.’
Drem hoped that she would leave it lying there, but still with that wide, horrified sleep-walker’s gaze on the bronze-smith’s face, she crouched down and felt for it, and took it up, very slowly. Then she turned and ran.
Some of the other children shouted after her, hooting and jeering; Luga called out, trying to mimic her high silvery voice: ‘One day—one day my father will come! Yah!—and fetch me away on a horse with a golden bridle!’
Talore suddenly withdrew his hand from Drem’s shoulder. It was a gesture like slipping a hound from leash. But Drem did not need it. He had no particular fondness for Blai; but she was of his hearth fire, and that was enough. He sprang up, Whitethroat at his heels, and began to push his way out through the circle, glaring about him at his own kind, especially at Luga, whose ankle he managed to kick in passing, and went with his freckled nose in the air after the small, desolate figure disappearing into the dusk.
She was right down by the brook before he caught up with her, Whitethroat bounding ahead to nuzzle his head against her—oddly enough she was the one person in Whitethroat’s world, apart from Drem himself, to whom the great hound ever paid any attention. But Blai took no notice of Whitethroat, not this evening. She was standing on the steep bank where it almost overhung the water above the sloping cattle-place, holding the ring-brooch in her hands. And the basket lay overturned beside her, with the little, dark bramble-fruit scattered in the grass. She turned as Drem came up, and stood there like a little wild thing cornered, with the drop to the stream behind her. ‘Have you come to laugh at me too? The others all laughed at me.’
‘Na,’ Drem said. ‘I came because they laughed.’
‘Did you, Drem?’ Blai said, in a small aching voice. ‘Did you truly?’
He scowled fiercely, swinging on his heels. ‘You are of my hearth fire.’ Then in a rough attempt at comfort: ‘You should be glad that he will not take you away with him. We are much better to be with than he is!’
Blai looked at him in silence, her narrow white face set in the twilight; and he had a feeling that she was older than he was, much, much older, which was foolishness because he had seen eleven summers and she only nine.
‘You have spilled all your blackberries,’ he said, because he didn’t like the silence. ‘What will you do with the brooch that he threw at you?’
Something happened in Blai, like the moment when the bronze-smith had struck at the strange grey dagger blade with his flint, and fire sprang out under the blow, so that watching her with his mouth open, Drem thought that the bronze-smith had been wrong about Blai, after all. ‘This!’ she cried, and spat on the bronze circle in her hand, with the savagery of a cat spitting; then whirled about to the stream and flung it from her into the deep water under the bank.
It struck the surface with a plop like a trout leaping, like the stone that Luga had thrown at the kingfisher, and peering down, Drem saw the ring-ripples spreading out and out in the shadowy water, with a faint gleam of light in the curve of each ripple, as though a trout had leapt there; no more. And then the last ripple touched the bank and was gone.
Blai said, ‘That was not my father. Something happened to my
father so that he could not come back. And now he will not ever come. He will not—ever—come.’
VI
The Boys’ House
NEXT DAY DREM heard that the bronze-smith had moved on, taking with him the strange grey dagger with the fire at its heart, despite all the Chieftain’s efforts to make him part with it; and Dumnorix the lord of three hundred spears had gone to look for a bear to kill, to ease his temper.
Blai never spoke of what had happened, and when the other children taunted her with it she cried out on them as though amazed that they could be so foolish. ‘That was not my father! Something happened to my father so that he could not come back!’ Nothing would shake her in that. It was almost as though she believed it herself. Drem’s mother was gentler to her than usual in those days, but being gentle with Blai, it seemed, was no good; she merely shrank away, like a wild thing backing from a kind hand, looking sideways and showing its teeth.
So that winter came and wore away, and the year came up again out of the dark. The whitethorn of the steading hedge was curdled with blossom, and there were young calves to bring in and stall in the hurdled-off part of the house-place; that year’s new warriors were made, in the night and the day before Beltane, and the Beltane fires blazed on the Hill of Gathering, before the grave mound of the forgotten champion who slept there; and it was time for Drem to go to the Boys’ House.
The Boys’ House stood in the garth of the Chieftain’s steading, among the other turf-thatched bothies that made up the Hall of Dumnorix. From their twelfth spring until the spring that they were fifteen years old, the boys of the Clan were brought up there, as it were at the Chieftain’s hearth. They learned the use of broad spear and throw-spear, sword and buckler and the long war-bow of the tribes. They learned to handle hound and pony; they hunted with the young hunters of the Clan, learning to follow a three-day-old spoor as though it were a blazed trail. They fought and wrestled together and grew strong; and together they learned to go cold and hungry, and to bear pain without flinching. And so, under the eyes of the Chieftain and of old Kylan who ruled the Boys’ House with his oxhide whip, the warriors of the Clan were made.