Phaedrus was seeing inside the darkness of his head, the white mask-like face under the silver moon head-dress, with the look in the eyes that he could not read. The face of Liadhan’s daughter. ‘How if I refuse?’ he demanded, his voice thick in his throat.
The dark brows lifted a little. ‘You will not refuse. You are the King.’
Phaedrus made one desperate effort to beat down the tawny wolf’s gaze that would not leave his face, but he was trapped, and he knew it, and knew also, raging inwardly, that he was ham-strung in this battle of wills by the fact that he had been a slave too long, trained to obey as a thing that had no right to any will of its own, and the training had left scars and weak places in him like an old wound that lets you down when you least expect it.
He turned the thing into an ugly jest. ‘So, I will take Liadhan’s daughter for my woman. But “like mother like daughter”, they say. Will you promise not to let her eat me and choose another king, seven Midwinter Fires from now?’
He dared not meet Conory’s eyes, lest he should see scorn in them, or worse still, the look of a man making allowance for a friend.
10
THE KING-MAKING
PHAEDRUS OPENED HIS eyes into complete darkness, and lay for a while trying to remember where he was, trying to pierce back through the black sleep that had come down like a curtain between him and some strange, shadowy half-world on the other side of it. Three days, they had said – someone had said – three days and three nights for the Horse Lord before he came back to life. But surely it had been longer than that, whole years longer than that. Or had there perhaps never been a beginning to it, and would there never be an end?
He made a sudden panic movement, and the pain and stiffness of his body seemed to tear apart the feeling of nightmare that had begun to rise in his throat, so that he remembered where he was and what was happening to him. He turned his head cautiously, and saw a little way off, the few red gleeds of a dying fire. There had been many fires in this place where the little Dark People had laid their dead Chiefs away, when they were the lords of the land; he had seen the dark scars of them on floor and roof, at the beginning, when there were torches to see by. The Place of Life, they called it, this place where now the boys came at their initiation mysteries, and the Horse Lord must lie for his three days and nights among the dead.
He had not been alone in the tomb-chamber. Vaguely he could remember now the Sun Priests coming and going about him; silent figures in horse-hide cloaks and aprons, their heads shaved save for the broad centre crest. The strange-smelling herbs that they had burned in the fire, the ritual patterns of sound and movement that they had woven round him. Dreams there had been, too, that seemed to come from the smoke of the fire, dreams of having four legs and a heart like flame, and running with a four-legged herd of kindred, in a thunder of hooves and a sky-wide flying of manes and tails. Strange wild dreams of freedom such as no mortal man had ever known.
He moved again, carefully, testing out his body, and the stiffened smart of the new tattoo marks on breast and shoulders brought him fully back to himself with a rush, and to wondering why, in the name of all the Gods that ever man had prayed to, he had got into that fight at the wine-booth. Why hadn’t he simply hitched up his bundle and turned south, the moment the gates of the Gladiators’ School closed behind him? He might have been in Londinium, a free trainer in some other school, perhaps, by now; his own master among his own kind. Even when Gault came, why hadn’t he pretended to agree, and waited his chance and run as though all the fiends of Tartarus were after him? He supposed he had grown so used to thinking no more than one day ahead that when Gault and Sinnoch had put the scheme to him, and when he was with Midir, it had only seemed like a wild adventure to set out on, and he had not realized that it was for all the rest of his life.
To the end of his life, he was Midir the Horse Lord, and when he came to the end he would be laid in much such a place as this, with a sword to his hand and a pot of heather-beer to cheer him on the dark journey, and be remembered by a name that was not his, by a people who were not his, either.
Meanwhile, wasn’t it time that somebody came? How much longer? Soon the last gleeds of the fire would dim and go out . . . Suddenly the darkness was bearing down on him with all the weight of piled stone and turf between him and the world of living men, suffocating and engulfing him, crushing him out of existence. There was a drumming sound all about him, quicker and quicker, and a strange, animal panting that seemed to echo back from the unseen walls, and he did not realize that he was hearing his own heartbeats and his own hurrying breaths. He thrust back the soft, skin rug in which he was wrapped, and struggled to an elbow, then into a sitting position, groaning as every stiffened fibre of his body twinged in protest.
There was a stir and a flicker of torchlight far off at the entrance to the tomb-chamber, as though someone on watch there had only been waiting for some sound of movement to tell them he was awake, and figures came ducking in along the low tunnel. After so long in the dark, the sudden light of the torches they carried jabbed at Phaedrus’s eyes, half blinding him, so that it was a few moments before he could see that the foremost of the torch-bearers was Conory, for once without his cat, and with two more of the Companions at his back.
‘It was a good sleep?’ Conory asked the ritual question.
And Phaedrus gathered his wits to make the ritual answer: ‘A good sleep. And a good waking.’
The Companions were setting their torches into the makeshift stands of crossed spears that stood ready for them against the walls, and the light, flaring upward, splashed the great in-curving stones with honey colour, till they ran in to meet at the great fire-blackened lintelstone high overhead. It was like a giant beehive, Phaedrus thought suddenly. It was easy to imagine the wild bees nesting up there, filling the chamber with their deep song – would the rib-cage of a dead Chieftain make a good framework for a honeycomb?. . .
‘It is time to be making ready,’ said Conory’s voice in his ear. And he pulled himself together and straightened his mind from its wandering with an effort. There were so many things he wanted to ask. So much could have happened during these three days and nights that he had been shut away from the world of living men. He wanted to know if there had been any word of Liadhan and what had happened to her priests – those that had not died in the fighting – how many of the tribe had died on either side, how the rising had fared in the farther parts of Earra-Ghyl. But all that must wait. He had been well drilled by Gault in how he must behave during this time of being made ready. So he drank the dark, bitter-tasting brew in the bronze cup that Conory gave him, and got stiffly and awkwardly to his feet, the floor dipping and side swimming under him, until whatever was in the drink took effect, and the world steadied somewhat; and stood to be decked out for his King-Making, like a sacrificial bull for the slaughter, he thought, and had a moment’s insane desire to laugh.
In silence, Conory and the Companions combed his hair and bound it back with thongs as though for battle, and dressed him in breeks and tunic that they had brought with them. They hung round his neck an ancient clashing necklace of river-gold, amber, and cornelian, and a broad collar of heron-hackles; sheathed a leaf-shaped dagger with a gold pommel-mount at his side and sprang on to each arm a pair of coiled bronze arm-rings that he seemed to have seen before. It was a few moments before he remembered when, and where, and that it was not the arm-rings alone; and then, looking down, he saw the dark clotted patch where Logiore’s blood had sunk into the heron-hackles.
They gave him a spear with a collar of black horsehair. And lastly, they set on his head the great maned and crested head-dress of the Horse Lord. He felt the scalp-cap gripping, from his brows to the nape of his neck, and the side fringes with their little gold disks that swung against his cheeks and chimed at every movement of his head, felt the heavy balance of the great arched stallion crest and the sweep of the mane between his shoulders, and for the last time before they faded altogether
, he remembered those dreams of racing four-legged among the horse-herd.
He crouched his way down the arched tunnel followed by the three Companions, his head ducked low between his shoulders to keep the great crest clear of the roof, and stood erect on the threshold, between the huge stone entrance posts; then stalked forward into the flare of pine-knot torches, where the rest of the Companions waited for him, and beyond the standingstones of the forecourt, horses were being walked to and fro in the bitter dark. After the still and heavy air of the tomb-chamber, the thin wind of the winter night seemed to whine through his very bones, and the torchlight was flecked with spitting sleet. The warriors raised a great clamour at sight of him, drumming their spears across the rims of their bucklers. Then someone – Phaedrus saw that it was the boy Brys – brought him a red horse with a mealy mane and tail, and he made the steed-leap on his spear, and was away, the others mounting and pounding after him – Conory a bare half length behind, lest at any time he should be uncertain of the way.
Down every narrow side glen as he headed south, from every rath and village among the snow-puddled moors, mounted men came in to join them, many carrying torches, until the whole countryside was speckled with flame; herdsmen on little, sure-footed hill-ponies, ragged-fleeced in their winter coats, men in their best cloaks and carrying their finest weapons; here and there a knot of men on fine horses with the Arab strain in them; once a fat man with a flame-red beard, riding a mare with twin foals at heel. More and more, until Phaedrus found himself riding at the head of a fiery cloud of horsemen, that churned the glen trails to a puddled slush; and his ears were full of the soft, rolling thunder of hooves and the exultant throat-cries of the riders.
It was midnight when they set out on that wild ride, and dawn was not far off when they came in sight of Dun Monaidh across the marshes; dark-humped against the half-thawed, half-frozen snow that pooled and paledappled Mhoin Mhor, and crowned with torches. The men set up great shouts at the sight, heels were struck into horses’ flanks, and the whole mass drummed forward into a gallop, strung out along the looping causeway track, splashing through the paved ford, and sweeping left-hand wise to come at the fortress track. A flying skein of horsemen were out from the Dun itself, sweeping down to meet them at the foot of the fortress hill; and all around him was a great shouting above the smother of hooves; saffron and black and crimson cloaks flying in the torch-flare and the spitting sleet, weapons tossed up and caught again.
So with a great riding of horsemen before and behind him, Phaedrus swept on up the steepening track and in for the second time through the gates of Dun Monaidh, and reined in before the tall Pillar Stone.
The Sun Priests were there, and their chanting rose into the pallor of the winter dawn, full-voiced and strong in the invocation to Lugh of the Shining Spear; and there also were the elders of the Kindred, to receive him as he swung down from the red horse. Tuathal the Wise stood foremost among his priests, wrapped in his horse-hide robe, with the amber sun-cross on his breast: he came forward and put a stone-hilted dagger with a strange, leaf-shaped copper blade into Phaedrus’s hand. A knot of young warriors were bringing up the sacred white stallion.
Midir, and later Gault, had warned him that he would have this to do, this making of the Horse Sacrifice before the Pillar Stone of the Royal House. ‘I am no priest and no butcher,’ he had said angrily. ‘I have killed men but not horses; I shall bungle it.’ And Gault had said, in the tone of one giving an order he will have obeyed:
‘You will not bungle it! A clumsy killing is taken as an ill omen, and there will be no room for ill omens, that day.’
And he did not bungle it, or not much. A clean kill enough, though the white horse reared up, screaming defiance as a stallion screams in battle, when he felt his death upon him, tearing at the ropes and swinging the men who held them from side to side. For one moment he towered over Phaedrus like a great wave before it breaks, ready to come plunging down and engulf him. Then the powerful haunches gave way, and the great horse crashed sideways to the ground, gave one convulsive shudder, and lay still. Tomorrow there would be a new Lord of the Sacred Horse-herd.
There was a smell of blood mingling with the smell of burning that still clung about scorched timber and blackened thatch, and a great wailing rose from the watching crowd. The old High Priest dipped a finger in the blood and made a sign with it on Phaedrus’s forehead, above the Mark of the Horse Lord. And the wailing of the Women’s Side was taken up and engulfed by a triumphant roar from the men, and that in turn was drowned in the deep booming splendour of sound that seemed to loosen the very thoughts in one’s head, as two of the priests raised and sounded the huge, curved bronze trumpets of the Sun that had not been heard in Dun Monaidh for seven years.
The torches were quenched and the grey light of dawn all about them, as Phaedrus was led up through the Dun, the Sun Priests going ahead, the Companions and Kindred, and then a great comet-tail of people following on behind, until they came to the court next below the Citadel, where the Rock of the Footprint jutted up from the natural outcrop; the Crowning Stone of the Dalriads.
There were more things to be done, but they were short and soon over; mare’s milk to be drunk from a battered black pottery bowl that was never used save at the King-Making; a ritual washing of hands and feet in the bowl-shaped depression at one end of the same great rock slab, where the gathered sky-water was more than half-melted sleet; the priests with short prancing steps making sacred patterns of words and movements that passed him by like a dream. They had brought the freshly flayed hide of the King Horse, and spread it across the end of the stone opposite to the bowl depression, so that it covered the third thing that was cut there: the wild boar beloved of warriors.
Sleet was still spitting down the wind, but the yellow bar of a low dawn edged the eastern sky, and as Phaedrus mounted the Crowning Stone, and with his left foot on the hide of the King Horse, set his right into the deep-cut footprint that had held the right foot of every king of the Dalriads since first they came from Erin across the Western Sea, the first sunlight struck the high snow-filled corries of distant Cruachan.
Gault brought the spear of Lugh, and put it into his hand in place of the other that he had brought with him from the Place of Life. Conory knotted the sheath thongs of the King’s sword to his belt. Now they were loosening the bindings of the stallion head-dress, lifting it away. Tuathal the High Priest was standing on the horse-hide beside him, holding up a narrow circlet of fiery pale gold that caught the morning light for an instant in a ripple of white fire, like the leaves of the white aspen when they blow up against the sun. Phaedrus bent his head to receive it, felt it pressed down on to his brows.
The bronze Sun Trumpets were sounding again; the deep earthshaking note booming out over the marshes and the hills and the high moors, to be caught up from somewhere on the very edge of hearing, and passed on, carrying the word from end to end of Earra-Ghyl that there was a Horse Lord again in Dun Monaidh.
11
ROYAL HUNT
THE NEXT TIME Phaedrus woke, it was to the flicker of fire-light through eyelids still half gummed together with sleep and the morning sky milk-silver beyond the smoke-hole in the crown of the King’s Place roof. He lay for a few moments basking in the sense of wellbeing that lapped him round; the aching stiffness and the leaden weight of exhaustion all washed away by the black warm tide of sleep. Then gradually a weight of some other kind settled on him in its place as he remembered. Yesterday he had been crowned Horse Lord, but today was the day of his marriage to the Royal Woman.
He opened his eyes and came to one elbow with something between a groan and a curse; and a small rhythmic sound that had been going on all the while without his noticing it, stopped abruptly. The young warrior Brys, squatting by the great fire that glowed warmly in the centre of the big square hut, looked up alertly from the great war-spear with the black horsehair collar he had been burnishing across his knee.
Phaedrus scowled, startled fo
r the moment at finding he was not alone. ‘What in Typhon’s name are you doing here?’
‘I was burnishing your gear and weapons while you slept, Lord. Gault bade me come to serve you.’
‘Gault!’ Something in Phaedrus seemed to snap. ‘Gault bids this thing – Gault bids that thing – Gault will choose me my armour-bearer, and my wife—’ He checked at sight of Brys’s face, and quietened his tone somewhat. ‘You have served me well; that spear blade looks as though it had this morning come fresh from the armourer’s hands. Now go back to your own Lord, and if you should be seeing Gault on the way, tell him I thank him for his care of me, but I will choose my own armour-bearer.’
There was a moment’s pause, and then Brys said, ‘My own Lord is dead.’
And suddenly Phaedrus was remembering the place where the fortress stream dived through the outer wall, and Brys holding the torch that called that answering gleam from the silver apples under the water. Gault had said, ‘Your Lord Gallgoid,’ and the boy had said, ‘My Lord Gallgoid is dead.’ He rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead, trying to clear the confusion that still blurred all the edges of that night. ‘Of course. You will be – you will have been Gallgoid’s armour-bearer.’
‘His armour-bearer and his charioteer.’
‘It is in my mind that to suit Gallgoid, a charioteer would need to be good at his trade.’
‘I am,’ Brys said with conviction.
‘Sa – and modest as well. And now you would be mine?’
‘I am of the Kindred,’ the boy said proudly, stating his claim. ‘You would not be remembering; I was only in my first year in the Boys’ House when you – when the Bad Thing happened. But I am of the Kindred.’
‘Gallgoid had no one with him all that moon and more that he was with me in the Cave of the Hunter.’