The Hadassah Covenant
‘I counselled him against leaving,’ said the other man angrily. ‘This is how I serve something greater.’
‘Yourself! Your greed!’
‘What else did Urtha serve if not himself? If not his greed? And all for a dream! Well, he should have been here. This quest of the three clans is a dream that will never come again. Orimodax has described enough of it, and what can be achieved, to persuade me that every man worth his shield would want to be a part of the greatest raid in the world. This will be spoken of and sung about when the sky itself lowers on the land. We have to go. And you have to stay. You are only half the man you were, Ambaros, but you have twice the wits. You’ll find a way to hold the fort.’
The line moved on. The ten uthiin stared hard at Ambaros as they passed, blank, hard faces, utterly without remorse or regret at their treachery. These men had once been his friends. It was as if he no longer knew them. They had dreams in their eyes, like a winter’s mist; they could see nothing but the unknown, and that unknown glittered with gold. Ambaros would have flung his short spear, but he was in no doubt that Cunomaglos would have flung it back with greater accuracy. And there were the children to think of.
Ambaros was shaking his head as he recounted this act of treachery, a desertion that I imagined was as bad, in his mind, as any wasteland. ‘After that, the tragedy,’ he finished. ‘We guarded the walls as best we could, and made provision for a retreat into hiding. We expected raids, perhaps a night attack from Ghostland itself—the dead have come against us in the past; your stronghold was built too close to one of their paths, Urtha.
‘But I swear on my shield, the riders that night came from the place beyond Ghostland. They were our Shadow Heroes! Out of the night, from the Beautiful Realm, they crossed the divide on a raid of incomprehensible fury. Among them was a woman, urging them on, her face veiled, her movements quick, her voice harsh and strange. Why would they do such a thing? We have all seen them from a distance, we’ve all stood on Morndun Hill and looked into the Bright Land. We’ve admired the horses, the gleam of armour, the flash of weapons, the turreted enclosures, the shimmering woods. Why would they turn against us? We stood no chance at all. I’m sorry for your wife and son…’
Urtha raised a pacifying hand to the older man. ‘I’m sorry for your daughter and your grandson. I know you would have fought like a madman to save them.’
Jason and Ullanna had listened patiently, understanding very little. When I had summarised Ambaros’s dreadful tale for them, Jason said with a shrug, ‘If this is that second wasteland that so worries you, then it was started by the man Brennos. This Dog Lord, who left you open to attack, would have gone with Orimodax anyway. You would still have been abandoned. This sounds like modern greed, not ancient prophesy, this desertion.
‘You’re back, now. You can reverse what has happened. You’re the king, after all.’
Urtha acknowledged Jason’s optimism. ‘I can’t reverse the death of my family and friends,’ he said grimly. ‘Though I shall certainly avenge them. Even my dogs turned against me. My three favourite hounds.’
‘Your dogs,’ Ambaros said with surprise. ‘No. They were the only three which stayed true when the others were bewitched and turned into killers. Ulgerd tried to protect your son Urien, but the boy thought he was being attacked and stabbed the dog. Even so, Ulgerd fought against the others, but he failed and Urien was unable to leave the house. I fear he’s dead. But Gelard and Maglerd carried Kymon and little Munda in their jaws, escaping up the valley. I followed. We were the only three to escape at that time, though these few sorry others limped after.’
Urtha was looking shocked, almost enraged. ‘The dogs saved my children’s lives?’
‘Carried them for hours,’ the older man said. ‘Saved them and made them safe, as if they’d been touched by magic. I’ll take you to them. Each child has a powerful protector in those dogs of yours.’
Urtha shook his head in despair. ‘No. I’d believed them to be killers. Their heads snarl silently from the gates. But for that act of misjudgement I’ll make amends.’
Ambaros was distressed. ‘You’ve killed them? Each day, after the attack, those dogs waited by the jetties, watching for you. It’s as if they could smell you coming home. They pined and cried for you, Urtha. They were ashamed of what had happened, that they’d been unable to save more than two.’
Urtha shook his head woefully. ‘I took that shame for guilt. I’ll make amends. But now, take me to my children!’
The older man hesitated only for a moment before saying, ‘I’ll take you to see them. That’s all I promised. They are two days’ ride away. Bring only who you need, we’re short of horses.’
Urtha asked for me and Ullanna. Two of Ambaros’s riders would come as well. Niiv and Jason returned to Argo, not without some argument on the part of the woman.
When we were packed and ready, Ambaros led the way from the camp to the river, but instead of turning back towards Argo, he cantered along a narrow track through the woods, going deeper into the hills.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fierce Eyes
The tired, slack-eyed horse that was supplied to me for the ride was not just an abandoned grazer, too old for Cunomaglos and the uthiin to have taken with them, too useful, still, to sacrifice, but was also small. For a tall man like myself, the experience of riding the animal was only a marginal improvement on that groin-straining journey by reindeer. I do not like riding with my toes dragging in thistles. I was soon at the rear of the small, straggling column of riders and complaining to Urtha.
‘I thought you keltoi were proud of your horses.’
‘We are. The best horses come from the land of the bolgae, over the sea. We often sail there and steal them. We breed them and train them more for turning ability than speed, if they’re to be chariot horses, and more for stamina than strength if they’ll be ridden to raid. But when they’re older, we let them roam free. They’ll always find their own grove to die. To come across a horse-shrine is considered very lucky.’
‘This one’s already got a grove in mind, I suspect.’
For two days we headed west through a series of deep, echoing gorges andsilent valleys, crossing over sparsely wooded hills, finally entering a forest of enormous depth, a place of shimmering, misty light, a green chapel where restless, curious movement disturbed the shadows.
It was not necessary to ask where we were going. Only one place could lie at the end of this tortuous journey. Ghostland, the Land of the Shadows of Heroes.
By the third morning, Urtha had resigned himself to a simple fact: that he would see, but not touch, his surviving son and daughter. We finally came out of the forest to find ourselves by a wide, fog-shrouded and slow-flowing river. Dark woodland rose behind a narrow pasture on the other side. Creatures had grazed there, and slipped down the muddy bank to drink.
We camped. Ambaros used a bull’s horn to blow a sequence of rising calls, repeating them throughout the afternoon. Animals came out of the dark forest to the river’s edge, staring at us before bolting back to cover: giant deer, bright-eyed wolves, two brown bears, a playful group of grey-backed lynx, a sullen troop of stark-ribbed, snarling dogs.
When the children came, Urtha cried. I sat with him, watching through drier eyes as the boy and girl approached and crouched at the water’s edge, staring at us as if they could only just make out our shapes. We were shadows to them, I felt sure of it. But they were curious, they could not resist the sound of the horn, and no doubt that curiosity had led them from their shelter to this limit of their new world. Behind them, staying close to the trees, I could just see the forms of three cowled, cloaked matrons.
‘How did they cross the river?’ Urtha finally asked. ‘No one can cross the river to that place.’
‘Your hounds dragged them there, and left them,’ Ambaros said. ‘Then crossed back as if the journey was as easy as a winter’s forest hunt. I’d followed them, trying to slow them, so I saw it all. Those three women ca
me from the trees and picked up the children, carrying them out of my sight. You had remarkable hounds, Urtha. More remarkable than you knew.’
‘But I can’t hold my daughter or mock-fight with my son. For all I know, they’re dead and what I’m seeing are their ghosts. That’s the land of shadows, over there, and they have no business running through its woods, not yet.’
I knew what was coming. I could feel the pressure of Urtha’s thought, as if some winged messenger had flown from one head to the other, a silent portent preceding the moment at which Urtha articulated his desperate need: can you help me cross the river, Merlin? Can you use a little charm?
‘Merlin … Is it in your power to take me over there? What would it cost you? I’ll be for ever in your debt.’
I was about to remind him that he was already in my debt, for the dream-journey at his fort, but I said nothing. His suggestion had frozen my blood; even the suggestion that he was about to make the suggestion had frozen my blood. I couldn’t cross this river, though the reason for the denial wasn’t clear at that moment.
The three matrons called softly to the children. Munda and Kymon returned to the forest, their curiosity unsatisfied, but almost at once alert to other childish interests. I heard their laughter as they chased a hare that had suddenly exploded from its cover on the open ground, bounding ahead of them into the trees.
Urtha was gloomy.
Ambaros suggested that we should now return to the caves, but Urtha said he would stay overnight—it was a fine evening, the sky clear, a pale three-quarter moon hanging in the blue—and I settled down to keep him company. Ullanna slipped away to hunt, while Ambaros constructed a simple shelter and built a fire ready for whatever she might bring back.
The day turned as dismal as Urtha’s mood, storm clouds sweeping across the sky, darkening the land. There was no sound of thunder and no sign of the storm, but that grey gloom over Ghostland flickered with lightning for a while and the ground shook, as if to the passing of riders. I sat with Ambaros at the river’s edge, sensing an approach from across the water but unable to glimpse more deeply into the realm.
Ambaros was uneasy. He carried a small horse-head amulet, a bone carving of Epona, and he rubbed it between thumb and forefinger, whispering to himself. Almost involuntarily, I did the same with the small ivory charm that Niiv had once given me.
The edge of the wood, where we had earlier seen the children, suddenly dissolved into the shapes of armoured men. They walked towards us, javelins and oval shields held loosely, short cloaks buckled at the shoulder. They were insubstantial and eerie, fifteen in all, one emerging at the rear—riding in a small chariot drawn by two ghost-white horses. This one rode the chariot to the water’s edge, turned it to display its right flank (not a challenge, then) and peered at me.
I was shocked. I recognised him at once. The shock passed away into confusion and I peered more closely. There was no doubt about it, this was the same dark-bearded, dark-eyed warrior whose consultation with the oracle in Makedonia I had eavesdropped. I was staring at Orgetorix. Jason’s son.
But this wasn’t possible. Everything told me that Orgetorix was with Brennos. That had been his destination after consulting the oracle. Was it possible he had been ambushed and killed, and now rode in Ghostland? But he was a Greeklander, not keltoi, despite adoption. Acheron, Elysia, those were his destinations if Time chose to take his breath away. How could he have changed his path to the land of his death?
Or then again, was he dead at all? It was hard to tell. The Shadow Realm denied my efforts to enter it with charm, filling me with a dread of trying and a sense of disaster when I tentatively probed it.
This place did not want me near it. It was making it clear that I was not welcome. That too startled me. As I thumbed the sedja Niiv had given me, I felt a voice whisper: you are still a small, small thing. You can’t always have what you want.
Ambaros was breathing steadily, peering hard across the river.
‘Can you see them too?’ I asked him.
‘They are part of the force that raided and destroyed the fort,’ the old warrior whispered hoarsely. ‘I recognise several of them. They are the Shadows of Heroes, and yet they killed without warning. I can’t understand why. But I can understand why they’re in Ghostland. They’re searching for Urtha’s children. That must be the reason.’
His sudden glance at me was anguished and afraid. Urtha himself was unaware of the visitors. He was among the trees, lost in his own thoughts. ‘How will we save them?’ Ambaros asked finally.
I had no answer for him.
‘They are not all the Shadows of Heroes,’ I said. ‘The man in the chariot is both a Greeklander and a dead man. I saw him alive nearly half a year ago. He must have been killed in that time. He’s a ghost.’
Ambaros was puzzled, then told me something that again made me reel with confusion. ‘No ghost, Merlin. He grew like the others. When I was Urtha’s age I saw him as a boy. He was training in that same chariot. It has an odd decoration on its battle side. I constantly glimpsed him, growing into a youth, then a man. He has a brother in Ghostland. I’ve not seen him, though, for years. We called them “brother wraiths”. Neither was part of the raid on Urtha’s fort.’
Then this was not Orgetorix. The man’s spirit could not have been in Alba’s heart for twenty years, while the body roamed in Makedonia and Greek Land. Could it?
No, this apparition (still staring back at me) was not the same young man who had questioned the oracle about his father. It was the simplest explanation. But when he wheeled the chariot around, turning a full circle before whipping the reins and setting the horses galloping silently along the river’s edge, so I saw the emblem painted on its battle flank: the head of Medusa! The same icon that had been on Orgetorix’s shield as he had waited, grimly, in the shade of the olive trees in the village.
I itched to know, but I would need to be across the river and the river wouldn’t let me cross. Or would it?
Taking a chance, I summoned the spirit of the swift, and looped and darted across the river towards Ghostland, turned back twice by its protective elemental forces before triumphantly flitting through to veer and swoop about the eerie band.
I brushed at Orgetorix with my wing, and he turned in surprise, following me with his eyes, his mind open for just a moment …
What turbulence! What turmoil!
This was no human mind; it was a screaming gathering of shades and wraiths, a jumble of memory, fragments of conversation, screeching and echoing like the forlorn hope of a dying man.
‘Who are you?’ Orgetorix asked, sensing my skulking presence within the darting bird. ‘Kinos? Is that you? Still playing tricks? Where are you, brother? Where are you hiding?’ There was an urgency in that whispered voice that matched the despair in the searching eyes.
And then the mind closed down, smashed into darkness, closed off in fury, like a blow that deadens all the senses. And I fled from the scene. Someone had driven me away.
But nothing could take away that brief, illuminating, terrifying glimpse of the spectral nature of what lay inside Orgetorix in Ghostland. All the memories of a life were there, from childhood to youth, from youth to manhood, from playing games to hunting games, to combat and the grief at the loss of a friend. But those images were collapsing into ruin, much as a dream dissolves into nonsense on waking, though in this case more slowly and with the confusion of a sudden flight of gulls, screeching, swirling, blinding in their panic. And only one strong thought remained coherent at the centre of this noise: where is my brother? Where is he hiding? Why has he drifted away from me?
I realised I had touched no human mind at all. But perhaps (I remember thinking at the time) perhaps that was not so unusual for an inhabitant of the Otherworld.
* * *
By twilight, the storm-skies had cleared. I had told no one of my encounter with the shade of Orgetorix. I was still quite shaken by the encounter.
Ullanna returned to the camp, ca
rrying a sad-looking, white-feathered bird hanging from a noose and a plump fish still on the arrow. She looked disappointed, but simply shrugged as she began to prepare this meagre feast. ‘I’m losing my touch. Too much time on that cramped ship, not enough on horseback.’
She had raised a knife, ready to behead the bird, but stopped in the action, staring at the river. ‘Istarta’s breath, what’s this?’
Out of the twilight came a sleek, brightly decorated barge, gliding round the bend in the river as if by magic, her small sail half furled, catching the slight breeze, hull leaning gently in the water. She tacked towards us. The small figure of Niiv sat within her, resting her arm on the tiller, holding a single rope, staring ahead as if she were in a dream. Then she saw our fire. She dropped the tiller and waved to us. The barge rocked in the current, faltered, then seemed to anchor. No oars struck, no true wind blew. This small boat had come here by her own power, Niiv called softly, ‘Merlin! Come aboard. This little boat has something to say to you.’
I waded into the river, all fear gone, and Niiv helped me into the barge. At once I recognised Argo, but Argo from the time of the stone sanctuaries, when elegant boats like this had carried the bodies of the noble dead, by night, by torchlight, along the winding forest rivers to the towering circles which lay at those forests’ hearts. Argo had shed a ghost, to come and find us.
Niiv was now crouched in the fore of the craft, the forbidden place. When I joined her I was startled to see how grey she looked, as if ice had taken on her skin.
‘Mielikki has been watching you. And watching Urtha. She will take you across to his children, but only the two of you. Fetch him.’
I called for the chieftain. He threw off his short cloak and stepped down the bank to the river, wading out to the barge and hauling himself aboard. He was curious and cautious as he crept into the narrow space where I crouched with Niiv. Niiv withdrew. I silenced Urtha’s questions. The boat rocked and shifted in the water, slipping away from one land and crossing to the other. She grounded in the mud, but before I could stand to peer over the side, the forest opened up before us in the boat itself.