The Mark of the Horse Lord (11 page)

And then behind the rest, with some kind of great fur collar round his neck, he saw a man holding back, taking his time; watching him out of eyes that seemed, even in the gloom beyond the torchlight, to be oddly set – one a little higher than the other . . .

Their gaze met, and Phaedrus saw in that instant that the fur collar had eyes too. A striped-grey-and-dark thing with eyes like green moons. The young man made a sound to it, and the thing rippled and arched itself into swift, sinuous life, became a wildcat, poised and swaying for an instant on his shoulder, and leaped lightly to the floor, and advanced beside him with proudly upreared tail, as he came forward to take his place among the rest.

For an instant, as they came face to face, and the wildcat crouched at his foot, Phaedrus thought that this could not, after all, be the cousin born in the same summer, who had helped Midir to wash the blood from his back after that long-ago beating. Not this wasp-waisted creature with hair bleached to the silken paleness of ripe barley, who wore a wildcat for a collar, and went prinked out like a dancing-girl with crystal drops in his ears and his slender wrists chiming with bracelets of beads strung on gold wires! But one of the man’s eyes was certainly set higher than the other; and on the bright hazel iris was a brown fleck the shape of an arrow-head.

For a long moment they stood confronting each other, and Phaedrus knew that this was indeed the danger moment. He saw a flicker of doubt in the odd-set eyes, quickly veiled, and something tensed in his stomach, waiting for what would happen next, while the men around him looked on.

The young man said, ‘Midir.’ Just the one word, and his hands came out. Phaedrus, with an unpleasant consciousness of the wildcat crouched with laid-back ears on the floor, followed his lead so instantly that the onlookers could scarcely have said which made the first move. But next instant their arms were round each other in a quick, hard embrace that looked like the reunion of long-parted brothers, but had actually nothing in it but a kind of testing, an enquiry, like the first grip of a wrestling-bout.

The wildcat spat as though in warning, but made no move.

Then both stepped back, and stood looking at each other at arm’s length.

‘Conory – you have changed!’ It was the only thing that Phaedrus could think of to say, and it seemed safe.

‘Have I?’ Conory said. ‘So have you, Midir. So – have – you,’ and the doubt was still in his eyes; indeed, it had strengthened, Phaedrus thought, but it would not be there for anyone but himself to see. At any rate – not yet. What game was he playing? Or was he playing any game at all? Had he, Phaedrus, only imagined that flicker of doubt? It was gone now. Unless it was only veiled once more . . .

With Conory’s grip on his shoulders, he discovered that there was more strength in those slender wrists than anyone could have expected. He made another discovery, too. He did not know, looking into those oddly set eyes that were so silkily bright, whether he and Conory were going to be heart-friends or the bitterest of enemies, but he knew that it must be one or the other; something between them was too strong to end in mere indifference.

THE CHIEFS AND Captains went their ways, even Gault and Sinnoch were gone, and there was still a moon and a half to pass before the time of the Midwinter Fires. But for Phaedrus, in his hide-out on the wild west coast, while the gales beat in from the sea and the days grew shorter and the nights longer and more cold, the time did not hang heavy, for he was kept too hard at his training.

Gallgoid the Charioteer, who had remained behind (officially he was lying sick in his own hall under Red Peak) to captain the little guard of warriors who were left with him, took a large hand in the training. It was the month in the Onnum cock-loft over again, but whereas that had been enclosed, a training of the mind, this was a thing of the open moors, a training in the skills of hand and foot and eye that the Horse Lord must possess. With Gallgoid and sometimes one or another beside, there were long days out in the hills inland, always leaving and returning in the dark, and gradually he learned the things, strange to him, that Midir must have known since childhood; he learned how to move silently without loss of speed on the hunting trail, how to ride on the fringes of a flying horse-herd and cut out one chosen colt from the rest, how to bring down game in full run with the three cord-linked stone balls of the hunter’s bolas, even such small things as how to mount by vaulting on his spear instead of the more familiar steed-leap with one’s hands on the horse’s withers.

Then, too, the Dalriads were all charioteers. It was four years since Phaedrus had handled a chariot, and the first time that he took out Gallgoid’s, he found with disgust that in growing used to the short sword and heavy circus shield his hands had lost much of their old cunning. At least he was thankful that the master who had made him a charioteer before he sold him into the arena had driven a British-built chariot, and not one of the graceful scallop-shells that the Romans called by that name. At least he knew the kind of vehicle he was driving, with its greater weight and different balance, the wider set wheels for stability on a rough hill-side, its open front that gave one a sense of being almost on top of the flying ponies. And little by little, the thing came back to him, in the way of old skills that are seldom quite lost, but only stored deeply away.

By the end of a month he and Gallgoid had grown so used to each other’s ways that one day, up in the hills above the Loch of Swans, reining in from a sweeping gallop, Gallgoid said to him, ‘You’ll do! Didn’t I be telling you you’d make a driver one day, when you stood no taller than a wolf-hound’s shoulder—’ and he checked, and they looked at each other and laughed, though the laughter was awkward in their throats.

Four days before the Midwinter Fires, they set out from the Cave of the Hunter, Phaedrus in a rough plaid with his hair gathered up into his old leather cap, turning for the last time to salute the great horned figure with something of the same grim flourish with which he had been used to salute the Altar of Vengeance before going into the arena, and headed south for the Royal Dun.

It was already dusk when they mounted the waiting ponies in the sheltered hollow inland of the sea-ridge, but there was a young moon sailing behind the hurrying storm-clouds when they came riding like a skein of ghosts past the Serpent’s Mound at the foot of the Loch of Swans, and by the time the full dark closed down, Phaedrus reckoned that they were the best part of ten Roman miles on their way. They found cold shelter for themselves and the ponies for what was left of the night, among the woods of a steep-sided glen; and pushed on again at first light, across ridges where the thin birch woods grew leaning all one way from the western wind, round the heads of grey sea-lochs, where many islands cut the water with yeasty froth and the swirl of tide races. Towards evening, with the wind dying down, they were following a narrow track that snaked along the seaward slopes of the hills, hazel woods bare and black with winter rising sheer on the left hand – dropping like a stone into the broad firth on their right; and at dusk, came down at last into the fringes of a sodden marsh country of reed beds and sear yellow grass and saltings that, in the failing light, seemed sinking away into the sea while one watched. And there, in what shelter a tangle of furze could give them, they settled down to wait for darkness. In all that way they had seen no one save a few herdsmen in the distance, and once a hunting band of the little Dark People jogging along beside the track. But it was well to run as little risk as possible of being seen on the next stage; better that no stray onlookers should know of any link between the little knot of Sun People coming down from the north, and the larger band heading from the south next day. Besides, they must wait for the tide.

It was a long wait while darkness came; a black darkness, for tonight the moon was almost hidden; and then gradually a strange sound stole into the air, a distant, wet roaring that was yet vibrant as a struck harp or a human voice, and Phaedrus, shifting one chilled and soaking knee from the ground, asked under his breath, ‘What is that?’

‘That roaring? That is the Old Woman Who Eats Ships. She always calls when the tide is on the turn.’

‘And who – what is this Old Woman?’

‘The whirlpool – out yonder where the waters dash between two islands. A coracle can pass safely at slack water, but when the tide turns, that is another matter. That is why they say that the Old Woman calls.’

‘The sound of death is in her calling,’ Phaedrus said.

‘She’s far out of your sea-road.’

Phaedrus laughed softly. ‘An old woman who used to tell fortunes outside the circus gates once told me that I should not die until I held out my own hands to death, so assuredly I am safe tonight, for I’ve no wish to go answering the call of the Old Woman Who Eats Ships.’

Gallgoid turned his head quickly to look at him in the dark, as though he had said something startling. But he only said, ‘I’ve known a two-man coracle caught in the pull and escape, all the same. The seamen of these coasts are seamen and no mere paddlers about in pond-water.’ And then, ‘Come, it is time that we were on our way.’

Leaving the ponies and the rest of the band behind them, they went on alone, far out into the maze of sour salting and little winding waterways and banks of blown dune-sand. Stranded on the tide line in the shelter of a sandy spur, a two-man coracle lay tipped sideways like an abandoned cooking-pot, and to Phaedrus’s landsman’s eyes not much larger, and the black shadow of a man rose from beside it, and stood waiting.

He and Gallgoid exchanged a low mutter of greetings and then as the man picked up his small craft and heaved it into the water, Gallgoid spoke quickly to Phaedrus in parting. ‘Now listen, for there is always a chance of betrayal. We have seen no one likely to be a danger to us on the trail south, but that is not to say for sure, that no such one has seen
us
. Gault may not come himself to meet you on the far side. If you do not know the man you find there, say to him that the flower of four petals is opening in the woods. If he replies that there is promise of an early spring, for the horse-herds are growing restless, you will know that he is to be trusted.’

‘And if not?’

‘You have your dagger,’ Gallgoid said meaningly. ‘Struan the boatman will wait for you a spear’s throw off shore, until he knows that all is well.’

‘
Sa
. Then if I do not see you again tonight, I will be looking for you tomorrow in Dun Monaidh.’

The boatman was squatting in the stem of the coracle now, and had got out the rowing-pole. ‘As I will be looking for you,’ Gallgoid said. ‘Steady! Don’t rock her. It is easy to see that you have long been among inland folk!’

Phaedrus, splashing through the icy shallows, got himself gingerly over the side of the coracle without shipping more water than, say, a hound would have done, and settled into the bottom of the bowl-shaped craft. He had never been in any kind of boat in his life before, and with an eye on the yeasty water beyond the sand bar, blurring into the dark, he wished that he were a better swimmer.

The boatman grunted something, and pushed off with the rowing-pole, and they were heading out across the mouth of the broad sea-loch that ran inland to lose itself somewhere away eastward in the marshes and the peat moss below Dun Monaidh. The sea took the small, crazy shell of stretched skins and wickerwork as she cleared the sandspit, and she began to dance. Phaedrus would have felt deadly sick, but that he was too numbed with cold to feel anything; it was bitterly cold, and the spindrift burned like white fire on the skin. But crouching there with his cloak huddled to his ears, feeling the little craft lift like a gull to each wave, and noting the skill with which the boatman handled her, he found after a while that he was beginning to enjoy himself. The man never spoke to his passenger, but had begun to sing to himself softly and deeply, in time to his rowing: to himself, or maybe to the coracle, as men will sing and shout and croon to a horse for encouragement and companionship. The crossing, which would have been only a mile or so direct, was made much longer by the run of the sea, and the unseen moon was down, leaving the world, that had been dark enough before, black as a wolf’s belly, when at last the sea gentled and they grounded lightly among more rushes and coarse grass and sand-dunes on the farther shore.

Phaedrus scrambled out, landing knee-deep in the shallows. The lightened coracle bounced high at the bows, and instantly, still crooning to himself, the boatman backed off. A figure uncoiled from among the broom scrub, a darkness on darkness. There was no possibility of seeing whether it was one that he knew or not. Phaedrus spoke softly, with his hand ready on his dagger.

‘The flower of four petals is opening in the woods.’

The voice of one of Gault’s household warriors said as softly, ‘You wouldn’t think it now, but there’s promise of an early spring. Already the horse-herds are growing restless.’

‘
Sa
, I have no need of my dagger. That is good,’ Phaedrus said.

‘That is most certainly good!’ replied the voice with a quiver of laughter. The man’s shadow turned seaward again, and gave the whistling call of a dunlin, three times repeated. ‘That will tell Struan that all is well.’

A few moments after, as they turned inland, the man asked, ‘Do you remember what he was singing?’

‘How should I? I – I have forgotten our songs in the past seven years – we sang other songs after supper in the Gladiators’ School.’

The other glanced round at him, surprised, but not suspicious. ‘It was the King’s Rowing-song that keeps time for the oars when the King goes seafaring. I’d not think it was ever sung in a two-man coracle before, but he must have been glad to be raising it again.’

‘What about the Queen’s seafaring?’

‘It is a song of the Men’s Side; even Liadhan would be knowing that.’