The Mark of the Horse Lord (7 page)

‘I think it would not make me, either,’ Phaedrus said.

He got up and crossed to the window. The lamp was finally dying in little gasps of flame, and the roofs opposite were already touched with morning, though night still lingered in the narrow chasm of the street below. He stood gazing down into it while he tied his hair back out of the way with a leather thong as he had been used to do before putting on his helmet. He knew that street – what one could see of it from the window – as well as he knew the room behind him, with its gap-toothed floorboards and the scattering of bright feathers that drifted through with the smell of droppings from the cock-loft, and the places where the daub had fallen from the walls and the laths showed through like the bare ribs of something dead.

‘Close on time for you to be away,’ Midir said behind him.

‘
Sa, sa
. No time for a wrestling-bout this morning.’

Every morning, since they had been cooped up here, they had wrestled together, at first simply to keep themselves from going soft, because they had no other way of getting exercise; but later, because they enjoyed pitting strength and skill against each other. Well, all that was done with now . . . ‘I must not be keeping my new master waiting,’ he added, and thought, ‘It seems a lifetime that I have been mewed up in this place, learning my trade, and in a little while, it will still be here, but I shall be gone. I shall be away up the street to join Sinnoch and take the pack-beasts north – to win myself a kingdom that isn’t mine, or more likely end as wolf-bait. And Midir?’ Somehow the past month had seemed so shut away from the run of life, so turned in on itself that he had never wondered before. He swung round from the window. ‘And you? What road for you now, Midir?’

Deep in the shadows the other shrugged. ‘The road back to Eburacum and my
old
master and the dressed hides. This was only to be a free time to visit my Aunt in Segedunum. He’s a good old man; he said I had earned the holiday.’

‘One advantage of being a free man. A slave never earns a holiday.’ (Midir had never been sold as a slave, Phaedrus knew. Who would buy a blind slave unless he could sing? He had simply been turned adrift like an unwanted dog among the beggars of Eburacum, and his one piece of good fortune had been when the harness-maker who was now his master had seen him rough-mending a broken pack-strap for a traveller outside the posting inn, and noticed the skill in his hands.)

‘I’ve an idea he did not mean so long a holiday as this one,’ Midir said wryly.

‘But he will take you back?’

‘Ach, yes. I’m a good craftsman. You don’t need to be able to see to work the skins or cut a belly-strap – only to be a king . . . I am wondering if this looks a noble jest to any God that chances to look this way. I wonder if the Gods laugh at the things that happen to men, as we laugh at someone slipping on a kale stalk – or if they simply don’t care . . . My father went out to meet his boar. There had been much fighting, and the Red Crests had burned off all the pasture that they could reach, and then a wet autumn and the cattle died. It was famine time, you see. And look what came of it. That will have made the Gods laugh, too.’

‘Don’t be talking like that,’ Phaedrus said quickly. He did not understand what Midir was talking about, but he knew that it was dangerous. ‘It is only a fool who sets out like a man poking at a stallion with a little stick, to make the Gods angry!’

Midir shrugged. ‘Ach, well, it is I that said the thing, not you.’ He leaned forward and felt for the jug, and with a quick gesture, flung the lees of the watered wine on the already stained and filthy floor. ‘See, I am making an offering – what is it you call it in your Roman tongue? I pour a libation to the Sun Lord, a peace offering.’ Then leaning back against the wall, hands behind head, ‘Come now, I’ll be hearing you your lessons one more time while you make ready for the road.’

Phaedrus had begun to move about their cramped quarters, gathering his few belongings and bundling them into an old cloak. A small part of his mind was wondering what had happened to his wooden foil and the fat woman’s bracelet – probably the lodging-house people had taken them and whatever else was in the bundle, when they heard he was dead. The rest of him was waiting, his mind poised to leap this way or that, for whatever question Midir would toss at him first.

Midir said, ‘What happened after Liadhan had you stunned and flung into the river?’

Phaedrus frowned. (‘Do not seem too sure,’ Sinnoch had said when his training began, ‘not so sure as to make men think “this is a lesson learned by heart”.’) ‘How would I be knowing in the dark and I hit on the head with a stone? The last thing I remember is Liadhan’s man; the one of them with a stone in his hand. For the rest—’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose the man did not strike hard enough – maybe he did not mean to. Or else it was that my time had not come. I must have lodged among the rocks under the overhang of the shore, with my face above water. And seemingly they did not wait to be sure the work was finished, for when I woke, there was no one there. I was half drowned and very sick, and there was no strength in me to make the bank again and I – I must have struggled, and rolled clear of the rocks, and the run of the river took me and carried me away, and washed me up at last, away down at the Crinan ford, where the chariot road runs south. A trader going that way with horses to sell to the Wall garrisons found me—’

‘What was he like?’

‘A small man – I do not remember clearly. I was in no state to be taking account of faces; and it was a long time ago.’

‘That is fair enough. Go on.’

‘He would not believe me when I told him who I was; he was a stranger and did not know the Royal Mark. He took me south with the horses and sold me when he sold them; and the man who bought me sold me again, and – shall I go on?’

‘No need. So far the story is a credit to Sinnoch. For the rest – you should know your own story well enough without my hearing it again.
Na
, we’ll try something else.’ He made no move from his lounging position, but the next question came silken-swift as a dagger thrust. ‘You see a man with a small sickle-shaped scar slicing through one eyebrow. Who is he?’

‘Dergdian, Son of Curoi, one of the Guard in my grandsire’s day.’

‘Which eyebrow does the scar cut through?’

‘The left.’

‘How is it that you remember so clearly? It is a longer time since you saw Dergdian than it is since you saw the horse-trader.’

‘It was I that gave him the scar, throwing a stone at what I thought was a fox in the tall bracken; and he gave me the choice of taking my beating from my father, or from himself and no more said.’ Phaedrus sounded rueful, hitching at his shoulders as he spoke, as though indeed remembering the weight of Dergdian’s arm. It was like that with him sometimes, now. He turned to the narrow window and stood looking out. ‘Conory helped me wash the blood off, and begged some wound-salve from old Grania to ease the smart.’

‘Conory?’ said Midir’s voice behind him.

‘Conory was –
is
my cousin, born in the same summer to Iorwen, my father’s younger sister. I know him by his having one eye set higher than the other, and a brown fleck in the apple of it.’ There were other things he knew about Conory, a great many other things, including some that Midir had never told him. But he did not recite them now. They had had to be learned, but though the arena years had hardened him to most things, he still disliked trampling more often than need be in another man’s private territory. ‘It was to Conory that the Queen sent her token at Beltane,’ he said, and then, watching a pigeon on the opposite roof, ‘It seems the Queen likes her kings young.’

‘The Sacred King must be always young, and strong, lest the harvest fail and the mares grow barren. It is maybe a fine thing for the Queen, but the needs of the harvest come first.’

‘You’ve not told me much of Liadhan the Queen. Very little beside all that you have told me of other men and women.’

‘What should I tell you of her? She has long fair hair and a long fair face, and all her movements are slow and strong and rich – like corn that is heavy in the ear. They say that Maeve of Connacht was such a one, who fought against us in the High and Far Off days, in the land our people came from. But there’s small need to tell you the look of her, you’ll not be mistaking her for another woman. I saw her in the Royal Woman’s place at the feasts and sacrifices, but her life never touched against mine, until—’ He broke off and Phaedrus, looking round, saw his face for the moment no more than a mask – like the calmly moulded features of the helmet mask over the sweating, snarling features of the gladiator beneath. Even his voice seemed masked with that same artificial calm, when he spoke again. ‘The boy Midir hated and feared her always, that is all that the Prince Midir, returned to his rejoicing tribe, need remember of Liadhan. Not even that she had him blinded to make him unfit for the kingship, and stood by to see it done. That story is done with and best forgotten, now that there is a new story to take its place.’

‘Nevertheless, the part of me that remains Phaedrus the Gladiator will not quite forget that story until the account is settled with Liadhan.’

‘
Na!
Forget it!’ Midir dropped the mask, and springing up, came striding across to him. ‘You’ve a wild enough team to drive without that mare yoked among them.’

‘It was you who bade me to avenge you, that first night behind the “Rose of Paestum”.’

‘I spoke in a black moment,’ Midir said.

And there was a small, sharp silence. Then Phaedrus said, ‘You must have hated me.’

‘You can scarce expect I would be loving you.’

A cart came rumbling up the street, the wagoner cursing his team; there was the crack of a long raw hide whip, the slow hoof-beats of the file of oxen died into the distance. Then Phaedrus said:

‘Give me a right to the kingship, Midir.’

‘I have told you—’

‘I want more than words.’

Midir stood thoughtful for a moment, then he pulled the dagger from his belt where he wore it night and day (‘A man needs to know where to lay hand on his knife in the dark,’ he had said once), feeling with a finger along the blade to the tip, and made a small precise movement quicker than the eye could follow. A thread of crimson sprang to life on the fine brown skin inside his wrist, and a few beads of blood welled up. He reversed the knife with a flick, and held it out by the blade. ‘Now you.’

Phaedrus took it, and stood for a moment balancing it in his hand. He was not even sure that he liked this uncomfortable man, certainly he felt none of the easy comradeship with him that he had felt with Vortimax; but none of that mattered. During this long enclosed month they had grown together at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with liking, but belonged somewhere far down at the root of things.

He made his own small quick movement; watched the blood spring out on his own wrist.

Midir flicked up his head at the sound of the movement. ‘Done?’

‘It is done.’

‘Bring yours to mine, then.’

Phaedrus did so, feeling the mouth of the tiny wound on the mouth of the other as they pressed their wrists together. Three drops of mingled blood escaped between them and made three brighter spots among the spilled lees of the wine on the floor where Midir had poured his libation to the Gods.

‘So now we are of one life blood, you and I,’ Midir said, ‘and you have the blood of the Horse Lord mingled with your own, if ever the Gods call you to account for taking the kingship.’ There was a note almost of laughter in his voice. Then as he took back the knife and sheathed it and brought up his hands to feel for Phaedrus’s shoulders, he spoke in deadly earnest. ‘Listen! You cannot be taking the kingship from me. Liadhan did that, once and for all. But it is not hers, even by riever’s right, for she has turned back to the Old Ways and so there is no Horse Lord to lead the Dalriads and answer for them to Lugh of the Shining Spear. The kingship lies free and waiting . . .Take it if you can – and a good war-trail to you, Phaedrus, my brother-in-blood.’

Phaedrus set his own hands for an instant on the other’s, as he had done that first night of all. ‘It may be that we shall meet again one day,’ he said. ‘The Sun and the Moon on your path, Midir.’

He turned and caught up his bundle, and went clattering down the rickety stair and out into the street, all but colliding with a man carrying hot loaves. The man swore at him, and Phaedrus swore back, with flowers and flourishes of insult learned in the arena which left the other open-mouthed and envious, then turned to look up at a small window high under the gap-toothed slates, from behind which came the sound of whistling, a short five-note phrase jaunty as a water wagtail, that he and Midir had used for a signal at their comings and goings, all this month. He whistled back, and hitching up his bundle, set off for the inn on the outskirts of the town, where Sinnoch and the horses were lodged, falling as he went into the old play-actor’s swagger.

He had entered into this business partly for the sake of the thing that Gault had offered as a price, partly because of that sudden feeling of oneness with Midir; and then he had not been sure what strange waters he was getting into, nor where he was heading. But now, striding up the already crowded street where light and colour were seeping back into the world, and the pigeons wheeled above the roof-tops, suddenly he felt light on his feet and lucky. Every gladiator knew that feeling; the day when the God’s face was towards you, your lucky day, when it was your adversary’s guard and not yours that flew wide. He dodged a cart laden with wineskins, and swaggered on. Once or twice a head turned to watch the tall man with the red hair under a Phrygian cap pulled down to his eyebrows, who wore the rough clothes of a pack-train driver and walked with the braced instep of a dancer or a swordsman.

It was almost full daylight when he came to the stable court of the ‘Golden Fleece’.

TOWARDS EVENING, SIXTEEN days later, with all the broad, slow heather hills of Valentia between them and the Onnum Gate, the little pack-train swung northward from the broadening Cluta which they had been following since dawn, and turned into the track that rose gently from the river marshes. And it was then that Phaedrus saw a faint haze of smoke hanging beyond the ridge, and said to the merchant riding beside him, ‘What lies ahead? It does not look like heath fire, though Typhon knows the furze is dry enough.’