Avilion (Mythago Wood 7) (24 page)

Her green side eavesdropped as she watched events unfurl.

 

Gwei eased the helm from Arthur’s wounded face. The blow had cut through the cheek metal to the cheek itself, splitting the bone. Arthur’s eyes were narrowed with pain, his wild red hair clotted. Emereth cradled him, kneeling behind him, glancing frequently at Gwei as his companion unlaced the chest armour. He put a finger in the first of the wounds there, then leaned down to kiss the cut, holding the flesh closed with his fingers as his tears fell upon the drying blood.

‘It’s done,’ Arthur whispered. ‘This is the dream. For me, it’s over.’

‘The wound is horrible,’ Gwei said. ‘Morthdred found the killing mark all right. You’re done for.’

‘I knew it when the point went in. But we held for a long time, didn’t we, Gwei? We held strong.’

‘We broke,’ said Emereth.

‘A battle too far,’ murmured one of the others, who were all crouched in a semi-circle around the dying war chief.

‘Morthdred was always going to break us,’ said another.

‘No!’ Arthur shouted, then gasped with the agony of the wounds in his chest. ‘No . . . he was never going to break us. Not all of us. Don’t you understand? For me, it’s finished. For you, far from finished.’

‘Then why are we sitting by this lake,’ whispered Bydavere angrily, ‘refugees from a blood- and shit-stained hill?’

Red rage grew fierce in the dying man’s features. He had eyes for Gwei, and a severe look for his closest shield man, Bydavere.

‘Who are these whimpering men?’ he said to the sky. ‘I don’t recognise them. How many whimpering men? How many survived the iron task? How many fell? Answer me, Gwei.’

‘Fallen?’ said Gwei. ‘Many! Scattered? Many! Of your shield ring, twelve are fallen. Twelve survive. We came out of it well.’ He spoke with enthusiasm, recognising, perhaps, that his dying friend needed to be surrounded by men who were still strong.

‘Twelve dead,’ Arthur sighed. ‘Twelve ahead of me, then. Into Avilion.’

‘You’ll meet them there,’ Bydavere said.

‘However they got there,’ Emerith added.

‘And all of us, in time,’ Gwei whispered, ‘wherever it is you’re going.’

A new strength came into Arthur. Through pain-hardened eyes he looked at Bydavere. ‘Morthdred has broken me, but only me. Do you understand what I’m saying? I do not wish to die in the presence of whimpering men. The sword at my side has his blood on it. There is a mark on his body, a cut as deep as his bone, that is Arthur-marked. The sword will find that place again. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes,’ Bydavere replied.

‘Take it, then, and don’t rest until the sword mark in Morthdred is opened, and opened to the crows.’

Bydavere reached over and unbuckled Arthur’s sword belt. He drew the blade; it was dulled with Morthdred’s blood.

‘Take it to the lake and wash it,’ Arthur said. ‘The blood is failure. It will find the place of failure, and fail again. The cleaned iron will find the traitor and pierce him true to its purpose.’

Bydavere rose and walked along the lake’s edge, then waded through the reeds to clean water. He returned, the blade sheathed, and knelt among his companions.

‘What’s going to happen next?’ asked Gwei, looking around him. Geese flew out across the lake. Evening was approaching fast and the wind was beginning to blow.

‘Of that, I’m not sure,’ Arthur said with a pained laugh. ‘Except that I’ll be dead before they come for me.’

‘And coming for you? That’ll be what?’ asked Bydavere, staring back across the lake.

‘A boat, a barge. The dream I had as a child wasn’t clear. I believe there will be women in the barge, women of rare beauty and great kindness.’

The shield men laughed. One said, ‘May I share your dreams? I’ll pay.’

‘I’ve always loved my dreams,’ Arthur said when the laughter had subsided. ‘There is promise in them, and pleasure.’

‘So we wait with you . . .’ Bydavere murmured.

‘Yes.’

‘For a boat or barge, you say.’

‘Yes. You wait and watch.’

‘To take you where? What is this Avilion?’

‘The land of healing, Bydavere. I’ll meet you there one day.’

Arthur caught Gwei’s frown. ‘What is it, Gwei? Old friend.’

Gwei took a deep breath. ‘It isn’t over. Morthdred’s men are scattering. You fell, but the battle didn’t end. Can’t you hear the crows? Half of them are still hungry. I can’t wait to get after Morthdred. Stay alive long enough for me to bring you his head.’

‘What a keen man you are, old friend. I always admired that in you. Is the blade cleaned?’

‘Bright as if it were newly forged.’

‘Show me . . .’

From the look in Gwei’s eyes it was clear that orders had been disobeyed. Gwei pulled the blade from its scabbard. Morthdred’s blood remained, dark and crisp on the metal.

Gwei said: ‘I want to return his own moment of failure to the failing life when I sever that neck of his. Why wipe away the moment of his wound? Rust on iron! Let the bastard suffer!’

Arthur struggled to sit up against his own killing pierce. Everything about him now was frail. ‘Gwei: a clean blade, a clean strike. It’s the certainty I want, the certainty of his silence in this life. Clean the blade in the lake. Let the blade shine as it strikes the traitor who brought me to my own end.’

Gwei withdrew, back to the reeds, back to the dusk-dark water.

‘Light a fire,’ Arthur said. ‘Do we have supplies? Food? Enough for a dying feast?’

‘Enough for a dying drink,’ said Ethryn, the youngest of the surviving shield men. ‘Food enough for twelve scavengers.’

‘Scavenge after I’m gone. Just sing and laugh and wait until the barge comes for me.’

‘Barge or boat,’ Emereth reminded him.

‘Whatever comes, make sure I’m in my war cloth, and that my face is helmeted, and my hair is tied tightly. Whatever happens, don’t resist it. My friends, your other friends are finding their own way to Avilion. My dream told me the nature of my own transit.’

Emereth said, ‘We won’t interfere. We’ll drink your health at the funeral games, and the health of Avilion as it welcomes Arthur.’

‘Good man.’

Gwei returned from the lake, his face grim. Arthur said, ‘Have you cleaned the blade?’

‘No.’

‘No? Why not?’

Gwei looked around at the others, then at Arthur. ‘Because you’re wrong. If I clean the blade, then the blade is new. We want the blade old; stained; hungry for vengeance. A new blade might seek new blood. It’s old blood you want, and the blood trail. After the strike in the belly of your cousin, the bastard Morthdred, it will be keener for the rust stain. Keener on the scent. The final act, which I shall deliver with pleasure, my friend, will be the harsher and the more final for it. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Arthur nodded. ‘You’re right. I see your point. Don’t wash the blade.’

‘It makes sense,’ Gwei said.

‘I agree,’ Arthur replied. ‘Sometimes what seems right isn’t truly right. If we don’t listen, we don’t understand fully. Listening makes things right. I can trust you to do the final work for me. Like an old man trusting his son, even though we are the same age. And you will keep things right for me.’

‘Yes,’ said Gwei. ‘I will.’

And Emereth added, looking round at the rest of the men. ‘Shall we begin the funeral games? Is it too soon?’

 

Yssobel was watching from the tree line, the red side in her beating hard, the green side savouring this edge of worlds, the lake shore, the distance to another world. She had imagined it would be misty. In fact it was clear and vast, more like an ocean than a lake, stretching away to the horizon, a gleam of dusk grey and blue, with the first glimmer of starlight on its breeze-ruffled surface.

As dusk made shadows of all things that moved, so a shadow moved towards her, one of the companions, a burly, half-armoured man. He walked up to Yssobel’s hiding place, and she drew back into the embrace of the coiled tree roots where she had been lurking, watching.

The shadow loomed and the man urinated, sighing with relief. For a moment as he tucked himself away he peered into the bosk, as if sensing a presence. It was Bydavere.

Yssobel practised the death breath, and held it for a long time.

With a curious sound, a grunt of dismissal, the man turned away and went back to where the war chief now lay on a bier of branches, his face and body armoured. Dressed again in the war cloth, face hidden, arms folded.

Two of Arthur’s men had slipped back to the battlefield, to the looted baggage train, to the place of the dead and dying. They had joined among the scavengers. They had weapons, and the war chief’s standard, which had been left, broken, halfway down the hill. They stripped the long banner from the shaft of ash and folded it between the silent man’s hands.

They had also brought flagons of wine.

As their horses grazed the shoreline, so Arthur’s entourage drank and became drunk. Night fell, and the men fell, curled by the lake, curled in their cloaks; men at the end of days.

Yssobel slipped out of cover. She shed the armour of Morthdred’s warrior and crept as quietly as possible to where Arthur lay on the bed of branches, enclosed and almost completely hidden behind his mask and cloak. Gwei stirred slightly, mumbled in his sleep, sat up and stared at the lake - a moment of alarm for Yssobel - then flopped back. He seemed to be crying in his dreams. So much had been lost that day.

For a moment Yssobel considered what she was doing. The lake was still. Stars illuminated its silent waters. The moon was hidden. Avilion, the place of her dreams, lay on the far side of this stretch of water, and she knew that a barge would be coming for the man who lay dead before her.

Gently, quietly, she eased Arthur from the bier. Step by step she pulled him from the wood frame. Breath by gentle breath she dragged him to the trees.

No one stirred.

When she was in cover, she dragged more fiercely, pulled the body deep into the copse.

By green light she surveyed the calm and handsome features of the man. His face was light with stubble, his hair tied elaborately. She drew out the small, open silver ring that Jack had fashioned for her, and copied the hair knot of the dying king, tying her own long locks into place.

Then she leaned down and kissed Arthur full on the mouth. His lips were cold, yet not death-cold. He didn’t stir. She kissed him again, held the embrace, reached to hold his face in her hands. Bloodied, yes, but beautiful. A man of strength and certainty, a face of love and humour. She pushed back the long, lank hair from his brow, kissed him between the eyes, then let her face rest against his for a while; breathing.

‘You don’t need the passage,’ Yssobel whispered. ‘You belong here. But I know you won’t forgive me for stealing your journey.’

Then she stripped him naked, every scrap of clothing, running her hands down his body, touching every part of him.

And then she stripped herself. The night was cool. She lay on Arthur’s body for a while, embracing him with her limbs, enclosing him, thinking of this most audacious of acts she planned, letting the warmth of her body seep into the hardening frost of his own flesh. Her skin bristled with the breeze. She lay on him and held his face again, and kissed him again, wondering if the eyes would open and his hands reach round for her.

She almost hoped for it.

He lay quiet. Cool but not cold, though he was certainly on the death road.

‘I’m stealing the armour of a king,’ she whispered to him. ‘I’ve dreamed of this moment. I never knew why I would steal the armour, just that I would have to do it. I do have a reason.’

Arthur lay silent. Yssobel sang quietly:

‘I will go to Avilion instead of you. But I will return and make good this theft. I promise.’

He lay silent.

There was no more time. His shield men lay sprawled and unconscious inside their cloaks, close to the lake. Ale-slumber was deep, but surfacing from that sleep was fast, as she’d often seen happen with Ealdwulf and his son.

She dressed Arthur as best she could in her own clothing. Rona was nearby, and Yssobel took the animal’s blanket and covered the dying king with it. Then she released Rona with a kiss and a word, leading her quietly to the track and sending her back to where worlds changed, hoping that the horse would struggle into imarn uklyss and gallop home, home to the villa.

Arthur’s clothing, his boots and armour were on the large side for Yssobel but not so much that she felt uncomfortable. She walked to the lake, lay down on the bier, crossed her hands and though the helm-mask watched the stars as they shifted in and out of clouds.

Her breathing slowed. At dawn, Gwei rose sleepily and stood by the lake, staring across the reeds, to where the mist was lifting.

And then he called out, ‘The boat is coming. This is the time.’