The Circle of the Gods (10 page)

From the edge of the crowd, his throat drying already, Arturo watched them, saw them raise their swords high to one another and then spring back and, half crouching, begin to circle warily. The shock of their first meeting took him by surprise, for suddenly they were closed and the clash of their swords struck fire sparks in the bright air and the thud and hiss of sword against shield seemed to fill the morning with a noisy venom and anger which seized his own body and tensed every muscle in his limbs.

They came apart from that first clashing and, holding fighting distance, swung and cut and lunged as though they sought now only to test and prove each other's qualities and courage. Their breath grunted and sobbed from their lungs as they circled and stamped and parried, and slowly over their naked torsos the sweat rose and lacquered their skin so that every movement was marked with the fierce ripple of sunlight running like fire over them.

Suddenly, without any eye keen enough to mark the swiftness of the blade that scored it, a crimson line of blood marked Inbar's left cheek. As suddenly again, as though the gods would match their favours, a great chip of leather flew from the edge of Baradoc's shield and the glancing blade of Inbar turned course and cut into the soft under flesh of Baradoc's sword arm. From then, as he fought, his forearm grew red with the blood that came from him to seep over his hand and the pommel of the heavy sword. But from the moment of his wounding it seemed that Baradoc, resenting even such a minor injury, lashed himself with some inner chastisement for undervaluing the prowess of his adversary. He became as a man demented with cold contempt for Inbar, and as a man exalted and so much at one with his weapon and so much in accord with the skills that had come to him over the years that fighter and sword were one whirling, probing, taunting, invulnerable singleness. A low sigh of wonder came from the watchers as they saw plainly now and again as Inbar left himself open that the slashing edge of Baradoc's sword was turned at the last moment to strike flat-faced in brutal arrogance. Again and again, for further humiliation, Baradoc forced Inbar step by step back to the cliff's edge and held him there while all knew that he had the power and mastery now to send him toppling and spinning to the sea below with a thrust to his body. Yet, each time, Baradoc drew back and stood with sword point lowered while Inbar held his ground, shoulders heaving, his mouth gaping and sucking at the salt air to give him breath for fresh fight.

At such times Tia was forced to turn her head away to shut the sight from her until she heard the clash of swords again ring clear above the cries of the seabirds below. At her side Mawga had no power to turn away. She prayed to the gods either to give Inbar quick end or to give their favour to soften Baradoc's heart when Inbar finally lay at his feet.

Then as the swaying, breath-hungry Inbar came forward in weakening attack, Baradoc gave ground until they were in the center of the open space.

There, in a gesture of contempt, Baradoc slipped his left arm free, tossed his shield from him, and leapt forward. His sword drew two fine blood lines across the man's chest within his laggardly guard. As Inbar winced with the pain and his head jerked skyward with muscle shock, Baradoc smashed the flat of his sword down viciously across the knuckles of his opponent's fighting hand so that his weapon was beaten from it to drop at his feet. Inbar swayed, then fell to the ground and lay there.

A great cry went up from the watching tribespeople. Baradoc, his body gleaming with sweat, unheedful of the blood that coursed down his sword, darkening the dull gleam of its blade, stepped forward and put his broad sword point to Inbar's chest above his heart. Mawga turned away to find Tia's arm wrapped around her and Tia's hand pressing her face gently to the comfort of her breast. By Tia's side, while the tribe sent up cry after cry for the kill, Arturo stood wooden-faced, watching, loath to move or speak or by any sign betray a strange shame for his father, who, despite his wound, must have known that he was always more than Inbar's match and had played with him like cat with mouse and who now, in easy victory, would show no mercy for this humiliated man in whom much that was good outweighed the bad.

Inbar, lying at Baradoc's feet, opened his eyes, felt the small bite of the sword's point against his chest, and saw the red-bearded, muscle-taut face of Baradoc above him, the deep-brown eyes still and dark as the darkest bog pool. Then with a slow sigh he said, “
Aie
… you have learned fine skills and feints in your wanderings. But before you press home the sword and send me to the gods I pray one charity from you. Take my wife, Mawga, into your house and treat fairly my sons who had no part in my doings.”

Looking down at him as he spoke, Baradoc felt no pity for this man who would have left him to a slow death to make pickings for the carrion birds and the scavenging beasts. Behind him he heard the stir and low voices of the tribe and he said aloud so that all should hear clearly, “Though you would have dishonoured my wife, yours shall live under my roof in peace. Though you would have killed my son when yours were well set, your sons shall live and serve with the tribe without fear of me.”

Inbar said, “I am content. So now, send me on my way.” As he finished speaking he closed his eyes and lay waiting.

Baradoc stood above him and his hand firmed on his sword to make the thrust true and clean. But it seemed to him then as though some power beyond his control was slowly possessing him, staying his sword hand and, against his will, invading his whole mind and body. Through their dead fathers they shared blood, he and this man, and their fathers had only known love and comradeship with one another. Then, as though not he but some other voice new-lodged in him spoke, as though not he moved but some inexorable will commanded him, he knew himself to raise his sword point. He stepped back from Inbar to the close-by Bada and said, “I rest it in the hands of the gods who suddenly move within me. Let him make the cliff run, but if he have not courage for it, let him be stoned, for he is not worthy of my blade.”

Almost before he had finished speaking, a great shout went up from the crowd. “The run! The run! Let him take the run!” While they still shouted Baradoc turned away from Inbar and moved through his people, seeing for a moment Tia's face, her eyes moist with tears, and by her side Mawga, who would have moved to him but was restrained by the hand of his wife. He walked alone down the cliff path, hearing the shout of voices and the stamping of feet behind him as all was prepared for Inbar's run. He climbed the streamside path to the long hall and, entering, called to an old, half-crippled woman servant to bring him water and cloths to clean and dress his arm wound. As he sat and was tended by her he heard distantly a great shout arise and he knew that Inbar had taken the cliff run. Once, as a boy, he had seen a tribesman take it and go to his death. In the living memory of the tribe out of a score of men to make the run no more than two or three had been known to live and escape to banishment from all the tribal lands of the Cornovii here or with their cousins in the far north of the country.

Sometime later, when Tia and Arturo had returned to the long hall and Tia was insisting on redressing his wound after her own fashion with a salve of healing herbs and the whites of fresh eggs, he said, “He took it. I heard the great shout.”

When Tia made no answer, Arturo said, “Yes, my father. He took it. But though we waited he did not show.”

Tia, finishing his fresh bandaging, said, raising his right hand to her lips and kissing it, “I was glad in my heart that you found that mercy for him.”

Baradoc grunted. Small mercy it had been and that never lodged knowingly in his own heart. He said, “Where is Mawga?”

“Tonight she keeps her place with her children on the cliff to mourn Inbar. She will come here in full time.”

That night, lying on his bed, the window slit above him unboarded to let the cool air in, Arturo lay thinking about Inbar. The crowd had formed a long open lane which led to the cliff's edge. Inbar had stood at the end of it while two tribesmen stood a spear's length behind him armed with the broad-bladed fighting swords. Once a man began to run along the lane to the cliff brink, from there to take the outward jump and the long drop to the sea below, there was no holding back except to be overtaken by the following swordsmen and to be hacked to death. There had been no hesitation in Inbar. He had run, outpacing the followers, and had leapt clean and far out. Arturo could see him now … dropping feet-first and then, as the wind took him, cartwheeling and sprawling while the dark sea rushed up to meet him and the cliff birds rose from their roosts in their hundreds, their cries drowning the shouts of the tribe as they lined the cliff and watched. Far below as Inbar had hit the water a plume of foam had spouted and been ragged and teased to nothingness by the wind. Inbar had gone under and had not shown again. Had he shown none would have helped or hindered him. The tribal law was that he must go where sea and tide took him, but seek the shore he must not until darkness came.

That night, too, as Tia lay alongside Baradoc it was long before sleep came to her as she thought of Mawga with her children, keeping vigil on the cliff top. The grief which she knew clouded Mawga's mind took from her the secret joy which she, herself, had come to know in the last few days. She was with child again. Although she had waited to be certain before telling Baradoc she knew that it would be many days yet before she would speak to him. He had been as merciful as tribal law allowed him to be toward Inbar and for that she honoured him, but she wanted no telling of her joy while Mawga dwelt in the first dark shadows of loss and despair from Inbar's death.

During the next two years Arturo never left the tribal lands. He grew in strength and height and in longing for the life that he had known at Isca. On the few occasions when Baradoc went to see Prince Gerontius he was refused permission to go with him. There were times when he sat alone on a cliff top staring out to sea, brooding over his grievances and the dullness of life in the settlement. Even the Scotti raids had now grown few and far between so that there were only rare times when, sword in hand, he could join the tribesmen in their stand on the beach at night or early morning to beat off the sea attacks. Sometimes he wondered whether Baradoc's firm refusal to allow him to go back to Isca came from his own, though never expressed, bitterness at the loss of his fighting powers. The wound that Inbar had given him had refused to heal properly. It had festered and sent him into a fever for many weeks. Tia and Galpan had treated him, but when with the passing of the months the wound had finally healed it was only to reveal that the arm muscles had wasted so that he could no longer wield a heavy sword. Baradoc had made light of it, no matter what his inner feelings might be, and had trained himself to use his sword left-handed but with only a shadow of the dexterity and skill he had known before.

A man so burdened, Arturo guessed, must always know bitterness or regret, and would want to keep a growing son, his heir, close to him, to fight at his right hand against the Scotti.
Aie
, he thought, watching a peregrine stoop from on high above the cliffs to take a rock dove, but what of the son? Each day here, except for the changes of weather and season, was the same as another and his body and mind itched for the excitements and adventurers of Isca and all the lands beyond.

So it was that out of boredom and restlessness as he reached his seventeenth year Arturo began to find himself more and more in trouble with his father. He would steal out at night to meet a girl and then have to face an angry Baradoc. If one of the other youths spoke to him carelessly he would waste few words but take to blows and then accept stoically a beating from his father for brawling. Once he stayed away for three days high up on the moors, hunting and roaming with only the now full-grown Anga for company. When he came back he stoutly maintained that he had been bewitched and held captive in a cave, and went on to invent some fanciful story which even made Baradoc secretly smile to himself. Of words and inventions to excuse or defend himself Arturo never had any lack.

One day as he sat on the cliff, brooding over his pinioned life, Tia came to him. She sat beside him, holding in her arms Arturo's sister, Gerta. Arturo leant back on his elbow and stroked her warm cheek and said, “She has your eyes, my mother, like the blue flower that grows among the corn, and your hair, brighter than the bunting's breast. One day she will marry a great chief and men will sing about her beauty and her goodness.”

“That she be a good wife to some man is all I ask,” said Tia.

“And what do you ask for me?”

“That you pleased your father more.”

“So I would if he gave me liberty to do what I must. And if he does not give me that liberty then soon I shall take it, for the gods command more obedience than any father.”

Tia laughed. “Now you begin to talk in your riddles again.”

“No. I say only what has been said. In the cave where I was held on the moor by enchantment the gods spoke to me plainly.”

“Arto!” Tia shook her head, smiling. “You dreamt with your belly empty from hunger.”

“No. I have few night dreams. I saw and heard. The gods have put their mark on me and, when the time comes, I must obey them.”

“And do they tell you to chase the maidens here and brawl with your companions and—”

“No.” Arturo sat up. “They tell me only that when the sign is given I must go.”

“And what is the sign?”

“I shall know it when I see it.” He plucked a grass stalk and began to tickle Gerta's nose, making her crow with pleasure. With a glance at his mother, he said, “You do not believe me? You think I am no more than a fledgling whose growing flight feathers begin to itch and make it long to take the air? No. It is more than that. There are things for me to do.”

“What things?”