The Circle of the Gods (25 page)

That evening they camped beside a muddy, slow-flowing stream and Arturo, after eating, sat by himself on the bankside in a brooding mood which kept his companions from him.

The day that was passing had taught him many things and amongst them those which he knew he should have long marked from his own understanding. Ten of his troopers had been killed, and six of the baggage train, among them Timo the dumb one. Six wounded horses had had to be destroyed. If his name were not now to be held in scorn in Hengist's hall there was much about his own conceit of himself which gave him self-scorn. The gods, though they had kept his side, had given him lessons which he would never forget. Chief among these was that cavalry by itself was useless against men who would bravely stand and fight on foot. He had to have such men, men who would march and fight afoot, to come behind the cavalry and hold the ground or pour through the breaches made by his horse. He knew now that he had fed too long on his dreams. From this day the hard work began. He had made his, progress and the name of Arturo had spread and was spreading. Behind the word now he had to work and build and shape the reality of a great command.

For more than a month Arturo and his company moved westward and wherever there was town, hamlet, settlement or village to be found they would stop and Arturo would draw up his companions and address the people. The news of the manner and purpose of his coming running ahead of him, there was now no fear of him so that on the high downs when they rested for a night the cattle and sheep minders would come from their runs to see and hear him, and in the wooded valleys he drew the lonely charcoal burners and swineherders wonderingly from the trees into the clearings. Now, when he called for men to join him, there were those few who stayed after their fellows had left. He went south down the river valley to the outskirts of Venta, which, although a shadow of its former self, was more prosperous and inhabited than most towns, and although the gates were closed against him there were those who came over the walls secretly by night to hear and see him. He moved like a man in a dream and spoke like one possessed and there were many of his companions who were hard pressed to keep patience and face with him. But others, like Durstan, Gelliga, Lancelo, Garwain and Borio, who knew his mind and purpose and read them right, knew, too, that Arturo meant to raise his own army and own no master but himself. When the day came to league himself with Gerontius and Ambrosius it would be as equal and with his own troops.

From Venta they turned northwest and at the end of that days march Felos rode into camp. He found Arturo grooming the White One after feeding and watering her for he would let no one serve her but himself.

Arturo said, “Greetings, good Felos. You have been so long gone that I had thought never to see you again.”

Felos, smiling, shook his head. “I would have been with you sooner, my captain. But your lady Daria kept me many weeks at her side.”

“She is well?”

“She is, my lord, and full of deep content.”

“Then why should she keep you so long and deny me the happiness of this news?”

Felos grinned. “Because she would be certain that I might bring you the happiest news you could have.”

Arturo, stroking the neck of the White One with his hand, knowing that for days on end his mind had held no place for Felos or Daria, said, “What news could I have greater than to know she is well?”

“That of which she would be doubly certain before my return. She bids me tell you that she carries your child and all is well with her.”

Arturo's hand dropped from the White One's neck and his face stiffened with the quick spasm of his inner joy and pride. Then, with an impulsive movement, he reached into the pouch of his sword belt and drew from it the silver buckle which he had taken from his first true Saxon foe and gave it to Felos, saying, “Such a great gift as you give me with your news deserves a return. Take this in token of my joy. And now go attend to your horse first and then yourself.”

Felos moved off happily, and smiled to himself at his master's last words …
your horse first and then yourself.

When he was gone Arturo stood alone in thought for some time, and there was a mixture of emotion in him which tinged his joy with shame. His love for Daria was deep and true, but it was of a different nature from his love of his country and his desire to see it become great again. But now Daria carried his child.…
Aie,
more than that, his son it must be if the gods were truly with him; and as though they were and would have him know it there came to him the bright conviction that without delay he must ride to their place and give them his thanks; and more than that, to show no disrespect to the god of Pasco, in whose name he had been baptized, he would take from the place of the gods a gift for the child from this other god to bear home with him.

Impatient now, he called for Durstan and said, “I saddle and ride this night to the Circle of the Gods for there is a thing I must do to set my mind at peace.”

“Alone?”

“Alone, yes. Our company moves that way tomorrow and I shall be waiting for you. Give me no talk against it for my mind is set. Felos will give you the news he brought me and from that you shall, since our thoughts keep pace together, know my reasoning.”

For a moment or two Durstan hesitated, but the look on Arturo's face told him there would be no shifting him. He said, “There is a moon tonight and you ride through peaceful country. Go, and the gods watch over you.”

“They will—for I go to give them all thanks.”

Losing no time, Arturo saddled the White One, armed himself and rode out of camp. The night was still and balmy and the full moon was passing to its last quarter. He rode north away from Venta to the high ground and then swung westward. But well behind him, trailing on his left flank, another marked and followed him, a man on a dark horse, heavily draped in a cloak which had grown ragged and torn and hid the sword he carried. Behind him was slung a bow and a sheaf of arrows hung at his side. The man's face, under its unkempt growth of beard, was drawn and haggard, but there was a dark gleam in his eyes which seen close would have told his joy. Many a time had Inbar in the past been on the point of turning from his hunt, but now he was joyful that hunger and thirst and hard lying and the perils of following the companions had not drawn him from his quest. Why Arturo should leave camp and ride into the night alone he did not know or care. One desire only burned in him and he waited now only for the meeting of time and place to give him the reward and the reformation which his manhood demanded.

Toward dawn, with a light ground mist rising knee-high over the land, Arturo came from a belt of trees out onto open ground and saw ahead of him on the sheep-bitten slopes of the down the great circle of henge stones silhouetted blackly against the westward-dying moon. As he had ridden through the night his thoughts had been full of Dana and the coming child, and of Daria and his days with her. Sparse though they had been, each one now seemed like a wondrous jewel inlaid with precious stones and enamelled with flaming colours. The gods had marked him for greatness to serve his country and he would make her by the grace of the gods a queen for all men, as she was now queen for him.

He rode into the great circle of stones and, slipping from the White One's back, took his knife from his belt and walked toward the fallen slab where long before he had hidden for safekeeping the silver chalice which had once held the blood of Pasco's god. As he moved away the White One lowered her head and began to graze on the sweet downland grass and herbs.

Kneeling, Arturo dug into the turf and quickly unearthed the chalice. He brushed it free of soil with his hands and the moonlight touched it so that it gleamed dully. At this moment Inbar, on foot, his horse left tethered to a thorn bush out of sight, stepped noiselessly from behind one of the tall stones. In his hands he held the drawn bow and the goose-feather-flighted arrow, armed with its sharp iron tip. There would be no honour in this killing, and he needed none since honour had been long lost to him. To his right the White One raised her head from cropping and looked at him. The sun, yet to show itself over the edge of the eastern land, already paled the sky with light and touched the underbellies of the low morning clouds with red and gold wash. The kneeling figure of Arturo was clear against the growing light, and already overhead a lone lark sang and the meadow pippits looped their way in morning flight-across the juniper-tufted down-land.

As Arturo slowly began to rise to his feet, the White One whinnied gently and uneasily. Arturo, knowing her moods and manners, swung round, suddenly alive with an instinct of coming danger. The arrow, meant to take him below the left shoulder blade, sped true across the stone-encircled grass, the hiss of its feathered flight one long, low note against the morning quiet, and the deadly point sank deep into his body below his right ribs. He cried aloud with the sudden shock of pain and staggered backward, the silver chalice dropping from his hands. He would have fallen but the great stone behind him held him up and through the mist of pain which briefly dimmed his eyes he saw Inbar racing toward him with his sword drawn.

They fought then, without shield or buckler, sword-armed, and no words passing between them while the blood ran dark over the linen shirt under Arturo's open tunic. The sparks leapt blue and gold from the clash of their swords and the White One, disturbed and frightened, raced round the great inner circle and whinnied high. In a moment of withdrawal Arturo reached down with his left hand to the hampering shaft of the arrow lodged in his side and snapped it short. His hand came back, dark as ebony with the spurt of his own blood, and he prayed to the gods, if it were his destiny to die, to give him lifeblood enough and strength to kill Inbar before he fell himself.

And the gods were good to him and gave him this boon. He fought with the blood-veil fast clouding his eyes and, fighting, he remembered how his father had faced and fought this man, and of the dishonour which had been planned for his mother. They fought without words in the growing light of the burgeoning morning. The grass about them was trampled and scarred and bloodstained and, when the moment came that his sword slashed across the neck of his foe and Inbar fell with his death cry bubbling from his blood-filled throat like the wailing cry of an upland curlew, all reality passed from him. He fell to the ground and passed from violence into the calm of a dream of fair days and love's delights. He walked with Daria in the river pasture and plucked for her the scent-heavy meadowsweet plumes. He rode the forest paths with her lodged between his arms, riding before him on the White One, her dark hair in the wind making a moving lattice before his eyes and the sweet warmth of her woman's body filling his nostrils with a headier perfume than any that could come from the flowering summer blooms. With time out of joint, he walked with her through the villa courtyard to the fountain of the nymphs and she held in her arms the manchild which was his, and the child, seeing the splashing waters fling a veil of drifting, jewelled spray to trap the sunlight in rainbow colours, stretched out his hands to take them and crowed with delight; and with the sound of his son's voice in his ears and the sight of Daria's red lips parted to touch the child's warm cheek with a kiss, lips redder than the breast of any spring-fired robin's, he drifted further into the dark shades of oblivion.

A long-haired, shaggy moorland pony grazed close to the White One within the circle of great standing stones. The pack which had been on its back lay open on the ground beside the body of Arturo, which was half-propped against a fallen lintel, his head cushioned by his own bloodstained cloak and tunic, and his body naked above his trews except for the tight binding of torn strips of cloth that circled his body below his ribs and held, tight-pressed, a great moss wad which blocked and staunched the flow of blood from his wound.

At his side sat the man Merlin, whom he had last seen on the high scarp above the Sabrina River, the dark-haired, stocky, brown-robed man known as the ageless, the wandering one. On the ground lay a half-empty waterskin and a piece of old cheese resting on a great dock leaf. The man ate and, from watching Arturo's face, he turned now and then to look at the body of Inbar lying a little way off, the flies and bluebottles crowding the wound in his neck, the eyes upturned and open, staring sightlessly at the midmorning sky.

A pair of grey-polled jackdaws, scavenging and eyeing the cheese below, sat atop one of the great stones and called noisily. At the sound Arturo slowly opened his eyes. He lay without moving for a while and there was a weakness in him that made him feel without body or contact with the turf and stone which supported him. But that he lived he knew, for slowly there grew in him a raging thirst which fired his throat and slowly brought him to an awareness of his own flesh and blood. His mind clearing, he said weakly, “I live.”

Merlin smiled. “It is the wish of the gods. Why else would they have set my steps this way? Once by happenchance we met. But now they stir themselves and begin to meddle with my affairs and give me dreams to plague my path. Yes, you will live. While you rested in limbo I cut the broken arrowhead from you.”

“Thanks I give you, and more thanks would for a drink. My … my throat is like a smithy's furnace and my body burns.”

Merlin reached for the waterskin and then took from the ground at Arturo's side the silver chalice. He filled it and, with an arm around Arturo's shoulders, lifted him a little so that he could drink in comfort.

Arturo took the chalice in his weak, trembling hands and drank. The water went into him with a coldness that suddenly made his body shake. He half lowered the chalice and coughed, holding it in his cupped hands against his breast, closing his eyes against the shock. When the spasm passed he opened his eyes, felt strength stirring in him and moved to raise the chalice to drink again, but slowly stayed his hands. Within the silver bowl cradled between his palms the clear water was slowly flushing with a crimson hue that deepened and, as the water stilled, took the morning light and glowed with a high brilliance to show his own bearded, fight-sweated face mirrored in it.