The Iron Lance Read online

  Thus resolved, I take my first faltering steps into the cave—for that is how I think of it, an immense subterranean cavern, a vast hollow chamber of stone deep under the earth. I take three steps into the clinging darkness, and I stop. I am no longer steady on my feet. I feel light-headed, as if I am floating.

  Nevertheless, I take a deep breath and proceed.

  I turn slowly, first left, then right. I seem to feel the faintest breath of air on my cheek when I face the right and so I decide to pursue the search in this direction. It is a whim, nothing more, but it is rewarded by the fact that after a dozen or so measured paces, I reach a step.

  I stoop and feel the edge of the step with my hands; it rises to others behind it. I mount the first three, then three more, then another, and I am arrived upon a platform, which I take to be cut into the cavern wall.

  I speak a word and judge by the reverberation of the sound that I have entered a smaller chamber, open to the larger—a vestibule of sorts. Stretching my hands before me like a blind man—truly, I am a blind man—I shuffle forward to explore the chamber to which I have ascended.

  My head is spinning now. I have passed giddy and am actually growing dizzy. My senses remain acute. I feel as if I am glowing in the dark, giving off sparks. My hearing is sharp, but there is nothing to hear, save my own breathing. Since I have not been instructed otherwise, I decide to remove the blindfold.

  As expected, there is no light. The subterranean darkness is complete. It covers me like a second skin, so close as to be part of me. Though I am blind still, my senses are alive and tingling with anticipation—or, more probably, the strange substances I have imbibed are beginning to work in me somehow. I feel as if I am flying.

  I continue with my inspection. The walls of the vestibule, I discover, are rounded and smooth, cut, as I have surmised, into the walls of the cave. There is no impediment to my movement as I work my way around what I perceive to be the back wall of the vestibule, feeling with my hands. And then…

  I brush the edge of the opening with my fingers. I feel the curved lip of a ledge, and quickly trace the opening in the wall with my hands. It is a niche, wider than it is high, and with a slightly projecting shelf. I reach in. It is not deep. I feel the back of the niche, and then begin running my fingers along the shelf.

  My fingertips brush something cold and hard.

  The object has been placed in the niche precisely. Indeed, I presume the niche and shelf have been constructed especial to hold the object it contains. Could this be what I was meant to find?

  I continue my investigation of the object. It is long and thin, with a hardness and coldness that can only be metal. I take it into my hand and carefully remove it from its resting place, holding it lengthwise across my palms to judge its heft. From the weight, I suspect bronze, or iron; and from the length and shape, I imagine a rake handle. But no, it is too thin—the circumference is too small for any common tool or implement of that sort—and it is too heavy. The surface is rough, pitted, and without marking or ornamentation that I can discern.

  Running my hand along the length of the metal rod, I perceive that it is not entirely straight—the metal bows and turns slightly as it gradually thickens towards its blunt, rounded end. I turn my attention to the opposite end, and find that the cylindrical shaft thins as it nears what I imagine to be the top, its roundness squared beneath a short, triangular—shaped head. There are three—what shall I call them? protrusions?—on the head: small vanes, if you will. These vanes are thin, and…

  As I stand puzzling over the nature of the object I have found, I hear the whoosh of air, great volumes of air moving, yet I feel not the slightest movement on my skin. Sweat breaks out on my forehead.

  All at once, it seems as if the floor beneath me is tilting. I reel forwards, clutching the metal rod. With my free hand, I grab for the edge of the niche, miss, and lurch awkwardly into the wall. The cavern is booming now, and I realize the sound is in my head—it is the rush of blood through my ears. Bracing myself against the wall. I try to turn, but find I can no longer stand.

  I am panting like a dog. My breath comes in quick bursts and gasps, as if I have run ten miles. Sweat is pouring from my face. I hold to the wall, leaning against it, afraid to move lest I fall from the raised vestibule to the floor. Instead, keeping my back to the wall, I slide down slowly into a sitting position, clutching the metal rod, and gulping air like a fish caught on dry land.

  The floor beneath me trembles; I feel the vibration seeping up through the stone floor and into my bones. My mouth is dry and tastes of sour milk. The sweat is pouring from me now. I press my head back against the solid rock and feel my poor heart thumping away wildly in my chest.

  This is how I will die, I think.

  There are dancing spots before my eyes—like fireflies, these errant beams glint and fade, appearing and reappearing in the vast emptiness of the cavern. Unlike fireflies, however, they are swarming, growing larger, gathering more substance. I see colors: bold, vibrant, shocking in their intensity. The light is growing stronger, coalescing into spheres.

  It must be the last eruption of a dying brain, but no…I can see some of the cavern chamber illuminated in the light of the ever—shifting spheres. One of them drifts close to me, shedding a gentle glow of light over me. What is more, I can see something moving inside the sphere: the dim shapes of human figures.

  The images inside the sphere are shifting, changing, filling my vision. It is all I can see now, and the light is growing stronger. Without warning the vision breaks over me. A sudden burst of light, and all at once, the cavern is ablaze with sparkling images. They fly past my dazzled eyes in a flurry of beams, a veritable blizzard of brilliance, each image a burning spark striking deep into the soft tissue of my brain. Each blazing particle is part of a greater whole, merging and coalescing as they accumulate in my mind.

  Individual fragments are swallowed in the gradually emerging whole, and I begin to see—not broken images now, but a portrait entire. With the crystalline clarity of a dream, I see it all. More, I behold. I have become part of the dream, living it even as it is played out in my mind.

  Still, the dazzling fragments, these scintillating shards of dream, fly at me, piercing my senses, embedding themselves deep in my perception. I am defenseless before the onslaught. I can but gape and surrender to the dizzying torrent. But there is so much! the scenes cascade into my consciousness, and I am a man drowning in the onrushing flood.

  I can derive no sense or understanding of what I see; the dream is too vast, too chaotic, too wild. It is all I can do to take it in. Yet, there is meaning here. I feel it. This dream is no hollow hallucination, the shadow—play of a drugged and fevered brain. Indeed, irresistibly, I am impressed with a grave and terrible certainty that the things I am seeing, however bizarre and chaotic they may seem, actually happened. The dream is authentic. It happened.

  Oddly, it is this awful certainty which overwhelms me in the end. I cannot endure the frenzied onslaught, and I fall back. A man drunk on an impossibly rich and heady elixir, I slump against the wall, blind and insensate. Resting the metal rod across my lap, I press the heels of my hands to my poor eyes. Instantly, the images cease. Upon releasing the rod, I have broken contact with the source of the dream, and am myself released to the blessed, soothing darkness of the cavern.

  Oh, but it is a darkness lit by the flickering light of a strange and glorious magic. The dream is alive in me. Slowly, slowly, with ignorant, faltering steps I begin the first feeble attempt to impose some small order on the irreducible chaos of the thoughts and images whirling inside my mind.

  Great God, I am lost!

  The cry is scarcely uttered when the answer is revealed. There is a thread…a thread. Seize it, hold it, follow it, and it will lead through the twisted labyrinth of madness to sweet reason.

  Carefully, carefully, I take up the thread.

  ONE

  Murdo raced down the long slope, his bare feet striking the soft t
urf so that the only sound to be heard was the hiss and swash of his legs through the coarse green bracken. Far behind him, a rider appeared on the crest of the hill and was quickly joined by two more. Murdo knew they were there; he had anticipated this moment of discovery, and the instant the hunters appeared he dived headlong to the ground to vanish among the quivering fronds where he continued his flight, scrambling forward on knees and elbows, first one way and then another.

  The riders spurred their mounts and flew down the hillside, the blades of their spears gleaming in the early light. All three shouted as they came, voicing the ancient battlecry of the clan: “Dubh a dearg!”

  Murdo heard the shouts and froze fast, pressing himself to the damp earth. He felt the dew seeping through his siarc and breecs, and smelled the sharp tang of the bracken. The sky showed bright blue through leafy gaps above him and, heart pounding, he watched the empty air for the first glimpse of discovery.

  The horses raced swiftly nearer, their hooves drumming fast and loud, and flinging the soft turf high over their broad backs. Murdo, flat beneath the bracken, every sense alert and twitching, listened to the swift-running horses and judged their distance. He also heard the liquid gurgle of a hidden burn a short distance ahead, lower down the slope.

  Upon reaching the place where the youth had disappeared, the riders halted and began hacking into the dense brake with the butts of their spears. “Out! Out!” they shouted. “We have you! Declare and surrender!”

  Murdo, ignoring the calls, lay still as death and tried to calm the rapid beating of his heart so the hunters would not hear him. They were very near. He held his breath and watched the patch of sky for sight or shadow of his pursuers.

  The riders wheeled their mounts this way and that, spear shafts slashing at the fronds, their cries growing more irritated with each futile pass. “Come out!” shouted the largest of the riders, a raw-boned, fair-haired young man named Torf. “You cannot escape! Come out, damn you!”

  “Give up!” shouted one of the others. Murdo recognized the voice; it belonged to a thick-shouldered bull of a youth named Skuli. “Give up and face your punishment!”

  “Surrender, you sneaking little weasel,” cried the last of the three. It was the dark-haired one called Paul. “Surrender now and save yourself a hiding!”

  Murdo knew his pursuers and knew them well. Two of them were his brothers, and the third was a cousin he had met for the first time only ten days ago. Even so, he had no intention of giving up; he knew, despite Paul’s vague assurance, they would beat him anyway.

  Instead, amidst the shouts and the brushy whack of the spears, Murdo calmly put two fingers beneath his belt and withdrew a tightly-wound skein of wool and deftly tied one end of the thread to the long bracken stem beside his head. Then, with the most subtle of movements, he began to crawl again, paying out the thread as he went.

  Slowly, slowly, and with the icy cunning of a serpent, he moved, pausing to unwind more string and then slithering forward again, head low under the pungent green fronds, forcing himself to remain calm. To hurry now would mean certain disaster.

  “We know you are here!” shouted Torf. “We saw you. Stand and declare, coward! Hear me? You are a very coward, Murdo!”

  “Surrender,” cried Paul, dangerously near. “We will let you go free.”

  “Give up, Stick!” added Skuli. “You are caught!”

  Murdo kept silent—and even when Paul’s spear swept only a hair’s breadth from his head, he did not break and run, but hunkered down and waited for the horse to move on. Reaching to the end of his thread ball, he lay still, trying to determine where and how far away were each of his pursuers. Satisfied that they were all at least ten or more paces away, he took a deep breath, pulled the woollen thread taut…and then gave a quick, sharp tug.

  He waited, and jerked the string hard once more.

  “There!” shouted Skuli. The other two whooped in triumph, wheeling their mounts and making for the place.

  But Murdo had already released the thread and was slithering down the hill as fast as he could go. He reached the bank of the burn and risked a furtive look back at the riders: all three stood poised in the saddle with spears at the ready, shouting into the bracken for him to surrender.

  Smiling, Murdo eased over the edge of the bank and lowered himself into the burn. The water was shallow, and cold on his bare feet, but he gritted his teeth and hastened on. While the riders demanded his surrender, Murdo made his escape along the low stream bed.

  It was Niamh who finally caught him; he was sliding quietly around the corner of the barn, hoping to slip into the yard unobserved. “Murdo! There you are,” she scolded, “I have been looking for you.”

  “My lady,” Murdo said, snapping himself straight. He turned to see her flying toward him, green skirts bunched in her fists, dark eyes flashing.

  “A fine my lady! Look at you!” she said, exasperation making her sharp. “Wet to the bone and muddy with it.” She seized him by the arm and pulled him roughly toward her. A head or more taller than the slender woman, he nevertheless delivered himself to her reproof. “You have been at that cursed game again!”

  “I am sorry, mam,” he replied, his man-voice breaking through the boyish apology. “It’s the last time, and—”

  “Hare and hunter—at your age, Murdo!” she snapped, then looked at him and softened. “Ah, my heart,” she sighed and released his arm. “You should never let them treat you like that. It is neither meet nor fitting for any lord’s son.”

  “But they could not catch me,” Murdo protested. “They never do.”

  “The abbot is here,” Niamh said, tugging his damp, dirty siarc and brushing at it with her hands.

  “I know. I saw the horses.”

  “He will think you one of the servingmen, and who is to blame but yourself?”

  “What of that?” Murdo replied sourly. “It’s never me that’s going.”

  “How should you be going? For all it is only ten and four you are.”

  “Ten and five—in five months,” Murdo protested. “Besides, I am taller than Paul, and stronger.” But his mother was already moving away. He stepped quickly beside her. “Why is the abbot here?”

  “Can you not guess?”

  “It’s the gathering,” Murdo answered.

  “It is that.”

  “When?”

  “Ask the abbot,” replied Niamh. “It’s him you are greeting soon enough.”

  They proceeded across the yard—a flat expanse of hard-packed earth enclosed on three sides by the barn and storehouses, and on the fourth by the great gray stone manor house itself. In all, Hrafnbú was as fine a manor farm as any in Orkney; the estate, or bú, had been in Murdo’s family for five generations, and it was the best place Murdo knew.

  Seven horses waited in the yard—the four clerics’ and those of Torf, Skuli, and Paul, who had reached the bú well before Murdo, but just after the abbot. Lord Ranulf, flanked by his sons and nephew, stood in the center of the yard, deep in conversation with the abbot and his monks.

  Ignoring the clerics, Murdo’s eyes went first to his father. The Lord of Hrafnbú towered above those around him. He was a big man, with large, strong hands—one of which gripped his elbow while the other stroked his heavy brown beard. Open-faced and naturally amiable, he was frowning now, his friendly dark eyes narrowed in a look which Murdo knew to betoken trouble.

  His expression changed instantly when the lord glanced up at the approach of Murdo and his mother. “Abbot Gerardus, my wife and last-born son.” Ranulf held out his hand, which his wife accepted with a minute bow.

  “Lady Niamh,” the abbot said, inclining his head respectfully. “God save you, my lady. I greet you in the name of Our Redeemer. I trust you are well.”

  A gurry-mouthed Saecsen, thought Murdo darkly, stiffening at the abbot’s accent. They hold themselves so superior and cannot even speak a proper word.

  The young abbot’s eyes swung easily to Murdo and, finding little
enough to interest him, flicked away again. Murdo vowed vengeance for the slight.

  “Good abbot,” said Lady Niamh, “my husband would keep you talking the whole day long, but I will not. I am certain that whatever you have to say will be better spoken over the welcome cup. Come, you have ridden a fair distance already and the day is yet new.”

  Murdo squirmed uncomfortably as his mother slipped easily into the speech and manner of the hated foreigner. Why did she always have to do that?

  “You are most kind, my lady,” replied the abbot imperiously. “I assure you my fellow priests and I would be delighted to attend you.”

  “This way, friends,” said the lord, indicating the house with an expansive gesture. “We will discuss our business over our cups.”

  Lord Ranulf and the abbot started off, and Torf, Skuli, and Paul made to follow. “See to the horses, you three,” Ranulf called over his shoulder, halting them in midstep. “And give our friends’ animals a good measure as well.”

  The young men stared after the lord, suddenly chagrined at being left out of the discussion. Murdo allowed himself a smile of wicked glee at their dismay. Torf saw the smile and started for him, fists clenched, but Paul seized the older youth’s arm and pulled him back, saying, “If we hurry, we can still join them before the cup is dry.”

  Torf growled and, turning on his heel, darted after the others. As the horses were led away, Murdo fell into place behind the trailing monks and the procession crossed the yard and entered the house. The monks were brought into the hall and given places at the lord’s board.

  Unlike Jarl Erlend’s palace in Orphir, Ranulf’s manor was very much the house of a working farmer, whose estate, though extensive, required constant vigilance and exacting care in order to produce even the modest wealth the lord and his vassals enjoyed. There were no golden bowls, no silver ornaments for visiting clerics, no gifts of coin for the church; the hall was not full of warriors with gleaming torcs and armbands awaiting the next raid, the next battle. Indeed, the master of Hrafnbú kept no fighting men, and at Yuletide and other holy days, his own family and friends more than filled the low-beamed hall; if any more visitors came, extra boards and trestles were set up in the yard. Still and all, Ranulf’s ale was good and dark and sweet, and the fire at his wide hearth was as warm as any king’s.