The Paradise War Read online

  “Is it really so dangerous?” I asked.

  Tegid nodded slowly. “The mountains of Cethness are high, and the Sollen winds are cold. The prince speaks the truth when he says that many will die before we reach the stronghold.”

  “Then why are we going?”

  “There is nothing else we can do,” Tegid replied dismally. “It is what the king has ordered.”

  I saw how the matter stood, so I did not bother asking the most obvious, and most disturbing, questions. If mighty Sycharth could not protect her people, why believe the stone walls of Findargad would fare any better? What good were swords and spears against an enemy that felt neither pain nor death?

  As Tegid had morbidly suggested, we might as well have stayed in Sycharth and saved ourselves the hardship and distress of a cold mountain journey, for one grave is very like another, and when Lord Nudd came for us there would be no stopping him wherever we happened to be.

  And yet . . . and yet, an elusive glimmer of hope danced at the edge of my awareness like a firefly floating just out of reach. It was there, and then it was gone. I gave chase and it disappeared; I stood still and it drew close. But, try as I might, I could not capture it.

  Yet I could not rest until I had seized that hope, however small. That night I withdrew from the comfort of the king’s fire and stood alone in a nearby grove, holding vigil until I should succeed. All through the night I stood, wrapped in my cloak, leaning now and then against one of the alder trees of the grove, listening to the branches clicking in the thin, cold wind while the knife-bright stars turned slowly in the black Sollen sky. All through the night I waited. And when the moon sank from sight below the hills, I was no closer to achieving my purpose.

  Then, even as a sullen, gray green dawn lifted night’s curtain in the east, the evasive quarry I sought drew near. It came, slim and fragile, in the form of a question: if Lord Nudd was so powerful, why remove the king from his stronghold before laying waste to the fortress?

  The Coranyid had not moved against Sycharth and the other settlements of the realm while the king remained in his stronghold. The destruction came only after Meldryn had been drawn away through deception. It seemed to me that some power had prevented Lord Nudd’s awful attack while the king remained with his people. Despite all the terrible Coranyid had done, the annihilation was not complete. And even now it might be avoided somehow. But how?

  As the first faint rays of daylight spread a sickly glow into the sky, I heard again the voice of the Banfáith, clear and strong as if she were before me once again: Before the Cythrawl can be conquered, the Song must be restored.

  Was this the hope I sought? It seemed unlikely, for she had also said: No one knows the Song, save the Phantarch alone. How could the Song of Albion be restored if no one knew the Song but the Phantarch, and the Phantarch was dead?

  It was a riddle and it made no sense.

  I worried at it through the mist-shrouded day and the long hours of the freezing night, as we sat huddled in our cloaks before our twig fire. But the riddle turned inward upon itself, and I could make no sense of it.

  “Tegid,” I said softly, “I have been thinking.” Twrch slept at my feet, the king rested fitfully on his white oxhide nearby, and Tegid sat beside me, staring into the shimmering flames, brooding in silence.

  The bard grunted but did not turn his eyes from his contemplation of the fire.

  “Where is the Phantarch?”

  “Why speak of it again?” he muttered. “The Phantarch is dead.”

  “Hear me out,” I insisted. “I have pondered this in my mind and do not speak just to amuse myself with the sound of my voice.”

  “Very well, speak your mind,” he relented.

  “The Banfáith told me many things,” I began and was quickly interrupted.

  “Oh yes, the Banfáith told you many things. And you have told me little.” He was sullen in this observation. “Have you now decided to part with some of your treasure hoard?”

  The words of the Banfáith were still a mystery to me, and I still feared them and all they might mean. But as the days passed and the hopelessness of our plight became ever more apparent, I grew less concerned for myself. This was no time for the selfishness of secrets. Tegid was Chief Bard now; he must be told what I knew.

  “You are right to rebuke me, Tegid,” I told him. “I will tell you everything.” So I began to relate all she had told me regarding the Phantarch and the Song of Albion—reluctantly at first, but then more readily as the words sought release and tumbled out. I described the prophecy as well as I could remember it. I told him about the destruction and upheaval of the days to come, and the looked-for champion. I told him about Llew Silver Hand and the Flight of Ravens and the Hero Feat at the end of the Great Year and all that I could remember, just as the Banfáith had given it to me. When I finished, Tegid did not raise his head but sat staring morosely into the fire.

  “It seems to me that despite all the prophecy portends, there may yet be some future for us.”

  But Tegid took no comfort in what I told him. Instead, he shook his head slowly and said, “You are wrong. What future there may have been, now can never be. The Cythrawl is too strong in the land; Lord Nudd has grown too powerful.”

  “Then why give the prophecy at all?”

  Tegid just shook his head.

  “I do not understand you, Tegid. You moan because I would not tell you the Banfáith’s prophecy, and when I do tell you, all you can do is complain that it is too late. Before the Cythrawl can be conquered, the Song must be restored—that is what she said. It seems to me that we have to find the Phantarch.”

  “The Phantarch is dead, as you well know.”

  “And the Song with him?”

  “Of course the Song with him. How can it be otherwise? The Phantarch is the instrument of the Song—there is no Song without the Phantarch.”

  “But where is he?”

  “You have Ollathir’s awen,” he snapped, “not me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He muttered something under his breath and made to turn away, but I held him.

  “Please, Tegid, I am trying to understand. Where is the Phantarch?”

  “I do not know,” he answered and explained how, in order to protect the Song, the Phantarch’s chamber was hidden and the location kept secret. “Only the Penderwydd knows where the Phantarch hides. Ollathir knew, and Ollathir is dead.”

  “And he died before he could tell you the secret?”

  “Yes! Yes!” Tegid rose to his feet and raised his hands in clenched fists about his head. “Yes, Llyd! You have finally grasped this important truth: the Phantarch is dead; Ollathir is dead; the Song is dead; and soon we will be dead too.” The king stirred in his sleep. Tegid saw that his outburst had disturbed the king and dropped his fists.

  What a cruel deceit, what a pitiless ruse this prophecy. I felt the fragile hope I had held so lightly begin to disintegrate. There could be no defeating the Cythrawl without the Song, and no Song without the Phantarch. But the Phantarch was dead, and, as if to make matters worse, the only person who knew where to find him was dead too.

  “Tell me now that there is still hope for us,” said Tegid, his voice a choked whisper. The fight went out of him, and he sank once more to the ground.

  “The king is alive,” I replied. “How can we be without hope if the king is alive? You are alive, too, and so am I. Look around—there are hundreds of us here, and we are ready to fight once more. Why has Lord Nudd been unable to kill our king? Why has he only attacked the unprotected villages?”

  Even as I spoke, my own words began to convince me that there was still something or someone keeping Nudd from his ultimate victory. “Listen, Tegid, if I were as powerful as you say Nudd is, I would first kill the king, and the kingdom would be mine. But why has he not done this?”

  “I do not know! Ask him—ask Nudd when next you meet!”

  “The Coranyid attacked only after the king had been re
moved— why?”

  “It is not for me to say! Perhaps Nudd wishes to prolong his enjoyment with the rich spectacle of our futile efforts at escape.”

  “We live only at Lord Nudd’s pleasure? I do not believe that.”

  “Believe it! We live at Lord Nudd’s pleasure. And when it pleases him to kill us, he will kill us—just as he has killed all the rest.”

  “And it is our king’s pleasure to die at Findargad?” I challenged.

  “That is the way of it! It is the king’s pleasure to die in Findargad, and I serve the king.”

  These were Tegid’s final words. But as I lay sleepless by the fire that night, these few words of the Banfáith sustained me: Happy shall be Caledon; the Flight of Ravens will flock to her many-shadowed glens, and raven-song shall be her song.

  And as I stared into the shimmering flames I saw, framed in the molten red and gold of the embers, a vision: I saw a green oak grove and, under spreading branches of clustered leaves, a grassy mound. On this mound stood a throne made of stag antlers adorned with the hide of a white ox. And perched on the back of the throne an enormous raven, black as moonless night, with wings outstretched and beak open, filling the silent grove with a bitter, stringent, yet strangely beautiful song.

  28

  THE HUNT

  As if maddened by our escape, the Season of Ice pursued us down the valleys and riverways, filling the world with its ravening roar. Sollen became an enemy to be battled, a foe growing from strength to strength while we slowly weakened. Yet we journeyed on. By the time we reached the foothills of the high peaks, everyone agreed that this year’s Sollentide was by far the worst that any had ever known for wind, rain, snow, and fierce, stinging cold. Not a day went by that the sky did not shed snow; the winds wailed and raged from dawn to dusk; the streams and rivers froze hard. As the snow rose about us, our progress slowed to a crawl.

  Finding enough fuel to make the night’s campfires became an obsession. Often we had to stop well before nightfall—sometimes even before midday—in order to find and gather enough firewood to keep us through the night. Any extra was carried along with us. Food supplies held good, but only because we began eating less. To fill our empty stomachs we ate snow as we stumbled along the trail. The warriors now walked, giving their horses to the children and mothers with infants, who could not flounder through the snow. We took to wrapping the horses’ legs—and our own as well—in rags and skins to keep their feet from freezing, and walked two by two on either side of a horse lest anyone fall away unnoticed.

  I carried Twrch beneath my cloak when I walked—the snow was too deep for him—and more than once blessed the warmth of his small furry body. I fed him from my own portion, or obtained meat scraps for him from those given to the other hounds. At night he slept next to me and we kept one another warm.

  “I have never been so cold,” I observed to Tegid one day, as we stopped to chop holes in the ice of the river to water the animals.

  “Save your breath,” he told me bitterly. “The worst is yet to come.”

  Hoping to lighten his mood, I replied, “Then the worst will be wasted on me, brother. I am numb from head to heel—I will not feel the difference.”

  He shrugged and continued chopping. When we had made a large enough hole in the thick ice, I scooped the ice chips from the hole with my hand to clear it. The water made my hand feel warmer for an instant, and then my fingers grew numb again. We brought our horses to the hole and, while they drank, I asked, “How much farther, Tegid? How many more days on the trail before we reach the fortress?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “You must have some idea.”

  He shook his head gravely. “I do not. I have never attempted the journey in the snow. Our pace has slowed from when we first began, and even then it was not quick. As our strength begins to fail in the high passes, we will move even more slowly.”

  “Perhaps it will clear soon,” I observed. “If we had even a few good days, it would help.”

  He cocked an eye to the sky—dark, as it had been for days on end, the clouds thick and gray with shut-up snow. “No,” he said, “I think that will not happen. Indeed, I am beginning to think that the Season of Snows will not end until Lord Nudd is defeated.”

  “Is that possible?” The notion of never-ending winter would have seemed ludicrous, if not for the evidence mounting around us with each passing day.

  The bard’s voice was solemn when he answered. “Great evil is loosed in Albion. Anything is possible.”

  Though I hated to admit it, I knew in my heart that he spoke the truth. Lord Nudd and his Demon Horde had seized Albion, and the hatred of Nudd’s cold heart now inundated the land—howling in the cruel, cutting wind, and raging in the stinging ice and blinding snow.

  “Have you told anyone this?”

  Tegid busied himself with the horses but made no reply.

  “You should tell the king, at least.”

  “Do you think he does not know this already?”

  After watering the horses we moved on, but with heavier hearts for the bleak prospect ahead. Day followed day. The land became steeper, the trail narrower and harder to follow. Our pace slowed accordingly— though we rose earlier, we were forced to rest more often, so gained no benefit there. Still, all was not against us. For, as the hills became more rugged and rocky, the sparse brushwood of the empty upland hills gave way to forest. We were able to find as much firewood as we needed, and, for the first time since leaving ruined Sycharth, we were at least warm at night.

  Also, the game which had fled the lowlands seemed to have taken refuge in the forests. We began to see signs of animals among the forest runs, and sometimes the gray flicker of a wolf loping silently through the trees. Prince Meldron formed a hunting party, which he led. At first, the hunters were luckless. But as the forest became more dense and the game more plentiful, the prince’s efforts began meeting with some success. More and more often, we had the roast meat of wild pigs and deer to fill our stomachs.

  One day, as we set about making camp, a small hunting party rode out in search of game. The hunters had not long left the camp when one of their number came riding back. “Hurry!” he cried. “We need six more warriors to follow me.”

  “What is it? What has happened?” inquired Tegid.

  “We have found an aurochs,” the hunter explained. “The prince has sent me to bring six more men to join the hunt.”

  “I will go,” I offered, feeling a strange tingle of excitement as a long-forgotten memory awakened. An aurochs . . .

  “Choose five to go with you,” Tegid told the rider. “I will remain with the king.”

  He did not lack volunteers, and in a moment we were mounted and flying after our guide. We rode along a hunting run cut deep into the forest. Because of the trees, the snow had not drifted to much depth, so we were able to ride with good speed. In almost no time we joined the prince and his party: four companions—Simon and Paladyr among them—and three hounds.

  “Here is where we raised the trail,” Prince Meldron said, pointing to the snow with the butt of his spear.

  I saw from the enormous tracks in the snow that a huge and heavy creature had wandered into the hunting run. And next to the first set of tracks was a second, slightly smaller set. Two animals. I looked in the direction indicated by the tracks, but the trail turned and the forest grew close, so I could not see far.

  “The tracks are new,” the prince observed. “The creatures can be but a little distance ahead of us. We will loose the dogs. Ready your spears.” He turned his horse and shouted, “Release the dogs!”

  Freed from the leash, the three hounds—all that were left of the king’s hunting pack—raced after the quarry. We lashed our horses to follow. The cold wind bit our hands and faces as the horses’ driving hooves kicked up a spray of snow. Along the trail we flew, spears level, slicing the chill air.

  The narrow corridor of the hunting run turned, and we rounded the bend to see that it ended
at an outcropping of stone a short way ahead. Tumbled slabs of moss-covered stone thrust up from the level ground, forming a toothy, jagged wall atop a small mound. And before this gray green mounded wall stood two aurochs, enormous beasts, an adult and a youngster—a cow and her calf, I guessed—by the look of them, exhausted.

  The smaller animal was a young bull, huge and sleek and black, its enormous shoulder hump rising like a dark hill above the broad plain of its back. Its mother was even larger—a massive mountain of flesh and hide, hoof and horn. Separated from their herd, the beasts had grown weak with hunger and thirst. They had stumbled into the run and lacked the wit to realize the danger. These great creatures know few predators; lords of the forest, they are seldom challenged—even by the wolves which will only attack an old or enfeebled animal.

  At first glimpse of the beasts, the dogs sounded. Their long, quavering cry pierced the air and echoed down the run. At the first shivering note, the aurochs made to bolt, but saw that they were trapped by the close-grown pines and blackthorn thickets on either side. As the dogs raced swiftly toward them, the larger aurochs trotted forward and stopped stiff-legged to await its attackers. The young bull remained behind its mother, safe for the moment.

  On Ynys Sci I had taken part in many hunts, but never hunted an aurochs. Indeed, I had never before seen one of these secretive beasts in the flesh. Seeing one now, even from a fair distance, I marveled at its size. Closer, it made our horses seem small, foolishly delicate creatures— more like deer than the mounts of warriors.

  I thought the beast would charge us. But it remained steadfast, with stiffened legs and lowered head. The wide-sweeping horns, sharp as spearpoints and strong as iron, tilted toward us. One misstep and both horse and rider would be impaled; those gracefully curved weapons would rip the belly of a horse wide open, or pass like an arrow through the body of a man. One mistake and the unlucky hunter would not live to make another.

  Heedless of the danger, the hunters raced ahead, raising the hunting cry, flying full-voiced down the run. Like keening eagles we swooped toward our prey. The aurochs stood like a massive black boulder in our path, waiting patiently. Not a muscle twitched, not a nostril quivered. Likely, the animal had never been attacked, and even now did not sense the peril hurtling down upon it.