XVII: The Myrinine
Tall sweet grass bent and rolled away from them up the slope, glimmering green under the breath of morning. Half a mile distant, the forest-wall leaped up from the meadow-land, the shadowed green of pine and fir, hornbeam and beech, but green still, cool-looking in a dawn already hot. Behind the wall the land rose swiftly, dark against a pale blue sky, but the clustered peaks they had watched all yesterday lay hidden now by their lowest skirts. A speck swept into the sky and sped down the wind towards them, resolved into a young kestrel that pulled up, hovered before them, lost interest and sailed away into the south.
“That it?” drawled Thardr, a dour Cardrogh just behind Maglad. A murmur of agreeable disdain rippled out from him. Deorgard’s silence damped it, and only the wind whispered.
Then the Madroch chuckled. Heads turned. He laughed, softly; men began to grin. Then he bellowed a mighty battle-laugh for the utter joy of strife, and while men were still drawing breath to echo him, he pounded his heels into his horse’s flanks and sprang away, first among them all, his Bordegundian sword a lash of sun-flame, and he charged the fastness of the Myrinine.
Two hundred of them they were, men of many clans but Maglad’s ringing voice, loosed first, led them all in one great cry: “Deorgard!” And the company echoed like a storm, “DeorGARD!” and the hooves of their horses thundered for the trees.
Raian might have lost his seat at the king’s back, if he had not grown well-used to the royal sense of humor (notwithstanding that he would have been royally punished had he fallen and let the Madroch’s ribboned spear dip). He had gauged Deorgard’s timing well, clung tight to banner, lord and horse, and bent sidelong to peer under Deorgard’s left elbow for a glimpse at the fabled forest.
He had never seen the sea. He had dreamed of it, though, dreamed that it rose and rushed across the land to smash over him where he clung against a crumbling dream-cliff. These dour trees loomed like that monster wave, surging up to blot away the sky and engulf them. He braced himself against a shock of impact, as if the gloom of the trees had the weight of deep water.
Under the long arms of the front-ranked trees they passed, king, slave, and mount, making for a dimmer slot now seen to be a gap like the beginning of a path. And like hitting a wall, the horse shied and screamed. Deorgard yanked it round at once, but the wild veer jarred Raian from his perch. His arm, gripping Deorgard for all honor, felt all but doubly dislocated, but if it could not save his seat, at least it stayed his fall enough that he kept his feet: the spear and its flying blue and yellow ribbons stayed high and erect.
Shivering, eyes rolling, the horse would not pass the trees for all the king’s horsemanship. Now the swiftest of the other horsemen rode up into the same wall of refusal, and the air filled with the cries of spooked horses inflaming one another’s terror while their riders fought to master them. The dogs, hunting hounds and battle-dogs alike, slunk about, trying to avoid the hooves and yet draw close to their masters, tails and heads sunk in abjection.
At last the company quieted. Men looked to the Madroch, while the horses still eyed the silent shadow under the trees. Deorgard glared into the wood. Not a shaft of sunlight could be glimpsed beyond the first line of trunks. The great height of the trees, thick and heavy with needle and leaf, swallowed up every golden drop long before it could find the floor.
It seemed clear enough within, with little undergrowth; once their sight adjusted, and they ducked to look up-slope, they could see a fair way up the hill: well clear enough for a horse to walk at ease, but never a one could be made to try it. Deorgard dismounted at last in disgust.
He held a brief council. For all that they had now some respect for this overgrown shrubbery since Thardr’s sneer, none would turn away. And none would willingly be turned away, left to tend the timid horses while their fellows marched on to a glorious challenge.
Someone suggested drawing lots. Another volunteered the seven youngest, who in outraged turn offered combat to any who tried to compel them.
“In the Uissig, we’d settle it by wrestling,” Raian murmured just behind the king, not so close as to seem to advise, or even suggest, but rather as one speaking idly to himself; yet not so loud that any but Deorgard heard.
The king let his followers wrangle till tempers just began to boil up, before ordering wrestling matches. A brief flurry of surprised objections—chiefly to the time, but the king’s glowering nod towards the trees made sufficient reminder that the Myrinine would still be there when they had finished—and they threw themselves eagerly into the contests, often as much performing for Deorgard’s amusement as competing for a place in the adventure. In this spirit, even Raian and the Wolfman were obliged to a match, with one another, being only slaves; and for that reason also neither was in danger of being left behind, though later Wolf privately admitted to a mad hope of it.
To winnow six out of the two hundred took no little time, and they took their noon meal late, there under the forest eaves, when the last man was thrown down. The losers took their fate with grace enough: they were, plainly, less fit than their brothers to dare unknown perils, but only little less, and even the horse-wards upon so noble a venture would wear more glory than those who had stopped home and never come at all.
Raian could not help reflecting that if no one had stayed home, everyone would starve over the winter and there would be nothing to plant next spring. If it was not glorious, surely it was not less worthy of honor; but no one made songs about it.
The plan had been to climb straight for the summit, not more than five miles, call it two leagues by the dells and swells of uneven ground, from last night’s camp; there to raise a great beacon-fire and return. Before nightfall: they were bold, not bollocks.
Too late for all that now. So they sported through the afternoon in the shadow of the Myrinine, and made for their night’s camp a bonfire there, taking what wood they pleased from the forest fringe. Wains from the Fenustad holdings a league behind them, meant to meet them after their conquest, arrived with meat and mead and made the night merry indeed. The wagoneers were at once conscripted by the six horse-wards. Deorgard consented to the trade, and next morning all the original band, many of them savagely hung over, plunged horseless into the forest.
Deorgard strode like a lion, through the slot that he and Raian had sought yesterday; a deer track, perhaps, a long bare streak through the ankle-deep carpet of ferns. Raian skipped nimbly after, still carrying his spear; behind him, Maglad the Grim, Wolf in his wake. Another half-dozen followed them, but most entered all along the edge of the wood and spread out, running and leaping through the dim park-like expanse. A greyhound pressed close to Raian’s knees, its eyes rolling; a chorus of dismal baying from the dogs that refused to follow echoed after them under the leaves.
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After the queer balking of the animals, they had expected to feel—a sense of doom, or foreboding at least, some taint of the glamour of the wood. Men looked to their fellows known to carry magic, to see if they had any rumor from the Otherworld. Raian “listened,” as he thought of it, for that thinning of the stuff of the world, as he knew it around, say, the Elder Pendiu, the tree under which he had first sheltered with Rothric.
There was nothing. Only the usual dimness under trees heavy with the full weight of summer’s growth, and the air was still, sticky with the heat. Most of the company had left tunics and leggings both behind in camp, running along now in breechcloths alone, the king among them. They shouted and laughed to one another, mocking the Myrinine: it was after all only a forest, however old and deep. No place for a man alone, sure, but the minions of the Piper in the Wild fled before men banded together in their strength, and even Dagn Himself would not meet so many.
Still, Raian wished they would pipe down. Even an ordinary wood should be listened to.
The lowest branches stood out a foot or more above the heads of the tallest of the Geillari, and such fern and bracken as grew in this dim shade reached no higher than their ankles, so that they could see one another well enough in the grey-green twilight. Getting lost from the party would require an effort of stealth, especially as the slope here was smooth. Within a furlong or two, however, the land began to undulate, paralleling the slope. The track upon which the king strode followed the bottom of a gentle but deepening trough. Raian could see several dozen men to either side, all careful not to outstrip their lord, but those beyond were hidden by the crests to either side. Deorgard snorted like a boar and struck off the track, crossing up to the top of the left, southern rise, Raian, Maglad, Wolf and several others following close after. There he stopped and glared off through the woods.
The rest of the army also noticed that they had begun to lose sight of their flanks. Deorgard made no sign or sound, but his lieutenants cried in signal through the now-rolling wood, and the outliers drew in. Deorgard waited till they filled the two swales on either side of his rise, and men on the southern and northern crests no longer glanced searchingly into the hidden spaces beyond, before starting sharply uphill again.
Now Raian had more of silence. The ground was soft, springy with moss, and made little enough sound under soft boots treading now more warily. But apart from the men, the only sounds were those of a drowsy forest in a late summer’s morning, a rustle of wind far above, the occasional laughter of birdsong. He wondered what he was trying to hear; a dragon’s bellow? a snow lion’s cough?
The swell of land up which the king strode grew flatter, even slightly dished, and began to be edged with milky quartz, like ridges of crude white teeth breaking through mossy gums (Raian licked tenderly at his own), and the sides fell away more steeply. The trees crowded in the swales more closely, though not on the ridge, and they could no longer see so far ahead, or to the sides. No trees grew in the lane between the white stones, but the towering giants to either side kept still a deep branching roof above them. Raian and Maglad could have walked easily abreast of the Madroch; neither had the temerity and instead flanked him, left and right. Wolf came on barely a pace behind and between them.
Then the rising slope ended. Cleft as by a monstrous axe driven in from the east, from ridge and trough alike the land fell steeply to a torrent that bounded down from the north, in many short white falls that spilled into dark pools, and it disappeared away southward. Across the stream reared a ragged black wall, dripping from many seeps, its top lost in the high foliage.
Deorgard stopped. Hands on hips, he glared down at the cut like a housewife at a spoiled floor; then up, as if he could see the peak of their ambition through the trees. Suddenly he leaped out, and landed twenty feet down, heels plowing the loamy slope as he skidded another fathom. Raian leaped after him, misjudged his own landing slightly and bounced his backside on the mercifully-soft earth. Deorgard was already running to his right, upstream, leaping up the narrow ledges at the waterside. Raian charged after. Behind him, Maglad and Wolf followed hard, Wolf’s distinctive “Wooo-haah!” ringing over the rushing voice of the water. The rest chased after as they could, more than one enthusiastic leaper bowling an earlier one over into the rocky pools, to much cursing, but no fighting: if there were many such checks, they would need all spare time for travel, to be back before dark. But not a dog would follow now. Forced to choose between hound and king, their masters gave up and left them, to whine and await their return.
The gully of the stream veered back toward the west, towards the heights. The ledge narrowed and vanished, and Deorgard plunged across the stream at a deep pool, swimming before he reached the far side. There the bank rose like a broken stair, steep as a ladder and then steeper, and the sharp black rocks cut at their hands as they scaled the last twenty feet. Then in a level place like a shady lawn they stopped for breath and to await the stragglers, when a scream broke from the water below, bubbled, and died.
Men still upon the rocky climb stopped. Deorgard strode to the edge and looked down. For a long moment, only wind and water spoke, and a raven laughed. Presently one last man started up the rocks, white-faced.
“Fergunor,” he said, as soon as his head was level with Deorgard’s feet. “He was the last, just behind me. I saw him go under. He—” The man reached the top and spread a brown-stained hand helplessly. “He didn’t sink.” He took a deep breath, wiped at the water still dripping from his scruffy brown beard, and his gaze writhed about as though trying to escape what memory saw. “Like he was pulled. Hard.” The young man, not more than twenty, Raian thought, twisted his head away. “I could see his face, through the water—amazed. . . . I stuck my spear-butt in after him, but I could feel nothing . . . and then something grabbed that down, too!” He caught Deorgard’s quick stare at the spear he carried, and he held it out dully, in a gashed hand that dripped blood unheeded on the moss. “This was his. It caught on the rocks.”
“Keep it,” Deorgard ordered. Then his eyes narrowed at the silent, crowded men. “How many are we?” he barked.
They had been two hundreds and three, not counting the two slaves. They counted now one hundred and eighty-two. Hackles rose. Men spoke of having missed this friend or that, but all had supposed them merely somewhere else in the throng. The king chuckled darkly.
“Will we find them cowering about the lower slopes when we return—?” he began.
“Never!” shouted someone, and many murmurs agreed.
Deorgard flung up a restraining palm. “Will you go and hunt them, then?” He was answered with silence, and he thundered, “Shall we all turn back to seek them?”
Silence.
Deorgard nodded. “We will sing their names in tonight’s camp.” His fierce gaze travelled over them, noting each, and appeared to decide that a reminder to stay alert and to watch one another would be waste of good breath. No one spoke further, save Kavin, or one of His attendants, stroking the far outer leaves above. The light dimmed, as though clouds covered the sun.
Then, “Lord! Lord!” shouted someone right behind Raian: Kerrnev, the youngest of the band, barely a whole year older than Wolf. His outflung hand pointed across the glade, and his voice rang wild and exultant.
Beyond the beechy lawn, a stand of pines began, dark as eventide beneath its shadowy branches. And in the gloom, two pale glimmers, like the ghosts of barn cats—but cats seven or eight hands at the shoulder: snow lions, the token of the Dunmadroch. One stalked down from the north, and its eyes glowed like red coals; the other prowled up from the south, with eyes of greenest foxfire. They passed one another, never taking their eyes from the adventurers, and—
Some swore later that the red-eyed one passed in front of the other; some cried the opposite; Raian saw them pass, ghost-like, through one another. And then they turned west, up into the Myrinine, and were gone. Men hallooed, and pursued as though every human bliss lay within those pallid hides.