9
IN THE EARLY-MORNING sunlight the clan women stripped the Aenir dead of all weapons and despatched those warriors still clinging to life. Caswallon walked into the forest with many others of the attacking party, stopping at a fast-moving stream and removing his blood-covered clothes.
The night’s work had appalled the new War Lord. More than six hundred Aenir warriors had been butchered in their sleep; it was no way for a man to die.
Caswallon stepped into the stream, shivering as the icy mountain water touched his skin. Swiftly he washed, then returned to the bank, sprawling out alongside Leofas and the young raven-haired warrior Onic, the finest quarterstaff fighter in the mountains.
‘A fine night,’ said Leofas, grinning. Stripped of his clothing, the old warrior looked even more powerful. His barrel chest and muscular shoulders gave evidence of his great strength, yet his belly was flat and taut, the muscles of the solar plexus sharp and clean.
‘It was a victory, anyway,” said Caswallon wearily.
‘You’re a strange man, Caswallon,’ said Leofas, sitting up and slapping the younger man between the shoulder-blades. These swine have come upon us with murder and rape and now, I sense, you regret last night’s slaughter.’
‘I do regret it. I regret it was necessary.’
‘Well, I enjoyed it. Especially watching you gut that tall son of a whore.’
A group of clan women, led by Maeg, came to the stream carrying clean clothes for the men. Caswallon dressed, and spotted Taliesen sitting on a fallen tree; the War Lord joined him in die sunshine.
‘There is the smell of death in this forest,’ said Taliesen. ‘It reeks of it.’ The druid looked impossibly old, his face ashen, the skin dry. His
cloak of feathers hung limply on his skeletal shoulders, the colours faded and dust-covered. ‘But still, you did well, War Lord.”
Caswallon sat beside the old man. ‘Who are you, druid? What are you?’
‘I am a man, Caswallon. No more, no less. I was a student centuries ago and I joined the trek from the stars to see more of life. I wanted to learn the origins of man. The Gates were a means to an end.’
‘And what are the origins of man?’
Taliesen chuckled, his tired eyes showing a glint of humour. ‘I don’t know. I never will. My teacher was a great man. He knew the secrets of the stars, the mysteries of the planets, and the structure of the Gates. And yet, he never learned the origins. Together we journeyed and studied, and ever the great mystery eluded us. I sometimes fear the cosmic force I cannot see, and he laughs at me in my vanity.
‘My teacher, Astole, became a mystic in a far land. It happened soon after the Prime Gate failed. You see, we could never travel back far enough, anywhere, to find the first man. The Gates would always be pushed back. Wherever we went, there was a man, developed to some degree. Several hundred years^ago I developed a theory of my own, and I left Astole in the deserts of his world and journeyed to a northern land, a highland kingdom. The people there were under threat, even as you are, and I led them to the Farlain to watch them grow and to see how they would develop. I thought the development would assist my studies.’
‘And did it?’ asked Caswallon.
‘No. Man is a singularly irritating creature. All that happened was that I grew to love the people of the Farlain. My studies were ruined anyway two hundred years ago, when the last of my people wed into the race. We had no women, you see, and every man needs companionship. I recruited many of their children, and so the order survives, but many of those now practising the skill do not appreciate any longer the … arts behind the machines.
‘You, Caswallon, are of my race. You are the great-grandson of the daughter of Nerist. A bright man, was Nerist. He alone of all my pupils said we would never re-open the Great Gates. You cannot understand the awful sense of separation and loss we experienced
when those Gates closed. You see, what happened was an impossibility.’