fighting, both for my lack of weapons skill and my potential value in other directions.
After the allocation of chariots and positions, we prepared for battle.
Cimmenos was the first to armour. He had taken the wolf-crest from his iron helmet and replaced it with the crest of heron feathers that was so typical of this part of Hyperborea.
He had buckled on his heavy bull’s-hide war harness over the patterned linen shirt that would stop it rubbing through to his bones; four layers thick, this covered shoulder and chest, back and kidneys. It could be slashed twenty times with the ice-forged iron of the Northlanders before it would part completely.
He had attached a bright bronze girdle to protect his midriff, a gullet shield of thin iron round his neck, and a soft, doe-skin kirtle over his blue-and-red-striped trousers. Grey goat-leather boots and pitch-blackened horse-bone greaves completed the armour. He flung his cloak around his shoulders and paraded in the Confident Manner as he yelled the exhortation to us either to win back the fort, or to make good conversation with our fathers and mothers in the Otherworld afterwards.
He was bright and strong. Dawn-light gleamed on red hair and red moustache, and reflected off the five recurved points of his kaibulg , the heavy bowel-hooking stabbing spear.
All totem crests had been removed from battle-helms and attached to standards: the tusked boars, the stags, the wolves, the falcons and hawks, the leaping salmon, the foxes, otters, owls and wish-hounds. There were more standards, it seemed to me, than men to carry them. All helmets were now crested with real or bronze feathers, a decoration that signified the readiness of the wearers to fly to their ancestors if they suffered one of the seven mortal blows.
Kymon emerged in his child’s harness, the equal of Cimmenos’s but in softer leather, and with thin, cloth-backed iron shields at his waist and heart.
Munda had armoured similarly, though she would not fight. This was a symbolic gesture only. Her small shield was inlaid in ochre with an image of Braega, the guardian of river crossings. Braega was also the warning spirit who whispered in a girl’s ear during the time she was becoming a woman, though quite what she warned about was a question I had never asked; and she was also the earth spirit to whom these Celts turned at times of transition or decision.
Whether Munda’s choice of shield-guard was conscious or instinctive, it was certainly apt.
Now Kymon went to the edge of Nantosuelta, with Speaker for Kings and Rianata, the Thoughtful Woman. He cried out his blood dirge with all the force of a grown man. Herons rose startled from the rushes. Birds flocked and wheeled above the drooping trees on the farther bank.
‘Dawn chariots racing from the river ford
Sun on helmet
Sun on spear
Sun on sword
Men scatter before the racing chariots
Blood on the plain
Blood on the rich tunics of the dead men
Blood on the sword
Heads cut, proud life, proud men hang from the belts of proud warriors
Life goes to Earth
Life goes to strength
Life goes to the sword
Red on the plain, blood on the green breast of Earth
Blood on the high walls of the fort
Heads hanging from the high walls
The men of the stabbing game are here, strong as iron, keen as wind, bright as sun, swift as birth, sharp as claw!’
The sun was high when we emerged in a line from the grove-wood’s edge, facing the tall-grassed Plain of MaegCatha, and the dark, rising slopes of Taurovinda.
It was clear at once that the Shadows of Heroes had been here in greater force since our last tentative visit. The woodland edge was marked with the tall wooden effigies of men, grotesquely crude, legs braced apart, arms in various positions, each hand holding a blade or a club or a shield. All these blank-faced idols were turned towards the groves. They were saying: this far and no further.
Black and yellow pennants blew in the strong breeze from the high
After the allocation of chariots and positions, we prepared for battle.
Cimmenos was the first to armour. He had taken the wolf-crest from his iron helmet and replaced it with the crest of heron feathers that was so typical of this part of Hyperborea.
He had buckled on his heavy bull’s-hide war harness over the patterned linen shirt that would stop it rubbing through to his bones; four layers thick, this covered shoulder and chest, back and kidneys. It could be slashed twenty times with the ice-forged iron of the Northlanders before it would part completely.
He had attached a bright bronze girdle to protect his midriff, a gullet shield of thin iron round his neck, and a soft, doe-skin kirtle over his blue-and-red-striped trousers. Grey goat-leather boots and pitch-blackened horse-bone greaves completed the armour. He flung his cloak around his shoulders and paraded in the Confident Manner as he yelled the exhortation to us either to win back the fort, or to make good conversation with our fathers and mothers in the Otherworld afterwards.
He was bright and strong. Dawn-light gleamed on red hair and red moustache, and reflected off the five recurved points of his kaibulg , the heavy bowel-hooking stabbing spear.
All totem crests had been removed from battle-helms and attached to standards: the tusked boars, the stags, the wolves, the falcons and hawks, the leaping salmon, the foxes, otters, owls and wish-hounds. There were more standards, it seemed to me, than men to carry them. All helmets were now crested with real or bronze feathers, a decoration that signified the readiness of the wearers to fly to their ancestors if they suffered one of the seven mortal blows.
Kymon emerged in his child’s harness, the equal of Cimmenos’s but in softer leather, and with thin, cloth-backed iron shields at his waist and heart.
Munda had armoured similarly, though she would not fight. This was a symbolic gesture only. Her small shield was inlaid in ochre with an image of Braega, the guardian of river crossings. Braega was also the warning spirit who whispered in a girl’s ear during the time she was becoming a woman, though quite what she warned about was a question I had never asked; and she was also the earth spirit to whom these Celts turned at times of transition or decision.
Whether Munda’s choice of shield-guard was conscious or instinctive, it was certainly apt.
Now Kymon went to the edge of Nantosuelta, with Speaker for Kings and Rianata, the Thoughtful Woman. He cried out his blood dirge with all the force of a grown man. Herons rose startled from the rushes. Birds flocked and wheeled above the drooping trees on the farther bank.
‘Dawn chariots racing from the river ford
Sun on helmet
Sun on spear
Sun on sword
Men scatter before the racing chariots
Blood on the plain
Blood on the rich tunics of the dead men
Blood on the sword
Heads cut, proud life, proud men hang from the belts of proud warriors
Life goes to Earth
Life goes to strength
Life goes to the sword
Red on the plain, blood on the green breast of Earth
Blood on the high walls of the fort
Heads hanging from the high walls
The men of the stabbing game are here, strong as iron, keen as wind, bright as sun, swift as birth, sharp as claw!’
The sun was high when we emerged in a line from the grove-wood’s edge, facing the tall-grassed Plain of MaegCatha, and the dark, rising slopes of Taurovinda.
It was clear at once that the Shadows of Heroes had been here in greater force since our last tentative visit. The woodland edge was marked with the tall wooden effigies of men, grotesquely crude, legs braced apart, arms in various positions, each hand holding a blade or a club or a shield. All these blank-faced idols were turned towards the groves. They were saying: this far and no further.
Black and yellow pennants blew in the strong breeze from the high
Similar Books
