Now Garroch woke from his awful dream and looked about him like a man who has come alive from the grave to see the bright world again. He stared at Vedrix who towered above him on the white stallion, his thin lips tight, his fair head thrown back with all the dignity at his command.
‘Who is this man?’ said Garroch, turning round to the folk who gazed at the strangers. ‘Ask him his business, you!’
He spoke towards a group of golden warriors, who stood waiting, their swords already unsheathed and in their hands. They stared back at Garroch, their eyes narrow, their lips tightly pressed together. But they did not move.
Then the Hornman broke through the crowds and ran across the compound towards Vedrix, flinging himself with a scurry of tattered hides before the white stallion and raising his clay-daubed hands.
‘The People of the Hill praise you, O Vedrix, King of the Sun! They welcome their new King, O Vedrix! Hail, Hail, O King!’
The Priest’s thin voice soared above the massed folk like a questing hawk in search of the easiest prey.
Vedrix looked down on him, unmoved, a tiny smile flickering about his thin lips. Gwenna turned her head from the creature and snorted as though his smell was too rank for her nostrils.
Then Garroch gave a roar, seeing that he was encircled by his enemies, his betrayers. With a sudden violent movement, he swung the great rawhide whip about his head and brought it down on the neck of the white stallion. The creature screamed with the sharp agony and reared, shooting forth its forelegs in its whinnying fury. The Hornman fell before it, his head crushed as though by the biggest axe that the Gods had ever quarried. His red blood splashed the stallion’s white chest, and then his tattered body slipped sideways and tumbled at Garroch’s feet.
Now all was movement, all confusion.
Garroch howled, ‘To me, the dark ones! We are betrayed!’
But the little men of Craig Dun, the dark-eyed ones, the users of flint, had seen enough. Now they knew at last that their day was over, that the great golden ones must inherit the earth! And where they could, on every side, they slipped away, through the gates, over the stockade, under the earth tunnels, to find what shelter they could away from these laughing conquerors to whom the Sun God had given his precious metals.
And those few who remained, hacking about them with their short flint knives, their clumsy axes, in their attempt to get to their Old Man, Garroch, he who had for too long neglected them and Earth Mother—they soon fell, before they had gone many paces across the red earth of the compound. Short flint was weak against the keen edge of copper.
And so, even before the morning sun had unchilled the air about the village, Vedrix had conquered Garroch and his few, had come into the kingdom that his father Barduca had set out to gain—for himself.
And still Garroch stood, wielding his rawhide whip, his clothes ripped from his body, his legs astraddle over Isca, the only thing he had left, the woman he loved, and hated at the same time.
And again and again the horsemen came at him, spattering him with foam, the terrible hooves seeming to hang before his dust-caked face. And again and again Garroch the King swung his sharp whip, cutting horse and rider, tearing the flesh of arm and of muzzle, blinding all with blood who came within his spattering stroke.
And at length, Cradoc came close to Vedrix and said, ‘Order an archer to pick him off, man!’
But Vedrix looked down at the man who had gained him a kingdom, with hatred. He did not like the contempt in Cradoc’s voice. And he said, ‘If you would earn my deathless love, Cradoc, the King-tumbler, go in now and drag Garroch down; then there shall be no honour withheld from you!’
And Cradoc turned, sneering, to run upon Garroch, a copper-headed javelin in his hands. As he went forward he shouted, ‘What I gain, I hold, O Puppy of a greater Hound!’
And Vedrix heard that taunt, though Cradoc’s back was turned and the noise of battle was thick in his ears, for he had, since his childhood, been aware of insults, even those passed on the morning breezes. And he put the white stallion at Cradoc’s back. The savage creature bore him down, even as Garroch struck at the javelin. Cradoc fell with a scream, his ribs stove in, and in falling he dragged the terrible whip from Garroch’s hands.
Gwenna, who sat some paces away from the thickest of this battle, her baby clutched to her body, smiled bitterly and said, ‘Well played, Vedrix, my husband! So you may take the two birds with one sling-shot! I must watch you, my little fox!’
Now Garroch stood unarmed and sobbing for lack of breath, his upper body naked, the scars of old wounds showing livid against his brown skin. The bone pins had fallen from his hair in his fighting; he flung back the heavy waves of hair and swung round, stepping carefully over Isca. His eyes searched for a friend among the crowds that pressed about him, but all his friends were gone. They had escaped from this place of death, or were dead.
Then Vedrix taunted him in a high voice. ‘Little headman, they tell me you have called yourself the Sun King? Is that so, my small one?’
The golden ones in the compound heard this taunt and laughed, not so much that it belittled Garroch, as that the timid Vedrix should have dared to make it, he who had never challenged a man in his life, and who at the last had challenged the fiercest fighter most of them had known.
Garroch paused for a moment, beaten and weary, his heart torn inside him, his world crumbling about him. He paused and sniffed the air, his eyes half-closed. Then slowly he said, ‘I smell a dead dog somewhere! A little dead dog, a dead puppy, drowned when his father made water in the dark!’
Now the laughter turned against Vedrix, and even Gwenna smiled, for she was a King’s daughter and knew a man when she saw one.
‘By the God,’ she said, ‘but this one should have been born with golden hair!’
Vedrix heard those words and turned pale. Then he lashed his stallion forwards, upon the defenceless man. Garroch went down, trying to save Isca even as he fell.
Vedrix would have ridden back over them to make sure; but six of the hardest warriors of his father’s tribes ran forward and took his horse by the mane, dragging it away, punching its muzzle, and even shaking their fists in the white face of Vedrix.
‘You little bastard,’ they said. ‘At least he is a man!’
Vedrix tried to remember what they looked like, so that later he might make them pay for their words, but suddenly the game was taken out of his hands, for Isca raised her bloody head, half-conscious, to stare about her now.
And Gwenna almost let fall her baby. She rode forward and gazed down at the whipped and bloody princess.
‘My sister,’ she said, ‘that bitch, my sister. So, she has come to this! They told me Barduca had taken her, but they did not say that this little black fighting cock had rejoiced in Barduca’s leavings!’
Now Vedrix gazed at this furious woman, afraid. And he was not the only one in Craig Dun that day to be afraid. Even the most scarred of the war-men were afraid.
And Isca, the darling of Barduca, the wife of Garroch, once the Sun King, looked up slowly and smoothed the wet and matted hair from before her blue eyes. She seemed to take stock for a moment, and then, in a still cold voice, she asked, so that all the folk heard her, ‘Tell this new lord of yours, my sister, whose is your baby, the golden child at your breast!’
Isca lay staring up at Gwenna now, her ravaged face smiling wickedly. Vedrix turned and looked at his wife, Gwenna, the Queen who was to rule with him over Craig Dun.
Gwenna began to kick her horse forward, anxious to put an end to this questioning, but Vedrix suddenly became a man and took the mane of her stallion, kicking his own strong beast backwards so as to drag hers with it.
‘Whose is the child?’ he shouted.
The folk in the compound took up that cry, ‘Yes, whose is the child?’
And Isca said sweetly, the blood on her lips, ‘It is the child of Barduca, my friends. Look at its nose; look at its lips; look at the tiny birthmark on its shoulder, the right shoulder, for that is where Barduca had it. It is a sun, my friends!’
Then Vedrix gave a great cry and let go the stallion of Gwenna. In her anger she rode forward and struck Isca across the face with her riding whip. Isca still gazed up at her, smiling, a new weal across what once had been a lovely face.
Then Gwenna rode sobbing into the house that had been prepared for the new King and his Queen. She clutched her baby closely to her.
Vedrix stared after her a moment and then in a dead voice he said to the many folk who clustered about him now, ‘My people, you hear what has been said. That is the law, the ancient law, you have a king among you—though as yet he is a little King—for he was got on a true Queen, whereas I am but the son of a herdsman’s daughter.’
Those who stood nearest him saw the tears in his eyes as he spoke. They were sorry for Vedrix, though they set the little child above him now.
And Vedrix said at length, ‘What is done, must rest. There is no other way, my friends. Truth is truth and no man can knock down the stone of truth.’
The folk bowed their heads before his words. He had become a new man before their eyes and for the moment held a strange cold power that they had never known before.
Then Vedrix said, ‘You have a little King, my people. And I am that little King’s mouthpiece, until he shall use his own mouth to rule you. Listen to me; this occasion calls for an offering!’
‘An offering! An offering!’ shouted the People of the Sun.
Vedrix looked down from his stallion into the bloodshot eyes of Isca, whose lips curled up at him in contempt. He nodded to her carelessly, as one who had known her well, had suffered from her taunts and wished for his revenge, cost him what it might.
‘My friends,’ he said, ‘I speak for the safety of your little King. Take this woman for an offering. Take her and her black-haired lover, another little King, in his way! A stone King, a sparrow who dreamed he was an eagle, the King of the Sun!’
Now, certain of the warriors came forward and dragged the two to their feet.
‘What shall we do with them, master?’ they cried, drunk with their easy victory, anxious to please the mouthpiece of the King.
And Vedrix said, ‘These folk have a stone, a crude thing, away from the steading. It has belly and breasts like a woman. Drag them to that stone and hoist them there; he on the one side, she on the other. Bind them with hide thongs and let them wait the little King’s pleasure. Perhaps he may be long in speaking his punishment, for he is still at the breast—but that is well; let them await his first words. I speak for him. The word is spoken.’
Then he kicked the stallion forward towards the hut to which Gwenna had gone. The warriors bent and bound the thongs about Isca and Garroch. They bound them belly to belly, part to bloody part, laughing as they pulled tight the bonds.
And at last, when the golden ones had laughed their fill, they hitched them to a team of oxen, and whipped the beasts through the stockade gates towards the Old Woman stone.
It was a painful progress, over the flinty ground, and both bare-backed. Yet Isca bore it without a groan. Garroch was still in the red sleep of loss, dreaming of Asa Wolf and Marrag and his little daughter Brach, who had seemed to walk this black earth so many centuries ago. Garroch the King did groan and the folk laughed to hear it.
‘She is the braver one,’ they said, as they followed the team.
But Isca spat at them, through her torn lips.
‘There is not one of you who dared say that to him when his eyes were in his head,’ she said. But Garroch never heard her words. For him, she was still his enemy, the killer of his dearest friend.