'I have reason to hate him,' said Bane, his expression unusually serious. 'But he did save these people when Valanus led the Panthers north. It was Connavar and the Iron Wolves who crushed the advance, and drove the enemy back into the lands of the Cenii. I cannot take that away from him. My hatred is mine alone.'
On the eighteenth day they reached the River Wir, and journeyed by flat-bottomed boat for two hundred miles. The days were pleasant on the water, watching the countryside glide by. At the start Banouin was nervous of the four-man crew, who seemed to him to be cut-throats. Bane laughed his fears away. He and the crew got on famously. Each night they would moor the craft near settlements, allowing the two companions to lead their mounts ashore to feed.
One evening, the day they crossed the border into Norvii lands, Bane got into an argument with a huge tribesman and they moved outside to settle it with fists. The fight was fast, furious and ugly, but at the close, with both men bloodied and bruised, Bane suddenly began to laugh.
'What is so funny?' asked his opponent.
'Well,' said Bane, 'you are the ugliest whoreson I've ever seen. But the more I beat upon your face the better- looking it gets.'
The men crowding around burst into laughter. At last even the fighter grinned. 'You're a cocky little game-bird,' he said.
'I am indeed. Can I buy you a drink?'
'Why not?' replied the man.
Banouin could not duplicate Bane's easy familiarity with the people they met, and would often find himself sitting alone in a corner, observing. He envied, with just a touch of bitterness, Bane's ability to make friends. Banouin thought about the river crew. Hard men who would think nothing of killing a passenger and heaving his body over the side had warmed to Bane as if he were a blood relative. It was mystifying. Yet Bane was not always full of camaraderie. Often he would fall silent for long periods, his expression dark and brooding. Sometimes, when in such a mood, he would avoid settlements and the two travellers would go ashore and camp out in woods or hollows. He would talk then of his sadness for the life his mother had led, and how she had been shunned by the folk of Three Streams.
'Not all of them,' Banouin pointed out, as they sat in the moonlight beside a small fire. 'She used to visit my mother. And the Big Man was good to you both.'
'I don't remember him,' said Bane. 'I was too young when he died. But my mother spoke of him often. She said she was sitting, cradling me, in grandfather's forge three nights after her husband cast her out. Ruathain came to her there. He asked her if her husband had given me a soul-name. She said that he had not. The Big Man told her that he had been out walking on the night of my birth, and he had seen a falcon flying through the night sky. This was a rare thing, he said, and he felt that it was an omen. Whenever she told me this story my mother's eyes would fill with tears. She said he put his arm round her and asked if she would accept Midnight Falcon as my soul-name.' Bane sighed. 'It was the first act of tenderness she had experienced following my birth. It was said that Ruathain's wife was furious with him, and demanded he see no more of my mother. He refused, and often visited her, to see how we were faring. I wish I could remember him. He was a great man, by all accounts.'
'Aye, he was,' said Banouin. 'My mother warned him not to go to that last battle. Told him he would die if he did. But he went anyway, to protect Connavar. Mother knew he would. Said it broke her heart.'
'She was in love with him?'
'I never asked her. Maybe she was. It's not something you think about with old people, is it?'
Bane had laughed then, his good humour restored. 'My grandparents used to make their bed creak most nights.'
'Oh, that's disgusting,' said Banouin. 'Thank you for putting that image in my mind before I sleep.'
On the day they left the boat to continue their journey overland Banouin had seen genuine regret in the eyes of the crew. They wished Bane good luck on his travels, and made him promise to seek them out when he returned, so they could hear of his adventures. Not one of them bade farewell to Banouin.
The journey south was slower now, as they entered the great Forest of Filair. Settlements were further apart, and the riders had to veer many miles east or west in order to purchase supplies and food. At each stop they enquired as to the location of the next village before moving on. Banouin purchased a pack pony in order to carry more supplies, and Bane traded in his old bronze sword to acquire a leaf-shaped iron blade and a short hunting bow with a quiver of twenty arrows.
It was pouring with rain when the riders reached the forest's end. The plain of Cogden stretched out before them, flat and empty save for the four huge mounds erected above those fallen in the battle. Banouin shivered when he saw the Barrows. Twenty-eight thousand had died here on that terrible day. He had hoped to arrive at the battlefield much earlier in the day, so that they might ride through it in daylight. But Bane's horse had thrown a shoe, and they had been forced to detour to a settlement where a blacksmith forged and fitted a new one.
Now, with dusk fast approaching, they would have to camp in this desolate place. It did not seem to worry Bane. As night fell the rain eased away. Somehow Bane managed to light a fire, which hissed and spluttered against the damp wood. Spreading his cloak on the wet ground Bane was soon asleep. Banouin sat alone, feeding branches to the flames.
Fear touched him, and he glanced around. Nothing was to be seen, save for the four Barrows and the bright moon. The fear grew, unfocused and all-consuming. His mouth was dry, his heart beating wildly.
Then he felt their presence…
At first all he could see was the night mist, rolling across the field; then it changed, flowing and rising until Banouin could see grey forms, the figures of men, cold and silent. For a moment he thought the scene was born of his fear, unreal – invented. Then the figures took clearer shape, becoming ten ranks of fighting men moving slowly across Cogden Field. Clad in helms of ghostly iron with embossed ear-guards, they carried long, rectangular shields and short stabbing swords.
This was the long-dead army of Stone. Banouin stared at them. Their forms were translucent, and shimmered in the moonlight. When they reached the Barrows, instead of climbing them, they passed right through. There was no sound. The advancing line broke into a run. Banouin glanced to his right. There, pale and spectral, was another line, this time of brightly armoured horsemen. Silently they charged at the enemy, swords as pale as moonlight slashing into them. Banouin saw a man stagger back, his arm hacked from his body. Then a spear ripped through his guts and he fell, the spear snapping in two. Horses fell, pitching their riders, who were stabbed mercilessly as they struggled to rise. All the terrible sights of war unfolded in eerie silence before his eyes.
A black crow glided down to the grass close by and stood, its baleful glare fixed on Banouin. Then a voice sounded from behind, startling him. 'These are scenes men sing of, and brag of, and lust after.' Banouin spun round. An old woman stood there, her shoulders hunched beneath a threadbare shawl, her hands clasping a long, crooked staff. Her hair was thin and wispy white, like mist clinging to her skull. She was impossibly ancient. Banouin's heart began to beat wildly. He knew of this woman, this creature of the Seidh. This was the Morrigu, whose promises tasted of nectar and burned like poison. The young man said nothing, but his dark eyes flicked towards the sleeping Bane. 'He cannot hear me, and he will not wake,' said the Morrigu. 'Will you bid me welcome to your hearth?'
'You… are not welcome here,' he forced himself to say.
'How that cuts me,' she said with a sneer. 'You, who I delivered safe when nature had decreed your death.'
'I don't know what you are talking about,' he told her.
'Vorna did not speak of me, then? How disappointing. On the night you were born her life was in danger. The babe – the you that was to be – was breeched, and there were no midwives, no druids on hand to save her – or you. So I came. And you were delivered by these old hands.'
'I don't believe you.'
'Yes, you do, Banouin. It is part of the Gift. You always sense when people are lying.'
'Even if you did save me, I don't doubt you had your own reasons,' he said, his voice firmer.
'Indeed I did.' She paused. 'Well, if I am not welcome here, will you at least walk with me awhile?'
'Why would I wish to?'
'Perhaps to prove to yourself that you are not the coward you believe yourself to be. Perhaps to repay your debt to me. Perhaps out of curiosity.' She stepped closer, and he could see that the skin beneath her right eye had peeled back, exposing the bone beneath. Banouin recoiled. 'Or perhaps because of your love for your sleeping friend.' Once more Banouin looked down at Bane. Something moved upon his friend's chest, and Banouin saw it was
