Celtika

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph 1

  Epigraph 2

  Prologue

  Part One: Resurrection

  Chapter One: Niiv

  Chapter Two: Urtha of Alba

  Chapter Three: Argo

  Chapter Four: Jason

  Chapter Five: In Makedonia

  Part Two: The Spirit of the Ship

  Chapter Six: The Spirit of the Ship

  Chapter Seven: Recruitment

  Chapter Eight: Departure

  Part Three: In Ghostland

  Chapter Nine: The Hollow Ship

  Chapter Ten: Earthworks

  Chapter Eleven: Desertion of the Land

  Chapter Twelve: Fierce Eyes

  Chapter Thirteen: Moongleam

  Chapter Fourteen: River Song

  Part Four: Hawk Watching

  Chapter Fifteen: Hawk Watching

  Chapter Sixteen: Out of Time

  Chapter Seventeen: Blood Rage

  Chapter Eighteen: The Hollow Hill

  Chapter Nineteen: Dreams and Memory

  Chapter Twenty: The Ghost in the Land

  Chapter Twenty-One: King of Killers

  Part Five: The Hot Gates

  Chapter Twenty-Two: At the Watch Station

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Against the Makedonians

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Combat of Urtha and Cunomaglos

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Hot Gates

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Sanctuary

  Afterword

  Teaser

  Praise for Celtika and Robert Holdstock

  Copyright

  To my brother Celts from Kent: Pete, Chris and James

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks to Yvonne Aburrow and my Finnish translator, Leena Peltonen, for their conversations on matters of the Northsong. Parts of R. Andrew Heidel’s A Flower, from his poetry collection Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Mortco), and Philip Kane’s Invocation 1, from The Wildwood King (Capall Bann) are incorporated into the text with their kind permission.

  My special thanks to Sarah, Howard, John Jarrold and Mary Bruton for their patience and encouragement.

  It was so old a ship—who knows, who knows?

  —And yet so beautiful, I watched in vain

  To see the mast burst open with a rose

  And the whole deck put on its leaves again.

  from The Old Ships by James Elroy Flecker

  Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  from Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Prologue

  Iolkos, in Greek Land, 978 Old Era.

  Though I wasn’t there to see it at the time, this is what I heard:

  Only one of the old crew had stayed in Iolkos, living at the edge of the city, close to the docks at Pagasae. Each day at dusk, Tisaminas walked along the crumbling harbour wall, passing the lines of black-sailed war galleys, bobbing fishing boats and colourful trading vessels to reach a backwater of the port where a rotting ship was moored. An ageing, angry man sat huddled in its stern, wrapped against the evening cool in a heavy sheepskin cloak.

  ‘Goodnight, old friend!’ Tisaminas called down to the deck. ‘Is there anything I can get for you?’

  The gaze that met his own was bright with fury, the voice a growl. ‘My sons! Help me find the bodies of my sons, Tisaminas!’

  ‘I can’t. It’s the one thing that none of us can do. Antiokus, perhaps, the young enchanter; but he’s long gone. We could never do it. You know that well enough. But is there anything else you want? Ask for anything. I’ll try to walk around the moon for you, if you like.’

  The man below huddled deeper in his cloak, staring at the prow, gazing into time. ‘My two sons on the funeral bier, Tisaminas. And a torch in my hand. The chance to say goodbye to them. Nothing more. Save for the head of that witch, their mother, stuck on the end of my spear! That’s all I want.’

  The ritual never changed, a ritual of anger and despair; the same words, the same desperation, the same hopelessness, week after week across the years.

  Tisaminas answered as he always answered. ‘They’re dead. They’re gone. Medea killed them twenty years ago and we were all helpless to stop her. She has fled to her own country, to an underworld that can only be dreamed about by the likes of you and me. What you ask can only be dreamed, my friend. I’ll still walk around the moon for you. Or I can bring you food and drink … a slightly easier task.’

  The man on the deck sighed. After a while he said, ‘I don’t want you to walk around the moon. Too far away. And I will eat and drink only what falls from the sky.’

  ‘Then goodnight, Jason.’

  ‘Goodnight. Thank you for watching me.’

  ‘I’ll watch you to the end. You know that.’

  ‘And I want that end so much, Tisaminas,’ Jason cried. ‘Truly I do. And so does Argo. She talks to me in my dreams.’ Again, his eyes were blazing. ‘But not before that witch is feast for crows!’

  Tisaminas unpacked bread, cheese and olives from his pack, and tossed this simple food down to the deck of the once great ship where Jason swept it into his cloak, before huddling again in Argo’s bosom, in the protecting oak, to brood and dream of his murdered boys.

  Why did Tisaminas stay close that night? Some inkling of our old friend’s fate, perhaps, whispered by the goddess whose watchful eyes peered from Argo’s prow. He lingered, out of sight of the raging, weeping hero on the cracked, warped planks, intensely sad himself.

  ‘It’s coming to an end. I shouldn’t have said the words. I’ve willed them true! What will I do without you, Jason? What will any of us do?’

  The moon sat full and low between the headlands. It had been there for hours, unmoving, as if caught in time. The only sign of change in the silent harbour was the restless ebb and flow of the dark sea against the harbour wall and the lines of tethered galleys. Tisaminas didn’t understand what was happening.

  ‘If only Antiokus was here,’ he murmured to the night. ‘He could explain this. Time has slowed…’

  He noticed, then, that torches were burning on each headland, men standing on the cliffs, staring back towards the port.

  ‘This is the moment,’ Tisaminas breathed, and tears filled his eyes as he searched the darkness for Jason, below him.

  As if his words had broken a charm, a rotten spar cracked away from Argo’s mast, crashed down to the deck of the ageing ship, striking the hero who sat there in a dream. The wound was mortal, by the sounds of the cracking bones and the sudden flow of blood and pain from Jason’s mouth.

  Tisaminas turned to run, to raise the call, but a voice whispered to him, ‘Stay here. Remember what you see.’

  He glanced behind him. A dark-eyed girl stood there, wrapped in a green cloak. She smiled at him, then drew his attention back to Argo.
>
  The old ship began to shift on the water. It slipped its moorings and turned towards the open sea. It drifted quietly between the dark war galleys of Iolkos, compelled by neither oars nor sail. On each headland more torches burned, twin lines of fire on the very edges of the cliffs, marking the passing of Jason towards the embracing moon.

  ‘They all knew,’ the man on the harbour wall said aloud. ‘The old crew—and their sons and their daughters—they all knew. She called us all!’

  He found his own torch and waved it. The fires on the headlands looped and signalled back. ‘She told us all,’ Tisaminas shouted as the ship passed between the cliffs. ‘She called to us all!’

  And he added quietly, ‘Thank you for that at least, Argo. Goodbye, old friend!’

  From the distant heights the torches were tossed into the sea, falling streams of flame marking the departure of a great man as the proud ship sailed below them. The moon rose suddenly and swiftly into the vault of stars, catching up with time, dropping below the hills of Iolkos in the west. Suddenly, everything was dark again, the funeral ship swallowed by the night and by the ocean.

  Tisaminas turned to the girl. He was apprehensive. He knew he was in the presence not of a mortal but of the goddess who had protected Jason for the better part of his life.

  ‘It’s over, then. Over at last. After all these years of agony.’

  ‘Yes. It’s over at last. Jason is in safe hands.’

  Tisaminas said, ‘Argo is frail. But will she take him to a safe place of burial? Out of sight and out of mind?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the girl, ‘she’ll take him to a safe place of burial.’

  Then she laughed, turning away, her cloak swirling. ‘But one among you will always know where to find him!’

  The northern country of Pohjola, 700 years later.

  Only half remembering this frozen land, he had struggled through the snow for a lifetime, it seemed, sometimes dragging his packhorses by their bridles, always reluctant to charm them and make his life easier. His bones ‘itched’, as if to say, ‘The power is here, you can use magic to stop this misery!’

  But he wanted his strength in full for when he reached the ice-bound and mysterious Screaming Lake. So he suffered the winter and the endless night. And the horses suffered with him. And where the snow lay shallow he ran, and where animals had ploughed their own deep tracks through the drifts he followed in their prints, and in this way, moon by moon, he crossed the night-pale snow waste, coming closer to the land of the Pohjola, and the strange place he sought.

  Knowing where he was, he was already wearing wolfbone and beartooth around his neck, and had tied the skins of mink and fox to the ragged, stinking furs in which he’d wrapped himself, half a year ago, when he had first left the plains and marshes of Karelia and crossed the ice-bridge to the mountains of the north.

  There was no dawn or dusk in the winter in this odd land, only moonlit clouds, patches of stars and the spirit-glow of lights to the north. His body alone, and the brief visits of the moon, suggested when sleep was needed. The horses didn’t like it.

  ‘My bones itch,’ the young man said through his frosted beard, as he brushed the ice from the flaring nostrils of his two proud companions, holding his torch closer to inspect their eyes and necks for damage. ‘They itch because they are carved and inscribed with all the magic that I have ever needed, and will continue to need in my long life to come. I was born this way, hundreds and hundreds of good horses like you ago! And yes, I suppose I could use a little of that magic to make life more tolerable. And of all the horses I have known, you two are certainly the best. Which is why I haven’t named you. I will grieve for you too much as it is, when you’re gone. Horses improve as the centuries drift by! So I could charm up a little warmth … but I won’t. I prefer to save it for when we’ll truly need it. Come on, horses … this is not so bad. We’ll soon be at the lake. For the moment, just one more hour of travel? And then we’ll stop for food. I promise!’

  Cold, frosting breath in his face, and a bleak look from the two animals, was all he received by way of reply to this lengthy pleading. It was as if they knew that the lightness of their packs meant that their food was almost finished. Already their bones showed stark against the skin, below their blankets, where the rationing was beginning to bite.

  No day, only endless night. The last time he had been here—five generations ago, now—it had been endless day, and he had thought he would never see the stars again. Now he longed for the sun. And dawn was coming. The many-coloured lights to the north were dancing higher, the fiery breath of the waking goddess, streaming into the starry, Stygian heavens.

  ‘Day is coming, horses. And though I’m glad of that, I must be at the Screaming Lake before it arrives. Too many things wake with the dawn in this chill-boned land. So come on … one last try? One last hour? For me? For your young-old master, Merlin?’

  Cold-eyed silence, save for the freezing breath.

  ‘I will not waste my precious bones on getting there,’ the young man said. He was impatient, now, and angry. ‘I must save my magic!’

  He dropped the tethers, turned and walked through the thick snow, following the shallow path made by a pack of wolves. He howled and growled as he picked up their scent, rattled the wolf’s-bone talisman on his chest. Teasing.

  After a moment, the horses followed quickly.

  But then, I’ve always had a way with animals!

  PART ONE

  Resurrection

  CHAPTER ONE

  Niiv

  I was neither a stranger in this territory, nor familiar with it. The last time I had passed this way, the route into the wilderness of forest and snow that was the northern land of Pohjola had been an open gorge, guarded by nothing more sinister than white foxes, chattering mink and dark-winged carrion birds. But in five generations or more, things had changed.

  As I came out of the birch forest into the gathering mouth of the gorge I faced a barrier of grim-faced wooden statues, five times a man’s height, each ringed with torches that illuminated the leering features.

  I counted ten such grotesques. They spanned the gorge. Between them, a thick thorn fence barred anything but a snow-rat from passing, and if there was a gate through this sinister wall, I couldn’t see it.

  I used the thorns as hooks and erected a crude shelter from the tent-skins in my baggage. I fed the horses then studied each tree-face in turn. One leaf-haired, grim-eyed mask held my gaze for several moments before I realised what it was. The knowledge shocked me. It was an image of Skogen, an old trickster friend of mine; his name meant ‘shadow of unseen forests’. That is exactly what he had been. In the remote past, when he had still been in human form, we had adventured together. Now he was here, in eternal night, a god in wood, face cracked by ice. He had no business being here. When I called out his name the torches that girdled his neck seemed to flicker with amusement. I was not amused, and nervous memory was returning.

  Now a second face suddenly became familiar to me, once I had seen through the rough-hew of its carving. Another old ‘friend’ from the early years, this one gentler.

  ‘Well, well. Sinisalo. You used to climb trees. Now you are one. You used to play tricks on me then run away like the wind. Now you’re rooted.’

  Sinisalo was the ‘eternal child in the land’. I myself had once been sinisalo. All of life’s creatures are sinisalo for a brief moment. The child’s power is usually left behind in the process of growth. But for some of us, that funny, frisky fawn always remains at the edge of our vision, to be summoned at will. The eternal child. Here she was, five thousand years on, a memory in carved birch.

  ‘Sinisalo,’ I whispered again, with affection, and blew a kiss.

  The face on the towering trunk didn’t change its expression, but large, dark birds began to rise from their winter nests and perch upon the craggy ledges of all the statues.

  It had been a long time since I had last encountered these entities, and I had forgotten
most of them. What I remembered was that every time I encountered them, in stone, or wood, or bone or as masks or colourful patterns on the walls of caves, whenever our paths crossed, my life changed. For the worse. It had always seemed to me that these ten old faces in my world were watching me, appearing to me as unwelcome portents of a shift in my life of travel, security and pleasure on the path I walked. Not that these frozen wastelands of rock, ice and forest were a pleasure to cross, but I was here on personal business, and had been anticipating a change for the better.

  No, these gruesome, grinning totems were not at all a welcome sight. My bones itched. Their names—all but Skogen and Sinisalo—continued to elude me. That there was life in the wood, that they had tracked me down for their own purpose, did not escape me. I wondered if they could read my confusion and my reluctance to remember more clearly.

  ‘Listen!’ I shouted. ‘I know two of you. I’d probably know all of you if I could recognise you. I’m a friend. I walk the Path. This is my hundredth time of walking. At least! Who’s counting? I’ve been here a hundred times before. And now I need to go on. Please call the people who erected you. I would like to talk to them. I need the gate opened!

  A long sleep later—I was exhausted; the crows woke me to the ever-present northern darkness—I stood before the wall, staring at the torches of reindeer riders, one of whom had dismounted and was standing, gazing down at me from some structure in the centre of the thorn barrier. I could see that there were five riders in all, each so heavily draped in dyed and decorated fur cloaks and hats that they seemed enormous as they straddled their beasts. The creatures were amply decked out with winter colours on their antlers, and draped in colourful blankets and cowls, through which their freezing breath emerged like elemental life-forms.

  The man who stared down at me asked me who I was. I could see only his eyes. I replied in a dialect of his language that I was the young warrior who had last come this way five generations ago and fought with their ancestor hero Lemkainon, against the bearskin-shrouded Kullaavo, the dark spirit of the land.