Read Online The Iron Grail by Robert Holdstock - Free Book Online

You are the sons of men who ran from combat! And hid below their cowls, exposing their backsides like dogs in submission! Suckled on tits that were no more than old leather wine pouches! Suckled by mothers who never had a chance to wash their backs because they were never off them! Fostered with mange-riddled dogs and foot-rotten sheep because no king’s sons would be seen alive with you!’
    Munda rode nervously out of arrow range as this diatribe proceeded, calling, ‘Enough now, brother. Save your anger for when you can get at their guts and do some cutting.’
    He ignored his sister, standing up on his horse, balanced on the narrow saddle, arms spread wide. ‘I will not be evicted from my father’s house,’ he screamed again, and his words started to echo from the sheer walls of Taurovinda.
    Now he waved the oval shield above his head. Sunlight caught the image of the horse and hawk. I saw light reflected on ghostly eyes, high above, beyond the steep earthen walls, a line of men listening carefully to every word that this brash and dangerous youth had uttered, taunting and challenging the occupying force.
    I had thought this would be the end, that he would ride back to safety, but to my amazement Kymon suddenly went into warp-spasm, still standing on his calm pony. Fists clenched to his chest, face distorted, skin as white as ash and sucked in against the flesh, he shouted the old curse, the curse of challenge.
    ‘I will make you endure hardship and the long sigh!’ he howled at the men above the gate. ‘Your own blood a red plague, your women red-eyed. I will play you at the stabbing game! My face, blood-filled, rage-filled, my eyes, ice-filled, hate-filled! I will be weary after triumph, a crow that scours the ploughed ground of your flesh. My sword, the thorn that pricks the rose-bloom of your hopes and dreams, your blood the blossom, blossoming on your breast, on your shield the blossom of your brother, clotting rose, petal-scattered crimson! I will be the plucking man, your bloom at my mercy!’
    This was too much for the Dead, those who remembered issuing and defending against this proud boast. A boy was challenging them; tempers could flare, even after death.
    The gates were flung open and five heavy horsemen pounded towards Kymon. The spasm left the boy at once and he dropped into the saddle, kicked his pony round, whipped it with the reins and streaked back across the plain towards the evergroves. He laughed as he rode, his sister by his side, crouched low over the withers of her own mount. Slingshot whistled past them, striking into the cover of the haven where I watched, but the two of them galloped into safety, each horse stumbling and throwing its rider but without serious injury.
    The pursuing host spread out in a line, horses breathing hard, hard men sitting low, watching us through masked helmets.
    Kymon returned to the edge of the groves, loosened his britches and urinated on to the turf, watching the enemy with cold eyes.
    *   *   *
    Angry though he was, Kymon refused to return to the valley. We waited until dusk, then he went to the grove where Urtha’s father and mother lay together, below a low cairn of stones. Kymon’s grandmother, Riamunda, had been a powerful woman in the land. It was through her strength and her cunning that the land of the Cornovidi had stretched as far as it did, and had come to take in the borderland with the Otherworld itself.
    There were many stories of Riamunda. She could still be seen, a silver owl with wings of hazel, flying across the fortress each midwinter, keeping an eye on events down below.
    She had clearly been unable to stop the sacking of her ancestral home.
    But now Kymon sang a song to her, joined by Munda, who followed his lead. It was not a song of summoning, but of courage, of intent. He drew on her sleeping soul for the inner strength to do what he had to do. The cairn was simply the grave, but his voice would echo into whatever part of