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Ghostland she inhabited. Ghostland was a complex realm. It had its land for queens, separate from its land for heroes.
    ‘Grandmother,’ he finally whispered, ‘even if I am one against an army, your country will never come under bondage. I cannot wait for my father to return. He may never return. I am battle-eager. Send me hawks to strike from the sun and carrion birds to clean up the field. Fly low over me, and screech if I hesitate. But grandmother … come back to MaegCatha, and haunt the plain. I will draw comfort from your shadow.’
    *   *   *
    Two days later, as we came back to the valley and the camp of the exiles, I was saddened to see a women washing a bloody shirt in the river, thrashing the garment against exposed rocks, not really cleaning it at all, simply manifesting grief. I thought immediately that Ambaros had died, but it turned out to be the death of a child, who had fallen from the cliff while trying to snare one of the small birds which nested there. Since there was no shortage of food for this vanquished society, his intention must have been either magic or propitiation. His parents had both been killed in the last raid on Taurovinda. Now his broken body lay in its tunic on a small bier, away from the dogs, while his guardians discussed burial or a small pyre.
    Ambaros was still very weak. His face had no colour to it, his breath was foul, there were shadows gathered about him. The glitter had gone from his eyes, which were moist and unfocused. That said, he was drawing a little strength from somewhere.
    ‘Do you have any thoughts,’ he asked me weakly, ‘on the consequences of being slaughtered by your own ancestors?’
    I told him, bleakly, that I had no insights, and my ideas would be guesses. I was as puzzled by Ghostland as was he.
    ‘Nevertheless, I’ll promise you this,’ he went on. ‘Whether I live or die, I’ll fight to stop them crossing the river. They don’t belong in this world. You can depend on me. Tell my grandchildren, will you?’
    ‘You can tell them yourself,’ I pointed out, but he laughed cynically.
    ‘Munda, yes. But the boy reminds me of his mother. Impatient and quick to anger. And nothing angered Aylamunda more than an unnecessary death.’
    I could have glanced into Ambaros’s future at that moment, but I declined to do so. He was between the sky and the earth, no more than half dead, no more than half alive. He had seen nearly fifty winters. The time that nestled in those big bones and broad shoulders would either work for him or for his departure to Ghostland.
    It was not my business to interfere.
    Although Munda visited her grandfather, Kymon did not. Instead, the youth summoned a council, in the biggest of the enclosed caves in the valley, and requested a feast. When it was pointed out to him that the community was in mourning for the boy who had fallen from the cliff, he suggested combining the wake with the Call to Battle. This entailed eating prepared food in a different order, and seating the High Women and the warriors in a different place, but Kymon cut through this ritual with the simple exhortation that: ‘I am still a youth; but I am my father’s son, and I will be the first to speak. I will honour the dead boy. I will honour him at his burial. But we are not in the royal lodge, we are in a cave in the wasteland between life and death. Don’t fuss about the orderliness of the dead when all that is necessary is to hear the proposal of the living.’
    I imagine he had worked quite hard on that assertive and pompous little speech.
    He placed the small oval shield, with its hawk and horse, at the centre of the circle of small wooden tables, and placed a cushion, a small bowl and an eating blade beside it. I knew what he was doing. There were palaces in the east where this eccentric action by one so young would have been greeted with amusement and tolerance; others where it would have been greeted with benign intolerance or even mild