Celtic Tales 6 the Bold

Copyright © 2006 by Brenda Jill Whalen

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Contents

TALE I: KHORASSAN

TALE 2: MULCHA

TALE 3: RANEE

TALE 4: ATEEA

TALE 5: THE BARD

TALE 6: THE CROSSING

Tale 7: Timur

TALE 8: SCORPION

TALE 9: THE KELLSAY

TALE 10: HONEYMAN RUNYAR

This book is dedicated to Clif.

TALE I: KHORASSAN

If a man may trade between two peoples far enough away, he will always get rich. I had a need to amass great wealth quickly before my mother found me, and I did so.

I should start at the beginning. My grandfather on my mother’s side gave me the seal for the whole bloodline.

He said, Keep this tucked away. Your mother can not have it.

We are the house of Nekofor of Mu. My mother didn’t know what to do. Raiders would have her if she didn’t find the seal; she couldn’t conduct business without it. Enemies were everywhere, inside of town, outside of town. I was the one my grandfather really liked. Mother didn’t know the rest of us, but we had our uses. None of us were raised by her; we were raised by a nanny.

I was not so stupid as to have it on me. When Grandfather died, I would not give the seal to Mother. We had not been close. She tortured the woman who raised me, my brothers and sisters, and me, for she didn’t know who had the seal. They tied me in a chair so I could not move.

Near the end my mother’s consort said, Hey, maybe the kid don’t know.

My clothes were stained. I had not been able to go to the bathroom for what seemed like days.

Mother said to her guards, If the little brat doesn’t know, at least he knows what we’re looking for. Ride to the west until your horses can go no further. Break his royal sword hands; break his feet that he cannot walk. Then you may return.

We traveled for a long time. People looked at me and they looked away. One man looked angry and started to come forward.

Not our headman, but one of our mouthpieces said, Ho! Stand back! Do not come near the crown prince who we are surely here to guard.

The man looked uncertain then let his sword go back into its sheath. I don’t know what I looked like. They had tortured and beaten me beforehand, before doing my nurse. Those men who were taking me to the desert weren’t unkind to me. What I needed was a hat. I was getting burned alive by the sun everyday. When I was leaving no one dressed me, because they weren’t worried about me ever coming back again. I was five years old.

They would relax each day after they got me strapped on the horse. They fed me the same thing they ate and gave me good water. I missed the baths. Then we went for a longer time with no water.

One day the head man said, Hey, we’d better turn, or we’re going to lose horses. As a matter of fact, we might not be able to keep them alive going back.

They brought a special block, put my feet on it, and hit it with a hammer.

I woke up to the pain in my feet and hands. It was night and the men were gone. I crawled back the way we had come. I got to where there was a dead horse. The saddlebags were left, but everything else had been cleared out. I wanted to get a piece of horse meat, but I couldn’t get through the skin. They had cut through the saddle reins and the girth strap, but I still couldn’t get it out from under the horse. I worked hard and dug with a stick between my forearms.

A group of men rode up on camels. One man got down and freed the saddle and the saddlebags. He was very fierce. His face looked like old leather.

He said, What is there is yours, boy.

There were a small knife and a fire-starter. I couldn’t use either one with my hands like that.

The group had come from the north. The ice wall drove them out of their land. Their horses had died the year before, so they went back north to the edge of the ice where animals were. They captured the two humps and tamed them after a fashion. Those people were in desperate shape, but when they found me they didn’t even hesitate. They took the saddle and bridle for themselves and the saddlebags for me. They skinned that horse, and since the meat was still pretty fresh, they carved it off that horse and shared it out among the families.

They had a healing woman. I remember her. I thought she was one of the meanest women I ever knew. She made them get me up and made me walk on my heels. She made me pick up things with my wrists held together. I had to pick them up, put them down, pick them up, and put them down over and over again. She wanted to let the infections go down. Dust and dirt got in the wounds. She cleaned those out.

One day she came in and turned my hands over palms up. She said, I will go in through the palms and straighten bones. We will put things on your hands to keep you from moving. I will go into the feet and do the same thing, but you must continue to walk on your heels, even with the things on there. You must try to keep your foot bones straight.

She gave me something to drink that was bitter and put me to sleep. She went in from the bottom, the side opposite from where they beat, because the skin was chopped up on top. It was so messed up; she had to take skin from other parts of the body to put on there. She did it in strips. It worked.

I woke up later. My hands hurt in dull throbs. She was there. She gave me some broth. I puked it up. She diluted it down with water, and she gave it to me again. This time it stayed down. She was stroking my hair. It was soothing.

I said, My hands hurt. I felt like crying.

She hugged me. I just relaxed against her. She stroked my hair and rocked me back and forth. I went to sleep that way. She hugged me a lot as did the other women. One of the older men came often and talked with me. One of the older boys came and worked with me. He helped me with all manner of things. He had lost a brother the year before. I thought that was why he worked with me so much. He told me later that when he saw me, he knew we would be great friends together; we would go away from his people together and do things people would talk about. I didn’t know about that then. He was not happy thinking about going away from his people.

We came into a high rocky upland, a land full of game. They celebrated. I enjoyed myself. The desert was to the west, so we kept moving east. One day we came out into a valley with water crashing down in torrents. We needed water. We looked down and saw trees, grass, and valleys; green covered the land, not rocks, but trees and such.

The headman asked me and four others to look for smoke at sunset and dawn. He also asked me to look for lights at night. My new brother and I watched together. He asked me what the glow on the distant horizon was.

I said, It is far down south. It might be Spice City.

We had no fear of spreading out into the valley below, or the one below that all the way down to the trees.

I was still a little boy the second winter we were there. A clansman stopped by with three horses. He wanted to know if we wanted to trade. He saw me and got real quiet looking around. My hands and feet were bandaged. My hair was still in a prince’s braid that hung down the right side of my head. The rest of my head had been plucked. Those people helped me keep it that way. They told him what happened. He asked me about it too. I told him. He looked at those people.

He said, I don’t know what relationship I have to this boy, but I and all like me owe you a big favor. It must have been hard down through the dry country with another mouth and another weight on your animals. He would eat food and drink water. It must have been a big burden.

One of the old men said, He was no burden.

He gave me a hug. They hugged the children all through that tribe. Of course, they were mostly kin to each other.

The stranger said to me, Do you know what your clan is?

Yes.

Will you tell me?

No, not until I get old enough to use a sword.

He sat back on his heels and looked at me. He put his head back and laughed into the air, but it wasn’t a laugh that made other people laugh. It was a scary laugh, especially to those people I was with. He gave me his name and his clan.

He said, When you want to avenge your feet, please let me know, so I can come too.

I said, You may come with me and my friend.

He turned to my friend and said, I am blood to this one, therefore my relationship to you will always be good. Anything you need, you call.

He rolled his packs up that night. The next morning he got them on his horses and all tied down. He looked at the two of us and said, Both of you need blades of the highest quality, but because the people I sell to can’t afford to buy them or won’t from a pack peddler, I don’t have them with me. But these blades,—he held out a fighting knife to each of us—these blades are good honest steel. They will do you well in life. They are the same. I have others, but not of better quality. I think you will like to have the same knives.

The next year early in the spring a very dangerous looking man showed up on a horse. He was there because the pack peddler said a clan boy lived there who would have to seek vengeance, and he would have to be the best that he could be.

My mother had killed the men that she had sent to take me to the west. She was angry. She expected them to be bright enough to stay there with me until I died.

Minstrels made a song up about a prince who wandered the afterlife with no hands and feet. When the pack peddler saw me, he knew right away who I was, a

prince with hands and feet bandaged up among strangers who found him in the west. By the time he saw us I was running on my heels.

Men came in a slow but steady stream. They taught my brother and me and anybody else who would come and listen. I learned philosophy, reading, writing, strategies of war and of getting supplies there, math, the stars, the history of my clans, how to use an ax and other weapons, and mostly how to use a sword. I couldn’t grip a sword until I was nine. The pack peddler showed up. He had a sword that my hand snapped into. The handle was inside of my hand.

He said, If you can’t grasp a sword, then a sword will grasp you.

I was long past being a grown man before I was done with the healer.

I didn’t know it, but input had come and passed around through masters’ networks about new ways of fighting for a man with fixed, unbendable boots. That is what my feet were like. They didn’t hurt anymore, but they never bent that well. The scars in the palms of my hands and on the bottom of my feet were gone. The skin stretched, but the backs of my hands and the top of my feet never worked too well. On those cold, foggy days I paid with great pain.

Three old men came out there in the middle of nowhere and held manhood trials. I passed easily; my brother barely passed the one, but he passed. Those old men congratulated him and jumped up and down with joy when he passed. They turned very seriously to me and congratulated me very soberly. I would have liked everybody to have jumped for joy for me too.

The next day I started to march toward Mu. A girl in the village collected my brother’s seed, because the people thought we were both dead. When I put foot to stirrup, the women started crying out in his family as if he were dead. I was really irritated. I found out later that they usually have a big celebration among the clan when you pass your manhood test. But those people didn’t want to celebrate; they knew I was going to my death; my friend was too.

My brother and I set forth. The pack peddler, eight other men who had come to train me, and witnesses that stepped in their saddles came to meet us. For the first time I had someone swear sword fealty.

One man told me he had so and so many men. Another man had so and so many men. There in that field I picked up three quarters of a million men. They were not just any men; they were some of the best of the united clans. When I rode down into the lowlands, more men came, three from beyond the pass. As I approached Mu there were scatterings of young knights. Finally came the older knights each with their levies.

As I marched on Mu I had a vast army. Generals would come to me with lambs’ skins upon which plans were drawn. I would argue with them. They went away astonished. No matter what they came up with, I could improve on it.

We came at last to Mu down through the villages packed in everywhere. My men simply went out and took the food we needed and food for our animals. Pretty soon as we went along the people brought the food to us. We came to the gates. The men there stabbed three men, threw their bodies over the wall, and opened the gate for they belonged to men among my group. It would be very disloyal of them to do otherwise. We went through three gates.

We were winding our way up until we were outside of one castle, for in Mu, each of the great families had a castle. My mother had them open a small gate and send out a delegation to talk to me. My men went through the man gate and fought to hold it open. Then they got the main gate open. Once the gate was open we poured in. They fell back into the castle within the castle. My men were everywhere looting and pillaging.

Finally my mother appeared on the battlement and she said, All right, son. You and I will come forth and talk.

She came and stepped forward. She looked very young in long silken robes. She moved forward and made as if to hold me, to touch me. I was already starting the stabbing reflex, when I saw the glint of metal on her little finger. It turned out she had a little, tiny poison scratcher on each hand. My brother stepped in and turned her poison fingernail on herself.

I made sure each man in that army was paid well. I went down in the armory. The armorer showed me the old hidden places. I came away with a sword that is beyond compare, as did my brother. We found horses that we took with us. I got my seal ring.

While I was there I saw a spider working in his corner. I remembered how I had watched it when I was a kid. I had an idea then; I wanted time to work on that idea.

A good chunk of my army stayed with me. I looked at my kinsmen. I found what seemed like the least effective branch and elevated one of their daughters, not the oldest, not the youngest, but a mid-daughter and her line to the throne. I kept the signet ring. Everything she wished to do from her budget to the menu of her annual celebration of her coming to power must come to me and be approved. All of her laws and everything had to be approved by me.

When I came to Mu the laws were huge and bulky. I had the cannons burned in a big fire. I laid down one hundred new laws; ninety of them were for trade and customs; ten of them were for criminal acts. You shall not kill among family.

Do not steal among family. They were basic laws that people need to live together. I did away with all the strange punishments and replaced it with one, death by beheading. That meant an easier death for criminals considered really bad, and a much harder death for some, especially the nobility, who were used to getting away with everything. They were used to taking whatever they wanted. Now there was a death penalty even for them. I doubt it was enforced properly, but the law was there.

I spent almost a year there. I really don’t see how anyone lives in a large city. In the end I finally got away from there. People trembled in their houses when my ten thousand ran by. What people didn’t realize was that anything we wanted to take away from there had gone out in a caravan six weeks before, for I really do plan well. Some of those horses we liked so much had enough fire, but none of them had enough bottom to ride like the horses we had, with the exception of one stallion that belonged to my friend.

By the time we got to the mountains, my men had frittered away this way and that to their homes. There were twelve of us left. All twelve went up into the mountains. We were men with that certainty that you get when you’ve fought in battle with a sword and exposed your own ass to danger. You were right there looking your enemy in the eye. As you fought your way through that, you knew you were a man. You didn’t think it, or plan it, or work towards it; you were a man, or you died. It made me think of the old saying: You have been tested and not found wanting. That is a good saying.

Our young men had many temptations from females along the way. We had heard about a valley. We saw a holding, and we stopped to see