Part 35 (1/2)
There was a moment's hesitation before the Comyn soldiers overcame their instinctive reluctance to give way before a potential enemy. A glowering look from their leader, however, prompted them to carry out his order without further delay. The great bolts were hauled back and the gates slowly drew apart, leaving the way clear for the Templars to enter.
The knights formed themselves into a well-ordered column and Arnault led them forward into the compound. All of them kept a wary eye for any sign of attack, but no hostility was offered. Descending from the rampart, Alexander Comyn curtly issued orders for his men to fetch their horses and equipment in preparation for immediate departure. Now that the decision had been made, Arnault noted, the men of Badenoch appeared only too willing to comply.
At Arnault's command, six of his knights remained on horseback to oversee the Comyn withdrawal, ranging themselves in strategic positions where they could observe the whole interior of the fort, especially the Comyn men now gathering up their belongings. Eight more knights climbed up onto the rampart with crossbows. Leaving Walter de Clifton to supervise the withdrawal of the Comyns, Arnault and the rest dismounted to press on through a second gateway leading to the mound of the citadel.
Dominating the courtyard beyond was a pair of weathered monoliths, rearing up twice as high as a man.
The one on the left depicted a huge bull, its head lowered for the charge, its powerful muscles sharply delineated by lines etched deep in the rock. On the other was the crude yet potent image of a woman rising out of the sea, a human skull hanging between her pendulous b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Each of these figures was surrounded by a swarm of abstract patterns: circles, spirals, and lightning bolts, brightly painted.
”Pagan G.o.ds?” Flannan murmured under his breath to Arnault.
Arnault only nodded, but many of their fellow Templars grimaced at the sight, muttering prayers and warding themselves with the sign of the cross. Others, more military in their thinking, cast calculating looks toward the citadel, which surmounted an earth mound at the far end of the promontory. Arnault found his gaze drawn toward a dark slot in the ground to one side of the path leading up the keep. To his inner senses, the opening seemed to exude an invisible miasma of dank decay, but before he could make a move to investigate, he was hailed by Walter de Clifton, who gestured back toward Alexander Comyn.
Comyn's men had finished hastily gathering up their belongings. Lingering out in the outer courtyard, they looked more than ready to abandon this ancient, haunted fortress. But the late Comyn's kinsman wore a determined expression as he approached the Templar commander.
”I have revised my thinking, Templar,” he told Arnault in a low voice. ”You may smash every accursed stone in this place, and do so with my blessing. But this is still a Comyn holding. If you are still here on the morrow, then we will meet again with swords drawn.”
”If we are still here when the sun rises, then we shall already be dead,” Arnault said baldly. ”In that event, you and your people had best flee as far from here as possible.”
Alexander went a little pale, clearly sensing that this was no dramatic exaggeration, but a sincere warning.
As he hesitated, a sudden movement on the path above them drew all eyes as a cracked voice split the air like the sudden caw of a gore-crow.
”Begone from here, unbelievers, if you value your wretched and unworthy lives!”
The speaker was a gaunt, white-robed figure with a sweeping gray beard, powerful hands grasping a gnarled black staff. Crowned with a circlet of spiny gorse, he was tonsured ear to ear in the Celtic manner, the back hair hanging in two greasy plaits on his shoulders. On his brow was traced in blue the smudged shape of a bull's head. A golden torc loosely circled his thin neck, and wide bracelets of hammered iron were clasped to his sinewy forearms. Beside him stood a much younger man, similarly but less elaborately attired, his wide sleeves obscuring some bulky object he clasped to his breast, over which his head was reverently bowed.
Curtly beckoning his acolyte to attend him, the old man descended the slope in a series of goatlike bounds to halt fearlessly a few yards before Arnault and Flannan, his black eyes blazing as he thrust out his staff to bar the way forward.
”Come no closer, Templars!” he warned. ”And you, fool! What have you done?” he demanded of Alexander Comyn. ”Would you allow these intruders to defile this shrine of your ancestors? Slay them, as is your duty!”
”My duty is not to you, Torgon!” Alexander retorted. ”I owe you naught but my contempt. You can be d.a.m.ned, for all I care-and so can any who stand in your defense!”
He turned his back in pointed disdain. Outraged, the shaman drew back his staff as if to strike, but Arnault lifted his sword in warning to come no closer. With angry vehemence, Torgon rammed the heel of his staff into the ground at his feet and barked a curt command at his a.s.sistant, who hurried forward to present him with the ivory casket he had been hiding under his robes.
Alarmed, Arnault thrust Alexander behind him and prepared to ward them both, for he sensed with a sudden and unshakable certainty that the chest contained the relics of Briochan, which Torquil had told him of seeing handed to the Comyns by Brian de Jay, eight years before. Torgon spat contemptuously, and darted back between the two standing stones.
Brandis.h.i.+ng the casket aloft, he offered it to the cloudy heavens above, as a torrent of invocation poured from his lips. Thunder rumbled in apparent response, but Arnault dared not let himself be moved.
”Your cause is lost,” he told the old man. ”Your patrons are dead, and those you serve will soon be swept away forever. It is not too late for you to turn away from this madness and ask G.o.d's forgiveness for your sins.”
”What care I for your murdered G.o.d?” Torgon snarled. ”It is your childish faith which shall fade away and be forgotten, in ages yet to come. My patron is Briochan-he who serves those who live as long as the earth itself. Come, Briochan!”
In answer came a boiling up of baleful energies from the ground between the monoliths, quickly enveloping Torgon like a suit of new clothes, overlaying his visage with a spectral image Arnault had seen before, in the vaulted treasury at Balantrodoch-Briochan, indeed, summoned in defense of the deities he had championed in ages past! At the same time, as Torgon's voice rose on an eldritch screech, a bitter wind swept in from the sea, bringing with it the stench of rotting seaweed. A deep boom reverberated from the subterranean stairway, shaking the citadel to its foundations.
Undaunted, Arnault reached into the neck of his surcoat and pulled out the keekstane he had brought from Iona, again worn on its leather thong. With his other hand he raised his sword. Sighting down its length at Torgon-Briochan, he closed the sacred stone in his raised fist and made bold to pet.i.tion Saint Columba, invoking his authority to drive back once again those forces he had beaten into submission centuries before.
”Kindly Columba, beneficent, benign: In name of the Three of Life, in name of the Sacred Three, in name of the Secret Ones, and of all the Powers together-s.h.i.+eld me from thine ancient enemy. O Michael of the white steed, lend me the sword of thy protection!”
At the same time, he opened his left hand to display the keekstane in his palm, directing its window toward Torgon.
A flash of white light burst forth from the heart of the scrying stone, leaping across to Arnault's other hand and coursing down the length of his blade on the path he directed. With a searing crack, the bright beam struck the casket of pagan relics, das.h.i.+ng it from Torgon's clutching hands.
The manifestation of Briochan vanished like a snuffed candle flame. Torgon's eyes flared with redoubled rage, and he pointed an indignant finger at Arnault.
”Now you have earned my wrath!” he howled. ”I shall send you such pain as you have never imagined!”
Fists clenched, he crossed both scrawny forearms before his breast in a clang of iron armlets; but before he could formulate any further intent, he was caught in the throat by a crossbow bolt. The force of its impact knocked him sprawling at the feet of the two great monoliths, a final paroxysm racking his frame as blood gushed from his lips and he at last was still.
Turning, Arnault saw Alexander Comyn handing the crossbow back to Walter de Clifton, who began calmly winding the weapon to take another bolt. With cold deliberation, Comyn drew his dirk before striding over to examine the shaman's prostrate form. From where he stood, however, Arnault could see there was no need to strike again.
Confirming this, Comyn turned to the shocked acolyte, who cringed at his glance.
”Take yourself away from here,” he said coldly. ”Return to whatever village or farm it was that sp.a.w.ned you, and find yourself such obscure occupation that you never come to my attention again.”
With quaking hands, the young man hastily stripped off his pagan accoutrements and dropped them in a heap by his master's body. With a last fearful look at Comyn and then at Arnault, he scuttled off past Clifton toward the open gateway, like a frightened field mouse fleeing to its nest. Alexander Comyn snorted in derision.
”It appears that I have inherited both the responsibility and the curse of Burghead,” he explained, his face a tight mask of self-control. ”If there is to be blood on anyone's hands, it should be on mine. I do not wish to see a fresh cause of feud, when there are too many scores already to be settled.”
Arnault inclined his head in acknowledgment of the other man's wisdom. ”I hope that when we next meet, it will be under friendlier circ.u.mstances.”
”I would not depend upon it,” Comyn replied. ”Friends.h.i.+p is in short supply in these troubled times.”
Turning on his heel, he strode off in the direction of the gateway, where his men were waiting with the horses. Seizing the reins of his own steed, he mounted up and rode off, sparing no backward glance. His men fell into line behind him, and soon were disappearing into the distance. With the departure of the Comyn soldiers, the Templars stood down from battle alert, looking to Arnault for further instructions.
”Search the place,” Arnault told them, ”and gather up anything that seems unclean to you. Burn what will burn, and sprinkle the rest with holy water. We must cleanse this place of its evil.”
He himself directed the destruction of the monoliths. Looping ropes around the great stones, mounted knights heaved them over so that they crashed to the ground like fallen giants. Both shattered; and hammers and picks were then used to smash them into pieces.
Meanwhile, Torgon's staff was broken and cast onto a bonfire, along with various items of shamanic regalia and the body of Torgon himself. To this cleansing blaze was added the chest of relics. As the flames consumed them, Arnault cast a measure of salt on the flames and p.r.o.nounced a formal edict of interdict, banis.h.i.+ng the spirit of Briochan to whatever afterlife awaited him. He prayed silently that with Briochan's departure, there would be no further revival of his cult.
Once these tasks were completed, he turned to that dark stairway leading down into the earth, where final rites must also be performed. He took with him Flannan Fraser.
”Just keep reciting whatever prayers you think appropriate,” he told the other knight, as he handed him a torch. All around the mouth of the stairwell, a dozen knights were already kneeling in a circle, swords thrust into the ground before them like crosses, hands on the cross-hilts. One of them was Walter de Clifton, the Master of Scotland.
”We are prepared to support you as you have taught us,” the Master said. ”But what should we do, if you should not come out?”
”If that should come to pa.s.s,” Arnault said, ”fill in this opening with earth and stone, consecrate our grave with your prayers, and return to Scone, to inform Brother Luc. Then be guided by his instructions.”
Clifton inclined his head. ”Go with G.o.d, my brothers.”
”We shall,” Arnault said with a smile. And turning his gaze to the rest kneeling around him and Flannan, he said, ”Non n.o.bis, Fratres.”
”Non n.o.bis, Domine,” they responded, in reiteration of the Templar motto that had sustained the Order through nearly two centuries of service to the Light. ”Non n.o.bis, sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam!” Not to us, Lord, not to us but to Thy Name give the glory.
Again grasping the scrying stone in his free hand, Arnault held his sword at arm's length before him like a crucifix as he led the way down the steps into the gloom that waited below, Flannan behind him, accompanied by the whispered aves and paternosters of those remaining above ground.