Stephen Lawhead - Grail

Offended by Tallaght's slur on his abilities, Peredur snapped, 'Perhaps if you were not so blinded by your own high opinion of yourself, you might – '

'Stop it!' I cried, exasperated and a little disturbed by their vexatious behaviour. 'What has come over you, Tallaght? And you, Peredur, this is not like you at all.'

'He started it,' sniffed Peredur.

Tallaght retorted hotly. 'Liar! I only said that -'

'Enough!' I roared. Both glared at me in sullen silence, overgrown children rebuked by a disapproving elder. 'Listen to you – fighting like snotty-nosed bairns, the pair of you! I will not have it.' I gave them each a frown of firm rebuke, and then, addressing myself to Peredur, said, 'Now, lead on. We will take it in turn with the horses as before.'

'I would rather go afoot,' Peredur muttered under his breath.

'Good,' I replied, 'then you can have the first stretch. Get on with you, now.'

Tallaght allowed himself a smirk at Peredur's expense, so I rounded on him. 'And you, my friend, can sift the ashes and tell us how long ago they were here.'

The young warrior opened his mouth to object, then closed it again when he saw the set of my jaw. Dismounting, he stumped to the firebed and began prodding the ashes. With a sigh, he stooped and took some into his hands, felt them, tossed them aside, and put his hand flat on the still-warm ashes. 'I say they left at dawn,' he concluded. Rising to wipe his hands on his breecs, he added defiantly: 'Unless anyone wishes to contradict me.'

'No one contradicts you, Tallaght,' I said, growing weary of the sour attitude. I gave a nod to Peredur, and we started off once more.

I wondered at the change that had come over the two young warriors. Previously they had shown themselves to be fast friends, quick to praise and slow to anger. Now, however, they seemed as quarrelsome as cats edging for dominion of the dung heap. I put the change to anxiety and the rigours of the journey, and let it go at that. Anyone as ill-fed and tired as we were might also be fretful. Even so, until they came to their former good spirits once more, I thought it best to keep them separated.

The path led us south and ever south. The sun waxed full, but carried itself shrouded in a white heat haze as on the previous day. We forced a rapid march all morning, stopping only to change riders. Just after midday, Peredur led us to a small, silt-choked pool a little way off the trail. We could not bring ourselves to drink the stuff, but the horses were thirsty enough not to mind. It was while we were waiting for them to get their fill that we noticed the smoke.

As it happened, I had been smelling it for some little time before Peredur brought it to my attention, but because my night's vigil over the campfire had left me with a cloak that stank of stale smoke, I had paid little heed to more of the same. 'We all reek of the hearth,' I replied.

'No,' he said adamantly, 'this is different.' Lifting his head, he turned slowly around in a circle, then, stretching out his hand, pointed in the direction we had been travelling. 'It is coming from that way,' he said.

We continued on, following the scent of the smoke, which grew stronger with every step. Soon we came to a ridge, whereupon I ordered my companions to dismount and we crept cautiously to the crest to observe the land below. Far off to the right, I could see the grey-green glint of the sea, flat and glimmering like an anvil under the white-hot hammer of the sun. To the left, the ridge descended in steep, rocky ledges to a rough, rubble-filled valley. And there, straight ahead, rising in a thick, black column, a pillar of smoke ascended to the heights to be carried away on the wind.

The fire itself remained out of sight behind a low hill. Signalling the others to follow me, I went down for a closer look, my companions leading the horses. Upon reaching the valley floor, we discovered the bed of a dry stream bearing the hoofprints of four horses – one with barred iron, the other three unshod – in the soft, fine dirt. It did not need Peredur's eye to see that the riders had crossed the dry stream, climbed the hill, and were now encamped beyond.

Rather than walk into a strange camp unawares, I thought it best to see what manner of men we had been following all this time. 'Stay with the horses,' I told Tallaght and, commanding Peredur to attend me, turned and made my way swiftly to the top of the hill, where, lying on my stomach, I peered over the crest and down the slope to the valley below. What I saw astonished me.

The entire valley floor had been heaped into a mound surrounded by ditches, and atop the mound stood a great fortress of stone. The Romans sometimes built in stone; however, the stronghold before me was unlike any the Legions ever raised, save in one respect only: this fortress, too, was a ruin. Its huge stones lay in tumbled heaps, the remains of high walls filling the ditches. The cracked shell of what once must have been a magnificent tower rose over the central gateway, a tree growing up through its empty middle. The rubble of a hundred dwellings lay overturned and scattered within the walls; and although the great hall itself was roofless now, several enormous beams arched over empty space, and two of its graceful walls stood untouched.

Hard by the mound to the south stood the blighted remains of a great wood; rank upon rank, trees of untold age stood leafless and dead, their black trunks and twisted limbs testifying to their tortured demise, while many more were heaped one atop the other like stout warriors fallen in battle.

At first I thought the smoke must issue from this bleak wood, but a closer look revealed that it ascended instead from the huge hearth in the centre of the ruined hall.

'Truly,' declared Peredur in an awed voice, 'giants must have built this place.'

'Perhaps,' I allowed. 'And did giants also start that fire?'

Peredur glanced at me to see if I was jesting with him, swallowed, and said, 'I see no one.'

'Then let us go down,' I replied, and instructed him to tell Tallaght to leave the horses, and for both of them to follow me and guard my back.

Warily, alert to any sight or sound, I crawled down the hillside, working slowly towards the ruined gateway yawning open like a toothless mouth in the centre of the collapsed wall. There I paused and waited until I saw that Tallaght and Peredur were behind me, and then picked my way through the opening. Upon entering the inner yard, I scrambled over the rubble and almost slid into a standing well; I looked in and saw my own self looking back, for though the well wall had fallen, there was yet water below.

It was the first clear water I had seen in many days, and my first thought was to drink – before caution convinced me that it might be better to wait until we could test it properly. 'There is water here,' I told my two shadows, and then advised, 'but I would not drink it yet.'

Moving on, I continued towards the hall. Here and there among the tumbled stones I caught the glint of sunlight shining up at me from the ground as I passed. Shoving aside the debris, I found bits of broken glass in the soil. Real glass, mind. The more I looked, the more I found. It was everywhere underfoot! Even the Romans who used the precious stuff with abandon were not so profligate as that.

The wrecked hall stood before me, thick, black smoke rising above its two intact walls. I saw no one, nor any sign that anyone had set foot, much less set fire, in the place for hundreds of years. Cautiously, carefully, I crept to the hall, then worked along the wall until I came to the end. Standing against the good wall, I peered around the corner into what had been the great hall's hearth. And there I saw a curious sight: a huge iron cage, round and with a peaked roof, like a house of an earlier age.