Cymry, Part Two

Swords. The sound the warrior heard outside his door was the ringing clash of steel, and it wasn’t play. He jumped up out of bed and grabbed his sword belt, then slipped a siarc on over his head before running out the door, blade drawn.
Cethness had been attacked by Picts. They pillaged wildly, the blue-painted fiends, and the dark-eyed warrior attacked just as wildly, fighting until there were no woads left in his sight.
“Da! Help me!” Cried a small voice from behind him. He whirled, running toward the sound of the boy’s voice. His little friend was cowering in a corner. “Alec?” He asked timidly. “Where’s Da?”
“We’ll find him. Come with me, Gwyn.” The warrior reached for the boy’s hand and turned just in time to see an upraised sword above his head.

“Alec?” Jack’s voice broke into his dreams and Alec sat upright.
Jack eyed him with mild concern. “Are you alright? You had a nightmare.”
“Thanks. Yeah, I’m fine.” Alec shook his head, glad that the air didn’t shimmer this time. The dream had been real enough already.
His roommate was used to waking him up when these battle dreams happened. They always ended when someone was about to die, and the trouble was, Alec knew he hadn’t saved them all. He would try desperately to remember ever having seen them again, but sometimes he couldn’t, and the knowledge that the person had died left a sickening knot in his stomach all day.
This time, however, he was relieved. He had no trouble remembering that Gwyn had lived, and so had his father. Alec stood, contemplatively, then put Cethness out of his mind and got ready for the day.
“Alec,” asked Jack curiously, “are those nightmares always about the same thing?”
Alec bit his lip. Not even his best friend knew about his life in Cethness, the old Cethness, and he didn’t know what to say. But he was tired of covering that part up. “Yes. They’re… battle dreams.”
“Battle dreams?”
“I always dream that Cethness is under attack, and that I am fighting, trying to save someone who is about to die. Sometimes I do, but sometimes I don’t.”
Jack nodded understandingly. “Ah, I’m sorry. That would be awful.”
“Mhmm. But at least sometimes I know they lived.” Alec poured himself a mug of coffee and looked at the clock. “Two hours until class. I need to work on my worksheets for aural harmony lab.”
“What a sad life you lead,” Jack laughed. “All I have to do is read the rest of this book on the effect of progressive policies on the changing American government before my class.”
Alec’s eyes twinkled amber. “You chose it, bro.”
Obviously, Alec liked music; it was his life here. Out of his seventeen credits, ten of them were music, and when his last pre-requisites were taken, even more would be. He planned to major in performance and teach after he graduated only long enough for him to get jobs playing for people. But lab worksheets were still not his idea of fun, and after that lab was finished, he had more enjoyable classes to go to. He went to Old Testament, and then to music composition after lunch, and was finished for the day.
Alec and Jack were going to Jack’s house for the weekend, and Kate was coming for the afternoon, so Alec went back to his room to put what he needed together. Jack’s bag was ready and on his bed; he planned to leave right after his three o’clock. Alec had an hour until Jack would be ready to leave, so he crawled under his covers and promptly fell asleep.
“Alec! Alec, hey, dude, wake up.” Jack’s voice broke into yet another dream, and he looked concerned. “That must have been a bad one. I thought you were going to kill me when I put my hand on your arm.”
Alec sat up, tired still. “Sorry, Jack... I had to kill someone, so I could save someone else.” He smiled. “Oh, well. Thanks for waking me up; it’s probably time to leave anyway.”
“Alec, who’s Terin?”
Alec gave his best friend a sharp glance. “What? How do you know about Terin?”
“You mentioned someone called Terin in your sleep. You said, ‘Let me go, I have to save Terin if nobody else will.’ What was that about? You’ve been so secretive since you came home. Whatever happened, I’ll hear you out. Please tell me.”
Alec, agitated, ran his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t know it bothered you. I’m sorry, Jack, I really am.” He took a moment, thinking intensely, and looked up very seriously. “I’ll tell you what happened. But I want Kate to hear it as well.”
“O-okay. Sure. I just called her; she’s meeting us at my house in a half an hour.”
Alec nodded. “Alright. It’s going to take a while to tell... The only reason I’ve never told you is that I honestly don’t think anyone will believe me. My father knows, my mother knows, no one else.”
“Believe you? What in the world? I can’t wait to hear this story. Is this why you’ve had those dreams?”
“Yeah.”
Jack was uncharacteristically quiet as they drove to his house while Alec tried to decide exactly how to tell them his story.
“Looks like Mom’s home.” He nodded at his mom’s black honda in the driveway, and smiled. “She’s probably cooking.”
“I love your mom,” Alec laughed. “She’s always cooking, and it’s always good.”
Jack’s mom was in the kitchen, as predicted, pulling dinner out of the oven. “Jack! Alec!” She smiled. “I’m glad you came before I left. I’m going to Shannon’s horse show, but I left you dinner. See you tomorrow- Shannon and Dad and I are camping out till Shan’s done.”
“Bye, Mom. Thank you.”
“Bye, Mrs. Mahon.”
Jack’s mom grabbed a bag off the counter, then turned back to Jack, brushing her out of silver-green eyes the same shade as Jack’s. “Oh, and Jack, feed the pony and Kody, will you? They’re feeling pretty left out with Handy and Shannon both gone.”
“Sure, Mom. Say hi to Shan for me. Bye.”
The Mahon’s house was one of Alec’s favorite places in the world. It was painted in vintage greens and blues, wide and open and comfortable. Jack donned big rubber boots and went to the barn; Alec put both their bags in his friend’s room and then stole up into the loft to play the Mahon’s piano. He’d always wanted to sit down and play it, but had never gotten the chance before.
Alec played with passionate abandon; at the piano, he didn’t remember the lives he hadn’t saved or the life he’d left in Cethness. This time he didn’t return to reality until he’d finished a song and heard Kate’s voice say, “Alexander Christian Lachlan, why have you never played for us before? You’re amazing. I thought Jack was playing a CD when I walked in.”
Kate stood at his elbow, with Jack behind her, watching him play. Alec laughed. “Thanks. Really, I’m not great, I just play alot so I can pretend I am. It never occurred to me to ask if you wanted to hear me play.”
“You are really good, Alec,” Jack commented. “Like, good.”
“Thanks, guys. Did you get here just now, Kate?”
She smiled, flipping strawberry blonde hair out of her face. “About ten minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Alec smiled sheepishly. “You don’t have to listen to me play any longer.”
“Jack said you have a story to tell us about Wales,” Kate reminded him. “I’d like to hear what happened, too.”
“Oh. Right.”
He led the way downstairs to the living room. Kate, with a woman’s intuition, made coffee for each of them without being asked and sat curled up on the couch while Alec thought of how to start; Jack flopped down next to her and waited.
“I’d better start by explaining Celtic lore about cairns.”
Jack and Kate both stared at him.
Alec laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah, not a good start. I won’t blame you if you don’t believe my story, but as I live it’s all true. Cairns are supposed to be-”
“A door to the otherworld. They open in the time-between-times, for special reasons, letting people cross from one world to the other,” Kate supplied. “British history, remember? We know this. It’s fine.”
“Sure, but I bet you never thought it was true.”
Jack shook his head. “I never had a reason to. Are you saying… you… I mean, when you were there…?”
“It’s true.” Alec’s eyes were dark and serious as he faced his friends, cradling his coffee mug in both hands. “I never believed it either. But in the middle of January, I crawled into a cairn, out of curiosity. No locals were there to tell me to stay out like they all do, and when I did come out, I wasn’t here anymore. I was in the otherworld. In Cethness, except then it was called Gwynedd.”
Kate and Jack said nothing for a minute. Then Kate touched his arm encouragingly and said, “Go on, tell the whole story.”
So Alec began.
************

I had gone for a walk in the early evening, in January, to the cairn near the lake. I had always wanted to look closer at it, but it was a bit of a walk from the house, so I’d never taken the time, thinking I’d go with my father soon. But I decided that day to go by myself, out of curiosity. I grew up on tales of the Celts, you know, and on ancient rhymes until, when I was old enough, Dad taught me a bit of the old languages and saw to it that I was fluent in modern Welsh. “I know you want to be a musician,” he’d say, “but just in case, boy, just in case. You’ll know more than half the Celtic scholars in the country soon, and that way you’ll always have another job to fall back on.”
That day, circling around the dome-shaped mound of stone, I whispered the words to an old Cymry rhyme, feeling nonchalant about the whole thing. As I came around for the third time, I noticed a small opening at the base of the mound. It was just big enough for me to squeeze through, I figured. So I crawled inside, carefully looking for cobwebs and snakes, and found the thing empty. There was just barely space for me to stand, hunched a little, but more than enough room to stretch his arms out on either side.
A dog barked outside, reminding me that I’d like to be home before dark; curiosity satisfied, I knelt down and crawled out of the hole in the cairn. I felt a little dizzy coming out, and felt that the ground I saw didn’t look that way when I went in; what I saw when I looked up was . The lake was still there, but the meadow land around it had been fenced to make pastures; where the moors stood before was definitely a caer that spread from the lake’s shore halfway to where my house had just been.
The dog I’d heard barking was one of several that ran in front of a large band of men on horseback; they were, I guessed, hunters and probably warriors, because they were armed with swords and spears, and dragged several deer and a large boar between them. They didn’t seem to notice me at first, nor did the other people going about their business in and around the caer. But one of the dogs did noticed the me as I stood staring, and came sniffing curiously with a wagging tail to see what I was doing.
At first, I considered crawling back into the cairn and hoping I came out here. But reason told me that it probably would not work, and I would do better to stay where I was, so I tried to be calm for the curious dog and the man who had dismounted to follow his dog over.
The warrior was a tall man with raven black hair and jade eyes, looking confident. He greeted me in the old tongue, but I didn’t know the greeting, so I said hello in modern Welsh. The rest of the warriors had noticed me now, and were whispering among themselves. The raven-haired warrior turned, and told them that they would frighten me more, and they should care for their horses and their kill; then he gestured for me to follow him.
“What is your name?” he asked as we walked to the hall.
“Alec Lachlan, lord.”
“How did you come to our side of the cairn, Alec Lachlan?”
“I do not know, lord. I crawled inside it, in- in my world… and when I came out, I was here.”
The warrior’s green eyes rested on me curiously. “You said your world? You did come from the otherworld?”
“I believe so, lord.”
“That… has not happened for a very long time. You must be special.”
“I believe I am simply overly foolish,” Alec said with a bitter laugh. “Only fools crawl inside cairns. At least in my world. They say they are sacred.”
“They mark the place where it is possible to cross from one world into the next, as you just did. It is not possible anywhere else. And it does not happen any time someone crawls into it; it happens when it is supposed to happen. I think you should consider that you may be here for a reason,” he told me.
We had reached the hall, where the prince sat on a throne carved of white oak on the far side of the spacious room. The raven-haired warrior walked up to the prince, touching the back of his hand to his forehead in a gesture of respect, and spoke quietly to him for a moment before beckoning me forward and then sitting on the dais that held the prince’s throne to wait.
I copied the warrior’s gesture of respect to the prince and waited for him to speak.
“Alec Lachlan, my friend here says you came from the otherworld through our cairn.”
“Yes, milord, I did.”
The prince sat silently for another moment, deep in thought.
“I think that Terin-” he gestured toward the raven-haired warrior- “ told you that it was not very likely that you will be allowed to return to your world immediately. My father’s bard will know better, and when he returns, we will try to get you home. Until then, you may stay here and find an occupation, or you may leave.”
I inclined my head to him, in a sort of bow, and said, “My lord, I will stay here until I can find a way back to my own world, but I am afraid I do not have an occupation which may be useful to you. In my world I am still learning.”
The warrior called Terin stood again. “Lord, I could use another warrior, if you do not object.”
I had always played at being a warrior when I was a little boy, and the realization that I might have a chance at it for a short time excited me greatly.
The prince, who was not many years older than Terin himself, turned to his friend and smiled gently. “You are always willing to train new men, and I’m grateful for that, but do you have the time right now?”
Terin nodded. “Yes, lord. I do. Your father returns this week, does he not? Once I can leave the circuit riders with you in the mornings, I can train Alec Lachlan myself. Cannach trains my boys now.”
“Well, then, if Alec Lachlan will agree to it, you may take him into your warband. Do you agree to this, young man? If you swear an oath of fealty you may become one of us as long as it takes to get you home.”
I was honored by how gracious Terin and the Prince were toward me. To show it, I bowed again, not knowing what else to do, then I said, “I will swear fealty to you and serve you in any way that I can, lord. I do not deserve your generosity.”
The prince smiled. “My father keeps a welcoming hearth at all times, and I try to follow his example when he is gone. You may go with Terin now. When you are ready to take your place in the warband, you will be called upon to swear your oath of fealty.”
I accepted this, and followed Terin out the hall to the warrior’s barracks. He gave me more fitting clothes to wear, throwing my old ones into the fire pit when I had put on the breecs and boots he gave me. He gave me a shirt as well, “But,” he said with a small smile, “you are training now, and trust me, you will not want your shirt for long. We have a good hour until we are to eat. Let us see what you may be taught to do with a blade.”
I was horribly nervous walked out behind the warrior’s house with Terin, a blunted blade in each our hands. He had produced them from weapon racks inside the door; I guess that the young boys learning the art of war used these blades every day.
“I have never held a sword in my life,” I said sheepishly.
Terin shook his head gravely at me. “From this moment forward, that is not true, and it does not matter. If you have the skill for it, you will learn; if not, we will find you another craft.”
The hour passed faster than I could have imagined it would, and already I knew I would be sore the next day. My dark-haired mentor had me block him almost the entire time, and I had bruises all over my body from letting his blunted blade get past mine.
“It would be backward for me to teach you to swing a sword before you can keep yourself alive,” he explained after hitting me in the shoulder. “You see, you would have had only one good arm now if this was a real battle. Much better to come out alive to serve your king another day.” Terin’s devotion to his king was sincere; he and Cormac had been friends since they were born, and along with his warband, Terin was fiercely loyal to his people.
I was immersed immediately into the life of the village. I realized that my hosts had no idea, for one thing, what life was like in my world; all they knew is that I had no idea how to be a warrior. And for another, they wanted me to become part of their life instead. I ate with the warriors in the hall that night and every night, at first sitting silently next to Terin and observing his warband, but soon I made friends with some of the men. My days were full of blunted swords and bruises, just like the first evening. In the mornings, until the king returned home, Terin rode out with some of his men to make a circuit of the village and surrounding lands, making sure that all was in order and safe. They, the people of Gwynedd, were fighting an ongoing battle with the Dafydi, and Terin’s job as warleader was to see to it that his people were safe from attackers. He and the prince, Cormac, had men in every Gwyneddi village who rode in often to report on their towns.
To my surprise, Terin took me along on the circuit rides every morning. Even when the king returned and Cormac took over the riding party, Terin put me astride his biggest gelding and sent me with the men. Fortunately, I knew how to ride, or it would have been a scary way to learn.
“A warrior is only as good as his horse in the middle of a mounted charge,” Terin told me. “You must become one with him or you will never learn to guide him while you shoot a bow or wield a sword. Learn to govern your horse by will.”
Gradually, I did. I would, at the insistence of my all-wise teacher and Prince Cormac, drop my reins for increasingly longer periods until I did not need them anymore. I learned to ride holding the sword in the morning that I was being trained to use the rest of the day. Terin was always my teacher when it was the sword I was learning. Once I could block him fairly well, he taught me to swing a good blow, to be swift of my feet and swift with my blade, to use cleverness and well as strength. He was a master swordsman and a good teacher, and by the end of my first three weeks I was practicing by fighting Terin. That is not to say that I was swift, clever, or strong yet, but I could swing my blade, and Terin patiently fought me every day for hours, leaving Cannach in command in charge of the men much of the time. Those first weeks were a whirlwind; the only time I had to think of home was at meals and at night, and I was too tired to stay awake long every night, so the time passed without me panicking about getting back to my own world. I was here for a time; there was nothing I could do; I was going to throw myself into it and try to forget my nagging thoughts. Granted, the first week I stole out one night and crawled back inside the cairn, but when I crawled out I was in the same world I had been five minutes before. Slowly I accepted Terin’s theory that I had been let across the worlds-bridge for a reason.

I did wonder sometimes what my parents thought had happened. Not even my father, the consummate Celtic scholar and half Welsh himself, would be likely to suspect the truth; nobody would believe it. Eventually I discovered that it was easier to forget than to worry about what I could not change. Not even the king’s bard, Teifi, could help me. “Wait for Samhain,” he said. “In the time-between times”- he meant dusk- “it may be possible for you to go home. But Terin is right, and if you have not done what you were let across for, you will not be able to go home yet.”
Samhain was October 31st, the beginning of the Celtic New Year. Nine months stretched out ahead of me, and I was determined to make the most of them. I made friends with all the warriors; Terin and I had already become close. He admitted that he was only three years older than me and had become warleader when the king made him his champion.
“What does it mean to be the king’s champion, exactly?” I asked. It was the beginning of February, after several hard hours of practice. Terin and I sat at the edge of the lake while some of the other warriors swam away the dirt of their week-long trip to a nearby caer.
“It means,” Terin answered reflectively, twirling a birch branch in his fingers, “that the king’s champion is sworn to protect the king with his life, to support him in and out of battle, to lead his warriors. It is a great honor, but also a great responsibility. The king can name any man his champion at any time, but it is usually after a battle in which he has done great service to the king.”
“Is the kingship hereditary?”
Terin nodded. “It has been for many years now. So far we have not been disappointed.”
Every day in that caer was much like the ones before it. I woke up with the warband, rode out with those riding circuit or hunting in the morning, came back to practice with Terin or Cannach, then spent the evening learning whatever Terin saw fit to teach me about the Cymry. One evening he sent me to the smithy’s to watch him make a sword; one whole day he sent me with a farmer, who patiently waited for me to learn to plow a straight furrow; every evening for a week I shadowed Prince Cormac and learned what duties would come with his kingship someday. Terin thought it was important for me to become a part of Gwynedd before I swore my oath as one of his swordbrothers, and that I respected greatly. By July I had seen everything in the caer that every man did, and had learned to make a bow, a spear, and arrows; to mend a saddle; to care for a horse, sick or well; to lead the men on their circuit; to plow a field; and to fend for myself in the woods. Most of all, though, I was learning to be a warrior. I was tan and lean from hours in the saddle, well-muscled from my days with a sword and spear. I began to playfully skirmish with the men and found it not so difficult to imagine beating one in a real fight as I had six months before. My Welsh gradually morphed into the Cymric dialect, and I didn’t even have to think in English or translate what was said to me. I was becoming a warrior of Gwynedd.