The hall of Rheged is half ash and air, but there is some roof, still, and the ghost of a wall, here and there. When he finally finds her, she is half-ghost, too, coughing ash and nursing her long-corrupted wounds.
He doesn’t know how to save his sister, for neither the word nor the sword can heal her.
She sees his future in his fading circlet and his flowing blood.
“When it’s over,” she whispers, “remember kindness.”
He holds her. He weaves her a soft death-melody. He sings her a path beyond this world. She smiles.
“Never stop singing.”
But when she is gone, he has to stop singing. He howls like a hound until his throat is raw.
He is called to hunt the evildoers until they can run no longer. He follows their rancid scent, and his companions follow him—the wanderer with dagger in hand, and the woman who wields a broadsword like it weighs nothing.
Urien and his earls abandoned each other days ago, as cowards and traitors always do, so the path is winding, gashed intermittently with deep gouts of blood.
The first earl, dead. The hound remembers the glow of his smiling face in the firelight of the hall, but he can feel no emotion beyond the observation of those flickering images as he bleeds the man dry.
The final earl, dead. How many were there between the first and the last? It’s all a blur, now, a crimson tapestry of screams and blood and begging, and the dull colours of a dead hall and long-gone laughter, eliciting nothing, and bodies, and bodies, and bodies—
The scent is close. It will be over soon.
Warriors rode to Catraeth,
A Lord and a Bard -
No more bound to his
Soulless charge.
Three rode to Catraeth,
All worthy of gold-mead,
The songs of wordsmiths
Blazing in steel, of
Aneirin, Taliesin, Cian,
Blwchbardd, and Talhaearn Tad Awen.
We see them riding,
And sing their praises,
We, Y Cynfeirdd,
The beirdd, who of canu
And awen were born,
Aneirin, Taliesin, speak to mourn.
~~~
101
Gwawrddur
I, Aneirin, sing his tale.
Beast on the battlefield,
Hound from the Gods.
HIs blows came cold and hard -
Greatsword singing for blood.
Annwn’s son, Arawn’s cur,
His Hunt was worth their mead.
Arthur’s son, Rhiannon’s cur,
They’ll feast on Urien’s fear.
~~~
102
Glyndŵr
I, Glyndŵr, sing my tale.
Run, Urien, run.
Cŵn Annwn come.
Run, Urien, run.
Cŵn Annwn follow.
Blood-beast, blunt blows,
Shiver, tremor - ach, fall!
Blood-beast, maw haunts,
Scream song of woe.
~~~
I sing the plight of
Three hundred gone.
Rheged, I am your Bard.
I bear the plight of
Three hundred gone.
Gododdin, I am your Sword.
~~~
He fights fiercely, yet without
Honour, no hero is he - Urien
I’ll slay, and desiring
Death I disarm my prey.
One arm for Tâd
One arm for Mam
The legs for Rheged
And for Morfudd the head.
As gore-circlet falls,
As Urien falls,
As Rheged falls,
My Duty is done.
I invite my battle-kin
To feast on his corpse.
~~~
103
Gwawrddur ap Glyndŵr
I, Gwawrddur ap Glyndŵr, sing my tale.
Morfudd, like the sun,
Ever-rising, I grieve her on
Her way. My failure’s scars
On ever-bloodied hands.
~~~
Of Aneirin’s mead I drank,
Of Taliesin’s awen I drank;
The blood of Blwchbardd,
Talhaearn & Cian roar in my ears.
I am bloodstained poet,
I am wearied soldier.
I am blade-singer,
I am warrior-bard.
I am Gwawrddur.
Blade and Book, Harp and
My heart fall to ground.
At last I cry, weep, weep
For the home forever gone.
~~~
104
I, Taliesin, sing his sorrow.
A bloodstained poet’s lament in
Mourning voices as sun arose.
For Rheged they cry;
No tears nor mead for Urien spilt.
~~~
There was no heroism in Glyndŵr’s battle with Urien, no poetry in motion. Just a broken man seeking vengeance. Arrogant Urien taunted Glyndŵr, at first. Then the fear came, when he knew he could never have won. He died pleading for mercy, before his last words were stymied by a shimmer of steel and a spray of ichor in the coming dawn.
Gwawrddur rose as Urien fell, and he wept.
Then he looks up, as a wispy hand rests on his shoulder. Two Bards stare back at him, Aneirin and Taliesin. They speak to him in dead tongues. Ruth catches some of their conversation; Cenau does not. They are comforting him.
And then for a moment, hundreds of figures are arrayed on the field. For the first time in weeks, Gwawrddur smiles. He is embraced by three of the figures. His replies are heeded by none but the dead.
Then Taliesin is next to Cenau. He hands them something. It looks like a mask. He nods, and says something in a thick accent to them. Cenau realises the rhythms are like Gwawrddur’s when he sings.
Gwawrddur receives a harp and a helmet from Aneirin. Ruth emerges with a manuscript from them both, written in her native tongue. Taliesin and Aneirin salute them all, before disappearing into rest once more.
Gwawrddur leaves Catraeth, never to return to there nor Rheged.
He spends the rest of his days wandering, performing and singing around the world, spreading the story of the palace of Fate as far as he can. He writes a copy, too, hopefully to be published. In time, perhaps, Gwawrddur ap Glyndŵr will become part of the same rediscovered Brythonic tradition as Aneirin and Taliesin, and the story, though changed endlessly, shall be passed on, orally and in print. He felt it his Duty to show the corrupted and bloodied foundations of the Palace of Fate, of Fate as an institution. He carries his Hall with him, all of them, and their love. In everything, they are with him. And Gwawrddur is still kind, as his dying sister told him to be, in the end. Good-spirited, earnest, willing to share mead with any who asked, to compose and sing for any, willing even to draw his blade for causes he thought just. He is the man who lost everything—but also the man of potential, of rebirth. Fate couldn’t break him, in the end.
Yet was Gwawrddur a good man?
And shall they sing his praises?
Written by Rhys P.