The Eagles Have Flown

by Henry Treece

  4. ‘Goodbye, my friend!’

  The cavalcade set out once more, one autumn morning, when the sun still shone, but weaker now, and the clear blue air carried on it the sharp hint of oncoming winter. Both boys were now warmly clad, for the men who had died in the cavern were men of wealth and had dressed well. Festus now wore a helmet and cuirass and carried a man’s weapons at his side; but Wulf, although he wrapped himself in the long blue cloak of a Roman cavalryman, refused to wear a Roman’s armour. That would have been too much like treachery to his own folk. All the same, like Festus, he was now privileged to ride among the foremost men-at-arms, the chosen henchmen of Artos the Bear.

  While they had been immured in the cave, some of the more able men, largely to pass the time, had tried their hands at making a forage-wagon, with some success. There had been wood and to spare close at hand, and, though the axles were of wood and the wheels solid, they had not wasted their time, for now this vehicle rumbled behind them, laden with meat enough to take them to the other side of Britain if needs be. Though their diet might be a limited one, at least the army would not starve. Up to a point, things were going well, it appeared, and the party set off in high spirits, for they were well rested after their stay in the cavern.

  Yet, on the second day out, something occurred to break the peace and to bring discord into the relatively settled life of the company.

  A young rider, noted among the men for his wit and his ability to sing in a fine tenor voice, rode up to the boys and said, ‘Surely, we named him truly! The Bear! Look at his face - one would think we were off to our own funerals - not the funerals of the Saxons!’

  Wulf drew his horse a little away from the young man, who noticed it and began to tease him, good-humouredly enough, but in a way that the Jute did not understand wholly.

  And in the course of his teasing, the soldier said, ‘But then, you are no longer a Saxon. How can you be, you ride with Britain against the sea-wolves!’

  Perhaps it was the mention of his own name that angered Wulf, or perhaps he did not like the young man, who had a cruel smirk on his dark face; but before he could help himself he said, ‘If I am a traitor to the Cantwara, where do you set Medrodus? Is he a true Briton, think you, horseman?’

  Now Medrodus had not been mentioned once among that company since the treachery outside the village. None could say whether or not he had been responsible for what happened there, and since Artos had not referred to him, no one else had dared do so openly. But now the name was spoken in broad daylight, and at more than an ordinary volume, for Wulf was loud-voiced when angry, however softly he spoke at other times.

  The effect of the speaking of that name, Medrodus, was a frightening one. It seemed that the foremost riders of the band shuddered in their saddles; and Artos held up his hand as a signal that they should halt. Then, turning in the saddle, he looked back at Wulf, coldly, his eyes now narrow as slits, his lips curling beneath the red hair of his face.

  This was not the friendly leader they knew. This was the Bear, whose callousness was to become a byword among the hosts of Britain before five years were out. He did not deign to address Wulf by name, or even to let his eyes dwell on him more than for an instant; but his words were deadly.

  ‘The fathers of Medrodus,’ he said, ‘sat in their gilded chairs dispensing justice when the Cantwara grubbed in the mud of Germany, among the swine, for trodden husks.’

  After that, he stared back among the horsemen, his face a block of carven granite, with no emotion showing. Then, when an awful silence had settled on the troop, he turned slowly in his saddle and gave the marching order once again, and the horses moved off.

  Festus looked sideways at his companion. Wulf did not say a word, but sat staring before him at Artos’s back, his face pale, his lips held tight between his teeth. Festus saw that he had let fall the reins and that his hands were clenching and unclenching spasmodically. Then he recalled that Wulf came of a people who, though slow to wrath, were vicious to the point of madness once they were fully angered.

  He urged his own horse over to the side of his friend and put out his hand upon the other’s hand. But Wulf shook him off with a sudden violent gesture, and the tears spurted from the wide blue eyes of the Jute.

  Festus hung back a little after that and the young soldier who had started it all smiled and said in a whisper, ‘Don’t bother with him. These barbarians are as changeable as cats, and as wild!’

  Festus looked him in the eye and said slowly, ‘One day I shall be a full warrior, I shall remind you of this morning and on that day you had better wear your thickest neck-ring, for I shall take your head if I can.’

  The young soldier was experienced in battle and had fought among the Saxon settlements since he was a child. He smiled and patted Festus’s thigh patronisingly.

  ‘You will be a soldier, one day,’ he said, ‘if you are careful and don’t make too many real soldiers angry!’

  Then, seeing the look in Festus’s eyes, he cantered along the column to talk with an old friend. Festus turned back to Wulf, but the boy’s face was tense and hard. He could see that any word of his would be unwelcome and so resolved to let Wulf’s anger wear itself out before he approached him again.

  That night the company camped below a bluff of rising ground, where a pine wood ran down to the stream where they got their water.

  The fires were burning brightly and men lay about here and there, in their heavy cloaks, joking and singing while the detachment detailed as cooks stirred the great pots of meat.

  Festus, who lay a little apart from the rest, almost in the outer rim of the blaze and where the darkness of the woods crept over his shoulder, was wondering what he could say to Wulf when suddenly he was aware of a light touch on his shoulder. He turned and Wulf was there, looking down at him, his face still bearing that same tense look of the morning.

  Festus tried to smile, and put out his hand to his friend, but Wulf’s face did not change, and he even drew away a little from that hand.

  ‘Festus the Roman,’ he said, and Festus hardly recognised his voice, it was so strained, ‘I have been thinking of my father today. I have been remembering again how he fell beneath the cowardly lances of the British horsemen who took us unawares on our way to market, with our baskets full of eggs and our hampers laden with bread-meal.’

  Festus held out his hand again, not knowing what to say, but Wulf now made a decisive movement and actually pressed the hand away from him, coldly and deliberately.

  ‘I am going now,’ he said, ‘taking the chance you offered me before. Goodbye, my friend, goodbye!’

  Festus, in alarm, reached out for him, but the Jute had slipped beyond the rim of firelight, towards the dark pine-shadows. Festus began to rise, but suddenly Wulf was back beside him, and had thrown him again to the ground, with a remarkable force.

  ‘If you try to stop me, Festus,’ his voice hissed, ‘I swear by Woden I will drive this knife through your ribs!’

  Festus, bewildered, but still anxious to keep his friend, flung out an arm, but Wulf had already gone; his feet were already running among the thick needles of the pine-wood. And even as Festus rose and ran for his horse, he could hear the hoofbeats of Wulf’s charger among the dried branches and bracken of the forest.

  ‘Wulf! Wulf! Come back!’ he shouted, in a voice fit to wake the camp.

  A soldier who stirred the pot at the nearest fire looked up and shouted, ‘Hey, Festydd bach, if you want any supper you’d better come back and sit down! It’ll all be gone by the time you’ve finished your game of hide-and-seek!’

  But Festus did not heed him. He rode into the growing purple dimness of the forest, his head low so as to avoid the overhanging boughs, his ears tensed to catch the sounds of his friend’s horse among the dry flooring of the forest.

  ‘Wulf!’ he shouted, again and again; and the echoes of that sombre wood took up his call and flung it back contemptuously to him. ‘Wulf! Wulf! Wulf!’ it said, in ever-fading cries.


  And at length, with those ghostly echoes swirling about his ears, here and there, among the black straight pine-trunks, Festus halted. Then there was only silence, an unbearable stillness that was at last broken by a squirrel’s startled chattering as it ran along a bough, and the distant coughing bark of a prowling badger. Festus was alone in the forest and Wulf, his dear friend, had gone.

  For a while the Celt sat silent on his horse at a small clearing in the wood. Far on the distant verge of the trees before him, he saw the faint glow of the sun, a dying light that almost vanished when he rubbed his eyes. He listened intently and heard something that might have been the hoofs of a horse - yes, a horse of fairyland, minute and almost as intangible as the sound that a sea-shell makes.

  Festus sat in a great dilemma, turning his head this way and that. Then, without warning, his eyes filled with tears, and he began to cry; not only because Wulf had run away from him, but also because he had suddenly recalled his mother and father, and especially little Julia, his sister. This had brought it all back to him. Yet, strangely, he could hardly remember what they looked like. He could only recall that Julia wore two long amber plaits that were full of lugs, she said, whenever her mother tried to comb them. Yes, and that on her wax tablets, in that angular, childish scrawl, she had written once: ‘The man who loves peace and gentleness will always live in the country.’

  And they had killed her, or taken her away, the Saxons. She, who thought that the country was a lovely place to live in. And Wulf was one of those Saxons, in a way, and he had run away and left his friend alone, in a dark and unfamiliar country with nothing but death and unhappiness behind him, and nothing but bloodshed and shame before him.

  Suddenly Festus set his jaw and, flinging away his tears, he set spurs to the surprised sides of his little warhorse and galloped on into the gloom of the wood.

  5. The Moonlit Glade

  At first his purpose had been to find Wulf, to vent his sudden anger and grief upon him when he had ridden him down. But as he plunged further and further among the dark thickets, his horse now foam-flecked and tiring, his rage and sorrow seemed to wear itself out, leaving behind only a weakness of spirit. He tried to retrace his haphazard path through the woods, for he had gone in many directions that night, wherever he had imagined he heard the sound of Wulf’s horse. Now, with the green darkness settling heavily round him on every side, he realised with despair that he was lost, and dismounted for a spell to rest his fatigued charger.

  At length, casting this way and that for tracks of his own earlier riding, he came to an unfamiliar glade, full on to which the strong moon threw a weird and silver light. Here he sat down on a moss-covered boulder, now cursing himself for a fool, and wondering how he should make his peace with Artos the Bear, whose strict order it was that none of his armed men should leave camp once the night-trumpet had sounded.

  It was while he was battling with this problem that his horse suddenly stopped cropping the dark turf and raised its head, listening. Festus, hardly breathing, listened too; it was the sound of a frantic and urgent running, which seemed to come from the direction in which he himself had galloped. In alarm, Festus rose quickly and led the horse back from the glade and into the blackest shadows of the trees, throwing his cloak over its head so that it might not whinny in fear and so give away their hiding-place.

  Hardly had he crouched down among the brushwood, when

  a squat, dark-haired man in a ragged green tunic staggered from among the trees at the far side of the glade into the bright moonlight. Festus could see the fear and exhaustion in his face and the long cut that ran across his shoulders, as though he had been slashed at from behind. Out of sheer sympathy, Festus felt for his own sword, so that should the occasion arise, he might go to the aid of this hunted creature. But with something like a start of alarm, Festus suddenly realised that he had left his own weapon behind by the camp-fire, when he had rushed away so precipitately after his friend.

  Then there was no time for thought, for there was a great pattering of feet and a party of men broke through the woods on the heels of the fugitive, perhaps half a dozen of them, led by a tall fair-haired youth, who ran, loping like a young wolf on the trail, at the head of his men, a long-handled axe in his right hand. He ran slightly ahead of his followers, a smile on his face, as though this was just another sort of game. Occasionally he gave a shout, not loudly, but with just enough force to reach the shambling creature who had passed through the glade a little earlier. Yet those shouts, in a tongue that Festus did not recognise, froze his blood as he listened, for they carried the message of death, he knew, despite their half-jocular tone.

  Further along the path through the wood, where the going was hard and the gnarled roots of ancient trees straggled out as though clutching towards the runner ahead, the squat man in the green tunic began to stumble, like a small boat caught by heavy rollers. It was apparent that he could not run much longer; his hands were clasped about his middle and he seemed to be in pain. Once he looked round when the young hunter called out to him, and Festus saw the terror in his dark face.

  But his plight was a hopeless one. Suddenly, as he swayed out from the path to avoid a lichen-covered boulder, one of his feet caught in a long curling root and he pitched forward among the rough grass on to his face, and there lay still, exhausted and petrified with fear. As he fell, the fair-haired young man gave a short high cry and bounded forward over the turf towards him, trying to outdistance his companions so as to be first there to strike a blow.

  Festus saw the fugitive half-rise and throw up a hand as though to protect himself, then he saw the axe rise and fall and saw the others cluster round him, shouting,’ like hounds about a deer. His first impulse was to run forward and try to save the wretch, but his training as a soldier had already taught him how ineffectual such an action would be. His duty was to fight for Britain, not to become involved in a private conflict which might well end in his own death.

  Shuddering, he sank his head in his hands and crouched behind the bush, hardly daring to breathe. There was a lull of silence, and then the rough foreign voices broke out again.

  Soon afterwards the men passed through the clearing once again, one of them stumbling within a yard of the bush behind which the boy crouched. They were silent now and Festus looked up cautiously to see that their young leader carried something in his left hand, something dark which he swung to and fro carelessly as he strode along, something which made Festus shiver as he looked on in horror.

  When the wood was silent once again, Festus led out the trembling horse and made his way as swiftly as he could from the place of terror, taking the path that the murdered man had followed so as to be sure of avoiding his dreadful pursuers. Although the war-horse shied when they approached the body, Festus overcame his own repugnance and dismounted to look at the sprawling form, for those strange voices puzzled him and he was anxious to identify these savage wanderers.

  The question in his mind was soon answered. The dead man’s hand sprawled out into a small patch of moonlight, and Festus immediately recognised the blue woad-marks across the back of the hand as a sign that these were Picts from the north.

  Now only the Picts still persisted in that barbarous custom of streaking forehead and hands with the dye of the woad plant, and they used it not as the old Celts had used it, to provide tribal or caste-markings, but rather as war-paint. Festus felt that he had at least made a discovery of some military importance - that Artos might well have to contend with Picts as well as Bacaudae and Saxons before many days were spent.

  But the main thing was to find Artos, and now Festus did not know which way to turn; his sense of direction was completely baffled.

  6. The Fiery Horseman

  At length, when he gave up all hope of ever finding his way-back to the camp, the trees of the wood began to thin out, and soon, to his great joy, Festus found himself riding among the gorse bushes which proclaimed open country. However, by now the moon had becom
e hidden by a succession of heavy cloud-banks, and the boy could not see where he was going. He only knew that the ground was uneven and dangerous for a horse to traverse blind. Moreover, from the distant cry of a vixen, he sensed that below him lay a valley of some depth, and he did not dare venture into such a place until his eyes had told him that it did not shelter some barbarian company, such as he had seen earlier in the wood.

  At this point, the horse began to pick its way into a narrow and gently-sloping declivity from which the air rose almost warm, as though by day it had acted as a sun-trap and even yet preserved some of the afternoon’s heat. It was not a deep place, yet there was about it an atmosphere of comfort and protection. At the bottom of the little basin, Festus dismounted and having hobbled his horse, wrapped himself in his thick cloak and lay down in the dry fern that clothed the ground. He was too tired to seek further for the camp of the Bear that night. His common sense told him that he might stray still further away from it, instead of drawing nearer to it as he wished. Now, in any case, his wits were reeling and his spirits were low. He fell almost immediately into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

  When the boy woke, it was already broad daylight and the sun shone down into his face. His horse cropped the lush grass on the slope above him, contented and rested. Festus sat up and then started with alarm at the ugly and malicious face which looked down on him. But his fear soon turned to laughter as he perceived that it was a face moulded in lead, the head of a satyr, with gaping mouth, the terminal of a small aqueduct which had once led into this hollow. The channelling of the water-course was supported on elegant stone columns, meticulously fluted at base and capital, and decorated with carved vine-leaves. Despite the gnawing tooth of wind and rain, these pillars still retained something of their ancient classical dignity, some element of grace and poise, carried from a nobler world to this dark island, and surviving yet, despite the ravages of ignorance and weather.