The beer was brought and the council lords and the kings’ warriors drank thirstily, wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands. Cadal had sent enough, Llywarch noted, to take the edge off their ill humor, but not enough for any of them to get fighting drunk.
“In exchange for Gruffyd’s two thousand ponies, I will give you a twentieth of the plunder, before any other division. Half of it will be given back again if the fighting reaches my lands.” Cadal nudged the next piece out on the game board. There must be some price for trampled fields and corn stores used up. A war host on the march could eat a large holding bare in a week.
Bendigeid nodded. “And the amount to be doubled if we fight two seasons in mine.”
Cadal nodded in return. It was not a promise he would have to pay on. Silure and Ordovice could ride together no more than one season before they turned on each other instead of the Romans. Cadal’s war band would ride home with their plunder at the first fall-of-the-leaf.
Bendigeid knew it, as Cadal knew when Bendigeid lied. There would be no more than one battle anyway – a fine, red slaughter to take Roman heads and Roman gold and put the Morrigan’s fear in the next Roman Eagle Army that looked their way. Then he could turn his war band and Gruffyd’s ponies on the Ordovices and take back the gold.
“And what for a surety that neither of us lies?” Cadal said, knowing that they both lied.
“How long have we warred between each other, your folk and mine?” Bendigeid’s dark eyes were masked and uninformative behind the spiral tattooing.
“Since first we came over-seas to Britain,” Cadal said, suspicious.
“Have you a woman at your hearth, king of the Ordovices?”
“Several,” Cadal said dryly. He was a fair man to look on, tall and well made, with a handsome face behind the blue stain that picked out the King’s Mark of his own tribe. He had no need for a black-haired Silure girl in his bed.
“A woman taken to wife, before the Druids?”
“No. Not that.” Cadal’s expression said plainly that he had no need of that, either. He had sons already, one of them by a royal woman of the Ordovices. The council would choose the best among them to come after him.
“Then let you take Ygerna, who is royal woman of the Silures, born to a royal woman of the tribe and a man who was of the kindred of the king’s house,” Bendigeid said. “That there may be no more war between us, ever.”
Llywarch gave him a thoughtful look but said nothing.
That the Demetae had Ygerna mattered little. She had never yet been wed where she was promised.
Cadal drank the last of his beer and laid the horn down carefully, thinking. A royal woman of the Silures would make a royal hostage if she were sent to Bryn Epona before the start of war. And wed after, if at all. He nodded slowly. “It is something I will think on, king of the Silures, if my council is in agreement. This is a matter they have the right to speak on. A wife’s sons would be first to come after me.”
And so Ygerna was bargained yet again. Providing, Llywarch thought, that she was still alive when the Romans had finished with the Demetae.
* * *
By the time Correus’s leave in Aquae Sulis had expired, the recurring headaches Were gone, and Flavius’s hands had healed. The lifelong breach between them seemed miraculously to have healed itself as well, due more, Correus admitted, to Flavius than to any new wisdom on his own part. Aemelia had gone back to Rome, telling Flavius that his mother had been right – it was not in Aemelia to follow the army with him. And Flavius, sadly, had seen the truth in that.
Paulinus was also in Aquae Sulis now, having pushed the governor’s tolerance slightly past its limits and having in any case learned what he had wanted to about the campaign for West Britain. No enlightenment had been given concerning Flavius’s presence in Moridunum, and as both brothers closed up like a pair of clams at the mention of it, Paulinus let the matter drop. He was beginning to have a good idea anyway, and if his suspicions were correct, it was not a matter for his snooping but something best left alone.
Paulinus had arrived three days before Correus was due back at Moridunum, and Flavius to his duties with his own legion, and the three of them had gone taverncrawling on their last night to the amusement of Julia, who had favored them with all the dignity of her eighteen years and read them a lecture for waking the baby when they came in, and then made them drink some horrid concoction of her own before they went to bed. Flavius had reeled off to his own quarters at the Green Plover, but Correus could hear his sister and Paulinus giggling in the next chamber and put the pillow over his ears to stop the sound. He and Freita used to play like that when they went to bed together, he thought miserably. The month’s leave had healed a number of hurts and given him an adult sister who had grown into a friend, but the empty place where Freita had been was an active pain that didn’t fade. He had learned only to put it at the back of his mind.
In the morning that pain was back in its hiding place again, and he kissed Julia good-bye with regret. He caught a transport back to Moridunum in an unfamiliar mood, reluctant for the first time to take up the life that had provided a home for three years, to pick up a shield and fight again, and leave Julia and the baby – his baby – behind him at Aquae.
It was just as well, he thought, rubbing Antaeus down in the transport’s hold, as the ship wallowed out into the river and he caught the sharp scent of salt in the air. It would be too easy to get used to life with a family that wasn’t his.
In the end, though, the army was deep enough in his blood that it slipped on like the accustomed weight of breastplate and helmet. Vindex was waiting for him, full of news, and took him off to his own tent, where he proudly produced a crock of native beer, hidden from the eyes of thirsty predators behind a jumble of saddle blankets and spare cloaks.
“This is good stuff,” Vindex said. “As good as they brew on the Rhenus.” Vindex had done his first tour with the Sixth Legion Victrix along the Lower German frontier.
Correus leaned back in his chair, helmet tipped down over his eyes, and wrapped his long hands around the red clay mug. “No wonder you learned to drink beer,” he said lazily. “The Lower German legions didn’t have anything else to do while we were clawing our way across the Agri Decumates.”
“‘Crawling’ is more like it, from what I heard,” Vindex said with a laugh, relieved to see some of the tautness gone from his friend’s face. It was an old and friendly argument with its base in the rivalry between the two provinces of Roman Germany.
“You may be right there,” Correus said. “I built more miles of road through bog land than I care to think about.”
“Nobody told me when I joined the army that I’d end up building half the roads I marched on,” Vindex said. “We’ll all get a nice new set of calluses now, I expect. When the governor can’t think of anything else for us to do, we build a road. Or an aqueduct.” There was a splash of rain outside and then the steady drumming of water on the tent roof and the muddy street below. Vindex groaned. “I don’t know why he doesn’t just set out barrels to catch it. Damned sopping country. Well, at least it’ll chase away the flies.” He stuck a finger in his beer and flicked a small, winged creature across the tent.
“It doesn’t sound as if I missed much,” Correus said. “I expected to chase the legion down somewhere up in the Demetae’s country, not find it sitting on its tail in Moridunum complaining about the weather.”
Vindex shook his head, and his face was serious now. “No. It was over fast enough when we caught them. One good fight and a whole tribe – gone. The Silures left them to sit there like a hare in a trap, and with their chariots burned… well, they didn’t stand much chance. I can’t say I cared for it. I expect they were just expendable – to keep us off the Silures’ tails for the rest of the season.”
A whole tribe gone, just to buy time, Correus thought. He made a face at his beer. “Wasted. There’s a good month of clear weather left.”
“Well, yes
and no,” Vindex said. “They served their purpose in their way. The governor won’t risk getting stuck in Silure lands with winter coming down and no adequate supplies in hand. We’ll spend the next month digging in here and up around Carn Goch and Luentinum – deep enough that Bendigeid won’t have a mind to try digging us out. Then we’ll put the auxiliaries in, and the legion can loll about in the palatial surroundings at Isca all winter. The men’ll hate that. Isca’s a hole. And they’re itching to fight somebody. We caught the Demetae at a place with a name I can’t pronounce west of Luentinum, and I wouldn’t have called it a battle. One of my juniors said if he wanted that kind of fun he’d have taken a job killing criminals in the arena.” Vindex made a face and poured himself more beer. “Glad you weren’t here,” he said frankly. “Then we came back by way of the gold mines at Luentinum and left a garrison to see that the output falls into the right purse in the future. A tidy campaign, but I didn’t like it,” he said again.
“And the Demetae?” Correus asked. They had indeed been caught between a fire and a cliff. No wonder they had been afraid enough to try that desperate murder at Isca.
“Conscripted mostly, what’s left of ’em.” Fighting-age men would be sent to the auxiliaries for service elsewhere in the empire. Those who survived would be given Roman citizenship at the end of it, and if they chose to come back to Britain then, they would have had twenty-five years in the Roman Army to break tribal ties. “A few of the women and children will be sold, I expect,” Vindex went on, “but mostly the governor’s leaving the rest alone. We’re here to pacify this province, not wipe it bare. Old Gruffyd, the Demetae’s chieftain, and two of his sons were killed in the fighting, and we’ve made the one that was left, the youngest, the new chief. He’s not old enough to make trouble, especially not with our advisers breathing down his neck, and it keeps the local folk happier to have one of their own. We’re taking a hostage, too, for good measure, but I’m thinking the Styx’ll freeze over before the Demetae’ll fight for anything more than to keep food on the table again.”
Correus nodded. A land denuded of its men and the strongest of its women was a land left to ruin. This year’s crops would rot in the fields, most of them. And in the spring it would be all the survivors could do to clear a small part of the weed-choked fields.
“Do you suppose Bendigeid’s enjoying his strategy?” Vindex asked.
“I expect he is,” Correus said. Another tribe’s death would leave no mark on the king of the Silures, so long as it bought life for his own. A strange, cold man with a bright, cold fire at the center. Correus had come closer to being afraid of Bendigeid than he was of most people. Not of the man himself, but of that cold fire at the heart that somehow wasn’t human. Or maybe just wasn’t Roman. The months that he had spent in a Briton’s skin had somehow got under his own skin as well, Correus thought. The Gauls and the Britons were one stock, and it was the Gaul in him that reacted to Bendigeid.
“We took a Druid prisoner, too, after the fighting,” Vindex was saying.
Correus brought himself back to practicalities. “Just one? There should have been more than that.”
“If there were, we never saw them.”
“They must have gone to the Silures,” Correus said.
“Where, it is to be hoped, they give Bendigeid a pain in the mid-region,” Vindex said.
The Druids were holy. Not even a king would dare deny one refuge. And they owed stronger ties to their priesthood than to the kings they served. The Chief Druid had the power to stop a war, although mostly they let the affairs of men sort themselves out as they would.
“What happened to the one you caught?” Correus asked. Druids were forbidden and bore a death mark when Rome could find them. The pantheistic Romans freely adopted other folks’ gods, and left conquered nations’ religions alone as long as their rituals contained no inhuman practices. But the Druids were trouble. Rebellion inevitably followed in their wake.
Vindex’s face was puzzled and uneasy. “I never saw anything like it,” he said slowly. “They brought him to the governor to be questioned. I happened to be in the Principia just then, fighting with the quartermaster, as usual – do you know they’ve sent us a whole load of pilum points and every damned one of them flawed halfway up the head? Anyway, this old Druid comes in under guard, in a ratty old gown that must have been made before Augustus was born and a hulking great collar like a sun disc that must have been two pounds of solid gold. Long hair like a wild man, and a beard down to his waist. He gives the governor one look – not afraid really, though he must have known what was going to happen. Just… thoughtful. Then he closes his eyes, says something no one can understand, and dies.”
“What?”
“Right under our noses. Just crumples up and falls down. They thought he was faking, of course, and gave him a shove, but nothing happened, so they yelled for Silanus. And when Silanus gets there, he gets a queer look on his face and says, ‘His heart stopped.’ Just that, nothing more, and won’t say another word.” Vindex reached for the beer. “I tell you, Correus, it scared ten years off me.”
* * *
The rain came down in a steady splash, leaving the ponies fetlock-deep in muddy water at every dip in the trail. A decurion of cavalry rode at the head, the hood of his foul-weather cloak pulled up over his helmet, and his thirty troopers squelched miserably along behind him. Beside him rode a thin figure in a heavy wool traveling cloak, with a bright blue-and-scarlet gown and blue calf-high boots showing under it. The cloak was a thick, oily wool, checkered gray and brown, and it shed the rain somewhat better than her escorts’, she noticed.
“Have we much farther to go?” she asked carefully, in simple British. “Your men will be wet to the skin.”
“Only to Moridunum,” the decurion chuckled. His words were heavily accented but understandable. “They won’t melt in a little water, miss, but my thanks for your caring.” The cavalry troop was a military guard, sent to bring the Demetae’s hostage to the governor, but she had plainly chosen to treat them as a guard of honor instead. Pretty nervy for a kid who didn’t look more than twelve. She was a royal woman, whatever that meant, and some kin to the king of the Silures. The Demetae had bargained her to the governor to avoid sending a hostage of their own, and old Frontinus had seen the use in that fast enough. The Demetae couldn’t fight off an attack by a troop of eunuchs just now, but a Silure hostage was a present sent down straight from Olympus. He took another look at the child’s pale face and the dark smudges under her eyes. Scared to death under it all, he thought, and he didn’t wonder. If the Demetae hadn’t wanted her to sell to the governor, they’d likely have cut her throat for her after what Bendigeid had done – or not done was more like.
Ygerna knew better. To kill a royal woman was to bring the Black Goddess’s curse on the man who had done it and on all his clan and tribe. They had merely shut her in a storeroom and fed her whatever was handy when anyone happened to think of it, until the Romans came to Craig Gwrtheyrn to get her.
Gruffyd’s women had stripped off her torn gown – none too gently, with an accidental pinch here and there – and poured a bucket of water over her by way of a bath. Then they had put her in a new gown and given her the blue boots and given back some of her jewelry. She had the Demetae’s harper to thank for that, Ygerna thought. He had shamed Gruffyd’s women by telling them that they dishonored the Goddess by sending a royal woman to the Romans in that state. And because harpers were also Druids, at a minor level, they had obeyed him.
When the Romans had come, the women had led her out and put her up on her pony without a word while Gronwy, the new chieftain, who was not even a man yet, stood to one side with his mother and his council lords. Only the boy Tegid slipped up beside her pony while Gronwy was putting his mark to the papers the Roman carried with him. “Here.” He pressed a little bead of amber on a ragged thong into her hand. “A Druid gave it to me, so maybe it’s magic.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. Sh
e looked at the bead and closed her hand around it.
“I just wanted you to know I don’t think it’s your fault – what your uncle did. Amber’s lucky. Maybe it will help. Though it didn’t bring me any,” he added bleakly. He leaned on a crutch, and his right leg was already healing with the foot twisted slightly outward. Now he would never be made a warrior when the other boys came to their manhood at the Spring Fires.
“Yes, it did,” Ygerna said, with a grim twist to her mouth. He would never be a slave in a Roman mine, either.
The Roman officer was coming back, and Tegid turned and limped away quickly while Ygerna clenched her hands on the saddle and fought down her panic. The Demetae didn’t want her; she was a hated outcast among them because she was Silure – but they were kin to her own people, and she understood them. It was the Romans who were the unknown, a monster out of a nightmare. They would kill her maybe, give her to their eagle god. The Goddess will take them if they do, she thought. I will tell them that. But maybe they wouldn’t believe her. Or maybe the Goddess’s magic didn’t work on Romans. She didn’t know. They might not even be human, not as her own kind were. She put her hand to her mouth to keep herself from screaming, calling out to Gronwy, pleading with him to take her back, not to let them have her. The Roman swung up into the saddle beside her, alien and arrogant under the scarlet and yellow plumes in his helmet. He raised a hand to the troopers behind him, and someone slapped a riding crop down on her pony’s rump.
They rode out lordlywise through the broken defenses of Craig Gwrtheyrn, and a pair of boys quarreling over something in the road scrambled out of their way. Ygerna took satisfaction in that. I am Silure, she thought. I am a royal woman and priestess to the Mother. She studied the Roman’s sharp, arrogant profile beside her and molded her own features into the same expression. I will not be shamed before them.
Barbarian Princess Page 17