The sun rose blood-red behind a low bank of cloud.
“Priest, I will do as you say but I will not make myself helpless for any man who lives. I will keep my pugio dagger behind my back under my cloak.
“Agreed,” Cynan told him and they set out.
Chapter 19
They set out with Cynan in the lead mounted on the gelding, Tud on the white mule and Otto trudging after them, sweating already in the grey travelling cloak Tud had dug out of the packsaddle for him. It was too short but it did have a hood and he could cover most of his body with it. The horse was nervous with a new rider on his back. He danced across the track and tossed his head. Cynan jagged the bit into his mouth to bring him to obedience. Otto dropped the mules’ lead reins and ran up. He grabbed Cynan’s arm and shook him.
“No more of that, he said. “Let the beast get used to you…”
“Fool,” the priest hissed at him. “Go back to your mules. Suppose we are being watched…”
The travelled into the early afternoon when they entered a broad valley. It was rich with fields of ripening grain and orchards full of green apples beginning to blush the faintest red. Much of the hay had been taken in and was stooked for drying. It would be stacked under cover before the persistent rains arrived. Herds of cattle were penned in wide pastures beside the two streams that ran through the valley. It was dominated by a hillock on which a high stockade had been built which enclosed an area large enough to house several thousand people. It was by far the largest settlement Otto had seen in this country. They passed along tracks between fields where ragged slaves worked in a lethargic way, scarcely bothering to lift their heads to watch the cavalcade pass by. As they moved closer to the towering wooden walls, Otto could see a deep ditch had been dug around them. Sharpened stakes spiked the rampart to deter attackers. It reminded him of a legion marching-camp on a grander scale. They clattered over a wooden bridge and through the open gates. Armed guards looked at them with barely veiled hostility but did not hinder their passage.
Each low, thatched house stood in its own garden, enclosed behind a straggling fence. Scrawny fowls scratched in the dust, goats or milk-ewes were tethered under apple or pear trees. The earth had been dug into strips which were now green with the top leaves of planted vegetables. Faces stared at them from dark doorways. Men and women sat on benches against their wooden or wattle and daub walls or busied themselves with the day’s tasks. Some glanced up, most ignored them. Children squatted in groups absorbed in their games or ran shrieking along the roads. The whole place stank of faeces, animals, unwashed clothes and wood smoke.
The party walked up the incline along the twisting roads nearer to the centre. The gardens grew smaller. There were more workshops and traders’ booths to be seen the deeper into the city they went. Cynan ordered them to halt outside a substantial inn. The owner was leaning against his doorjamb. He looked at them with a jaundiced eye. Cynan dismounted.
“Food, shelter,” he demanded brusquely.
The innkeeper looked him up and down and spat. “Full up, priest. Find somewhere else,” he responded. Cynan nodded and smiled. Then he raised both his arms in the air and began to chant. “No, no,” the panicked man shouted, suddenly frightened that he was being cursed. “There are no rooms left, truly. I can let you have the stables…”
“Food?” Cynan repeated.
“It will be brought to you sir, please, this way...” He ushered them round the side, through a yard and into a clean and airy stable.
They unsaddled and watered the animals. A fat boy arrived straining, carrying a tray heavy with food and a flagon of ale. As he put it down, Cynan scraped up a handful of dust behind his back. When he was leaving, the priest called him to stop and watch. He muttered and sprinkled the dust across the stable entrance. It scintillated in the sunbeams as it slowly fell back to earth.
“I have called up a guardian spirit. If anyone crosses the mystic line I have drawn without my permission, he will sicken and slowly die. Tell your master. Now go,” he told the awestruck boy who turned and wobbled away as fast as his legs would let him.
They stayed in the stable uninterrupted for the rest of the afternoon. The sun sank, the cloudless sky grew purple. Venus, the evening star, rose as the purple faded to black. Infinite sparks of light showed themselves in their constellations. The moon began to rise, full and yellow, a harvest moon. Cynan looked at it once or twice, waited for it climb nearer to its zenith, then he called Otto.
“You will accompany me now. Whatever you see or hear, say nothing; do not react and draw no attention to yourself. Tud will wait here. Guardian spirit or not, I do not want anyone ferreting about in our belongings.”
The street they walked was so well-lit by the moon they could have been in daylight but for the lack of colour. Cynan preferred the shadowed side. Other hurrying figures passed them, all going uphill. Their street opened into the main square of the city, filled by a crowd of thousands. The timber buildings overlooking it were high, with window openings and balconies on their upper floors. People jostled for a place at every vantage point. Some had climbed up onto the roof ridges where they perched like crows. Cynan pushed his way up onto a cart at the side of the square. Otto was tall enough to see everything by standing on the wagon tree. He noted the reluctance with which people had moved aside for the priest.
An unlit log fire had been laid in the middle of the square with a wide space left free all around it. With a rumbling sound, two men trundled a huge bronze cauldron in and hoisted it up on the logs to the cheers of the onlookers. Otto saw that the front rows of the spectators were made up of women sitting cross-legged or squatting on the ground. A group of men began to shove people back to make a lane on one side. He heard the drumming of hoofbeats. A wild roar broke out from thousands of throats. The women’s ululations rose above the tumult and echoed off the surrounding walls. A man riding bareback on a white horse burst into the circle. The entry lane disappeared as the crowd pushed forward and filled it once more.
The horseman cantered around the ring made by the spectators. He was heavy-set with massive shoulders and a pelt of red hair growing on his body to match his beard. His head was shaven and he was naked other than for a knife in a sheath carried on a string around his waist. He directed the horse with a jaw- rope, jerking it mercilessly as he drummed his heels into the heaving flanks, forcing it round and round in frantic circles. Otto noticed that it was a mare. A small one and young; scarcely more than a filly. She was far to fragile to carry the weight of her rider. She showed the whites of her eyes in her terror, bloody froth flying from her open mouth. She began to falter but the sawing jaw-rope, thumping heels and baying crowd would not let her rest. Finally, she came to a halt, shaking, her hide twitching; driven to the limit of her strength. She was beaten.
The man slipped off her back and raised both his arms to accept the plaudits from all sides. He strutted to the edge of the crowd and walked slowly past the women Some giggled and reached up to caress his growing erection as he brushed past them. Others cried out their willingness and offered themselves. He went right around the square and stood in the centre again, turning on the spot so all could admire his engorged, rigid penis.
The mare was breathing hard, her head hanging low, too exhausted to move from where he had left her,. He stepped behind her, raised her tail and thrust deep inside her. Once, twice, three times he thrust then his body arched and quivered as he ejaculated with a great roar, like a wild beast; a bear, a bison. He withdrew to silence from the men but cries of admiration and more wild shouts from the women. He went to the mare’s head jerked it to one side with the jaw-rope and withdrew the knife from its sheath. He held it aloft; a thin sickle shining in the moonlight. He cut her throat. She collapsed without a sound.
The women rushed forward with basins to catch as much of the gushing blood as they could. The horse rider, abuser, killer climbed into the cauldron where he stood with his arms held out from his sides. They began to em
pty the blood over his head to the sound of chanting. The dead horse was butchered where it lay. Oozing lumps and dripping joints of meat were flung into the cauldron around the nightmare figure standing in it, his face and body black with congealing blood and his eyes glittering. They lit the fire and poured pitchers of water over him. He was helped out when the first steam swirled up and strode away through the silent crowd bowing to him as he passed.
No-one left the square. The women threw beans and cracked barley into the cauldron, they added wood to the fire beneath until it blazed. They danced around the flames in long lines singing and clapping to the rhythmic stamping of their feet; a drum sounded, shrilling pipes joined the ritual music. A smell of stewing meat began to steal across the square. Old women with long-handled ladles dipped the broth out of the pot and let it fall back until at last they were satisfied and called out to the others. The song changed. A high-backed chair was carried into the square and torches were lit.
The previously naked rider entered, dressed in a red tunic and cloak. He sat on the chair. A bowl of broth was reverently brought over to him. He put a hand in and withdrew a lump of meat which he sucked into his mouth, chewed then tipped the remaining contents of the bowl down his throat. An immense cheer blasted Otto’s eardrums. He felt someone plucking at his arm. It was Cynan. He had climbed down and was hurrying away in quick purposeful strides gesturing to Otto to follow him.
He said not one word until they were back in the stable when he exploded with rage.
“You saw that abomination? You saw that sacrilege? The insult to our Goddess Epona? Does our Lady of the White Horses wish to see her symbol, humiliated, raped and slaughtered while a gang of ignorant oafs look on, whistling and cheering. They are feasting on her flesh as I speak. It is disgusting, depraved. And that man, that despicable creature now calls himself the Horse King. He did all that was done and cut her throat to make himself the Horse King, above all other men, above even the High Priests of Ynys Mon. Oh what pride, what folly! My Order will not tolerate that ceremony being performed anywhere on this island. He will not hold himself exempt from our rule! Tomorrow, Otto Longius, you will kill him!”
Otto’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Why would I do that?”
“Because if you do not, the Horse King will kill your friend.”
“Why…”
“Why, why, why, can you say nothing else? He is going to prove to his assembled people that he fears nothing, not even Rome, by defeating a Roman in single combat….”
“But Quintus Mucius is no warrior…”
“I take it that is the quaestor’s name? It doesn’t matter. No-one will care, Otto. The Horse King will have cut down a Roman; by the time the tale is told half a dozen times, Quintus Mucius will have become a giant. Now, can you kill that man?”
Otto reflected for a moment. “I do not know. It is to be seen. But I will fight him.”
“Good, then let us rest.”
Otto spread the cloak he had been given over a truss of straw and lay down. He wriggled around to find a comfortable position, eventually turning onto his back, gazing up at the few, faint moonbeams filtering through the stable roof. Cynan’s words had given him much to think about. He recollected what the priest had said to him and things he had noticed on their journey. He smiled; he was close to composing a full picture. Tomorrow would see it finished. The combat he faced did not cause him undue worry. There had been so many of them, one more made little difference. The result would be decided as the Gods wished. He had only to fight and let them concern themselves with the outcome.
In the morning, Tud woke him with a dish of hot porridge and bacon, the first meat he had eaten since he had left the coast. He ate it greedily then went to straight to the privy.
“A man does well to empty his bowels before a fight,” he explained cheerfully on his return. “Makes him lighter on his feet and stink less if his tripes are ripped out.”
He walked over to the horse trough, stripped and washed himself from head to foot. Wrapped in a cloak to dry, he sat with Cynan who was in a nervous frenzy; unable to sit still without one of his knees jiggling up and down or constantly pulling at one of his earlobes or scratching his neck. Otto was as calm and unmoving as one of the standing stones on the high heathlands.
“If a man defeated the Horse King, he could rule over these people. Call himself a king if he wanted,” Cynan told him. “This is a fine, populous city. Using it as a base, such a man could rule from the coast where you landed right across the country to the estuary of the great river to the west of us. Think, Otto Longius, a kingdom of your own the full breadth of the land. Of course, my Order would need to be present to advise and see to the spiritual welfare of the people. What does Rome offer in comparison? Scraps off the tables of the nobility that all the rest must fight over like the dogs they are. You will never have real power while you serve them. Think what is being held out to you here.”
And with his words, the last few details dropped into place for Otto. He smiled broadly.
“Later today, I shall choose,” he told the priest.
The sacrifice had been made in the full of the moon, the affirmation by force of arms would be at noon. Tud worked on the links of Otto’s mail with a stiff brush and rubbed them over with an oily rag to make everything shine. He helped him dress in subarmalis, mail shirt and polished boots, then handed him his sword-belt, shield and lance. Otto settled his helmet in the crook of his left arm and smiled at the priest and his servant.
“Shall we go?”
He found it difficult not to stride ahead of Cynan who carried a peeled hazel-wood staff in his hand and wore a wreath of fresh ivy. Tud, who was with them this time, had also prepared his master for the conflict. The square was filled as it had been the night before. The cauldron had been taken away and all that remained of the fire was a patch of black ash. This time, the front rows were composed of armed men, sitting on low stools or leaning on their spears. Each of them dressed for war to a greater or lesser extent. Otto estimated that there were over five hundred of them. As Cynan had said, the core of a powerful force. The sense of anticipation among the onlookers waiting for the combatants grew to a point where the tension was almost tangible. A ripple of movement as men moved aside, and the Horse King stepped into the arena to the welcoming shouts of his followers. His small eyes under his bushy red brows flicking across the crowd judging the extent of their approval.
Otto drew in a surprised breath. The man was armoured exactly as he himself was, even to the oval cavalry shield. If he had served as a Roman auxiliary, it would make a great difference and not in Otto’s favour.
A flurry opposite him marked the arrival of his opponent. There was a world of difference in the appearance of today’s Quaestor Quintus Mucius from the dapper Roman nobleman Otto had met for the first time only a few weeks ago. His hair stuck out in tufts at odd angles, an uneven growth of beard covered his lower face, one side of which was swollen and discoloured. Blood encrusted one nostril and raw wheals encircled both his wrists where he had been tied up. He was thin, dirty and seemed smaller than Otto remembered. A short infantry sword was thrust into his right hand; a battered legion shield flung down at his feet. Quintus looked at the menacing figure he was to fight. He picked up the shield and slipped his left hand through the loop and took a firm hold on the grip. Trying his best to put Roman hauteur and contempt for his adversary into his expression, he stared over at the Horse King who thumped the shaft of his lance against his shield. In response, Quintus shuffled a few paces forward. Advancing his left leg, he brought his own shield up and held his sword level with the edge as he had been trained to do. His year as a junior tribune in a legion stationed at Regium in which he saw no action, meant that he knew the basic drill even if he had never used it. He looked fearlessly over at the man who would soon cut him down and tear him apart. Quintus defiantly stood his ground.
Before Otto could move, Cynan threw off his cloak and barged forward through t
he throng of spectators. He stood n the ring and pointed his staff at the Horse King, leaned forward resting his hands on his thighs and roared, bellowed, with laugher. When he was sure he had caught everyone’s attention, he stood upright. He spoke in the Belgic tongue using the rich, full voice of a trained orator. Everyone in that square could hear every word, every syllable.
“Is it this man’s blood you will spill to confirm your pretended kingship?” he called out and walked over to stand beside Quintus who understood nothing of what was going on. He tore the sword from his hand and flung it to the ground. “Why give him a sword, every man here can see his is no match for you? Why not simply kill him while he is unarmed? Because that would be murder? What else is it, sword or no? If you would fight a Roman to assert your right to your false kingship, find an opponent of your own size and strength. Measure yourself against a man like the Roman Prefect Otto Longius,” he gestured to Otto who settled his helmet on his head and stepped forward.
He stood with his legs slightly apart, his lance grounded and his shield held loosely at his side. The Horse King looked from Cynan to Otto and back. He was angry. He had intended to toy with Quintus for a few minutes before ending it but now he had a serious fight on his hands. He could not back down in front of the assembled warriors he aspired to lead. He studied Otto, he took in his size but also noticed that he was twenty pounds lighter and ten years younger. A hard contest but one he was likely to win, he decided. The Horse King pulled himself up to his full height and shouted, not in Belgic but in heavily accented Latin; a second surprise for Otto.
“I am Farval, son of Berinhard. I fought for Rome as a cavalryman. Then I discovered that all Romans are weak and corrupt. Now I kill them.”
Knight of Rome Part II Page 30