The Legions of the Mist

by Damion Hunter

  Sometimes when he and Licinius took the dogs out, if the record books were put away and the wineshop ready for that evening, Gwytha would tie on the same heavy leggings that the men wore, fling her mantle over her head, and come with them. Justin and Licinius, in their scarlet cloaks, stood out against the snow like bonfires beside her rough brown mantle and the brown and grey coats of the dogs.

  Once she caught Justin on the back of the neck with a well-placed snowball, and he pitched her in a snowbank to teach her better manners while Licinius laughed loudly and impartially at them both. They went on, brushing the snow from each other, but when Licinius turned his back, they jumped him. Then, laughing, the three stopped on a little ridge above the river and stood looking out over the winter-bare landscape.

  ‘It’s as frozen as ever,’ Gwytha said. ‘I was watching the sentries on the wall today. They’re almost pretty against the snow.’

  ‘You wouldn’t think so if you were up there,’ Licinius said.

  ‘When was it you told me that this thaw of yours was going to thaw, Licinius?’ Justin inquired acidly. ‘Wait until spring, you said, and Britain will be beautiful.’

  ‘It’s beautiful now,’ Gwytha said. ‘Only you have to be looking at it on a full stomach from beside a fire to appreciate it.’

  ‘That does make it harder.’

  ‘This winter is different,’ Licinius said. ‘It’s one of those events that the country people date things from. ’Aye, two years after the Great Winter, that’d be’.’

  ‘And every man in the Legion who went through it will be perfectly insufferable,’ Gwytha said. ‘Somebody will only have to breathe the word “cold” and you’ll pipe up with “You should have been out in Eburacum in the winter of Trajan’s nineteenth year. Talk about cold! Well, it was so cold that we were sleeping with a brazier under the bed and burned our—’’’

  She was silenced by a handful of snow in the face and they walked companionably on, their mood sobering as the wind came up again.

  ‘I hope it thaws soon,’ Gwytha said. ‘I’m cold to the bone, and this is my country.’

  ‘So are we, and it isn’t. The camp is about ready to start walking about on the ceiling,’ Justin said.

  Gwytha pulled the folds of her mantle closer around her face. ‘Aeresius saw a wolf while he was hunting. It was dead. He thinks it starved to death. It’s got to thaw.’

  By the end of another week, Justin was beginning to feel the same way. The suffocating white world seemed to be closing in around him. He was unnaturally relieved to wake to the sound of water dripping from the roof some two weeks later.

  * * *

  The man lay flat out along the ground, one elbow braced against the rocky outcrop at the hill’s crest, and peered down into the valley below. His golden hair was tied back with a thong, and he was bundled against the cold in a grey wolfskin cloak which blended with the surrounding rock. There was a fine, misting rain coming down, to which he appeared oblivious.

  Not so the two other men huddled out of sight behind an overhanging clump of thorn and rock, sullen and wet in the late thaw. They had been on the hunting trail all day and this detour was not to their liking.

  ‘What’s the good of staring at a few Romans from up here, like vultures. There aren’t enough of us to take them,’ grumbled one.

  The watcher in the rocks was silent, his golden head bent intently toward the men moving along the valley floor. Two of them carried a buck deer between them, but there was an awareness in their movement that showed they had more than the hunt on their minds. The centurion with them kept a wary eye both on his men and on the skyline, and changed their formation somewhat as they approached a clump of windblown trees. He turned a hawk-nosed profile to the watcher above him, and the golden-haired man nodded to himself.

  ‘Armored and in formation. That one’s no fool. The new centurion, think you?’

  ‘Aye, lord,’ the second of his companions volunteered. ‘I saw him with Licinius the Surgeon in the Roman town.’

  The patrol passed out of sight, and Vortrix slid back from the hill crest. ‘A good day’s hunting.’

  His companions grimaced at each other and slogged along behind him to rejoin the rest of the party which had been left safely out of sight, with orders to stay there and let well enough alone with the Romans. A new cohort commander at the fort was bound to stir Vortrix’s curiosity.

  Curiosity and a watchful eye were what had kept him alive in the years that his uncle Dubric had turned a regency into a takeover, and in the months when Vortrix had fought Dubric’s brother Rhiada for his father’s throne. And it was his watchfulness, coupled with an iron will, which now held the clans as one people after the bloody fighting which had left Rhiada dead and Vortrix in the High King’s place.

  There was much bustling in and about the little hill steading where the High King’s household was keeping quarters as the hunting party straggled in. Three still-laden pack ponies were standing dejectedly under a tree. Several small boys dashed up to take the hunters’ gear and bear their kill off to the kitchen, and Vortrix headed at a trot for the hall.

  A dark-haired man in grimy traveling clothes was warming his hands at the hearth. ‘The sun and the moon on your path, Vortrix the King.’

  Vortrix shook the rain from his hair and mustache like a dog. ‘And on yours, Eri. You are always welcome at my hearth.’

  ‘I have brought you more than copper cook pots and eardrops to please the women this time, Lord Vortrix.’

  ‘New spear blades, I hope,’ Vortrix smiled. ‘We can’t make anything to touch what you can bring us.’

  The rest of the hunters, having spotted Eri’s shaggy little ponies, were gathering round the hearth to warm their hands and listen, while the women, whose ears had pricked up at the first sign of the trader, fluttered about the bolts of cloth and gleaming kettles which lay already unpacked in the far corner.

  ‘Send a few of your hounds to bring the rest of my packs and I will show you.’

  Vortrix whistled to a couple of small boys standing goggle-eyed at the edge of the throng and they scurried to the door. As Eri supervised the unloading, the men ambled over to inspect the cook pots and jewelry while their wives offered vivid descriptions of the size of the hole in the current kettle, or a hitherto unfulfilled longing for amber eardrops. Cathuil, the old chieftain whose lands marched closest to the Roman fort at Eburacum, and who was hence a not inconsiderable power, strolled over to inquire about the success of the hunt.

  He eyed the array of gold and copper, amber and onyx and soft folds of cloth. ‘Eri always manages to turn the women upside down,’ he muttered. ‘There will be no peace at the hearth tonight for any man who doesn’t buy.’

  ‘It has been a long winter with little softness in it,’ Vortrix said in the carefree tone of a man whose house contained no wife to demand new cook pots. ‘You can hardly blame them.’

  ‘Aye, perhaps he comes at a good time. It is in my mind it is time to buy Branwen her bride goods.’

  ‘See, here is Eri with something even more important,’ Vortrix murmured, turning away with a smile. Cathuil had a daughter of marriageable age, and Vortrix suspected there was something more on his mind than cook pots.

  The men gathered round again as the little trader unrolled the first of his packs, and Vortrix nodded to a few of the new arrivals, including his kinsman Cawdor, a reluctant vassal since the death of his father Rhiada.

  ‘So Eri brings us new teeth to bite the Romans,’ Cawdor said, looking ferretwise at his kinsman. His red hair reflected the firelight like the copper pots, and he twitched a fold of his kilt in nervous fingers.

  ‘Aye, and something better, I hope.’ Vortrix’s eyes were alert under the twin blue spirals tattooed across his temples. He watched in silence as Eri unrolled pack after pack, spreading out spear blades and arrowheads and new sword blades glinting in the firelight.

  As the men squatted down to look and bargain, Vortrix nodded to Eri, and t
he little trader brought out one last bundle. He pulled out the thongs that bound it and spilled out five more blades, shining blue in the firelight.

  ‘Look well, brothers!’ Vortrix’s voice brought silence in the room as he picked up a sword blade and bent it against his knee.

  ‘Ah, they are fine.’ Niall the old armorer knelt down to examine them. ‘They will not break against the Roman blades as ours do.’

  ‘Can you get us more, Eri?’ Vortrix asked.

  ‘Aye, but the price comes high.’

  ‘It will be paid.’

  ‘And with what will it be paid, oh kinsman, when the better part of our corn goes in tribute to the Romans?’ Cawdor leaned against an upright beam at the edge of the circle, still pleating his kilt edge between his fingers.

  ‘It will be paid with whatever we can raise,’ Vortrix said, ‘so that there will be no more corn given to Rome, ever.’

  Cawdor looked as if he were about to speak again, and for a moment the tension was drawn so fine between them that there was no sound in the hall but the faraway call of a plover and the little wind that whipped in spurts around the door. Then Galt the Harper, who led Vortrix’s household warriors, turned with exaggerated reluctance from the little pile of golden jewelry he had been fingering, and picked up one of the new blades.

  ‘I will buy, Eri. I’ve a longing for a new arm ring, but this seems like to be the better bargain.’ There was a murmur of laughter, and a joke or two at the expense of Galt’s vanity, and the moment passed.

  Vortrix knelt beside Galt to make his choice of the new blades, and took also a wicked little dagger with a silver hilt which Eri pressed upon him as a hearth gift. It was small enough to fit in a sleeve, and he wondered if, after observing Cawdor, Eri thought he needed it. Cathuil bought also. He owed the Romans a debt over the matter of burned thatch.

  The warriors having completed their purchases, Eri rolled the remaining weapons back into his pack – he had many such stops to make among the tribes – and turned to the women clustered about the goods which were nearer to their hearts than new war gear.

  Cathuil inquired ostentatiously when Eri expected to reach his hall, and, setting aside certain objects from the pile, informed him that he would be there. Vortrix smiled. He had certain ideas of his own on the subject but had no intention of discussing them at a time not of his choosing. He waited while Galt lovingly sheathed his new blade and then drew him away from the rest to his private lodging.

  Galt had ridden in from the north but a moment or two before the High King’s hunting party, and his harp still hung in its leather case on his back. He loosened the straps and let it slide to the floor. ‘She has kept me company on a lot of long rides,’ he murmured, running a hand softly across the case. ‘But she grows old, and I have given Eri some gold in trade for a new one from the harpers of Eire when he passes that way. Perhaps I will give this one to young Dawid. He shows signs of having the music in him.’

  He opened the case and ran his fingers along the strings in a half tune. ‘The new colts show promise,’ he said, and the tune changed to a frolicking, undisciplined thing that sang of open country and new grass and a foal tumbling along at his mother’s heels.

  Galt was the finest horseman among the warriors, and if he saw promise in a new herd, it was there. Vortrix had sent him north to the Tribe’s main horse runs as soon as the weather had made the journey possible, with instructions to report on their status.

  ‘The yearling crop is the largest we’ve had yet,’ Galt said. ‘I’m afraid this year’s batch won’t be as good – it’s been a black winter, and we’ve lost some mares as well. But the two-year-olds are shaping well, and there are many of the three-year-olds chariot-broken to draw on.’

  ‘That is good. It is in my mind we may be needing them.’

  ‘We had best keep a close watch on them, then,’ Galt said. ‘There are stirrings in the heather that the Painted People will be raiding south again this spring. A hard winter always drives them this way.’

  ‘The Painted One never moves unless he has the advantage,’ Vortrix said. ‘If the war band holds its strength, they’ll stay clear.’ Galt ran a questioning string of notes across the harp and looked up at him sideways. ‘Then keep an eye on Cawdor,’ he murmured. ‘His ambitions reach as far as the war band, if not the High King’s throne.’

  ‘The one makes a good stepping-stone to the other,’ Vortrix said drily. ‘No one commands the war band but me.’

  ‘Nor ever will,’ Galt said. ‘But there are one or two to watch, all the same. I wonder occasionally why you have not seen fit to rid the tribe of that ferret.’

  ‘There has been enough blood shed in this Tribe,’ Vortrix said. ‘I will kill no more kinsmen if I can help it.’

  ‘I can think of some who might be improved by it,’ Galt answered lightly, but Vortrix just shook his head. ‘Then I will make you a wrist sheath for that dagger Eri seems to think you need.’

  * * *

  As it had been a long winter, it was a long thaw. The snow about Eburacum melted only to freeze again into icy ruts and glasslike pathways that sent many a careless soldier sliding on his way on his backside. Justin, seeing the Legate skating helplessly across the courtyard of the Principia, retired around a corner to have a private fit of hysterics. The supply lines were got open after the first few days, but they were slow and unreliable, and it was the first day of May before the last ice had melted.

  Looking down from the west wall, where he had gone to see to his sentry posts, Justin felt oddly isolated. Behind him in the fort, light shone warm in the barracks and the windows of the Praetorium, and torches glowed along the ramparts, but below the town lay dark. Except for the pale light of a lantern where the Watch made its rounds, there was nothing to be seen beyond the rim of the sentry walk. The thin horns of the moon, too new to shed any light, hung along the horizon.

  It was the Feast of Beltane when all fires were quenched and the people gathered for the yearly miracle that would wake the new spark to light the world once more. Soon the friction of the fire drill would set the flames to leaping in the great piles of bracken on the low crest of the hill, but for now the world lay ink-black and desolate, with only the chanting of the priests on the hill to mark the presence of any living thing outside the walls of Eburacum.

  Then, from far off, there was a sudden flash of light that glowed in triumph and leapt higher. Justin turned to find Licinius standing beside him.

  The surgeon looked out over the rampart at the distant glow that spread now into several smaller glimmerings as torches were lit from it. ‘Come along. You mustn’t miss your first Beltane. It’s the Night of New Fire, the ritual death and rebirth of the tribe that has its counterpart in every religion in the world. And for all that Lugh Shining Spear is not my god, I find it awe-inspiring.’

  They crossed the bridge into the town and, whistling the dogs from the dark shop, set off toward the great twin fires on the hill.

  By the time they reached them, the first leaping flames had died down, and the people were beginning to drive the sheep and cattle and shaggy little native ponies through them, to make them fruitful in the coming year. The animals, lowing and neighing with fright, streamed through the fire and down the far side of the hill in a cascade of flying embers, some of the young men following to make sure they didn’t scatter too far. The boys who had undergone their initiation the night before tended the flames, proud in their new manhood, with the intricate spirals of the Spear Pattern pricked into the skin with woad, still raw and angry on their brows and chests. The chief priest of the tribe was chanting low over the flames, his brow crowned with a stag’s antlers and his arms raised like the horned moon above him.

  Licinius eyed him askance. ‘One holy man who doesn’t care for Romans can cause more trouble to us than any ten warriors,’ he murmured to Justin. ‘They’re the greatest nuisance in Britain, curse them.’

  Justin smiled at this mild term applied to the one force
which had started more rebellions than any other. But he could understand why. There was a power in that low voice that was more than mere trappings.

  The hill was crowded, not only with people from the village but with most of the neighboring clans as well. Justin saw Gwytha and Aeresius standing in a group near the farther fire, as well as a number of soldiers from the fort, some of them with their arms about native women. Technically, marriage was forbidden during their term of service, but that service was a long one and since the children would be made legitimate upon their father’s discharge, many men married anyway. Among the officers, their marriages would receive social recognition as well.

  The young men who had rounded up the animals returned, and the gathering settled down to the feasting part of the Feast of Beltane. The night was ordinary enough now, but while the priest was chanting his prayers to Lugh, silhouetted against the orange flames and the night sky, Justin had sensed what Licinius meant. Like the surgeon, and many who followed the Army, Justin made his prayers to Mithras, but he had felt a kinship there somewhere, as the tribe had given its thanks to the god who had given them this wonder of fire, produced out of dark nothing by the magic of the drill.

  It was a gathering into which a handful of Romans would ordinarily have been wary of coming, but at Beltane, the feast of miracle and thanksgiving, all were welcome. Or, if not precisely welcome, at least no harm would be offered them. Someone handed them horns of sharp native mead and pieces of hot meat, and they stood on the edge of the crowd, watching.

  ‘There are more here than usual this year,’ Licinius said. ‘Maybe they feel they need all the help from the god they can get after this winter.’

  ‘And maybe there was a council meeting before the feast,’ said Justin.

  The flames had died to glowing embers now, and the young warriors were taking their wives by the hand to leap across them so that they would have sons in the year ahead. As they watched, a tall young man with a heavy golden bracelet clasped about either arm and a circlet of gold barely visible in his thick corn-colored hair pulled a girl out from among a group of women.