But when he had finished, and turned to see her still sitting on the rock, turning the fallen wreath of dead grasses between her hands, he began to shake again. And then, without meaning to, he was beside her and his arms were hard around her waist.
And then it began to snow again, and he bundled her into the chariot and wheeled the horses straight down the hill.
* * *
It had been a late winter, but with that day’s snow it arrived in earnest. It fell from then on, drifting deep about the barracks and granaries, freezing in the ruts of cart wheels and falling endlessly, blindly, smothering the world in a powdery blanket that stretched for miles.
There were days that were fair enough for travel, but Justin, wrestling with the rot at the heart of Martius’s cohort, could not be spared, and so Gwytha’s mind was made up for her concerning a winter’s visit to the Iceni.
Aurelius Rufus, gloomily checking over the rosters in the Principia, made the interesting discovery that the Ninth was even farther below its paper strength than he had been told. Worse yet, there were no suitable replacements for the officers he felt were unreliable. Cassius was top priority. There wasn’t anything he could put his finger on, but the Legate was an experienced enough soldier to know trouble when he saw it, even under a cohort commander’s helmet. Favonius, shaken to his soul by the death of Martius, might either pull himself around and be the better for it, or break altogether. Young Lepidus was doing well enough with the Eighth, which Justin had almost got whipped into shape before his transfer, but Lepidus was a good year away from his own cohort in the normal course of things and had less experience than the Legate liked. Hilarion’s Ninth Cohort was shaping as well as possible under the circumstances, as was the Seventh under Geta. But young Albinus was having Ahriman’s own time with the Fourth, which had been under the command of its second for almost a year before his posting. The Tenth was a demoralized mess, and the Legate had managed to get its centurion transferred elsewhere, leaving command with the second, who showed more sense and was ready for promotion. The Second Cohort was so far down from its paper strength and showed such promise of being real trouble that the Legate had lumped it together with the First under the command of the Primus Pilus, Claudius Galba, where they remained a surly thorn in the flesh, but would at least have an eye kept on them.
The auxiliary cohorts in the northern forts were under strength as well, the more so now that the Vinovia garrison had had to be made up from among the other units stationed in the north. The southern detachments sent in during the last rising had since been recalled. And Justin’s remarks about the Trimontium garrison had given the Legate cause to doubt the Auxiliaries’ stability as well.
It was well after dinner when he finished his rundown of the rosters, accompanied by a growling stomach and a splitting headache. He drew forth a clean papyrus and then pushed it away again, scraping his chair back across the tile floor.
There was another matter he had to attend to before the night grew too late, and he might as well see what the hospital could offer for his headache while he was at it.
A light in the surgery sent a hazy gleam through the drifting snow as he reached the door, and he entered to find the senior surgeon redressing a feverish-looking leg wound in one of the small wards.
Licinius glanced up from his work and nodded, but didn’t speak until he had finished. ‘There, that should help. You paid a high price for your wolf skin, my friend.’
The soldier looked up at him. ‘Aye, too high, I’m thinking. I’m not going to lose it, am I?’
‘I don’t think so, if you behave yourself and take care of it.’ Licinius tipped the contents of a phial into an earthenware cup and handed it to the boy. ‘Here, drink this, and get some sleep.’
He turned to the Legate and ushered him across the hall into his office. ‘I regret keeping you waiting, sir, but the boy was in pain and it wouldn’t keep.’ He offered the commander a chair.
‘Commendable. What have you got for pains in the head?’
‘A moment, sir.’ He disappeared down the hall to the dispensary and returned with a small ampule of powder. He drew out the green glass cups and a flask of wine and shook the contents of the ampule into one of them. Licinius handed it to the Legate with a small bow.
He took a sip. ‘Thank you, that is vile. I trust this won’t put me to sleep? I have several matters yet to finish up tonight.’
Licinius sat down again. ‘No, sir, it’s purely a painkiller. If you take too much of it, it’ll knock you out, but not the amount I’ve given you.’
‘I doubt if I could drink more of this than was necessary.’ He swallowed the rest of it at a gulp and coughed. Licinius refilled his cup, this time with wine alone. ‘Thank you. An excellent wine, when unadulterated.’
A smile tugged at the surgeon’s mouth, and he refilled his own cup. ‘To the Army.’ He raised it in mock salute.
Aurelius Rufus sat back in his chair. ‘Tell me, what are you doing in the Medical Corps? You’ve got “Centuriate” stamped all over you.’
‘I have a bad knee. Oh, I get around all right, but it wouldn’t hold up on the parade ground, and you’ll find when we march that it doesn’t hold up there either. The hospital mules and I are old acquaintances.’
‘Then why the Army at all?’
‘The Eagles are in my family… it seemed the natural thing. And then, the Army is the best teaching hospital in the world. Most advances in surgery come out of the Medical Corps.’
There was a small silence while the two regarded each other in the lamplight, their faces equally unhappy. Finally the Legate spoke again. ‘I expect you know why I came up here, instead of sending for you to my quarters.’
Licinius nodded. ‘I suppose it’s no good my saying I didn’t think this up to tear myself apart on purpose.’
The Legate’s voice was gentle, but there was, when he came to the point, steel in it. ‘All the same, my friend, you’re on the road going nowhere. Get off before you tear yourself apart, and my daughter with you.’ He rose and gathered his cloak around him. ‘A word to the wise.’ And he was gone.
* * *
In his office, the Legate reached again for the papyrus roll. As well to tackle this one now, too. It was a grimly private communication, and once posted, there would be no record copy for the Legion’s files. Stop up the rot, they had said. Well, they had better send him something to stop it up with…
The lamp burned low, and the wind had come up and was howling like a wolf in the courtyard outside, by the time Theodore came looking for him with a flagon of hot spiced wine.
‘It is nearly the third watch, Master.’
‘I know. I will be home directly.’ He drank it while he finished… three letters, almost identical, to the newly appointed Governor Falco, to the Senate, and to the Caesar of Rome.
“… unless we have more men… regretfully inform you… the hand on the knife is likely to be our own.’
XV
The Hearth Fight
The Council Mound was a white bulk rising solitary above the flames. It was dark-of-the-moon, and the only illumination came from the spit and flare of the torches as they fought with the mist in the circle below the ancient barrow. Full in the glare, head high, stood a dun stallion tethered to a peg in the ground where his hooves had trod a dark circle in the snow. Outside the circle of torchlight, disembodied in the mist, a sea of faces stretched back into the trees. The feeling of something coming loomed heavy in the air, and suddenly, though no man had marked their passing, an antlered form sprang up from the top of the mound, and another figure that began as a man but ended with the curve of a stallion’s crest appeared amid the torches.
The men outside the fire held their breath and waited while farther back in the trees two knots of warriors stood detached. In the center of one the face of a grey-eyed chieftain stood out from the rest, beneath a head of hair that burnt like molten copper down his back. His eyes were fixed on the naked, stallion-creste
d form among the torches, as if he knew what was to come. In the midst of the second group, a slight, dark-haired man with tattooed patterns thick on his skin and a circle of twisted gold on his head eyed the Horse Man with something akin to hatred.
And then the stallion-crested figure raised a shining knife and a scream tore through the stillness with a defiance that lingered after the great golden body of the horse had come crashing down in the snow at the feet of the Slayer.
As the sound died away in the mist, the antlered figure on the Council Mound raised its arms to the night sky. Below, naked except for the horse mask on his head, Vortrix the High King of the Brigantes held up the silver blade above the body of the great stallion whose blood would seal the Binding.
At a sign from the antlered form of Talhaiere on the Council Mound, a second horned figure stepped forward and raised a small swaddled shape before the gathering. The baby woke and began to howl as Vortrix dipped a thumb into the blood that ran from the stallion’s throat and inscribed two intersecting curves on the child’s forehead.
‘Look well, my brothers, look well. I, Vortrix, son of Arviragus and High King to the People of the Brigantes, give my firstborn into the keeping of the Tribe, that he may grow wise in our ways against the day that he shall come after me. By the Shining Spear I vow it.’
‘Look well, my children,’ Talhaiere repeated. ‘Look well. The Tribe accepts Bran, son of Vortrix, into its house, and returns him to his mother’s keeping until such time as he takes his place as warrior among us.’
‘By the Shining Spear we vow it!’ The words came from a thousand throats ringed around the torchlight.
Then Talhaiere himself stepped down from the mound and took the babe, making the sign of the Spear Lord over him, and there was a great roar of approval from the Tribe, as they beat their spears against their shields.
‘Who speaks for the cub?’ Talhaiere threw back his head, hidden in the red deer mask, and surveyed the gathering.
‘I, Cathuil, father of the mother, speak for him, that he may go in peace with the Mother of us all.’ He crushed a tuft of corn above the baby’s chest, and the riven grain drifted down around him to the earth.
‘I, the Hound of the Father, speak for the cub, that he may bear his spear in the sunlight, and the Lord look well on him.’ Galt too stepped into the circle and touched the baby lightly on the forehead with his spear point.
There was another shout of approval, and the watchers drew back to form an alleyway between them. Galt and Cathuil plucked the nearest torches from their stands and led the way through the opening. Then all around the circle men took up the remaining torches and the procession flowed like a stream of light through the white forest. Vortrix and Talhaiere bore the child between them, and when Talhaiere whispered to him, the babe ceased his wailing and reached out for the thongs that dangled from the red deer mask. Behind them came the warriors of the king’s house, and streaming out behind, the clan chieftains and their warriors, and finally the boys who would come to manhood in the spring, proudly bearing their spears in the men’s ranks this night.
As the procession passed, the two groups of strangers fell into step beside the Horse Man, the sprigs of evergreen in their belts showing red in the torch flare.
He turned his head in greeting to both, but did not speak. The time for that would come when he had put away the stallion-crested mask of the Slayer.
As they approached the king’s hall, Branwen came out, her hair flowing loose about her shoulders in token to the Mother. She held out her arms to take the child from Horse Man and Deer Man, and bore him back into the hall, the men of the gathering thronging after her, for the feast which would follow the Binding of a king’s son. The two masked figures moved away into the darkness. When they reappeared some minutes later the mystery was gone, and it was Talhaiere the High Priest and Vortrix the High King who took their places in the hall.
Branwen took the babe away to feed it, and Vortrix watched her, smiling, until she had passed through the curtained doorway. He was glad that it had not been necessary to send her south to her father to wait for the babe. By the time her pregnancy had begun to show on her, the fight was over, and he no longer feared the stab of pain that would take him unexpectedly, sending his sword clattering to the floor. None but Branwen knew what that fight had cost him, the hours of searing pain, forcing himself to work the arm more each day, frantic lest he should have to choose between the chance of a knife in the dark or sending his wife and babe to bide within striking distance of Rome, and maybe not being able to get them back before Rome took notice of them.
He flexed his hand and smiled a small wolf-smile. There had been no more talk of maimed kings among the Tribe since the day he had sent a throw spear whistling half an inch past Cawdor’s ear and made him a guest gift of the grey goose it had pierced cleanly through the throat.
Now the time had come to seal the next hunting. ‘It is good for a man to have a son to come after him,’ he said, nodding at the red-haired chieftain on his right, and the young spear bearer behind him, who was marked with the chieftain’s features and flaming hair.
‘Aye, it was a good kill and a clean one. The Shining One will look well on your cub.’ Brendan, War Lord of the Selgovae, nodded his head in approval. Except for the copper hair, he had much the same stamp as Vortrix, and indeed the Selgovae were close kin to the High King’s tribe. He was a golden warrior, some ten years older than the young king, grey-eyed, with pale skin lightly freckled by the sun, and the shining torque of the High Lord around his throat. The spear patterns on his face and breast had faded to a soft grey-blue in the years since his initiation, but his hands and arms were those of a man still in his prime.
‘And what of the Mother? Is there no honor to her in all of this?’ The second chieftain gestured at the thronging hall.
‘The women make the mysteries of the Mother, as they always have,’ Vortrix said cheerfully, ‘but among the spear band, aye, and the women in it as well, our foremost prayers are to Lugh.’
The chieftain shifted in his chair as if uncomfortable. He was smaller than the other two, with dark hair and eyes, the stamp of the native folk with whom his tribe had intermingled. And, like all the tribes of the Painted People, he was blue with woad almost from head to toe. He was very beautiful to look at, but there was something alien there, and he seemed to sense the difference as well.
‘Come, Dergdian,’ Talhaiere put in, seeing his discomfort, ‘because the Caledones make their first prayers to Earth Mother and we and our kin make ours to the Shining One does not mean that we cannot hunt together in this thing. Our folk were still kin to yours, you know, when the world was young.’
‘Aye, belike,’ Dergdian said, twitching at the folds of his kilt, ‘but I had not heard that the Brigantes had so far left the old ways that a maimed king was not an insult to Earth Mother and the Shining One alike.’
‘What?’ Vortrix whipped round so fast that the golden hair hung for a second in the air behind him like a cloud.
‘There is talk in the heather of an arm that is not healed and cannot hold a spear,’ Dergdian said quietly, looking him straight on. ‘If this is so, there will be no hosting until the Brigantes have crowned an unblemished king.’
Vortrix’s eyes were cold and furious. ‘And you, Brendan? Is there talk in the heather you hunt in also?’
‘Aye, there is talk. But I had thought to wait and see for myself before I gave tongue to it. I saw you make the Sacrifice tonight, and the kill was clean. But a knife to slit a horse’s throat is not a sword to cut a man’s.’
Vortrix scraped his chair back and stood full in the torchlight as he stripped his shirt off over his head. ‘There, look well!’ He held out his right arm, so that the firelight played along the twisted scar. ‘Ugly, is it not? But still strong enough to slay a ferret. Watch and you shall see!’
Silence fell as the High Kang spoke, and for a long moment there was only the drifting smoke from the hearth and the
almost visible fury that seemed to radiate from the half-naked figure of the king. Then he leapt over the table, landing cat-footed on the dancing floor below.
‘Dawid! Bring me my sword and Cawdor my kinsman’s.’ The boy scurried off and Vortrix turned to face his cousin. ‘I had thought to put an end to the bloodletting in our family, and so I did not kill you when I could, even when you would have taken the High King’s crown and set it on your own head! But stopped up at one run, you turn to another – aye, I know whose tongue this talk in the heather has behind it. Did you think to force the matter as the price of alliance?’
Cawdor stood also, his eyes gleaming dangerously. ‘And have I not as much right to the kingship as you, cousin? I who am son to Rhiada whom you murdered? And a whole man!’
‘We shall see, shall we not?’ Vortrix said softly. ‘Come you out, then, and find out.’
‘Do you make formal challenge?’ Cawdor’s face was confident – the price for the maker of such a challenge, if he won, was higher than most men were willing to pay. Then he found himself looking into the demon light that flared behind the High King’s eyes, and went cold.
‘I do.’ Vortrix took the sword that Dawid held out to him.
‘You know what you must do – after?’ Talhaiere asked him gently.
‘Aye, Father, I know.’ To kill a man at such a gathering was forbidden. Only by making challenge, and accepting the three-day purification which followed it, was such a fight permitted. And the purification was not pleasant.
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