by Jack Whyte
One of Philip's men had a long skinning knife and was stropping it against the tautened end of his belt as he stood gazing down at the dead animal.
"Well," Philip asked. "What do you think?"
The man grunted and leaned down, grasping a handful of the animal's thick coat and tugging at it. "Nah, this thing's been dead for almost a full day. My guess is it'll be a waste of time to skin it, though it's a pity. Too late to cure the hide—it's too far gone. The hair'll fall right off it, now, no matter what you do." He glanced up again, at Philip. "I'll go ahead, though, if you want me to."
Philip looked to me, and I shook my head.
"He's right. It's too far gone by now. Leave it to rot, and let's go home." ·
We turned and left it there, with its three fearsome sets of claws, and as we made our way back down to where we had tethered our horses, the talk among the men was all of Rufio and his chances for survival. My mind, however, was filled with Peter Ironhair.
The final and most astonishing incident in the Autumn of the Beasts occurred the very next day. Even now, recalling it once more as I have so frequently in the years that have elapsed, the memory of it fills me with wonder and even religious awe.
Much of what people regard as Fortune, whether good or ill, depends upon the recipient's being in a particular place at a specific time. I once saw a horseman killed by a lightning bolt that struck a tree beneath which he was passing. The impact of the bolt shattered the tree and he was killed by a falling limb. I had been watching his progress, for he was one of my men, on his way to me with a message, and afterwards it became clear to me that his death occurred by the merest, most random chance. His horse's gait brought him to that place at that time. Had his mount been travelling more slowly, he would have survived, but his chosen speed brought him beneath the tree at the precise moment when the lightning struck, and his horse was still rearing in terror when the limb fell.
We had begun to quarry the friable local stone from an exposed hill face above the fort the previous summer, using the material we dug out to make repairs on the most dilapidated stretches of the fort's wall and several of the corner towers. The local stone fractured easily, splitting naturally into long slabs that varied in length and width but maintained a uniform thickness, anywhere from a thumb's length to a handsbreadth in size. The entire fort of Mediobogdum had been built of this stone, save only for the main gateposts, which were of quarried red sandstone blocks shipped down to Ravenglass from farther up the coast.
The work of refurbishment, small in scale though it was, was not strictly necessary to our welfare but had been undertaken for one excellent and self-evident reason: the garrison soldiers tended to grow bored up here on our rocky platform, miles away from Ravenglass, and the hard labour of their compulsory daily stint in the quarry kept them out of mischief and in good physical shape. Rome's legions had built the great Wall of Hadrian across the north of Britain centuries before for precisely the same purposes.
Benedict's garrison troops were now the third such body to be employed in our quarry, and the scope of the work had been extended to accommodate the increased manpower made available by the additional infantry contingent. Our other communal workplace, in the forest where we had set up our timber-felling operations, lay about half a mile downhill and to the west of the quarry.
My recent decision to leave Mediobogdum in the spring had called the need for all such labour into question, but I had insisted that it be continued, reasoning that we might return here some day in the future, and that the work of repairing the walls and trimming, shaping and dry-stacking the timber baulks we had cut would fend off boredom during the winter ahead. No one questioned my decision, and the work continued in both locations.
On the day when the events I am about to describe took place, I had ridden up to the quarry with Benedict and Philip, simply to review the situation up there and to pass the time of day with our troopers, from the viewpoint of keeping up morale. It was a fine day, with the definite snap · of the first, mild frosts of autumn in the air. Philip became involved in a technical discussion with the overseer of the quarry, an engineer from his own company, concerning the effects of frost on lines of cleavage or something equally incomprehensible to us, so Benedict and I left him to it and set out to stroll together down the half-mile-long stretch of open hillside to the forest clearing, where the rest of our work parties were sawing lumber. We left our horses at the quarry and walked.
We talked about Rufio and his condition. Lucanus's extraordinary skills had given us hope that our old friend might survive a series of wounds that ought to have killed him. No one was yet making any wagers on Rufe's chances either way, but everyone was convinced that his carefully cozened survival had been little short of miraculous. His right arm and shoulder had been badly mangled, the flesh shredded from the bones by the bear's razor-sharp claws, and he had four enormous puncture wounds in his left shoulder, two in front and two behind, where the animal's monstrous canine fangs had sought to crunch clean through him. His right femur had been broken cleanly, and several of his ribs crushed, but his skull appeared to be intact and the only other wound he had incurred was a deep, clean slash, probably caused by a claw, on his right thigh.
Luke's own prognosis was cautiously optimistic. His major concern was the danger of infection in the bite marks and claw cuts, but he had cleaned the wounds thoroughly and carefully, making liberal use of powerful astringents that, he assured me, Rufio would have been unable to bear had he been conscious at the time of their application. If Rufe could pass the next few days without developing a fever, Lucanus now believed he would probably survive, although he might never swing a sword again.
As we walked away from Philip and the others, picking our way carefully among the stones that littered the sloping ground, Benedict began reminiscing about some of the exploits that had kept Rufio consistently in conflict with his superiors—of whom I had been the senior—in earlier times. I was half listening to him, smiling as I remembered some of my own experiences with Rufio's antics and trying to avoid falling on the loose stones underfoot, when Benedict suddenly stopped walking and raised one hand to press it against my chest, stopping me, too.
"Hey," he said. "Look at this."
I turned to look where he was looking and for a few moments, before some inner alarm began clanging in my breast, I did not know what to make of what I was seeing. I know that the events that followed occurred very quickly, but each time I relive them in my mind, and I do so frequently, everything seems to happen very, very slowly.
We were not yet out of the small quarry. The cut itself was at our back, with one steep face—the cliff that had attracted us to begin quarrying here—directly to our left; the short, mountain grass, scattered with shrubs, resumed again some twenty paces below the point we had reached. There was an animal, a small fox, trotting up the hill directly towards us, its tongue lolling sideways from its mouth as it approached. My first thought was that it had somehow failed to see us, for foxes are timid creatures that avoid any contact with mankind, but I quickly dismissed that idea, since the beast was staring directly at us.
'Tame little bugger, isn't he?"
Benedict's question chilled me abruptly, for no truly wild animal is tame. I looked again, much more sharply now. The fox had halved the distance between us and I could hear it growling as it came, its-pace unvarying directly for us. I looked again at its open mouth and lolling tongue and saw thick, ropy saliva slavering from its jaws.
"No, Ben, it's not tame, it's mad—rabid! It's attacking and if it bites one of us, we're dead. Quick, up the cliff. Mover-
Benedict stood there, hesitating, his hand starting to move towards the hilt of his short-sword, but I punched him on the arm then grabbed him, propelling him in front of me towards the cliff face. "Climb, dammit! You'll need both hands. Get up there!"
I was less than half a pace behind him as he reached the base of the cliff and began scrambling upward, scrabbling for handho
lds. I scooped up a large flake of stone.
The fox was still coming directly for us, no more than twenty paces distant. I hurled the stone, but the animal gave no sign of having seen it. Belatedly I remembered the long cavalry sword hanging between my shoulder-blades. No time now to unhook it, unsheathe it and prepare myself. I launched myself at the cliff after Benedict.
"It might follow us up, if it's strong enough to climb! If it does, be ready to kill it when it reaches the top. Don't try to stab it—cut the damn thing in two!"
The cliff we were scaling was perhaps fifteen paces high at this point, sloping steeply and not difficult to climb, either for us or for the fox.
"Whoreson's coming up," Benedict gasped.
"Let it come! Keep climbing."
I grasped an outcrop of rock and it broke off in my hand just as I was hauling my whole weight up on it.
I knew instinctively that I would fall. And I knew, too, without looking, that the rabid animal was immediately beneath me. For a long moment I hung there, clawing at the cliff before I toppled. Somehow I twisted around as I fell, to slither down on my back, jarring myself painfully during my descent.
Then several things happened simultaneously: the point of my sword lodged in the cliff face, ripping its retaining hook from the ring between my shoulders. The fox suddenly appeared level with my eyes, slashing at me. I jerked my arm away from the thick rope of saliva that looped itself the length of my forearm, away from the gnashing teeth. And I swept the beast's front legs from under it, so that it fell with me, end over end.
I landed at the bottom on my feet, hard, hands at my back, catapulted myself forward into a rolling dive and slammed my shoulder against a large stone. Then I was on my feet again, running, looking back over my shoulder. The fox was already coming after me.
Vaguely aware of voices shouting above and beyond me, I threw myself headlong over the uneven ground. I may have managed a score or more long, bounding paces before my ankle twisted on an outcrop and sent me sprawling, slamming down hard. Slightly stunned, I whipped myself around, onto my elbows and backside to face my fate.
The fox was leaping for my throat, yellow teeth bared, when the shadow glided over me. There was a mighty slamming of bodies together, like a fist striking flesh, and an enormous eagle hung just above the ground before me, gripping the limp body of the fox in its powerful talons.
For a moment, the bird hung there, stationary before my eyes, its huge wings measuring strong, steady beats. Slowly, firmly, it stroked the air, its pinions nearly brushing the ground, holding it and its prey aloft. Three, four long, deep strokes gradually propelled the two upward, further into the eagle's own element, away from the earth. Each ensuing beat drew them higher, hauled them deliberately forward and away from me, above the trees.
I pushed myself to my knees, panting, and then to my feet to watch each surge of those mighty wings. My salvation, the magnificence of the eagle, the miracle of its intervention transfixed me. I strained to follow the bird's unhurried progress, watching it rise higher and higher above my head, in great, soaring circles, until it appeared to be the size of a tiny sparrow. And then it released the fox, and I watched the animal fall to earth and heard it smash among the rocks behind me moments later. The eagle was now a mere speck against the blue firmament, moving away, towards the distant Fells.
What had brought this eagle to this place at this precise moment? Perhaps God truly did watch over the lives of individual men, as the Church taught. Had the eagle been sent expressly to save me? The sane, rational part of me rejected the notion as nonsense, yet I could not help but wonder whether I had been spared for some specific purpose.
The arrival of my friends interrupted my reverie. They were as full of wonder as I was at what they had seen, so I said nothing and pondered all these things in my heart.
Late that afternoon, during the general discussion before dinner, when everyone had gathered around the big fire outside the main gates, Shelagh and Donuil came to where I sat with my arm about Tress's waist.
"It's a beautiful evening, Cay. Why don't we go for a stroll?"
Her tone was anything but casual, and I looked from her to Donuil, and then to Tress, who had already moved away from me and was standing, pulling her shawl tight across her arms and shoulders. Clearly, they had something to say to me that they wanted no one else to overhear. I simply nodded, saying nothing, and stood up to join them. We made our way down towards the road, Shelagh and Tress chatting animatedly between themselves and Donuil and I strolling in comfortable silence.
When we were a good hundred paces from the nearest of our neighbours, Shelagh moved next to me, linking her arm through mine.
"What's this about?" I asked her. She tilted her head back and looked up at me in wide-eyed, exaggerated innocence, but I cut her off before she could form any kind of reply. "Don't throw that wide-eyed look at me, Shelagh, I know you too well. You and this innocent-looking woman here, not to mention my good friend and sometime adjutant, have words to say to me and you've plotted this, to get me here alone with the three of you, so that I'm the only one who doesn't know what's going on. So talk. What's this about?"
She grinned, but then her expression grew serious immediately.
"Dreams, Caius, what else?"
"Go on."
She ran the tip of her tongue across her teeth, making her upper lip bulge out as her tongue moved, then she made a "tutting" sound and plunged ahead.
"Do you remember the first dream you and I discussed?"
I nodded. "Of course I do. It was in Eire, the first night we really met, when your father and the others went off to look for the fellow Rud, who had disappeared in the forest ... "
Shelagh had been terrified that I would expose her secret—that she too had prophetic dreams—and that she would be banished from her home and people for sorcery. It had been difficult to convince her that her secret was safe in my keeping, but once I had done so, she had told me everything, without reservation.
She had dreamed about a bear, a boar and a dragon that battled. Only the bear survived. It rode on the back of a white bull and it met another bear. All three then fought among themselves in a ring of wolves. The first bear was badly wounded and thought to die, until a great eagle rode in on a broadening beam of light. The eagle attacked the wolves and scattered them. It killed the dominant wolf and ripped the coat from its back, exposing the crimson scales of a dragon beneath. Finally, Shelagh saw me, watching from the shadows, and saw the crimson dragon settled on my breast and the eagle come and sit on my shoulder.
I recounted this to Shelagh, speaking straightforwardly, omitting nothing, and when I was finished no one rushed to break the silence.
"Hmm," Shelagh said, eventually, "Your remembrance is surprisingly complete after ten years."
I smiled as I contradicted her. "Nothing surprising there at all. You were the only person I had ever met who dreamed like me, and your dream was about me. Of course I remembered every detail. But why would you ask me about it now?"
I saw that I had really surprised her now. "You really have to ask me that? Can it be possible you see no connection between that dream and what happened today?"
I fought to keep my face clear of expression, not wishing to hurt her by seeming to scoff at her, for in truth, even now, I could see no connection. The eagle in her dream had slain a giant wolf. Mine had killed a tiny fox. "I can see that you do," was all I said.
"Of course I do, and so should you. But you should know, too, that the dream came back to me, two nights ago, and this time it was different."
I frowned, wondering where she was going with this, the civilized, sceptical Roman within me—the fearful cynic who shied back from recognizing potency in dreams—warring with the superstitious but unwillingly credulous Celt. I kept silent, however, seeing the tension in her and knowing she had more to say but would not speak it until I asked her to. "How, different, then—and how different?"
She paused, watching me cl
osely, then continued. "I have never forgotten that dream, Cay. It seemed too ... portentous ... too important to disregard, and in the years that have gone by since then, I've made some sense of parts of it, at least."
"How so? I never have made sense of it, save for the obvious—but then, I have not thought of it in years."
She said nothing for a count of five heartbeats, then cocked her head to one side. '"Save for the obvious,' you said. What was obvious?"
"I was. The bear is my emblem—Camulod's emblem, if you like, as the dragon was Uther's and therefore Cambria's. Together, Camulod and Cambria destroyed Lot, the boar of Cornwall. That much was obvious. But the ring of wolves and their giant leader? There, I confess, I lost the track, other than knowing that the wolves are enemies and encirclement by such threatens destruction ... The White bull means nothing to me, either. Nor does the eagle, other than that it signified the Roman legions, long since gone and never to return."
Shelagh nodded her head, glancing at Donuil arid Tressa, both of whom were listening closely. "I've seen more, since yesterday—found more to understand—than before."
"Like what? Tell me, now that you have me ready to hear."
"Well, the white bull, and perhaps the eagle."
I thought of the forces allied to and opposed to my own, considering their emblems, and suddenly much became clear to me. "Of course! How blind can I be? The eagle is from the Pendragon! Their War Chief wears the eagle-crowned helmet. I remember Uther's grandfather, Ullic Pendragon, wearing that emblem.
"Aye, but it's more than that, Caius. Many of the Pendragon Celts are warriors, who worship the white bull of Mithras, the warrior's god. No—" She raised her hand to silence me before I could protest. "Mithras was not a Roman god. The Roman soldiers worshipped him, but Mithras was ancient before Rome was built, and he has had many names throughout the ages. But by them all, he is the' white bull god."
"Wait you now." I accepted her words on Mithras completely, but I still had doubts. "I'm growing confused. How can the Pendragon be both bull and eagle, in your dream?"