by Jack Whyte
“I wanted to come to you with this as soon as I got back, but I was — distracted — as you have observed.”
He smiled. “Where is she now, that your distraction has faded?”
“Asleep. Caius, what had you planned to do tomorrow?”
“Nothing that cannot be changed. What do you have in mind for me to do?”
“Could you stand the journey up into the hills with me? There’s something I would like to show you. I need your advice.”
“I can think of nothing I would enjoy more. What do you have to show me?”
I shook my head. “I would rather not say, right now. You might think I had lost my wits. But it’s important. I think I’m right. In fact, I know I’m right. But I haven’t got the courage yet to back up my conviction. That’s why I want you to see this for yourself, and to advise me. If I’m wrong, and I could be, I’d feel very foolish.”
The Britannican eyebrow was up. “You intrigue me, Publius. This sounds fascinating. I can hardly wait to see what it is. Will I recognize it?”
“I hope so, Caius. I hope so!”
“It has to do with your skystones, obviously.”
“Yes, it does.”
He raised his thumb and forefinger to the sides of his mouth, pinching his lower lip outward and downward, as though wiping away dried crumbs from a recent meal. “I saw some of them this morning, in the smithy. Equus told me what they were. I was hoping to talk to you about them.”
“What were you doing in the smithy? You don’t often go down there.”
He smiled and told me what he had done that morning.
Apparently the villa had been as quiet as a tomb that day, after all the preceding weeks of hurly-burly, and Caius had been hard put to remind himself that this was normal. He had prowled the grounds like a lost soul, angry at himself for having slept later than usual and losing some precious hours. Then he found out I had been gone since dawn, up into the hills, and that increased his bad temper, for some reason. Luceiia, he said, had tried to be nice to him over breakfast but knew her brother well enough to see that he was in one of his most foul frames of mind and left him to his own devices.
He had spent two fruitless and frustrating hours trying to write, but found himself too volatile to concentrate for any length of time on what he was about, and eventually, some time after noon, he had found himself in the smithy, watching Equus pounding a glowing ingot.
Equus had looked up and seen him standing there, and had greeted him, calling him “Gen’ral!” He had picked that up from me.
They had exchanged pleasantries for a while, and then Equus had returned to his work, leaving Caius to his own devices. Caius had then walked to the back of the smithy and idly examined the bizarre-looking stones that lay there on the shelf along the wall.
“Funny-looking things, aren’t they?” Equus’ voice had startled him.
“What are?” he’d asked.
“Them skystones.”
Only then had Caius realized what he was looking at, for I had kept them secret even from him, so keen was my disappointment in their size. Now he examined them more closely. There were seven of them, ranging in size from the smallest, about the size of a new-born baby’s head, to the largest, which was the size of a half-grown boy’s head. They were all the same kind of stone, a heavy, dull grey-black. And all of them were smooth: not the worn smoothness of a watered pebble, but more of a glassy texture. He had picked up one of the intermediate ones and hefted it, thinking that, if I were correct, this thing had fallen from the sky! His logical Roman mind told him that was impossible. Everything must come from somewhere, so where had it. fallen from?. Caius knew, as every child knows, that in order for something to come down from high in the air, it first has to be put up into the air. But the weight of this thing, he realized as he held it, made the thought of its being hurled upwards from the earth into the sky more than ludicrous. It was impossible. He knew how high and how far the strongest catapult could throw such a stone. He had seen his own armies hurl them, and they never were lost from sight. So how could this thing have fallen from the sky, on fire, as he knew I believed, and struck the earth with such ferocity that it could bury itself and throw up a ring of earth twelve or more feet across?
And yet, as he admitted to me that night, its surface did seem as though it had been melted at some time. And he knew I had dug it up from the middle of one of my “dragon’s nests.” At least, he thought he knew that.
At this point in his recital, Caius stopped and looked at me, waiting for me to say something. I did not know what he expected, so I shrugged.
“That is correct. I dug it up from a dragon’s nest. What are you struggling with, Caius?”
He shook his head in bewilderment. “I don’t know, Publius. All my education tells me that what you are asking me to believe is impossible. And yet you stand there facing me with all the confidence of an augurer who has just pulled a rotting heart from a healthy chicken. Until I see metal from these stones, I will never be able to accept your contention that they fell from the sky. And even then, I feel constrained to point out, any credence I give to the matter will be based strongly upon nothing more than my faith in your peculiar style of madness.” He paused for a short space. “But, as I say, your positive results have me mystified. What is it that you want me to look at tomorrow?”
The following forenoon found us high on the hill overlooking the valley of my dragons. There were only three of us — Caius, Equus and me — and Caius, at least, had enjoyed the ride up into the hills.
“So, Publius, this is the valley of the famous dragon’s nests. I had forgotten how magnificent it is.” He nodded towards a newly dug hole in the hillside. “I presume that is one of them?”
“Yes. And there’s another down there to your left. And one more to your right, across there. Seven of them in all, General.”
“Seven. I can see only four. And each of them has yielded you a skystone?”
“Yes.”
“So what is worrying you? Are there no more?”
“Oh, there’s more. I’ve found ten that I haven’t dug for yet. But they are all too small.” I hawked and spat. “The largest of the seven I have came from the largest ‘nest’ I could find. The nests are really impact rings, thrown up by the force of the stones’ landing. The biggest of those is twelve long paces across.”
“Twelve paces?” Caius began to gnaw his lower lip. “Varrus,” he said at last, “I have to be honest. I know I’ve said this before, and I know you’re probably sick of hearing it, but even if your stone did fall from the sky, my mind cannot grasp the prospect of a stone that small falling hard enough to blast an impression that big.”
“No more can mine, General.” I tried hard to keep my voice impassive. “But the fact remains: it happened. Believe me. It fell. And it created that impact ring. Only God Himself can know where it came from. Perhaps it fell from a star. Perhaps it was a star!”
Caius tutted disapproval. “Stars are light, Publius. These stones of yours are black.”
“They are now, Caius. But they fell as fire. Iron is black when it is cold, but heat it and it takes on a white and blinding brightness. And we are hampered by the fuel we have to heat it with! Given the fires of Heaven, who can tell how bright it might become?”
I knew there was no answer for that. Caius stared at me in perplexity.
“Anyway,” I went on, “that is the biggest I am likely to find here, unless my guess today is correct. The stone my grandfather found was more than twice that size, and by the time he smelted it, he was left with just enough metal for a dagger and the best part of a sword. That’s all.”
He was quick to see my chagrin. “But if you smelt all seven of them together? Would not that produce enough to fit your needs? And what of the other ten?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps. Who knows? I have no way of knowing how much metal there is in such small stones. There might be none.”
Caius looked down into the valley
again. “What was it that you wanted me to see?”
“A dragon’s nest, Caius, bigger than all the rest combined. A mighty dragon’s nest.”
“Where? In the valley?”
“Aye. In plain sight. But you must see it for yourself, with your own eyes. I cannot help you. If I did, I might not be convinced myself that you could truly see it. I looked at it for months, not knowing it was there. You know it is now. Find it for me, Caius. You too, Equus.”
Heeding the plea in my words, they began to scan the valley, and I watched them closely as they looked. I saw them discern each of the rings I had already found and identified with a cairn of stones, but nowhere could either of them see a mighty ring, try as they would. I watched Caius in particular as his gaze ranged the entire valley, from the raw cliff at one end to the lake tucked into the folding hillside at the other. He scanned each hill from top to bottom. Nothing.
Finally he spoke again. “Are you sure what I am looking for is there, Publius?”
“Aye,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “It is there. What I am not sure of is that it is what I think it is.”
“And I should be able to see it? Now?”
“Correct.”
He tried again, sweeping from north to south, from east to west, again and again, not knowing what he was supposed to see. And then I saw him catch a shape from the corner of his eye, or an impression of a shape. He jerked to look, and it was gone. But it had been there, I knew it had been there, for I had seen the same thing the day before… I watched him move his eyes off slowly and held my breath, praying he would see it again. Then, from the quickening of his gaze, I knew he had found it again and recognized it for what it was. Now he looked straight at it and saw it clearly. Not a circle, but a segment of a circle— a clear-edged part of one. I watched his startled gaze adjusting to the size of it, and my heart began to beat faster.
“The lake, Varrus,” he whispered at last in a voice full of wonder. “The lake is a dragon’s nest! But huge! Enormous!”
I leaped from my horse and dragged him down from his, pinning him to my breast and swinging him around in triumph and shouting at the top of my voice.
“I knew it, Caius! I knew you would see it! The lake is it! A huge bowl full of water! Not circular, because the hillside absorbed much of the shock. And the debris and boulders blocked the flow of water down through the valleys below, and turned the impact ring into a lake!”
I set him back on his feet and together we stared down at it.
“And that explains the cattle, too,” I added, suddenly realising the truth.
Caius looked at me. “What cattle? What d’you mean?”
“The dead cattle.” I realized then that he had not heard that part of the story. “There was a herd of cattle, Jack apparently, in the valley the night the skystones landed. They were all killed, naturally enough, but there was something about it that didn’t make sense. It bothered me. I thought it was highly unlikely that anyone would drive those animals all the way over the hills, into the valley, when the grazing was just as good on the other side.” I nodded down again towards the lake.
“But there’s the answer. The valley must have been open at that end before the cataclysm, so it would have been accessible to the cattle, offering shelter from the winds. The upheaval caused by the skystone blocked off the access and threw up the rim that now contains the lake.”
“But didn’t Meric say there had always been a lake there?”
“Aye, and there probably was. But it would have been smaller, and shallower. That’s where the mud came from that coated everything the day after. The skystone must have blasted every drop of water and mud out of the lake and punched a deeper bed for it.”
I turned to Equus and he was gaping at both of us as though we had gone mad. Caius saw this too, and we both broke out in laughter.
“Equus!” I asked him, “what’s the matter? Can’t you see it, man?”
“Aye, I can see it. It’s a massy lake! So what’s all the excitement about? How will you find a skystone at the bottom of a lake? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“The same way he found the others, Equus!” Caius was jubilant. “He will dig for it!”
Now Equus knew that we were both quite mad. It was plain on his face. We fell about with laughter as he became completely confounded. Finally I took pity on him and pulled myself together enough to put his mind at ease.
“Equus,” I said gasping, “it’s a simple matter of military engineering. We’ll drain the lake, letting the water run down into the other valleys. Then, when the mud at the bottom of the lake has dried out, we’ll dig up the skystone.”
Poor Equus! He was enormously relieved, and we soon sat down to eat the meal that we had brought with us. We had not brought much wine, but we were so light-headed that what we had was ample.
XXVII
The buck was magnificent — sleek, beautiful, graceful and not yet come to prime. He had emerged almost unnoticeably from the copse in the dawn light, solidifying magically from the low-lying mist and moving forward delicately, picking his way on tiptoe through the knee-high, dew-drenched grass of the meadow. His breath steamed visibly in the motionless air so that it seemed he was producing the mist by himself, and through the screen of young leaves that hid me from him, I could see water droplets hanging from his antlers like precious stones. Slowly, careful to make no sudden sound or motion, I drew my bowstring back towards my ear, feeling the tension of the braided sinew on my calloused fingertips and the long, lethal glide of the shaft of the iron-barbed arrow against my thumb. My drawing thumb touched my cheek and as it did so the buck froze, head up, ears forward, a perfect target. I closed one eye, sighting carefully.
“No, Publius! No!”
The cry startled me as much as it did the buck, shattering my concentration so that I flinched and jerked the bow high, straining my muscles against the instinct to release the arrow. By the time I looked again, my beautiful buck had vanished. Slowly, gritting my teeth, I released the tension on my bow. Then I turned around to where Luceiia stood watching me, the fingertips of one hand touching her lips and her eyes wide and filled with apprehension. With her other hand she clutched a blanket she had wrapped around her against the morning chill. I made no move towards her and she simply stood there, waiting for my anger to break over her for the first time.
“Why did you do that?” I asked her, calmly.
She blinked her own deer-like eyes at me. “I… he was too beautiful. I didn’t want you to kill him.”
“I divined that much already, Luceiia. But why did you find it necessary to frighten me out of a year’s growth as well as tonight’s dinner?”
“What? Frighten you? How did…?” Her eyes changed slightly, crinkling to a smile. “Did I startle you?”
I nodded slowly, seriously, drinking in her marvellous beauty as she stood there unaware that her nakedness beneath the blanket was clearly visible.
“Half to death,” I said. “What would you have done had I fallen dead? How would you have felt? Would the buck have comforted you?”
Her hand moved up to cover her mouth completely, masking the laugh that now danced in her eyes. “You are not angry?”
“I asked you how you would have felt had I died of shock, woman. Answer me.”
Instead of speaking she shivered, giggled and turned to dart back towards the leather tent hidden among the saplings behind her. I chased her and caught her at the entrance flap and bore her down onto the still-warm pile of furs inside.
Hours later, riding through a golden springtime morning, she was still talking about the deer whose life she had saved, pointing out that, had I killed him, I would have had to spend time cleaning, skinning and butchering him, so that we would have lost the glory of the early day. Besides, she said, the buck was young — too young to have experienced life and the wonders of mating. Was I so jaded and indifferent to life that I could deny its pleasures to another, even to a deer?
> The spring sun shone warm and strong on us, and her eyes sparkled with health and humour. The long, clean lines of her thigh filled out the soft leather breeches she wore for riding. My breath thickened in my throat as I followed her contours with my eyes, although for the moment I was content to ride alongside her, listening with pleasure to her prattling and feasting my eyes on her crystalline beauty. This was my wife! Even after almost a full month of marriage I still had to keep reminding myself of this. She was mine! I could have her and enjoy her any time I wanted to, for the remainder of our lives.
“You are not listening, Publius.”
The singsong notes of her comment brought me back to attention with a start.
“I was day-dreaming. Forgive me. What were you saying?”
“I was saying, husband dear, that I feel a sorrow, a sympathy, for the poor animals.”
“What animals? Deer? Why?”
“Not merely deer — all animals.” She was grinning at me, mischief dancing in her eyes. “Because of the way they are tied to seasons and have no hands.”
I felt myself frowning. “I don’t follow you.”
“I know you don’t, because you haven’t been listening. But you would follow me if I slipped from my horse and from my clothing here in this long, lush grass, would you not?”
“What?” I felt my stomach tighten with anticipation and glanced around me involuntarily. “You mean here? On this open hillside?”
“Open?” Her laugh was tinkling bells. “We are miles from anywhere, husband, and I want you. I want to feel your hands and your body and the cool greenness of this grass on my skin.”
Somehow our horses had stopped moving, and the air between us seemed to solidify and tremble, drawing me towards her.
“You are a shameless wanton,” I muttered, hoarsely.
“Completely, with you.”
She laughed again and seemed to flow down from her horse’s back and into the long grass, and I almost fell from my own mount in my rush to join her.