The one called Ingald rose, and this time the priest nodded permission for him to speak.
“We listened to the Semnones once, and made a burning. But the Romans are still here, and the Semnones are walking lordlywise across our lands. We, the Nicretes, will decide whether to go to the Romans or stand against them, and we do not need the Semnones to tell us!”
One-eyed Geir rose and looked down at Ingald. “You need us to fight the Romans, little man. And if you bow your heads to them, we will fight them anyway, and it will be over your burned huts.”
He sat down again while Ranvig thumped his fist on the table in agreement, and Ingald stared at him, eyes blazing.
Arngunn wavered. He was not fond of having Nyall, a red-haired puppy half his age, as overlord; but Geir had spoken the truth. Arngunn’s own men of the Nicretes were divided. Arngunn knew well that a chieftain ruled only so long as the Council voted to let him. If he did not walk carefully, one side or the other would try to put their own man in his place. Ingald himself had ambitions to come after him, and had already asked for Arngunn’s daughter as a means of gaining influence. If Arngunn bent to Nyall, Ingald might try for the Council’s vote now. Arngunn sighed. And if he refused Nyall, he would be caught between the Semnones and Rome.
Nyall watched the problem chase itself around behind Arngunn’s eyes. He could force his will on the old chieftain if necessary, but he wanted to fight Rome, not the Nicretes, and he needed their warriors. Which meant he needed Arngunn and the Council vote. And he needed Arngunn before Arngunn wavered so much that he lost his power over the Nicretes. Nyall stood up.
Arngunn’s warriors were sprawled along the benches or perched on the trestle tables, arguing with each other. He saw Ranvig tap another man emphatically on the chest, and the man shook his head and turned away while Ranvig thumped his fist on the table again. Another man spoke in Ranvig’s ear, and then Ranvig laughed, a crooked laugh that showed crooked teeth in a wide mouth, and a little flame in blue eyes set slightly askew. He followed the other man to the table behind him and they began speaking earnestly to three others sitting there. At the next table Ingald stood with his hands flat on the plank, leaning across it, while the bronze rings on the ends of his braids made little clicking sounds on the wood when they touched it. He too was arguing, and a goat-bearded man came up to add his opinions. Across the room the Semnones lounged on their benches against the clay-covered outer wall. They drank Arngunn’s beer, and with amused eyes watched his warriors argue.
Nyall stepped down from the platform and picked his way through the bones and crusts and the trampled straw to the cleared place on the hearth. He waited while the priest thumped his staff for silence and the argument subsided. They turned to face him, and the only sound was the crack and hiss of a green log in the fire.
“You bellow like cattle at the summer herding,” Nyall said. His voice was disgusted. “And while you squabble with each other and glower and sulk at my warriors, the Romans build their roads over your hunting trails and think up new taxes. Nicretes, the time has come to decide – now! Ride with the Semnones and be acknowledged free people under your own lord!” He glanced at Arngunn and saw that sink in. Gudrun leaned forward and whispered something in her husband’s ear. Nyall went on: “Or bow your heads to Rome’s yoke and plough your cabbage patches!”
Voices rose around him and the old priest thumped his staff. “Silence!” His eyes were old and pale under bushy brows and he fixed them on the chieftain in the High Seat. “Arngunn of the Nicretes, let you hear me now.”
Gudrun whispered insistently in Arngunn’s ear again and he nodded. “Speak, Valgerd.”
The priest’s voice was quiet, as if he were used to being listened to. “You have heard the minds of your warriors, and of Nyall of the Semnones. Now hear the word of Donar Hammerer. It is this: the Semnones’ gods are our gods, and the Romans are strangers who trample our groves with iron-shod feet. Go to Rome and our gods also will fall and the priests and wise ones will go the way of the Gauls – into the eternity of night, never to return to you. And then Donar will turn his back and there will be no light on the earth for you.”
There was a deathly silence when he ended. It was a curse, Nyall thought, and his back felt cold. Not even Ingald would go against the fury of Donar when his priest spoke thus. As if in response, there was a crack of thunder and a flash of cold lightning that came in through the withy shutters on the windows, dimming even the fire and torch flare and illuminating the room for a ghostly instant like a scene out of Hell.
There was pandemonium. The serving women shrieked and cowered against the walls, and the tables clattered as men on both sides leaped up, hands clutched to their dagger belts. Arngunn sat sweating in his chair. The old priest turned and walked away, back to his place, leaving Nyall alone on the hearth as the cold light faded and the room came up gold-lit and warm again. Nyall gave a silent prayer of thanks to the Thunderer and faced Arngunn. Only the girl on the platform had not moved, he saw, and a quick thought ran across his mind as to how he could hunt his quarreling dogs in one pack when the alliance had been made.
There was no question about it now. Arngunn, forced to speak some decision, would go with the stronger force. The Nicretes’ chieftain moved slowly, shaking his gold-and-brown cloak back from his shoulders and rising from the embroidered deerskins in his chair. “Donar has spoken,” he said. “Let you come forward, Nyall of the Semnones, and bind the alliance before my Council.”
Nyall came up on the platform so that Arngunn would not have to kneel in the trash on the floor. Arngunn knelt down stiffly, as if his joints ached, and put his hands in Nyall’s. “I, Arngunn of the Nicretes, swear to Nyall, lord of the Semnones, that I will keep treaty with him in all things touching war and the battles of men, and give no harm to his house or his cattle, his thralls or his women, while I live. And if I break faith with him may the sun drop from the sky to burn me, and the ocean come up from the shore to swallow me.”
Nyall nodded with satisfaction and turned his own hands over so that they covered Arngunn’s. “And I for my part swear that save in the matters of war, the Nicretes are a free people and shall have kin-bond with the Semnones so that no man shall give harm or hurt to their people or anything that is theirs. And if I break faith with you, let it be to me as you have said.”
Then Valgerd the priest came out of his corner again and touched their clasped hands with the sun-disk, and it was done. Nyall swept his gaze over the warriors of the tribe, seeing Ingald’s cold, resentful face, then turned back to Arngunn again.
“And now, that there may be no quarrel with my leadership, give me Fiorgyn your daughter for my wife.”
The girl on the platform sat up straight. There was an exclamation from the warriors, and Arngunn hesitated. “Fiorgyn is… is promised,” he said.
Gudrun was thinking hard, but before she could speak, the girl said: “I am promised to no man.” She knew that Ingald had asked for her, but she didn’t want Ingald. And she knew that her father had yet made no promises. She was too important a piece for him to play before he had to. “I am promised to no one,” she said again.
Nyall couldn’t tell from her voice whether she wanted him, or just didn’t want someone else. Except that it might speed Arngunn’s approval, he didn’t really care, but there was something in her voice that made him turn and look at her all the same. He had inspected her only long enough to see that she wasn’t ugly before asking for her to give him some hold on her father’s men. Now he looked at her closely.
She was wearing a blue woolen dress embroidered in red and purple at the throat. Her pale hair rippled like meadow grass down her back and her brows and lashes were the same wheat color. Her eyes were the blue of her gown, and something in them moved in the firelight the way the sky shimmers with heat. Her feet were tucked under her, and her hands rested in her lap; pale, strong hands that could no doubt use the knife that hung in a red leather sheath at her belt. The only real color
in her face was in her eyes and the translucent flush of her lips, the color of a berry just starting to turn.
She didn’t say anything; she just sat looking back at him out of those sky-colored eyes, and the longer Nyall watched her, the more reasons he knew of that he should have her.
“Let you give her to me,” he said again to Arngunn. “She is of an age to take a man, and I want no would-be chieftains in my war band.”
Arngunn swallowed hard. Gudrun leaned forward and looked sharply at Nyall. She should have thought of it, but it had never occurred to her that Nyall would take a wife from a lesser tribe than his own. But his father had done the same, she remembered now with an irritated click of her teeth. A Gaulish princess she had been, and he had rammed his marriage down his own Council’s throat with hardly a chirp from them.
Fiorgyn was Arngunn’s only child, and the man she married would stand a good chance of getting the Council’s vote to lead the Nicretes after him. That made her too important to throw away in haste, but now that Nyall had broached the matter in open Council and Arngunn had acknowledged his half-promise to Ingald, the girl would have to go to one or the other. Until now, Arngunn had kept Ingald in tow with that half-promise. Now the matter was different. Ingald would use her to try to break the alliance, and Arngunn’s hold on his tribe would go with it. Gudrun knew her daughter did not like Ingald, but a chief’s daughter generally had little choice in the matter of her marriage. It would be pleasant to give Fiorgyn what she wanted, since it fell in so well with necessity. Arngunn was still wavering, and Gudrun stood up quickly before he could speak.
There was a silence as she tugged her red gown into place and stood fingering the little silver moon that hung from a chain around her neck. Even a chief’s wife had no real authority, but a wise woman was respected, and it was well known that Gudrun’s voice spoke behind Arngunn’s often enough. Gudrun was a priestess of the Mother also, and a marriage was a matter in which the Goddess must be heard if she should choose to speak. Gudrun closed her hands around the silver moon and shut her eyes. Even Ingald waited in silence, but his hands were clenched tight on the edge of the table. His handsome face was taut – a string about to snap, Fiorgyn thought, looking quickly from him to her mother. Gudrun’s plain face was calm and quite still, as if her thoughts had gone away.
Gudrun stood motionless, and Nyall watched her with respect. He couldn’t tell if her communion with the Goddess was real or feigned (he gave a quick mental apology to the Dark Mother for that thought) but surely something important was at work. While Gudrun’s hands were clasped on the silver moon, her lined and bony face became almost beautiful, the beauty of the seasons and the harvest, and of the unchanging ebb and flow of the world. Then Gudrun opened her eyes.
“Let the tribe hear the word of the Mother,” she said. “War is the work of the Sun Lord, and the Mother does not trouble herself in such matters except that she be given her due. But marriage is for the Goddess.” For a long moment she looked at Nyall out of those shrewd blue eyes – the same sky color as her daughter’s. The hall was silent, almost breathless. At last, she said, “The Goddess has spoken for Nyall of the Semnones.”
There was an exclamation from the warriors on both sides, and Ingald leaped up as if to protest. “Let no man go against the Goddess,” Gudrun said, looking right at him, and there was a threat in her voice. “It is the wish of the Mother of All that Nyall of the Semnones shall take Fiorgyn, Arngunn’s-daughter, to wife, that both our peoples shall be as one, and that the Roman-kind shall make no more sacrilege in the sacred Forest of the Mother.”
Nyall smiled and inclined his head to Gundrun. “My thanks to the Mother,” he said, and it was hard to tell whether he meant the Goddess or her spokeswoman. “Let Arngunn give me his daughter to bind us and it shall be as you have said, Gudrun.”
Fiorgyn let out a caught breath and moved her hands in her lap. It was done. Her father would accept what had already been decided for him, as always, and she would go with the red-haired Semnone lord. If in time, as seemed likely, it was he who ruled her tribe, she would rule with him. And… he wasn’t Ingald.
“It shall be as the Goddess has said,” Arngunn said, with some show of taking the decision into his own hands. “There shall be a hand-fasting now before the Council, and if any man has a mind to dispute it, let him come forward or keep his silence forever after.”
Ingald was still standing, head up, his tall, muscular body braced against his fury. “For what reason does the Goddess set aside the promise made to me by Arngunn?”
“Do you question the Goddess?” Gudrun said, giving him a level look.
“I question the right of Nyall of the Semnones to take a chief’s daughter of the Nicretes!” Ingald said bitterly.
Gudrun started to speak, but Nyall said softly, “This is for me to answer.”
Gudrun gave him a startled look and closed her mouth.
Nyall stepped down from the platform and came close to Ingald. “The thing has been done,” he said, so quietly that only those close by could hear him. “Make no open war with me.”
Ingald glared back. “You think to take what is mine. Look you that you do not find more war than you were seeking.” He also spoke softly. To those ten paces away they might have been discussing the sale of a cow. But there was a tension between them that snapped like Donar’s lightning.
“Do you want to fight me for it?” Nyall asked. “Do it now if you do. I will agree to a combat.”
Ingald looked at Nyall, and then around the room. Now… no. If he won he would still need the Council, and he didn’t have them with him now, not so soon after Gudrun’s meddling. “No. I’ll not fight you now,” he whispered. “But walk warily.”
Nyall nodded and walked away, leaving Ingald staring after him, a little spear point of light flickering in his eyes.
* * *
Ten days later on the night of the winter solstice, as the officers of the legion had made their worship to Mithras under the hill, outside their camp, the warriors of the Nicretes and the Semnones together raised their prayers to their own sun lord in his sacred grove, and to his son Donar Thunderer. Nyall, stripped to the skin and gritting his teeth against the cold, stood at the center while Valgerd made the signs that confirmed him in his leadership. His red hair hung loose down his back and it fanned about him like the mane of the white horse that stood tethered to a stake at the center of the grove – the King Horse.
Valgerd put a bronze knife into Nyall’s hands and raised his own arms to the sky to begin the high, keening prayer of offering to Wuotan All-Father, lord of the horse herd and hence of the life of the tribe. His face was hidden behind the white horsehide mask, cut from the head of last year’s King Horse.
The bronze knife flashed in the moonlight, and the King Horse screamed and went down, its blood spreading in a dark pool into the snow and the earth beneath. A clean kill was a good sign. There was a shout from the warriors in the torchlit circle, and Valgerd stepped forward to dip the shock of grain from his belt in the blood and make the sun sign with it across Nyall’s chest. Nyall, shivering, knelt down in the snow and began to cut away the white hide from the horse’s head.
As it came free Valgerd lifted the dripping, fresh-cut mask to the night sky and set it on the head of the naked man before him. Nyall could feel the blood soaking into his hair, hot and sticky, and the life in the thing made his skin crawl. The smell of fresh blood was thick in his nostrils, suffocating after the clear cold of the winter air. He felt his stomach rising and fought it down. A circle opened in the ring of torches and two men appeared, Ranvig and Lyting, with the bridle reins of another white horse, the new King Horse, in their hands. He was yoked to a two-wheeled chariot with bronze disks running down its sides – the earthly carriage of the Sun, who was re-born at winter solstice from the sacrificed blood of the King Horse. In the old days when the Mother had held the tribe’s worship in herself alone, it had been the king himself who had died to give his peop
le new life. Now it was the King Horse who paid the price instead. Nyall repressed a shudder. Those ways were not as far off here among the Nicretes, the people of her forest, as they were among his own tribe. That was what gave the marriage of a Nicrete chieftain’s daughter so much importance.
They put him in the carriage while the King Horse stamped and whinnied at the blood smell of the other white form that lay with its bloody head in the snow. In a year’s time, a year of the best grain and the best mares and the lordship of the herd, he would return to the grove. Perhaps he knew it.
Nyall stood bracing his bloodstained hands on the front rim of the chariot with the white mane falling down his back like a streak of snow against his red hair. The blood smell was thick and choking in his face. He had not wanted to go to his wedding this way, but a union between lord and lord’s daughter, both of the Kindred of their tribes, became an offering in itself when done in this fashion, and the world’s rebirth was mirrored in their coupling. It made a strong thread in the bond between his folk and hers, so in the end he had consented to do it.
Lyting put a strand of grain in Nyall’s hand and Ranvig a bronze axe – it had an oaken handle, and an inscription of magic runes ran sideways down the head. They turned the carriage about and moved through the trees with the warriors trailing behind them in the torchlight.
A half-mile away they halted where another trail ran slantwise across theirs. The wood was still. The wild things had disappeared with the first scent of man, and the silence was sharp-edged and shining, like a piece of ice. There was only a little moon, tangled in the treetops. The torches made yellow-gold circles, and inside them everything was honey-colored. Beyond the torchlight there was only black and white and shimmering streaks of moon-washed silver. Even the blood on his hands was dark instead of scarlet.
The Centurions Page 19