The Centurions

by The Centurions (retail) (epub)

  A faint jingle of bells whispered in the trees ahead, and then there was a pinprick of light, and then another, as a winding procession snaked its way among the black, gnarled trunks. The leading figures were horned, he saw, not the stag’s horns that some of the sun priests wore, but the broad curving horns of cattle. They led another two-wheeled chariot, drawn slowly by a white mare heavy with foal. Her sharp hooves turned up little flurries of snow as she moved, and the cow-horned figures matched their pace to her slow, rolling step. As they came nearer, Nyall saw that they were women, their faces masked by cowhide, their forms black against the snow.

  In this light wicker chariot a single slim figure stood, cow-horned also, face hidden beneath the mask, but with a fall of pale hair gleaming in the moonlight. She too was naked, and Nyall saw that there was blood drawn into the Sign of Horns on her breasts, and that a trail of blood dripped from the mask into a dark curve on her shoulder. Like him, she also carried a little bronze axe, blade forward, and a sheaf of grain. Even through the mist of blood and magic she was beautiful, a flawless form that shone milky in the moonlight. Nyall caught his breath beneath the horse mask. Then he realized uncomfortably that the girl beneath the cowhide had an equal view of his own scarred body. He straightened his shoulders.

  The white mare pricked her ears and whickered as they approached, then came up to the King Horse to nuzzle at his face. The two women who led her stepped back. They were masked also, but Nyall thought he recognized Gudrun’s angular form in one of them. They made the Sign of the Mother over the girl in the chariot and then slipped back into the crowd of women behind them. Valgerd stepped up and drew his wheat sheaf across the girl’s body from breasts to belly, and then across Nyall’s chest and loins. He took the grain and axe from each and laid them on the flat rock that marked the crossroads. In the two chariots, the Horse Man and the Goddess-as-Virgin gazed at one another through the eye-slits of the masks, and Nyall felt himself stirring. He was unsettlingly aware of his nakedness before this throng of unknown warriors and women.

  A man in the red-roan mask of a war-horse – it must be Arngunn – stepped up and took the girl’s hand in his. He led her from the chariot as Lyting bent to let down the step into the car of the King Horse. The Red Horseman laid the girl’s hand in Nyall’s and then boosted her in a flurry of flying hair and bare feet into the chariot beside him. Nyall caught her to him with one arm and held out a hand as Lyting put the reins of the King Horse into it. The crowd of women drew back before him as he shook out the reins, and Ranvig stepped forward and slapped the King Horse hard on the flank.

  They flew like the Elves’ Hunt down the track, Nyall’s arm tight about the girl’s naked body, and one horn of the cow mask grazing his ear, with the knife-wind cold about them. After a while he drew rein and reached behind him in the chariot for the woolen blankets that Lyting had put there.

  After drawing a blanket about her, he untied the leather thongs that bound the cow mask to her. He drew it gently from her head and she turned a bloodstained face up to his, which was still hidden behind the stallion mask of the old King Horse.

  “Take it off,” she whispered.

  “That you may be sure what it is you ride with?” He pulled the stallion’s mask from his face. She stood looking up at him for a long moment in the white silence, and then reached out for a second blanket and drew it around him.

  “So you are real,” she said.

  Nyall laughed. “You were expecting another horse head under the mask?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “The women make much talk that the god himself comes in the bridegroom’s place at a solstice wedding.”

  This time he didn’t laugh. He knew that it had been in the back of his own mind to wonder what it really was that had ridden in the crook of his arm. “I admit that the gods have been rather thick about our heads of late,” he said, “but I am real enough, I promise you.”

  His hand slipped up and brushed across her breast where the cow’s blood had dried stiff and rough to the touch, and she gave a little shiver. “Yes,” she said with a ripple in her voice that surprised him, “I see that you are.”

  He shook out the reins again and they rode on, arms about each other beneath the woolen blankets, fair head against red one, until they came to a hunter’s hut in the heart of the forest. It had been made ready for them, and Nyall unyoked the King Horse and tethered him under a wooden shelter beside a pile of hay. He put an arm around the girl and pushed open the door. The hearth fire was laid ready to light, and a bed of grass and dried herbs was spread with piled hides and a wolfskin blanket in the corner. There was a wooden chest beside it with clean clothes, but now he no longer felt the want of them and crouched, wrapped in his blanket, to strike a flint to the tinder on the hearth.

  It took a while to kindle the fire, and when it was burning he turned to see that the girl was curled under her blanket on the spread skins of the bed. There was a bucket of water in the corner and she had washed the blood from her breasts and face in it, so that the skin was white and unmarked and the damp hair hung down pale around it.

  Nyall plunged his own head into the bucket to get rid of the clinging feel and scent of the blood and came up shaking like a hound. He dipped the tail of his blanket in it and scrubbed at the blood on his chest and hands. The girl looked at him apprehensively. “I didn’t think—” she said. “It is a sacrifice. Perhaps we are supposed to leave the blood—”

  “I have done any number of unpleasant things tonight because the priest-kind said to,” Nyall said firmly. “But I will not lie with my wife smeared with a horse’s blood.” The girl sat up, the striped blanket slipping off one damp, white breast. She smiled with a little sideways smile that lit up her face like a May fire. “And in any case,” Nyall said, “it is too late now.” There was a catch in his voice, and as he knelt and put his arms out for her she held up her own.

  * * *

  It snowed in the night, and the morning sun came through the withy shutters of the hunter’s hut as silvered as the moonlight. Fiorgyn stirred under the wolfskin covers and propped herself on one elbow to watch Nyall combing out his red hair by the fire, which he had relit. The hut was warm and he had not bothered to dress. The red hair fell like a flame down his back. It was hair that a woman would have bartered her soul with the elf-folk for, and she had a feeling that he knew it.

  “You are as vain as a woman,” she said, watching him comb out the copper-colored fall. “Why do you bother to bind it up?”

  Nyall looked at her over his shoulder, and she gave him a half-grin and snuggled deeper under the wolfskin. “If you are not liking me, wife, let you go back to your father and let him give me back again my twelve cows.” He pulled the flaming hair into three strands and began to braid it.

  Fiorgyn chuckled. “You got me cheap for your twelve cows, husband. I am remembering that Ingald offered sixteen.”

  Nyall swung around to face her, the half-braided hair falling over the white scars on his chest. “Then say now why you spoke for me and not Ingald.”

  “Why, you are four cows the richer than he, for not having paid them,” she said innocently.

  “Fiorgyn—” He put a hand out and grasped her wrist.

  “Oh, very well.” Fiorgyn looked uncomfortable. “It is only that it sounds foolish. I don’t like Ingald.”

  “Why not? He is a fine warrior.”

  “When we were children,” Fiorgyn said thoughtfully, “he used to bully anyone he could. It occurred to me that his wife would be treated no different. And… and he has thief’s eyes. He goes sideways to what he wants.” This last was a warning, Nyall thought, a pointed one.

  “I will remember.” He sat back and finished braiding his hair.

  “Nyall.”

  It was the first time she had used his name. He stuck the gold pins home and looked at her.

  “You took me to hold my father’s war band.”

  He nodded.

  “Was that all?”


  “It was… then.” He thought of the night past, and of the warning she had just given him. “It may be that it is not now.” He looked at her and smiled, then stirred up the fire and put more wood on it. Between the firelight and the sunshine they turned the hunter’s hut golden, and the girl on the bed seemed to lose her silver shimmer and grow golden also. “And me?” Nyall asked her. “You accepted me because I am a chieftain and because I am not Ingald. Was that all?”

  “It was then,” she repeated his own words. “It does not seem to be so now.” She held out her arms, gold-washed in the sunlight, and he slipped into bed beside her again and tangled his long hands in the curtain of her hair.

  * * *

  They rode back to Arngunnshold at noon, dressed in the finery that Ranvig and Lyting had placed in the hunter’s hut for them. A trail of oak branches was threaded through the sun-disks on the chariot in token that their first coupling had been made as a gift for the gods and the tribe and not for themselves alone. Nyall’s shirt and trousers were of forest green, heavily sewn with gold thread and small bits of amber. Fiorgyn’s gown was sun-colored, like a splash of light in snow, and her long hair was braided as befitted a married woman. A cluster of little golden apples chimed and jingled at the end of each braid.

  The whole of Arngunnshold turned out at the first shout that the King Horse and chariot were approaching – the chieftain’s own household, freemen, thralls, and hounds; Nyall’s Companions; and the warriors of the Nicretes who were gathered from their own holds for the war that was coming.

  Nyall stepped down from the chariot and, feeling conspicuous, lifted Fiorgyn after him. In some tribes, he knew, the Council hung about the marriage bed in person when a chieftain was wed, but he found the ring of expectant faces and the pointed jokes of his Companions quite enough of a trial. Only Ingald, he saw, stood apart, leaning, with booted ankles crossed and thumbs hooked in his belt, against the forepillar of the hall. His handsome face was completely blank, but there was a look about the eyes that made Nyall remember Fiorgyn’s words: thief’s eyes, she had said.

  He turned Fiorgyn over to her mother and the other women who bustled forward, noting that the small, freckled girl, Saeunn, dodged determinedly past Lyting to get to her mistress. Nyall waved the warriors into the hall with him, and Lyting abandoned his pursuit to bring Nyall a horn of beer and settle himself in his usual place at Nyall’s feet. Nyall eyed his young Companion thoughtfully. So the pup began to grow into a hound, did he? He supposed he would have to do something about that. Lyting was too young and too well born to be married off to the first girl whose round backside caught his eye, but it wouldn’t do to have him prowling through Fiorgyn’s women like a wolf on the hunt.

  Nyall pushed the problem to one side. He had more important matters at hand just now, notably Kari and Geir, who had returned the day before while Nyall was twitching impatiently under the hands of the priests, making ready for his wedding. They came into the hall now, their hands full of tally sticks, and knelt down before him to count out the strength of the men and horses he could draw to him in the spring.

  “Of our own war band and Arngunn’s, you know well enough,” Kari said, counting out the notches on two sticks. “The Hermanduri have sworn to Rome, but they will blow with the wind, I think. For the rest, Egil and Sigvat will follow you, and Thrain now.”

  “Your wedding Arngunn’s daughter made a turning point there, I think,” Geir said, and Nyall nodded.

  “And the other five?” The Nicretes were the main strength of the Black Forest, but he would like the nine lesser clans also if he could get them.

  “Sigurd and Mord, yes,” Geir said. “Gunnar’s no more than a hill bandit with twenty thieves to call warriors, but he’ll come if the pickings look good. The same goes for that old fox Runolf. The best reason to have those two is to keep them from looting our cattle when our backs are turned.”

  “And Jorunn?”

  Geir spat with emphasis. “Jorunn doesn’t like foreigners, and that means us. He will ally, but only with the Nicretes. Pompous old bastard. He’d have set the dogs on me if I hadn’t given him to think twice about it.”

  Arngunn pulled his cloak about him and leaned toward the fire. “I will go to him,” he said, “but it will take a while to get there on a winter trail.” It was warm for a winter day, especially with the press of bodies in the hall, but he looked cold, and the blue-veined hands were not steady.

  He’s old, Nyall thought, with a new sympathy. Old, and he’s been ridden over enough. “No, old Father,” he said aloud. “Jorunnshold is a wild ride at midwinter. It’s a young man’s trail. Who of your warriors carries the most rank?”

  Arngunn didn’t protest. He was tired, and he had given over his warriors and his tribe to Nyall. Let him have them, he thought. He was cold. “Ranvig,” he said, “and Ingald. And Arni,” he added, nodding at a young man with a scarred ear and a flyaway smile who sat perched cross-legged on the end of a bench.

  Nyall thought. He knew Arni, and that reckless smile summed up his nature. But still… “Ranvig,” he said. His eye lit on Ingald and passed by. “And Arni. Go you and… reason… with Jorunn. Take enough men that he declines to set the dogs on you. I will tell you what you may promise him after—” He broke off as a bench crashed back against the wall, sending a little cloud of dust and a trickle of clay chips onto the floor.

  Ingald was standing now, his face set and furious. “I will ride with Ranvig!”

  “No,” Nyall said flatly.

  “By what right?” Ingald shouted.

  “By the right of the war leader!” Nyall slapped his hand hard on the arm of the chair, and half stood, leaning forward. “I command the war band, and the war band has sworn to me! And if you cannot abide it, Ingald, go out from here, and back to your hold, alone. Or stay with your tribe and obey!”

  To be tribeless and alone was a road no man in his right mind would walk. Nyall knew it, and Ingald knew it. Ingald swallowed hard and brought his voice down. “I also have sworn with the war band,” he said stiffly. “Why then do you pass me by?”

  “You swore unwillingly.”

  “But I swore. You lay insult on me by sending a babe in my place.” He jerked a hand at Arni, who bristled and reached for his knife.

  “Stop it!” Nyall was standing now, hands on hips and his gray eyes wolf-bright in the shadows of the hall. “Ingald, you have a quarrel with Ranvig and a quarrel with me, and to my mind that does not make you the man to send to Jorunn.”

  “And now a quarrel with me also!” Arni was on his feet too by this time, knife in hand. The rest sat silently, just watching. Nyall could not hold the war band if he couldn’t hold these two. It was a test.

  “Put up your knife, Arni,” Nyall said quietly, “or I will send you back to your nurse instead of to Jorunn. You are like to have worse insult than ‘babe’ from him.”

  Arni hesitated and then slid the knife home.

  Good. Nyall could knock enough sense into Arni to keep him diplomatic while Ranvig made the treaty with Jorunn. He turned back to Ingald.

  “If we wrangle among ourselves, we might as well send our heads on poles to the commander of the Eagles and have done with it. You have a choice, Ingald. Me or the Roman-kind. Decide now.”

  Ingald fingered the bronze ring at the end of one braid, and his eyes slid away from Nyall’s. “I told you. I have sworn.” He turned on his heel and stalked roughly through the crowded hall to the door.

  Kari watched him go, his brown eyes serious. “Shall I hunt that ferret out of his hole for you?” he whispered.

  Nyall dropped into his chair again. “My thanks for your care,” he said drily, “but no. He is no oathbreaker yet, and I won’t begin with a killing. Especially not that one.”

  Kari sighed and nodded. He knew Nyall better than most men, perhaps because his own half-blood birth made him no rival for the chieftainship. But Nyall was wrong this time, Kari thought, staring at the empty place where Ingald had sa
t, and the little drift of clay gouged from the wall. Maybe deadly wrong.

  XI A Springtime War

  In the Black Forest the first signs of the turning season were the swelling leaf buds and the wild things that came blinking up out of their burrows in the warming air. Then the snow began to melt in the hill pastures, and the thin cattle were turned out to forage with the first show of new grass.

  They felt it in the camp of the legion. The heavy cross-gartered leggings began to come off and so did the extra cloaks, and they raised their noses to the new smell in the air. The ground turned to slush, and a sprinkle of snowdrops lifted their heads by the Dexter Gate only to blacken again in a late frost. The whole army took a deep breath and stretched its muscles and set about cleaning a winter’s rust from its pilum points.

  Correus chased his century out onto the parade ground for the first open-air drill they’d had in two months. He was pleasantly surprised when they champed at the bit like chariot ponies and got it right every step. The long weeks of turn-and-march in the drill shed had paid off. The straight scarlet column of another century marched past, heading out the Praetorian Gate on patrol; with them, Silvanus, newly promoted to second-in-command of the Fourth Cohort, raised his vine staff in greeting.

  In the hospital Labienus turned his hacking, sniffling patients out in the central courtyard to soak up the sun, and the “on report” list pushed a phalanx of brooms down the Via Principia, mounding up the winter’s trash and sludge before them. The log road began to creep east again while the scouts ranged well ahead of it. Of the Germans there was no sign now, and that was a sign in itself. In the ragtag huts outside the walls, the entrepreneurs debated – stay one more week while the spring air made business brisk, or pack up for Argentoratum before trouble began. The comings and goings of the frontier scouts were watched with interest. They were a disreputable-looking band, and until you saw one washed and in uniform you’d never know him for a Roman. And they were mostly officers, at that. But they could whisper through the forest like a drift of leaves, and live on the land. It was one of these that Correus remembered afterward as marking the start of war.