The sun was full up now, with the first hint of spring warmth. A pack of children tumbled about in a running ball game among the huts. Kari and Hallgerd leaned arm in arm in the hold gateway to watch them, and Hallgerd sighed. It was pleasant to stand here together, talking of small domestic things. She would enjoy it while she could. Soon enough a message would come from the chieftain, and Kari and all the men of fighting age would go away to the hosting and she would be left with the women, to try to do their own work and the men’s, and wait for them to come back – the ones who did come back. She leaned her head against Kari’s neck. Another war… there was always another war.
* * *
Ranvig’s wife was alone when the rider came, pushing his horse hard up the track to the holding, bearing the same message that he had brought to Kari and every other lord between here and Nyallshold.
“My husband is in the high pasture,” she said. “I will send for him. In the meantime, they will give you something to eat in the kitchen. You have had a long ride.”
“Thank you, lady, that I have.”
When he had gone, she beat her fist in frustration on the carded wool in her lap. Like Hallgerd, she had known war was coming, but the knowledge did little to ease her as she sat cursing the Romans, an implacable menace, frightening and unknown, who were armor-plated like beetles and carried better weapons than her own people could forge. Lyting, her half-brother, had ridden away to fight the Romans at the chieftain’s call, and he had not come home. Now Ranvig would go, and the hold would be masterless again, and she would be alone.
She sent a thrall to fetch the lord home and sat down to wait for him, the wool forgotten in her lap. She was praying for something, for anything, to keep him from this hosting. If the gods would break her husband’s leg for him, she would give them anything they asked.
* * *
Fiorgyn watched the last of the chieftain’s riders returning to Nyallshold and set off to deal with the coming war in her own fashion. The Semnone lords and their warriors would be hard on the riders’ heels, and after them the allied chieftains of the Suevi. The war bands would make a camp for themselves, but lords and chiefs would have to be given hospitality at Nyallshold, fed and housed, and given gifts, while seniority and group commands were decided. The chiefs would be bringing Nyall gifts, and the gods only knew what form they would take. One chieftain had brought him a woman, and after he had gone home again, Fiorgyn, with fire in her eye, demanded that Nyall give her away. Nyall laughed and said he couldn’t because the man would be insulted; but in any case he wasn’t going to do anything with her. Fiorgyn replied darkly that you never knew, and that after this hosting he could give her away, or marry her to someone, and if he didn’t she was going to have an accident.
It was still a sore point with them, but a minor one compared to another quarrel that had been raging for three days between the chieftain and his lady.
“I forbid it!” Nyall shouted when she broached the subject again in their chamber. “And I am not going to talk about it again!”
“I am a chief’s daughter,” Fiorgyn said stubbornly. She faced him, arms crossed.
Nyall sighed. That declaration usually preceded a statement on which Fiorgyn would give no ground.
“I was trained as a warrior, the same as any woman in your own tribe, against the day when we might be needed. I will go with this hosting, and if you forbid it, I will put on trousers and walk with the spearmen to shame you!”
“Fiorgyn!” He took her by the shoulders none too gently. “I will lock you up,” he threatened.
She beat her fists against his chest. “And send for that… that creature, I suppose.”
“What in Donar’s name has the woman got to do with it?”
Fiorgyn pulled away and stood rubbing her shoulders where his fingers had left an imprint. “I don’t know,” she admitted, “except that she makes me angry, too. You have given me no reason why I shouldn’t go.”
“I forbid it.”
“That is not a reason. I am not one of your thralls.”
“If you were, I would have sold you for an unruly nuisance.” She glared at him. “Very well,” he said, “the women do not take up their spears except in great need. They are the future of the tribe, and if we must risk that, there is no point in fighting the Romans at all. That is a reason.”
“I am not asking you to call out the women. Only that I ride with you. So it is not a reason.”
“You might be with child.”
“I am not.”
“Can you be sure?”
“No, of course I’m not sure. Anything is possible.”
“There. That is your reason.”
“I might be with child? I might fall off a cliff and die tomorrow! The gods might come down from the sky and slay all the Romans for you. ‘Might’ is no reason.”
“Fiorgyn, stop arguing with me!” Nyall ran a hand across his forehead, which was beginning to ache. “I won’t risk you. With child or without child. I can’t command the war band if I’m worried about you. I can’t order a wing into the Romans’ spears, knowing that you’re riding with it. And if I can’t do that, we’ll lose. If I were not chieftain, it would be different. I would have no decisions to make. But I do, and I can’t play favorites, and I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t if you were there. I can’t even look to the others as if I might. How long do you think I could hold the war band together if they suspected me of that?”
Fiorgyn’s face was pale and defeated. She sat down slowly by the cold hearth. “Yes… I suppose that is a reason.”
He sat beside her and put one arm around her shoulders. “I am sorry.”
“Tell me one thing. If you were not chieftain, would you take me with you?”
“Yes.” He was silent for a moment, trying to remember a time when he had not been chieftain, when everything he did was not touched by it. “I wouldn’t want to, for fear for you, but if you wanted it, I would take you. I think I would be glad I had, in the end.”
She leaned against him and they sat together for a long while. Soon there would be no time for this.
“I am cold,” Fiorgyn said at last. She shivered. “Why is this fire not lit?”
“Because you have been too busy arguing with me,” Nyall said, “to see to your duties – wife.”
“I will send that woman to do it,” Fiorgyn said. “She might as well be useful. After you have gone,” she added thoughtfully.
* * *
Fiorgyn’s prediction proved true. From the moment that the first of the allied chieftains of the Suevi rode in with his lords about him and his war band trailing out behind, Nyallshold erupted into the madness of a fair day, only on a scale a thousand times greater. Every guest chamber was filled to overflowing, and even the barns were emptied and their walls hung with rugs. Such spare furniture as could be scrounged from the storerooms was moved in to make them habitable. The Companions crowded themselves willingly into the dormitory chamber that normally housed only those unmarried and holdless men who lived in the chieftain’s hall year round. They were a close-knit group and proud of it. But the rest of the Semnone lords expected to be received with no such disregard for dignity. They inspected their quarters and compared them suspiciously to each other’s and those of the allied chieftains’ lords until Morgian developed a permanent harassed expression. Fiorgyn suggested tartly that perhaps they should build a new hold just for the lords’ benefit.
Each lord and chieftain’s war band pitched its own camp outside the hold walls until a great city of tents stretched away in all directions. It was the greatest hosting ever made by the tribes of the Free Lands, and it was awesome.
Nyall stood on the walkway that ran around the inner side of the hold walls, looking down thoughtfully at the endless confusion of tents and wagons and rope corrals, while a hundred different shouts and commands melded together into an unceasing billow of sound from the chaos below. If he could hold them together, he could pull the Romans
’ fortresses down stone by stone and dance in the ruins by summer’s end. If. Then he thought of the recent message that had come by the hand of Beorn the trader. He narrowed his eyes to follow the track running westward from Nyallshold toward the Nicer River.
“What are you watching for?” Kari said, as he and Ranvig clambered up the ladder to a place on the walkway beside him. Kari counted on his fingers. “The last of the western holds rode in yesterday. Is there someone else?”
“A visitor, maybe,” Nyall said. “Where is Beorn the trader?”
“Gone away to the west, to the Cherusci, he said. I’m thinking he found us too well armed for his taste. Beorn wants no trouble with the Romans.”
Beorn must have been well paid for bringing that message, then. Beorn offered a fair price for his goods, but he never gave anything away free. A horseman was coming – four days behind Beorn, but riding faster. It would be soon then… or not at all. Because in three days, the war host would be on the move.
* * *
As the dawn mist swirled along the valley floor, the camps of the Suevi were already moving. The fires glowed palely in the half-light and went out as they were doused and trod into wet cinders. The tents were already down, the animals fed and watered. The warriors stood or crouched in the wet grass, making a meal of dried fish and bread, while their lords waited for the signal that would come from the chieftains meeting in the hold.
Nyall stood before the great hall in riding dress, booted and cloaked, with his red hair showing fiery in the first light. Around him stood the eight allied chieftains of the Suevi, old fighters all, and northmen most of them, bred to an even harsher land than Nyall’s. They were kin to one another, and kin to the tribes of the lands-across-the-river if you went back far enough. But it was a kinship that had never prevented a ceaseless warring among themselves. The Confederation of the Suevi had been one nation in name only, until now. Now they had a common cause to unite them as kinship had not: Rome. Roman forts in the Black Forest were too close to the Semnones and to the four tribes directly to their north. And for the four other tribes whose lands lay more northerly still, these five were too close and too strong to deny. It was an uneasy alliance of shifting power and frequent quarrels, held together only by the iron will of the chieftain of the Semnones. Without Nyall, the war bands would be more likely to turn on each other than put any fear into Rome.
Nyall knew, and the chieftains knew, and the Companions knew. They shadowed him like hounds wherever he went, and now they sat lounging on the steps of the great hall while he went over the war trail for the final time.
“We will cross the mountains here.” He drew with his dagger in the dirt. “And then southward this way, and a second crossing here.”
“That’s the longer march,” one of the chieftains objected, and Nyall explained it again, patiently, but with an edge in his voice.
“They are the best crossings for many men and wagons. The best water. And the best trail into the mountains of the Black Forest. Also, I think the Romans will be looking for us to the northward, because this trail will take us through the Hermanduri’s lands, and they have spun around like a weathercock and sworn to Rome again.”
“Then we will have to fight them to get through. And maybe be caught between them and the Romans,” Hoskuld, another chief, objected.
“I doubt it,” Nyall said. “The Hermanduri are poor fighters. I’d rather Rome had them than us. They have grown fat cuddling up to Rome, and we will need somewhere to forage.”
Hoskuld laughed and one or two of the other lined faces split into a grin. “So we’ll forage among the Hermanduri. Nice of Rome to plant them there.”
“A fat herd, for our culling,” Nyall said. “Rome has beaten them into loyalty again, but not even the Caesar can beat any fight into them. They’ve been Rome’s sheep too long. From there we will split and hit their new forts on the Nicer with a smaller band to tie down the southern legion, so—” He leaned forward to draw three more lines, branching south, west, and northwest. Suddenly there was a commotion at the gates.
The Companions stiffened and Hoskuld’s eyes widened as two of Nyall’s men staggered in, dragging a third between them. Nyall stood up slowly and faced them, and Hoskuld felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He wouldn’t want the Semnone chieftain’s gray eyes fixed on him with that look. Hoskuld was a man who feared few things, but there was death and worse on Nyall’s face.
They flung Ingald into the damp earth at Nyall’s feet, and he raised his head slowly, wiping the mud from his mouth.
“So you lived,” Nyall said.
“Aye, I lived, Nyall Sigmundson.” Lined and stretched taut, Ingald’s face had lost some of its blandness. “Barely, but I lived.”
“Then you should not have come back where you are forbidden,” Nyall said. He nodded to the Companions. “Take him and kill him.”
Arni and Ranvig rode with the Companions now, and Ranvig was on his feet before the others, with Kari a half-step behind him.
“No!” Ingald said. He pulled himself up and stepped back, his face exhausted.
“No?” Nyall said. His voice had a deadly disinterest in it. “You have a death mark here, Ingald. You knew that.”
“Wait,” Ingald whispered. “Kill me if you must, but wait until I have spoken. I wouldn’t have ridden here with death on my heels, and death waiting, without a reason.”
“Death on your heels? Nothing but Hell’s folk could drive a man back to put his head on a pole, Ingald, and no man outruns Hell’s folk.”
“The Romans. I rode a half-day ahead of the Romans all the way across the Nicer. And in fear of your men after that.” He staggered a little. “May I sit down?”
“Certainly,” Nyall said, but made no move to have a chair brought.
Ingald’s eyes flashed for a moment, and then the look was gone. He sank back down in the dirt where he had fallen, and sat on his heels. “When I left here, I went west, back across the Nicer into my own lands.” He looked up at Nyall. “You know the kind of journey I will have made, chieftain – at midwinter.”
“Your journey is your own,” Nyall said. “You do not belong to us anymore.”
“No. So I went back to my own hills, thinking to find some shelter there. And there was… nothing. Burned and ruined holds. And… bones. I slept one night with rats where Argunn’s cattle byre had stood. The walls had fallen in, but it was not quite burned through, and there was room to get out of the snow. I even got a fire going.” He gave a short laugh. “Ironic, that. But there were dogs gone wild, prowling through the ruins, and they hadn’t learned to fight the wolf-kind for the wild game yet, most of them. We were meat, my horse and I. I rode out the next day… to the fort on the river.”
“Jackal to jackal,” Ranvig said.
“I had nowhere else to go. You do not know what it means… to be tribeless.”
Nyall watched him carefully as he spoke. The dark shadow on Ingald’s face when he spoke of that was truthful enough, he thought. “You made your own fate,” he said. “All this gives me as yet no reason not to kill you. I know well enough what the Romans have made of the Black Forest.”
“Yes,” Ingald said. “You would be knowing. It is not to tell you that that I came for. I… lived by the fort on the river for a time. Working at whatever would buy bread. I am a warrior of the Nicretes, and I pruned vines for a fat Gaul in a Roman gown! And other worse things. But there is always talk in these towns by the Romans’ forts. And an outcast laborer hears many things, because no one thinks him worth the noticing.”
The other chieftains were watching curiously, and Hoskuld explained Ingald’s banishment in a low voice.
“It would take a lot to bring him back here, I’m thinking.”
“Best we listen then,” the chieftain of the Anglii said, hooking his thumbs in the sword belt that was strapped over his fur riding jacket. “Anything that bears on Rome interests me just now.”
“A man with no tribe has little
enough to occupy him at night,” Ingald said. “I used to get drunk when I could. And I used to watch the soldiers from the fort on the river. There was one wineshop they went to and I would drink there and watch them, and listen as they would talk. I learned a little Latin. Not much, but enough – they use our names for places mostly, and twist them to fit their own tongue. And I came to think that you had been right in one thing – Rome is not a master the Free People could live with. And that I had been right in the other – they are strong, stronger than you would think such little men could be, and their cohorts move like one man with a thousand legs. I watched them march on their parade ground. They are a… a machine. And there is no nation on earth that can beat them when they are ready to make war—”
“Did you come back to say that?” Nyall interrupted.
“No. I think you are wrong to fight with Rome, and these” – he gestured at the silent circle of men – “are wrong to follow you, but my hatred of you does not extend to my people. Since you are going to fight anyway, I came to tell you how you may have a chance to beat them – as Armin of the Cherusci did – when they are unwary.”
“You are so great a strategist?” Nyall asked softly. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Fiorgyn had come out of the hall and was standing behind the Companions on the step. “Or did Wuotan’s ravens come flying down to whisper in your ear?”
“I told you,” Ingald said. “I listened to much talk, and finally something worth the hearing. Two officers, and one of them drunker than I – his fellow kept trying to quiet him, but he had too much wine in him to listen – talked of his marching orders. He was to go out the next morning with a patrol to scout for the best place to camp in a certain valley, and the legion would go out after him and wait for the legion from the fort that is downriver. It is beyond the Nicer by the third big bend of the river the Romans call Moenus, and if you go now, you can wait a little back from it until they come, and catch them with their camp unbuilt and with the second legion still on the road.”
The Centurions Page 39