“You risked death to tell me this, Ingald?”
“Aye. I told you, I do not want my people slaughtered.”
“Surprise will give us the advantage,” the chieftain of the Anglii said.
Hoskuld shook his head dubiously. “I have seen this one before. I would think long before I let him tell me the best road to a battle.”
“You are wise,” Fiorgyn said from behind them. “I have known this man longer than any of you, and I say he lies. I don’t know why, but he lies!”
“I think the reason is obvious,” Kari said. He looked at Ranvig. “You said he would go to the Romans.”
“I went to the Roman’s town to live!” Ingald snapped. “You left me little enough chance to do that elsewhere!”
“An exile has the right to live where he can,” another chieftain nodded. “And he risked everything to come back.”
“I doubt he had much choice,” Nyall said. “Those who serve Rome find it dangerous to refuse their work.”
“You can’t know that,” the chieftain said. He was the Varini’s lord, the least willing of the allies.
Nyall ignored him. He looked Ingald up and down, and Ingald half stood, as if to back away. “You’re between two pits, Ingald. The commander of the Eagles and me. But you should have played him false, not me. You were seen, Ingald, seen in the gates of the fort on the river, selling out your own kind to a Roman.”
Ingald’s face paled, but he steadied himself. “You lie! You have no spies in the Roman fort.”
Nyall smiled, a thin wolf-smile with no charm in it. “It seems I have. One who saw your thief’s face at Jorunnshold. She’s a Roman thrall now, and she remembers you well, Ingald.”
Ingald recalled the hooves that had cantered away from him in the dark, and he clenched his teeth. “It’s a lie,” he said again. “No one could have got clear of the Romans to bring you this tale.”
“You claim to have done so,” Nyall pointed out. “And that I believe even less. She sent me a message with Beorn the trader, who travels free with the Romans’ blessing.”
The others were watching tensely now, eyes moving from Nyall to Ingald and back. Too much rode on this, on who lied – Ingald, Nyall, or a captured thrall.
“She’s the one who plays you false!” Ingald said desperately. “If she’s the Romans’ thrall, she will have done as she was bid.”
“By sending a message four days before the Romans knew you had gone?” Nyall inquired. There was a murmur of talk among the other chieftains, and the Companions quietly laid their hands on their sword hilts. Nyall’s voice was calm… quiet, implacable, the voice of death.
Ingald was backing away, half crouched. There was a white flash in the dawn sun and he had a sword in his hand. Kari and Ranvig were on their feet, and the two men who had brought Ingald in came running from their post at the gates. Ingald looked around him, trapped. If he could kill Nyall, the other chieftains might save him from the Companions long enough to hear him out. Ingald lunged at Nyall.
Nyall had his own sword out and he knocked Ingald’s blade away with it. “Get back!” he shouted to the others. “This is between us now!”
The other chieftains moved a prudent distance away, but the Companions stood on the steps, twitching like a leashed hound pack.
“Let be,” Fiorgyn whispered, as Kari shifted his feet. “He won’t thank you if you disobey him.”
“If Ingald kills him, the war is over before it’s started,” Kari said desperately. “If he’s even wounded—”
“Look at them,” Fiorgyn said. She gestured to the semicircle where the eight northern chieftains stood, watching silently, considering… “If you fall on Ingald in a pack, he’ll lose them. And then where’s your war?”
“She’s right,” Ranvig said unexpectedly. “Kari, let be.”
None of them mentioned any other reason for putting another sword in, such as love. A man’s fight was a man’s honor; not even a spear brother or a wife would interfere. But they stood together, the three of them, each reaching out a hand to the others, while Nyall and Ingald circled each other and the sun came full up over the hold.
Ingald was a fighter, a vicious one; he had fear on his side, and the desperation of a man who has nothing to lose. He came in again hard, dodging out of the way of Nyall’s swinging blade, and slashed at Nyall’s neck.
Neither man had a shield. Nyall flung himself back, away from the downstroke, and rolled. He came up again in a crouch and his sword sliced in an arc at Ingald’s legs, then flew up fast to parry as Ingald struck and moved in. They were too close now for a long sword to maneuver, and they drew their daggers almost together, each with his eyes on the eyes of the other.
The sound of running feet and a murmur of voices welled around them, as every person in the hold came thrusting into the circle of bodies that ringed the struggle. They watched with caught breath when they saw that it was the chieftain fighting. Morgian came through the doors of the hall and stopped, leaning against the doorframe with her hand to her mouth.
Nyall and Ingald fought on in that silent circle, oblivious of anything but this dance of death. Nyall thrust Ingald’s dagger away with the hilt end of his sword and stabbed with his own dagger, left-handed. They were dressed for cold riding, and Nyall’s cloak swirled around him. He could feel it tangling his dagger hand, making the blow awkward. Ingald pulled back with a yelp of pain and only a shallow gash across his chest.
It was enough to throw Ingald off for one split second, and Nyall swung his sword, driving him back farther. He jumped back himself then, and before Ingald could close in, Nyall had ripped the pin from his cloak and caught the end in his left hand, wrapped around his dagger hilt.
Ingald moved warily, eyes wavering between that snaking cloak and Nyall’s cold eyes. He could feel the warm blood seeping down his shirtfront.
“What did the commander of the Eagles offer you?” Nyall whispered. “Argunn’s burned lands – or mine?”
“What I was robbed of!” Ingald snarled. His face was taut now, alive, the expressionless mask stripped, away. “It’s little matter to me which robbers I make truce with! Semnone wolves are cut from the same hide as the Roman-kind!”
“And neither runs tame to your hand, do they? A dog should think of that, Ingald, before he barks at a wolf!” Nyall’s sword flashed down, a shining, deadly sweep, and as Ingald raised his to block it, the cloak whipped out between his feet, catching him across his right ankle as the left foot came down on the end of it.
Ingald stumbled, and as he went down he saw the pale fire of a sword blade with the sun on it. It took him through the throat.
Nyall pulled the blade free and flung it down in the dirt, while Ingald’s body lay and twitched in the blood that poured from his mouth and throat and soaked through the pale braids into the ground.
Nyall stood looking down until the blood ceased to flow and the body quivered and was still. He turned to the two men who had brought Ingald in. “Take him out again and bury him,” he said. They lifted the body, and he added softly, “Tell Valgerd the priest to come and make the prayers over him.”
There was a shifting of the crowd as if they’d awakened suddenly and begun to look about them. Morgian let her breath out in a half-sob and her women clustered about her. Fiorgyn, Kari, and Ranvig unclenched their hands from each other’s and exchanged glances shakily.
Arni heaved himself to his feet. He looked down to find his hands shaking and felt older by a year. The eight allied chieftains hadn’t moved, but there was low-voiced talk snapping back and forth among them. Something more was going to come of this killing.
Nyall murmured some vague apology to the chieftains and stumbled into the hall, then out through the back passage to the storeroom. He found a vat of water and stuck his head in it, coming up coughing and choking.
He sat down hard on a sack of grain and leaned back against the wall, clenching and unclenching his hands until the faraway feel that clouded everything began t
o fade. The storeroom came slowly into focus: stacked boxes and sacks on the dirt floor, and strings of dried herbs and onions turning slowly in a light breath of air. Last year’s onions, shriveled, and sprouting green tops. A mouse scuttled out, sat up on its haunches at the sight of him, and dived under a sack in the corner. Nyall stood up and took a deep breath, then went slowly back out to whatever was going to happen now.
In the courtyard, Kari, his dark half-Roman face standing out like some exotic plant in a cabbage row, was talking vehemently with the northern chieftains. They appeared to have split into two camps: Hoskuld of the Suarines and three others to one side, the chieftain of the Varini and two more to the other, with the lord of the Anglii wavering somewhere in the middle.
“You have no cause for oath-breaking,” Hoskuld was saying stubbornly. “It was a clean death and long in the coming, and we know more than we did before.”
“And so do the Romans,” the chieftain of the Varini said. “I say that changes things. It was Nyall Sigmundson’s own man who sold us to the Romans. Let Nyall Sigmundson pay the price.”
Damn you, Nyall thought. You’ve only been looking for a reason to back off. Break your oath and you’ll pay for it. “Undoubtedly the Romans know our numbers now,” he said aloud, trying to keep his temper. “But we know that they do, which is none so bad. And we know where they’ll wait for us, which is better.”
“If he lied to us, as you say,” the chieftain of the Anglii said, “then the Romans are readying a trap.”
“Certainly it’s a trap. But still, we know where they’re waiting. In fact, I think I know exactly. We rode over that country all last year.”
“Much confidence!” the Varini chieftain snapped, and the two chieftains beside him added their voices in agreement. “You would stake your life on it?”
“I’m going to,” Nyall said. “We will change our road and come through the pass above the Moenus – behind them.”
“No!” the Varini said. “They will have their full strength there, and it will likely be more than we counted on since your man has told them our own numbers!”
“You seem to be forgetting,” Nyall said menacingly, “that you are oath-sworn, you and all the rest, to this hosting. And that I command!”
“There was no oath to overlook treachery!”
“Whose treachery? Ingald’s – who is dead by my hand – or yours?”
The chieftain of the Varini turned on him, face furious and eyes oddly aloof. “You insult me. And that dead fool’s talk has changed things. I withdraw my oath,” he said deliberately. He took a step backward, and the two chieftains beside him moved with him. They were the three northernmost of the allies. Nyall knew what they were thinking: if Rome’s army was greater than he had thought, and ready for them, and the German army grew somewhat smaller… why then, Rome would win. It was very simple. And there would be no more Semnones, which was maybe better to these chiefs than there being no Rome, which had never come as far as the northern lands.
It was too late to renegotiate, to spend another week on threats and promises. Nyall looked the three over coldly. “Go back to your northern holds and sit in them. And if the gods have not rotted you for being forsworn, then when we have beaten the Romans for you without your help, we will come and kill you ourselves.”
“If you live.”
“You had better pray that I do not.” He turned to the chieftain of the Anglii. “And you? Do you break faith, too? I want to be very clear whose holds we will burn, my war band and I, when we are done.”
The Anglii lord wavered, and the Varini chieftain shot him a contemptuous look. But of the four northern tribes, it was the Anglii who lay closest to the five southern ones… closest to vengeance. And the Semnones might win, which would give him the chance to expand his lands greatly when Nyall took an avenging war band north. He thought long and hard. “The Anglii stay,” he said finally.
The three defecting chieftains turned and marched through the gates, and after a while their wagons and men could be seen moving away from the rest, their outriders headed for the northern track that ran up the valley. Nyall let them go unmolested; there was no sense in losing more men now. If the gods had not marked them for death as oath-breakers, it could be taken care of by mortal hands when the Romans had been killed.
“I don’t much like leaving them loose in our land with our backs turned,” Kari said dubiously.
“They have eaten at my table,” Nyall said. “They won’t attack our women. Not until they’re sure we won’t come back. All the same, we’ll give them three days to be sure. Track them.”
Kari nodded and signaled to two of the Companions. Ranvig, who had come up behind them, flashed Nyall a crooked smile with real amusement in it. “And in the meantime, we give the Romans a little more time to settle in and wait, and maybe begin to get edgy?”
Nyall smiled back for the first time that day, some of the harsh lines leaving his face. “It is in my mind that we have made the best of the exchange. I am rid of three unstable tribes, and now I know where the Roman wolf is laired. Ingald served me in the end, after all.”
“And how do we flush the wolf?”
“We go in the rear door and put a spear through his back.”
Kari nodded and twisted the gold ring he wore. It had been his Roman mother’s, and her father had given it to her to play with on the day his legion had gone to talk peace with Armin of the Cherusci, and had not come back.
XXI The Battle on the Hill
Correus sat on a camp bed, polishing his greaves. They didn’t need polishing, but he had to have something to do. The army was split into two camps, tucked away in the hills above the Moenus River at the eastern end where the water tumbled down from the high ground into the winding valley. The Twenty-second Legion Primigenia from Moguntiacum lurked across the river in the second camp, and the Vindonissa Legion had been left to patrol the Rhenus. All were fully up to strength, with heavy cavalry auxiliaries attached. Here they sat, waiting, and Correus found he had more time to think than he wanted.
His life had made a sudden unsettling shift with the introduction of Freita into it. Unsettling, but right. The gods took a hand most unexpectedly, it seemed. And then, just when all he really wanted to do was lie with Freita and make love, he had to pick up a pilum and march off to defend the Emperor’s frontier for him. And if the legate’s tame German didn’t succeed in the plan to trap Nyall, very likely Correus would get killed doing it. Then Freita, who didn’t want to go back to her people now, might have to go, and possibly carrying a half-Roman baby. Correus knew enough about the Germans by now to know that would be a disgrace. Damn! He resisted the temptation to fling the greave across the tent, and got up and began to pace, though there wasn’t much room for it. Junior centurions’ tents were not very spacious.
Too many farewells, he thought, too soon, and too quickly made. Flavius’s pathetic good-bye to Aemelia, with his heart in his eyes and the marriage not yet settled. Paulinus’s farewell to Julia… a happy one that, and Paulinus was in Argentoratum, not out here waiting to fight a war. But Correus had deduced enough about his friend’s non-literary activities to know that Lucius Paulinus would probably never have a safe day in his life. And then his own leave-taking from Freita…
* * *
They had been given only a few weeks, and they had used every spare moment urgently, desperately, as if it were all they would ever have. Freita had been waiting for him when he got there on the next night after his homecoming, and his heart had turned over at the mere sight of her. Julius was again conspicuously absent, and Freita, when questioned, said primly that she had sent him to sleep in the stables.
Correus laughed. “We need a bigger house.” He knelt down by her chair and rubbed his face against her hair. “My heart, are you glad to see me?”
She put her arms around him. “Heart of my life, yes,” she whispered. Her hands shook slightly, and he wondered if it was entirely for him. There was something troubled i
n her voice.
“Is there something wrong?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He pulled her closer. That last interview with the German spy had left a bad taste in his mouth, and he wanted to wash it away. They held one another for a long moment, stroking each other gently. He felt her shake again, and this time he was almost sure it was for him. He stood up, looking down into her eyes, and held out his hands.
“Come.”
On the bed she rolled into his arms as if she had always belonged there, and they began to play, exploring each other by the light of the lamp.
“Don’t do that,” she giggled.
“Why? Doesn’t it feel good? It’s supposed to.”
“Yes, oh yes… But it makes me feel wanton as a wild sow.”
“That’s a good way to feel.”
“Yes. Do it again.”
“There. Now touch me. See, I am not so frightening.”
“No, not now. How does it feel?”
“Like Paradise.” He groaned. “Dear gods, I want you so.”
“I am yours.”
Her legs slipped apart for him, and he caressed the soft pale hair and the insides of her thighs, marveling at the whiteness of her skin and the beauty of her body. Her full breasts were pink-tipped in the lamplight and he ran his hands across them lightly for the pleasure of feeling the nipples tighten at his touch. He brushed his lips across the white skin of her belly and she looked up at him shyly.
“I have heard of a thing that Roman ladies sometimes do,” she whispered, “and I thought… if it would give you pleasure… that I would try it.”
“Anything you do would give me pleasure.”
She slid down on the bed until her head was in his lap, and gently, experimentally, she took him in her mouth.
“Oh, sweet Mother!” he whispered.
He knotted his hands in her hair and lay there, letting that wonderful feeling wash over him. After a while he guided her gently away and she tipped her head back to smile up at him, touching him with the tip of her forefinger.
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