Cregan was about to clear his throat and announce his presence when Magda spoke.
“I know you’re there, Cregan, so don’t start making odd noises.”
“Yes, Magda.” Cregan tried to sound humble.
“Don’t be so damn unctuous, you withered, vicious old snake. It’s hypocritical and doesn’t suit your character.”
“I suppose I was a bit drunk last night.”
“Stinking, piss in the corner, shit in the bed drunk,” she said. “Burn your hall!”
“Magda—” he began.
“Shut up. Burn that vermin-infested, filth-encrusted pile of shit and do it within the week or I’ll take a torch to the place myself.”
Cregan’s jaw muscles worked. “Magda—”
“But,” she continued inexorably, “what you want is in that pot over by the fire. Two whole loins of wild boar, cooked with apples, carrots, and bacon. The sun hasn’t touched the valley yet. She will be waiting. Honey and wine in the net bag beside the pot. Take those two. I personally cannot see what she sees in you, but I suppose even among the immortals flawed judgment is possible.”
Cregan thought on the loss of his balls, thought it might almost be worth it, but was discouraged when she said, “No, it wouldn’t. I’ll think up something special just for you. And remember, before the week is out, burn it.”
He had to climb a ways before he reached the well. It was an unprepossessing pool in the shadow of a slab of black rock guarded by an olive tree. The changeable shimmer of the gray-green leaves greeted the wall stone; pines were a lacy silhouette against the brightening sky. Rowan trees were thick around the well; heavy flower heads cast their strange scent into the air and fallen petals stippled the water at his feet.
The footpath over dove-pearled moss to the water was very narrow. When he reached the edge of the water, Cregan paused and placed the food, honey, and wine at the edge of the pool. He’d unstoppered the wine jug and made ready to pour the contents into the pool when someone said, “Just leave it. She will pick up the offerings when she gets ready.”
Cregan said, “Yiiiiiii!” and froze.
The youngster was standing on the other side of the well, next to the big, black rock that formed one side of the pool. Cregan was an old and deadly warrior. Most men found it impossible to get within thirty yards of him without his being aware of them. He was also reasonably sure he had been alone when he put the food down.
His next thought was that the youngster was a good-looking kid. He was rather simply dressed, wearing a mail shirt. Good quality, that shirt. Trousers, boots, and cross-gartered leather leggings. He had a black wool mantle edged with silver embroidery. Odd pattern—something about it made the hair on the back of Cregan’s neck stir. It looked like the letters of some alphabet, closely spaced and so tightly configured that but for the eyelash-thin separations between them, they might have formed a single, solid band.
The hide helmet was strange, also. It fit tightly and came to a point at the forehead, rather like a bird’s beak. The eyes, ruby-red, peered over the beak, and the body and wings formed the back and cheek pieces. They flared out to protect the sides of his face, and the first primaries curved around under the lad’s eyes.
Cregan’s skin crawled when the eyes, after studying him for a moment, closed and seemed to vanish into the helmet’s stark blackness.
“Good day to you, sir,” the youngster said. “She instructed me to present myself to you. I am Lolatia.”
“Are you now?” Cregan asked. He noticed a slight wheeze in his voice.
“Yes,” was the reply.
“I can’t pronounce that name, and it has been whole centuries—even before the Romans—since that dialect was spoken. The only reason I know it at all is because some of the oldest prayers are written in it, and those prayers were already old when Hannibal crossed our land on his way to the Alps. He paid us to divine his fate and sacrifice among our trees for the welfare of himself and his men. ’Tis said near a thousand of our young men joined him—the Romans were making pests of themselves then. Besides, I reckon the pay was good. Only seven or eight of those who joined him ever returned. No one can or will say that name now. The language is dead. The closest I can come to it is Lancelot.”
“Very impressive. Lanzalet.”
“That’s close enough.” Cregan sighed.
The boy went carefully to one knee, placed his hand on his heart, and asked, “May I join your company?”
“Did She ask you to come see me?”
“Yes. And She says, ‘Don’t dump the wine into the pool. It’s hell getting it separated from the water. Sometimes it ruins the taste.’ ”
“We wouldn’t want to do that, would we?” Cregan said, giving the pool an apprehensive glance. “But doesn’t She worry someone will steal it?”
“She has ways of dealing with that.”
“Yes,” Cregan said. “I imagine She does. So, fair sir, rise and join my company.”
“Thank you.” Lancelot/Black Leg rose and followed Cregan into the valley.
On the way down, Cregan told him, “They will want to test you. You don’t ride with me unless you’re tough. Are you tough?”
“I don’t know,” Black Leg said.
“Modest, too,” Cregan commented, then sighed again.
“Will they all jump me at once?”
“No, that’s not allowed.”
“Oh. Fine, then everything should be all right.”
“Boy, there are over forty men who are my companions.”
“Oh,” Black Leg said. “How many at a time?”
“Only one. That’s the rule. It doesn’t matter if you’re defeated eventually, just so you give a good account of yourself. No weapons allowed.”
“That’s all right. I haven’t any,” Black Leg told him. “Phew! What’s that?”
Cregan gave a long-suffering groan and muttered, “I suppose our little drinking hall might be getting a bit overripe this spring.”
“I’ll get used to it,” Black Leg said.
They arrived at the courtyard in front of the roundhouse door. It was big, with low stone walls surmounted by a steep, cone-shaped roof. Last summer’s bread wheat had been grown on the roof, and the scraggy stalks made the thatch look as though it had hair on it.
The courtyard held a fire pit for cooking and was floored by flat-sided, wooden cobbles. Cregan handed Black Leg a horn and said, “Blow.”
Black Leg pulled off his mantle and threw it over Cregan’s arm as he took the horn with his right hand. Cregan stretched out his other hand for Black Leg’s helmet, but it took wing and flew into a tree.
Cregan’s whole body jerked, and he muttered, “Yes, you’re a friend of Hers all right. I wish they’d seen that. They wouldn’t be so eager. But let’s have at it.”
Black Leg blew. The horn call echoed among the rocky hills. Birds flew up from the trees all around, and everywhere people began running toward the warrior’s house. Some action was in the offing. Men began to stream out of the doors, some half-naked, some completely so, most rubbing their eyes and looking annoyed.
“What! Who is this child?” a big redhead yelled, gesturing at Black Leg. “Fool that you are, Cregan, what cradle have you robbed? You, boy! Go home and grow another inch or two before you return.”
Black Leg was nervous. He had never faced anything like this before. He had wrestled Maeniel every day until his father could no longer pin him. None of the young men in the village had been able to give him an interesting fight with any weapon. Even barehanded he was deadly against a fully armed man. Maeniel had seen to that. But all that had been mere practice. This looked to be a real engagement. He was nervous, palms, armpits wet.
He dropped down and dusted his hands with ash from the fire pit, then rose, took his stance, feet slightly apart, hands at his sides. No one was near his back; his wolf senses would have informed him if even a cat moved behind him.
Yes, there were at least forty men standing outside
the hall, and spectators from all the nearby dwellings were crowding in around the wooden block courtyard, more and more arriving every minute. God, he was frightened and wondering if he were going to embarrass himself.
“Gentlemen,” he said softly, “I haven’t broken my fast today, and I’m hungry. Would it be possible to expedite matters?”
They loved it.
“Expedite matters! Oh, my God,” the redhead roared. “By all means, let’s expedite matters.”
And he came flying toward Black Leg at a dead run.
Black Leg stood his ground to the last second while noting the redhead was going for a bear hug. Then he pivoted to one side so quickly that it had to be seen to be believed, and broke the redhead’s arm.
Red landed on his back, clutching his broken arm at the wrist to support it. Then he rolled, rose, and backed away, a look of astonished respect in his eyes.
Bull, the next, was on the way. Black Leg positioned himself carefully. His boot toe slammed into this one’s breadbasket, and as he doubled over, a second kick got him in the backside. It was downhill from the courtyard, and he could be heard crashing through the undergrowth for some distance.
Somehow, the third landed in a tree. No one was sure just what Black Leg did, but it seemed effective.
The fourth was naked. It may be stated here, no one tried that again. The fifth tried to butt him and was redirected into a tree.
The sixth (by then they were learning) circled him, trying to get Black Leg’s back to a friend of his. Black Leg broke his jaw with a knee and as his opponent was falling, turned, knocked the friend’s legs from under him with a sweeping kick, then got him by the arm and dislocated his shoulder.
Cregan stepped in, sword glittering like a new icicle. “A foul ends it,” he said. “If none can take him one-on-one, then he has bested you.”
Black Leg stood still. He was a bit mussed, but he wasn’t even breathing hard.
“I am at your disposal for as long as you like,” Black Leg said in a very formal manner.
Cregan gave a nasty laugh, then slapped him on the back. “I can’t afford any more wounded. Come. Let’s eat breakfast.”
They were a hellacious crew. But they showed Black Leg a lot of respect. Even Red, whom it transpired had expected the very trick Black Leg/Lancelot worked, but even armed with foreknowledge hadn’t been able to stop him. Black Leg had simply been too quick and too strong for him.
Breakfast was sausage, bacon, ham, porridge, and bread. Black Leg, having seen and smelled the men’s house, had determined not to sleep in it. He didn’t have to. That very night Cregan sent him out with Red (his arm in a sling) to learn the countryside and reconnoiter.
“They are going to burn it,” Red told him.
“Thank God,” Black Leg said fervently.
Red thought this hilariously funny, and laughed all the way down into a very wild valley dominated by a gorge. Black Leg looked back after they had covered a few miles and noted he could see nothing of the dwellings belonging to Cregan’s people. Not even smoke troubled the sky near the mountains.
“Badugae? Is that what you are called?” Black Leg asked Red.
Red shrugged. “So Cregan says. I don’t know. Like so many of the rest, I’m a runaway colonus from the Champagne, a wide, fertile country near the Seine River. The Roman villas there belong to the Franks. Or rather, I should say those are the men my master paid taxes to. Barbarians who call themselves Franks. My master’s daughter married one, a Frank, and now they don’t collect so many taxes from my master.”
Black Leg felt uncomfortable. “What was his name?”
Red grinned. “My master? Or my ex-master, you mean?”
Black Leg blushed. He knew about slaves and the coloni bound to the land in the south of England, France, and all over Italy. But he had never met one before and wasn’t sure how to ask him about his life.
“Yes,” Black Leg answered.
“I don’t know, except that he was a great man and his Frankish and Hunnish guards did what they liked to any who offended him. So we feared them greatly. Him, too.”
“What happened that you came here?” Black Leg asked.
Red looked into the distance. They were traveling downhill through a mixed oak and scrub pine forest.
“We are coming to a low place. I have seen pig there.” He handed Black Leg his spear. “If we startle one, I want to know what you can do with this.”
The spear was long, narrow at the tip with pronounced flanges that formed a deadly barb.
“Won’t get it out easily,” Black Leg said.
Red laughed. “That’s the idea.”
“He will turn on you,” Black Leg said.
“Ah, and haven’t I the greatest warrior in the world with me?” Red asked.
Black Leg knew of the pigs before they came to them. The wind was blowing his way. He knew how many: two boars and three sows, one with an almost grown litter. He stretched out his arm to stop Red, then put his finger to his lips. The wallow was just ahead.
He picked up an oak knot fallen from the tree above. He threw it in the direction of the wallow, where it landed with a satisfactory splat. Pigs exploded in every direction, and Black Leg’s arm lofted the spear before he had time to choose. As it flew, Black Leg wondered if the heavy spear would fall before it struck the one (a young boar) he’d managed to pick.
It didn’t, but broke at the precise moment the pig caught up with it, and drove itself through the animal’s body, pinning it to the earth.
Red laughed again. “Young one, you’re a wonder.”
“No,” Black Leg said. “I’ve done a lot of hunting. We’ll eat a good supper tonight.”
The further down the mountain they walked, the more the forest thinned out. They crossed the remnants of a Roman road.
“It used to follow the river to a wooden bridge downstream,” Red explained. “But last year a rock slide wiped out the lower end and the bridge. So it goes nowhere now. Just as well. The thing made Cregan nervous. Those roads, you know, boy, they were built so you could put a legion somewhere fast. Now this road is too broken to follow, even if there were any legions left to travel it.”
A few minutes later, they reached the river gorge and then stood surveying the countryside.
“Nobody knows how long Cregan’s people have lived here. They fought Caesar and he didn’t think it was worth the trouble to dig them out of their hills. Every spring they drive their flocks to the high meadow, and in autumn they come down, slaughter the surplus animals, and live on meat, milk, cheese, butter, and barley the women raise around the farms they cut out of the forest. We try to help our brothers. If they raise the standard of revolt against the Roman landowners and their barbarian troops, we go and fight beside them as long as we can, and we welcome those who have to flee the cruelty of tax gatherers. Or the slavers who buy up the surplus young men and women from the great Roman landlords and ship them to the slave markets in the east.
“There are a lot of us. No one knows how many. We make no promises and take no oath but to assist each other whenever we can and to hang on and outlast the great landowners. The Roman officials, the barbarian mercenaries who murder, enslave, and steal all that is worthwhile in life from the people of the earth. Yes, Bagudae we are, and if enough of us last long enough who remember freedom, we will remake the earth. We can but try. Now, see there are no humans nearby while I build a fire and cook the pig.”
Black Leg’s head was spinning. Too much, too quickly, he thought. He left Red at the edge of the bluff over the river.
A few miles downstream, he saw a practical place to ford the river. He went wolf and left his weapons (such as they were) and his clothes in a tree. The river crossing turned out to be only a brief swim. But he had to cover a few more miles before he found a shallow place to climb the bluff.
Then he swung out in a wide circle to investigate the countryside. It was wild and beautiful, but being brought up among farmers, he concluded it wasn
’t terribly fertile and the very sedentary Romans hadn’t tried very hard to hang on to it. Yes, these people perforce clung to their old way of life, one the Romans had difficulty profiting from. This had been, in his father’s eyes, the reason for the failure of the empire in the west: the Roman inability to comprehend or assist any other way of life than that revolving around the military. You live by the sword, you die by the sword; and the Romans had remained relentlessly military until the very end.
The tax base had eroded. Barbarians poured in over the frontier; the limes, a chain of forts, that once guaranteed order decayed. Still the whole Roman focus remained on the legions, even if said legions were now composed of inefficient and rapacious barbarians who fought to the death over the empty title of emperor at least once, usually twice, every generation.
Black Leg found some evidence that a Roman villa of considerable size had existed here once. But it was long gone now. Farms belonging to its tenants were piles of weed-covered rubble, and their fields so long overgrown that their boundaries could no longer be traced. He found wolf, bear, boar, and cat sign, but no indication that humans inhabited these scrub forest lands at all.
He trotted out on a rock spur that allowed him a view of the entire countryside. Behind him were the foothills of a mountain range that towered blue-white and fragile-seeming in the distance. To his left, the river gorge flowed out of the mountains, the bluffs falling lower and lower until they were gone and it ran unobstructed along the plain. Ahead the forest thinned out also.
Black Leg sat, lifted one hind leg, and prepared to scratch behind one ear. Then he realized, when his hind foot claws met a hard surface, that he was still wearing his helmet. When he changed shape, it had also changed to conform to the shape of his head.
The Raven Warrior Page 28