by Jack Whyte
I had misread what might happen. The barge sank downward on an even keel, steadily and appallingly swiftly, so that we had no need to coax the horses over the side. The sea, instead, came up to meet them, gurgling between the planking of the deck, and before they knew it they were swimming strongly for the shore, carrying their normal passengers, although in a most abnormal fashion.
For the second time in two months I found myself immersed in the sea, out of my depth and weighed down by heavy armour that threatened to drag me to the bottom. I hung tightly to the horn of my saddle, trusting my horse's strength and attempting to kick my legs to relieve him as much as possible of my dead weight. I might as well have tried to fly! My leather- lined chain-mail coat and leggings, almost weightless in the saddle although uncomfortably bulky when walking, were lethally dangerous in water. Each futile thrust of my overburdened legs threatened to tear them from their sockets. I gave up and clutched with my hands and arms, my eyes tight shut, wrapping my right elbow tightly about the saddle horn and praying I had cinched the saddle securely enough to prevent it slipping sideways and drowning me. And then I felt Germanicus falter, then push himself erect, his feet solidly planted on the sandy bottom. Almost without pausing to adjust his balance, he began to push forward strongly, walking now, and I felt the pressure of the water against me change. A moment longer I clung to my saddle's safety, and then I let go with my elbow, feeling for the bottom with my own feet, but retaining a firm hand grip on the horn. I touched bottom immediately, my toes dragging through sand so that I had to brace myself to get my legs beneath me properly. Then, first slowly, but with increasing ease and speed, I walked towards the beach until the sand beneath my feet was dry. Only then did I fall to my knees.
As I knelt there, catching my breath, I became aware again, for the first time since it had happened, of the heavy ache in my balls caused by the blow from Dedalus's elbow, and then a gust of wind set me shivering with cold. I forced myself to my feet and looked about, seeing my men and horses all around me, most of the men already loosening the cinches and removing the heavy, waterlogged saddles from the beasts' backs. I saw our two herd- boys, too, one of them clutching the bridles of the matched chestnut roans that were my gift to Athol. The stallion wore Quintus's saddle on its back, but the mare was unencumbered. The other boy was running among the men and animals, gathering up and herding the extra horses, many of which were laden with bundles of our baggage and supplies, and I wondered briefly how much had been spoiled by sea water.
We were on a small, sheltered, steeply sloping, crescent-shaped beach with tree-covered arms sweeping out to sea on either side. The upper edge of the beach was less than the height of a man below the level of the surrounding ground. Beyond that rim, the land seemed to stretch level for a distance before sweeping sharply upward, covered completely with trees as far as the eye could reach before the low clouds obscured the view. I turned towards the sea behind me, and there was Logan's galley, riding calmly less than fifty paces distant, held in place by an occasional backward or forward sweep of a few oars on either side. I could see Logan himself up on the forward platform, gazing towards us; I waved to him and received an answering wave. I heard someone approaching me and turned to see Donuil walking head down, tugging at his clothing. He had already divested himself of his cuirass, leggings and helmet.
"Well," he said, peering down at a knot he was attempting to undo, "we're all safe ashore."
Behind him, I saw Dedalus and a couple of others lifting Quintus down from the back of the big white that had ferried him safely.
"How's Quintus, do you know?"
"Aye, he's as well as he can be, I suppose, but I wish Lucanus were with us. His leg is badly mangled. Bone right through the flesh. We'll have to set it and splint it, although I don't know where we'll find decent splints. There!" The knot at which he had been tugging came loose, and he stripped off his tunic, leaving himself naked except for a breech cloth. His huge chest was covered with goose bumps and his skin had a bluish tinge to it. "Now we have to light a fire."
"With what? You'd have to go up off the beach to find kindling and no one is strolling off alone until we're sure there's no enemy up there watching us and waiting for us to be stupid. That means you stay here until we are organized and that, my friend, is a direct command. Anyway, it would be futile—everything will be soaked from the fog." I glanced up towards the sky, surprised to see bright blue up there. The fog had vanished and the sun hung low in the sky above the horizon to the east. "It may take some time for the sun to develop enough heat to dry things out, so we will simply have to settle for being cold for a spell."
Now Donuil looked directly into my eyes, smiling. "Ach, Commander, you are in the hands of an Erseman now, in his homeland. We can always find dry moss, even in a downpour Besides, I wouldn't go alone. Let me take Ded and Rufio with me, and I'll have a fire going before you have time to grow another goose bump." He broke off and looked at the impenetrable trees surrounding the beach. "I wonder where we are exactly? Best we make no smoke until we know for certain. I'll fetch my fire-making tools and a knife, and then I'll get started. Can I go?"
I glowered at him, stifling the urge to laugh at his audacity, yet thinking that if there were enemies up there among the trees, we would be better off knowing now.
"Take four men, all of you armed, and be careful."
He grinned at me and nodded, then turned and loped away, heading back towards the pile of gear and armour he had cast off on landing. I was shivering with cold and knew that movement was what I needed. I turned and climbed the sloping beach, feeling the sand cling heavily to my sodden footwear as I trudged towards the overhang of a little cliff that rimmed the inlet. Once there, I leaned an elbow on the hard, grass-stubbled ground and peered towards the trees.
Behind me, I heard the sounds of someone approaching and I assumed it to be Donuil, but it was Rufio. Donuil followed behind him, leading Philip, Benedict, Paulus and Cyrus, all of them except Donuil still fully armoured. Almost naked, but carrying a sword and an axe, Donuil paused at the top of the bank, looking at me. "I would suggest you too strip off, Commander, before you freeze or rust solid. Then move around. The sun will warm you, and the quicker you get warm, the sooner you'll be prepared for any company that might come by." He disappeared into the fringe of trees, followed by the others in his party, and Rufio and I watched them go, then waited for any sound of conflict that might follow. None did, and I eventually decided we were alone. I hauled myself up onto the level ground and turned back to Rufio, pulling him up beside me.
"Donuil's right. Wet clothes and wet armour over cold bodies will cripple us. Better to warm ourselves first and then put on damp clothes again over the warmth if we have to." Quickly, with a minimum of effort, we helped each other remove our armour, each undoing the other's wet and slippery buckled straps, and then we undressed completely. The others on the beach, seeing where we were and what we were doing, began to move up to join us until only Dedalus was left, kneeling over the shape of Quintus. The horses, too, remained on the beach, most of them rolling in the sand, drying the sea water from their coats. They would have no way of climbing up to where we were until we created a causeway of some kind for them.
Donuil had returned without my noticing, and now I smelled the tang of smoke. I looked behind me and saw him crouched on his knees, blowing gently and lovingly on a tiny tendril of smoke. As I looked, he knelt up straighter and began to lay twigs carefully across the crackling grass and moss and bits of bark he had ignited, and the flames began to leap higher. The mere sight of it, and the promise it contained, put heart in all of us, and my sense of purpose found its feet again.
Less than an hour later, three large, roaring fires were ablaze, surrounded by steaming clothes and armour, all stretched out upon an amazing array of dead branches and sticks. Logan's galley had anchored alongside one of the protecting arms of the small bay, so that his warriors could land and form a perimeter about our small encampment
, standing guard against unwelcome visitors until our clothes and armour were dry and we were fit to take care of ourselves.
Benedict and I had set and splinted Quintus's broken leg between two narrow lengths of heavy planking, split and trimmed to size with a hand axe. I had been assisted by four of our biggest men, who had had trouble holding Quintus down until he passed out from the pain of the procedure. Now the worst was over, and his wounded leg was clean, washed out and scoured by the salt water. I had hopes that he would recover, and Logan, who had provided clean, dry cloth to bind the leg, had agreed to transport him on his galley to our destination. Logan's ship had also provided us with food, a porridge made of ground, salted oats, and pots in which to cook it, and we were all feeling much better and stronger. A team of ten men, some of them ours, most of them Logan's, all strong swimmers, had dived down to the sunken barge and prised loose a number of whole deck planks, bringing them ashore and lashing them together, after which they had returned and salvaged almost everything that we had lost. Before beginning that operation, however, two of them had retrieved the corpse of poor Metellus, towing him between them to the beach, and I set two more of my men to digging a grave for him, up on the solid land far from the water. While that was happening, another group of men had laboured to break down the lip of the bank at its weakest spot, creating a ramp for the horses to climb up from below. Most of the horses' grain supply was ruined, but there was enough grazing nearby to sustain them, and they themselves had been thoroughly dried and groomed. Within another hour, I estimated, we would be self-sufficient again: rested, well fed, dried out, re-armoured—although a little stiffly and uncomfortably—and remounted.
A single glance around having shown me that everything was happening as it should, I crossed to where I had left Publius Varrus's great bow leaning against a tree bole in the sunlight. It had been among my first concerns, after the welfare of my men. At the earliest opportunity, I had dried it carefully and coated it with a fresh covering of the light oil I always carried in a tiny bottle in my scrip, working the lubricant thoroughly into the surfaces with a soft, dry cloth. It was the same oil that Publius Varrus had always used in the bow's upkeep. I had been concerned about the effect of sea water on the old weapon's triple-layered composition—the smooth, deeply polished wood of its outer curve was backed by a layer of carefully grafted animal horn, which, in turn, was reinforced by a third layer of densely woven animal sinew, painstakingly plaited into a resilient strip, then stretched, glued into place and carefully dried and shrunk by a master craftsman now dead for more than a hundred years. I had been grateful to see no signs of deterioration in any part of the huge bow, although the rational part of me knew that its highly glossed finish was proof against a mere soaking, that the glue that bonded its layers together had endured for more than ten decades and showed no signs of deterioration, and that in any event, the weapon had not been immersed for long enough to have sustained damage. Satisfied that it was unharmed, I hefted it and turned it in my hand, checking the condition of the half-dozen bowstrings of woven gut I had wrapped tightly around the shaft, spiralling from one end to the other, to allow them to dry out, too. They were drying evenly; still too damp to use, since they would stretch when moist, but showing signs of hardening again.
A leather satchel inverted over a nearby bush had been filled with my supply of arrows, each of which Donuil had dried individually, to avoid rust on the heads, and laid out fiat while I took care of the bow. I could see traces of salt riming the feathers of the flights, but that would easily be dislodged between a finger and thumb. As I stood there, looking down at them, I heard a voice shout, "There they are!" and then a chorus of cheers told me that Feargus's galley had returned. As I looked, it came surging around the headland to the north, under full oars and sail, its prow slicing through the waves that had risen with the slight wind. Their lookout had seen us before we saw them, for the long, sleek vessel was turning sharply, cutting towards us, headed directly towards Logan's moored craft. It came impressively, swooping like a hawk and then slowing dramatically as the rowers backed water in unison and then allowed it to find its own way until it glided to a halt alongside Logan's vessel and was made fast. I saw Donuil striding along the beach towards the newcomers and I followed him, restraining myself against a ridiculous urge to run and catch up.
Feargus crossed into Logan's galley immediately, ignoring Donuil and me when we climbed aboard and greeted him. Only by a warning gesture of his upraised palm did he indicate his knowledge of our presence, but the peremptory gesture contained enough authority to inform both of us unmistakably that, irrespective of our rank elsewhere, our presence was unwanted until he had discussed the situation with his own subordinate. Donuil and I exchanged a glance and waited by the mast in the middle of the ship, out of earshot of the discussion taking place on the rear deck, until the little man snorted violently, pulled himself up to his full height, and walked to the edge of the deck. There he stared out towards the dark shape of the sunken barge for long moments, his hands clasped together at the small of his back.
I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders, thinking to myself that this might be the proper time to assert my own authority, but Donuil's voice murmured gently in my ear.
"Give him time, Merlyn. He takes his responsibilities very seriously, our Feargus, and there's no point in upsetting him more than he is already. In his mind we are in his charge, for the time being, in spite of what we ourselves might think, and we'll remain so until he has delivered us safely to my father's Hall, fulfilling his obligation. He will be seeing our misfortune as his own fault, for all that he was nowhere near when it occurred. As he will see it, his is the command, so his must be the fault. Of course, he's an Erse Outlander, and they're all strange, don't you agree?"
I spun to look at him and saw him smiling. Recognizing his wry allusion to my own attitude to command, I resigned myself to waiting until Feargus was ready to speak. Moments later he turned from his musing and made his way down the central spine of the ship towards us, beckoning Logan to come with him. He stopped just short of us, looking up at Donuil first and then at me.
"This is dangerous. We are in hostile territory, almost ten leagues south of where we ought to be, and by now we should be overrun and dead."
"At whose hands?" He did not even dignify my question with an acknowledgment, let alone an answer. His attention had now focused upon Donuil.
"Yourself will have to remain here, aboard my vessel. The others will have to take their chances on the land, unless they care to come on board and leave the animals here for the Wild Ones."
I straightened up at that. "The Wild Ones" was not what my ears heard but what my mind supplied as a rough translation. Years with Donuil had enabled me by this time to speak his tongue fluently, so close was it to the tongue of Uther's Celts, but now that we were among his own people again, he was conversing naturally with them at great speed and using words and phrases and entire constructions that were alien to me. The phrase I had translated as "The Wild Ones" was one of those. The disdain with which the words were uttered—forming an epithet rather than a name—carried overtones of implacable savagery and inhumanity.
"The Wild Ones?" I looked at Donuil for help, but he was already shaking his head at Feargus.
"No, Feargus, I will not leave my friends here, and they will not leave their horses."
"Don't talk like a fool, Mac Athol! Your father charged me with the guardianship of you, and you will obey me in this as you would himself. I will send half my men to escort your friends overland, out of this place, but your welfare is more important than all of them together."
Donuil turned to me. "What do you say? Will you leave the horses here and come by boat?"
"No." I did not even have to think about it. "How far are we from the nearest road?"
My question startled him. He looked at me and laughed. "From the nearest road?" He waved his hand out to sea. "The nearest road is back there in Britain,
Merlyn, beyond the sea! We have no roads in Eire, not in the sense you mean. We have tracks and paths, beaten by passage over the years, but there are no Roman roads linking towns and regions. This is a different land. It has never been conquered or colonized."
I blinked at him and then turned to Feargus, trying to hide my dismay. I had never envisioned an entire country without roads. "Who are these Wild Ones you mentioned, Feargus?" I used my own words, unable to recall the exact phrase that he had used.
He looked at me in disgust. " 'Wild Ones?' That's a pretty name for such as those. They are the creatures of the dark who infest this place. Savages is too weak a word for them. They are mindless and pitiless. They have no system: no king, no chiefs worthy of the name, no government of any kind, no clan structure."
"You mean they are outcasts? Alien?"
"Outcasts?" His bark of savage laughter was derisive. "Cast out of what? They have never belonged to anything except their own madnesses. Alien? That's a strange word I've never heard before, but if it means different then yes, they are alien, as different from ordinary people as the wolf is to a boy's pup. Different indeed. They are all blood mad and all they do is fight. They spend their lives looking for folk to kill, and when they cannot find them they kill each other. It is our law that any of them we find, we kill on sight."
I frowned. "Invariably? I find that hard to accept."
"That is your right." He stopped abruptly, and then his voice changed, becoming more pensive, less outraged. "Look you, Merlyn Britannicus, I know not how it is in your land, this Camulod, but my mind tells me, from the very look and presence of you, that it must be similar to here. Here in Eire we have always known that people cannot live together without laws. The laws of each clan may differ in substance, but each has laws, and rulers, kings and chiefs and family heads to make and defend those laws, and you would be surprised to know how little most of them differ, even among clans and groups set far apart. The people you so innocently called the Wild Ones have no laws. None at all. They know no loyalties, even among themselves. They live in savagery and they are completely merciless. Woe betide any man, woman or child unfortunate enough to encounter them alone."