by Jack Whyte
We had to assume, as Rufio had, that all strangers were enemies, so my first concern was for the cart holding Quintus and the women. I ordered Liam Twistback, who held the reins, to get the vehicle off the road and out of sight among the trees as quickly as he could. Then, while Liam was looking around for a place to leave the road safely, I turned my attention to our extra horses, setting Cyrus, Paulus and Philip to assist our two trainees in leading the animals from the road, too, spreading their exit points as widely apart as possible in a short time to obscure the evidence of their exit. That done, I turned back to hiding the cart. It was a slow and awkward process, hampered by the poor condition of the cart itself and its high, narrow wheels, which sank alarmingly into the soft ground, leaving deep tracks. I assigned three men to that task, too: Benedict to lead the horse forward by its halter, steadying it and eliminating the need for a driver, and Falvo and Paulus to walk alongside, one by each wheel, to help maneuvre it among the bushes and obstructions that littered the ground. I followed behind it with Dedalus, both of us working to conceal the signs of its passage.
As we laboured, Ded talked. He was convinced, he told me, that the men approaching were the same who had attacked us in the town the day the great bireme had sailed away. They had been left behind for some purpose, he observed, reminding me that I myself had feared they would range farther afield in their search for booty, once the town had been stripped bare of marble. Already there was not much left to plunder and they had gone scouting for a new supply, perhaps even as far as Aquae Sulis. Now they would be returning.
As soon as the cart was safely out of sight of the road, I shrugged out of my heavy, black cloak, with its conspicuous white lining, and left it on the cart. Then I strung my bow and hung a quiver of arrows from my shoulder and Ded and I returned alone to find a spot from which we might watch whoever passed without being seen ourselves. As we drew close to the road Ded stopped and looked up, pointing to the tree that soared above us, an ancient, massive oak hung with dense clumps of mistletoe. He jabbed upward with his thumb, raising an eyebrow in silent query. The sight of the mistletoe, and the idea of climbing up there, immediately took me back across a gulf of thirty years to the day I had fled for my life, aged six, from a Saxon pursuer and found salvation in the person of Flavius, my father's friend and Junior Legate. By the time I had recalled the incident, Ded was already far above me, climbing strongly, apparently unaware that he was wearing heavy, bronze armour. I slung my bow across my shoulders and followed him, pulling myself up surprisingly easily to where we each found a sturdy crotch among the upper limbs and settled down to wait, with an unobstructed view of a clear stretch of road no less than thirty paces long.
For a long time after our ascent nothing happened and the forest settled into utter stillness around us, broken only occasionally by the sounds of birds. Then, gradually, noise began to swell in the distance, first the sound of raised voices, laughing and shouting, and then the creak of laden wagons and the clop of hooves. I glanced at Ded, who seemed to have better hearing than I.
"What language is that?"
He shrugged, making a face. "Nothing I've heard before. Might be Saxon."
"Saxons? Here in the west?" I shook my head, still listening to the alien sounds. "They're a long way from home, if they're Saxons. . ."
"Well, we'll see them any moment now." Almost as he murmured the words, the men leading the party came into view, four of them, all heavily armed and armoured, arguing hotly. They trudged by our vantage point without looking left or right, two of them looking down at their own feet and the other two glaring at each other as they exchanged angry-sounding words, although there seemed to be no acrimony in their posture.
I had heard Ded's hissed intake of breath at his first sight of the strangers, but his surprise had been no less than my own. These men were like no others I had ever seen, but I had recognized the bows they carried instantly as being related to the one I bore. Despite their smaller size, about half the length of my own great weapon, I knew from their elaborate, double-curved form that they were made of laminated layers of different materials, and that marked their bearers in my mind as Africans, since it was out of Africa that the bow I held now had come, brought to Publius Varrus's grandfather by some returning legionary a hundred years ago or more. They were swarthy of skin, these men, dark brown, with coal-black beards, and their dress and armour were exotic. Their necks and shoulders were protected from behind by thick, armoured leather flaps suspended from the bottoms of the shining metal helmets they all wore—helmets uniform in shape and design, more conical than domed and each crowned with a high, sharp spike. They wore heavy cuirasses, front and rear, of the same shining silvery metal fastened over mid-thigh-length tunics of ringed mail. Their legs, seemingly unarmoured, were covered by long, loose black trousers, and from each man's waist, slung low and almost dragging on the ground, hung a long, heavy sword with a curved blade. I had never seen metal curved in such a fashion and the sight of them told me that these people, whoever they were, were master smiths, far more skilled in ironwork than any in our land.
Before the first four had passed from our sight the main body of the group began to appear from the screen of leaves that had masked them from us. We counted thirty-eight men, twelve of them pulling an enormous, four- wheeled cart filled with a chaos of goods, among which I saw a heavy wooden table and two high-backed Roman chairs.
We watched them pass, holding our breath when one fellow left the road to defecate almost beneath us, within two paces of the rutted tracks of Liam's cart, which, from our elevation, stood out like fresh-burned brands upon the ground. Fortunately, the fellow squatted with his back to them and concentrated solely on his task, wasting no time afterwards, but running to catch up with his companions who had passed from sight. We waited again, still silent, until the sounds of their withdrawal had faded, then Ded hawked and spat.
"I almost emptied my bowels before that whoreson did, when I saw where he was headed."
" They're Africans," I said. He glanced at me, surprised enough to stop himself in the act of swinging his legs up onto the bough on which he had been sitting.
"Aye," he said, musingly, after a pause. "Perhaps. . . North Africa could have spawned them, but I'm more inclined to think them Barbarians."
I grinned at him, feeling light-headed with the relief of danger safely past. "Of course they're barbarians, Ded. They're not civilized like us."
"No, that's not what I meant. I mean they're Barbarians, the Berbers, from the far end of the Middle Sea, across from Africa. I've been there, seen them in action, ran from them once, when several of their accursed galleys almost caught us alone, close by the Pillars of Hercules You think Athol's Eirish galleys are fearsome? You'd never think so again if you once saw some of those Berber galleys come slashing towards you on a bright blue sea. There's a sight to loosen your bowels! They're fast, and sleek, and built exactly to their purpose, crammed with savage, fighting predators, and all their rowers are slaves, chained to the oars. The sight of them has emptied the bladders of bigger and braver men than you and me . . ." He stopped abruptly, peering down between his knees to the ground far below. "Come on, we'd best get down and on the road again."
As we climbed down, I questioned him further. "I didn't know you had been that far away from Britain, Ded, to the Middle Sea. My father never served in that area, did he?"
"Nah," he grunted, hanging from one thick branch while seeking another with his feet. "I was only a tad at the time, travelling with my father. He took me with him when he went to Constantinople." He found his footing, the last difficulty between us and the ground, and from that point on our descent was swift and he talked non-stop, his eyes moving constantly as he sought his next hand- or foothold. "I didn't join your father until years after that and even then, I was still but a lad. Hadn't even begun to grow a beard. Your father was my first Imperial Commander, and my last. I was serving as a runner to him when he was betrayed. I brought him the wor
d of danger just ahead of the killing squad Honorius had sent to arrest him. Consequently, I was one of the ten he took with him when he escaped. The rest of our contingent stayed behind to give him breathing space. God knows what happened to them, but if they weren't killed fighting whoever had been sent, they'd have been executed out of hand for simply being Picus's men."
We reached the ground, he slightly ahead of me, and paused to sweep the dirt and bark from our dress. "Anyway," Ded concluded, "Berbers makes sense. They came on that big bireme, which they probably captured in some naval fight. Their own galleys, fearsome as they are, are too light and small to survive out of the Middle Sea, and far too small to pull the kind of cargo they're dealing in now."
We joined the others, then made shift to haul the cart back out onto the road. We were eight miles and more from our destination and the sun had begun to sink already, lengthening our shadows on the road. Rufio rode out ahead of us again and I sent Philip rearward to make sure the strangers had not reversed their course for any reason. We made good progress after that, but it was deep twilight when we finally approached the small valley that provided refuge to the lepers.
Lucanus was astonished and delighted to see us returned so soon. He had thought us gone for at least six months. That our absence would last less than six weeks had not occurred to any of us as a realistic probability. While our men set up our tents at some distance from the leper longhouse in the barely adequate light of two large fires, Luke and I sat by the larger fire, and I began to tell him of our journey. He had examined Quint's leg as soon as we arrived and the greetings were over, and pronounced it healing splendidly. Quintus would have some deep-trenched scars, he pronounced, but should have full use of the limb once the bone was fully set. More men than Quintus had sighed with relief on hearing that, and one of them was Benedict, who had set the bone and splinted it.
Now, as we sat and talked, his eyes sought Shelagh, who was preparing food with Paulus, the best cook among us, and Turga. The baby slept safely, wrapped in a bundle of blankets close by Turga's side.
"The woman, Shelagh. Who is she?"
"Liam's daughter, I told you when you met her."
"I know that, Cay, but who is she? Why is she here?" His eyes had not left the young woman, whose long, tousled hair disclosed and obscured her face and eyes alluringly in the leaping of the flames. I had to take my own eyes from her deliberately.
"She is to be Donuil's wife."
His head swivelled slowly towards me. "Then where is Donuil?"
"At home in Eire." Before he could question me any further, I launched into the tale of what had happened in the past week, omitting nothing, and as I talked the tent-raising around us was completed and the men began to gather close around the fires, although they took care to leave us room to continue speaking in private. I ended my tale with my agreement with Athol to acquire a concession from Pendragon that would permit Liam to raise his animals on their lands for at least a year.
"You think you can obtain such a concession?" he asked, when I had finished. I could only shrug and observe that it seemed reasonable. There was no ill-will between Uther's people and my own of which I was aware. To my concealed dismay, however, Lucanus named the single concern that had been gnawing unacknowledged at the edges of my mind since I had spoken of this to Athol. I myself had not visited the Pendragon lands since the accession of Uther to his father's throne, and Uther's support of Camulod in the recent wars had cost Pendragon dearly, not in men alone, but in losses of the precious longbows that were so hard to replace, since each one took so long to make. Those losses, allied with the apparent lack of gratitude and concern expressed by me, or any in Camulod, either privately or publicly, might well have eroded the goodwill that had existed between our peoples since the days of King Ullic, Uther's grandfather. In the eyes of the Pendragon, he said, I might well have earned the reputation of an ingrate. Untrue as that might be, it was not an unlikely perception.
Chastened considerably, I admitted that I had given insufficient thought to this possibility, and we agreed that this was a matter that demanded an immediate journey by me into the Cambrian mountains, to express that gratitude, belatedly, and to explain to whoever now held power among the Pendragon the many reasons for the lapse of time since I had burned Uther's corpse and returned home to Camulod. From there, we moved on to talk of other things, and he told me how they had lost five of their number, several days before, struck down by arrows from an unseen enemy. I stared at him, but he had nothing more to say.
"What do you mean, an unseen enemy? You were attacked, yet saw no one?"
"That's what I said. Whoever it was shot at us from the woods, there. From the summit of the hill behind us."
"And killed five people, without attacking further after you had run and hidden? Did you show them you were prepared to fight?"
"To fight? Fight with what, Cay? These people are lepers, not soldiers. . . And no one ran to hide. The five who died were all outside, walking, most of them with the aid of staves and crutches. They were too weak to run. Whoever killed them knew well what they were, and did their slaughter from afar, running no risk of contagion. It was butchery, callous and inhuman."
"The Berbers," I said, and told him of the armed band we had seen returning from this region. As he listened, his face grew troubled.
"Then they will return, is that what you are telling me? They'll pass this way again and come looking for further sport, and Mordechai has no way of deterring them."
"Mordechai may not, but Camulod does," I told him, feeling a monstrous anger boiling in my gut. I looked to where Dedalus sat talking with Benedict and Cyrus and called them to us, bidding them summon the others. Briefly then, once all of them were listening, I repeated what Luke had told me of the arm's-length slaughter of helpless invalids, and I spoke of the inherent threat of further outrages by the alien Berbers, and I saw the same anger stirring in their eyes.
"Now," I said. "We return to Camulod tomorrow and should arrive within the next three days. As soon as we have won back and I have settled several matters within the Colony, I must leave again for Cambria, to visit the Pendragon lands and find out who rules there today. You, Ded, will accompany me and so will you, Rufio. The rest of you, however, all five of you, will return here under the command of Cyrus and Benedict, bringing with you a full cohort of our troopers, and you will cleanse Glevum of this barbarian filth that has polluted it. Do you hear me?"
"Aye!" All five spoke as one.
"Good. So be it! Now eat and then get some rest, all of you. We will be up and away, come dawn. I'll need Lucanus's wagon harnessed ere the sun comes up, and the women and the baby safely installed in it. Eat well, and then sleep well, and deeply."
As soon as they had gone, clustered around the cooking pots and the delicious aromas they emitted, Lucanus and I sought out Mordechai, so that I could bid him farewell and inform him of what would happen upon our return to Camulod. Mordechai listened and then thanked me, although his eyes told me he had a question. I prompted him, curious, and he shook his head, the hint of a smile on his lips.
"I was merely thinking how strange the ways of people are," he murmured. "These Berbers you speak of stand far back and kill us from concealment, because they are afraid to come too close to us, risking contagion. Now you tell me your own men, who are equally afraid of us, will return in strength for our protection. It is a non sequitur, my friend."
"Not really, Mordechai. There is ample logic there. Granted, my men fear your people and avoid their presence, as I do myself. But it is leprosy they fear, rather than lepers, and the avoidance of contagion is mere prudence. These are simple soldiers, ordinary men with ordinary terrors. They dread the sickness far more than the sick . . . But they are decent men, and casual slaughter of the kind that happened here outrages them. As for these Berbers, if that is what they are, they represent a threat to us, and to our Colony, so we will wipe them out and guard against their return. The service we will provide f
or you is incidental, an entailment to your benefit. However, my men will not come anywhere near your encampment on their return. I see no need to feed the idle curiosity of our troopers by telling them of your presence here. The aliens must be cleaned out of Glevum; that is sufficient reason for our punitive expedition, and all that will be given."
He nodded, accepting my words, and thanked me again with great dignity. When we left him, assuring him he would be quit of us come dawn, Lucanus walked with me back to my tent. I paused there, before entering, and looked him up and down, as friend to friend, the exigencies of the day all dealt with.
"Well," I asked him. "Are you well? Convinced you have contracted no disease?"
"Leprosy?" he responded, smiling. "No, Cay, I am convinced there is nothing of the leprous in me now that was not here ere we arrived."
"I'm glad of that, my friend," I told him then, only half jocular. "As I told Mordechai, I am not at ease in proximity to such potent threat as is concealed beneath the clothes of even such a friend as he." He stared me directly in the eye and I nodded. "So be it. Are you hungry, or have you already eaten?"
He pursed his lips and shook his head. "No, to both your questions. But I am tired. I have not slept properly since the night of the attack, waiting for a return visit."
"Well, you can sleep now. No one will bother us tonight and we leave for Camulod at dawn. Sleep well, Luke. It will be good to reach home again, even for a few days."
We passed by Aquae Sulis late the following day without looking for signs of life, making twelve additional miles before we camped for the night, and as I made the rounds of our small camp before seeking my own bed I was aware of the feeling of anticipation that filled everyone. Even the women seemed to be looking forward to tomorrow, although neither of them had ever seen our Colony. We would be up and on the road before first light, travelling at campaign speed, and we hoped to sight the towers of Camulod before noon. I wrapped myself in my cloak and an additional blanket beside the fire and then discovered, to my great surprise, that I could not sleep. I lay awake for a long time, tossing and turning, feeling the earth grow harder beneath me, before I accepted my insomnia and crawled out from my blankets to throw more wood on the sinking fire. As I did so, I heard the sound of the baby whimpering somewhere close by, and then the sound of Turga's voice crooning and whispering to him, soothing him to silence again.