‘I’d not say it was a good plan,’ Phaedrus said, ‘but it’s possible, and I can’t think of a better. It has one sore spot in it, though – it will be death to the man with the dirk.’
‘Surely, if he were alone. That is where the second man comes in – to draw off the hunt.’
‘I was forgetting about the second man,’ Phaedrus said. ‘Well, do I send him in with the other?’
‘Na, you do not send him in at all. I shall wander in to talk with the fishermen when they bring in the catch at evening – it won’t be the first time – and find means to go to ground until the time comes.’
‘You?’ Phaedrus said.
‘Why not? They will not see my face when I run from them. I know that ground well; with luck I shall lead them a fair way before I fall over anything – maybe farther than they will go themselves; torches are unsure light for a chase. They will not know me, until they capture me, for the blind leather-worker from the town.’
‘And when they do capture you?’
‘I shall have a fine excuse. See now: I went down to talk with the fishermen and bargain for a fish for my supper. I was tired, and the air thunder heavy; and I crawled into a corner and fell asleep. The sudden uproar woke me, and I was frightened. A sudden uproar is a frightening thing to a blind man, my Phaedrus – and I ran.’
‘It holds together,’ Phaedrus said slowly.
‘Surely, it holds together.’
‘But it would be madness for you to try it, Midir – don’t you see—’
Midir cut in. ‘No, I don’t see – I don’t see; that’s what you mean, isn’t it? You are not believing that I can do the thing, because I am blind! I know what I can do, better than you can! If any man of yours does it, he will die; there is no escape round the south side of the rock. But I can do it and like enough live to tell the tale – not that that greatly interests me just now . . . Also, it is my right. My right to have a small share in my own vengeance, and maybe a small share in saving the tribe also.’ He broke off, and added in a tone of deliberate lightness, ‘It is strange that I should trouble about that. Long ago I ceased to feel that I belong to them. But I still do not want to see the Dalriads trampled into the mud.’
‘Just as I have come to feel that I belong to them, and they to me. I also would not see the Dalriads go down.’ Phaedrus broke off, and was silent a moment. ‘Come then, and take your rightful share.’ And checked again. ‘I am not liking it, this slaying-in-the-dark, but it must be done; it is her life or the tribe’s – it must be done!’
‘It must be done,’ Midir said.
A low, long-drawn mutter of thunder trembled into the silence. The woods seemed to have grown very still, and in the stillness the voice of the burn sounded unnaturally loud. ‘The storm is coming,’ Midir said. ‘Phuh! There is no air to breathe.’
‘It is as though the woods knew it – and were waiting.’
They stood together, a short while longer, quickly going over the few remaining details, then parted without any leave-taking, Midir turning back towards the bothy-town that huddled at the foot of Theodosia Rock, Phaedrus heading up the glen once more.
Another thread of the finishing pattern had been woven into place.
It was not until he caught the first flicker of the watch fire through the trees, that he realized that Midir had asked no word of anyone, not even of Conory. He was puzzled for the moment, and then he understood that here, so near his own people, who were so completely lost to him, his only hope lay in not asking, not wanting to know. ‘Long ago I ceased to feel that I belong to them,’ he had said; and that was his armour.
He whistled to warn the Companions of his coming and men were afoot and faces turned to him as he came into the fire-light. Finn began a question, and then stopped; no one else spoke, but the question was in all their faces, and Phaedrus answered it. ‘No, no ghost. An old friend of mine who I did not know was north of the Wall – a leather-worker in the town, who slipped out with news for me.’
‘Why did he not come up to the camp?’ Dergdian asked.
‘Maybe he had no wish to risk getting caught up with the War Host of the Dalriads; it was only me that he had his news for.’ Phaedrus squatted down on his haunches well back from the fire, but near enough for the smoke to keep the midges away; and sitting with his arms folded across his knees, told them of what had passed between himself and Midir – or at least as much of it as they needed to know.
When he came to the end, Dergdian, the oldest and most cautious among them, said, ‘It is in my mind to wonder what price the Red Crests may demand, for the slaying of a Goddess under their protection.’
Phaedrus had thought of that, too. ‘Liadhan means little to the Red Crests, and her slaying will mean little, save that by it we shall have set their authority at nought, and that they will not like . . . If the luck runs our way, they may never even be able to prove that the dirk came from the Dalriads. If they do, they will maybe march north to teach us more respect for our betters. Then we shall drive off the cattle and horse-herds – giving thanks to Lugh Shining Spear that we are not a corn-growing people rooted to our fields – and take to the hills and islands, and play wolf-pack on their flanks until winter turns them south again. They may burn down a hall here and there, but thatch and turf and timber are none so hard to replace; at the worst, they may burn off what they can of the pasture. But there’s rain coming soon. When the storm breaks, the weather will break with it. If Liadhan lives and has her way with them, if they march north to thrust her back into the Royal Place and hold her there with their swords, as they did in the earlier days for that other She-Wolf Cartimandua, that will be another – a darker, story.’
All round the fire, men’s voices answered him quick and fierce, eyes red-sparked with an old anger above the rims of their shields.
‘Sa, it is well thought out,’ Dergdian said. ‘Then it seems there is only one question left to settle: who is the best dirk-thrower among us?’
The Companions glanced at each other. Niall began, ‘I—’
But Phaedrus said, ‘I am.’ He looked round at them in the fire-light. ‘The throwing-knife is not really our weapon, here in the North, but one learns strange skills in the Gladiators’ School.’
Niall said quickly, ‘My Lord Midir, I did not learn it in the Gladiators’ School, but I’ve a fair aim with a dirk, none the less. Let me go.’
‘No.’ Phaedrus said. He looked at face after protesting face. ‘I am the best dirk-thrower round this fire tonight; it is as simple as that. Also – this is a matter between Liadhan and me.’
‘It is between Liadhan and all of us,’ Finn said.
‘But since we cannot all settle it with her, it is right that the King should settle it for the rest.’
‘It is not fitting work for the King.’
‘It is not fitting work for any man. But one man must do it, and only the King can do it for the whole tribe.’
19
THE DIRK-THROWER
WHEN DAWN CAME the threatening storm had still not broken. A little wind had got up, brushing fitfully through the tree-tops, but there was no freshness in it. And the sense of coming storm made Phaedrus feel increasingly, as the day dragged by, that if anyone touched him he would give off sparks like a cat.
Thunder was grumbling again in the distance, when the time came for him to make ready, but they had heard it more than once that day, and each time it had gone away again. This time it would probably do the same. He hoped so, much as he longed for the relief of its coming, for a thunderstorm in the next few hours might complicate and confuse things hopelessly. He put on his war-tattered cloak, partly because he could pull the loose hood forward over his head if he needed to hide his face, partly with a certain feeling for the fitness of things; in a way, a play-actor’s feeling for the shape of the pattern that he was making. It was the King’s cloak. Brys had brought it down for him from Dun Dara on the night they fired Glen Croe, that he might not go into battle without it. Now he was go
ing out against Liadhan for what, he knew, one way or the other would be the last time. And he flung on the cloak as though for battle, settled the folds at the shoulder to give free play to his right arm, and thrust in the great bronze war-brooch with its splendour of blue and green enamel.
Brys, who had been standing by, came forward with his dirk freshly burnished and whetted to a razor keenness. Phaedrus took it and felt the edge with his thumb, then nodded. ‘Sa, sa! With this, one could draw blood from the wind!’ and slipped it silkenly into the deer-skin sheath at his belt.
‘Take me with you!’ Brys said, suddenly and desperately. ‘My Lord Midir – let me come with you!’
Phaedrus touched the boy’s shoulder kindly enough. ‘I’ll not be needing my armour-bearer on this trail.’
He turned to the rest of the war band; they were all there, save for the two who were watching the river fords against the time when Gault came seeking them. He had already given them their orders, that they were to bide here, no man coming with him save Old Vron as far as the forest verge, that there might be no target of moving men large enough to catch the eye of any Red Crest scouts, and whatever happened, there was to be no attack on the fort, even when Gault came with the War Host. In their present weakened state, once they lifted a spear against the fort, they were done for. He could only hope that he had got that through to them, knowing as he did, the hotness of their heads and the little skill they had in counting the cost. Dergdian understood, at all events. He could trust Dergdian to hold this lot, anyway, in leash.
They sacrificed to Lugh Shining Spear together, the small, quick sacrifice of barley meal, moistened with a few drops of blood from each warrior’s thumb, which the Sun Lord accepted when there was no living sacrifice to be had – for at a time like this, no God worth praying to could even wish for one of the horses.
And when that was done, there was nothing more to hold Phaedrus from his setting out.
They watched him go in silence, no one raising a protesting voice. All that had been finished with, last night. If the Sun Lord willed it, he would come back; if not, then the Mark was on his forehead. Either way, it was the King’s trail and no one else’s; between him and Liadhan, between him and the High Gods, and they had accepted that it was so.
It was already dusk when he came with Old Vron to the edge of the woods, close to the place where the ancient chariot road forded Baal’s River. An unnaturally early dusk under a piled tumult of blue-black clouds, their underbellies stained here and there with dull copper light from the unseen westering sun. The storm had held off so far, but it was churning round them in closing circles; not long now, Phaedrus thought, before it broke.
He whispered to the shadow in the battered sheepskin hat beside him, ‘Wait here and watch till I am well into the bothies; then back with you, and tell them that all goes well so far.’
The old fore-rider grunted by way of reply, a grunt which might mean anything. Phaedrus waited for no more, but slipped out from the gloom of the wood shore and down through the low-growing scrub to the Chariot road.
There was no walled or hedged cantonment at Theodosia – the steep rise of the rock left no space for more than the fort itself on the crest – and the more level ground below it was too far outside the Wall for bath-house and married quarters and granaries. Only a huddle of native bothies had sprung up along the foot of the rock on its landward side, with a wine-shop thrown in for good measure. And being in a kind of no-man’s land – for within a day’s trail of the Northern Wall the old tribal territories had not much meaning save in time of war – it was a place through which the rags of many tribes came and went. And so there was no encircling dyke with its gateway stopped at twilight by the night-time thorn-bush, and Phaedrus loped in by the track that turned from the chariot road, like a man at the end of a journey, without let or hindrance of any kind. Neither men nor hounds took any especial notice of him, as they would have done of a stranger in a tribal dun, as he made his way between the crowding bothies, keeping always well clear of the fire-light that shone here and there through hut doorways or from little courtyards. If any man spoke to him or even looked at him hard, he was going to ask for the wine-shop, which he knew from Midir lay in the right direction; but no one did. It was all very easy – almost too easy . . .
He passed quite close to the wine-shop and saw the smoking light of oil-lamps spilling from the doorway, and heard a sudden burst of singing, that brought back with a vivid flash of memory the dark streets and crowded wine-shops of Corstopitum.
‘Six poor soldiers, marching home from Gaul,
Five centurions, bully-big and tall.
Four brave Legates, who never saw a fight;
Three grave Senators, to set the world to right.
Two wise Consuls, going out to dine,
But one shall be our Emperor, and pay for the wine.’
They had sung the same counting-out song to slightly different words in the Gladiators’ School, and with the same clamouring of someone’s name at the end – the name of whoever was to be Emperor and stand treat for the rest . . .
Phaedrus left the lighted doorway behind him, and walked on. There was beginning to be a different smell in the air, the smell of salt-water mingling with the stink of the little, dirty town. And he became suddenly aware of the crying of gulls made restless by the coming storm. The bothies began to thin out, and gleams of fire- or lamplight became fewer and more far between, and he knew that the time had come for going still more cautiously.
A short way farther – and he dropped to his belly in the black gloom between a store-shed wall and a ragged pile of driftwood, and lay flat, looking out across a patch of open ground, hearing the tramp – tramp – tramp of a sentry’s feet, coming closer – closer – and dying away again. He could see the man, a dark bulk in the deepening dusk, moving steadily across the open space, and before his footsteps had died away into the lap of water and the crying of the gulls, the footsteps of another sentry took up the beat, a second dark figure crossed the open space, turned, and paced back; and a few moments later the first man had reappeared. Midir had been quite right; the fringes of the old dockyard were being patrolled.
Phaedrus lay still for what seemed a long time, watching and listening, while the lightning flickered closer, showing him the pacing figures with acid clarity every now and then, trying to decide what point in that steady passing and re-passing would give him his best chance. And gradually he found that though both sentries were within sound all the while, there was one moment in each turn when one sentry had his back to him and the other’s sight was blanked by the corner of what looked like a derelict sail-loft. Still he waited, getting the timing by heart, and found that it never varied; every time there was that one blind moment, just long enough, he reckoned, to get him across, but with certainly nothing to spare.
The next time it came, he got to his feet and slipped forward to the very last nail’s breadth of his shelter, then froze, crouching like a runner before a race, while the second sentry came up and passed, turned and passed again, and the first returned. This time, the instant the man’s back was towards him, he loosed forward like an arrow from a bow. His soft raw hide brogues made no more sound than bare feet on the sunbaked earth. The open space seemed all at once appallingly wide, the dusk still appallingly thin, and he could hear the footsteps of the second sentry – in another heartbeat he would round the corner of the derelict sail-loft.
He just made it, and as the man came into view, dropped beside a dark pile of nets against the sail-loft wall and lay still, praying that no lightning flash would betray him, praying that the sentry would not look that way and notice that the pile of nets was bigger than it had been before. The footsteps came on, closer, closer – passed without checking. A few moments later Phaedrus was oozing forward again, into a narrow alleyway between the sail-loft and the gutted shell of another building. Sand and shingle had drifted deep in the narrow space, and dry, dagger-sharp dune-thistles had seede
d themselves thickly along the wall. The dry rustling of them sounded so loud in his ears every time he moved that it seemed it must bring the Red Crests down upon him every instant; but at the end of the building the sand-drift ceased and he knew with an almost sick relief that he was clear, through the patrol line. But he had no means of knowing whether there were more guards about, and his heart was still drubbing against his breastbone as he worked his way forward with agonizing caution through the wilderness of derelict buildings and rotting, weed-grown jetties. At last he found himself crouching in the doorway of a halfroofless store-shed of some kind, close in to the great upthrust of rock that towered over him like some vast menacing beast about to strike; and saw in the faint lightning-flicker, the wooden steps at the foot of the zigzag track from the fort above. Looking far up, as the lightning flickered again, beyond the rock ledges cushioned with the dry brown ghosts of sea-pinks, he saw the head of the track where it swerved up the last steep stretch, and the harsh outline of the fort against the sky; and at the southern end, where the rocks dropped almost sheer into the sea, he saw the out-thrust catapult platform from which in the old days, the great stone-hurler batteries must have covered the entrance to the anchorage and dockyard.
There had been no sign of the galley alongside the one serviceable jetty, or even of a stern brazier out to sea; but it was not quite full dark yet. He had a long wait ahead of him. He put his hand to his dirk, and felt that it was loose and easy in the sheath. Now that he was so near to the thing, he felt curiously empty, as though everything had been drained out of him except the knowledge of what he had to do. He did not even feel anything about that; he only knew, very clearly, inside the cold echoing emptiness of his own head, that he had come to kill Liadhan, and how, and why. Presently, he would feel again, but not now.
He whistled softly, not the old five-note call, which was too obviously man-made, but the high thin ‘Pee-Wheet’ of a plover, twice repeated, which was the agreed signal. No answer came. Only the fretful gulls still wheeled crying about the face of the rock, only the lap of water and the low mutter of thunder like the first distant waking of the wolfskin war-drums.
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