The Circle of the Gods

by Victor Canning

  Her smile broadened, and she said, “And why should I not? Or are your promises like blowing thistledown to be carried away and lost? Have you forgotten then that once you said to me that one day you would come and woo me; that we should lie in the long grass, listen to the golden birds sing and drink the new wine? That seeking me you would ask only for one who had eyes like the blue bell-flower, lips redder than the thorn berry and hair like … Aie now that escapes me—”

  “Like polished black serpentine,” said Arturo suddenly, for now memory was back with him like the sudden sweep of light from the sun breaking free of dark clouds.

  “True, that was it. So why should I not smile at you in the marketplace—since I would know your face anywhere, or so I thought until you greeted my smile with a face as blank as a mouse-stuffed owl’s? But now I know you as all folk who have heard the blood price called against you would know you with your tunic drawn back to show your tribal tattoo and birthmark. Would you, too, have me immodest enough to lift my robe and show you the swallow’s gorge mark on my thigh?”

  “There is no need,” said Arturo quickly, recovering from his confusion. “I would have known you at any time except this when—as you must know—there are other matters which bear heavily on me. You are Daria, daughter of Ansold the sword smith. But it was to Lindum, not Corinium, that you were travelling.”

  “True—but my father changed his mind when he saw the work which was here with Count Ambrosius’s army. You are a fool to work with old Paulus half-naked for all to see your marks and so make a high blood price an easy picking for any man who passes. Such heedlessness will never bring you the years to make good your boast to Gerontius and Count Ambrosius. Perhaps those who called that an Arto promise were wiser than I thought.”

  As she finished speaking she began to turn away, but Arturo, anger rising in him, stepped forward and held her by the arm and said pugnaciously, “You do right to mock me. But you do wrong to taunt me with talk of empty promises. They shall sue me for help for the gods have ordained it.”

  Daria frowned down at the hand which held her arm and, as Arturo released her, she said, “And the golden birds and the new wine—when shall they be heard and drunk?”

  Arturo smiled. “There will be time and place for them. You think you stand here and talk to me out of chance? Nay, even though I had forgotten you the gods had not. I take my shame for a misty memory. But it is written that on the day of my triumph you shall come riding into Glevum with me on a white horse, wearing a cloak of scarlet with a lining of blue silk and about your waist a golden belt with a clasp of two singing birds. And when Count Ambrosius comes out to greet us he shall hand to you a silver goblet full of new wine, and then—”

  “And then, and then,” Daria interrupted him, mockingly, “will be the day when pigs shall be flying and the salmon coming up the Sabrina shall wriggle ashore, their mouths full of sea pearls to lay at my feet. But for now, be wise. Keep your tunic drawn and your god dreams to yourself.”

  Without other word or look she turned from him and walked away. Arturo watched her go, knowing now that he would never again lose her from his mind, and wondering how he ever could have forgotten her and that rain-drenched day on the high moors when she had slipped a quick hand to the dagger in the garter sheath beneath her tunic.

  At noon on the following day Arturo waited for Volpax under the trees on the little knoll that overlooked the cavalry training grounds. When he arrived it was as before, riding the dun pony and leading another. He came over to Arturo carrying his wineskin and a knotted cloth in which were six cold roasted quail.

  He set the food between them and this time offered the wineskin first to Arturo and began talking as though there had never been any break in their conversation.

  “The affair is settled. I have a friend who keeps cattle in a valley far to the south of Corinium. He will lodge and find fodder for up to thirty horses. No more. We take no more than four horses a night—and that at long intervals—and never travel the same path to my friend’s valley. Nor when the ground is soft from rain to show the hoof marks. When we have the thirty, you take your ten and I take my twenty and we go our own ways. When you have the men and need for more mounts all you have to do is to pass a message to my friend and I will come to you.”

  Volpax smiled wolfishly, flicked his hand at a bluebottle which buzzed above a roasted quail, and said, “Also from today you see no more of Corinium. We stay together, not from lack of trust on my part—but for each other’s safety.” He lifted the wineskin and drank deeply.

  Speaking almost to himself, Arturo said, “We shall steal our horses. Would that it were as easy to steal men.”

  Rubbing a hand over his wine-wet lips. Volpax shook his head, and then, grinning said, “You and I are in the business of horses. No more. But this I say—once it is known that you need men and can promise them what they want they will find a way to you.”

  Arturo lay back on the grass, staring at the slow march of the heavy clouds above, and felt a heaviness, too, in his heart. Now that the moment was on him for action he suddenly felt helpless and undecided and astray. So far he had done no more than make Arto promises. Now was the beginning of the time when, gods or no gods, he had to work and scheme and make a beginning to bring to truth the words and dreams which had comforted him for so long. He sighed suddenly. “Well, ’tis with one step after another that a long march is made. We will take the horses and then I will think about the men.”

  “So be it.” Volpax flung a picked quail carcass into the grass. “Be here at nightfall, fair weather or foul, and we will walk around the camp. Then tomorrow night, if the weather is kind, we will take our first horses. For now you can go for the last time to Corinium. Tell Paulus you travel back to your friends. Then steal charcoal from his firepot to blacken your face and hands for tonight.” He stood up, taking the wineskin, and went on, “I leave you the rest of the quail. When you come back tonight give me a curlew’s whistle three times. If I do not answer, then you must find some other to help you with mounts.”

  Arturo stayed until he had finished the quail and then went back to Corinium. That night, with blackened faces and hands, he and Volpax made themselves familiar with the cavalry horse lines. Some of the beasts were penned inside wooden-palisaded yards but more were hobbled and tethered to picket lines. Guard fires burned at intervals around the camp and sentries patrolled each sector of the great space that the cavalry wing occupied. They made the circuit of the camp twice to familiarize themselves with it and then, withdrawing to a safe distance, sat in a patch of low broom scrub and watched the movement of the patrolling guards. As the night began to wear away they saw that the guards often hugged their fires and missed a patrol, and saw, too, that the guard officers were lax in their duty rounds. Inaction, Arturo knew, bred carelessness and indifference in the best troops.

  Long before first light the two withdrew to their ponies, which they had left tethered in a wood far up the Glevum road, and Volpax led the way to a small bothy made of hazel boughs and roofed with dead bracken in a small dell deep in the wood. They slept and ate their way through the long day and there was little talk between them and no passing of the wineskin. A nearby stream gave them water to drink. When Volpax was about his business he remained sober.

  The next night they took the first of their horses. Volpax left Arturo near the picket lines and went to the far end of the camp. Here, between midnight and dawn, standing in the cover of some trees, he drew his bow and shot four arrows at the three guards who sat around the watch fire. The first stuck the three-legged ion brazier and sent sparks and burning wood high in the air. The others thudded into the ground about the guards. The men scattered, shouting and drawing their swords. Expecting an attack, one of them blew the alarm on his horn. The blowing of the alarm brought the main guard turning out from their hut and they ran toward the danger spot. Arturo smiled to himself as he saw the two men guarding his length of picket line jump to their feet and hurry
toward the alarm call. Crouching low, one hand holding his dagger and the other two stout rope halters, he went quickly to the line of horses where the animals moved restlessly. Talking softly and soothingly to the disturbed animals, he slashed the hobbles from two of them and slipped the halters over their necks. Then standing between them, gentling them, crooning the love talk and caressing noises which bond all good cavalrymen to their mounts, he waited. In a few moments Volpax, running low, crablike on his bowed legs, came scuttling across to the line and freed another two horses. He swung himself onto the back of one of them and rode, leading the other, out into the darkness of the night and away from the pandemonium and shouting from the far end of the camp. Close behind him rode Arturo.

  By daybreak they were well south of Corinium in wooded, steep valley country, each man now riding his own pony with a haltered stolen horse on either side of him. As the sun, glowing red through a misty autumn sky, climbed high Arturo rode with a light heart. Here, by the gods, was a beginning. Horses first and men later.

  A week later they took four more horses, and this time without causing any disturbance since it was a night of thin brume, lying waist-high over the ground under clear starlight. They worked their way on their bellies to the lines while the guards huddled about their braziers, cut the horses free and, mounting, galloped them away, separating and twisting and curving through the mist to defy all hopeful pursuit.

  On the next foray, two weeks later, and now there was the nip of sharp frost in the air and the camp drinking troughs were plated with a thin layer of ice, Volpax and Arturo wormed their way to the pens at the northern end of the camp where unhobbled horses were quartered. Volpax surprised the single guard at the gate, laid him low with a blow from a wooden club and then freed the horses to stampede them through the camp while he and Arturo roped two horses each and rode off with them. After that they kept away from the camp for three weeks, and then made another raid, using the same strategy as they had employed on their first raid.

  By the time the year was well on the turn, they had taken twenty horses. Since a fall of snow then made raiding unwise Arturo took two of the six horses that had fallen to his lot and, riding a pony borrowed from Volpax, led them back to the Villa of the Three Nymphs, where he found all in order but his friends becoming overanxious about him.

  When he returned to Volpax he brought Durstan with him so that his companion could take by turns his remaining four horses back to the villa. Now, because the weather was worsening, snow and rain often making raiding impossible for fear of their tracks being followed, Volpax and Arturo spent many a long day lodged in their bracken-roofed bothy, waiting for the right conditions to favour them. Sometimes, since tedium was an enemy which Arturo was least fitted to combat, he left Volpax sleeping or nursing his wineskin and wandered off through the woods by himself, close-wrapped in his cloak against the cold or the rain. He would stand at the edge of the wood and look across to the smoke of the cooking fires rising above far Corinium. The day came when, the impulse strong and irresistible in him, he made his way there. If a man’s feet itched, he found excuse for himself, then might not that be a sign from the gods? If they could colour his mind with visions why should they not as surely direct his footsteps past denial?

  Avoiding the main gates, he entered the city through a gap in the broken walls. A heavy squall of rain made him draw the cape of his cloak over his head. He ran across the Forum and took shelter under the colonnade which fronted the Basilica. There were very few people abroad and those that were hurried about their business. Arturo sat on a stone bench and watched the puddles forming between the broken paving of the Forum square. As he sat there his eye was caught by some graffiti marked with the soft edge of a slate on one of the colonnade pillars. A long inscription amongst them ran vertically down the length of the column. As he read it anger grew suddenly and sharply in him.

  Between the empty promise of Arto and the sloth of Ambrosius where shall a warrior blood his lance?

  Impulsively, heedless of any who watched, he stood up and went to the pillar. With a piece of the charcoal which he carried for night raids he wrote:

  Arto has taken your horses. Are all the warriors of Ambrosius dormice to sleep through winter? Come south with your swords and claim your mounts.

  A few minutes later, careless of whether he had been seen, he left the city and made his way across country in the gathering gloom and rain toward the forest shelter.

  A few nights later with the ground iron-hard from frost he and Volpax took another lot of horses, but this time things went wrong for them. As Volpax crouched, cutting the hobbles of a horse, the animal, frightened by the noise of the alarms sounding, reared and a forehoof struck Volpax to the ground. A guard came running through the darkness, saw the two men and threw his spear from a distance. It struck Volpax in the side of his neck as he rose, tore deeply through his flesh, and then fell away from him. Abandoning the horses he would have taken, Volpax ran from the picket lines and caught up with Arturo, who, ignorant of what had happened, was leading his two horses away at a fast trot. As Volpax called to him he pulled the horses up, saw the blood streaming from Volpax’s neck, and without word—the night behind them loud with the cries of men and the blowing of horns—he hoisted Volpax to the back of one horse and swung himself on the other and they rode hard into the darkness. When they were well clear of the camp they pulled their mounts up and Arturo, ripping lengths of cloth from his cloak, tied them about Volpax’s neck to stop the bleeding from the wound.

  Choking over his words, Volpax said, “’Tis nothing. A glancing blow that will leave but a ragged scar and—”

  He swayed and Arturo held him on his feet. From the way the blood had spurted from the wound he knew that it was far from nothing. Life was pumping fast from his friend.

  He said, “Save your words to spare your breathing.”

  Suddenly Volpax’s eyes closed and he fell heavily against Arturo and, before he could be held, collapsed to the ground. As Arturo tried to staunch the blood flow Volpax opened his eyes. They shone dully in the starlight and Arturo knew with a heavy heart that the death look was on the face of his friend.

  With his next words Volpax showed that he knew it, too. He raised a hand and held Arturo’s, gripping it tightly, and said, fighting for breath, “There is an end to every road. Mine stops here, Arto. Aie—” a weak smile touched his lips, and he said, “and I go without the comfort of a wineskin. May the gods be kind and greet me with one.…” He coughed and swallowed violently as the blood gorged his throat. Then, in a moment of ease, he went on, “Leave me. Take the horses—they are yours now—all of them. A parting gift from Volpax. In return say a prayer for me when you ride to Ambrosius to make your promise good.…” Then, with the faintest of sighs, his head dropped and he lay still in Arturo’s arms, his dead eyes staring up to the frost-bright stars.

  Because of the comradeship which had been between them Arturo wrapped the body of Volpax in his cloak and bound him cross ways on the back of the second horse. He had no means of burying him and would have thought it scant respect to leave him to be picked clean by scavenging birds and beasts. He rode the rest of that night, leading the spare horse on its halter. The dun-coloured and the other pony they had abandoned near the camp in their flight. There was nothing in him now but sorrow. Horses he might have now in plenty, but for the first time he knew the measure of the loss of a friend. If the gods granted him his wishes he knew that the time would come when he would mourn other friends, but none, no matter how dear, would cloud his mind with the blackness of the grief he felt for Volpax.

  At daybreak he stopped by a small forest pond to rest and water the horses and to eat the hard bread and cold meat which he carried in his pouch. The night had brought a thick hoarfrost which now, as the sun strengthened, dripping from the bare tree boughs. Deep in his own misery, sitting with his elbows on his knees, staring at the black surface of the pond, he was taken by surprise when from behind him a voice
said, “Reach not for your dagger. I come in friendship.”

  Arturo swung round and half rose. His hand went for the knife in his belt, gripped it, and then was stayed from drawing it by the sight of the young man who stood on the fringe of the trees. He was on foot, a sword hanging from his belt, his hands held wide and free from any weapon. He was bareheaded, his hair, the rich colour of a polished chestnut and fired with sharp red glints from the rising sun, running down the sides of his checks to a small, bushy beard. He wore a close-fitting surcoat and tightly gartered trews while about his neck was tied a blue Sabrina wing cavalry scarf. He smiled as Arturo now stood slowly upright.

  Arturo said, “Why should one of the Sabrina wing offer me friendship?”

  The man came forward a few steps, his eyes going from Arturo to the two cavalry horses standing by and then to the cloaked body of Volpax on the ground. He said slowly, “Because if you are, as I truly think you to be, that Arturo of the famous promise, and also that same one who has set Corinium and all cavalrymen talking about your message written on the Basilica pillar, then I am no longer of the Sabrina wing.” He raised a hand to the knot of the blue scarf, tugged it free and threw the cloth from him to rest pinned on the thorns of a leafless brier.

  “I am that Arturo.” As he spoke Arturo’s eyes went from the man to the thickness of the trees and scrub behind him. Soft words and friendship’s appearance could be the forerunners of treachery.

  As though he had read his mind the young man said, “There is none behind me. I come alone, riding your dun pony and leading the other. ’Twas my comrade’s spear that sent your friend to the Shades—the gods celebrate his coming. I followed on foot and found your ponies, which you dared not stop to untether. Aie … and then there was another trail plain to follow … wet and shining on grass and leaf under the stars. And when that went the gods gave a quick night frost to bear your marks. The gods have grieved you with one loss, and now—if it is your will and you are truly the man I seek—offer you the gain of myself and others like me. If I talk overmuch be not surprised. My father was a bard in Lavobrinta in the country of the Ordovices and I would have become one but that I loved horses more. My name is Gelliga.”