The Dog and the Wolf

by Poul Anderson

  “Hard over!” Evirion roared.

  Sail cracked, yard slatted, the ship came to rest. Crewmen tossed lines to the swimming barbarians. Anguished, the others circled in their boats at a distance. “Best not let them make an attack,” Rufinus advised. “They’d die, but wed lose too.”

  Reluctantly, Evirion agreed. As soon as the half dozen Scoti were on board, he put around and beat outward toward Ocean. The currachs followed for a while, but fell behind and finally turned south. That far off, they seemed like cormorants skimming the waves.

  Pikes and bows held the dripping captives close to the poop. Rufinus approached them. “It’s binding you we must be,” he said in their language, “but if you behave yourselves you’ll live.”

  A big red-haired man, who seemed to be the skipper, returned a wolfish grin. “That wouldn’t matter, could we take some of you down with us,” he replied. “But as is, well, maybe later we’ll get the chance.’ He glanced upward. “We’ve fed your birds, Mórrigu. I hope you’ll not forget.”

  “Bold fellow,” said Rufinus. “The Latin word would be ‘insolent.’ May I ask your name?”

  “Lorccan maqq Flandi of Tuath Findgeni,” rang forth.

  “That would be near Temir, would it not?” Rufinus recognized the dialect and had recollections from his visit to those parts.

  “It would. A sworn man of King Niall of the Nine Hostages am I.”

  “Well, well. Now if you will hold out your arms—These are honorable bonds, and yourselves hostages.”

  The prisoners submitted, scowling. When Lorccan’s wrists were lashed together and his ankles hobbled, Rufinus drew him aside and offered his own name. “I have been in your beautiful country,” he added. “Sure and I understand how already you must long homeward. Let’s try between us to make that possible.”

  They stood at the lee rail, talking quietly; the wind blew their words away. “None less than King Niall must have sent such men as you,” Rufinus insinuated.

  “We had meant to fare,” answered pride. “But himself did speak to me and my companion leaders before we left. He must go north to put down rebellion among the Ulati, else he would have come, and today it would be you with ropes on you, unless you lay dead. Your turn will come.”

  “And what raiders like you have to tell will be helpful to him.” Rufinus stroked his beard, twined the forks of it together, gazed afar, and after a short span said absently, “You have been to Ys, I see.”

  Lorccan started. “How do you know?”

  Rufinus smiled. “Not by witchcraft. Around your neck is a pendant of gold and pearl, Ysan workmanship. Somehow I doubt you came by it in trade.”

  “I did not,” Lorccan replied, turning grim. “I found it there.”

  “Among the ruins? I hear they are dangerous, a haunt of evil spirits. You are either a brave man or a foolish one.”

  “I won it doing the work of my King.”

  “Oh? Rumor is that the whelming of the city was his deed. Is he not satisfied?”

  “He is not. He laid on us what he says he will lay on all who rove this way, that we tear down some of what remains. I found this in … a tomb.” Lorccan grimaced. He could not be entirely easy about it, however bold a face he showed.

  “The rocks thereabouts are hungry.”

  “My party went afoot, from older ruins where we were camped.”

  “Ah, Garomagus. And I take it you had satisfactory pickings thereabouts?”

  “Some.” Lorccan stiffened. “You wield a sly tongue. In grief for friends lost, I have spoken too much. You won’t be learning from me where the booty was stowed.”

  “It can buy you your freedom.”

  “And what of my shipmates?”

  “We can bargain about that. Otherwise we’ll take the lot of you to Venetorum for sale. They know there how to gentle slaves. Think.” Rufinus walked off.

  When the Scoti had been herded below and secured, he went to Evirion. The captain was back in high good humor. “We’re done well,” Rufinus agreed. “However, the real treasure we’ve gained won’t go onto any scale pan.”

  “What’s that?” asked Evirion.

  “Knowledge,” said Rufinus softly, “that my King will be glad to have.”

  2

  Trees groaned in the wind that roared raw about them. Rain made a mighty rushing noise through their crowns. Where unhindered it struck the Stegir, the river foamed at its force. Blackness drowned the forest, until lightning flared. Then again and again each leaf, twig, droplet stood luridly in the glare. Thunder rolled after on wheels of night.

  In her house, Nemeta screamed. “Hush, child,” Tera said. Her voice barely made its way against the racket outside. She laid a hand on the sweat-cold forehead. “Easy. Rest between the pangs.”

  “Out, you damned thing!” The voice was worn to a rasp by hours of shrieks and curses. “Out and die!”

  Tera fingered the charm bag hung at her throat, as often before. For a mother to hate the life she was bringing forth boded ill. “Cernunnos, give strength,” the woman muttered wearily. “Epona, ease her. All kindly landwights, be with us.”

  Flames guttered and smoked in earthen lamps. They cast misshapen, unrestful shadows which filled every corner of the room. Nemeta’s face jutted from the darkness. Pain had whittled it close down around the bones. Teeth glimmered as if her skeleton strove to break free. Her eyeballs rolled yellow in the niggard light. The straw tick beneath her was drenched and red-smeared.

  Her belly heaved anew. “Sit up and bear down,” Tera said, and lent her arms to help. She had forgotten how often she had done this. Would the labor never end? “Not two, but three bulls to You, Cernunnos, if they both live,” she bargained, “I’ m sure King Grallon will give them. Epona, to whatever else I promised I lay—aye, my man Maeloch will carve Your form in walrus ivory, I can make him do that, and ’twill be there at Your rites always after. Elves, nymphs, ghosts, every dweller in woods and waters—ha, d’you want me to lead the Christian wizard to your lairs? Hell ban you, he will, he’ll give your haunts to his saints, ’less you help us this night.”

  Lightning burst. Through cracks between shutters, it seemed to set afire the membranes that covered the windows. Thunder grabbed the cabin and shook it. Wind boomed and clamored. Between the thighs of Nemeta, a head thrust forth.

  “He comes.” Tera was too exhausted to rejoice. Her hands worked of themselves.

  “Aye, he, a boy, the King’s grandson.” She lifted the sprattling form and slapped its backside. The storm overrode the first wail.

  There was the cord to cut and tie, there were washcloth and towel and blanket, there was the afterbirth, and then Tera could care for the mother. She cleansed the thin naked frame, helped it stagger from the pallet of the floor to the fresh bed that waited, got a gown around the limbs where they flopped loose, combed the matted ruddy locks. “We’ve soup in the kettle, dear,” Tera said, “but here, hold your wee one for a while. You’ve earned the right, so hard you fought.”

  Nemeta made fending motions. “Nay, take it away,” she whispered. “I’ve cast it from me. What do I want with it?”

  Tera turned, hiding the trouble on her countenance. Nemeta fell into sleep, or a swoon. The infant cried.

  —Morning was cool and bright. The ground lay sodden under torn-off boughs and bushes, but drops of water glinted like jewels. A messenger arrived from Gratillonius, as one had done daily since Tera came to look after his daughter. Nemeta had said she did not wish to see anyone but a midwife, nor have any who was Christian. Gratillonius masked his hurt and spoke to Maeloch. Tera and her children now lived with the fisher captain in his house in Confluentes.

  “Aye, at last,” she told the runner, “A boy. Sound, though ’twas a cruel birthing. Tell my man I’ll be here a few days yet, till she’s on her feet.” She added a recital of supplies she wanted brought on the morrow.

  Alone again, the two women could rest. Tera had little to do but keep house and fire, cook, wash, tend mothe
r and babe. Those both did as well as could be awaited; the blood of the King ran in them, and they were properly sheltered.

  Nemeta’s cabin was no hovel. It was stoutly built of logs, moss-chinked, with clay floor, stone hearth, sod roof: a brown-green-gray oblong nested close to a huge old guardian oak. Close by flowed the Stegir. Forest crowded around, full of life and sun-speckled shadows, while a beaten path wound toward humankind. Nemeta chose the site because it was immemorially holy, a place where folk had come seeking the help of the spirits since the menhirs first arose. Years ago, a Christian hermit actually settled here. Her workmen had heaped up the rotted remnants of his shack, and she kindled them to burn an offering.

  That day passed mutely on the whole. Most sound within the walls came from the babe. “You must soon take him to your breast, you know,” Tera said in the afternoon.

  “Aye,” Nemeta sighed from her pillow. “Nine months it sucked my blood. It may as well have my milk.”

  Seated on a stool at the bedside, fingers twined together in her lap, Tera said slowly, “I’m disquieted about you, lass. You’ve been dumb throughout, save when bearing. You stare like one blind. But at what?”

  The young woman’s lip flicked upward. “You told me not to waste strength crying out while the. thing happened. I strike a balance, nay?”

  “You do wrong if you blame the child.”

  “Do I? Four beasts begot it; and it would not go away.”

  Tera regarded her a while. “You sought to be rid of it, then.”

  “Of course.”

  “HOW?”

  “I tried—oh, what I hoped might serve, whatever I could think of. But what did I know, I a stranger in the Roman city? Afterward—” Nemeta’s voice halted.

  “Afterward,” Tera followed, “you stayed with Princess Runa.”

  Nemeta compressed her mouth.

  “Trust me.” Tera reached for a hand lax on the coverlet and cradled it in hers. “Think you yours is the first woe like this that ever I kenned? I’ll keep silence. But sometimes yon leechdoms wreak lasting harm. If you’ll tell me what you tried, I’ll better know how to help you.”

  Nemeta considered. When she spoke, her tone was hard with resolution. “Do you swear secrecy? That without my leave you’ll utter no breath of whatever I may say here?”

  “I promise.”

  “Nay, you must give oath. Silence about every single thing you heard or saw in the whole while you’ve been with me.”

  Tera grimaced. “That’s a heavy load. But—Aye.” She took a knife that hung at the cord around her waist, nicked her thumb, squeezed a drop onto the floor. “Hark. If I break faith with you, let the Wild Hunt find me, let its hounds lick my blood, let my ghost stray homeless between the worlds. Cernunnos, You have heard.”

  Nemeta sat up in bed. She shivered with sudden ardor. “You know the old lore, then. Teach me!”

  Tera shook her head. “I know just enough to fear how spells can turn on us. Lie back down. Tell me what I asked.”

  Grudgingly, Nemeta obeyed. She spoke of bitter or nauseating herbs she had taken, of casting herself belly first on the ground, of searches for a witch or wizard or renegade physician. Nothing availed. Outsider, pagan, therefore object of suspicion despite the money Evirion left her after he departed, she dared not inquire forthrightly, even among the poor of Gesocribate. Christian law forbade doing away with the unborn as well as the newborn.

  “Runa gave me sapa to drink,” she finished. “It only made me weak and ill. At last she said I’d best stop. Presently I felt better. But I was being kicked within my body. As a rider kicks his animal.”

  Tera frowned. “Sapa?”

  “A Roman brew, Runa said. They make it by boiling grape juice in a lead vessel. ’Tis thick, sweet, commonly added to their wines. I took it pure.”

  “Hm. In Ys they thought lead a slow poison. Belike that’s soothfast.”

  Nemeta raised her eyes. “Runa told me Roman whores are wont to drink sapa. It whitens their skins. Ofttimes it sloughs out their unwanted young. How right, I thought, if I drink a whore’s potion against this maggot in me. But it failed.”

  Tera sat silent before she answered, “Well, keep the child till we find him a foster home, your father and I.”

  “Does he want it?”

  “I’ve a feeling he’d be happier had it died in the womb. And yet. … ’tis his grandchild, and Queen Forsquilis’s. I think he cared for her as much as he did for any of the Nine, aside from Dahilis the mother of Dahut. But Dahilis left us ere I was grown. I knew her just by hearsay. I’ve seen Forsquilis, though, beautiful, strong, and strange. Aye, Grallon will do whatever he can for the grandchild.”

  “I will endure, then,” Nemeta mumbled. When Tera brought the infant over, she bared her breast and held him close. He suckled with savage eagerness.

  —In the time that followed, she showed him neither love nor cruelty. Nursing him, learning from Tera how to care for him, were things she did. Otherwise she gazed afar, spoke little and distantly, fingered the magical objects she was collecting. As strength returned, she first paced the cabin like a cat in a cage, later went off by herself to walk in the woods and bathe in the river.

  Those were brief whiles, but increased rapidly. On the third day, Tera said, “Well, I can leave you and go tell your father you’re up and about. He’ll be glad. When can he come see you, or you come to him?”

  Nemeta’s answer was low and cold. “I’ll send word.”

  “Men of his will still look in on you daily for a span.” Tera’s tone softened. “Keep him not waiting much longer. He’d laden and lonely.”

  “He shall hear. Thank you for your help.”

  Tera drew a sign in the air. “May They be with you, dear.”

  —When the woman was gone, Nemeta began to tremble. It worsened till she crouched in a corner hugging herself while the teeth clattered in her jaws. The babe cried. She threw a curse at him. It drowned the noise he made. She howled aloud for a long time.

  Thereafter she had mastery of her flesh. Rising, she busied herself. There were things to pack together—knife, a stake she carved, the scribed shoulderblade of an aurochs, flint and steel, tinder, bundle of kindling wood—and a distance to go while daylight wore away toward sunset. As she worked, she muttered, sometimes prayers she had learned as a vestal, sometimes scraps of what she had heard were spells. It helped curb rage at the clamorous creature. She would have gotten silence by nursing him, as well as relief from an ache in swollen breasts, but she could not quite bring herself to that.

  At last she donned a clean white shift and hung her filled sack across her back. Quickly, she stooped to lift the infant from the basket Tera had brought to be his crib. He struggled before she got him firmly held on her left hip. With her right hand she took the staff twined with a snake’s mummy; and she set forth.

  Heat, stillness, odors of wet mould hung over the game trails down which she padded. The babe’s yells dropped to a whimper and to naught; rocked by her pace, he slept within the bulwark of her arm. Now and then she heard wings whirr or a cuckoo call. Through the few gaps between boles, sunbeams slanted ever more long and deeply yellow. Finally they went out and shadows closed on her.

  She reached the place that people shunned. Here too was a narrow opening in the forest, looking west. Heaven smoldered red where Ys had been. Overhead it arched wan behind leaves; eastward, night filled all spaces. The pool burned with sunset. Swifts darted noiseless in pursuit of mosquitoes that swarmed above it. Chill seeped from the earth below the fallen leaves. They rustled and scratched at her bare feet.

  She set her loads before the boulder at the waters edge. It bulked high as her waist, black athwart sundown. The babe started crying again, a sound that sawed the air. Nemeta scuttled about gathering deadwood dry enough to burn. She must lay and light her fire while she could see what she did.

  It was never an easy task, making needfire, but she had skill. Her father had taught her. He had taught her whatever
he could that she wanted to learn when she was a little girl, ere the rift between him and his Queens denied him to her. How she had missed the big man with the knowing hands.

  Her child screamed on and on. “Be quiet,” she snarled. “Oh, soon you shall be very quiet.”

  The fire flickered up. She made sure it would burn untended for a space. The western embers were turning to ash.

  She stood, lifted arms, spoke aloud: “Ishtar-Isis-Belisama, I am here. I call on You, Maiden, Mother, and Hag; Lady of Life and Death; Comforter and Avenger. See, I make myself pure before You.”

  She stripped off her garment and waded into the pool. Withes caught at her. Slipping along her nakedness, they lashed and stung. Roots made her stumble and bruise her feet. She went on until she stood at the middle, ooze cool around her ankles, water to her waist. Thrice she scooped a double handful and poured it over her head. “Taranis,” she called as she did, and “Lir,” and “Belisama.”

  The fire sputtered low when she returned. She squatted to build it anew, feeding it until the glow quivered as far as the lightning-blasted beech nearby. A burning brand in her left hand, the knife in her right, she danced slowly three times around the great dead trunk while she named her Gods.

  The babe wailed, kicked, reached arms up from the blanket whereon he lay. Nemeta came back to stand above him. For an instant she found herself moveless, muscles locked together. With a gasp and a shudder she broke free. She plunged the torch into the soil; its flame went out. Her left hand caught the child by a leg and lifted him. He was so small, he weighed scarcely anything.

  She took him to the boulder and stretched him on its flat top. He writhed. His cries had grown thin. She held him down and looked aloft. Day was altogether gone. Stars blinked.

  Her words rushed forth, half-formed, falling over each other. “Taranis, Lir, Belisama, behold the last of Your worshippers. Men fled in terror of Your wrath, sought a home with the new God of the Romans or the doddering old Gods of the Gauls. I, Nemeta, born to the King of Ys by Your Queen Forsquilis, I alone keep faith with You. Hear me!”