The Dog and the Wolf

by Poul Anderson

  “And what do you mean to do next?” the Duke demanded.

  Gratillonius shrugged. “Go back to our everyday lives. Stand by to come to your side again whenever need be, No, I have no intention of rebelling. Let Gratianus cross over from Britannia and he’ll have us to deal with.”

  Bacca stroked his chin. “Since you have such respect for the law and our Emperor,” he purred, “it’s curious how you kept his ministers waiting this long until you condescended to visit them.”

  Glabrio: “Outrageous. Repeated refusals to obey my summons. Unheard of.”

  Gratillonius: “My replies explained the reasons, over and over. First we had to go home, care for the injured, let our men pick their lives back up. Then it was time to start working the farms. It still is. I have my own, as well as everything that’s had to be postponed in my tribuneship.”

  Glabrio: “Tribuneship! You arrive with that pack of bandits and dare call yourself an officer of the state?”

  Gratillonius: “I did it for your sakes, sirs.”

  Glabrio: “What? ”

  Murena: “Easy, Glabrio. Say on, Gratillonius.”

  Gratillonius: “If anything untoward should happen to me, that would be unfortunate. It could well unleash the selfsame revolt you fear. I thought that bringing a bodyguard was a sensible precaution.’

  Bacca: “Against hotheads?”

  Gratillonius: “I’m sure the procurator is not among them.”

  Bacca: “What do you propose?”

  Gratillonius: “I told you, I’ll go quietly home and take up my work and my public duties.” Slowly: “But the men who saved Armorica—all of them, everywhere, serfs, reservists, everybody, they must have amnesty. No harm shall come to a single soul of them. Otherwise I can’t answer for the consequences.”

  Bacca: “I daresay you’d quickly learn about any … incidents.”

  Gratillonius: “They will. The brotherhoods.”

  Murena: “You refuse to disband them, then?”

  Gratillonius: “Sir, I couldn’t. Men are flocking to join. Isn’t the only sensible thing to allow this, encourage it, help improve it, and so keep it at the service of Rome?”

  Murena: “Under you.”

  Gratillonius: “I offer my counsel.”

  Bacca: “You mean your good offices.”

  Glabrio: “Offices? Impossible! Absurd! Your commission was revoked the moment I learned of your deeds.”

  Gratillonius: “That’s in the governor’s power, but please remember that my petition is on its way to the Emperor. Not for myself, but for the people of Armorica, asking for a rescript granting us the right to defend ourselves. Meanwhile, if the governor chooses to replace me as tribune, I’ll cooperate with the new man to the best of my ability.”

  Murena: “Ha! Glabrio, don’t waste anybody on that nest of vipers.”

  Gratillonius: “If we have to govern ourselves in Aquilo and Confluentes, we will. We’ll maintain law and order. The taxes will be paid on schedule.”

  Glabrio: “And when your petition is denied, when the order comes from Ravenna for your arrest and execution, what then?”

  Gratillonius: “I’m not sure that it will, sir. Lord Stilicho may well advise his Imperial Majesty that what we have in Armorica is the foundation of a Roman fortress.”

  Bacca: “If he does that, then, bluntly put, he’s a fool who can’t see past the end of his Vandal snout. The precedent—”

  Gratillonius: “Times change, sir.”

  Bacca: “And Stilicho … is given to improvising.”

  There was another silence. The wind blustered.

  At length Murena asked, “Has anyone anything else to say?” Throttled fury trembled in the words.

  “Just putting our agreement in plain language that none of us can forget or misunderstand,” Gratillonius answered.

  “Because it can’t very well be recorded, can it? We must connive with you at gross illegality to avoid what is worse.” The smile on Bacca’s lips was a grimace as of a man in great pain. “You’re right, times do change. A strong Emperor with some sense of statecraft—But let us get on with our distasteful business.”

  “Then I’ll go home,” said Gratillonius.

  6

  “Hail, Caesar!” boomed the deep young voices.

  From the towertop where he stood, Constantinus saw widely over those domains that were his. The river sheened beneath soft heaven and brilliant sun. On its opposite bank reached the roofs of the civilian city, red tile, neat thatch, and beyond them a landscape of hills and vales grown vividly green, white where fruit trees and hawthorn blossomed, the breeze from it laden with odors of earth and flower. So had the springtime been five years ago, at Deva on the far side of Britannia, that day when he turned back the mighty barbarian Niall.

  “Hail, Caesar!”

  His gaze dropped between the walls of the fortress. So had they stood for centuries. Here had come the Emperor Hadrianus, who built the Wall; here had died the Emperors Severus and Constantinus; here the legions had proclaimed that man’s son, another Constantinus, their Augustus, he who first conquered in the sign of Christ. This countryside had prospered peaceful throughout the wars that tore the Empire, lifetime after lifetime, because Eboracum abided as the home of the Sixth Victrix. Strange to think that he, Flavius Claudius Constantinus, would end its long watch.

  “Hail, Caesar!”

  The cry was antiquated. Caesar had come to mean simply the Imperial associate and heir apparent. The troops were making him supreme Augustus. They would march and sail and march at his beck to enforce it—-or, if he failed to lead them, kill him and name another. Below, at the front of the armored men massed and shouting, the head of Gratianus gaped on a spear.

  Constantinus lifted an arm. Across the shoulders of his own mail he had thrown a purple cloak. His brows bore a laurel wreath. Swords drawn, his elder son Constans stood proud on his right, his younger son Julianus on his left.

  Stillness fell, till he heard the murmur of the breeze and a lark song on high. Faces and faces and faces stared upward. Sunlight gleamed on their eagles. Elsewhere in the world, horsemen had become lords of the battlefield. Only in Britannia did something remain of that unbreakable fighting machine which had carried the power of Rome from Caledonia to Egypt. Oh, the machine had corroded, he’d need plenty of cavalry himself, but the Sixth and Second, the Britannic infantry, set down in Gallic soil, would be the dragon’s teeth from which his armies grew.

  He filled his lungs. When he spoke, it rolled forth over the ranks. He’d learned how to do that, as common soldier, centurion, senior centurion. Thence he went to camp prefect, but that was a short service. Already the troops were ill pleased with Gratianus, who was doing nothing, like Marcus before him. Constantinus had known how to steer that discontent….

  “Hail, my legionaries! Great beyond all measure is this honor you have done me. Next after God, I thank you for it. Under Him, I will prove myself worthy of it.

  “You are soldiers. I am a soldier, one among you. I too have marched and fought, endured rain and snow, hunger and weariness and the loss of dear comrades. I too have eaten bitterness as barbarians pillaged and burned along our shores, killed our men, ravished our women, dashed the brains of our little children out against walls that our forefathers raised. And Britannia is not alone in her wretchedness. Again and again, Goths break into the Southern lands, even into Italy. How long till Rome herself burns? And now the Germani spill across Gallia, right there over the narrow sea. And a weakling Emperor with a witling councillor lies idle.

  “The time is overpast for action. Rome needs a strong man, a fighting man, an Emperor who sits less on the throne than in the saddle. If God will give us such leadership, we shall yet prevail. We will crush the heathen; but first we will crush the fools and traitors who let them in.

  “This I promise you. I promise it by Christ Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour. I promise it by my great namesake Constantinus, whom your forebears hailed within this very stron
ghold, and who went forth to restore the Empire and establish the Faith. I promise it by my kinsman Magnus Maximus, who likewise went from here to redeem; he fell, but his spirit lives on, immortal. By my own soul and hope of salvation, I promise you victory!”

  He paused for cheers.

  7

  The sun drew nigh to midsummer. This was a beautiful year, as if to atone for last. Croplands burgeoned, kine sleekened in lush pastures, forests teemed with game and rivers with fish. Armoricans kept watch over their coasts, but seaborne raiders were few and all were beaten off. It was as though Saxon and Scotian bided their time until a certain word should reach them. Meanwhile folk made ready for the solstice festival.

  In a private room of the basilica in Turonum, Duke Murena stood before seated Governor Glabrio and Procurator Bacca. A letter was in his hand, hastily scrawled on a wooden slab. His phrases fell like stones. “That is the news.”

  Glabrio ran tongue over lips. His features hung tallow-white. “Nothing more?”

  “Not yet,” Murena said. “Weren’t you listening? He was in the process of landing when this went off to me. I expect he’ll guard every road out of Gesoriacum, take control of communications, while his Britons finish crossing and his Gallic allies gather.”

  “Which way will he move, then?” The question quavered.

  “South, surely.” Impatience edged Murena’s heavy tones.

  “Those Germani—”

  “They’re down that way, but more to the west. If I were Constantinus, I’d strike for Arelate. Of course, before venturing that far, he’s got to consolidate his position in the North.”

  Bacca rose. “A new Constantinus, come from Britannia,” he said low. “A new age?” Wonder transformed the sunken countenance.

  “What shall we do?” Glabrio cried.

  Morena shrugged. “Whatever seems advisable.”

  “Could we stay neutral?”

  “That may prove inadvisable.”

  “Armorica did wh-when Maximus struck.”

  Bacca’s tartness returned. “This isn’t Armorica,” he pointed out. “Turonum was as involved with Maximus’s campaign as any place was, and afterward fully under his rule. Besides, Armorican aloofness was largely the work of Gratillonius, who had Ys for his tool kit, and he did the job on behalf of Maximus.”

  Color mottled Glabrio’s skin. Fury elbowed fear aside. “Gratillonius! Will he declare for this usurper too?”

  “I rather think not,” replied Bacca. “He denied any such intention to us, and he is a man of his word. I made a mistake when I recommended him for tribune—though an inevitable mistake, mind you—but that much I’m still certain of. Also, I know, he grew disillusioned with Maximus.”

  “And today he’s no King of Ys,” Murena growled. “Nothing but a mutinous scoundrel with a lot of Bacaudae on call.”

  “And a much larger lot of ordinary Armoricans,” Bacca said. “They won’t likely want any part of this new quarrel.”

  “Gratillonius, Gratillonius!” puffed Glabrio. He pounded a knee. “Must he forever obsess us? Armorica’s only a military district, an outlying part of my province. I have my whole province to think of.”

  “And Rome,” added Bacca, quietly again.

  Glabrio blinked up at him. “Well, of course, but—”

  “If you mean that sincerely, then you’ll declare for Constantinus.”

  Glabrio swallowed. “Would that be … prudent?”

  Murena paced a turn around the room. “My guess is that we won’t dare not., unless we start for Hispania tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ve been keeping track of events in Britannia as best I could, you know. It’s hard to see what can stop him this side of the Pyrenaei Mountains. Stilicho stripped Gallia of regular troops, as well as volunteers, to meet the Goths. Those that’ve come back—and my intelligence of such things is good—they mostly feel disgusted. They think their absence was what invited the barbarians into their homeland. No matter that they’d returned by then, this is how they feel. And there is some justice to it. Their losses were heavy, and the Gallic military has been disorganized ever since. Meanwhile Italy is a wreck and Stilicho spars with the East. No, I think pretty soon men of Constantinus’s will be here in Turonum, and soldiers everywhere in western Gallia going over to him.”

  Bacca pounced. “Therefore we should declare for him at once. Win the favor of our future Augustus.”

  “That—is an unnecessary risk?” Glabrio’s indignation had faltered. He plucked at his robe. “Constantinus may fail. In that case, we must be able to show we had no choice.”

  “And afterward be political eunuchs,” Bacca retorted scornfully. Ardor followed: “Whereas if we join the cause early—the cause of him who does look like the man with the power, the mission, to save Rome—God Himself will smile on us.”

  “You speak more surely of Him than is usual for you,” Murena gibed.

  “I speak from the heart.” M-m—

  “Consider also this matter of Armorica.”

  “What of it?”

  “Insubordinate. Defiant. Here we have an opportunity sent from Heaven.”

  Glabrio straightened his bulk. “How?” he piped.

  Bacca waited, making attention come full upon him, before he said: “Without special incentive, Constantinus will pass Armorica by, won’t he? It’s just a thinly populated peninsula. If he doesn’t expect it’ll menace his rear, he’ll ignore it till later. Maximus did—because Gratillonius made it safe for him.”

  Murena scowled. “Do you think Gratillonius would incite the Armoricans to fight for Honorius?”

  “Scarcely,” answered Bacca. “I don’t believe he could if he wanted to, nor do I believe he does want to.” He raised a forefinger. “What I do think is that we, as Constantinus’s early friends, can show him the advantages of making Armorica positively his. Immediately, for manpower and revenue, both of which he’ll be wanting in quantities as vast as possible. In the longer and more important run, to eliminate this armed peasantry, this cancer in the state, before it spreads further. That alone will make the magnates throughout the Empire see him for what he is, the deliverer, the guarantor. And the demonstration, at the very beginning, of his determination to rule—that will bring submission and support like nothing else.”

  “Can he spare the troops?” Murena asked doubtfully.

  “It won’t take but a handful. Not barbarian wolves, Roman soldiers: Roman, protecting Imperial officers in the performance of their duties. I suspect they’ll only need to occupy Confluentes. Then everything falls apart for Gratillonius, and soon Armorica is ours.’

  Glabrio stared at a vision of glory. “To break Gratillonius,” he crooned. “To destroy Gratillonius.”

  XXII

  1

  To Gratillonius it was like a storm he had seen afar, gigantic bruise-dark cloud masses thundering and lightening over the hills toward the ridge where he stood. Yet he was surprised when at last it broke over him—at how quietly the thing went, and how its bolt did not strike at him but into his heart.

  Light spilled from a sky where only scraps of fleece drifted above thousandfold wings. Summer brooded in majesty on ripening grain and fragrance-heavy forests. There often the only sounds were bees at work in clover and the call of a cuckoo. Air lay mild over earth, as might a benediction or a woman’s hand.

  He was out among his mares and stallions when a boy galloped up with word from Salomon. At once Gratillonius resaddled Favonius and made racetrack speed back to Confluentes. At the south gate he saw the strangers across the Odita on his left, coming along the road from Venetorum. For an instant a surf of darkness went through him. It was as if he were again at the whelming of Ys.

  “Romans,” the boy had said; and across the fields and down the woodland trails, word had already scuttered to him of squadrons out of the east. Closer than that it did not speak of them, for the time was long and long since Armorica had seen anything of quite this kind.

  Two men rode at the head. On
e wore civil garb. The other was helmeted, beneath the transverse red crest of a centurion. Behind them tramped thirty-two afoot. Sunlight gleamed fierce off mail, shields, javelin points. At their rear, three led the pack horses. At their front, one had a bearskin over his armor, and from the staff in his hand rippled an eagle banner.

  Legionaries as of old, as of Caesar or Hadrianus, as of Gratillonius’s youth when Britannia still bred them, not mounted lancers nor barbarian auxiliaries nor peasant levies but Romans of the legion; O God, he knew that emblem!

  The dizziness passed. He grew aware of those who trailed, a hundred yards or more to the rear, Osismiic men, perhaps fifty, a sullen, wary pack, their clothes gray with grime but spears and bills slanting forward, axes and bows on shoulders. And he knew without seeing that shadowy forms had flitted along through the woods and now waited at the edge of cultivation. And city dwellers were on the walls at his back, beswarming the pomoerium, choking the gateway. He heard them mutter and mumble.

  The soldiers never looked right or left or rearward. A single proud being, they advanced on Confluentes. Dust flew up to the drumbeat rhythm of their hobnails. Their centurion held his mount to the same rate, the Roman marching pace that once carried the eagles across half a world. So had Gratillonius led his vexillation to Ys, fourand-twenty years ago.

  A pair of his guards kept uneasy watch at the far end of the bridge. Gratillonius rode across. Hoofs thudded on stone. “Get back there,” he instructed the men. “Call the sentries down from the wall. I want that gateway and the street cleared. I want everybody orderly. Go!”

  Relief washed over them. They had something to do; he had abolished formlessness. They hastened in obedience. He cantered on.

  Nearing, he made out faces. Family faces, not of anybody he knew but unmistakable. Some twenty of them could only be Britannic. The insignia grew clear in his sight. They were of the Second Augusta. His legion.

  Their ranks came on against him. He lifted his right arm in Roman salute. A strange figure he must be to them, he thought, a big man with gray-shot auburn hair and beard, in rough Gallic tunic and breeches that smelled of sweat, smoke, horses, but riding a superb animal and at his hip not a long Gallic sword but one like their own.