The Dog and the Wolf

by Poul Anderson

  That was not in the nature of a young man afire to go fight. Salomon hoped fleetingly that in the years to come he would learn. If those years be granted him and his mentor.

  —They were not a real cavalry force whom he led west, though all went mounted. Some had mastered the lance, more could strike from the saddle without risk of losing their seats or having their steeds panic, a few had trained themselves into horse archers. The choicest such were afar in the Liger Valley. Most of Salomon’s were fighters afoot, who rode in order to reach the scene quickly. He made them, too, vary the pace, spare the animals. A long afternoon lay ahead in which to spend four-legged strength.

  4

  Smoke and soot drifted from burnt-out farmsteads. Thrice had the Scoti hurled themselves at the city. Thrice had men on the walls sent them back, but at a cost to their own ranks that they could ill afford. Each wave came higher than the last.

  A cheer lifted thin when the oncoming armor blinked into view. The attackers abandoned their improvised scaling ladders and swarmed snarling, yelping, turbulent, to meet the newcomers.

  Salomon leveled spear. The standard of blue and gold flapped furiously in the van of his charge. A warrior stood before him, half naked, sword awhirl over a face contorted by a wildcat scream. Salomon’s point went in with a dull impact. The man stumbled against another. Blood spouted from his belly. Salomon hauled the lance out. Loops of gut snagged it. He shook them free while he clubbed the next enemy with the shaft. A tug on the reins, a nudge of the spurs, and his horse reared, appallingly tall, blotting out the sun. Bones splintered under descending hoofs. Salomon pressed inward. An ax chopped his spear half across. He dropped it, grabbed sword, hewed around him.

  Not very far in, though. The Scoti were too many. His riders could drown in the whirlpool of them. He signalled the trumpet at his back to sound retreat. The troopers beat their way out of the crowd. They rejoined the larger number of comrades who had jumped to earth and fought as infantry—a barely organized infantry, armed and outfitted in wildly diverse fashion, but stark in its determination.

  The barbarians fell away, disordered. They rallied fifty yards off, shouted and glowered and threatened, but made no move at once to counterattack. The dead who sprawled and the wounded who writhed on the red sod between held far more of them than of Armoricans.

  Their living remained vastly the superior. A concerted rush would drag down Salomon’s band as hounds drag down an elk. The price would be high, though, even to men who disdained death. It could well end any hope of capturing the city. Salomon saw a lean gray wight lifted on a shield in the ancient Celtic manner. He seemed less to harangue the war party than address it. There followed lengthy, often florid argument, also in the ancient Celtic manner. Excellent, Salomon thought. Every minute that passed was a minute in which to rest, a minute wherein friends drew a bit nearer.

  The sun trudged down the sky. Decision came. The mass of the foe turned back to Audiarna, leaving about a hundred to deal with the Armorican reinforcements.

  That was as Salomon had hoped. The Scoti evidently didn’t know how many more he had on call. Unless sheer thirst for blood and glory made them indifferent. You never really knew what went on in those wild heads. What he must fight was a delaying action.

  His immediate opponents howled and attacked. They had the numbers but he had the horses and, in his foot, at least the seed corn of legionary discipline. Those men closed ranks and held fast. His riders harried flanks and rear. The charge broke up, bloodily.

  After that the battle became a series of skirmishes. Salomon’s command beat off assault after assault. In between, it struck at the main body of the Scoti, now here, now there. The tactics were simply to reap and retreat. That alone was confusing to warriors who knew of nothing but headlong advance, except when “the dread of the Mórrigu” stampeded them altogether. It blunted their onslaughts against walls to which a heartened garrison clung tighter than before.

  Though the Armoricans took losses, their count swelled. Osismii who had gotten the word arrived in groups, hour after hour, to join the blue standard. At last the core of the Confluentians appeared. They were not fresh, after their forced march; but by then, neither was anyone else on the field.

  The Scoti left the walls. They collected into a single huge pack and moved toward their foe to tear his throat out. Quite likely they could do that much, a consolation to them for the survival of a city they would thereafter be in no condition to take. “We are in the hands of God,” Salomon called to his troops. “Know that and keep your hearts high. Let our battle cry be—” not religious, with all the pagans here—“Armorica and freedom.”

  Should he have said “Osismia” instead? The idea of Armorica as a nation was barely in embryo … No, let him nurture it, let him feed it with his blood.

  A shout lifted. Among the enemy it turned into a screech, wail, death-dirge.

  Up from the sea and into the river mouth came a ship. Her sail spread like a wing on the evening wind that drove her majestic against the tide. Black with a red stripe, her hull flaunted a scrolled bowsprit whose gilt blazed in the long sunbeams. From her stern reared the head of a gigantic horse, as if Roman cavalry also rode over the waves. Yet somehow she was not of Rome. She might have been a ship of Ys risen from that drowned harbor to carry Nemesis hither.

  Her deck pulsed with men armed and armored. She grounded among the boats, crushing two of them under her forefoot. A catapult near the prow throbbed. Its bolt skewered three men of Hivernia. The crew sprang out or slid down ropes, waded ashore, formed and moved forward, a walking thicket of pikes. A few stayed behind and began demolishing the rest of the boats.

  That broke the Scotic will. Warriors turned into a shrieking blind torrent. It gashed past the city, down to the riverbank, to get at those craft and away before every man of it was trapped into exile. The Armoricans pursued, smiting.

  Their harvest was large. It cost them. Even demoralized, a barbarian was a dangerous beast. The wrecking gang must scramble clear, and several were too slow. The squadron from the ship barely held its ground while the escapers poured around it. The sailors left aboard were hard put to fend off valiant savages who tried to climb the sides. In the end, perhaps two-thirds of the Scoti crowded into what boats were left, bent to their oars, and vanished seaward.

  Well, Salomon thought, they would bring back a tale that should give pause to future pirates. And Audiarna had been saved. The story his followers told would be of hope reborn. He wiped and sheathed his sword, lifted his hands aloft, and from the saddle gave thanks to the Lord God of Hosts.

  5

  Clouds had risen on the rim of Ocean and a vast sunset filled the west, layered flame and molten gold, smoky purple slowly spreading as night moved out of the east. The moon lifted enormous above trees as black as the battlements close by. Heaven overhead preserved for a while a greenish clarity. Across it winged a flight of cormorants, homeward bound to the skerries outside Ys. Waves and the river went hush-hush-hush. Wind had lain down to rest in the cool.

  Before he sought his own sleep behind yonder gates, Salomon had much to do. He must see to quartering and feeding his men, as well as what horses they had left; the badly wounded required special conveyance into town; the dead wanted care too. Fallen Scoti could wait where they were for a mass grave in the morning, but the Armorieans should rest together under reverent guard until their brethren bore them home.

  There were words to speak, praise, encouragement, condolence, shared prayer. Finally there were words to exchange with the enemy. Those maimed lay still, knife-stuck; but a dozen or so had been captured, hale enough to seem worth binding. They sat on the trampled grass near the stream, hobbled, wrists lashed behind backs, in a dumb defiance. Equally weary, their keepers leaned on spears whose heads glimmered in the dying light. The hull of Brennilis made a cliff blocking off the sea.

  Salomon approached with Evirion, who understood the Scotic language. “I don’t know what information, if any, we can
get out of them,” the prince explained, “nor what use, if any, it may be. However, Gratillonius believes in gathering all the intelligence he can.”

  Hardly had the skipper begun to say that this was their conqueror who had come, than one among them crawled to his feet. He was aged for a warfarer, the gray hair sparse on his head, beard nearly white. Scars won long ago intertwined with gashes and clotted smears from today. His tunic hung a rag on the gaunt body. Yet gold shone on neck and arms, and his look made Salomon think of a hawk newly taken from the wild.

  “Sure and is it himself you’ve brought?” he said in Latin. Hivernian lilt and turn of phrase made music of it. “I’ll met, your honor.” He smiled around the teeth left to him. “But ’twas a grand fight you gave us. No shame in defeat at hands like yours.”

  Astonished, Salomon blurted, “Who are you?”

  The seamed visage registered offense. “It is unworthy to mock a man in his grief. The Gods mislike that.”

  Verania had said barbarians were more than witless animals. Someday such as these might be brought to Christ. “I’m sorry,” Salomon replied. “You’ve worn me out, and I forgot myself.”

  The man laughed, a clear sound, like a boy. His friends raised their heads to behold him athwart the sky. “Ah, that’s better. I am Uail maqq Carbri of Tuath Caelchon in Mide, and fortunate you are, for I it was who led this journeying from Ériu.’

  “What?” Incredible luck, maybe. No, likely not; his people would never disgrace him by offering ransom. Just the same—“I command the Armoricans here, Salomon, son of Apuleius. Our lord, uh, our lord Gratillonius is away or he would have met you himself.”

  “I knew that,” said Uail. “It was a reason why we came. We did not await the young wolf fighting as stoutly as the old, saving your honor.”

  “You knew? How, in God’s name—by what sorcery?”

  Uail’s smile grew sly. “Ah, that would be telling.”

  “Tell you will!” Evirion snarled.

  Uail gave him look for look and said quietly, “Your Roman tortures would only close our mouths the harder.” To Salomon: “But you and I might strike a bargain, chieftain with chieftain.”

  His face was blurring as dusk closed in. “Go on,” Salomon urged, and felt how suddenly the eventide was chilling off.

  “I will answer your questions, so be it they touch not my honor or the honor of my King, until—” Uail glanced east. “Until seven stars are in the sky. That is generous of me, for the moon will make the little ones slow tonight. Then you will strike the heads off us you have bound.”

  “Are you mad?” Or a barbarian.

  “I am not, and I know I speak on behalf of these lads with me, young though they are while I am long past my time, I who outlived my King. You will make slaves of us otherwise, will you not? You will put us to digging in your fields and turning your millstones. Because our owners will fear us, they may first blind us—or geld, and we may be so unlucky as not to die of that. I bid you my answers in return for our freedom. We shall swear to it by each his Gods and his honor. Is this not fair?”

  “Make the deal,” Evirion whispered in Salomon’s ear. “It’s the best we can do. But don’t let him blather on till the time’s run out.”

  Salomon swallowed a lump of dryness. His pulse thuttered. “It is fair, Uail,” he said. “I swear by Christ Jesus, my hope of salvation, and, and my honor.”

  “And I by the heads of my forefathers, the threefold Mdrrigu, and my honor, the which is the honor of my King Niall.”

  “Niall!” exclaimed Salomon.

  Uail’s voice rang. “I was his handfast man these many years. He was my King, my father, my dearest brother. It was for the avenging of him that I called the young men to sail with me: not for plunder or fame, though that lured them, but for vengeance upon his murderers. Ochón, that we failed! Ochón for the dead! Ochón for the righting of the wrong, now when none abide who remember Niall as does this old head soon to fall! But we gave him a pretty booty of newly uprooted souls, did we not?”

  “But Niall died—south of us—at the hand of another Scotian.”

  Hatred flickered. “Ah, you would be knowing of that, wouldn’t you?” After a breath, Uail spoke half amicably. “Well, I do not believe you, Salomon, with your honest face and all, had any part in that work of infamy. Nor quite did your King Grallon, though the Gods know he had much of his own to avenge and I do not think he forbade—”

  “How did you reach us like this?” Evirion interrupted. “Nobody saw you before dawn.”

  “Ah, we stepped masts and sailed straight across,” Uail said blandly. “By day and by night the wind was fair for us, the waves gentle, and we unafraid though everywhere around us was only Lir’s Ocean. I knew that our course held true, and from me the lads took courage—”

  “None of your damned talking the time away!” Evirion broke in again. “Where did you make landfall?’

  “Why, just where we wished, at the headlands of Ys. In among the rocks we threaded, cat-sure, never endangered, and there we took the first small part of Niall’s revenge for him. Men were at work ashore, breaking what still stood. We put in and ran them down, like foxes after hares, and laughed as we slew them. You may go find their bones and the bones of their oxen above Ys. The oxen we roasted and ate; the gulls will have feasted on the men.”

  Salomon remembered sickly that despite the terror that misted yonder bay, bold scavengers made forays yet. The gold and gems were gone, but dressed stones remained. They called to need more than greed. Folk built houses, often where raiders had destroyed wooden ones; they decked paths against winter’s mire; they raised shrines or chapels—Gesocribate required much building material to repair and heighten its shattered defenses—

  “Then you rowed by moonlight to Audiarna,” Evirion was saying. “What would you have done if you’d taken it?”

  “Why, looted, killed, and left a waste, a memorial pyre to Niall,” Uail said. “After that, ah, well, that would have been as the Gods willed, and a fickle lot They are, as every sailor and warrior well knows. We bore hopes of going on upstream, not this river but your Odita, as I understand you call it, to seize Grallon’s very rath, and him returning to no more than what Niall found at Emain Macha. We might not have chosen this attempt, for I am not as rash as you may be thinking, but if not, then we would have raged up and down your coast until—”

  “Hold!” Salomon cried. Twilight deepened. Moonlight tinged the grass and the dead. The cold was within himself, he knew, and shuddered with it. “Who told you Gratillonius was away?”

  “She did,” Uail answered. “She rose from the sea and sang to me while I walked by night mourning for my King. That was where the Ruirthech flows into its great bight, and across it the land of the Lagini to whom he gave so much sorrow, but who in the end—”

  Salomon seized the ripped tunic in both fists. His knuckles knocked on the breast behind. “Who is she?” he yelled.

  “The White One,” Uail said, “she who swam before our prows to guide us and—” He looked over his shoulder at the night-blue east, beyond the moon, and finished triumphant: “And now, your honor, behold the seven stars.”

  XXIV

  1

  There was a man named Catto who was a fisher at Whalestrand, a hamlet clinging to the shore near the eastern edge of the territory that belonged to Ys. After the city foundered, the Whalestrand folk allied themselves with the nearest clan of Osismii and brought their catches to Audiarna. There Catto, embittered at the Gods of Ys, soon learned to call on Christ.

  He saved what he could, and was at last able to get a small vessel of his own, which he named the Tern and worked with his grown sons Esun and Surach. Their affairs prospered in the meager fashion of their kind. They were ashamed when they learned the Scotic raiders had gotten past their watchfulness, though that was at night; but first they had rejoiced to see currachs full of wild men fleeing scattered back oversea.

  Once sure that the danger was past, Catto hoist
ed sail and left home behind him again. The season grew late; fishers must toil until storms and vast nights put an end to it, if they were to have enough to last them through the winter. Tern was not a boat for venturing out far and staying long, but her sailors knew the shoals around Sena. There the nets often gathered richly, and few others cared to go near that haunted island.

  The vessel had just passed Cape Rach when a fog bank to the south rolled on a suddenly changing wind over her—whereupon the wind died away and left her becalmed. For hours she floated blind. The gray swirled and smoked so her crew could barely see past the rail to slow, oily-looking swells that rocked her before them with hardly a whisper. The sound of water dripping off yard and stays was almost the loudest in the world. Cold and dankness seeped through to men’s bones.

  Then, blurred by faintness but ever stronger as time crawled along, came the rush and boom of surf. “We’re in a bad way, lads,” Catto told his sons. “The Race of Sena is bearing us where it will, but never did I know it to flow just like this.” He peered out of his hood, forward from the steering oars whose useless tiller he gripped, into the brume. “Pray God—nay, He’ll ha’ no ear for the likes of us—ask holy Martinus if he’ll bring us in safe, for ’tis out of our hands now.”

  “Can he see us where we are, or walk over the water to us?” Surach wondered.

  “There’s them that could,” Esun said, and shivered.

  Darkness thickened, but they made out a reef that they passed, a lean black length around which the waves grunted and sucked.

  “I’ll give the Powers whatever they want for our lives,” Catto said.

  He thought those might be unlucky words, and fumbled after better. All at once a breeze sprang up, sharp and salt on his lips. The mist streamed away before it, lightening around the boat though low and murkful yet overhead. To starboard and port the noise of breakers deepened but also steadied. Among the vapors, dim and mighty shapes began to appear. Closer by, lesser ones lifted jagged, turbulence afoam at their feet.