The Legions of the Mist

by The Legions of the Mist (retail) (epub)

  ‘In one way, yes. I think it’s the place that you’re born that you want to go back to in the end, but Rome is – it’s hard to explain. It’s the center of things. In one way, it is the Empire.’

  Gwytha was silent a moment. ‘That is an idea, I think, that my people would do well to learn,’ she said slowly. ‘That no matter what single tribe goes down, what is important is that the land as a whole should survive. If we cannot learn unity, we will never win over any invader, and the next one, maybe, will be worse than Rome.’

  ‘That’s very advanced thinking,’ Hilarion commented.

  ‘It’s what Justin says of this war. If you are going to do a thing, do it quickly and right. Otherwise nothing survives at the end.’

  ‘“Justin says,”’ Hilarion grinned at her. ‘You sound more like a wife all the time.’ She was silent, and he saw that he had touched a wound. ‘Feeling a little strange about it all?’

  ‘How could I not? Hilarion, you know why he married me.’

  Hilarion searched for some sentiment of comfort and found that it did not come easily to mind. ‘Do you know,’ he said finally, ‘I rather think most new married people feel that way. There aren’t that many marriages for love, you know, even among Justin’s folk and mine. Less maybe – look at my mother’s plans for me. And Justin told me once, his mother had a bride all selected for him. If she’s anything like mine, he made a good bargain, getting you. At least you and Justin are fond of each other … there are lots who don’t even have that.’

  Gwytha didn’t say anything, and somehow Hilarion felt that he had still said the wrong thing. He sat watching her fingers as they wove their intricate pattern of red and gold across the loom, and a certain amount of light burst upon him. ‘Gwytha, you can box my ears for me if I’m out of line, but… was there ever anyone else but Justin?’

  Gwytha kept her eyes on her loom, but her answer came clear and sad over the click of the shuttles. ‘None that I loved… no.’

  * * *

  The sun came out that afternoon, giving a white gloss to the world, but Justin, supervising his cohort at drill and keeping a wary eye on the catapult practice going on behind him, found himself impervious to the beauty of the world. He was occupied with gloomily wondering whether he should buy Gwytha something else, a real present, for its own sake, not like those damned eardrops, or whether that would just make matters worse. And why in Hades, he thought viciously, had he tied himself to a woman who could never forgive him for having married her in the first place?

  He was jerked out of this train of thought by an oath and a scuffle from the parade ground. One of the men, apparently also with other things on his mind, had turned right instead of left and snarled up his whole century.

  ‘Very impressive,’ Justin said, advancing on the traffic jam. ‘Remind me to leave this century behind next time we march. I’ve no desire to have a pilum flung at me by one of my own men. Do any of you know what you’re doing, or do you just make it up as you go along?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the junior centurion in charge began, looking nervously at his cohort commander.

  ‘It was me, sir,’ said a penitent voice from the rear of the tangle. ‘I did it. I think I turned wrong. It won’t happen again, sir.’ The culprit was easy to spot, a wiry, barrel-chested legionary who stood a good head above the rest of his century.

  ‘Who is it? Clemens? Ah, yes. Well, I appreciate your admitting being the cause of this monumental mess, but you’ve just let yourself in for extra drill, you know. All right, Centurion, take them round again, double time, until they get it right. All of them. The whole century shouldn’t come apart just because one man’s dreaming.’

  ‘It’s getting close to dinner, sir,’ the young centurion said.

  ‘Well, then they’d better learn it quickly, hadn’t they? Otherwise they’ll get awfully hungry.’ He went back to his position at the edge of the field.

  ‘Whoo, I thought you were for it, Clemens,’ said one of the soldiers, watching the centurion out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘So did I. He’s a queer one, though.’ Clemens considered his commander with furrowed brow. ‘I tell you this,’ he said at last. ‘I’d sooner have him on my side than not.’

  ‘Aye, well, likely you did right. Lying’s the thing he won’t put up with, they say. He’s the old school, he is.’

  Justin, who was not privileged to hear this conversation, wondered just how irritated they’d be by the extra drill. Enough to get it right the first time, he hoped. He was cold and he wanted his dinner.

  All the same, when Justin finally got home (they had not got it right the first time) he had another little silk-wrapped packet in his hand. He stepped into the atrium to find his wife curled on a couch, dispensing wine and sweet cakes to Hilarion and Licinius who were lounging at her side, and laughing at whatever story Hilarion had been telling her.

  Justin held the silken bag out to her hesitantly. ‘I thought you might like these better,’ he said, apprehensive of her reaction to this somewhat clumsy apology, and also hoping fervently that this time she would not see through him. He himself was all too aware that the new gift was a penance for his previous mistake.

  Gwytha gave him a startled look and pulled out a pair of amber bracelets. ‘Justin…’

  ‘He’s been selling passes again,’ Hilarion observed to Licinius. He eyed the bracelets. ‘You’ll look as fine as the Empress in those.’

  ‘Please take them,’ Justin said.

  ‘There was no need.’ She looked unhappily at the bracelets, and Justin wondered if she too was a little embarrassed about those eardrops.

  ‘Of course there wasn’t,’ he said tiredly. ‘They’re a present.’

  ‘They are beautiful.’

  ‘Well, put them on then, and let’s see how they look.’ He could feel an edge of exasperation creeping into his voice and tried to quell it.

  Gwytha must have heard it too, for she slipped the bracelets on obediently. Hilarion nodded at her with approval, and she smiled shyly. ‘Hilarion says they’ll become me,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we can argue with his taste in these matters.’

  Justin wondered what in Hades had been going on all afternoon and why Hilarion seemed to be eyeing his wife with such transparent concern, but he shrugged it off. Everything Gwytha did these days baffled him anyway.

  Hilarion wasn’t sure what was going on either, but he had the feeling that a crisis had been averted, and thankfully resumed the story he had been telling. Gwytha gave a shout of laughter at the end of the tale, and Justin watched her sadly, wishing he could call up that mood in her. Still, if she couldn’t make a friend of him, he was glad at least that she had others. And her laughter was good to hear.

  ‘Play something for us, Gwytha,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘All right.’ She took up her harp. ‘Happy or sad, think you?’ Justin realized that he only wanted to hear her voice, so he shrugged and said, ‘You choose.’ He closed his eyes and let the sound sweep over him, while she watched him, surprised, as she sang:

  The winter sun sets early now;

  It glints along the snowbank there,

  And through the fire’s smoky breath,

  It tints our spear points bright as death,

  And turns to gold the king’s grey hair.

  Her clear voice floated through the room… an old song of her people, born of an old war and an old king long forgotten.

  He is come, a last resort,

  To council table with his kin.

  Across that table Alun stands,

  And Evan with his bloody hands,

  And counts the men he knows for him.

  Death blows on the wind here where

  MacBrendan sits among his brood;

  Silent as the rest are fed,

  His cup untouched, he will not shed

  Their blood nor eat their food.

  We followed him in our wild youth’s flight,

  When war was to our liking,
<
br />   And earned for each a golden band,

  Cattle and our wives and land,

  For thirty years of fighting.

  Now come his sons to claim their share:

  At smell of blood the jackals rise.

  Our foemen’s huts are rent and burned,

  Their farms and fields to wildwood turned,

  Yet still the swift-wing war spear flies.

  And so we keep our watch upon

  Alun’s eyes and nervous hands,

  For death lies in a knife blade hid,

  And it comes to feast unbid,

  As this last dark council ends.

  It was a song with the fine-drawn strength of a bowstring, and the old harper that had made it lived again for a space in Gwytha’s voice. The mood she created caught more than Justin in it.

  ‘Brr,’ Hilarion said when she had finished. ‘Now there’s a tune to give a healthy man the creeps.’

  ‘It is a song of my own people,’ Gwytha said, laying the harp in her lap. ‘Still, I could not sing it for them,’ she sighed. ‘Among my people, it is not permitted for women to make such music.’

  ‘Then your people have lost much,’ Justin said softly.

  Licinius smiled. ‘Give us “The Courting of Claudia,” Gwytha. That’s more in Hilarion’s line.’

  Hilarion’s face reddened, but he grinned appreciatively as Gwytha struck up a lively, mocking tune of two rival suitors and the setbacks they suffered, ending with the winning of Claudia by a man who appeared not to want her in the least.

  ‘That’s women for you,’ Hilarion said mournfully. ‘Bring them sweets and perfume and they fall over themselves chasing the fellow who’s not interested.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ Justin said grimly, ‘that’s strategy. Never wear your heart on your sleeve. It gets trod on.’

  Gwytha looked at him oddly, and the other two watched them in uncomfortable silence until Licinius gave them an abrupt change of subject.

  ‘I came to talk to you, Justin,’ he said. ‘And you also,’ he nodded at Hilarion. ‘I’ve been hearing some highly unpleasant things in my surgery when my patients apparently overlooked my presence. How do things stand in your cohorts?’

  ‘Well enough among most of the men,’ Hilarion said. ‘There are a few – I suppose there always are – who are talking rather large and loud.’

  ‘I think I’m finally beginning to make some headway with mine,’ Justin said, ‘although I’ve had to crack down on a couple, like Drusus. I rather fancy our cohorts are in better shape than most, but that may be just vanity. Still, I’ve heard some things from men in other cohorts that I wouldn’t stand for.’

  ‘No more would I,’ Hilarion said. ‘Though I dislike putting a man in the guardhouse for saying old Lupus is an idiot when I’ve been thinking it myself.’

  ‘Two distinctions seem to have escaped you,’ Licinius said drily. ‘One is that you haven’t been holding those views in public with an eye to stirring up trouble. And the other is that no matter how mistaken you think Lupus is, you obey his orders and you’ll go on obeying them. Can you say that for the rest of the Legion?’

  ‘For most of my men, I think, yes, at the moment,’ Justin said. ‘I’m not so sure about the rest of the Legion. They’re spoiling for a fight of some kind. I just hope they’ll be satisfied with fighting the Brigantes. I think they would be if they could do it properly.’

  ‘I think also that the right man could bring them round,’ Hilarion said. ‘They’re not that far gone yet. But the best we can do is keep our own men in line.’

  ‘This should never have been allowed to get started in the first place,’ Justin said. ‘It’s a damn sight easier to prevent than it is to stop it once it’s started. And if we had any brains, we’d take every warrior the Brigantes have left and ship them off to the Auxiliaries in Parthia – before they can pull themselves back together.’ Justin made a disgusted noise in his throat.

  ‘Will we, do you think?’ Hilarion asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because they’re very sorry now that they were bad boys and are being very good and paying their taxes and behaving themselves like the good little barbarians that they are, and after all, our job here is to keep the peace.’

  It was only too obvious what was the source of this speech, and Hilarion said indignantly, ‘But surely after last summer – the man’s got to have changed his mind. We can’t go on just spanking them and sending them to bed without their supper indefinitely.’

  ‘I think he will, though,’ Gwytha said.

  ‘But why?’ Hilarion looked startled. His experience of women did not cover any who took an intelligent part in military conversations.

  ‘He is a man who does not like to… take chances.’ She looked thoughtful. ‘And he does not understand Britain. I think he feels they will… will give up and turn to something else.’

  ‘You’re a better judge of character than I gave you credit for,’ Licinius said. ‘What do you think of Vortrix?’

  ‘It always comes back to Vortrix, doesn’t it? I don’t know. I think he is… dangerous. He has too much charm, too many men who would follow him across the Rubicon – or the Styx – without question. If he still lives.’ She glanced at Justin.

  Justin was silent. He had the uncomfortable sensation that if Vortrix were dead he would know it. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ he said abruptly. ‘We have enough to do with our own cohorts without trying to run the whole Legion singlehanded.’

  And enough elsewhere as well, he thought, looking at Gwytha. He knew, sadly, that her laughter and her outspokenness would last only until their guests had gone.

  On an impulse, he asked them to stay for dinner.

  * * *

  It was a wakeful night, moon-washed and shining, when Licinius and Hilarion left the house. The surgeon raised a hand in farewell and started up toward the hospital to make a final check. It was quieter there now that Justin didn’t come so often to talk, and Licinius found that he missed him.

  As always, he took his comfort from the countryside, watching the black knots of trees whispering in the wind. He was more than half in love with Britain, he thought. A strange, compelling country. Like Justin, he had hated it when he first came. Now… there was something here that drew him. But he was lonely for someone with whom to share the moonlight and the trees. Only Hilarion, of the three of them, seemed to be heart-whole, he thought, and tonight he had wondered about him. But perhaps it was only the restless night.

  * * *

  Hilarion picked his way through the icy wheel ruts in the street and glanced down the narrow alley that led to Cordaella’s garden gate. He had been considering her as a likely successor to Claudia, and there wasn’t really a thing wrong with her. In fact, there were a great many things right. Her figure was opulent, her tastes were not, and her virtue was almost nil. Somehow he just didn’t seem interested. The truth was, he acknowledged ruefully, he had Gwytha on his mind. It would be nice to have a wife to bring presents to, if she were someone like Gwytha, not his mother’s selection, a pudgy eight-year-old with a passion for cream cakes which threatened to spoil her face as well as her figure in a few more years. ‘I simply can’t marry her,’ he said aloud. ‘Mother will just have to think of something else to do with her. I shall rise to be Emperor,’ he added, repeating a childhood formula, ‘and then I can do what I like.’

  He kicked suddenly at a clod of dirty snow and turned down Cordaella’s alley. There was a light in her window, and she might even be alone.

  * * *

  In their own window, Justin and Gwytha too stood looking at the night. It seemed a live thing, rustling in the garden. An owl floated by on silvered wings, and they watched it drift past in silence, as if the gentle mood that still lingered was too fragile to break with words.

  ‘Do you know,’ Gwytha said finally, ‘I think that’s going to be an apple tree. It has the right shape.’

  Justin di
dn’t answer, but took her words as he thought perhaps she had meant them and slipped an arm around her shoulders. The grey and white tomcat went prowling along the wall, intent on his own amours, and Justin, with a silent grin, took his wife by the hand with like intent.

  He felt that same ache and longing which seemed always to come to him with Gwytha at night, and as always, she lay still and let him do what he wished. But this night, instead of turning away to sleep, she closed her eyes with her head on his shoulder and his arm around her. In a while he tried to slide it out from under her, and she stirred and wrapped her own arms around him in her sleep.

  So Justin lay still, his arm slowly growing numb beneath her, and held to him, if only for this one night, a new and unknown thing.

  IX

  The Music Maker

  Vortrix looked up, frowning, his eyes narrowed against the sudden sunlight. ‘What do you want?’

  A small white hand jerked the door hangings back. ‘A word or two with my lord,’ said an icy voice.

  ‘Branwen!’ He turned his mangled arm away from her. ‘Were you not told to bide with your women?’

  She advanced on him like a large golden thunderstorm. ‘My women!’ she said furiously. ‘I began to wonder if I was not like the maid of the story who marries a monster and knows it not, since she never sees him!’

  ‘I am not much to look at,’ he said drily. ‘And I have other things on my mind just now. And…’ he stopped short.

  ‘And?’ One small slipper beat an irritated tattoo on the floor.

  ‘And I would not have my woman see me shamed!’ he flared at her, holding out his arm. ‘Look, then! Look well, if you will! I cannot use it! When I do, I faint like a maid with the pain. Now you have seen. Go away.’

  The thunderstorm vanished. ‘Let me look.’ She pulled the curtains back again and tugged him into the winter sunlight. ‘So. Someone caught you a fine blow, did he not?’ Vortrix pushed her away.

  ‘How much can you do with it?’ she inquired practically, seeming to take no offense.