The Legions of the Mist

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

  The moon hung low over the heathered hills, a round, fat moon that shed a watery gleam on the rocks and new spring grasses in the rider’s path. The light changed almost constantly with the clouds which shifted now across the moon’s face, and now away again, but there was enough to see by… and to ride by, for a man who knew the country.

  He rode silently, his cloak huddled around him against the damp wind which blew from the north, and draped so as to give extra protection to the harp bag on his shoulders. An owl swooped low across the trail and the pony pitched and shied.

  ‘Steady, little brother.’ The rider ran a slim hand along the pony’s neck and spoke softly in his ear. ‘We’ll talk to stranger things than owls this trip, I’m thinking.’

  The pony tossed his head and snorted, and the two moved northward through the wet night.

  With dawn, they came to a little stream bubbling down over the rocks, and then to a hill steading half hidden by the encircling heather. Horse and rider drew wearily to a halt as an old woman emerged from the hut. She fixed them with a malevolent eye and made a sign with her hands.

  ‘Good morning, old mother,’ Galt said. ‘May the gods look well on you.’

  ‘Huh!’ She turned toward the hut and spoke to someone inside, then turned back to the visitor with no further comment.

  There was a bustling inside the hut, and presently she was reinforced by a man of almost equal antiquity and two others much younger. Grandsons, perhaps. They were small, dark people, the lingering remnants of the people who had inhabited this land before the Brigantes and their kin had come with new weapons and new gods and swept the little dark folk into the wind like so many leaves.

  ‘The sun and the moon on your path. May I enter?’ Galt spoke carefully. Much was said of the little dark folk’s magic, and while Galt generally remained a sceptic in such matters, he had a healthy respect for the powers of the hill people.

  One of the younger men stepped forward. ‘I am Dree. What does the golden harper want with our house?’

  ‘A place by your hearth to sleep this day. We have run all night, my horse and I. And a guide for the trail north at sundown.’

  ‘Have you the true music in you, harper?’

  Galt smiled. ‘Some men say so. The god’s gift is not for me to claim for myself.’

  Dree exchanged glances with his brother, who stood leaning on his spear shaft, and then motioned for Galt to dismount. ‘Come you in to the hearth then, harper. We will see to your horse. When you have slept perhaps you will wake your harp for us.’

  ‘That gladly,’ Galt said. ‘My thanks to you and your kinfolk.’ He followed the small dark man into the hut and settled himself on the bedplace that was shown him. There was a small stirring among the hill people, then they settled to the business of the day, ignoring their guest.

  Galt sunk himself deeper into the pile of furs and bracken, firmly ignoring their smell, which was ripe and well aged. At his movement, the old woman eyed him darkly and then returned to her cook pots, muttering.

  ‘Brother, the things I do for thee,’ Galt murmured to himself, tucking his forearm between his nose and a particularly redolent wolf skin.

  Galt had been the High King’s sworn man since their boyhood together in Dubric’s usurping household, where the king had prudently kept his nephew under his eye. It had been Galt who had shared Vortrix’s bitter tears and fury at his humiliation, Galt who had solemnly sworn a brother’s bond with him when they were ten. They had gone through the dark and awesome ceremony of initiation together, and when the time was right, the bond was fulfilled in blood as Galt rode at the head of the war band that put Vortrix on the High King’s throne and Rhiada on a bier beside his brother’s.

  Dubric, dead of a lingering infection in a wolf-bitten hand, Rhiada, dead three days later on the edge of Vortrix’s sword… Vortrix had stood watching the flames rise from the bodies, and then turned to Galt beside him.

  ‘There will be an end now to kin killing kin,’ Vortrix had said, and Galt had kept his silence. But on the fringe of the spear brothers he could see Cawdor, bitter-eyed, watching his father’s body burn. However loath the High King was to shed more kinsmen’s blood, the time would come when he would have to, or see an end to all hope of the unity which would be their one telling point against Rome. Rome was losing that capacity to fight as one man which had been her bulwark. If the Tribe could learn it, and turn it against her…

  Galt slept until late afternoon, when he woke to find his four hosts regarding him unblinkingly from across the hearth. His fingers went to the harp bag and what it contained, and he sighed softly as he drew it out from under his cloak. ‘My thanks to this house for the place at your hearth,’ he murmured, sitting up and stretching himself. ‘I have slept well.’

  ‘That is good,’ Dree said. ‘The harper will honor our house by eating with us before he goes. And perhaps by waking the music in that bag he guards so carefully.’

  ‘She has borne me good company on many long trails.’ Galt laid his hand on the harp bag with affection. ‘I would be honored to wake her music for the house of Dree.’

  This exchange of courtesies completed, he accepted the bowl of stew and barley bannock which the old woman brought him. There was a slightly odd taste about the broth… not unpleasant, but different. Galt remembered the old women’s stories of his childhood, of how a man ate of the little dark folk’s food and was forever bound to them, and of his return to his own people to find them long dead and a hundred years gone by in the wind. He shrugged and continued his meal. Not to eat would have been an insult too great to be erased, and he was going to need the dark folk’s good will. Without it he would have little need to worry about his possible bewitchment.

  The stew was rich and satisfying, and he finished the last of it, then laid the bowl aside and drew his harp carefully from its bag. He ran his fingers along the strings in a questioning trill… the old music? It seemed appropriate.

  Galt began to play, calling up the deep and stirring music that pulled at the heart… the old music of his Tribe, born centuries ago from the songs of the little dark folk when they were kings in the land. Dree and his brother sat silent, their eyes reflecting the shining sounds that filled the room, while the old woman stirred and cocked her head at the sound, and the grandsire, secluded in his deafness, fixed his eyes on the hands of the harper and seemed to draw the music from them.

  Presently Galt began to sing, a lament at first, low and mournful, then changing with the music to a great striding sound that called down the very hounds of war and gloried in their coursing. He brought forth again the high and far-off days when the gods themselves came down on the horses of the sky and fought beside their mortal armies.

  Galt’s eyes were fixed on some distant space, and his face lay shadowed while the light of the cook fire danced in the white gold of his hair. No longer mortal, he was Music, and the sound that he called forth enveloped them all.

  * * *

  When he had finished, there was silence.

  At last Dree said, ‘It has been long since I heard the ancient music made thus. Truly the golden people have bred a harper of the old ways.’

  Galt shook off the trance such music always laid on him and smiled. ‘Nay, then, merely a harper who loves his craft. Have you not such among your own people?’

  ‘Aye, though these days they are few. But it was our music before ever the golden people came overseas. Or did you not know?’

  ‘I knew. But the love of the music opens many doors.’ He slid the harp gently back in its bag and gathered his cloak about him.

  ‘The sun is low, and I must be on my road.’ He looked at Dree. ‘I ask guidance of you.’

  ‘For the sake of the music, I will take you so far and no farther,’ Dree said. ‘But there are those who will serve after me, if I ask it.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘That depends on why the harper rides north at night.’

  ‘No harm to you and yours.
I have eaten your food and I swear it.’

  ‘I begin to see,’ Dree said, ‘but it is all one to us. Come then.’ Outside the hut, Galt found his pony fed and bridled. He swung up and followed as Dree, barefoot and fleet, slipped like a shadow into the heather.

  X

  Birthright

  Eburacum was huddled under a sullen March drizzle as Gwytha picked her way across the camp, and the sentries squelched miserably from puddle to puddle, casting curses according to their nationality on a government unfeeling enough to send its subjects to drown by degrees in a marsh.

  In the hospital, Flavius, perched on a surgery table, was happily singing a ditty about the shores of sunny Italy for the annoyance of the senior surgeon and his patients.

  Seeing Gwytha in the doorway, he stopped his song, forestalling one of the more robust patients who was apparently preparing to stuff a bandage down his throat.

  Licinius looked up from the unfortunate whose boil he was engaged in lancing and raised his dark brows at her. ‘Child, you’re soaked to the skin. You’ve no business being out in this. Were you looking for Justin?’

  ‘No, I came to see you.’

  At this, the owner of the boil, finding himself exhibited in a most undignified position before an unknown female, raised his voice in protest.

  ‘It won’t take me a minute to lance this,’ Licinius said, eliciting a further protest from his prisoner. ‘If you don’t mind waiting… uh, perhaps in my office?’

  She nodded and left Licinius to his victim. There was a howl of outrage as the surgeon applied his scalpel to the problem, and a few minutes later he joined her in the hospital office, wiping his hands and looking, she thought, indecently amused.

  ‘Poor Balin. He’s suffering as much from wounded pride as boils on the backside.’ He settled himself behind the desk. ‘What’s Januaria doing to let you run around in the rain like this?’

  ‘It never ceases to amaze me,’ Gwytha said drily, ‘what a hothouse flower I’ve become in the last few months. Licinius, I’ve slept in the rain.’

  ‘I suppose so. But there’s no necessity for you to do it now. Unless, of course, it’s a matter of pride.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she said affectionately.

  Licinius hesitated. It seemed as good a time as any. ‘Don’t be too reluctant to accept the things Justin can give you. He needs to be able to, you know.’

  Gwytha studied her hands. ‘I… yes, you’re right. But what about me? I must have some dignity left to me. It’s bad enough knowing what this marriage has done to his life without feeling like a complete charity case.’

  ‘If you insist on acting like a charity case, and a grudging one at that, you’ll do him far more harm than you did by marrying him. And as to that, I’m not sure you may not be a good thing for Justin. He has a great need of someone to love, I think.’

  ‘It should have been one of his own… and it would have been – except for me. Now he’s trapped.’

  ‘And so were you or you wouldn’t have married him. Don’t think I don’t know that. But I’m not sure… Gwytha, who knows how the gods work these things out? It may be that this marriage is what should have been. At any rate, you’ll do better by acting as if it is… learn to love him, if you can. And let him love you.’

  Gwytha looked pale against the dark folds of her mantle. ‘Licinius, my friend, I would give… more than you know, for that to happen. But it has never occurred to me that it was possible.’ Licinius was taken aback. Poor child, no wonder she had been having such a tough time of it. If the two of them would just let the barriers down…

  ‘Oh, I think it is, you know,’ he said, and smiled at her. ‘If not now, then in time… if you give it a chance. There is a bond between you that I think is stronger than you know.’

  Gwytha twisted at a fold of her mantle. ‘Very well, Licinius. If you, who know him better than anyone, say so, then I will try.’ Some of the weariness left her face and she laughed at him. ‘How very fatherly you sound.’

  ‘Yes, well, you make me feel old. Now tell me why you’ve come trudging up here in the rain, instead of biding at home like the lady you’re supposed to be and letting me come to you.’

  ‘I didn’t particularly want Januaria to know about it. Or Justin either, for that matter.’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘Only in the mornings,’ she said grimly.

  Licinius started to laugh. ‘Well! That’s a pleasant piece of news. You had me worried for a minute.’

  ‘I wasn’t feeling very pleasant about it on the way up here. It looks a little less formidable now. But Licinius, I know Justin – this will tie him to me forever… and if he—’

  ‘If you know Justin, then you know that he considers himself tied to you forever now. So for the gods’ sake, woman, try to make it a pleasure to him!’

  ‘But…’

  Licinius stood up. ‘Come along, my girl, we’re going to find out for sure. Then I’ll argue with you.’

  * * *

  ‘Well, I’m as sure as I can be,’ Licinius said, helping Gwytha to sit up on the table in the examining room. He dragged a chair over and sat facing her. ‘Probably about the end of October from what you’ve told me.’ He reached for the little records folder he had carried with him from the office, and made some notations. Then he pointed the quill at his patient. ‘Now let’s get one thing straight – the first thing you’re going to do is to tell Justin.’

  ‘Not yet.’ There was a stubborn set to Gwytha’s mouth that belied her youthful appearance as she sat swinging her bare legs against the table edge.

  ‘If you don’t, I will,’ Licinius said firmly. ‘That’s a promise. This is Justin’s child as well as yours, and you have no right to deny it to him even for a few months. If you’ll start treating yourself as his wife, and not an accident, you’ll do fine.’

  ‘I don’t want to be fussed over. And I don’t want him worried about me when he’s gone. He’ll have enough on his mind with the Legion.’ She leaned down and began to pull on her boots.

  Licinius looked exasperated. ‘My dear girl, Justin isn’t stupid. He’s going to notice your being sick. And I think you’re going to be one of those women who show their pregnancy early. As to being fussed over, I shall give strict orders that you’re not to be, if you’ll promise to behave and do as I tell you.’

  Gwytha finished tying on her boots and then cocked her head up at him. ‘Very well, Licinius, it seems I haven’t any choice.’

  ‘Indeed you don’t. Now come back to the office with me and I’ll give you something to warm you, and more advice than you want.’

  She got up and followed him back down the corridor, past patients’ cubicles, and storerooms filled with bandages and blankets, and pots of ointments scenting the air with myriad unappetizing smells. An orderly leaning on a mop and contemplating the far wall drove it hurriedly into his bucket as Licinius appeared, and began mopping the floor with commendable energy. The senior surgeon had what the orderly considered an obsession with cleanliness, and he searched for hidden dirt with the zeal of a housewife.

  ‘I should lend you Januaria,’ Gwytha murmured as they passed.

  ‘I should kick him in the rear,’ the surgeon retorted in a voice pitched to reach the unfortunate orderly.

  He led her into his office, stowed the records folder away, and produced a jug of wine and two green glass cups.

  ‘Here. I keep this for special occasions. Or days when I’ve talked to one idiot too many.’

  ‘And which is this?’ she inquired, accepting the cup.

  ‘Special occasion. I’d like to have children myself someday. Now, then. You are to have plenty of meat, milk, fruits, and vegetables. Moderate exercise is good for you… you like walking, keep it up. I don’t imagine I have to tell you you are not to lift anything heavy. I probably do have to tell you not to worry about your figure. A little extra weight won’t hurt you. If you get too vain, you’ll only shortchange the child.’


  ‘Very well, I shall get as fat as Januaria if you tell me to – She’ll be in a high old mood. With a new babe to mother, maybe she’ll stop trying to mother me.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it until after the babe is born.’ They both laughed. ‘But I will tell her that you’ll do better if you aren’t coddled too much.’ He pushed the curtain aside and peered out at the grey sky. ‘It seems to have stopped raining for the moment, so wrap up and take yourself home before it starts up again. I’ll want to check you over again in about a month, but 1 will come to see you. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, I will behave.’

  ‘Good girl. Tell Justin tonight, mind.’

  He watched her go, wondering if his advice about Justin had made any impression. He hoped to Hades it had. Justin was getting a fine-drawn look about him that Licinius didn’t like. If Gwytha couldn’t forget about the circumstances of her marriage and get on with the business of making it work, her husband was going to explode somewhere. And Licinius rated his friend’s explosive capacity rather high…

  As Gwytha made her way back through the sodden fortress, she looked about her from a new perspective… barracks and granaries, drill hall and armorer’s shop lay in orderly rows along roads as straight as an arrow’s flight. It had always seemed a sharp-cornered world and alien to her kind. But now she was truly of the Roman world, bound to it by a half-Roman babe.

  It had saddened her, in the long bitter years of slavery, even those she had spent with Aeresius, that she would never have a husband and children at the hearth. Now, unexpectedly, she had both… Licinius had seemed to think it a good thing…

  A scarlet-cloaked figure on the west rampart called out and waved to her, and she waved back. Hilarion, posting his sentries. She smiled reminiscently at his description of the bride his mother had selected for him (‘pleasingly plump and terrifyingly stupid’)… perhaps Justin was not so badly off, after all… Then, seeing another face she recognized heading her way, she turned down a side street and made for the fortress gate by the long way round. She had no desire to outface Favonius right now.