The pretty face, when it appeared again at the private Council of Alliance, was somber. ‘There will be an ill mood in the air when the merrymaking has worn off,’ he said, flinging his cloak onto the bed and drawing a chair toward the others at the fire. ‘Already there is talk that the alliance will not stand and the thing cannot be done alone.’
‘Perhaps the Lord of the Brigantes should have thought of that before he slew a man at Council,’ Brendan said.
‘It should have been done long ago,’ Galt said frankly, ‘at a time when the price did not come so high. But remember, he has seen the Royal Family murder each other one by one, and so he promised himself that there would be no more. I think even Cawdor was surprised when he broke that vow.’
He called out through the curtained doorway, and swept a litter of harness straps and broken harp strings from the table as his spear bearer appeared with a platter of steaming boar’s meat and a pitcher of beer with three flagons hanging from hooks round its mouth. When the boy had gone, Galt poured beer for the allied lords and then looked them straight in the eye.
‘It will not wait,’ he said flatly. ‘You made the first council with me last winter. Now perforce you must make this one also.’
* * *
Two mornings later Branwen, huddled alone beneath the piled furs on the bed, was awakened by an icy touch on her bare shoulder. She sat up, shrieking at the imagined culmination of all her nightmares, and was confronted instead by the face of the High King, chalk white and haggard. He was clad only in a fighting kilt of grey wolf skin, and there were fresh scars radiating in a sunburst across his chest. A faint trace of dried blood, missed in the Cleansing, ran from the center of the pattern down across his belly.
‘Nay, I am no demon.’ He smiled, but she could see that he was weaving on his feet. She thrust the tumbled hair back from her face and reached out to him.
‘You are cold to the bone!’
‘Aye, bitter cold.’ He shivered, and she thought that the cold he spoke of had little to do with the winter frost.
‘Then come you in with me.’ She pulled him down to her and wrapped them both in the soft furs, cradling his head on her breast.
‘I cannot stay longer than to let you warm me. I must find Galt.’
‘Hush, it is well. They had to call Council in your absence, but it went well, I think, and Galt will still be sleeping now. Was it very evil?’
‘Not evil, no, but… bad enough. And now there must be no more talk of it, else I speak of forbidden things because I am tired and you are warm and comforting. I knew the price beforehand, and I have paid it. Let that be an end to it.’ He settled himself deeper against her breast, and a shudder ran through him like a tremor in the earth. Then it seemed to her that he slept, but after a moment he roused himself to whisper, ‘What of the small cub?’
‘He is sleeping, which is what he mostly does when he is not eating like a pig. And he took no chill at the Binding, as I had feared he might. Midwinter is no time to take a babe out in the snow.’
‘Branwen, it was necessary.’
‘Aye, I know it was, with things as they are. And see, he has taken no harm from it, and I was foolish. It seems the Mother and the Shining One both have smiled on our cub.’
He stirred and wrapped one arm around her tightly. ‘And on me, when they sent me Branwen Cathuil’s daughter to my wife.’ His eyes fluttered shut and, seeing that he was on the edge of sleep, she gently pulled the thongs from his hair, letting it fall in a golden wave across her breast to mingle with her own.
But when she woke, she found herself alone again. Vortrix, with his cloak pulled around his shoulders, stood leaning in the outer doorway, talking softly with Galt’s young spear bearer.
He dismissed the boy and padded lightly across the floor to pull a shirt and breeches from the clothes chest. ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said, seeing that her eyes were open. ‘I’ll only be as far as the Guest Hall.’
She nodded drowsily and obeyed, as he caught up his sword and the king’s circlet and slipped out into the courtyard.
By midmorning there was much bustle between the King’s Hall and the Guest Hall, small boys scurrying here and there with trays and pitchers and older boys doing messenger service, loping through the outer buildings, heads popping through doorways. ‘Have you seen my Lord Cathuil?’ ‘King Brendan wants his spear bearer. Where have they put the boys?’ ‘Lord Galt says if you don’t get him something to drink there’ll be murder done.’ ‘Good Lord, who set an infant to tend the kitchen? Give me that, child, I’ll show you how.’
In the midst of the confusion the clan chieftains came and went, summoned to the Guest Hall one by one to make their reports, with Talhaiere among them, stately in his white robes.
From the Guest Hall could be heard frequent spates of shouting, followed by the thump of an emphatic fist on the table.
The women also hurried to and fro, overseeing preparations for the feast that night. ‘A proper feast,’ Branwen said tiredly, with her sleeves rolled up, spreading fresh rushes on the floor, ‘with the High King to sit at it, thank the Mother. If they don’t murder each other first,’ she added, as angry voices broke out again across the courtyard.
‘It is only the small matters they are ironing out now,’ Talhaiere smiled, stepping deftly around a pail of dirty water, ‘but they make for much shouting. The rest was settled peaceably enough this morning.’
By midafternoon the shouting had died to an occasional burst of raised voices, and the last clan chief had made his appearance before the four figures seated around the table.
Galt emerged first, looking tired and bedraggled, and took himself off to his quarters. He reappeared some two hours later looking his usual fine self, decked in the few trinkets that had not gone to the war chest and with his flaxen hair freshly bleached for the occasion.
Vortrix also, when he stepped from the Guest Hall with Dergdian and Brendan beside him, looked bone-weary, and also made his excuses and retired to his chambers where he flung himself down on the bed and drew the covers up over his ears. Brendan and Dergdian gathered their warriors to them, and there was much quiet conferencing before they too went to make ready for the evening’s celebration.
Branwen made one last tour of the hall, evicted a small boy who had gone to sleep under one of the tables, and called her women to her chambers. She sat back wearily while they dressed her hair, amid much fluttering and hushing lest they disturb the High King asleep in the adjoining room.
For the next two hours quiet reigned, as the whole court made ready for the night; and then, as dark fell, it blazed into life again. Torches wove to and fro in the darkness, streaming through all the courts of the king’s holding toward the Great Hall; the men in kilts or breeches and shirts of soft dyed leather and brightly checkered woolens, the women in flowing gowns of the same materials, with the glint of bronze and gold and bright enamel round their necks and arms. The children, as always, set to make themselves useful, tended the fires with much importance and added the final touches to the tables in the hall. Dogs of all varieties paced at their masters’ heels, those on their home turf eyeing the dogs of the visitors with open suspicion, making it clear that their masters had but to give the word and they would show the interlopers a thing or two.
Brendan’s warriors mingled freely with the men of the Brigantes, trading jokes and tall tales amid shouts of laughter. The Selgovae were old allies, and there had been much intermarrying among the two tribes as well. The blue-stained men of the Caledones held themselves aloof, although the High King’s men, in the expansive mood that always prevailed at a great feast, set themselves to be friendly. But it had taken much negotiation to hammer an ancient enmity into a new alliance, and in some ways it was uneasy still. Only an undying hatred of the Romans bound the northern tribe to this new friendship.
The three kings made an entrance together, set by Vortrix with a showman’s timing for the moment when the dried herbs that the boys tossed on the
fire to sweeten the air sent the flames shooting up in a burst of light. Brendan, in a kilt and shirt of dark green leather, with red gold encircling his throat and upper arms, and running almost invisibly through his flaming hair; Dergdian, clad in woolen checkered bright blue and black, with a fine red thread running through it, and his shouders draped in a scarlet cloak held at the throat by a huge brooch of amber-studded gold. His dark hair was braided back with thongs of soft red leather and the fresh stain of woad stood out sharp against his fair skin.
And finally Vortrix, his golden hair streaming down his shoulders, the raw scars hidden beneath the winter white of his shirt, and his russet kilt belted with a bronze-studded circle of leather and a bronze buckle that curved into the form of a leaping horse. His eyes were wolf-bright under a fringe of pale lashes, and he carried the bronze fillet on his head as regally as any golden one. Come from three days in the presence of the Shining One himself, he stood on the edge of the fire glow, enveloped in a haze of smoke and light, and even Dergdian’s warriors looked on him in awe.
Then the fire sank down again, young Dawid scurried up with three flagons foaming with the best beer, and the moment was over. The allied kings took their places at the High Table and the evening’s concentration turned itself to the feast, the revellers doing their best to make up for the grimness of that other feast two nights before. In this they seemed likely to succeed, and the hall was loud with laughter and bragging, and tales of great battles in the high and far-off days when the world was young and the golden people were its kings. A light snow had begun again outside, but the hall was warm with the fire and the press of bodies and the flying feet of the dancers. After a while, Galt took up his harp and made a song of one of the old tales of the coastwise tribes, about a woman who mated with a man of the seal people and bore him a son, and how she cursed him when he came back years later and took the child away to his half kin, and how the curse flew home on the spear of her hunter husband, striking both the seal man and her son.
There were shouts of approval and requests for other songs equally well known among the tribes, but Galt just shook his head and, taking his harp, drew a stool close by the glimmer of the sinking fire. Eyes closed, he began to make a new music, born of the new alliance… a battle music to be remembered by the sons of the sons of the men who sat there, with the brightness of a spear point and the keen edge of death and victory in it. His slender hands danced along the strings, and the sounds of chariots thundering down a valley and the clash of armies could be heard, and the high sweet note of trumpets. The bleached hair and bright jewelry and the brilliant green and saffron of his kilt, faded in the firelight, and it was Music who sat there, as blinding as the sun, and wove them all in its spell.
* * *
When morning came, the shadow of that singing still lingered in the air, underlying the excitement that rippled through the courtyard. The holiday mood was gone, and a tense expectancy gave every face the sharp, eager look of a hound about to be unleashed.
There was a rattle and thunder from the stables, and the chariots of the Selgovae swept through the courtyard, sunlight glinting from harness rings and wheel hubs, Brendan at their head, his hair streaming out like a wind-borne fire.
Behind them careened the horses of the Caledones, with Dergdian at the center, shadowed by the lithe, wicked length of a feather-decked war spear.
The great gates were flung open, and the road north lay snow-dappled before them, blinding white in the winter sun. The chariots wheeled and poured through the gates as the allied chiefs leaned down to pluck two flaming torches from the gateposts.
XVI
A Spring Too Early
Come you bold fellows and join the Ar-mee,
To slaughter the Pict and the heathen Parsee –
Someone was singing in the street outside the armorer’s shop, his cheerful voice cleaving the morning stillness.
And maybe, just maybe (the chances are small)
But maybe you’ll rise to be Emperor of all!
Roma, far Roma, we list to your call,
Townsmen of Italy and farmers from Gaul.
We’ve bought you an Empire from Britain to Crete,
With the boils on our backsides and the sores on our feet!
The song in its heyday had enjoyed a popularity throughout the Army, and Justin, lounging in the armorer’s shop while a loose rivet was pounded back in his helmet, poked his head through the doorway and joined in. The last time he had heard it was before setting out from Lambaesis under the hot sun, on a summer’s campaign.
So take up your pilum and shield and your sword,
And fly with the Eagles to fame and reward!
But remember, young fellow, ere glory you seek,
A recruiting centurion will lie like a Greek!
Come you bold fellows and join the Ar-mee,
To slaughter the Pict and the heathen Parsee,
And maybe, just maybe (the chances are small)
But maybe you’ll rise to be Emperor of all!
Some of us turn home with twenty years pay
At the end of the long march, and – some of us stay.
So when you have climbed to the Emperor’s throne,
Remember the Eagles who’ll never fly home!
‘I haven’t sung that since Africa,’ Justin said, when they had finished with a last rousing chorus that rattled the roof tiles.
The dark young auxiliary officer, punching a new hole in a bridle strap, looked up and grinned at him. ‘Glad to have you join in, chief,’ he said. (The auxiliary cavalry, being mostly rugged individualists, had scant respect for the regular Legions.)
‘You’ve a good voice.’
‘Oh, aye, all the Silures are accounted good singers.’
‘Silures? Then what are you doing in the Asturian Horse?’
‘Oh, that’s a long story.’ He tried the new hole in the bridle buckle and seemed satisfied with it. ‘My mother, you see, she married a man from the Second Legion, and when he was shifted to Spain, she followed him, more fool she.’
‘An officer?’ Legionaries were seldom bounced from Legion to Legion as the centurions were.
‘Oh, aye, and killed right off, so there she was, stuck, with me on the way. But she did well enough. Married an Asturian who didn’t mind bein’ presented with a family two months after the weddin’. So here’s me, in the Asturian Horse.’
‘Why not a Legion? I expect you’d have qualified.’
‘Nay, I never had a taste for goin’ too much by the book. My Asturians now, they’re a handful, but they’re one o’ the best troops in the unit. ’Course, I’ve known a lot of ’em since we were boys, and sometimes it’s a help.’
Justin held out a hand. ‘I’m Justinius Corvus, Sixth Cohort.’
‘Ah, you’ll be the poor devil they threw to Martius’s sharks. I’m Owen Lucullus – and there’s a good half-and-half name for you.’
And typical of the Army as a whole, Justin thought. British mother, provincial Roman father, Spanish stepfather, and now come full circle back to Britain with thirty headstrong Asturians in his charge.
‘How long have you been out here?’
‘Posted last year, with more of us to follow, so they said. Me, I haven’t seen ’em yet.’
‘Well, we’d better have them soon.’
‘Aye, we had, or we’ll have the little painted bandits stealin’ the horses out from under our arses.’ He paused and his ears pricked up. ‘And speakin’ o’ that, who’s the one trailin’ round with Cunory the Hunter? I’ve never seen him before.’
Justin turned to look where the cavalry man was pointing. Cunory, taking advantage of a light winter to make an early tour, was unloading skins in front of the soldiers’ barracks and haggling cheerfully over their price. Behind him, holding the pack ponies’ bridles, was a slight, dark man in a nondescript cloak and checkered breeches. He was tattooed in brilliant patterns over every visible inch of skin.
‘I don’t know him e
ither,’ Justin said, ‘but Picts make me nervous just now. Still, we can’t keep out every native hunter that comes to sell skins…
‘He’s probably only a henchman of Cunory’s,’ Owen said, rising. ‘Otherwise he’d be busy enough in the north, most like. Still, it won’t do to have him lounge about and count noses, will it? I’ll just be having a word with Cunory. The sun and the moon on your path, chief.’ He picked up his bridle and ambled over to the group collecting around the hunters.
‘And I’ll be having a word with the Legate,’ Justin murmured. The armorer called him in to collect his helmet, and he strolled up toward the Principia, dangling it by the strap. In the courtyard he paused and settled it on his head before proceeding into the Legate’s office.
‘There’s a Pict trailing round with Cunory the Hunter that you might like to talk to – sir,’ he added, saluting. (Consorting with Owen seemed to be contagious.)
‘Indeed.’ Aurelius Rufus nodded to the Optio who was presenting a duty roster for his inspection. ‘Please make it so.’
‘And now,’ he said, when the Optio had gone on his errand, ‘I thought Cunory hunted solo. Kindly tell me all.’
‘That’s all I know, sir. But I’ve an idea that if you sent for Decurion Owen Lucullus of the Asturian Horse – I don’t know which troop – he would probably be able to tell you by now.’
The Pict, when questioned, protested vehemently that he was just a wanderer, one of the many of his kind who for one reason or another (sometimes shady, sometimes not) broke away from his tribe and sought another life elsewhere. He had merely contracted his services to Cunory for the season for the price of his meals and a little loose change at the end of it.
Cunory, Owen said, substantiated the story as far as he could. The Painted One was a good hunter, as were all of his kind, and had much skill with the pack ponies. He brought in more skins than the price of his hire. Therefore the bargain was sealed. He would no doubt be off again in the spring – the Pict never stuck to hired labor for long.
The Legions of the Mist Page 28