B007IIXYQY EBOK (27 page)

Gradually a strengthening anger came, buoying her up. Slowly she crept back to the scene of last night’s struggle, wearing nothing but the earth amulet Ramis gave her, listening for signs of human life. She heard none. There were her clothes, and the bloody, broken horn. Only her cloak escaped Odberht’s dagger; gratefully she took it and wrapped herself in its warmth.

She found the stream that fed the pond and followed it south, feeling herself more deer than woman.

You are an animal alone. To the world, show only claws.

CHAPTER VII

T
HE FULL MOON OF MIDSUMMER BRIMMED
with magic. It shed so much light at midnight this might have been an eerie day, a colorless noon of bare hills gently rolling, broken by occasional groves painted in shadow and light.

The Midsummer Assembly was the greatest of the year; all who could ride or walk flocked to its hallowed promontory. It lay in the hill country, far in the southern reaches of their lands, close enough to Wido’s fast-growing camp that sentries would have been posted except none could imagine that anyone of the tribal blood would violate the sanctity of the holiest full moon of the year.

The hill was crowned by a lone oak of fearsome magnificence. Some said that if all the land’s oaks formed up in battle, this one would be their chief. It was a sapling before the Romans came, and now it was a stubborn old god, grand enough to shelter hundreds. Bitter roots clenched the earth; a massive trunk split into serpent branches spiraling in every direction, to peter out eventually into anguished fingers that scratched at the sky. This oak was believed a bridge between heaven and earth, uniting the spirits underground with the sylphs of the air. When the cold, potent light of the midsummer moon fell on that oak, the people believed no judgment given beneath its branches could be false.

Set about it was a ring of torches; within this ring the twelve priestesses and priests of Wodan stood in hooded cloaks of midnight hue, the skins of wolves draped across their shoulders, long ceremonial spears upright in their hands. The people camped all over the open land, up to the edge of the beech and oak forest where night hovered close. None strayed off alone into the wood—on midsummer night the fissures leading to down to the lightless hall of Hel yawned open and multitudes of unholy things with cloven hooves and glittering eyes ventured forth to frolic about, couple, or keep still, quietly watching.

It was the first Assembly in the memory of most that was not overshadowed by the presence of Baldemar—the medicine women insisted he not be moved from his tent in the war camp. His battle companions sat in a place of honor in the forepart of the throng, nearest the oak. Baldemar’s place was represented by an empty bench on which his sword was placed. Sigwulf and Thorgild sat at the head of his Companions.

On the day before, the Companions who had accompanied Auriane arrived with the news of the ambush and her capture. And so the measure of hope the people gained when Baldemar drove off Wido was lost. This was a blow that surely Baldemar would never survive. The tale of the Ash Grove slaying also spread rapidly, and was known to everyone at the Assembly, but now it only brought looks of puzzlement. “How was an omen fit for a battle-hero given to one with the life-luck of a thrall?” it was asked.

During the opening ceremonies, Sigreda slaughtered and offered up a white mare and a black stallion. The flesh was passed among the Holy Ones and eaten. The beasts’ heads were hung in the low branches of the oak.

Then a bronze bell was struck to summon silence. The tone was soft but long-lived, a dark, purplish sound that shivered out until it melted finally into the honey-musk smells of night, leaving a quiet so vast many could hear the tap-tap of blood dripping from the horses’ heads onto the muddy ground.

Geisar and Sigreda performed the cursing ritual: The priest placed a figure of straw that represented Wido into the sacrificial fire while Sigreda spoke the words that swore the betrayer of kin out of the tribe. Then, as the folk came forward one by one, judgments were given on various matters—the disputed ownership of a strip of prime farmland, of thirty head of cattle that had wandered from their home pasture; the occasional case of murder to be settled by payment in rings rather than by blood vengeance.

When the last judgment was given, the priestesses and priests began the mass rite of receiving new warriors into the tribal army. Two dozen wild boars caught for this purpose had been given to the god of the earth. A candidate came forward and offered proof he had slain an enemy with an honorable weapon of war—usually a witness, or some token taken from the fallen man. If he were accepted by the people, he ate a small portion of boar’s heart and took the oath. As night progressed, the tribal army was increased by one hundred thirty-nine men—mostly warriors’ sons—and three women, all daughters of the groves. The number was pathetically few, many feared, when they considered Wido’s steady supply of seasoned foreign soldiers.

Well into the night Sigreda’s bell-clear voice proclaimed: “Now we summon Wodan to lay a hand on the head of the one who must lead us out to destroy the betrayer. Who shall carry our standard?”

Sigwulf leaned close to Thorgild. “Watch well,” he whispered. Thorgild nodded. They were certain Geisar and Sigreda were Wido’s pawns, and they suspected the priest would try to put forward the name of a man in Wido’s pay. Among themselves they planned to call out only Sigwulf’s name; if the name of more than one man of Baldemar’s Companions were put in, it might cause division among the people and give Geisar the chance to break the stalemate by putting in a name of his own.

There were moments of sad silence and glances at Baldemar’s empty seat. Then finally, hesitantly, people rose to propose names. Thorgild waited through the first ten or twelve; each brought cheers from one section of the folk and volleys of gnawed bones and rotten fruit from another. Then he stood and shouted Sigwulf’s name. Spears were clashed against shields and a greater noise was made than for any other candidate. This was as they expected.

And then a little-known man among the free warriors proposed Thorgild’s name. The cheers raised up were equal in passion to those given to Sigwulf.

“Who is that fool? I’ll have his head on a spit,” Sigwulf muttered.

“Geisar paid him well, you can be certain,” Thorgild said.

What followed did not surprise them. Geisar came forward and humbly announced, “Since we cannot agree, the law demands I decide between them, or offer you a third choice. Sigwulf and Thorgild are of equal eminence—it is impossible to choose. Therefore…” Geisar paused.

There was some disturbance at the back of the throng, and the sound of determined chanting. Geisar strained to see and hear, but the participants were too distant. He exchanged an anxious look with Sigreda. She gave the barest shrug.

“Therefore,” Geisar continued, “I name Unfrith.”

“The viper. He has done it,” Sigwulf said in a covered voice. “He might as well have named one of Wido’s sons.”

The man called Unfrith stepped nimbly to the front, a faintly amused smile on his face. His trappings spoke of new wealth: A fine cloak of ermine swept the ground; his swordbelt was of polished new leather, its buckle of heavy gold. That calfskin tunic and those high-laced boots had never seen mud. Had he traveled here in a Roman covered carriage? Sigwulf wondered with contempt.

The response was half-hearted, uncertain. Hasty looks were exchanged to see what others thought of this.

“The fox,” Thorgild agreed, slowly nodding while his hand moved unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. “And the people have no notion. He named a relation of the father’s side. Were it the mother’s, he knows well they would tear him apart.”

Where they trusted the priest, they applauded loudest, from piety more than enthusiasm. But there were pockets of silence all through the throng. The common famrers did not consider Unfrith a close relative of Wido’s at all—only those of higher rank counted relations in the Roman fashion, through the paternal line—and so suspected nothing on the face of it. But with the animal sense of crowds they scented something was amiss; Geisar seemed too pleased to announce this man. And Unfrith was an unworthy replacement for Baldemar.

Sigwulf knew Wido counted Unfrith a close kinsman; privately Wido imitated closely the customs of his Roman masters, even as he belittled them. The betrayer’s influence would live on. Unfrith would quickly acquire fame if the battle were won, and Baldemar, when he recovered, might never again reclaim the standard.

Geisar was working himself into a fury anyway, Sigwulf saw, pacing fitfully while stabbing at the ground with his staff. The response was too tepid for him and he was insulted.

Geisar paused to look once more toward the black depths of the forest, his hair floating out like ghostly wings. The chanting and the cries from the back were gaining in force. It had a rebellious note that stiffened the priest’s spine. From his vantage point he could see a knot of people far down on the slope; the crowd made way for them as slowly they worked their way toward the Midsummer Oak.

Now he could hear what they cried.

“Daughter of the Ash! Lead us out!”

Earlier in the night while the new warriors were still being made, a muddy urchin clad in a bramble-dotted cloak fastened with thorns had emerged from the forest. When she approached the nearest of her countrymen, a black-bearded smith, and asked where Baldemar was, he answered with a scowl and silence. When she told him who she was, he gave a mocking laugh.

“This mud-hen calls herself Baldemar’s daughter? A pity no one’s told you Wido’s got her, and she’s better guarded than a Roman fortress. Off with you.”

She nearly lost heart then, and slipped back into the forest. She had walked all day and most of the night, sleeping for a short time at midday, curled in a hawthorn thicket among beetles and ants and the noise of birds. She was exhausted and dirty. For a moment she could not remember why she ever wanted to take the oath. Perhaps marriage to Witgern….

But Witgern was a prisoner. Her brother was dead, slain by the Romans. Neither her mother nor father could walk without help. Her family was dying, and it would live again only if one of its members claimed vengeance for the bloody harm done them by Wido. The Assembly would disperse at moonset; she must go forth now or not at all.

She approached an old farm woman with the same question; she proved to be Herwig, whose lands lay alongside her family’s.

“Auriane, it truly is you! Your father fares well, but not so well that he was able to journey here.”

Gradually others turned to look and knew her too. They gathered round to gape.

“It is a prodigy,” a voice called from the dark.

“She cannot have escaped, yet she has!”

One old woman tentatively reached out to touch Auriane, as though to make certain this was a woman of flesh and bone, not some spirit-double sent forth from her place of imprisonment.

“The Fates have truly freed her,” she muttered.

“She comes to save us from Wido’s harm!” shouted another.

To save us
? Auriane thought. What madness.

“Daughter of the Ash!” came a triumphant cry. Others liked the sound of those words and quickly took them up.

She struggled to get past them. “Let me pass. I’ve little time left—I mean to take the oath.”

“Not looking so, you won’t,” Herwig called out, producing a bone comb and holding Auriane fast. She tried to drag it through Auriane’s hair, but after a short struggle she gave up; the mud had dried in it. A wealthy herder who had several cloaks he meant to sell placed one over Auriane’s mudstained cloak to conceal it. Quietly she thanked him and moved on.

As she moved forward, the scattered cries, “Daughter of the Ash! Lead us out!” melted into a unified chant, then took on a joyous, aggressive rhythm that was irresistible; first dozens, then hundreds joined in.

As more in the throng recognized her, it was as though they caught fire. If Baldemar had appeared among them, they could not have felt more exultant. By the time Geisar brought Unfrith forward, two hundred and more followed her closely—a makeshift honor guard drunk on mead and moonlight, conducting her to the oak.

They half dragged Auriane up the hill like some unwilling donkey. The crowd’s abandoned wildness was beginning to frighten her; it seemed but a breath away from murderous frenzy.

Only gradually did she understand that they meant for her to take Baldemar’s place.

When the twenty-two surviving Companions Baldemar had sent to take her south caught sight of her, it was as though fresh logs were thrown onto a bonfire.

“Ganna! Ganna!”
they cried. Already they had spread everywhere the tale that she had saved their lives when she gave up her freedom to Odberht. And the story of the encounter with Ramis had been embellished with each retelling, until it became a war of magicians, which they assumed, because Auriane survived, she must have won.

Unfrith scented the crowd’s dislike of him and wisely yielded, falling back into the throng. Geisar’s shrieks for order went unheard; the people seemed to have forgotten him.

Hylda came forward from among the Holy Ones and took Auriane’s hand in a wiry grip. As Hylda braved the thickest part of the throng, leading Auriane, she showed her cursing finger to any who seemed ready to bar the way. Eventually they gained the hallowed circle about the oak.