The Dog and the Wolf (29 page)

She closed fingers on his arm. “Your work, man of mine.”

Somehow those words wakened a misgiving in him, but it was faint and he sent it away.

They entered the town. Clad as befitted dignitaries going to conference, they stood doubly out among ordinary people bound on ordinary occupations. The whole place felt alien to Gratillonius, half a dream. Most of his mind tarried in the night before.

Realizing that, he hauled it back and gave it marching orders. Urgent business was on hand, the initial discussion of strategy and tactics with Apuleius. Simply composing a letter to the praetorian prefect would require much thought; and it must be on its way soon, by the fastest of couriers.

A slave admitted them to the senator’s house. He met them in the atrium. Brightness filled it too, shining from the purity of walls and their delicate murals. Apuleius wore a white robe worked with gold thread; Gratillonius thought of a lighted candle. Brows lifted slightly. “Hail,” said the gentle voice. “I had begun to fear something was amiss.”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” Gratillonius replied. “Overslept.” A luxurious looseness perfused him.

Apuleius smiled. “Well, you earned the right. I’ve heard about your speech. We’ve held the meal for you.” He inclined his head toward Runa. “You give us a pleasant surprise, my lady, but you are very welcome to join us.”

Verania flitted in from the rear of the house. Joy sparkled
from her. “You’re here!” she said to Gratillonius. “I have something special for you on the table.”

Apuleius frowned indulgently. “Quiet, girl. Mind your manners.”

She halted at the inner door, spirits undampened. Gratillonius smiled at her and raised his hand. Her lashes fluttered down and back up again. Rosiness came and went in her cheeks.

“I brought the lady Runa along,” Gratillonius told Apuleius, “because her advice should be valuable. She knows, understands things about the Ysans that, well, a man, an outsider like me never really could.”

“Subtleties.” Apuleius nodded. Immediately he turned solemn. “I wonder, though, if that isn’t premature. And … the bishop will arrive later today.”

“I’ll absent myself,” Runa offered with a meekness new to her listeners.

“Oh, he’s no woman hater,” Gratillonius said.

“But he would doubtless feel … awkward … especially given the circumstances,” she pointed out.

Apuleius’s glance went from one to the other and back. Runa drew close beside Gratillonius and took his arm. Together they returned the look.

The Roman became expressionless. “Well, well,” he said low. “It appears you two have an understanding.”

“We do,” Gratillonius declared. Glee broke forth. “In all honesty, I brought her because I wanted you to know right away, my friend.”

In the doorway, breath tore across. Verania covered her mouth. Her eyes widened till they seemed to fill her whole face. Apuleius turned his head. “Why, daughter, what’s wrong?” he asked. Concern dissolved the reserve he had clamped on himself. “You’re white as a toga. Are you ill?”

“F-f-forgive me,” she choked. “I can’t dine—today—” She whirled. They heard her footfalls stumble down the corridor beyond.

7

Autumn blew gray from the north. Wind bit. White-capped, iron-hued seas trampled its shrillness beneath their rush and rumble. The air was full of salt mist. It hid the tops of the mountains behind the firth. They lifted stark, ling-clad, with a few gnarly dwarf trees clinging amidst boulders; streams plunged toward the sea. Eochaid had heard that those heights sheltered deep glens and mild vales, but at the prow of his ship he saw none of it. There was haven here, though, and smoke in tatters from a great rath ahead.

Rowers put out a last burst of strength to drive their galley boldly forward. Currachs accompanying her skimmed like gulls. Eochaid had donned a cloak he otherwise kept locked away from weather, of the six bright colors which he as a king’s son might wear. It took eyes off the faded and mended shirt, sea-stained kilt, worn-out shoes.

Spearheads glimmered in front of the earthen wall. Men of the rath had come out to see what strangers drew nigh. “A goodly muster,” said Subne at his captain’s ear, “and, for sure, more of them alert inside. I think we’ve found the king where he will be spending this Samain tide.”

“May we be finding what else we seek,” Eochaid said, more to Manandan maqq Léri and whatever other Gods were listening than to any man. He had already promised sacrifices if They were kindly.

Approaching, he raised hands and cried peace. The warriors ashore stood warily while galley and currachs ran onto the strand. When the crews jumped out to secure them, clearly not hostile, the watchers let weapons droop and smiles arise. Their leader advanced to greet Eochaid in the name of Aryagalatis maqq Irgalato, his king.

His speech had the burr of the Ulati. This Dál Riata was a settlement from the land of that same name in northern Ériu. Nonetheless, it was the language of the home island the wayfarers heard, after three years of roving. More than the wind stung tears from their eyes.

Yet Eochaid must enter not as a gangrel but as a chieftain
in his own right. Proudly he walked, and behind him his men bearing gifts of Roman gold, silver, jewelry, cloth, the choicest of their plunder.

The ringwall enclosed a number of buildings: barn, stable, workshops, storehouses, cookhouses, lesser dwellings, and the royal hall. Nothing was nearly as grand as Eochaid remembered of his father’s holdings in Qóiqet Lagini, let alone what Niall of Mide and his sons possessed. This house was long but low, poles and daub weathered, thatch overrun by moss. However, it was the present seat of a king, and he a man with many spears at his beck.

A runner had told Aryagalatis who was coming. He lifted the knee in salutation and bade Eochaid take a stool before him, Eochaid’s followers to settle themselves where they could find places in the smoke and dimness. He was a stoutly built, rugged-featured man with a black bush of hair and beard. His clothes were more for warmth than show, but gold shone on his breast.

Women brought ale for the warriors, hoarded wine for him and Eochaid. Much seemly talk passed on both sides, giving honor, mentioning forebears and kin, exchanging news. When he received his gifts, Aryagalatis could do no less than offer lodging for as long as his guests wished. His chief poet made verses in praise of Eochaid. They lacked the polish heard among the high ones of Ériu, but hallowed fellowship equally well.

“I will speak openly, lord.” Eochaid said at last. “You know what misfortune has made me homeless.”

Aryagalatis looked hard through the firelight at the marred, once beautiful face. “I do,” he answered carefully. “Your deed will keep you from your motherland forever.”

Eochaid held his voice steady. “Injustice and mistreatment drove me mad. It is not the first time such has happened to a hero. Myself and these loyal men have proven on the Romans that we keep the goodwill of the Gods.”

“I think that may be true. But say on.”

“We are weary of wandering. Thin is the comfort in a camp on an islet or with a woman wrenched from her
home. We have homes of our own to make, wives to wed, sons to beget and rear. It is land we ask of you and troth we will give you, Aryagalatis.”

The king nodded. “Sure and that comes as no surprise. Well, Alba has land aplenty, once the Cruthini are cleared from it. And since they do often come back, we have always need of fighting men. Let us talk more about this during the winter, Eochaid maqq Éndae.”

A sigh as of a wave went through the house.

The exile doubled a fist on his thigh. “You may well also want all the spears you can find,” he said, “when Niall of the Nine Hostages attacks your folk across the water. He may not stop there—though surely you will be crossing over to give help and take revenge.”

Aryagalatis frowned. “This we will not talk of. That could be bad luck. I know he is your enemy; but while you bide among us, you and your men, you will not be provoking his wrath. Do you understand?”

“I do.” Eochaid forced sullenness from his voice. “You will find me grateful, lord. Then, if ever the time does come—But now we want only to wish for your good fortune. May you feed fat the ravens of the Mórrigu!”

1

Midwinter’s early darkness had fallen before Gratillonius got his horse properly stabled. Under a thick overcast, Confluentes was a still deeper huddle of black. Though he knew every house, street, lane, almost every rut, he stumbled often enough to make him swear at himself for not bringing along a groom with a lantern. There was too much night within him as well as without.

At last he found his own door and passed through into light of a sort. Tallow candles in wooden holders burned
around the main room. They mingled their reek with the closeness that a couple of charcoal braziers laid in the air. Nonetheless a tinge of dank chill persisted. Summer felt ages agone.

His manservant took cloak and coat from him and said the maid, who was actually a middle-aged widow, would set forth a meal as soon as might be. Not knowing when to expect his return, she had perforce let preparation wait. “Bring me a stoup of wine,” Gratillonius said. “Nay, mead.” If wine was worth drinking, it had gotten sufficiently scarce in these parts and at this season—what with piracy, banditry, and the fear of them cutting away at commerce—that he’d rather save it for happier occasions.

Runa entered from the inner house. She wore a shapeless dress of brown wool, thick socks beneath sandals, and a wimple, under which he knew her hair was coiled in tight braids. “Well, you’ve come,” she said. They had taken to speaking Latin in the presence of his servants, who were Ysan countryfolk with scant grasp of the language. Neither of them liked having words of theirs bandied about. “Where were you?”

“I went riding.”

Her arched brows lifted higher still. “Indeed? All day, when you’ve been telling me you haven’t half the hours you need for guiding your people?”

He checked an angry retort. That was not what he had declared, and well she knew it. Crises, most of them petty but important to those concerned, had a way of springing up in bunches, like weeds. Otherwise he had undertakings to supervise, military instruction and drill to maintain, dickerings with Osismii and Aquilonians to carry out. But much of his time he spent standing by, passing it with wood and leather in his little workshop.

“A day is very short, these months,” he said. “I needed to get out by myself.”—use his muscles, gallop along empty roads, range afoot into leafless woods.

“You might have had the goodness to stop at the basilica and tell me you’d be late.” She spent her own days in the former manor house. Sometimes she visited the homes of settlers, gathering their memories of Ys and its history,
but oftenest she summoned them to her. The habit of deference to a priestess remained in them.

His patience ruptured. “Damnation, must I always be spoke to your hub?”

The manservant brought his goblet. He raised it and swallowed. The mead was well brewed, dry, flavored with woodruff, a pungency recalling meadow margins where cornel bloomed. His mood mildened. This was no easy life for her either. “Well, I should have told you,” he admitted, “but the news I’d gotten—Apuleius had the letter passed on to me at sunrise—that drove everything else out of my head.” It flitted through him that formerly Apuleius would have come in person, or invited him to Aquilo, and they would have talked.

“Oh.” She also gentled. Somehow that made him aware of her pallor, even in this dull light. She had been ill for several days of late, keeping to herself in the manor house as if too proud to let him see her thus. Recovery advanced, but as yet she didn’t quite have her full strength back. “Bad. From the South?”

He nodded. She came to him, took his elbow, guided him to a bench built against the wall. They sat down together. Straw ticking rustled beneath them.

He gestured an order that the servant bring drink for her, and stared into his as he dragged forth: “The Visigoths broke down every defense. They’re looting and burning all through northern Italy.”

It was a minor wonder, perhaps, that couriers had brought the word this far, this soon. Only last month had King Alaric invaded. The war was not much older than that, it had broken out with such stunning swiftness and ferocity. Before, Emperors Arcadius in the East and Honorius in the West—rather, their ministers—seemed to have made peace with those warriors. Alaric had become Master of Soldiers in eastern Illyricum. The thought was like poison in Gratillonius, that quite possibly Constantinople had then secretly persuaded him to fall on Rome.

Be that as it may, “The Imperium has to call in reinforcements,” he said. “The letter mentioned troops on their way from the Rhenus. Come sailing weather, if the war is still going on, I wouldn’t be surprised but what
they’re hailed out of Britannia too. And then what about the barbarians along those frontiers?”

“Horrible.” Runa’s tone stayed level and she did not reach for his hand as Tambilis, say, would have. “But what can we do except continue in those tasks God has set us?”

He grimaced. “Mine is to hurry up the reconstruction of our defenses. If only those sh—those donkeys in Turonum would so much as answer my letters about it!”

“Don’t start pacing again. You know how I dislike that. In a year’s time, ten years, a hundred, this will be past.”

“Like Ys,” he said bitterly.

“Well, Ys had its woes too, century after century. Just the same, what I am writing will be glorious as long as the world endures.”

The man brought her mead. She sipped as she talked on about her book. It could not simply be written from beginning to end. Her education came back to her in pieces; suddenly she would remember something that happened generations ago, and record it before she forgot again. The other survivors had minds less orderly. “And you must be more forthcoming yourself, Gratillonius. I really must insist you tell me things, tell me in full. I know it hurts you, but you should have the manhood to do it, considering what this means. Oh, and if you’d only trouble yourself to make notes, how much toil you’d spare me, instead of puttering at your bench like a common carpenter.”