The Dog and the Wolf (44 page)

“I’m sorry,” Gratillonius answered. “An ordinary trading trip would be risky enough these days. This won’t be one.”

“What will it be, sir? What?”

Gratillonius held hands with Verania while he spoke in his most carefully measured tones: “We’re building Confluentes again, and building it right. That’s a huge and expensive job. Doing it in a hurry makes it more expensive yet.” Finish before Glabrio and Bacca hit on some means of forestalling it. Apuleius was already contending with their objections and legalisms. “We’re employing as many Ysans and Osismii as we possibly can, you know. That means farms and other businesses neglected. We’ll have to bring in food, most necessities. By autumn, when we’ve paid off the outside experts, contractors, laborers, we’ll have emptied the treasury of Confluentes, everything we took from the Scoti. How then can we go on with what remains to be done? And the city will have to keep paying the people’s taxes for them, for the next several years, till farms and industries are solidly on their feet. How?”

“I don’t know,” Salomon admitted with a humility rare in him. “I should have thought about it.”

“Well, nobody gave you any figures,” said Gratillonius, smiling at him through the dusk. “We keep such things confidential. I don’t want to discuss why, though I think probably you can guess.”

“He’s bound forth to get what we need.” Pride and
dread warred in Verania’s voice. “I’ve begged him—he shouldn’t go himself—but—”

“But without me, it’ll fail,” Gratillonius said flatly. “A matter of leadership.”

“Yours,” breathed Salomon.

Gratillonius turned his gaze back on him and continued: “Evirion and I will rendezvous up the coast with picked men. They’ll fill his ship and those two galleys we capture last year. We’ll make for the Islands of Crows. You’ve heard of them, pirate haunts off the Redonic coast. Barbarians often spend the winters there, so they can start raiding again as soon as weather allows. Scoti, Saxons, renegade Romans, every kind of two-legged animal, in lairs stuffed with loot. Rufinus has had his spies out, he’s heard a great deal on his missions to Hivernia, he knows where the big hoards are likeliest to be. We’ll strike, cut the scum down or scatter them, and bring the treasure back.”

No wisp of a thought of danger was in the cry: “Oh, sir, I’ve got to go!”

“You do not,” said Gratillonius. “You’re far too young.”

Salomon doubled his fists. Did a trembling lower lip stick out? “I’m f-f-fifteen years old.”

“You will be later this year,” said Verania sharply.

Gratillonius let go her hand and laid both his on the youth’s shoulders. He looked into the tearful eyes and said, “You’ll have your test of manhood, I promise. It will be harder than you know, keeping silence.”

“I w-w-will. I’ve sworn. But I can fight too.”

“Carry out your orders, soldier. I told you already, you’ve got your share of duty and then some. I’m afraid you’ll see plenty of fighting later on. Meanwhile, we can’t squander you on a simple raid.”

Salomon gulped. “I don’t understand, sir,” he pleaded.

“I believe you are the future leader of our people—of all Dogwood Land, maybe all Armorica. Your father is beloved; they’ll be ready to follow his son, come the day. You’ve done well in your studies, I hear, and very well in the lessons about soldiering you got me to give you. You have the fire. I won’t let some stupid encounter blow it out.”

“No, you, sir, you’re the King.”

Gratillonius released his hold. “There’s too much of the uncanny—of Ys—about me,” he said. “Those who haven’t known me before, they’d never feel the way they must about their leader, the way I think they will feel about you. But I’ll be at your side as long as I’m on this earth.”

Overwhelmed, Salomon sank down onto a baulk of timber and stared before him at the stars above Mons Ferruginus, beneath the moon that rose and waxed toward Easter.

Verania drew Gratillonius aside. She held him close and whispered in his ear, “Come back to us, beloved.”

“To you,” he replied as low; and, since nobody watched, he kissed her. She returned that with a passion he well knew, and only he.

Like the bat at sunset there flitted through him: She’s not Dahilis. Nobody could ever be. But she is mine, and here are no heathen Gods to break us from each other.

2

The men from the currach reached holy Temir a few days after Beltene. They had heard that King Niall was there yet.

Their captain and spokesman Anmureg maqq Cerballi stood before him to say: “The Romans took us unawares. They must have gotten pilots, islanders who knew those waters and shores even better than we do. Suddenly, there they were, two Saxon galleys out of the fog and onto the beach. Men jumped from them and started hewing. It was butchery. Oh, sure, brave lads rallied and I think must have taken some foes with them, while others among us escaped inland, but most died and we lost everything, all we had won in two years of work.”

Rain roared on the thatch of the King’s House. Wind shrilled. Cold and darkness gnawed against the fires inside. It was wrong weather for this festival time.

Nonetheless Niall sat benched in state, with his warriors well-clad around the walls, their shields catching the
flamelight above them. Servants scurried over fresh sweet rushes to keep filled the cups of mead or ale or, for the greatest, outland wine. Smoke thickened the air and stung eyes, but soon it would be full of savory smells, when the tables were set up and the meat brought in from the cookhouse.

Niall leaned forward. The light limned his face athwart shadow, broad brow, straight nose, narrow chin. It showed little of the ashiness in locks and beard that once were primrose yellow, nor of scars and creases or how the blue of the eyes had faded. In richness of fur, brightly dyed wool, gold and amber, his body now verged on guantness; but the thews had not shrunk, the movements remained steady and deft. “Why do you call them Romans?” he asked.

“Some were so outfitted, lord,” Anmureg replied. “Others appeared to be Gauls, though from elsewhere than Redonia. We heard Latin as well as their own language, when their chiefs were egging them on against us. Then when my crew was at sea—we happened to be together near our currach, making a small repair, the only ones, for the which we have promised Manandan sacrifices—the fog thinned and we saw a ship of the Roman sort anchored offshore, and one of the galleys drawing close to her in peaceful wise.”

Another of the men who stood there dripping from the rain said slowly, “She looked much like what I’d seen earlier, King, that galley did.”

Niall held himself unmoving. “How was that?” he inquired. Beneath the crackle in the firepit, stillness deepened around the hall.

“You bought a Saxon galley for yourself, King, shortly before I went off a-roving. Black she was, with a yellow stripe, twenty oars, the sternpost high and spiralled at the top and gilt.”

“Such as you lost at Ys,” declared Cael maqq Eriai. He, an ollam poet, could dare.

“Did you see the other your enemies had?” Niall asked, his voice deadly quiet.

“Not really well, any of us,” Anmureg said. “Yourself will understand what wildness ruled on that beach. We
here barely stood off an attack till we had our currach launched. Better, we thought, come back and tell your honor about this, than leave our bones there unavenged. The Gauls call those islands the Islands of Crows.”

“You did leave two ships behind at Ys,” said Cael.

“Ys-s-s,” hissed from Niall. “Forever Ys.”

“The men who took them may have sold them off,” suggested a brithem judge nearby.

Niall shook his head. “They would not,” he said; a gust of wind keened at the words. “Over the years I have gathered knowledge of the King of Ys, that Grallon. His city is fallen but he will not rest in the grave where he belongs. This latest is his work too.”

“It is that,” the druid Étain told him. “A fate binds you two together, though you have never met and never shall. It has not yet run to its end.” Because of her calling, she was the sole woman there. Save at Brigit’s Imbolc, usage on Temir was that a Queen entertain female guests in her own house. Étain’s long white dress made her a ghostly sight among the shadows.

Cael saw how much heartening everybody needed. He stood up, jingled the metal that hung on his staff, reached for the harp he had tuned beforehand. Rain drummed to the strings. Created as he uttered them, the words rang forth:

“Valiant lord of victories,

Avenge your fallen men!

Heroes rise throughout your hall,

Hailing you their King.

“Goddesses Whose birds you’ve gorged,

Grant that you may fare

Windborne, fireborne, laying waste

Widely, Roman land.

“Sail upon the southbound wind.

Set your foot ashore,

Letting slip from off his leash

The lean white hound named Fear.

“Swords will reap when they have soared

Singing from the sheath

Heavy may your harvest be

Of heads and wealth and fame.”

Shouts drowned out the weather. Men pounded fists on benches and feet on floor. Niall climbed erect, raised his arms for silence, loomed above the company, and cried:

“Thanks be to you, poet, and good reward shall you have. You too, warriors who bore us this tale—first, dry clothes, full bellies, and lodging in brotherhood; later, your share in the revenge we will take. I swear by Lúg and Lir and the threefold Mórrigu, for what you and your comrades have suffered, Rome shall weep!”

—But that evening he walked from Temir, and with him only the female druid Étain. Four guards followed, well out of earshot, the least number the King could take and not demean his name.

The storm had blown over. Grass lay rain-weighted, air nearly as wet. Clouds ringed the horizon. Eastward they towered in murky masses, off which whiteness had calved into the deepening blue. Westward they glowed with sundown, molten copper and gold run together across that whole quarter of the sky. Hush and a soft sort of chill lapped earth.

Niall made his way down from the heights of Temir and up again to the ancient hill-fort sacred to Medb. It was empty of men, because he had enough in this train for any trouble. So there he could speak freely, and maybe likewise Those Who brooded over it. Étain came along in shared muteness. She was a woman tall and thin though sightly, her hair thick and red and the first frost of her years in it.

Atop the ringwall they looked vastly over the western plain, the forest and Boand’s River to the north. Niall kept his gaze yonder while he leaned on his spear and said, “I wish your counsel.”

“You do not,’ replied the druid. “You wish my comfort.”

He cast her a glance and a troubled grin. “Well, have you any for me?”

“That is for you to know.”

I felt easier with old Nemain, he thought. And Laid-chenn’s
poems had wings, where Cael’s walk. Well, time slips through our fingers till at last we hold no more of it.

“A name can abide,” she told him.

Startled at being answered, he said in his turn as steadily as he was able, “I would have mine stand always with its honor.”

She nodded. “Will you or nill you, that is so. Else power must also fall from it.”

“That will surely outlive me. Sons of mine are now kings across the breadth of Ériu.”

“But the one of them who is to have Temir and Mide from you—and he will, after your tanist falls—is a little child still. To his heritage you must add terror among his enemies; and for that, you must redeem what happened last year, against which today’s news was no more than a spark on fuel. Say how you mean to do it.”

He looked again at her, and now did not look back away. Sunset colors welled up behind her. “I think you already know,” he murmured; “yet the speaking may help me.

“One-and-twenty years ago, while Rome writhed at war with itself, I gathered a fleet and the finest of my warriors. We set course for the Biver Liger that flows to the sea through rich lands and past gleaming cities. Boundless could our winnings have been. But the witch-Queens of Ys raised a gale that drove us onto the rocks; and their King slew most of us who made it ashore.”

He drew breath to quell an undying pain and went on: “Well, Ys is no more, and yonder stream flows as of old. From travelers and scouts I know how stripped are the garrisons that hold Gallia, with the lower end of the river in the hands of strangers. Soon I will make known my intent, the which is to fare with the same strength to the same hunting ground. Men who follow me will win booty, glory, and revenge for their fathers. Afar in Rome, its King shall bewail his loss, and until the heavens fall they will remember us.”

His lifting bravado sank when she asked, “You will not be calling at Ys, though, will you, now?”

“I must steer wide of it,” he said harshly, “or the men would cast me overboard to her who haunts that water.”

“It is you that she haunts, and after you, him whom she also loved.”

“What do you then see for us?” he whispered.

“In the end, you shall not go down to her. That fate is for him.”

He scowled. “You speak darkling words.”

“As the Gods do to me.” Étain reached to stroke his cheek. There was sadness in her smile, but it was undaunted. “Come to my house, darling,” she said, “and I will give you the best comfort that is mine; for it is what any mortal woman has power to give.”

3

Laden with plunder,
Brennilis
and her companion ships—
Wolf
and
Eagle,
for the emblem creatures of Rome—left the Islands of Crows and steered for Hivernia. There, in Mumu, they set Ruftnus off. Once more he would range about gathering intelligence on King Niall, returning to Gallia by some fisher or merchantman making that passage late in the season. “Have no fears for me,” he laughed. “I’ve become an old Ériu hand.”

A hand to strike down the enemy, Gratillonius hoped.

Homebound, the ships stood well out to sea. Not only were the waters around Ys dangerous, sight of that land was almost unbearable for some aboard. When they felt sure they were to the south of it they would turn east. That would doubtless mean doubling back along the Armorican coast to the Odita mouth, but was amply worth the added time and effort.