The Eagle and the Raven (33 page)

“‘Let me remind you of one thing,” she said hoarsely. “Even dogs have dignity. Do you understand me?”

He gazed down into the freckled, chestnut-haloed face for a long time, feeling those capable, tough fingers bite into his ankle, seeing the mingled pleading and defiance in the mauve-shadowed eyes. He nodded curtly. “I do.” She let go of him and he wrenched on the reins and cantered after his men, and she walked slowly back to Prasutugas.

“What did you say to him?” he asked curiously, and she shrugged.

“Nothing very much. I simply wanted to know if he was fond of dogs.”

Chapter Seventeen

B
RAN
reined in his tired horse, dismounted, and strode back to Caradoc, who sat still, Cinnamus and Caelte beside him, and Eurgain behind. “We have arrived,” Bran said. “Leave the horses here, they will be attended to.”

Caradoc slid from his mount and gently set Gladys on her feet. The child was ill and shivered continually. She whimpered as she felt the sodden ground quelch under her boots and Bran, bending and peering into her flushed face, scooped her up and walked away. Caradoc stretched, loosened his sword, then ordered Cinnamus to take Eurgain and follow Bran. He looked around him. There was not much to see. The night was very dark and rain poured down in a chill, never-ending curtain. It had been raining for five days, and Camulodunon lay three weeks behind them, back where the summer was hot and dry and a man could stand on the hill by the Great Hall and see for miles over the forest and the river. He could not see them but he could feel them here, the mountains, rising from low, treeclad foothills, ragged heights bare of snow in the fleeting warmth of summer. He felt uneasy, knowing that they were there. They dwarfed him.

For a week they had ridden hard during the day and half the night, through tinder-dry woodland, beside warm streams, sleeping with their faces to the stars and their cloaks flung from hot limbs. But gradually the weather had changed. Summer did not hold the west for long. The party began to climb imperceptibly, the ground rising and falling in long, thickly treed troughs, but always rising more than it fell, and one day the rain came. At first it was pleasant, a cool, cleansing draft after the summer heat, but as they rode on the rain became heavier, colder, and the children sneezed and huddled deeper into cloaks that were never quite dry. Bran and Jodocus led them confidently, oblivious of the weather, and they saw no man in all the miles lengthening between them and their familiar country. Some times there were little fields hewn out of the forest’s greedy fingers, crops standing yellow and tall, splashes of color and order in an otherwise wild land, but the peasants who tended the fields had vanished. Only the animals watched them with hidden, bright eyes as they passed along the hunting paths as furtively and swiftly as the wolves themselves. At night Caradoc heard them crying far away, a chorus of howls and yips that froze his blood, for the moon was nearing the full and magic ran strong and deep under the dark, dripping trees. More often than not the company did not know the names of the goddesses whose woods they crossed and they could not placate them. Only Bran and Jodocus were at ease. They sat talking softly together at night, sitting cross-legged by the fire that hissed as the raindrops steamed in it, black beard and gold wagging in the flickering light.

Then the morning came when Eurgain woke early, rose from the mossy ground under the oaks where they were camped, and stepped through the trees to where pale light was flowing. For a moment she stood unbelieving, her cloak bundled against her breast, and she whirled and ran back, taking Caradoc by the shoulder and shaking him urgently. “Get up, get up,” she whispered. “Come and see!” He came awake immediately, grabbed up his sword, and ran after her. They broke through the edge of the wood and she pointed, hardly able to speak for the excitement bubbling within her. The trees ended abruptly and right at their feet the land fell away, sloping steeply in a long, running curve that ended on a wide valley floor through which a river snaked, red in the morning sun. The valley bottom was patchworked with golden, cropped fields. Two miles away they could look across the chasm and see the land struggling up again like the crest of a huge, frozen wave, but it was not the valley that made Eurgain’s voice tremble. Far beyond, over the scrub that lipped the other side of the valley, was a marching line of hills dressed in forest, crowned bare like the knobbled spines of sleeping monsters. And farther back still, so far that they seemed to drift on a sea of pink mist, were the mountains.

“Ah, Caradoc, to see them, to actually see them!” Eurgain breathed. “What strange rocks and crystals lie hidden there, waiting for me to discover them! I could only dimly sense their secrets, sitting at my window at home, but here they have a voice!”

“They sing a song of promises to you, beloved,” he said. “But take care. Do not give them your heart. You will be very lonely if you do.” She turned and smiled at him, kissing him on the mouth and laying her tousled head against his neck.

“Are you jealous, Caradoc?”

“Perhaps. There are many things far stronger than another man that wait to take a wife’s love away from her husband.” She raised her head.

“And what of the things that divide husband from wife? You from me? How many more times will I hold you in some quiet, peaceful place such as this, far from councils and war and all the other things that claim you? Oh Caradoc, I wish that fate had not seen fit to choose this way for you. I love you. How can I live, wondering, not knowing from day to day whether you live or die?” She seldom let down her cool guard, even to him, and he held her tightly. There was nothing to say. The very pores of her body were better known to him than his own, yet after ten years of marriage she could still surprise him, still intrigue him with glimpses of a character that ran infinitely deep, each layer carefully covered over with a mystery of which he would never tire. He took her hand and led her quietly in under the trees, away from the still sleeping camp, and the brief moment of watery sunlight went out as the day’s rain clouds began to gather.

To Eurgain’s disappointment, they did not enter the mountains. They picked their way onto the valley floor and then turned south, riding beside the river. For two days they followed it without sheltering trees, defenceless under the rain’s fierce lashing. Then they forded it at a place where it widened into a shallow, rocky pool. Caradoc thought that he could catch the tang of the ocean mingling with the river’s dank odor and the smell of sour earth, and with a queer twist of the heart he thought of Gladys’s cave, its dry dimness empty now forever. Then they clattered up the farther bank and pressed on, skirting the dark foothills that bulked sullenly on their right. In another four days and half a night they had arrived.

Caradoc waited while Eurgain dismounted stiffly and came to him, then they followed Bran, and the silent Catuvellaunian chiefs straggled behind. The village was small, three or four circles of round, wooden huts with thatched, sloping roofs, but the huts themselves were large and spacious, each with a low gate followed after a few steps by doorskins. At the gate to the largest hut a man waited, uncloaked, and as Caradoc walked forward the man spoke, holding out his arm. “Welcome to this hall,” he said. “If you come in peace, then stay in peace.” Caradoc’s cold, wet fingers found the other wrist, strong and warm. “I am Madoc, of the House Siluria. I apologize for the rain. Our summer is almost over, and between it and the autumn there is always a period of turbulence.” He withdrew his hand and turned, bidding them to follow, and they stumbled after him, eager faces and hands reaching out to the room’s welcome heat.

Slaves waited to take their sodden cloaks, small, dark men with blackbirds’ eyes. In the center a huge log fire crackled, its smoke hanging thick about the airy ceiling, and Caradoc, shedding his cloak and going to the fire, felt as though he were in a big, pleasant tent. Madoc drew his knife and hacked part of the haunch from the pig that turned slowly over the flames, handing it to Caradoc, and easing him to a place on the skins. Another slave brought dark, strong beer and a dish full of new peas, green and juicy. Llyn and Fearachar had entered, the boy swaying on his feet, blinking in an effort to keep his eyes open, and Madoc beckoned them over. Caelte had not waited to be invited. He was already settling himself by Caradoc’s knees, and his glance flicked over the company. About forty chiefs squatted on the skins, with the remains of their meal on the floor in front of them. Their gaze went unashamedly to the bedraggled, dirty foreigners. Little Eurgain was already asleep, too tired for food, rolled in a dry cloak against the wall, but of his wife, his other daughter, Cinnamus, and Bran there was no sign. Madoc, seeing his anxious, roving glance, gently pushed the dish closer to him. “Eat. Eat! The Druid ministers to the little one. A fever is a small thing for him to cure with his herbs, and with good sleep she will be well by the night after tomorrow.” Caelte met his master’s enquiring eye and nodded.

“They have gone to another hut,” he said. “Eurgain went too,” and Madoc chuckled.

“You do not trust us fiends of the west! Well, you will learn. And
you
will learn also!” he roared at his still-staring, silent men. “Where’s my bard? On your feet, man, and sing! The foreigners are hungry and tired and there will be no Council tonight.” His odd, stiffly frilled hair seemed to bristle at them, and he lay back on his skins with a grunt and closed his eyes. “Food and sleep, and then war, eh Catuvellaunian? I hope you are worth all the trouble we have taken over you, as the Druid says you are.” The bard tuned his little harp and cleared his throat, and Caelte’s eyes began to shine in the firelight. Presently Cinnamus and Eurgain pushed back the doorskins and slipped to Caradoc’s side.

“She is better,” Eurgain whispered. “She sleeps. Bran is still with her.” Then real exhaustion descended on Caradoc, and he wrapped the strange-smelling cloak around him, put his head on his knees, and fell asleep.

Some time during the night, when the fire had died to red embers and the chiefs had all gone, Jodocus roused him and he staggered after the silent man, still too weary to care where he laid his head. He had a confused impression of new fire, long shadows, and an inviting, well-draped bed, then he dropped the cloak, pulled off his tunic and breeches, and fell beside Eurgain. Drowsily she covered them both and went back to sleep, both of them lulled by the steady patter of the rain.

In the morning they woke refreshed to sunlight. Fearachar was already up, tending the fire and laying out clean clothes, and the beds that the children had slept in were empty. Caradoc heard Cinnamus and Caelte’s low voices outside and he got up, splashed in the basin on the table beside the bed, pulled on his clothes, and after kissing a still-somnolent Eurgain, he went out. His chiefs greeted him, and together they looked upon Caer Siluria. The village lay in a small valley, beside a river. To the west the foothills rose again, and the tips of far-off mountains could be seen. To the north the valley meandered with the river, heavily wooded, and though the mountains they had seen above the big valley were not visible, their knees were, humping in the east, swathed in white mist. “Mother!” Cinnamus said. “A pretty place to die in! The enemy only has to seal off the mouth of the river and these stupid people are trapped like rabbits.”

“They are far from stupid, Cin,” Caradoc remarked. “This village is close to their fields and to water. They have flat land for their cattle and sheep. And you can be sure that the chiefs know every path that winds about the hills and climbs into the mountains. At the first sign of trouble they could melt into that gloomy wilderness and never be found unless they chose to be.”

“Of course,” said a voice at their elbow and Madoc sauntered into view, hair spiking to the sky, his red tunic glittering with necklaces and his arms weighed down with bracelets. “So you are at last awake, Caradoc. You have missed the first meal of the day, but it does not matter. It was only bread and apples. Come. I will show you the caer.”

His bard and his shield-bearer, who carried an enormous weight of leather and bronze tooled over with trumpet whirls and long horse faces with closed eyes, swung in beside him, and they all strode through the huts, which were full of the smells of cooking and the laughter of women. Dogs and children came out and ran beside them barefoot, their tunics hitched above bony brown knees and their hair stringing to their waists. Beyond the last circle Madoc halted. “Here are the stables,” he said, pointing. “We keep few horses, for they are useless on the high passes, and we do not bother with chariots. Looking around you, you must see why.” They did. No chariot could ever navigate the winding, rocky paths of the foothills. “Over there,” he turned and waved an arm, “down along the valley, two days’ march away, is another of our caers, and between there are many farms. We do not like to huddle together in one big mass like you Catuvellauni,” he said with a sidelong glance. “We prefer to live and fight on our own. Each chief lives on his farm with his peasants and slaves, and each chief has the right to speak with equality in Council. The Druids have the last word. After me, of course!” He chuckled, a dry, gasping bark, and his men smiled dutifully.

“This valley, though narrow, cuts a long way between the mountains, and most of our people have settled along it, but we at this end seldom hear from our freemen and brothers at the other end. We trade a bit, by boat. As for the rest of us,” he grinned at Caradoc, showing yellowing teeth in the black beard, “we are scattered through many little valleys hidden up there.” He waved again airily at the ragged tips behind him and Caradoc’s heart sank. Madoc gazed at him, the twinkle in his eye telling Caradoc that he knew very well what was passing through his mind. These people could never be united. They might be able to fight like a thousand demons but always with the arrogance of invincible independence, when and with whom they chose.

He looked at Madoc, his belly empty and his spirits low, and Madoc nodded and came closer. “We have quite a task ahead of us, my friend,” he said in a low, rumbling purr. “I listened to the Druid when he spoke of you because, well, I can lead my chiefs to battle, there is no greater warrior than I, but up here…” He tapped his stiff hair with one stubby finger, “Up here I am stupid. Yes, I, Madoc, chieftain and mighty swordsman, admit this to you, foreigner. I have not the brains for such work as we plan. So I send, and you are delivered. In a while the Council will begin, and you must say the words that will cause my chiefs to listen to you. If you do not you might as well go away. I can make them hear, but I cannot make them obey if they do not want to.” His voice dropped lower, a buzz in Caradoc’s ear. “Say nothing of the Druid’s dreams of an arviragus rising. I think he is a fool where this is concerned and I see that you do also, but it just may come to pass at the proper time. First, gain the trust of my chiefs. Then travel, Caradoc, with me and the Druid, into the little valleys of which I spoke. If we can rouse all of Siluria we will have done a great thing.”