The Eagle and the Raven (81 page)

“Where is Venutius?” his companion asked him, his brown hair whipping into his eyes as he flung stale crumbs to the seagulls that had followed them every day in a squawking cloud.

Andocretus raised one shoulder, his eyes narrowed against the spray. “I do not know. We will keep to the coast until we reach Deceangli country, then take the first path that strikes inland. We will stop at the fort at Deva, I think, and get news of the rebels.”

“I hope they are not summering in the mountains. I hope they have come down to fight. I am afraid of mountains.”

“And I, too, but with luck we will have good guides.” His friend nodded, smiling, and they cantered on.

A week after they had turned south along the coast they met a Roman patrol out of Deva. There was no laughter and loose talk with these fully armed, flint-faced, grim men who spent their time scouting the foothills. They were men who had lived for so long with the hourly expectation of a savage death that there was no longer anything but a wary animality in their eyes. If Andocretus had not seen them and hailed them fluently in their own tongue they would have shot the two youths from afar. Their centurion wasted no time in conversation with them but yoked their horses together and took them to the fort, he and his men moving swiftly away from the ocean through the Deceangli’s brooding forest. Even when the great walls of the fort loomed up out of its little valley, the centurion and his men neither relaxed nor chattered among themselves.

Once arrived, the centurion ushered Andocretus and his friend into the presence of the legate, leaving them without a backward glance. The legate, Manlius Valens, looked them over quickly as they stood before him, his arms folded on his desk.

“Who are you, where are you from, and where are you going?” he snapped crisply.

“We are Brigantian chieftains, seeking contact with Venutius, leader in the west,” Andocretus replied smoothly and politely. “We are to tell him that his wife is dying and wishes him to return to her.”

“Brigantia,” the legate muttered, unfolding his arms to thumb through the dispatches lying piled neatly under his hand. “Brigantia.” Andocretus and his companion waited while the man found the message he was looking for. He skimmed it rapidly and then tossed it back onto the desk, favoring them with a cold smile. “What do you want me to tell you?”

Andocretus stepped forward. “We need to know where Venutius is, where his host is summering.”

The legate barked once in laughter. “Three days ago he and his men attacked a posting station not twenty miles from here and took all the horses. They killed thirty of my men. He is very close, gathering horses and massing his men, but the governor will not have us attack him before he can fall on us. You will have no trouble finding him. He knows that my hands are tied. Do you want a guide?”

The two young men looked at each other, then Andocretus shook his head. “No, sir. We do not want to take the chance of being seen with a Roman, but we would like supplies.”

Valens folded his arms again. “Very well. Good hunting.”

They realized that they had been dismissed. Awkwardly, they left the office and wandered onto the parade ground, uncertain who to approach, staring at the motionless men who stood guarding the aquila, the sentries high on the wall, feeling unwanted, a nuisance in this place of constant danger among men who stood endlessly to arms.

Andocretus wondered how long it had been since the men of Deva had laughed for sheer happiness. Now I think on it, he mused, I have never heard a Roman laugh for nothing at all, for simply the joy of being alive. What a heavy people they are! Then the legate’s secretary emerged from his office and beckoned them, leading them around behind the administration building to the granaries.

“Fill your packs,” he told them. “Your horses have been victualed and watered. If you wish, you may stay here today and tonight, but the legate advises you to leave at sundown and put a few miles between yourselves and the fort before you rest. If the tribesmen catch you too close to Deva they will be suspicious.” He left them to stuff the grain into their packs. Andocretus had no wish to linger in that forbidding, death-scented place. He and his friend went to the stables, led out their horses, and breathed a sigh of relief when the tall gates slammed shut behind them with indecent haste.

It was noon. The sun was high in a blue, cloud-dotted sky. They hurried out of the valley and entered the forest once more, veering south and slightly west, riding slowly and in silence. The trees closed around them and were immediately suffocating to them both who had been reared under Brigantia’s wide sky, and they soon began to sweat. The forest was oppressively still. Occasionally a bird chuckled or the undergrowth rustled, but in the main a brooding quiet weighed down upon them, laying fear on their shoulders and about their necks like soft veils. They did not stop to eat but in the late afternoon, when light shafted through the trees and a slight breeze rustled the dark leaves, Andocretus reined in. “I cannot bear this anymore,” he half-whispered. “I am going to climb a tree and see where we are.” He stood on his mount’s broad back and sprang onto a branch, disappearing upward with scarcely a sound. Minutes went by while the young man on the ground held the horses’ heads and peered anxiously above him and around into the evening’s first shadows. Then Andocretus sprang down softly beside him. “Far to the south the forest begins to thin,” he panted, “and rocks and cliffs appear. But I think we have another day’s march before we reach the foot of the mountains. We will make camp here.”

They led their horses deep in under the arms of the oaks, to a place where the sky was utterly blotted out by high-soaring branches, and there they ate a cold meal and unrolled their blankets. Andocretus ventured farther into the wood to find a stream, for they were very thirsty, but his companion would not stir from the friendly sounds of the snuffling horses. When Andocretus came back, the full skins slung over his shoulder, the other said in a half-whisper, “Who are the gods of these woods, Andocretus, do you know? Who do the Deceangli worship?” Andocretus handed him the water and wriggled under his blanket. “I do not know. But all the men of the west, and the Romans too, move freely here. I do not think the gods of the Deceangli will molest us. Samain is far away.” Nevertheless, they lay side by side while the shadows thickened and the sun vanished, gazing up into the moving darkness above them, their ears straining. Neither of them slept, and when dawn came, colorless and heatless, they got up quickly and left that place.

All day they plodded through an unending green ocean of summer-lit leaves. Twice they crossed little streams that gurgled hypnotically, running clear and very cold to disappear under last year’s damp russet carpet. Andocretus did not bother to make sure the horses made no mark in the wet spongy moss overhanging the banks of the water. He wanted this silent, tree-prisoned journey to end. When the light began to fail they again left the faint but unmistakable track they had been following and made another fireless camp, noting that the ground was no longer soft and yielding and the soil was thinner, barely covering the broken rock beneath. The trees had been thinning, too, and their girth and height was less. Fear lay like ugly burdens on them now and they kept close together, lying back to back under a tree with their eyes wide open and their hands aching for knife or sword. Stars winked fitfully at them as the night wind stirred the forest’s roof, and apart from the scratching of leaf on leaf, the silence was absolute. Then Andocretus, staring with tired eyes into the gloom, thought he caught the glint of moon on metal. He sat up. It was there again, a flicker of dull light, and he rose to his feet, dragging his friend with him. With their hearts pounding they strove to see with their ears, hear with their eyes, and then they found themselves knocked to the earth with a speed and suddenness that stunned them. Andocretus, the dark forest spinning around him, saw a nightmare bending over him, the frozen snarl of an angry wolf whose black mane tumbled over his chest. He closed his eyes.

“Kill them quickly and let us be gone!” he heard the wolf say. “We are too close to Deva, and the night is fine. The patrols will be out.”

“Wait,” a deep voice answered it. “Wait.” Hands touched the jet necklace at Andocretus’s throat, and the bracelet on his arm, and he lay very still and would not open his eyes. Then rough hands lifted him as though he were a wisp of grass and set him on his feet. “Open your eyes, Andocretus,” the same voice commanded, and he obeyed.

The wolf was standing looking at him, its face a metal horror, but Andocretus, with a rush of gladness, fixed his eyes on the black-bearded chief whose hands still gripped him by his hair. “Domnall! Brigantia has given me luck! My lady is in such trouble but I was afraid that I would never find the arviragus! Will you take us to him?” Behind Domnall and the wolf, seven or eight chiefs stood in the gloom, unmoving, as quiescent and dark as the forest itself. Domnall released Andocretus slowly and the wolf turned its stiff face to him.

“Then the rumors are true!” it whispered. “Aricia…”

“Hold your tongue, Sine!” Domnall said, then he stepped up to Andocretus until his breath warmed the other’s cheek. “I must now decide, my one-time brother, whether to kill you here or take you with us. Your facility for lying is well known to me, Andocretus. Indeed, you lie better than you sing, and that is well enough. How come you here?”

Marshaling his scattered forces, Andocretus lifted his eyes to meet Domnall’s. “I do not come willingly,” he said in a low, hurried voice. “I am afraid of these forests, afraid of the mountains. But my lady is dying, Domnall. Day after day she lies on her bed, and her flesh has shriveled to her bones. The Roman physician can do nothing for her. She longs only to see her husband, to beg from him forgiveness for the wasted years. She sent me to find him, out of her desperation.” Blue eyes locked with brown ones, but Domnall was no Druid. His gaze fell first and he frowned at the ground.

“‘Happy is he who dies slowly,’” he quoted, “‘for he may recover his soul.’ So say the Druids. And yet…yet…”

“Kill them now and let us go!” Sine urged him. “That woman has never told a truth in all her life! Domnall, he lies to you!”

Domnall’s wide shoulders hunched. “Be still, Sine. This is a matter of kin, a private matter, and you may not interfere.”

“But your lord is now arviragus! His loyalty no longer goes to the kin!”

Domnall ignored her and Andocretus looked at her curiously. This was no wolf. Only a slender, weapon-girt woman, whose black hair fell over the bronze mask that hid her face. But out of that mask two moon-glittering eyes poured suspicion over him. Finally Domnall straightened. “I do not think that he lies,” he said, “but even if he does, this matter is too weighty for me. My lord must hear. Tie them onto their horses!” he called to the men behind him. “Blindfold them!” Firm hands took Andocretus and the young chief back to the path, and Sine caught Domnall by the arm.

“You know what this could do to him,” she said. “Even if the young man lies, the doubt will tear him in two. Domnall, I beg you, kill the messengers, kill the rumors. If it is true then no matter. Let her die as she deserves. If not you will have done him a great service.”

“Sine, I cannot,” he replied, the frown still furrowing his face. “He has ordered all strangers brought to him and, besides, if he knew that I had hidden such news he would slay me. There are Druids in the camp. We…” But she had swung away from him and was disappearing into the darkness.

For the rest of the night and far into the morning they glided through the forest, and Andocretus, sightless on his horse, his wrists tied together behind his back, marveled at how he seemed to be alone. No sound of human footfall came to his ears, no whiff of human presence, yet he knew that ten people accompanied him. They gave Andocretus and his friend no food or water, nor did they stop to eat themselves. His horse plodded steadily onward, jolting him so that soon his muscles cried out, for they were climbing steadily, weaving back and forth. Wind began to play on his face. At last he began to hear something, or thought he did, a murmuring, a quiet sound of continual movement, and then a word was spoken. His horse came to a halt. Hands reached for him, pulling him down, and he stood shakily while a knife parted the rope around his arms and the blindfold was torn from his head. He looked around him, blinking in bright sunlight. Gray, tattered tents spread like clumsy gulls as far as he could see, half-buried in scrub and rocks. A few small fires burned without smoke, tended carefully by limber, squatting men, and men and women sprawled silently outside the tents or stood in quiet groups. His glance found the horizon, a long, tree-clad slope that ended in naked rock where sentries perched. Behind him the slope continued to a river and on to the eaves of the forest he had left, and more men and women stood like the trees themselves, unmoving, at intervals along the bank, their eyes turned to the cool green depths of the wood. His friend was beside him, pale and nursing sore wrists but unhurt, and they smiled tentatively at each other, acknowledging without words the bare discomfort of this forbidding place, the oppression in the muted sounds of a camp that should have been alive with laughter and shouts.

He and his companion were ordered to sit next to one of the fires, and they sank to the ground with relief. Food was brought to them—cold rabbit, bitter bread, an onion apiece, and hunks of white, strong-smelling cheese, all washed down with black beer that tasted of sour, rotting undergrowth. Then they sat in that animal quiet, their guard’s eyes fixed on them, while the afternoon drowsed on. They finally dozed also, with two sleepless days and nights behind them, and they felt, in some odd way, completely safe.

Their guard woke them and they rose at once to dusk. Around them the fires were being extinguished and the last of the day’s orange and pink light still lay gently on the lip of the little valley. The forest slumbered in its evening dimness, but long, thin shadows followed the three men who came striding up the slope toward Andocretus and his companion. With a beating heart Andocretus recognized Venutius, but he did not know the short, burly chief who swaggered beside him, or the graceful one who walked a step behind. He faced them, bowing to Venutius, and the familiar riot of red hair and beard, the wild, piercing eyes and swooping nose brought a sickness frothing inside him. Venutius knew that he was more than his lady’s bard, but those alert eyes met his own without rancor. Only Venutius’s mouth betrayed pain. It was slightly parted, ready to tremble into anger or contort with grief. Andocretus remembered that face twisted into agony, shamed under pitiless sunlight, and the blood that had fled down the shuddering chest. The sickness threatened to reach his mouth. He swallowed and faced his greatest test. “Greetings, Lord,” he said. “I am glad to have found you at last.”