The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] (20 page)

Guern turned from the fire to face Marcus. ‘I was not one of them. Before the Lord of the Legions I swear it. My full shame was not yet come upon me and I held the few men left to me in leash yet awhile. Then the Legate saw where his mistake had lain, and he spoke more gently to his Legion in revolt than ever he had done before, and that was not from fear. He bade the mutineers lay down the arms that they had taken up against their Eagle, and swore that there should be no summary punishment, even of the ringleaders; swore that if we did our duty from thenceforth, he would make fair report of it, the good with the bad, on our return. As though we should ever return! But even had the way back been clear, it was too late for such promises. From the moment that the cohorts mutinied it was too late. There could be no turning back for them, knowing all too well what the word of the Senate would be.’

‘Decimation,’ Marcus said quietly, as the other halted.

‘Aye, decimation. It comes hard, to draw lots out of a helmet, knowing that one in every ten means death by stoning to the man who draws it.

‘So the thing ended in fighting. That was when the Legate was killed. He was a brave man, though a fool. He stood out before the mob, with his hands empty, and his Eagle-bearer and his beardless Tribunes behind him, and called on them to remember their oath, and called them curs of Tiber-side. Then one struck him down with a pilum, and after that there was no more talking…

‘The tribesmen came swarming in over the barricades to help the red work, and by dawn there were barely two full cohorts left alive in the fort. The rest were not all dead, oh no; many of them went back over the ramparts with the tribesmen. They may be scattered about Caledonia now, for all I know, living even as myself, with a British wife, and sons to come after them.

‘Just after dawn, your father called together the few that were left in the open space before the Praetorium, and there, every man with his sword ready in his hand, we took hurried counsel, and determined to win out of the old fort, which was become a death-trap, and carry the Eagle back to Eburacum as best we might. It was no use by then to think of making terms with the tribesmen, for they had no longer any cause to fear us. And besides, I think there was the thought in all of us that if we won through, the Senate could scarcely count us as disgraced. That night the fools feasted—so low had we sunk in their contempt—and while they drank, baying to the moon, we got out, all that were left of us, by the southern scarp, and passed them by in the darkness and the mist—the first time ever the mist had seemed our friend—and began the forced march back, heading for Trinomontium.

‘The tribes picked up our trail at dawn and hunted us as though it had been for sport. Have you ever been hunted? All that day we struggled on, and the sorest wounded, who dropped out, died. Sometimes we heard them die, in the mist. Then I dropped out too.’ Guern rubbed his left flank. ‘I had a wound that I could put three fingers in, and I was sick. But I could have gone on. It was being hunted—the being—hunted. I took my chance at dusk, when the hunters drew off a space; I slipped into some long furze-cover, and hid. One of the Painted People nearly trod on me presently, but they did not find me, and after dark, when the hunt had passed far away, I stripped off my harness and left it. I look like a Pict, do I not? That is because I am from Northern Gaul. Then I suppose I wandered all night. I do not know, but in the dawn I came to a village and fell across the door-sill of the first hut.

‘They took me in and tended me. Murna tended me. And when they found that I was a Roman soldier, they did not greatly care. I was not the first of my kind to desert to the tribes; and Murna spoke for me, like a lioness whose cub is threatened.’ For an instant, a glint of laughter sounded in his voice, and then it grew harsh and heavy again. ‘A few nights later I saw the Eagle carried by on its way north again, with a great triumph of torches following behind.’

There was a long, strained silence. Then Marcus said in a quiet, hard voice, ‘Where did they make an end?’

‘I do not know. But they never reached Trinomontium. I have looked there again and again, and found no sign of fighting.’

‘And my father?’

‘He was with the Eagle when I dropped out. There were no captives with it when they carried it north again.’

‘Where is the Eagle now?’

Guern reached out and touched the dagger in the other’s belt, looking at him steadily. ‘If you are minded to die, here is the means to your hand. Save yourself the further journey.’

‘Where is the Eagle now?’ Marcus repeated his question, as though the other had not spoken.

For a moment he held the hunter’s eyes with his own; then Guern said, ‘I do not know. But tomorrow, when there is light to see by, I will give you what direction I can.’

And Marcus realized suddenly that he was seeing the other’s face by firelight, and all beyond him was blurred into the blue dusk.

He did not sleep much that night, but lay rigid with his head in his arms. All these months he had followed a dream; in a way, he realized now, he had followed it since he was eight years old. It had been bright and warm, and now it was broken, and without it he felt very cold, and suddenly older than he had been a few hours ago. What a fool he had been! What a blind fool! Clinging to the stubborn faith that because it had been his father’s, there had been nothing much wrong with the Ninth Legion, after all. He knew better now. His father’s Legion had been putrid, a rotten apple that fell to pieces when it was struck by a heel. And God of the Legions! what his father must have suffered!

Out of the ruin, one thing stood up unchanged: that the Eagle was still to be found and brought back, lest one day it became a menace to the Frontier. There was something comforting about that. A faith still to be kept.

Next morning when the early meal had been eaten, and the fire quenched and scattered, Marcus stood beside his mare, looking away north-west, along the line of Guern’s pointing finger. The light wind whipped his face, and his morning shadow ran away downhill as though eager to be off before him, and he heard the wild, sweet calling of the green plover that seemed to be the voice of the great loneliness.

‘Yonder where the vale opens,’ Guern was saying. ‘You will know the ford by the leaning pine that grows beside it. You must cross there, and follow the right bank, or you will find yourself at the last with the whole broad Firth of Cluta between you and Caledonia. Two days’ march, three at the most, will bring you to the old northern line.’

‘And then?’ Marcus said, not turning his narrowed gaze from the blue hazed distance.

‘I can tell you only this: that the men who carried the Eagle north were of the tribe of the Epidaii, whose territory is the deep firths and the mountains of the west coast, running from the Cluta.’

‘Can you hazard any guess as to where in this territory their holy place may be?’

‘None. It may be that if you find the Royal Dun, you will find the Holy Place not far off; but the Epidaii is divided into many clans, so I have heard, and the Royal Clan may not be the guardians of the Holy Place and the holy things of the tribe.’

‘You mean—it might be some quite small and unimportant clan?’

‘Not unimportant; it would be as powerful as the Royal Clan, maybe more so. But small, yes. There is no more help that I can give you.’

They were silent a moment until there sounded behind them the faint jink of a bridle-bit, as Esca brought up the other mare. Then Guern said hurriedly, ‘Do not follow that trail; it leads into the mouth of death.’

‘I must take my chance of that,’ Marcus said. He turned his head. ‘And you, Esca?’

‘I go where you go,’ said Esca, busy with a buckle.

‘Why?’ Guern demanded. ‘Now that you know the truth? They will not re-form the Legion. Why should you go on? Why?’

‘There is still the Eagle to be brought back,’ Marcus said.

Another silence, and then Guern said almost humbly, ‘You have said nothing about all this that I have told you; no more than if it had been a story told to while away an idle evening.’

‘What should I say?’

The other laughed, shortly and harshly. ‘Mithras knows! But my belly would be the lighter if you said it.’

‘Last night I felt too sick in my own belly to care over much for yours,’ Marcus said wearily. ‘That is passed now, but if I cursed the Hispana with every foul Tiber-side word that I could lay my tongue to, it would not serve my father, nor sweeten the stink of the Legion’s name.’ He looked for the first time at the man beside him. ‘As for you, I have never been hunted, and the Lord of the Legions forbid that I should be your judge.’

The other said defiantly, ‘Why did you come? I was happy with my woman; she is a good woman to me. I am a great man in my tribe, though an outdweller. Often I forget—almost—that I was not born into my tribe, until once again Trinomontium draws me back for a little while. And now I shall be ashamed to my dying day, because I let you go north on this trail alone.’

‘No need that you should carry a new shame,’ Marcus said. ‘This is a trail that three can follow better than four, and two better than three. Go back to your tribe, Guern. Thank you for your salt and your shelter, and for answering my questions.’

He turned away to mount his horse, and a few moments later was heading down the stream-side with Esca close behind.

O
N
an evening more than a month later, Marcus and Esca reined in to breathe their tired horses, on the crest of a steep ridge above the Western Ocean. It was an evening coloured like a dove’s breast; a little wind feathered the shining water, and far out on the dreaming brightness many scattered islands seemed to float lightly as sleeping sea-birds. In the safe harbourage inshore, a few trading-vessels lay at anchor, the blue sails that had brought them from Hibernia furled as though they, too, were asleep. And to the north, brooding over the whole scene, rose Cruachan, sombre, cloaked in shadows, crested with mist; Cruachan, the shield-boss of the world.

Mountain and islands and shining sea were all grown familiar to Marcus. For a month now he had seldom been out of sight of one or other of them, as he came and went among the mist-haunted glens where the Epidaii had their hunting grounds. It had been a heartbreaking month. So often, since he crossed the northern line, it had seemed to him that he was at last on the trail of what he sought, and always he had been wrong. There were so many holy places along the coast. Wherever the Ancient People, the little Dark People, had left their long barrows, there the Epidaii, coming after, had made a holy place at which to worship their gods; and the Ancient People had left so many barrows. Yet nowhere could Marcus hear any whisper of the lost Eagle. These people did not speak of their gods, nor of the things which had to do with their gods. And suddenly, this evening, looking out over the shining sea, Marcus was heart-sick and not far from giving up hope.

He was roused from his bleak mood by Esca’s voice beside him. ‘Look, we have companions on the road.’ And following the direction of his friend’s back-pointing thumb, he turned to look down the deer-path by which they had come, and saw a party of hunters climbing towards them. He wheeled Vipsania, and sat waiting for them to come up. Five men in all, two of them carrying the slung carcass of a black boar; and the usual pack of wolfish hounds cantering among them. How different they were from the men of Valentia: darker and more slightly built. Maybe that was because the blood of the Dark People ran more strongly in them than in the lowland tribes; less outwardly fierce than the lowlanders too, but in the long run, Marcus thought, more dangerous.

‘The hunting has been good.’ He saluted them as they came up at a jog-trot.

‘The hunting has been good,’ agreed the leader, a young man with the twisted gold torc of a chieftain round his neck. He looked inquiringly at Marcus, forbidden by courtesy to ask his business, but clearly wondering what this stranger, who was not one of the traders from the bluesailed ships, was doing in his territory.

Almost without thinking, Marcus asked him the question which had become a habit with much asking. ‘Are there any in your dun who have the eye sickness?’

The man’s look grew half eager, half suspicious. ‘Is it that you can cure the eye sickness?’

‘Can I cure the eye sickness?—I am Demetrius of Alexandria.
The
Demetrius of Alexandria,’ said Marcus, who had long since learned the value of advertisement. ‘Speak my name south of the Cluta, speak it in the Royal Dun itself, and men will tell you that I am indeed a healer of all sickness of the eye.’

‘There are several that I know of in the dun, who have the eye sickness,’ said the man. ‘None of your trade ever came this way before. You will heal them?’

‘How should I know, even I, until I see them?’ Marcus turned his mare into the way. ‘You are for the dun now? Let us go on together.’

And on they went, Marcus with the Chieftain loping at his horse’s shoulder, then Esca and the rest of the hunting party with the slung boar in their midst and the hounds weaving to and fro among them. For a while they followed the ridge, then turned inland, and came looping down through thin birch-woods towards a great loch that lay, pearl-pale with evening, among the hills. Marcus and Esca knew that loch—they had touched its further shores more than once. The Loch of Many Islets it was called, from the little islands scattered in it, some of them steep and rocky, or low and willow-fringed where the herons nested.

It was twilight when they reached the dun on its hill shoulder above the still waters of the loch; the soft mulberry twilight of the west coast, through which the firelit doorways of the living-huts bloomed like yellow crocus flowers dimly veined with red. The cluster of huts that made up the rath of the Chieftain was at the head of the dun, in a sharp curve of the turf ramparts, and they turned aside to it, while the other hunters, after arranging for the sharing of the boar, scattered to their own houses.