The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] (25 page)

‘Do you wish the Eagle yet in the place we took it from?’ Esca asked.

Marcus was still watching those dwindling specks, almost out of sight now. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If it were yet in the place we took it from, it would be still a danger to the Frontier—a danger to other Legions. Also it was my father’s Eagle and none of theirs. Let them keep it if they can. Only it is in my heart that I wish we need not have made Dergdian and his sword-brethren ashamed.’

They saw to their gear, tightened the ponies’ bellystraps, and rode on.

Presently the loch began to narrow, and the mountains to crowd in on it, rising almost sheer from the water’s edge; and at last they caught sight of the village; the distant huddle of turf bothies at the head of the loch, cattle grazing up the steep glen behind, and the straight blue smoke of cooking-fires rising pale against the sombre browns and purples of the mountains that towered above them.

‘It is time that I sickened of the fever,’ said Esca, and without more ado he began to sway from side to side, his eyes half closed. ‘My head!’ he croaked. ‘My head is on fire.’

Marcus reached out and took the reins from him. ‘Slump a little more and roll a little less; it is fever, not metheglin, that lit the fire, remember,’ he directed, beginning to lead the other horse with his own.

The usual crowd of men and women, children and boys gathered to meet them as they entered the village, and here and there, people called out a greeting to them, glad in their remote way to see them back again. With Esca slumped over Minna’s neck beside him, Marcus singled out the ancient headman, greeted him with due courtesy, and explained that his servant was sick and must rest a few days; two days, three at the most. It was an old sickness that returned from time to time, and would last no longer, given proper treatment.

The headman replied that they were welcome to share his fireside, as they had done when they passed that way before. But to that, Marcus shook his head. ‘Give us some place to ourselves; it matters not how rough, so long as it will keep out the weather. But let it be as far from your living-huts as may be. This sickness of my servant is caused by devils in his belly, and to drive them out it is needful that I use strong magic.’ He paused, and looked round at the questioning faces. ‘It will do no harm to this village, but it cannot be looked upon safely by any who have not the signs for protection. That is why we must have lodging apart from the living-huts.’

They looked at each other. ‘It is always dangerous to look upon forbidden things,’ said a woman, accepting the story without surprise. There could be no question of refusing them shelter; Marcus knew the laws of the tribes. They talked the matter over quickly among themselves, and finally decided that Conn’s cow-byre, which was not now in use, would be the best place.

Conn’s cow-byre proved to be the usual turf bothy, exactly like the living-huts, save that it was not set so far below ground-level, and there was no hearth in the centre of the trampled earthen floor. It was well away from the main rath, with its doorway at an angle that would make it possible to slip out and in without showing up too clearly to any watchers among the living-huts. So far, so good.

The villagers, feeling perhaps that a man who could conjure out devils was best treated kindly, did their best for the two returned strangers; and by dusk the mares had been taken in charge, fresh fern stacked inside the hut for bedding, an old skin rug skewered up over the doorway; and the women had brought broiled boar’s flesh for Marcus, and warm ewe’s milk for Esca, who lay on the piled bracken, moaning and babbling most realistically.

Later, with the deerskin rug drawn close across the door, and the villagers crowded about their own hearths with faces and thoughts carefully turned from the outlying bothy and the magic that would be a-making there, Marcus and Esca looked at each other by the faint light of a floating reed-wick in a shell of rancid seal oil. Esca had eaten the lion’s share of the meat, for he would need it most; and now, with a few strips of smoked deer meat thrust into the middle of a rolled-up cloak, he stood ready to go.

At the last moment, Marcus said savagely, ‘Oh, curse this leg of mine! It should be me going back, not you.’

The other shook his head. ‘That leg of yours makes no difference. If it were as sound as mine, still it would be better, quicker, and safer that I should go. You could not leave this place and return to it in the dark, without rousing the dogs; but I can. You could not find your way through the passes that we have traversed only once before. It is work for a hunter—a hunter born and bred, not a soldier who has learned a little forest-craft.’ And he reached up to the little stinking lamp hanging from the roof tree, and pinched it out.

Marcus drew back a fold of the rug and peered out into the soft darkness of the mountains. Away to the right, a solitary glint of gold shone from the chink in a deerskin apron over a distant doorway. The moon was behind the mountains, and the waters of the loch were only a lesser darkness, without spark or lustre.

‘All is clear,’ he said. ‘You are sure you can find the way?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good hunting, then, Esca.’

A dark shadow slipped past him, and was gone into the night. And he was alone.

He stood for a while in the bothy doorway, ears stretched for any sound to break the silence of the mountains, but heard only the wet whisper of falling water where the swift stream came tumbling into the loch, and a long while later, the belling of a stag. When he was sure that Esca had got clear away, he dropped the rug. He did not re-light the lamp, but sat for a long time on the piled bracken in the pitchy darkness, with his arms across his knees, thinking. His one comfort was the sure knowledge that if Esca ran into trouble, he himself would very soon share it.

For three nights and two days Marcus kept guard over an empty hut. Twice a day one of the women, with face averted, would bring broiled meat and fresh ewe milk, sometimes herrings, once a golden lump of wild honey-comb, and set them on a flat stone a little way off, and Marcus would collect them and later take back the empty bowls. After the first day there were only women and children in the village; evidently the men had gone to answer some call from the dun. He wondered whether he ought to provide noises for the benefit of the village, but decided that silence would probably be more effective; so save for a little muttering and moaning when he thought someone was near enough to hear, just enough to keep it in their mind that there were two people in the bothy, he remained silent. He slept when he could, but he did not dare to sleep much, for fear that trouble should blow up suddenly when he was not on the alert for it. Most of his time, day or night, was spent sitting just within the doorway watching, through a back-drawn chink in the rug, the grey waters of the loch and the sheer, boulder-strewn upward thrust of the mountains towering so high above him that he had to tip his head far back to see their jagged crests where the mist-rags trailed among the peaks and the high corries.

Autumn had come to the mountains almost overnight, he thought. A few days ago, summer had still lingered, though the heather was past its flowering and the flaming rowan berries long since gone. But now it was the Fall of the Leaf; one could smell it in the wind, and the trees of the glen grew bare and the brawling stream ran gold with yellow birch leaves.

Some while after moonset on the third night, without any warning, a hand brushed across the skin rug at the entrance, and as Marcus tensed in the close darkness, he heard the faintest ghost of a whistle: the broken, two-note whistle that he had always used to summon Cub. A sudden wave of relief broke over him, and he echoed the whistle. The rug was drawn aside and a black shape slipped through.

‘Is it well?’ Esca whispered.

‘It is well,’ Marcus returned, striking flint and steel to kindle the lamp. ‘And with you? How went the hunting?’

‘The hunting was good,’ Esca said, as the tiny flame sprang up and steadied, and he stooped and set down something closely bundled in the cloak.

Marcus looked at it. ‘Was there any trouble?’

‘None, save that I pulled the bank down a little in landing with the Eagle. It must have been rotten, I suppose—but there is nothing in a bank slip to set anyone thinking.’ He sat down wearily. ‘Is there anything to eat?’

Marcus had made a habit of saving each meal that he was given, and eating it only when the next one came, so that he always had a meal in hand, packed into the old cooking-pot. He produced it now, and sat with his hand resting on the bundle that meant so much to him, while he watched the other eat, and listened to the story of the last three days, told in low snatches between mouthfuls.

Esca had cut back across the mountains without much difficulty, but by the time he reached the Loch of Many Islets it had been near to dawn, and he had had to lie up in the dense hazel-woods through the day. Twice during the day parties of warriors had passed close to his hiding-place, carrying coracles, and evidently bound, like himself, for the dun by the short way across the loch. Also they had been carrying war-spears, he said. As soon as it was dark, he had set out once again to swim the loch. It was little more than a mile across at the place he chose, and that, too, had not been difficult. He had worked his way down the far shore until he came to the spit of land that marked the place where they had hidden the Eagle; found it, and landed again, pulling down the bank a little in doing so, and bundled it in the wet cloak that he had carried bound to his shoulder. Then he had returned the way he came as fast as might be, for the dun was thrumming like a disturbed bees’ nest. Of a certainty the tribe was hosting. It had all been very easy—almost too easy.

Esca’s voice was growing blurred towards the close of the story. He was blind weary, and the instant he had finished eating, he stretched out on the piled bracken and sleep took him like a tired hound after a day’s hunting.

But before the sun was above the mountains next day they were on their way once more, for though they were now clear of suspicion, it was no time for lingering. The village had shown no signs of surprise at Esca’s sudden recovery; presumably when the devils were no longer in his belly the man was whole again. They had given the travellers more of the eternal smoked meat, and a boy—a wild, dark-faced lad too young for the hosting and sulking in consequence—to guide them on the next stage of their journey, and bidden them good hunting and let them go.

That day they had gruelling travelling; no level loch-side to follow, but a steep thrust northward into the heart of the mountains, and then east—so far as they could hold to any course—by narrow passes between sheer heather-washed crags of black rock, skirting wide mountain shoulders, traversing bare ridges, across what seemed to be the roof of the world; until at last the lie of the country turned them south again into the long downward sweep that ended afar off in the marshes of the Cluta. Here the boy parted from them, refusing to share their camp for the night, and set off back the way he had come, tireless as a mountain buck among his native glens.

They watched him go, easily, not hurrying, at the long, springing mountaineer’s stride. He would walk like that through the night and arrive home before dawn, not much tired. Marcus and Esca were both hillmen, but they could never have equalled that, not among these crags and passes. They turned their back on the last glimpse of Cruachan, and set off southward, making for more sheltered country, for once again there was storm in the air, not thunder this time, but wind—wind and rain. Well, that would not matter much; mist was the one thing that would matter, and at least an autumn gale would keep the autumn mists away. Only once before had weather meant as much to Marcus as it did now: on the morning of the attack at Isca Dumnoniorum when mizzle rain had kept the signal smoke from rising.

In the last flush of the evening they came upon the ruins of a broch, one of those strange, chambered towers built by a forgotten people, perched like a falcon’s eyrie on the very edge of the world. They made camp there, in company with the skeleton of a wolf picked bare by ravens.

Thinking it best not to light a fire, they simply knee-hobbled the mares, gathered fern for bedding, and after filling the cooking-pot at the mountain stream, which came leaping down through its own narrow gorge nearby, sat down with their backs to the crumbling stones of the entrance, to eat leathery shavings of dried meat.

Marcus stretched out thankfully. It had been a gruelling march; most of the day they had had to trudge and scramble, leading Vipsania and Minna, and his lame leg was aching horribly, despite the ready help that he had had from Esca. It was good to rest.

From their feet the land swept away southward over ridge after ridge into the blue distance, where, a thousand feet below and maybe two days’ march away, the old frontier cut Valentia from the wilderness. Far below them, among dark ranks of pine-trees, the northern arm of a great loch reflected back the flame of the sunset; and Marcus greeted it as a familiar friend, for he and Esca had followed its shores on their way north, almost two moons ago. A straight journey now, no more sniping to and fro among sea-lochs and mist-wrapped mountains, he thought; and yet there was a queer superstitious feeling in him that it had all been too easy—a queer foreboding of trouble to come. And the sunset seemed to echo his mood. A most wonderful sunset; the whole western sky on fire, and high overhead, torn off, hurrying wind clouds caught the light and became great wings of gold that changed, even while Marcus watched them, to fiery scarlet. Stronger and stronger grew the light, until the west was a furnace banked with purple cloud, and the whole world seemed to glow, and the upreared shoulder of the mountain far across the loch burned crimson as spilled wine. The whole sunset was one great threat of coming tempest; wind and rain, and maybe something more. Suddenly it seemed to Marcus that the crimson of that distant mountain shoulder was not wine, but blood.

He shook his shoulders impatiently, calling himself a fool. He was tired, so were Esca and the horses for that matter, and there was a storm on the way. That was all. A good thing that they had found shelter for the night; with any luck it would have blown itself out by morning. It struck him that he had not so much as looked at the Eagle. It had seemed better not to, in the village they had left that morning; but now … It lay beside him, and on a swift impulse he picked up the bundle and began to unroll it. The dark folds of the cloak as he turned them back caught a more brilliant colour from the sunset, warming from violet to Imperial purple. The last fold fell away, and he was holding the Eagle in his hands; cold, heavy, battered, burning red-gold in the sunset. ‘Euge!’ he said softly, using the word he would have used to praise a victory in the arena, and looked up at Esca. ‘It was a good hunting, brother.’