After Rome (29 page)

Cursing, Dinas turned the stallion and galloped back along the line. This brought him within range of the Sarmatian horse, who had not yet assumed his place at the end. The big-headed gelding wheeled around, unseating Cadel in the act of mounting, then lashed out at the stallion with both hind legs. The kick struck the dark horse full in the ribs with a sound like thunder—a hairsbreadth away from Dinas's knee.

With a scream of rage, the stallion rose on his hind legs and pawed the sky.

Cadel cowered on the earth beneath him.

Dinas clamped his fingers around a lock of mane as his horse plunged toward his adversary. The gelding refused to give ground; being a warhorse was in his blood. Both animals reared again while Cadel desperately tried to scramble clear. The horses towered like titans above the mere mortal. In their passion they were indifferent to humanity. Dropping to all fours, they turned in unison, then, as if on a prearranged signal, they kicked each other almost simultaneously with the full force of their powerful hindquarters.

Meradoc imagined he could hear something breaking. Not the dark horse! Perhaps he cried out. He did not know. He slid from his pony and wrapped his arms around her neck. He wanted to close his eyes but could only stare.

The two horses whirled to face each other and began jockeying for position. Darting, feinting, striking out with one foreleg and then the other, rhythmically grunting with concentration. Theirs was a deadly dance. One was going to die that day; the horrified spectators were certain of it.

“Stop them!” Meradoc cried to somebody. Anybody. But even Dinas could not stop them, all he could do was hang on. To fall between them might be fatal.

The stallion screamed again. The Sarmatian tried to match him, but being gelded had robbed the horse of his full vocal power. This added to his anger; he redoubled his efforts, fighting with a savagery compounded of cunning and naked fury.

What happened next was almost too quick for the eye to follow.

The Sarmatian dropped almost to his knees and his big head snaked forward, reaching with bared teeth for the stallion's slender foreleg. Seeking to crush the bones. At the same moment the dark horse went up for a third time. Balancing on his hind legs, he slammed one front hoof squarely between the gelding's eyes.

The Sarmatian dropped like a rock. Dead before he hit the ground.

Dinas was fighting the stallion to a shuddering halt when, as a last act of conquest, the dark horse lifted his tail to drop a steaming pile of dung on his fallen foe.

Most of it fell on Cadel.

The sudden end of the battle left everyone shaken. The dark horse could not stop trumpeting his victory through distended nostrils. Dinas slid from his back as Meradoc came running up. “Is he all right? Was he hurt?”

“I almost lost my knee,” Dinas said, sounding aggrieved.

Meradoc plucked the reins from his cold fingers and led the stallion forward a few paces, watching his legs to ascertain if he was sound.

“I almost lost my knee,” Dinas repeated to no one in particular. They were all talking, not listening, as each man gave his own breathless version of what just happened. Only Cadel was silent. All he had seen of the battle was the massive bellies of the two horses fighting above him. He could see nothing now through the brown dung plastered over his face.

“I hate horses,” he remarked.

Dinas gave orders to pile some earth over the carcass as an act of respect to a warrior; he did not want to waste more time digging a hole big enough to bury him. But by the time they got Cadel cleaned up and the excited horses calmed down it was almost sunset. They made camp a mile away and spent a restless night. The horses were not the only ones who had been overstimulated.

*   *   *

Once again, Dinas could not sleep. He sat staring at the campfire until the air around him resounded with snoring.

He had a gift for uncovering hidden treasure. It had been proved again in an unexpected way with Meradoc and Pelemos, and now, Bryn. All three possessed special talents that would be useful to him. But what possible use could he make of Tarates, who was, at best, a stone around his neck? Dinas still thought he could abandon the man and never look back, but it would be a mistake to reveal that side of his character to his men. Let them see him act with compassion. Like Pelemos, whom they all admired.

Although he was unaware of it, the lone wolf was changing.

Getting to his feet, he went to see if Meradoc was asleep. Sometimes a conversation with Meradoc unearthed the answer to a problem. The little man was snoring in a series of rippling whistles, but Tarates was awake. Lying on his litter under a blanket pearled with raindrops.

“The pain,” he explained as Dinas bent over him.

“Do you want Bryn to…”

“That won't be necessary, Dinas. I am growing used to it, and it is much less than it was. Do you know what I would like, though? Sit here with me for a while. The night will not be so long if I have company.”

With a sigh, Dinas sat down cross-legged on the damp ground.

“Is there a problem?” asked Tarates.

“A problem? I have a handful. My most recent disaster involved my losing one horse and gaining two men. I really needed that horse.”

“I am sorry you consider me a disaster,” Tarates said stiffly.

“You misunderstood me.”

“Perhaps. I knew you as a boy, Dinas, when no one understood you. You gave no more light than marsh gas: a flicker here, a flame there, and gone again. Your cousin was the steady one.”

“Yes,” Dinas agreed, “Cadogan always was the steady one. If you know that much it means your memory's coming back.”

“Considering the state of me, I might be better off without it. Who wants to recall a nightmare? It could ruin my sleep for the rest of my life. Tell me, Dinas, do you ever have trouble sleeping?”

“Sometimes. Like now, when I have a lot on my mind.”

“Worrying about the men with you?”

“Not worrying, no. But they're part of it.”

Tarates said suspiciously, “What are you up to now?”

Meradoc had stopped snoring. Now he started listening.

“What makes you think I'm up to something?”

“I knew you of old, Dinas, remember?”

“Perhaps I've changed.”

“Oh yes,” said Tarates. “And perhaps the sun will rise in the west tomorrow.”

“One's as likely as the other,” Dinas told him. “To be honest, I'm happy the way I am.”

“Do you never get lonely?”

“Lonely? I'm as free as the wind and have everything I want.”

“What about women? Have you no wife, no…”

“No,” said Dinas.

Tarates pressed on. There was a pain rising in him and he sought distraction. “Are you saying you don't feel the need of female company?”

The chill turned to ice. Polite, but ice. “You ask a lot of questions, Tarates. I already have one man who does that and I'd rather not have two. I'll tell you this, though. A woman is warmth and scent and texture, which I enjoy very much. But have you ever listened to a gaggle of females talking? They twitter like birds in a tree. Beautiful, of course, but you can't understand them.”

As they were saddling the horses the following morning Meradoc said to Dinas, “You lied to Tarates last night, I heard you. You have Saba.”

“No one has Saba,” Dinas replied. “She's as free as I am.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The work was unremitting; nothing came easily. They were trying to wrest a home and a living from an unforgiving wilderness. The years Cadogan had spent in the endeavor had toughened him, but the new pioneers, the urban elite, had soft hands and undeveloped muscles. Only Godubnus and his three men, Esoros and—perhaps—Quartilla had had any experience of real labor.

If asked to help Esoros invariably declined unless the request came from Vintrex. Which rarely happened. Vintrex seemed content to spend his days in a half-aware dream. He slept a lot. He ate a little. He watched the activity around him as a man might watch the busyness of ants.

As for Quartilla, sometimes she would work as hard as a man and sometimes she was, as Cadogan wryly remarked to Godubnus, “the queen of Egypt.”

“Women do what women do,” Godubnus replied.

“Was your Morag like that?”

The ironmaster scratched his head; considered the question. “I think they're all like that. But then I've only had four wives and a random sampling of casual women, so I'm no expert.”

Cadogan, whose experience of women was considerably less, envied him.

The dream of offering Viola a fine house built by himself; the dream of a country life with her and their children; the dream of having time to read and think in peaceful seclusion as the years drifted past … so many dreams had been blown away.

Where do dreams go? Cadogan wondered. Do they descend on people who had different dreams and pull their lives out of shape? Who is living the life I wanted, and unhappy about it?

But he had little time for pondering. Every minute of daylight and much of the night was fully occupied.

When Pamilia bemoaned the lack of servants to do her menial work, Regina lost patience with her daughter-in-law. “If you grieved half as much over my son as you do over your maids, I might have some sympathy for you.”

“I weep every night for my husband,” the young mother protested. “You just do not hear me.” She turned to Cadogan. “Why did you not bring some servants with us?”

“We brought the people who wanted to come. You can't blame the servants, Pamilia; they saw a chance for freedom on their own, and they took it.”

“They may all be dead by now!” she wailed.

“Perhaps.”

“When this is over can we look for them and reclaim them?”

Regina was disgusted. “This is not going to
be
over, you simpleton,” she told the girl. “It already
is
over; it ended when they sacked Viroconium. We have a new life and we must learn how to live it. You can start by washing your own clothes in the river.”

Pamilia was aghast. “I had rather die.”

“Die, then,” said Regina. “Die in dirty clothes and that is how we shall bury you.”

After some sniffling and a few feeble protests that Regina ignored, Pamilia gathered up her soiled garments and those of her children and headed for the river.

Cadogan had known it would not be easy dealing with the disparate personalities of the refugees. Mistakenly, he had expected the recalcitrant Esoros to be his aide and ally. Instead the position was ably filled by a small grandmother who tolerated no nonsense. Regina had little physical strength but great mental energy. She was the first one awake every morning and the last to go to bed at night. During the day she knew where everyone was and what they should be doing, as well as what they really were doing. Any person who shirked was given an embarrassing tongue-lashing.

Cadogan assigned the tasks; a challenge in itself. Some of the men he put to work at construction were unable to perform simple carpentry. They could not see how the pieces must fit together, and only recognized a mistake after things fell apart. Others were too impatient and insisted on forcing the materials, which resulted in considerable breakage. Any person who claimed he knew exactly how to do a job had to be watched closely. Braggadocio usually disguised ignorance.

Recognizing his own early mistakes, Cadogan had a sneaking sympathy for all of them. But there was more to be done than building cabins. Even as he worked his mind was busy laying the foundations for the next step, the next series of actions that seemed inevitable to him if to no one else.

He formed the habit of talking things over with Regina at the end of the day, after the children had been put to bed and before the fire was banked for the night. At his invitation Regina and her family had remained in his house after the others moved out. Vintrex, Esoros and Quartilla were also sharing the house—Vintrex had been given his son's bed—but Cadogan wanted someone he could talk to; someone with an orderly mind. Regina listened intently to his ideas, asked intelligent questions and offered constructive criticism. Best of all, she made valuable contributions.

“The number of people you brought here would populate a sizable village,” she observed. “Did you not say the Saxons are targeting towns? Is it wise for us to live so close together?”

“It's the obvious thing to do,” said Cadogan. “We can look after one another and share the work.”

“Who said obvious is better? There will be no work to share if a horde of Saxons swoop down and slaughter us all at the one time. Could we not spread out a bit?”

Cadogan immediately saw the wisdom of her suggestion. He could envision a handful of cabins scattered seemingly at random through the forest, well out of sight of one another. “We won't look anything like a town,” he told Regina. “We won't even have roads. We'll only use the trackways the deer use.”

Regina agreed enthusiastically. But when Cadogan tried to explain the idea to the others he was showered with arguments. They could not visualize how it would work. Everyone saw something wrong with the plan; no one could see anything right. At last, exasperated, he selected one of his treasured books, unwrapped the scroll of papyrus, thrust the end of a thin stick into the ashes until it was covered with soot, and began drawing a detailed map on the back of the precious manuscript.

“Your houses will be spaced well apart in a sort of giant wheel, with a hub of cleared ground at the center where we can grow grain. The greater our self-sufficiency the less likely we'll be to attract attention. It would be madness to troop off to the nearest town to buy supplies in any great number.

“The houses should be as inconspicuous as possible. This is hilly country, so we can tuck them into the contours of the land. They'll be built low to the ground and surrounded by timber stockades like this, see? From a distance a house will look like part of a woodland. Their exact location will depend on the nearest water supply. People are too vulnerable if they have to travel a long distance for water. We'll dig wells and divert water into ponds when we can. We'll also need sheds and pens for livestock”—he was warming to the topic as he went along—“because we should have at least one milk cow for every family, and a couple of pigs. And oxen for the plows. And hens for eggs and meat. We should plant orchards and…”