Island of Ghosts (29 page)

At that he went pale as well, but he was resolute. “Yes,” he declared, “if it’s man to man, and you’ll take those gilded fish scales off.”

I took off my coat and began undoing the buckles on my armor.

“Please!” said Pervica. “Please don’t! Ariantes, he isn’t a soldier, you mustn’t fight him!”

“Ariantes,” said Longus, “look, I know he wants to—we can all swear to that—but if you kill him, they’ll still have to at least formally charge you with murder, and I don’t like to think what your men would do if we tried to arrest you. In the name of all the gods, leave him be!”

“Do not be anxious,” I told them. “I will try not to harm him.” I unfastened my baldric, set the sword on the table, and pulled off the scale armor cuirass. The woollen shirt and trousers I wore underneath the armor were only light ones; it would be a cold fight. “Do you have your arms with you?” I asked Quintilius.

He licked his lips. “N-no.”

“You may borrow my sword, then.” I unfastened the belt of the armored trousers and began taking them off as well.

Quintilius picked up the sword, which was very like a Roman
spatha
, the long slashing sword of the cavalryman. The hilt was gold, with a dragon’s head set with rubies forming a ring-clip on the end. He put his hand around it tentatively and drew it from the sheath; the blade gleamed with the serpent pattern of fine steel. He looked at it as though it might bite him.

“Is it too long?” I asked, setting the armored trousers beside the cuirass.

“I . . . I said I’d fight you. It will do.”

“I am sorry if you prefer the short sword. I have none. Do you prefer to fight on horseback or on foot?”

“On foot,” he whispered.

“Please!” repeated Pervica. “Please, this is pointless! Pointless! Cinhil, in the name of all the gods, apologize!”

“I’m going to fight the bastard here and now!” shouted Quintilius, abruptly going red again.

“I won’t have men killing each other on my property!”

Quintilius simply ignored that. He pushed his way out, through the door that led into the kitchen and the back of the house.

“Would you prefer it if we went up to the road?” I asked Pervica.

“No! I’d prefer it if you didn’t fight at all!”

“We must fight now. There is a code in such matters, and I at least could not back out without disgrace.”

“And what about the disgrace to me?”

“Lady, I swear on fire there will be no disgrace to you. I have been insulted and I will defend my honor, but the responsibility for that is not yours, but his. I must go before he says something stupid to my men as well.”

I hurried out, through the kitchen and into the backyard. My men had made themselves a shelter against the wind with some straw moved from the barn, built a fire in a sandy corner, and the cups and bowls of beer testified that they’d been relaxing comfortably. But they were all on their feet now and glaring at Quintilius, who was standing in front of the door clutching my sword nervously in both hands.

“Wait one minute,” I told him. “I will make them swear not to harm you if you should win.”

I pushed past him, went over to my men, and explained the situation to them. They were pleased—he had offended their sense of my dignity—and they grinned at each other and offered me their swords. I made them stretch their hands over the fire and swear that they would not harm my opponent or do any damage to his cattle, family, or property, in the event of my losing the contest. This done, I went back to the door. Quintilius had been joined by the others. Longus just looked resigned now, but Pervica and Eukairios were distressed.

“If you wish, we will go off your land and fight alone,” I offered Pervica.

“Not knowing what was happening would be even worse,” she answered wretchedly. “Please . . .”

Quintilius slashed the air with my sword, still holding it two-handed. The hilt was really too short for this, and he had to overlap his hands to manage it, but I supposed he was used to holding some weapon like that. “You haven’t borrowed another sword,” he said, harshly.

“No,” I answered. “Do you require any other arms?”

“Come on! Let’s get it over with! Go borrow a sword!”

I went back to my men and asked for a dagger. Their faces lit up, and they ran to fetch a coil of rope as well.

“Just a dagger,” I said, and the glee ebbed away. There was a moment of horrified silence as they realized I meant it.

“Take a coil of rope as well, my lord, please!” said Leimanos. “That at least!”

“He isn’t a warrior,” I told them. “A lasso and a dagger against a sword is almost even odds, and where would the glory be in that? Give me the dagger, and remember what you swore.”

“My lord,” said Leimanos. “Please . . . your leg might fail you . . .”

“Leimanos, I don’t correct you in matters that concern your own honor. Don’t correct me in matters that concern mine.”

They handed over a dagger reluctantly, and I walked back to Quintilius. He stared.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“You are unaccustomed to my sword,” I said, “and, if you will forgive my mention of it, you are somewhat older than I. Please allow me to even the balance.” I felt suddenly and overwhelmingly happy, light-headed with the old wild thrill: my life in my hands, death before me, and glory either way. It was an intoxication I hadn’t expected to feel ever again.

Quintilius almost refused the advantage—but couldn’t bring himself to, and the fact that he couldn’t enraged him. He gave a sudden howl of fury and leapt forward, swinging the sword into the air.

I could have stabbed him as he jumped, but I didn’t want to kill him and I was wary of his unorthodox method of fighting. I leapt sideways—to my right, so as to land on my good leg—and stepped back quickly. The sword came down, then heaved up again, and he ran after me, waving it wildly above his head. I jumped to the right again, then, since he was almost on top of me, hurled myself forward. He spun about; again I might have slipped under the sword, which he was holding insanely high, but I didn’t want to strike to cause serious harm. I jumped right, nearly crashed into the house wall, and jumped forward and to the left. I had to land on my bad leg this time, and it gave for a moment; I pushed myself up desperately—and saw that Quintilius had brought my sword down on the ground where I’d been, and buried it edgewise in the earth. I was astonished, and somewhat concerned for the blade. He heaved it out, bellowed, and ran at me, swinging it sideways this time. I dropped flat on the ground, and it whistled over my head; Quintilius tripped over me and fell. I rolled and got to my knees; he managed to sit up and swung the sword back at me, one-handed now. I caught it on the dagger and pushed. The knife slid up the sword-blade, over the guard, and sliced the backs of his fingers. He yelled and dropped the sword, then, to my amazement, balled his bleeding hand into a fist and slammed it into my face.

The world went red and black for a moment, and I heard behind me the angry roar of my men. Disbelievingly, I put my hand to my nose. Quintilius staggered to his feet. I covered my head just in time to keep the next bare-fisted blow out of my eyes. My left arm went numb. I struck upward with the dagger, blindly, and at the same time shoved toward him. Both the dagger and my shoulder hit something. He grunted; I dropped my arm, saw that the dagger had only sliced his sleeve but that the shoulder had caught him in the stomach.

This was no sword-fight. I grabbed the arm nearest to me in a wrestling hold and rose, throwing him over and onto his back with a thud, then turned, dropped to my knees on his chest, and put the dagger against his throat.

For a moment I thought he was going to try to rise anyway, but he didn’t. He lay still, gasping, and looked at me without expression. I wiped my nose with the back of my numb hand, and saw that it was streaming with blood. “What sort of fighting was that?” I asked.

“Shut up and get it over with!” he returned.

I took the dagger away from his throat and got up. “You did not even know how to hold a sword!” I said, still hardly able to credit it. I looked around for my sword, limped over to it, and picked it up. It was covered with dirt.

Quintilius sat up slowly, clutching his stomach, still gasping for breath.

“Look what you have done to my sword!” I told him, wiping my nose again.

Longus started to laugh. I felt a fool.

“Don’t you laugh at me!” Quintilius shouted—and gasped again. “Damn you!” He rubbed his stomach.

Longus offered him a hand to help him up. “I wasn’t laughing at you. You’re a brave man indeed, to fight Ariantes when you don’t even know how to hold a sword. He’s killed more men than you’ve got teeth in your head—ask his followers about it sometime.
I
wouldn’t fight him, and I’m a decurion. But I hope now you’ll admit that the lady has the right to say who is and who isn’t allowed in her own house. If you make him fight you again, he’ll probably insist on doing it blindfolded.” He pulled Quintilius to his feet and looked around for something to bandage the cut hand with.

Leimanos came over and took the sword away from me. He rubbed some of the dirt off and began examining it carefully for chips in the blade. Another of the bodyguard collected a handful of wool to mop up the nose-bleed. Then Pervica came over with a woollen rag instead. “You had better come into the house,” she said quietly. “It’s too cold to stand about in your shirt, and you should lie down with your head back.” I nodded and, pressing the rag to my nose and feeling a complete idiot, went back into the house.

A few minutes later I was lying on the carpet I’d brought, with my head back, and Quintilius was recovering on the couch while the rest of them stood about the dining table. Leimanos had found another use for the handful of wool, and was cleaning my sword. “People who cannot hold a sword have no right to expect a scepter-holder to fight them,” he said. He did not direct his comment to Quintilius, but he was careful to speak in Latin. “Herdsmen who cannot fight should keep silent before noblemen.”

“He is not a herdsman,” I said, through the rag. “He is a farmer. He owns land. Probably he has herdsmen working for him.”

“He fights with his hands, like an animal. I do not believe he even owns a sword.”

I shrugged, as well as I could lying down. “He owns a house, and probably he spends any surplus on it, instead of on swords. He owns a farm, and he spends his time working on it, and has no time to learn war, and expects other people to do any fighting that is needed. He is a Roman, Leimanos.

“ ‘Beyond the stars will stretch his lands
Beyond the paths of the sun and years
Where heaven-bearing Atlas stands
Turning the earth between his hands
On its axis of stars that burn so clear.’

“Or so say the Romans.”

There was a moment of silence. “Where the hell did you learn to quote Vergil?” asked Longus.

I didn’t answer. I felt foolish and depressed. My grand heroic gesture had ended in a fistfight, and I was realizing yet again the terrible gulf between the world we had inhabited before and the world we lived in now.

Pervica came and knelt beside my head. “Thank you,” she said. “You could have killed Cinhil and you took terrible risks to make sure you wouldn’t.”

“I would have been very ashamed to have killed a man who cannot even hold a sword,” I replied.

Quintilius made an inarticulate noise of anger and resentment.

“I . . . I have something that we found on the riverbank, that we thought was probably yours,” Pervica said, after a moment. “I think the water’s spoiled it, but I was meaning to give it to you. I’ll go fetch it.”

She left, and Longus took her place. “Can I just make sure that the nose isn’t broken?” he asked.

I lifted the rag and he inspected it. “No lasting damage,” he announced cheerfully. “You ought to wash your face: your beard’s full of blood.”

The bleeding seemed to have stopped, so I sat up and looked for something to wash my face with. Leimanos brought the bowl of water he’d been using to wipe the mud off my sword.

Pervica came back into the room carrying my bow case. “Is it yours?” she asked, holding it out to me.

I took it; as my hands touched it, I remembered Aurelia Bodica saying,
I’ve given you the bow because they’ll think you were hunting—
and her giggle as she pushed me toward the water. I sat still, staring at the water-stained red leather.

“What’s the matter?” asked Pervica.

“I remember drowning now,” I answered. I unlatched the case, opened it, and took the bow out to examine it.

“I’m afraid the water has spoiled it,” Pervica repeated.

“No. The case has an oilskin lining, see? It is quite dry inside. It must have floated downstream and washed ashore.”

“But the bow’s bent backward.”

I looked up and smiled. I’d forgotten that the Britons were unfamiliar with the recurved bow, with its layers of horn and sinew. There were no other units of eastern archers on this end of the Wall, and the native bows were weak and made entirely of wood. “They are always like that when they’re unstrung,” I explained. I slipped a string into the bottom nock, twisted the bow backward against my leg, and strung it. The string gave its sharp, buzzing hum as the bow pulled into its living shape.

“I thought you were hunting,” said Longus, puzzled.

“And?”

“So why was your bow in its case, unstrung?”

I looked up at him, then looked down at the bow. I bent it and unstrung it again, without answering. I put it back in its case. “Thank you,” I told Pervica. “They do not know how to make these here. My men can make them, but I think probably we could not get the best kind of glue here.”

“I’m glad it’s not broken,” Pervica said, smiling. Then she sat back on her heels and rubbed the top of the bow case with her thumb. “About the horse,” she said, watching her nail against the leather.

“Ah. I thought perhaps you might wish, after all, to keep him. He would be a valuable asset to the stud.”

“No,” she said, looking up and smiling at me again, “no, I can’t manage him. I’d like to give him to you.”