The Dog and the Wolf (59 page)

He paused for cheers.

7

The sun drew nigh to midsummer. This was a beautiful year, as if to atone for last. Croplands burgeoned, kine sleekened in lush pastures, forests teemed with game and rivers with fish. Armoricans kept watch over their coasts, but seaborne raiders were few and all were beaten off. It was as though Saxon and Scotian bided their time until a certain word should reach them. Meanwhile folk made ready for the solstice festival.

In a private room of the basilica in Turonum, Duke Murena stood before seated Governor Glabrio and Procu
rator Bacca. A letter was in his hand, hastily scrawled on a wooden slab. His phrases fell like stones. “That is the news.”

Glabrio ran tongue over lips. His features hung tallow-white. “Nothing more?”

“Not yet,” Murena said. “Weren’t you listening? He was in the process of landing when this went off to me. I expect he’ll guard every road out of Gesoriacum, take control of communications, while his Britons finish crossing and his Gallic allies gather.”

“Which way will he move, then?” The question quavered.

“South, surely.” Impatience edged Murena’s heavy tones.

“Those Germani—”

“They’re down that way, but more to the west. If I were Constantinus, I’d strike for Arelate. Of course, before venturing that far, he’s got to consolidate his position in the North.”

Bacca rose. “A new Constantinus, come from Britannia,” he said low. “A new age?” Wonder transformed the sunken countenance.

“What shall we do?” Glabrio cried.

Morena shrugged. “Whatever seems advisable.”

“Could we stay neutral?”

“That may prove inadvisable.”

“Armorica did wh-when Maximus struck.”

Bacca’s tartness returned. “This isn’t Armorica,” he pointed out. “Turonum was as involved with Maximus’s campaign as any place was, and afterward fully under his rule. Besides, Armorican aloofness was largely the work of Gratillonius, who had Ys for his tool kit, and he did the job on behalf of Maximus.”

Color mottled Glabrio’s skin. Fury elbowed fear aside. “Gratillonius! Will he declare for this usurper too?”

“I rather think not,” replied Bacca. “He denied any such intention to us, and he is a man of his word. I made a mistake when I recommended him for tribune—though an inevitable mistake, mind you—but that much I’m still certain of. Also, I know, he grew disillusioned with Maximus.”

“And today he’s no King of Ys,” Murena growled. “Nothing but a mutinous scoundrel with a lot of Bacaudae on call.”

“And a much larger lot of ordinary Armoricans,” Bacca said. “They won’t likely want any part of this new quarrel.”

“Gratillonius, Gratillonius!” puffed Glabrio. He pounded a knee. “Must he forever obsess us? Armorica’s only a military district, an outlying part of my province. I have my whole province to think of.”

“And Rome,” added Bacca, quietly again.

Glabrio blinked up at him. “Well, of course, but—”

“If you mean that sincerely, then you’ll declare for Constantinus.”

Glabrio swallowed. “Would that be … prudent?”

Murena paced a turn around the room. “My guess is that we won’t dare not., unless we start for Hispania tomorrow morning,” he said. “I’ve been keeping track of events in Britannia as best I could, you know. It’s hard to see what can stop him this side of the Pyrenaei Mountains. Stilicho stripped Gallia of regular troops, as well as volunteers, to meet the Goths. Those that’ve come back—and my intelligence of such things is good—they mostly feel disgusted. They think their absence was what invited the barbarians into their homeland. No matter that they’d returned by then, this is how they feel. And there is some justice to it. Their losses were heavy, and the Gallic military has been disorganized ever since. Meanwhile Italy is a wreck and Stilicho spars with the East. No, I think pretty soon men of Constantinus’s will be here in Turonum, and soldiers everywhere in western Gallia going over to him.”

Bacca pounced. “Therefore we should declare for him at once. Win the favor of our future Augustus.”

“That—is an unnecessary risk?” Glabrio’s indignation had faltered. He plucked at his robe. “Constantinus may fail. In that case, we must be able to show we had no choice.”

“And afterward be political eunuchs,” Bacca retorted scornfully. Ardor followed: “Whereas if we join the cause early—the cause of him who does look like the man with the power, the mission, to save Rome—God Himself will smile on us.”

“You speak more surely of Him than is usual for you,” Murena gibed.

“I speak from the heart.” M-m—

“Consider also this matter of Armorica.”

“What of it?”

“Insubordinate. Defiant. Here we have an opportunity sent from Heaven.”

Glabrio straightened his bulk. “How?” he piped.

Bacca waited, making attention come full upon him, before he said: “Without special incentive, Constantinus will pass Armorica by, won’t he? It’s just a thinly populated peninsula. If he doesn’t expect it’ll menace his rear, he’ll ignore it till later. Maximus did—because Gratillonius made it safe for him.”

Murena scowled. “Do you think Gratillonius would incite the Armoricans to fight for Honorius?”

“Scarcely,” answered Bacca. “I don’t believe he could if he wanted to, nor do I believe he does want to.” He raised a forefinger. “What I do think is that we, as Constantinus’s early friends, can show him the advantages of making Armorica positively his. Immediately, for manpower and revenue, both of which he’ll be wanting in quantities as vast as possible. In the longer and more important run, to eliminate this armed peasantry, this cancer in the state, before it spreads further. That alone will make the magnates throughout the Empire see him for what he is, the deliverer, the guarantor. And the demonstration, at the very beginning, of his determination to rule—that will bring submission and support like nothing else.”

“Can he spare the troops?” Murena asked doubtfully.

“It won’t take but a handful. Not barbarian wolves, Roman soldiers:
Roman
, protecting Imperial officers in the performance of their duties. I suspect they’ll only need to occupy Confluentes. Then everything falls apart for Gratillonius, and soon Armorica is ours.’

Glabrio stared at a vision of glory. “To break Gratillonius,” he crooned. “To destroy Gratillonius.”

1

To Gratillonius it was like a storm he had seen afar, gigantic bruise-dark cloud masses thundering and lightening over the hills toward the ridge where he stood. Yet he was surprised when at last it broke over him—at how quietly the thing went, and how its bolt did not strike at him but into his heart.

Light spilled from a sky where only scraps of fleece drifted above thousandfold wings. Summer brooded in majesty on ripening grain and fragrance-heavy forests. There often the only sounds were bees at work in clover and the call of a cuckoo. Air lay mild over earth, as might a benediction or a woman’s hand.

He was out among his mares and stallions when a boy galloped up with word from Salomon. At once Gratillonius resaddled Favonius and made racetrack speed back to Confluentes. At the south gate he saw the strangers across the Odita on his left, coming along the road from Venetorum. For an instant a surf of darkness went through him. It was as if he were again at the whelming of Ys.

“Romans,” the boy had said; and across the fields and down the woodland trails, word had already scuttered to him of squadrons out of the east. Closer than that it did not speak of them, for the time was long and long since Armorica had seen anything of quite this kind.

Two men rode at the head. One wore civil garb. The other was helmeted, beneath the transverse red crest of a centurion. Behind them tramped thirty-two afoot. Sunlight gleamed fierce off mail, shields, javelin points. At their rear, three led the pack horses. At their front, one
had a bearskin over his armor, and from the staff in his hand rippled an eagle banner.

Legionaries as of old, as of Caesar or Hadrianus, as of Gratillonius’s youth when Britannia still bred them, not mounted lancers nor barbarian auxiliaries nor peasant levies but Romans of the legion; O God, he knew that emblem!

The dizziness passed. He grew aware of those who trailed, a hundred yards or more to the rear, Osismiic men, perhaps fifty, a sullen, wary pack, their clothes gray with grime but spears and bills slanting forward, axes and bows on shoulders. And he knew without seeing that shadowy forms had flitted along through the woods and now waited at the edge of cultivation. And city dwellers were on the walls at his back, beswarming the pomoerium, choking the gateway. He heard them mutter and mumble.

The soldiers never looked right or left or rearward. A single proud being, they advanced on Confluentes. Dust flew up to the drumbeat rhythm of their hobnails. Their centurion held his mount to the same rate, the Roman marching pace that once carried the eagles across half a world. So had Gratillonius led his vexillation to Ys, fourand-twenty years ago.

A pair of his guards kept uneasy watch at the far end of the bridge. Gratillonius rode across. Hoofs thudded on stone. “Get back there,” he instructed the men. “Call the sentries down from the wall. I want that gateway and the street cleared. I want everybody orderly. Go!”

Relief washed over them. They had something to do; he had abolished formlessness. They hastened in obedience. He cantered on.

Nearing, he made out faces. Family faces, not of anybody he knew but unmistakable. Some twenty of them could only be Britannic. The insignia grew clear in his sight. They were of the Second Augusta. His legion.

Their ranks came on against him. He lifted his right arm in Roman salute. A strange figure he must be to them, he thought, a big man with gray-shot auburn hair and beard, in rough Gallic tunic and breeches that smelled of sweat, smoke, horses, but riding a superb animal and at his hip not a long Gallic sword but one like their own.

The centurion returned the gesture. Gratillonius reined
his stallion in, wheeled, and drew alongside, so that he and the centurion rode almost knee to knee. A small, homely squeak of saddle leather wove itself through the footfalls at their backs. The centurion was lean and dark-haired, but with skin that would have been fair if less weatherbeaten. The civilian on his farther hand was gangly and blond, well clad for travel, bearing somehow the look of a city man though obviously fit for a journey like this.

“Hail,’ Gratillonius said, “and welcome to Confluentes.”

“Hail,” the centurion replied brusquely. Both men gazed hard at the newcomer.

“I am Valerius Gratillonius. You might call me … the headman here. When I heard of your approach I hurried to meet you.”

“You, Gratillonius?” exclaimed the civilian. He collected his wits. “This is unexpected, I must say.”

“I’m sure you’re aware the situation here is, hm, peculiar in many ways.”

“Starting with that weapon of yours,” the centurion said.

“These are dangerous times. Most men go armed.”

“I’ve noticed. That’s part of what we’ve come about.”

The pain of it jagged through Gratillonius. My brother of the legion, our legion, do we have to spar like this? Why? How have they fared all these years in Isca Silurum? Do you know if my father’s house still stands and who holds the land that was his? What has it meant to you, bearing your eagle from Britannia after four hundred years? Couldn’t we sit down over a cup or twenty of wine—I have a little of Apuleius’s Burdigalan left, I’d gladly break it out for you, centurion—and tell each other how it’s been, how it is?

“On behalf of Constantinus,” he said coldly.

“The Augustus,” replied the civilian.

“Let’s try not to quarrel,” said Gratillonius. “May I ask your names?”

“Valerius Einiaunus,” the civilian answered, “tribune of the Emperor for affairs in this part of Armorica.”

My gens, Gratillonius thought. It doesn’t mean anything, of course, hasn’t for centuries, except—except that
when Romans were newly settling into Britannia, a man of the Valerii became the patron of our ancestors; and both their houses bore his name ever afterward, along with Belgic names they tried to make Latin; and now we have both forsaken Britannia.

“Cynan,” the centurion introduced himself, and blinked. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Gratillonius brushed air with his hand and stared elsewhere. “Surprise. I used to know somebody of that name. Are you by any chance a Demetaean?”

“I am.” As Cynan who marched to Ys and died there had been.

Gratillonius forced himself to meet the blue gaze. “What’s your cohort, centurion?”

“The seventh.”

It would be. My own. It would be.

“Well, I’ve had reports of your vexillation for a while,” Gratillonius said. “You’ve not met much friendliness, have you? It’s a touchy business. I’ll do my best for you, and hope we can talk frankly and reach agreement.”

Cynan jerked a thumb backward. “Rustics like them have dogged us since we left Redonum,” he said. “They turn back at the next village, but always there’s a fresh bunch of louts, and nothing but surliness from anybody. Often jeers, pretty nasty ones, and even rocks and offal thrown at us. It’s been a job, keeping my men from retaliating.”

Einiaunus’s look lingered on Gratillonius. “They’re as many as the Emperor felt he could spare for this mission,” he said. “If necessary, they should be enough to cut their way back to him.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Gratillonius replied around the fist inside his throat. “The Armoricans—But we’ll talk.” He regained fluency. “First let’s get you settled in. I’m sorry I can’t offer you hospitality myself, but my wife is very near her time, and besides, it’s better that all of you keep close together. That strikes out the hostel in Aquilo too, I think. It couldn’t hold near this many, and there’s no campground nearby. I’ve arranged for you as best I could, and—if you don’t mind—we’ll improvise quarters in the basilica of Confluentes. It’s unfinished, but
a solid block. I’ve had boughs brought in for men to sleep on, and a couple of real beds in rooms of their own. As soon as you’re ready, we’ll talk.”

“You seem more reasonable than I’d been led to expect,” Einiaunus said. “That augurs well for everybody.”