The Eagle and the Raven (22 page)

“It’s useless,” Adminius said sulkily. “They hate me, all of them, and they will hate me all the more now, for bringing the might of Rome down on their heads.”

“But Adminius, you led the emperor to believe that your tribe could not wait to shake hands with Rome and welcome you back,” Plautius said gently. It was too dark for Adminius to see the sarcastic glint in the gray eyes.

“It is true,” Adminius protested vehemently, “but not in the middle of a battle, sir!”

“If you are successful the battle is over,” Plautius reminded him. “You know what to say, Adminius. Now go.” The words ended heavily, and Adminius saluted shortly and vanished.

Caradoc lay beside the fire, too tired to wash or eat, though Fearachar had offered him goat’s flesh and barley bread. Cinnamus sat beside him wrapped in his flower-patterned purple cloak. He was polishing his great sword, a cup and a jug of wine at his knee, and his golden braids shining in the warm glow. Llyn was curled close to the fire, fast asleep, with one grimy hand under his brown cheek and his cloak over him. Beyond him sat Gladys, her head bowed and her arms folded on her green chest. She had not spoken since the dusk and Caradoc knew that she suffered, her longing for the healing quiet of the lonely ocean wounding her. But he was too weary to care. Togodumnus had come to him, boasting of his tally, but Caradoc, lying prone with grass under his sweat-bedraggled hair, his muscles burning and his right arm and hand almost numb, had sent him away with sharp words.

The subdued rise and fall of many voices filtered through the dark trees around them, and Caradoc stirred and sat upright.

“How many have we lost, Cin?”

Cinnamus spoke without looking up, his hands busy. “I do not know, Lord.”

“Can you not make a guess? A hundred? A thousand?”

“Oh Mother, Mother, I do not know!” Cinnamus snapped. “All I know is that the chiefs are almost done and the Romans are fresh as spring daisies, and the morrow will bring an unknown fate.”

Caradoc fell silent. He needed to sleep, if only for an hour, but something knocked at the back of his mind—an insistent, unwelcome pulse of warning. It had no shape, no coherence, but he felt that there was something he should know, something he had overlooked. The unblooded legion across the river, waiting in the darkness, bothered him. Why had Plautius withheld it? What new horror was he planning? The shrieks of the tortured horses rang again in his ears. He thought of Eurgain, sweet, sane, blue-eyed Eurgain, and of his little girls, dimples and blowing curls, but the pictures in his mind had no substance, like the wraiths of a dream. He sighed, troubled, then fell back onto his side and slept.

One hour before the dawn he woke, cold and stiff. His cloak was soaking with dew and he rose and carried it to the fire, and stood shivering while it dried. The woods were full of morning noises, of the first drowsy bird calls and the spasmodic, disgruntled murmuring of sleepy, hungry men. Llyn was awake, sitting cross-legged on the other side of the fire and chewing thoughtfully on dried beef, a cup of water by his knee. Caradoc greeted him, and Fearachar moved from his perch on the lowest bough of the overhanging oak and went to bring him meat and beer.

“What did you think of the battle yesterday?” Caradoc asked Llyn “Were you afraid?”

The round, dark eyes met his scornfully. “Of course not! The Catuvellauni are afraid of nothing and no one. But I couldn’t see much, Father. Fearachar made me lie down and peer over the edge of a hill.”

“That was wise of him.”

“Will we defeat the Romans today?”

Caradoc handed his cloak to Fearachar and took the food held out to him. He still was not hungry but he forced down the tough, unappetizing mouthfuls. “I do not know, Llyn. Perhaps. Now you and Fearachar must leave, for the sun is rising and there is work to do.”

“If you do not beat them today, Father, I think that I will go home,” he said, getting up obediently. “It is good hunting weather and my dogs will be looking for me.”

Suddenly the meat tasted to Caradoc like the bark of some old, sick tree, and he spat it out. “That is a very good idea, Llyn,” he said gravely. “Why don’t you go now? If you hurry you can be with your mother in three days.”

Llyn shook his head. “Not yet, Father.”

“Farewell then. Be obedient to Fearachar.”

The man and the boy walked away into the mist and Caradoc slung the cloak that Fearachar had handed him around his shoulders. The sun was up. The mist lay only on the ground, and above, through the lacy-green, fluttering branches he glimpsed a bright sky. Good hunting weather. He smiled with wry pain and drank his beer, then struck out through the wood, moving silently, keeping low, hugging the shelter of the biggest trees. At last he came to the edge and dropped to the ground, slithering easily through the long grass. He halted, and peered out.

Across the river the brown mud flats were deserted. The legion had gone. Panic seized him. Where were they? The hairs on the back of his neck crawled. Between himself and his own side of the water the Romans were up, forming ranks, readying themselves for another day of slaughter. They had piled the dead in great heaps away from their fires, but there was no sign of any wounded. Caradoc hastily wriggled back the way he had come and then took to his heels, pelting through the dense brambles and briars. Where, where, where? He tied up his hair as he ran, and burst into his own camp to find Mocuxsoma and Cinnamus searching angrily for him, and the chiefs harnessing their chariots.

“Where have you been?” Cinnamus panted. “There is news.”

Mocuxsoma shouldered forward. “Lord, your brother has been here in the night. He slipped past the guards and went among certain chiefs and their freemen. Half our force has gone.”

“What do you mean gone? Gone where? What has Tog been up to?” His heart was still pounding and his throat was dry.

Mocuxsoma stamped on the ground. “Not Togodumnus. Adminius! He has enchanted the men away. Now they fight beside Rome!”

The words struck Caradoc in the deepest part of his soul, igniting his whole body in a sudden, flesh-searing explosion, and he flung back his head and roared like a wounded boar, his eyes closed, his voice screaming. “May Camulos split his belly and spill his guts before his eyes! May Epona trample out his brains! I curse him! In sleeping and eating, in hunting and feasting, I curse him! Taran burn him! Bel drown him! Esus strangle him!”

Cinnamus went to him, touching his arm, but Caradoc threw him off, the pain of betrayal ripping through him, becoming a torrent of despair. The tuath was forever disgraced, and all the worry, the sleepless nights and careful planning, all the suffering—all, all for nothing.

Rome would be victorious. It was the end.

Caradoc winced against the belief that their life of freedom had been shattered, but after a moment the pain receded and a new, pitiless stubbornness began to harden within him. Something of himself, some vestige of his youth, some boyish innocence that still believed that honor was all had gone forth with the howling of his anguish, and he felt the red-ringed, bleeding hole that its passing left within him.

“Tell me,” he whispered, his voice trembling with intensity. “What were the magic words this animal used to lure good men into slavery?”

“He told them that we had no chance. He said that the Second Legion even now surrounded us, deep in the woods, and in the morning we would be wiped out. He said that if they surrendered they could go home to plant, and breed cattle, and there would be good trade as before.”

“Mother.” It was a word of utmost, soul-emptying contempt. Caradoc sat down suddenly and the two chiefs sat with him. The remaining chariots should now be rolling toward the water, but Caradoc waited in his timeless moment of hell, unable to think or feel.

“Lord,” Cinnamus said. “I am sorry, but there is more. Will you hear it, or shall my mouth be stopped?”

More? What more could there possibly be? The knife could turn no more. There was no more blood to flow. Yet he said, “I will hear it.”

“In the night the Dobunni came. Boduocus has been promised his old boundaries and he will fight against us, for Plautius. The Atrebates are here also. They have a new ricon, approved by the emperor, one Cogidumnus. We have lost all.” Cinnamus spoke in a monotone, his voice not betraying any emotion, but the strong hands hidden under his cloak pressed together as if hanging onto life itself.

And I slept, Caradoc thought, his mind calm now, hiding from his rage and bitterness. By the Great Mother, I slept. The earth has split under my feet, the sky has fallen about me, and… He turned around quickly to find Mocuxsoma. “Does Togodumnus know all these things?” he asked.

“I do not know, Lord,” Mocuxsoma replied, shaking his head.

“Well find him and tell him and bring him here. Run!”

He and Cinnamus sat in silence. Tog and I have sown these seeds and the crop has sprung up a thousandfold, Caradoc thought. Raids, insults, murders, and all the time the steady push—outward, always outward. If I had been ricon of the Atrebates, what would I have done? The answer came without hesitation. I would never have sold my people into slavery. I would rather have offered myself to the sacred arrows.

Togodumnus came leaping down the path, his chariot behind him. His face was ashen. “No words, my brother!” he shouted. “First we must kill Plautius, then Adminius, then this Cogidumnus, then Boduocus!”

Caradoc laughed, in his face rudely and loudly. Slowly, wearily, he got to his feet, put on his helm, and walked to his chariot. He picked up the carnyx. “I love you, you poor mad fool,” he said. He blew one long, harsh blast and the remaining chiefs came out of the trees. They were grim-faced, their eyes, filled with impending death, looking toward Caradoc with reproach.

“A red morning!” he shouted, grief choking him. “A blood morning! We ride in honor, my brothers!”

They picked up speed, thundering out of the wood and onto the flat land beyond, while the incursus sounded and the standards of Rome surged to meet them, but there was no hope. The legions were before them, the Dobunni and the Atrebates to the right and left, and they crashed headlong to meet their doom, crying, howling, their swords held high. Valiantly, the Cantiaci swung in behind them.

Caradoc dismounted and ran, and a tall warrior swung to meet him—a Catuvellaunian, brown-haired, his dark blue eyes now bloodshot. The tears ran down Caradoc’s cheeks as they hewed at each other and the warrior fell to the ground. Who will purify me from the blood of my people? he thought, turning, and suddenly a great, terror-stricken cry went up from his men. Caradoc looked. Behind them all, out of the woods, poured a host of iron-clad legionaries, fresh and vigorous, and the wail of fear grew and swelled into panic. It was Vespasianus and the Second, muddy, wet, triumphant. Everywhere the Catuvellauni began to cast away their weapons, running here and there, and the Romans and their own countrymen flowed over them and cut them down like rabbits.

“Stand and fight!” Caradoc screamed, but they were seized with the animal terror of death and did not heed him.

Cinnamus ran to him, dodging the wide slash of a Dobunni sword. “Run, run, Caradoc!” he shouted. “Back to Camulodunon!”

Suddenly Caradoc found himself doubled over and running, running, darting, stumbling, caught in the confused uproar, his chief running beside him. They gained the shelter of the trees but kept on, their breath coming in gasps, their sides searing with pain, and all around them, in the sun-dappled drowsiness of a summer morning the Catuvellaunians fled.

“Llyn!” Caradoc blurted, but Cinnamus urged him on. “He and Fearachar have gone,” he managed, and still they ran, their legs aching, their lungs burning, hot and dry, their limbs pumping with waning strength, surging, stumbling forward until the noise of the carnage faded and the trees stood tall in the gentle silence and at last they fell to the wet grass and lay with eyes closed, no longer caring whether they lived or died.

For two days they stumbled through the wood. One by one other chiefs joined them, tattered shocked survivors without horses, food, or weapons, stunned and incapable of words. Together they trudged along the paths that had seen them pass before, gaily bedecked, their horses’ harnesses ringing and their spirits high.

Near dusk on the second day they rounded a bend and saw another group, five or six chiefs sitting on the bank, heads and hands hanging, a crude litter lying before them on the path, two branches with a cloak slung between. Suddenly Caradoc’s heart constricted, and he ran forward, his legs shaking with the effort. He came up to the litter and knelt, and Togodumnus slowly turned his head. Blood was matted in his long brown hair and caked about his mouth. One shoulder was a mess of bone and pulpy flesh, and Caradoc, lifting the covering cloak with nerveless fingers, saw deep wounds about his chest, his hip. He was lying in blood, steadily oozing blood that spattered the earth like bright coral and stained Caradoc’s hand as he let the cloak fall back. Tog’s face was gray and old. The spider lines of laughter about his eyes and mouth had become the caprices of a swift-drawn knife, deep and pitiless. He opened his mouth to speak and a slow bubble of blood welled between his teeth and burst to trickle down his cheek.

“Caradoc,” he whispered. “Who would have thought that it is so hard to die? Ah, Mother, it hurts, it hurts.” The black, bruised fingers found the ragged edge of Caradoc’s sleeve. “I spit on death.” He tried to laugh and another gobbet of dark blood spewed from his lips. “The mighty Catuvellauni are no more. I am glad…glad…to die now. Fire me high, my brother, fire me well.” A great spasm of agony gripped his face then, the muscles slowly tautening and the eyes widened, filled with a lonely terror. “I do not think that I can bear it.”

Caradoc could not answer. Late sunlight streamed onto the path, shafting down in golden glory, and the birds whistled and piped in the green-halled vastness around him, but he could think only of the free-dancing, wild-leaping spirit now huddled before him, maimed and broken. The eyes that tried to focus on him were full of incoherent sadness and a new, dark knowledge, but Togodumnus’s indomitable, flaming spark of life fought on. He tried to speak again, but his strength failed him and he gasped, struggling for breath. Caradoc rose. “Pick him up,” he ordered, not ashamed of the tears that poured down his face. They went on, Caradoc pacing beside the litter, Cinnamus behind him, and the other chiefs walking silently in the rear.