The Eagle and the Raven (39 page)

A head swung against the horse’s shoulder, pale eyelids half closed in death, eyes black and dull in blood-rimmed sockets. The nose had been crushed. Dried blood caked the open mouth and the ragged, severed neck, and a rope passed under the chin and up around the forehead over the short, wet, dark hair. A Roman.

“Mother,” Cinnamus whispered. Caradoc felt the blood drain from his face, then he recovered and lunged forward, gladness spilling over into arms that lifted of their own accord. Llyn turned his head slowly and looked at Caradoc; then the frozen, blank little face began to pucker, and he fell from the horse into Caradoc’s embrace.

“Father! Oh F…F…Father! He killed Fearachar and I stabbed him from behind and cut off his head. It took a long time. I…I…was lost, I could not find the way, Father…Father…! He buried his face in Caradoc’s neck and babbled incoherently while the other men stood silent. Caradoc hugged him fiercely, feeling his knees weaken with relief and terror, then he set him on his feet, soothing him with words that were no words, reading mingled horror and grief in eyes that were supremely, pridefully dry. A warrior did not shed tears of fear and Llyn had wept to the towering trees but would not break again. The thin, brown lips shook uncontrollably, the mouth would not be still, but the square, cleft chin rose high. “I brought his sword with me, Fearachar’s sword, but I could not lift him to set him on the horse.” His face grimaced with the effort not to cry afresh and the eyes pleaded, Father, help me not to disgrace myself. Caradoc put a hand to his own neck and slowly removed his bronze torc.

“Llyn,” he said, his voice husky with emotion. “You are blooded. Not with a formal raid, not in the company of your train, not at the proper age, but alone, unaided, in defence of your friend.” He lifted the wet hair and set the torc around the small neck. “As ricon of the Catuvellauni I make you warrior, freeman, and give you my blessing. Will you now oath to me?” Llyn raised his eyes and in them Caradoc read the final death of any innocence the lad might have had. Great pain was there, and fear still, but no cheeky glint of boyishness. Llyn had become a man. He pulled his sword from its scabbard, hardly able to unsheath it for its length, and he flung it at Caradoc’s booted feet.

“I will,” he said.

“Will you fight for me, swear for me before the Druids, and serve me to the death?”

“I will. Will you protect me and my honor-price, swear for me before the Druids, and loose me from my oath as is my right, if I desire it?”

“I will. Llyn ap Caradoc, you are now a Catuvellaunian chief.” He picked up Llyn’s sword and handed it gently back to him, wondering what Madoc would say. There would be no Silurian initiation now. But surely Madoc would understand and forgive, for the circumstances were unusual, to say the least. “Now go with Cinnamus,” he said quietly, “and ride my horse back to the caer. I will ride this one.” Gratitude sprang to the pale face but Llyn hesitated, stepping close to his father and taking his sleeve.

“Lord,” he whispered. “It was not like killing a boar, no matter what I told myself. I do not think that I can do it again.”

Caradoc wanted to cry out in pity. He put a hand on Llyn’s cold cheek. “Don’t think about it now,” he said. “I shall not call on you to fight with the chiefs for a long time yet. Be at peace.” Llyn nodded faintly and walked unsteadily to where Cinnamus and Caelte stood, still dumbfounded, and Caradoc mounted the gray. He looked down on the lifeless thatch of bloodied, black hair. He looked ahead at his son’s straight back. Suddenly a wave of acrid bile filled his mouth and he spat, a dark stream of revulsion. Then he kicked at the horse and followed his men.

Eurgain had returned and was waiting on the bank of the river, motionless in the folding blue cloak. She saw them come splashing slowly across the ford, three weary men and a scrap of a boy, and she walked toward them, her hands clenched into hidden fists under the cloak. Llyn slid from the horse and she bent and kissed him, seeing the bloody fingers, the caked tunic. “I am glad you are safe, my son,” she said evenly. “Now go to the Council hut and eat. Then Tallia can find you clean clothes.” He nodded faintly and left them and she turned to Caradoc, her eyes widening at the sight of the huge charger and the head dripping with water. “Was there trouble?” she asked, and Caradoc dismounted. The stable slaves ran to them and he relinquished the reins, while Cinnamus untied the head and laid it on the ground. Caradoc shook his head.

“Not for me,” he said shortly. “This head is Llyn’s. I will tell you later, Eurgain, but now I need fire and food.” He brushed past her, leaving her looking down on the trophy, her heart pounding painfully in her chest.

In Council that night Madoc roared with laughter when he heard of Llyn’s escapade. Caradoc was now so firmly in the Silurians’ favor that they agreed not to insist on Llyn’s initiation. They all sat in the warm, firelit hut while music floated with the sweet woodsmoke and the beer was passed from hand to hand. The head, now washed and tidied, was brought to Llyn, but he put his hands behind his back and flushed, the lamplight lying golden on the torc about his throat.

“Actually,” he said, “I don’t want it.”

“But it is your right!” Madoc said, pushing it forward. “It is the proof of your manhood. Better than cattle, eh Llyn?”

“I would rather be a child again, and have Fearachar beside me,” he insisted. “You can have it, Lord, if you want it. Put it up beside the others.”

“But I did not take it, nor did any of my chiefs. It does not belong to the Silures.” Madoc was mystified. He breathed heavily, the thick brows drawn together in bafflement. No Silurian child had ever brought such an honor as this to the tuath, and Llyn’s attitude was incomprehensible to him.

“Then give it to the goddess,” Llyn said definitely. He sat down beside his father and Madoc shrugged, handing the head to Cinnamus, who put it against the wall beside him. What odd people these Catuvellauni were. They fought like devils when they had to, and loved their honor like good freemen, but they were too full of womanish sensibilities. They had probably lived too long under Rome’s enervating influence. But in spite of everything, Madoc had only respect and admiration for them.

Fearachar’s body was found lying amidst a thicket of brambles, the ribs stove in by a shield’s cruel boss, the arms, neck, and face a mass of sword cuts and one deep hole under the right breast. It was carried back to the caer with great solemnity and Llyn himself, with Cinnamus’s help, washed it and dressed it in a fine, gold-embroidered tunic, laying the notched sword on the breast, putting a chieftain’s helm on the brown locks. Caradoc purchased a simple bronze torc from the artist and set it on Fearachar’s neck. “Once, long ago,” he told Llyn, “Fearachar was a rich chief with a great honor-price. But he and his family began a blood feud, Llyn, over a woman, and he lost it all. Now he has bought it back.”

They did not bury Fearachar in the Silurian way. They built him a tall pyre and laid him reverently upon it, and while the flames crackled and leaped upward Llyn himself stood by it and gave the eulogy, tears pouring down his face. The songs were sung, the memories brought forth, and all the Catuvellauni paid homage to a man who had been, under a doleful, wry exterior, an honorable and trustworthy chief. Then they gathered up the Roman arms taken from the bodies of the slain, and Llyn took the head, and they went to the well that lay deep and still within the arches of the wood, now fully leafed and strongly scented with spring. There they cast the treasures into the scummed water and Llyn saw his trophy sink slowly, taking with it his childhood. He knew that the sweat and terror of his blooding would stay with him for the rest of his life, but now the memory was muted, overlaid with the grief of the passing of his friend and guardian, and he went back to the funeral pyre and took out his sword and stood before the flames, still crying. He remained there all night.

A week later Bran returned, thinner than ever. He and Caradoc sat by the river in the warm sun and he told Caradoc that the Ordovices were at last willing to listen to him in Council. “But we must go at once,” Bran warned him. “If we wait too long they will change their minds, and my brethren and I do not want that.” He fixed his piercing gaze on the other man. “Are you ready to fight, my friend?”

“I am, but even if I were not, the time for preparation is almost over. If we wait too long the people of the lowlands will have forgotten their freedom, and no sword will be able to rekindle that desire.”

“Will you bring Eurgain with you this time?” The question was placed lightly but Caradoc turned with eyes full of suspicion. Bran had sought out Eurgain as soon as he returned. He had brought her new crystals and a star map made especially for her by the master of the Druithin on Mona. Walking to his hut, Caradoc had heard her delighted laughter, a carefree, uncomplicated, happy sound that was no longer shared with him. He was not jealous. One was never jealous of a Druid for they seldom took a sexual interest in women. But Caradoc remembered what Eurgain had said about the many things that could separate husband from wife, and he felt himself guilty. His work had to be done. No one else could do it, and that she understood. But she had never understood why he had left her alone instead of taking her with him, and he knew now that he had been wrong to try to shield her from the dangers and weariness of his missions. Now he met Bran’s eyes with the uncomfortable feeling that the Druid knew what he was thinking.

“If she wants to come,” he said noncommittally.

Bran looked away, across the quiet water. “Caradoc,” he said. “If you do not take her you will lose her. She is a proud and talented woman, wasting in idleness. She could be of great use to you. She loves you as she always has, but if she feels that you have no more need of her she will gather her belongings and slip away some night, to carve another destiny for herself.”

“I know,” Caradoc replied simply. “But I have been too bone tired to consider the matter. A life such as ours brings many deaths, not all of the body. There are parts of me that are dead, Bran, and nothing will ever restore them. I teeter on the brink of madness. I am driven. I cannot rest.”

“Take heart, Caradoc. Only a little longer. We face the final task before our destiny comes to float us away. If you are elected arviragus, have you plans?”

Caradoc rose. “One thing at a time, Druithin! It will take a mighty spell indeed to turn these western men into one tribe, and me into an arviragus!”

Bran rose also, and smiled. “But the spell has been cast,” he said. “You have been weaving it yourself, for three years.”

Chapter Nineteen

N
O
Silures went north to the Ordovices. Caradoc left Madoc and his men to harry the Roman patrols through the summer, and only Bran and the Catuvellauni set out for the high mountain passes. They went on foot and all of them, even Eurgain, carried their needs on their backs. They had changed so greatly that not one of them thought twice of bearing these burdens they would have scorned to take up at Camulodunon.

The early summer was mild and settled, and to Eurgain the winding track, steadily meandering higher and higher through flower-sprinkled meadows, beside cold, rushing streams, taking them along the crest of bald hills from which the whole of the west lay under their feet like a shimmering mirage, brought hours of a still contentment. They camped each night in the lee of a hill, or beside a river, or in the shelter of the rocks that had tumbled from the heights above to be trapped by the clinging fingers of strong mosses and grass. They lit their fires and cooked their prey, drinking icy water, singing and laughing. Only Caradoc was silent. He knew what the mountains could do to a man if the weather changed and his thoughts flitted between the screaming winds of the gorges still to be traversed and the coming Council with the Ordovician chieftains. Bran had told him nothing about them. He had merely smiled. “You will never meet their like again” was all he would venture. And Caradoc brooded in the folds of his cloak while Llyn gathered wood with Cinnamus, and Eurgain and Bran scanned the heavens to the soft singing of Caelte. Every day was like a festival day, Beltine or Imbolc, and the weather held, and the moon waxed round and silver.

In a week they had crossed the invisible border which lay in a valley between gray, broken cliffs and they began to climb again, now in country that only Bran had traveled through. A wind sprang up, veered to the north, and black clouds sped toward them on a howling gale. Up there, where trees clung precariously to the sides of steep canyons, where only herbs and lichens grew, summer was a faint, apologetic dusting of momentary green between the torrents of melting snow in the spring and the gales that brought more snow after the brief calm of autumn. The track to the passes was narrow but clear, used by raiding parties, scouts, and Druids carrying messages, and they made good speed. Eurgain fell to wondering what irrational fear lay behind Caradoc’s insistence that she stay in the town as she strode easily after Llyn. But Cinnamus, Bran, and the others knew that this journey was the simplest part of their trek. The exhaustion and the dangers came when they had received a Council’s permission to visit the isolated, palisaded farmsteads to which no tracks conveniently ran, crouched in country where a man could lose his way and leave his bones to bleach in wind and sun. As they climbed higher they had to slow, for the way was often blocked by boulders and the track dwindled in many places to a thin ribbon, but within a day the passes had been left behind and the Ordovices’ territory lay below them. It was ragged, with rock-strewn slopes and heavy dark woods, a country deserted by all save the plaintively calling curlews and the wolves.

In three more days they crested a long, rolling slope and found themselves looking down on a village. The round huts were of stone, and smoke spiraled from the beehived roofs. Along the little valley, sweeping around the circles of huts, were tiny, fenced, patchworked fields splashed with the brilliant green of new crops, and beyond them herds of cattle and sheep grazed beside the river. Bran hitched his pack and started down the slope, heading for the bridge that spanned the narrows, and the silent company straggled after.

“You can almost smell it, can’t you?” Caelte whispered to Cinnamus, and Cinnamus nodded, lips compressed, eyes on the huts rising to share the horizon. He did not need to ask what Caelte meant. Magic lay so thick on the valley that he imagined he could see it as well as smell it, thin clouds lying above the water, curling around the huts, wreathing from the darkness of the trees that covered the valley sides. It was late afternoon. They reached the bridge unchallenged. Then from under its shade three men appeared, swords drawn, massive shields at the ready. Two of them wore curiously pronged helms, and the face of the other was covered by a mask of beaten bronze, a wolf’s face, the ears laid back against the man’s own long black hair, the pointed muzzle covering his mouth. From its glitter two black eyes flicked over the company, as hard as stones.

“Wait here,” Bran said in a low voice, then he walked quickly across the bridge, with his arm outstretched. “Aneirin! Gervase! It is I, Bran. Sine, I come with immunity for the Catuvellaunian chieftain Caradoc and his men. Will you grant it?”

They took his wrist in turn, greeting him calmly, regally, and with surprise Eurgain heard a woman’s voice coming from beneath the wolf mask. “We will grant it. Bring the foreigners over.”

Bran turned and waved and they filed across the bridge, then Bran went to Caradoc. “Lords, this is Caradoc ap Cunobelin, come to address the Council. Caradoc, this is Aneirin, Gervase, and Sine, chiefs of this tuath.”

They extended brown arms laden with silver and bronze toward him, then to his men, and Eurgain, grasping Sine’s thin, strong wrist, felt the woman’s cool, enquiring eyes travel over her. She met the quick scrutiny boldly and had the pleasure of seeing the eyes drop.

“The lord will welcome you properly,” Gervase said. “Please follow me.” They went with him up the bank, across a smooth, grassed meadow, watching how these people did not swagger as the Silurians did. They glided surely, heads high, limbs easy and relaxed, in a pleasing, fluid motion like deer loping gracefully across a field, but somehow their very symmetry was menacing, and Caradoc knew that they could turn and kill with lightning speed, still with that inborn elegance. They passed between the stone huts from which curious children peeped and barking dogs ran, then turned to the rear of a building and were blasted suddenly by the hot odor of molten metal. There were kennels, but no stables. With legs like those, Eurgain thought, watching Sine’s long, breech-clad limbs swing, they surely do not need horses.

The Council hut stood in the center of the village, surrounded by a low stone wall. At the opening three more chiefs waited, swords sheathed, slings wound around their enameled belts. Two of them were helmless but the tallest one had a thin circlet of silver about his brow. The late, soft sun lay golden on their bronze brooches, their golden torcs, their jeweled arms, and gaily patterned cloaks. It gleamed on black hair that was smooth as ravens’ wings. Bran led them to a halt.

“Caradoc, Ricon of the Catuvellauni, has come, Lord,” he said briefly, and the man in the center bent his gaze on Caradoc. He was taller than any of them and built like a healthy oak, straight and solid and somehow satisfying to regard. His eyes were set wide and were full of a clean, open severity. Indeed, his whole face reflected wisdom and austerity from the stern mouth to the high forehead. If this man can be won to me, Caradoc thought, I will never need to worry about treachery or deceit from him. Something of the same character was revealed in Cinnamus; an open freedom of trust and honor coupled with the ability to kill well if need be. There was something else in the face, too. A nobility, the touch of innocence that Caradoc had never seen before in his life. He felt that he was in the presence of an enigma, a spellbinder, and he could do nothing but stare rudely at his host.

The chief smiled warmly and held out his arm. “Welcome to my tuath, Caradoc ap Cunobelin. If you come in peace then peace be upon you. Enter, and eat. There is meat, bread, and beer.” He was exquisitely polite and Caradoc had to forcibly remind himself to be on his guard. These men were legend among the tribes, and while the others were blatantly, virilely excellent warriors, the Ordovices’ strengths were hidden and ran much deeper. He took the proffered wrist. “I am Emrys, chief of chiefs. This is my bard Cerdic and my shield-bearer Ninian.”

Caradoc answered with the formal words of thanks and introduced his train, and when Llyn stepped forward Emrys’s dark eyebrows rose. “I did not know that the Catuvellauni blooded their boys so young,” he remarked, seeing the torc about Llyn’s neck, and Caradoc said quickly, “We do not. We wait for the proper age. But my son performed a deed of great bravery and I awarded him his manhood.”

“Indeed? Then he shall be accorded a chief’s place in the hut. Come within.” He slid between the doorskins with the same lithe fluidity and they all followed.

The hut was full of light and the Catuvellaunians, bracing themselves for the usual stuffy dimness of the many Council huts they had entered, blinked in momentary confusion. Then they saw why. The circular stone wall ended well below the sloping overhang of the thatched roof so that at any time of the day sunlight and air might pour into the room and the smoke might drift out. Trophies were slung together in threes and fours on the roof supports. The fire burned in the center, its flames battling the shafts of soft, late sunlight, and six chiefs sat cross-legged on the skins, seemingly sunk in thought for they gazed at the ground or into the fire and reflectively lifted their cups to drink. When their lord pushed through the doorskins they rose, graciously greeted the Catuvellaunians behind him, then went back to their silent musing.

“Sit,” Emrys said. “When the sun goes down we will feast. Are you hungry now? Would you like cheese or bread?”

The servants did not wait for an answer but were already moving, carrying small tables to the strangers, placing platters on them. Caradoc noted that Bran had been served first, with a deferential respect. Emrys had folded himself a little apart from the travelers, his train nearby. The lady in the wolf mask went down beside him, her long legs stretched out before her. Caradoc wished she would remove her cover, wondering whether it concealed a face disfigured by disease. He drank his beer and sank his teeth into the strong cheese.

“I have never before met foreigners from the lowlands,” the wolf lady said. “Tell me, is it true that the freewomen of the Catuvellaun no longer know how to wield their blades and they now wear them only for show?”

Caradoc tensed. He knew this game only too well, having been forced to play it in Council with the Demetae. But this time the insults that would slowly grow more pointed would not be aimed at him, and he wished he had left Eurgain with the Silures. She stirred beside him, put down her cup, and folded her arms.

“It is not true,” she answered mildly. “Perhaps, Lady, the Ordovice freewomen wish to delude themselves into believing they have no equal in swordplay, and so delight in exaggerating certain rumors.”

“H’m.” Sine lay back on one elbow. “But is it not a fact that once a Catuvellaun freewoman has given birth to three children she loses interest in her honor and hangs up her sword?”

“Bitch,” Caradoc heard Eurgain mutter under her breath. “You must ask the Druithin if you want to know the difference between fact and seeming fact,” she said aloud. “I suggest to you, Lady, that you ask Bran without delay. You obviously need help in divining this difference. The Catuvellaun freewomen are the greatest swordwomen in Albion, for they know how to combine the gentle art of child-rearing with the noble art of war. The women of other tribes are not so well-rounded. They give all their attention to fighting, to disguise the fact that in their womanhood they are deficient.”

Sine was quiet for a moment, acknowledging the blow and considering her next attack. Eurgain appeared unconcerned, and in the silence she ate a little and raised her cup, but Caradoc felt her aura of concentration like a bubble of ice.

“Such a balance is admirable, if it can be achieved,” Sine remarked. “But the Catuvellaun women have not achieved it, and their children have blunted their swords. Only the Catuvellaun warriors met the invading legions of Rome. The women stayed at Camulodunon, huddling around their offspring.”

The gloves were coming off now. All in the hut listened avidly, not stirring, the Ordovice chiefs smiling, their mouths open in anticipation. Caradoc could have broken in to point out that Catuvellaun women were obedient to their oaths and he, as ricon, had ordered them to stay at home, but to do so would have been to transgress the rules of the game, and he sat with lips clamped shut.

“Catuvellaun women do not need to prove their bravery in foolishness, nor do they feel impelled to strut and boast and provoke others into a show of arms out of doubt in their own ability,” Eurgain returned. “It was better for the women to defend the town if the men were defeated, rather than to rush into battle and leave all to be burned, and we are sufficiently sure of our own power, Ordovice Lady, to feel no need to explain our stand. It is nobler to die in defence than to live in victory. Your pride is blind arrogance, and your honor is only unstained because here in the mountains it has never been put to the test. You Ordovice women remain unblooded.”

“Do you call me a coward?”

“No. I only call you ignorant and ill-mannered.”

Emrys raised his eyebrows. No tribe was as polite as the Ordovices but the game had taken a swift turn and the challenge would not be arrived at gently, couched in the right language.

Sine swung to her feet. “But I call you a coward, Catuvellaun nursemaid, and I will wager my life to prove that your honor, like your sword, is rotting away.”

“Do not accept,” Caradoc whispered to his wife, but she was already rising.

“This is not your business, Caradoc,” she whispered back fiercely. “Even if you care nothing for my honor, which seems to be the case, I care. If I do not fight you may as well scurry back to Madoc.” There was disgust in her tone and he said no more.

“Do not kill the lady,” Emrys called to Sine. “She is our guest.”

Sine smiled down at him. “I may or I may not, depending on how well she fights. Come outside, mother of three. Can you draw your sword?”

Cinnamus rose with Eurgain. “I have been told that they fight in one long, continuous dance,” he murmured in her ear. “One action blending into another. Remember that.”

“Thank you, Cin.” Eurgain strode from the hut after Sine, and all the chiefs straggled after her.