The Eagle and the Raven (57 page)

He turned to Caelte. “Why do you sing, my friend?” The haunting notes faltered, and Caelte met his question with a faint half-smile. “Why Lord, because I am alive,” he said huskily.

Caradoc looked back. Sunlight glittered on a peaceful, emerald ocean and the horizon held nothing but a thin line of morning haze. Albion had gone.

P
ART
T
WO

Chapter Twenty-Five

V
ENUTIUS
spent no more than two hours in the town, and he left the same morning. Over the last two weeks, he had traveled far, bringing his kinsmen south, for Aricia had sent for him with words of regret and abasement and his heart had leaped at them. They had fought many times in the past. Many times he had ridden away from her to his holdings in the north, swearing bitterly that he would never again darken her door. Yet, as many times she had held out the carrot of reconciliation and he had run after it, always willing to forgive, always anxious to see her, touch her, hear her sarcastic, clever wit sharpened at his expense. He had learned to inure himself to her insults, and her stinging jokes no longer hurt him. He knew her need of him, deep under the coverings of her greed and hatred, of her returning fear of being alone. He had always come when she had sent for him. But this time was different.

He could hardly bear to bring to consciousness what she had done. Shame poured over him like a hot river of melted pride, shame for her, for himself, for Brigantia. The land was tainted with it, the people stank with it. His agitation was so deep, his grief and anger so strong, that he could not stand still, and as he curtly ordered his people to repack the goods they had just begun to strew over the field outside the town he strode from chief to chief, family to family, suffocating in his loss. They watched him warily, watched his flushed and contorted face, his clenched fists, his red-soaked breeches, his naked, mutilated chest where the blood was rapidly congealing. Long before he had reached them all, word of his wife’s action and his own reaction flashed through the town and quickly spread over the territory.

Before Venutius was three days toward the west his group of kinsmen had begun to swell. The farmsteads emptied quietly. Families slipped away from their village huts. By the time he entered the vast forest that would take him south and then west again, he had a quarter of Brigantia strung out behind him.

Venutius had made no plans. Word of Caradoc’s final, disastrous battle came to him disjointed, distorted, and he knew that the men he had to seek would be hard to find, buried far into the safety of their mountains. But he kept moving, the lash of his wife’s great crime driving him unmercifully. He could not sleep. At night, when the fires of his followers twinkled out, he would leave his tent and walk in the darkness of the forests, for if he stopped, if he stood still, that tide of unbearable sorrow would reach out for him and he would drown. Aricia, he thought, threading through the stately, night-hung trees, but no other coherent words would come. Just her name. Aricia. His feet spoke it to the rustle of last year’s dry leaves. His heart beat it through his blood, hot and sick and spellbinding. Aricia. Only when he was so exhausted in body and numbed in mind that he could no longer stand upright did he go to the small comfort of his tent and receive the blessing of unconsciousness for an hour or two before the dawn.

He took his people north of the half-finished fort at Deva, marching all one night beside the ocean to avoid detection. If he had been in his right mind he would never have done such a thing. A river connected the site of the fort with the coast and it was always busy with patrols, for the Deceangli continually harried the men of the Twentieth and the Romans there were all eyes and ears, but luck was with him. The marsh and the little estuary lay calm under a half moon. He did not know it but the Twentieth, emboldened by Caradoc’s defeat and the scattering of the tribes, had emptied its fort and was scrambling to the south, where the feet of the Ordovician mountains rested. For four more days Venutius kept to the coast, and then turned inland. There were no paths. He had no destination, unless it was that of flight and healing. He moved through instinct, vaguely remembering the ways he should go, for he had spent three agonizing months with Caradoc in these mountains, half of him a rebel, the other half longing without pause for Aricia and the nakedness of Brigantia. He had deserted Caradoc, running home to his wife’s arms like a repentant child, but he had not forgotten.

He knew that on his own he had no hope of finding Emrys and Madoc, if they still lived. They would have to find him, and they would be hidden within the cold heart of the mountains, bruised and wary. Day after day, he and his hundreds clambered to where forests grew perpendicular, rivers fell from sky to earth, and what valleys there were, so small, so secret, could be passed unknowingly. Occasionally they stumbled upon a farmstead, perched up against the slope of one of these valleys, always empty, the thatch rotting, the walls decayed, and the tiny field of the valley floor rank with weeds and tall new forest growth. Silence lay on the country like a watchful god, a silence that heard and saw them desecrate its jealously held domains. And though they sacrificed as best they could, and surrounded themselves with spells of immunity, the sheer weight of that ever present consciousness began to tell on them.

Then, one hot, still noon when they had stopped by a stream to drink and douse their tired feet, they rose from the grass to find themselves surrounded. There had been no sound, no warning stir of twig or wind, yet when Venutius got to his feet it was to find a sword resting against his neck and a dozen bright eyes fixed on him with hostility. His chiefs stood foolishly while thin knifes prodded them.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” said the chief who was eyeing Venutius with such cold efficiency.

There were no words of greeting or hospitality, but Venutius had not really expected them. Relief made him close and open his eyes. “I am Venutius, chieftain of Brigantia, and these are my kin and my people,” he replied. “I seek Madoc, or the Ordovician chief Emrys.”

“Why?”

“I prefer to tell either one of them myself.” He had thought of warning the rebels that his following was large and they should not decide on violence too hastily, but he realized that if these men were overpowered and perhaps killed he might as well turn around and go home. He smiled wryly to himself. He no longer had a home. Besides, if he harmed the rebels he would have no chance of leaving the mountains unscathed.

“I have heard of this chief,” one of the men said. “He fought beside the arviragus for a while, but did not stay. One of his hands is joined to Rome.”

“Not so!” Venutius flashed, but it was so, it had been so up until now; and how were these killers to know how his soul had been maimed?

The leader made up his mind quickly. “Bring them,” he said quietly and was gone, swallowed up in the motionless noonday shadow. His companions gestured. Venutius picked up his gear, told his shield-bearer to pass the word, and went after the first man into the green gloom.

After only two hours of walking they came abruptly upon a camp, its brown tents clustered by the same stream Venutius had drunk from. Two people squatted on its bank, talking softly, and Venutius happily recognized Sine’s bronze wolf-mask, her long, curved green back, the gray fringes on her green breeches. The man was a stranger to him. Without a word, Venutius’s guide left him, and the two by the water stood. The Brigantians flowed around the camp and then squatted in silent twos and threes on the earth, their eyes on their lord. He waited, his spirit damp with an edge of fear, and then Sine was before him, the dark, hard eyes looking him up and down, the thin right hand resting lightly on the hilt of her sword.

“I know you,” she said. “Venutius. Brigantian chief. We fought side by side for a while, did we not? And then you grew weary and hungry and you left us.” Her voice was as curt as her eyes, as hard as the battered bronze of her mask. “You are not wanted here. We do not trust you.”

He did not want to explain, not then. “Where is Emrys?” he said.

“He travels, gathering in the chiefs who were put to flight by Scapula.”

“Madoc?”

“He has gone into Siluria to collect his people before they are all destroyed. The Second has gone mad. Its soldiers are setting fire to the forests there and killing every man or beast they meet.” A sudden thought struck her. Venutius could see it bloom in her eyes and the fire of it made him step back. “There are rumors that the arviragus roams in the mountains, seeking us,” she said, “but the strongest rumor is that he escaped into Brigantia, to you. Have you brought him back to us, Venutius?”

The wild hope in those black eyes brought the hot shame into his throat once more and he lowered his head. “No, Sine, Caradoc is not with me,” he replied. She sensed that more was to come and nodded, the fire going out behind her eyes as quickly as it had been kindled. Venutius found that he could not go on. He swallowed. Sweat trickled down his temples. Pain swelled his tongue and beat in his thoughts, unrelenting. All at once he pressed both fists to his forehead. “Sine! he gasped, the words so raw, so jagged that they tore his mouth. “The arviragus will come no more. He sought me, but did not find me. My wife captured him and sold him to Rome. By now he will be in the fort at Lindum, perhaps, or on his way to Camulodunon.”

A breathless and instant hush fell. Venutius could not look at Sine. She, too, was struggling to breathe. All around them a wailing began, a swiftly spreading tide of shock and loss that rippled out from Venutius and was soon lost under the trees. Sine put a trembling hand to her hidden face, but that was the only sign she gave that the news had devastated her. When she spoke again her voice was as cold and steady as ever, rising above the grief and rage exploding around them.

“Did she send you to us with this message?”

He had recovered a little. His fists unclenched and fell to his belt. “No. I have left her, and Brigantia, for good. I will not go back.”

Suddenly she foamed with rage, snarling at him with her grinning wolf’s mouth. “We do not want you here! We want no Brigantians here! You are a filthy, lying tuath full of dishonorable people who no longer merit being called freemen! Go away! Go away!” He could not tell if she was weeping.

Probably not. He remembered her as being without softness, without pity or compromise. He stepped to her.

“Sine, I cannot go away. There is nowhere for me to go. I have brought men and women to you, fighting people, and more will follow as word of the arviragus’s fall spreads. Let me stay. Let me prove to you that I am no longer the chief who deserted Caradoc out of weakness.”

She stopped shouting and scanned his face, reading there more than his words could say. “What of Eurgain? Llyn? Where is his family?” she pressed.

He shook his head in misery. “I do not know. They were not with him when…when…” After a moment she folded her arms.

“Very well. You may stay. But I make you no promises until my husband and Madoc return. They may still decide to slay you.”

“‘I understand. You may wish to guard me, Sine, but I will not sneak away. My fate lies here now.”

She watched him walk away, tangled red hair brushing his back, his long, thick legs swinging easily from the narrow hips.

“You will not stay long, Brigantian,” she muttered. “You cannot stand the pace.”

One of his chiefs had overheard her and came up. “You are wrong, Lady,” he said. “He has sworn an oath, and his lady carries the weight of his blood. He will stay.”

She rounded on him. “That is a serious ceremony,” she snapped, “but it would have been more honorable for him if he had slain her. What does she care for the weight of his blood?” The chief bowed and left and she stood listening to the keening around her, her fingers still on her sword. Hurry back, Emrys, she thought. Hurry! Or I will kill him.

Emrys returned three weeks later together with the majority of his tuath. By that time the news of Caradoc’s incarceration at Camulodunon had been confirmed by the spies, who paused only to add their news of Eurgain’s capture and Bran’s execution before moving on to tell the master Druid on Mona. Emrys heard it all in a resigned silence.

He called Venutius to him, greeted him politely, then questioned him closely. Venutius had little to add to the tragedy but his own invisible wounding, and Emrys, after a night of fruitless argument with his wife, decided to let Venutius stay. He had, after all, brought fresh blood into the west, and after him had straggled many groups of angry and humiliated lowlanders to swell the rebel ranks. Day by day those ranks grew as the battered survivors of the battle wandered in, but there was no cohesion, no force of purpose in them. There was no Caradoc to bully and coax them into new life. Emrys was glad when a wounded but indomitable Madoc swaggered into the camp with three thousand of his people. Southern Siluria was no more. It was a blackened waste, and where the fires had not eaten, the soldiers had. But Madoc was not dismayed. There could still be a front there in the north of his tuath, a place of engagement—if only the arviragus could be found. When Emrys gave him the news, he reacted predictably, roaring like a wounded bull. He drew his sword and ran about, slashing at trees, then collapsed by the fire and sobbed. “What now, Emrys?” he asked when he had finished. “Without an arviragus, can we keep going?”

“We cannot surrender, therefore we have no choice,” Emrys said firmly as Madoc wiped his face and sheathed his sword. “I think that we have all learned a hard lesson since my people’s pride forced Caradoc into pitched battle. We will not be so foolish again. You and I, Madoc, must blunder on.”

“The Demetae. The Deceangli. Will they listen to us?”

“I think so. But if they will not, it does not matter. They fight their own battles now, the Demetae along their coasts and the Deceangli against the Twentieth. The Deceangli must rely on us, for only we can provide the help they need.”

“Ah, Mother, what a tragic mess!” Madoc breathed. “And all because your high and mighty freemen would not bend their necks to the arviragus’s yoke!”

“I will not quarrel with you, old friend,” Emrys said forcefully. “If you are wise you will not pour recriminations on our heads, for they are now bowed as low as any could wish. We must look ahead.”

“I prefer not to,” Madoc grumbled, “but you are right. Now what of the Brigantian? Sine does not like him.”