The Eagle and the Raven (65 page)

“Annis,” she whispered to him soothingly. “You have not allowed yourself to be chosen, and for that I am sorry. Nor are you a criminal. For that I am sorry also. But I must put upon you every evil that your countrymen have done in Albion, Roman, and especially I put upon you my husband’s dishonor and my own suffering. Do you understand?” She spoke calmly and reasonably as though she were explaining something to a child. Puzzled, he looked from her face, to the thing she held in her hand, to the straining hounds, and then he felt the teeth behind that ice-lipped mouth fastened to his chest. Annis. A pack of hounds, a fox’s bladder, the huntsmen, and Annis. The victim. The hunted. Now he understood. Now other memories came to him, other stories, of things so dark, so full of dread that even his fellows believed it brought bad luck to speak of them. He began to scream, eyes wide and staring, pale limbs thrashing in a mindless burst of terror, heedless of the cracking in his arms as Lovernius attempted to restrain him. Boudicca waited while the two men wrestled, detached and oddly calm, Prasutugas’s face fading in and out before her. Then the Roman was on the ground, Lovernius’s knee on his chest, his spasms of resistance dying feebly away.

“What have I ever done to you, Lady? What?” the soldier whispered, his voice a trembling whimper, but when she looked down on him she did not see him.

“That question is mine,” she said, seeing a thousand dead lips ask it, lips parted in bewilderment, lips contorted in pain, lips long closed by Roman spears. “What have we ever done to you, Rome, that you should seek to destroy us?” Prasutugas had opened his lips. I will remove you from my bed and from my life, he had said, and her eyes closed against the remembering. Yes, those had been his words. “Hold him well, Lovernius,” she ordered harshly, going down on one knee beside him. “You are our hunger,” she said, and the knife carved a nick on his shoulder. “Carry it. You are our disease,” and the knife sank into his other shoulder. “Carry it. You are our impoverishment. Carry it.” She went on building the spell, Lovernius muttering it with her, and when it was completed and the naked chest was a mass of bloody cuts she added the final burden. “You are our winter, the winter of our sorrows, the winter of our oppression. You are Rome. Carry it.” The knife trailed another bloody furrow and the man cried out. Lovernius then lifted him to his feet and turned him and Boudicca held the bladder over his head and pierced it with one savage movement. The contents dribbled over the Roman’s head, a foul, pungent shower, and suddenly the dogs went mad. They threw themselves against their leashes, leaping into the air only to be snapped back by the strong leather, but they could not howl because of the muzzles’ restraint. Their eyes ignited in the dimness, a fire of bloodlust. The young man seemed dazed. His glance dragged slowly from the dogs’ crazed dance to Lovernius’s grim visage to Boudicca’s own impassive face. Beyond him the forest was sunk in blackness, a blackness with a listening, gloating presence, and only moments of accidental moonlight came to whiten his already ashen face. The blood trickling over his body was black also. “Carry it all, Annis,” Boudicca said. “Carry it, die with it, take it from us. Awake!” He blinked. Slowly his eyes met hers and now there was consciousness in them, behind the drugging terror.

“Wh…wh…why?” he asked stupidly, but she ignored the question.

“I will help you,” she went on. “Do not climb a tree. If you do, the dogs will simply sit at the foot until you fall out. Do not go in a straight line. Seek running water if you want to save your life. You have a certain amount of time before I release the dogs. Use it well. Now run.” Lovernius let him go but he stood there staring at her helplessly. “Run, you fool. Run!” For a moment he continued to gaze at her, his mouth working, then he swayed, staggered, and began to run.

They watched him lurch away into the trees, a pale sliver of stumbling flesh. The dogs launched themselves after him but were jerked to a halt by their leashes. Lovernius and Boudicca stood motionless, blind to the still world around them, feeling only the long movement of second sliding into second, minute into minute. They did not need to seek the moon’s face to tell them how the time was going by. Its flow mingled with the pumping of their blood, hot, tense, alive. For an age, for the life of a man, they stood there, then Lovernius said softly, “Dawn is three hours away.”

“I know,” she replied simply. “Unmuzzle and release the dogs.”

The man careened through the trees, blundering wildly through thorns, vines, and bushes, not knowing or caring in which direction he pounded, sobbing as he went. The stink of the fox’s bladder ran with him, catching in his throat, his nostrils. Run…water. Run…water, he whispered breathlessly to the broken rhythm of his feet. His side began to ache and then to pierce him with sharp stabs of pain but he ran until the pain sliced through him with every breath. He would have gone on until his heart had burst if his foot had not gone down into some small animal’s hole, twisting his ankle. With a cry he measured his naked length on the ground and lay there, heaving and weeping. Run! his mind shouted, but now the first incredulous shock, the numbing fear, was giving way to reason, and he was able to think past the clamor of self-preservation. I cannot be more than five miles from the garrison, and beyond the garrison is the river. Flowing water. How did she bring me? From which direction did she come with me? I must not run away from them. Somehow I must angle back and around them, but how can I tell my direction with no moon to see by, no stars to guide me? The wind. Was there wind on my right cheek, and then on the back of my neck? Jupiter, my feet are raw already. I am a dead man… He scrambled upright and craned to listen, but behind him the forest was plunged in silence. So she had not released the dogs yet. He shuddered and began to whimper, but he tore a low branch from a brittle, dying tree, wrested the twigs from it, and knew that he could ram it down one slavering throat before the others pulled him down. He considered rolling in the soil but dismissed the idea and ran on, more steadily this time, trying to match his gait to his breath. Nothing but a hard scrubbing with sand and wood ash would relieve him of the miasma of death. That, and water. Water. Flowing, running salvation. He sped on, peering every so often above him to where the branches arched high and blotted out the night sky, but he did not see the moon. Nevertheless he strained to catch a breath of wind on his face. He ran with a fixed, frozen grimace on his mouth, oblivious to the throbbing of his chest where the knife wounds oozed blood, and still he did not hear the sound of his executioners. Annis. I am Annis. Four hours ago I was Dio Balbilla, soldier of a garrison, and now I am Annis. I wish I could reach the commander. I wish I could warn them all. I wish I could go on living, but I am Annis, and I must die. She smiled at me yesterday when I stood at the fire to receive meat from her hands, but now I am meat, and she did not recognize my face. He wrenched his mind back to the chase. What would an animal do? he wondered. I am a hunted animal, I am as the wolf, the boar. What should I do? Find water, or a burrow. A thicket is no good. The dogs may not get me but the hunters will. Do not climb a tree. No, no, the dogs would put their great paws against the trunk and howl for me, but the hunters… He was gasping now, the sweat pouring down his spine, his breath ragged, his throat dry. I must rest again, I cannot go on. How far have I come? Why is she holding them in? She is playing with me. She knows that no matter how far or how hard I run, I am dead. I should lie down here and close my eyes and wait. The image of himself prone on the grass in the darkness with the hounds coming closer brought another scream to his lips, and he forced his scratched, aching legs to obey him and move one before the other. Suddenly he halted. Above him he had caught a glimpse of the moon, and what he saw brought a surge of delirious hope. He had been describing a circle. No, more than a circle, an arc, a detour to safety. He muttered feverishly to himself, hands to his head, trying to remember where the moon should stand if he were standing guard at the gate of the garrison. Then he heard it, the sound he had heard a hundred times already, in his cowering imagination, the coarse baying of the hungry hounds. He slapped his elbows against his waist and sobbed aloud, falling forward once more to run, to stagger, to cover a little more ground, just a little. He forgot the moon. He forgot his true name. He forgot the contours of his face. I am Annis about to die, he cried. Annis to die, Annis…die. I carry… I carry… The broken, excited baying rose to one concerted howl as the dogs found the scent to be fresher and rushed on.

Like an exploding vision he saw it, a faint glimmer of light on water. Ah! he gibbered. Ah! His eyes widened, his legs found new strength, and there it was again, the moon’s rays silvering his hope, his sanity, his life. He burst out of the trees and fell with a scream of passionate relief into the river. Before he had sufficiently returned to himself to be able to swim, the current had carried him around a bend and out of sight of the dogs that scampered up and down the bank, tongues hanging out, fangs snapping on nothing. The man struck out for the farther shore. He still did not know where he was. There was no town beyond the water, no garrison, only more black-enfolded forest, but he did not care. He had only to walk a little way in under the trees to be hidden from the farther bank, and then follow the river as it washed down to the ocean. Somewhere between himself and the sea was the garrison. Light, voices, swords, safety. He pulled himself up and did not pause to glance behind him but plunged straight in under the forest’s eaves. Darkness embraced him, but this time he did not fear it. He began to walk, unsteadily but with light-headed gaiety. I am Dio Balbilla, he said to himself. That is my name. Ah, such bliss, such incredible happiness, that I should remember my name.

He heard a dry rustling in the leaves above his head and he stopped dead in his tracks, his fragile joy evaporating, leaving only horror. The rustling came again. Summoning his courage, he looked up. There, in the thick darkness of the leaves, he thought he could discern a thicker shadow, something black that gave back the light of the moon. His heart faltered and his knees gave way. As he slipped to the earth he thought he heard a whisper come echoing down to him, like dry leaves rubbing together, like the slow spreading of giant feathers. A-nnis. A-nnis, it fluttered. His heart gave a lurch, hot and agonizing in his chest.

“No!” he croaked. “I am… I am…” The pain in his heart raced to his loins, along his limbs, and blossomed like white fire inside his head. He did not have the time to speak his name again.

The hunters stood on the bank of the river and the dogs raced up and down, baying their loss. “He got away!” Boudicca said unbelievingly. “He found the water! How did he do that? Even I myself would have had difficulty in finding it without moon or stars. The spells failed, Lovernius. Why?”

Lovernius squatted in the mud, his hands passing slowly over the deep, blurred footprints where the Annis had launched himself to freedom. “Because Andrasta has ceased to listen,” he answered. “Because Rome is here to stay forever and the spells have no more power. What will happen, Lady, when he tells his tale to Favonius?”

Boudicca stared at him. “Favonius will not believe him. Would you, if you were Roman? We must hurry back to the town and in the morning deny everything. Prasutugas will believe, but that does not matter anymore.” Her deep voice cracked on the words, and such desolation swept over her that for a moment the cool promise of peace, the eternal forgetfulness that rose from the dark bosom of the river was almost too strong to deny. Just take one step, it crooned to her, and you will never need to feel pain again. Lovernius knew her mood as she leaned out over the gurgling water.

“Only cowards take their own life because they are afraid of hurting,” he said quietly. “A freeman may destroy himself when he knows that for him all things are ended, but it is never an act of cowardice, Boudicca. Feel it, taste it, and then go on. There is always a tomorrow.”

She unwillingly drew herself back from the edge. “You are right, of course,” she said regretfully. “Andrasta has gone and I have lost my husband’s trust, but my world has not yet ended. My time has not yet come. Leash the dogs, Lovernius. We will go home.”

They went back to the town in silence. Somewhere the Annis still lived, and the winter of Rome’s omnipotence would reign unchecked in Icenia. Despondency flowed from the couple to the dogs who slouched ahead of them, their tails dragging, and even the trees seemed formal with mourning. They circled the town, climbed noiselessly over the wall behind the kennels while the dogs scrabbled and leaped after them, and parted without a word. Lovernius caged the dogs, and Boudicca went wearily to Prasutugas’s Roman house, opening the door quietly and slipping into the warm, fire-scented dimness. Outside, the cold conflagrations of the stars were diminishing and the night lay less heavily on the town. Inside the room the darkness was still full of sleep.

He was lying on his back on the bed, still fully clothed, his hand behind his head. She paused. He had not moved, but something told her that he was watching her.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

The answer came back immediately, quietly. “Yes. I have not slept this night.” He spoke without inflection but she knew then that his own hurts had kept him sleepless. All at once she could not bear it anymore, this aloneness, this stupid, murdering wall of words that had risen between them. She ran across the room and knelt beside the bed.

“Prasutugas, nothing in this world is worth a separation from you. I have thought about it, and I would prefer to die than to hear you say that because of our differences you do not love me anymore. Perhaps you disagree. Perhaps for you the welfare of Icenia under Rome is greater than what we have together. If that is so, do not tell me. I do not want to know. I only know that to try to live without you would make any cause meaningless, and if we cease to be one and become two, as we once were, then the world and everything in it is a lie. Do you still hold a love for me?”