The Eagle and the Raven (83 page)

They trekked for a week, moving steadily south and east, though as far as Andocretus and his companion were concerned they could have been riding in circles. Sine led them silently and unerringly, Andocretus and his chief behind her, and the two young Brigantian rebels brought up the rear. At night Venutius’s nephew spent a few hours hunting while the others sat in some hidden dell or cave, or beside some shallow stream without speaking, Sine and the woman somehow managing to interpose themselves between Andocretus and his friend so that private words were impossible. Andocretus’s thoughts scurried hither and thither, becoming wilder as Brigantia neared, plan following half-formed plan, and he despaired of getting any word to his lady. She would greet them dressed in all her finery, standing strongly on her own two feet, and the reward for her husband’s capture would stay snugly locked in the coffers of the fort at Lindum. When it was time for sleep one of Venutius’s kin or Sine herself kept guard, and even when Sine lay down to rest, Andocretus could feel her eyes on him, unblinking and contemptuously hostile behind the bronze mask. She was like some wild wolf cub that the Brigantian children sometimes carried to their huts to tame, grown now into an unstable animal adulthood, still with the ferocity of its free, blood-hungry roots staring out from behind its wily eyes. He was afraid of her.

Andocretus’s chance came late one afternoon, two days’ march away from the town. The heavy woodland of Brigantia’s extreme south was behind them and they rode now over the first rolling, wind-raked moors. Sine and Venutius’s kin were tiring, and their weariness was exacerbated by the nakedness they felt under the wide blue sky, stripped of protection and uncomfortably visible, just as Caradoc had once felt on his way to this same town with Caelte and the traitor. But Andocretus and his friend drew deep lungfuls of the scentless wind and hope came to them as they were able to lift their eyes and gaze for unimpeded miles over small villages dotted like islands, and streams gushing fast and almost unbanked. Here and there in the depressions where the hills swooped down only to rise again, were trees, trees one could count, trees that did not encircle and engulf.

They were camped under just such a stand of thin trees, sitting in the pale shade while the sun beat down around them, when Sine suddenly put a hand to the earth. “Horses!” she snapped. Immediately, she lay prone with her ear pressed against the dry grass, and Andocretus watched her, his heart in his mouth. “I think it is a cavalry patrol,” she said after a while, and before the words had left her mouth her companions were leaping to their own mounts, drawing them deeper into the copse’s frail cover. Then all five of them were flat to the ground, waiting tensely. Andocretus found himself next to his chief. Softly, slowly, he inched his face against the other’s dark hair. “When the patrol has passed,” he breathed, “run.” The other made no movement, gave no sign of having heard, but Andocretus knew he had been understood. For almost half an hour they did not stir, while the patrol came on slowly, easily, and even when it passed so close to them that Andocretus could hear the voices of the officer and his men, none of the five so much as blinked, and the horses themselves, long trained among the silence of the west, made no whinnies of greeting. Sine kept her ear to the minute trembling in the soil beneath her until long after all sound had been swallowed up in the wind’s sigh, then she sat up and opened her mouth to speak. Andocretus did not give her time. He rolled over and flung himself on top of her, and with a grunt his chief sprang to his feet and shot out of the copse, bent low, feet fleet and light, speeding in the direction of a village whose smoke smudged the air two miles away. With an oath Venutius’s nephew leaped after him, while Sine fought against Andocretus’s smothering weight. Then Andocretus felt himself jerked from her and an arm went around his throat. Sine cursed and shot out from under the trees and Andocretus felt the other woman’s knife cold under his ear. “Do not move, beautiful boy,” she said, the first words she had addressed to him in all the days behind them, and he closed his eyes and shivered.

Sine drew her knife as she ran. She could see Venutius’s nephew ahead, his arms and legs pumping frantically, but far beyond him the Brigantian flowed like water over the ground, settling into the stride that had once brought admiration to Brigantian freepeople from those tribes where the territory did not offer unlimited open spaces over which to run. Venutius’s nephew had been in the mountains too long, and though his muscles were hard and firm he had forgotten how to run. Sine sprinted desperately, knowing that she would soon tire, forcing herself to breathe deeply in time to her lope. A little closer, her legs prayed, a little closer, her arms shouted, then she saw the fugitive stumble and then recover, and she had gained a little ground. It was now, or she had lost him. The blade of her knife slid lightly into her palm. “Down, Manaw!” she shouted and he immediately fell to the earth. At the same moment her arm came up and she flung the knife, and raced after it, not breaking her stride as it flew upward, outward, turning over and over, flashing in the sun. Then the Brigantian screamed, staggered, and fell, and by the time she had jogged unsteadily up to him he was dead. Stooping, she wrenched her knife from between his shoulder blades, wiped it on his breeches, and returned it to her belt and Manaw walked to her, still panting. “Take an arm,” she ordered hoarsely, and together they dragged him back to the concealment of the copse.

“You stupid young fool!” she spat at Andocretus. “The lady would have been warned and would have killed us, and later she would have sent another victim into the west to enquire of the arviragus where her bard and her necklace were and why he himself had not come to her on her deathbed. But you did not think past such cleverness, did you?” She squatted in the shade and removed her mask to wipe the sweat from her face, and Andocretus saw her face for the first time, a brown face without sweetness or gentleness, yet coldly, caustically beautiful with its sharp bones, its huge black eyes, its thin, spare mouth and pointed chin. It was not a youthful face but he did not know whether that was because it had never had the soft curves of cheek and temple which belong to youth, or whether those curves had been planed away by the harshness of her life. Around her eyes went lines of weathering and war, but it was a simple, clean face, pure in its harshness. She could have been Emrys’s sister, not his wife, they were so alike in grace of feature and body, in the music of danger about them. He stared at her as she wiped the blood from her fingers.

“Now I am convinced that your lady is the queen of liars. You did not consider that, did you?” The knife still pressed into his neck and he did not dare to shake his head.

“Let us slay this one also,” the woman said, “and go back into the west,” but after a moment of swift thought, Sine disagreed.

“The arviragus would not be satisfied,” she said bitterly. “At first he might believe, but then he would begin to wonder whether this idiot,” she stirred the corpse with one foot, “simply fled in an excess of fear, or whether one of us had mistaken an innocent movement of his and had slain him out of our own weariness and fear. No. We must go on and play this stupid game to its end. We will see this bitch with our own eyes, and then the arviragus will be content. Release him.” The woman sheathed her knife reluctantly, and Sine leaned forward, taking Andocretus by the chin in a grip of steel. “And you, my fine, gutless little bird. Make one rash move and I will forget my mission and carve you into a thousand red pieces.” Her tone was not malicious but matter-of-fact, and they rose and untethered the horses without another word.

Two days later, at about the same hour, they dismounted at the foot of Aricia’s tall earthwall and walked through the unmanned gate, mingling with the crowds that sauntered unhurriedly to and fro in the soft, failing sunlight. Andocretus’s quick eye saw that there were more than the usual number of Roman soldiers, standing in twos and threes or pacing among the freemen. Sweat trickled under his armpits as he thought of his lady, with all her preparations complete, waiting impatiently for him in her house.

Sine gave him no chance to catch a legionary’s eye. She came up to him, drawing her knife under cover of her cloak. “Now,” she said in a low voice. “I will lean on you, thus.” She draped her left arm over his right shoulder, “as though I am very tired, and you will put your arm around my waist.” He did so unwillingly, feeling the warm muscles, tight as a man’s, under the short tunic, and her right hand came up and pressed the knife under his ribs. “If you signal or cry out I will kill you,” she went on. “Lead us to the lady’s house. How many men does she have to guard her?”

Andocretus swallowed. “Six.”

“Ah. And I suppose all these Romans have been gathered to escort the arviragus to Lindum.”

So she too had noticed. Andocretus relapsed into despair. “There are always soldiers and traders here,” he answered and she nodded once.

“Do you think I am stupid? When we reach the house you must call her with excitement in your voice—excitement, mind you. She will step forth, and my task will be over. Lead on, liar.”

Slowly, they wended their way up through the town. Sine made Andocretus take the alleys but everyone was out breathing the limpid air and many curious glances followed the group as they passed—the lady’s young bard, a weary freewoman in a wolf’s mask, and two foreign tribespeople. Andocretus did not even try to attract the attention of those chiefs who knew him. The knife pressed viciously into his side and in any case, he told himself, what would be the use? Venutius is not with us. I might have considered giving my life if he had been, but I will not die for the capture of these three.

Before long they were facing Aricia’s high stone wall and her iron gate. Sine glanced back, as a steady sea wind lifted the hair from her hot neck. She could see beyond the huts and houses of the town, beyond the lowering earthwall, to where land rolled away to become clothed in the blur of the comforting forest, and the falling sun’s streamers lay like red pools in the hollows and ran down the hills like rivers. For one moment she almost turned and fled, seeing herself running free again toward Emrys and the west. With the yearning in her the knife trembled against the young man, but she gave him a push and turned her metal face to the shadow of the gate. “Speak!” she whispered.

“Open!” he croaked hoarsely. “It is I, Andocretus!”

The high gate swung open, and Sine’s quick scrutiny showed her a compound, a large wooden house, and a cluster of armed chiefs, all clothed in the coming night, all encompassed by that smooth high wall. The men holding the gate stood waiting but she hesitated, knowing now that if she stepped within and the gate was closed there would be no escape. And of course the gate would be closed. There would be nothing but that unscalable wall. She should have guessed, she should have asked the bard, but it was too late. I do not deserve this, she thought bitterly. After all the years I have managed to stay alive, against all the odds, to be caught at the last and to fall, not in battle, but trapped by a woman I could kill blindfolded in combat. Andocretus gasped as the knife suddenly slid through his clothing and pierced his skin, and a warm wetness blossomed under his tunic. Sine gritted her teeth and jerked her head, and together they walked toward the waiting chiefs. The gate boomed shut behind them.

In the middle of the courtyard Sine stopped, and Manaw and his wife came to stand close to her. “I have changed my mind,” she muttered to Andocretus. “Order one of her chiefs to go into the house and tell her that you are here, together with the one she expects.”

Andocretus raised his voice with an effort. “Go and tell the ricon that I have returned,” he called, “and that the one she expects is here. He waits in the Council hall for word of whether she is well enough to see him.”

The chiefs looked with suspicion at Sine, draped over their lady’s bard like a lover, but as she slowly stood straight one of them muttered something to his fellows and strode away. Sine’s heart began to beat in slow, even strokes. If the lady was ill they were safe, but that swift spark of longing for self-preservation soon died. They all waited in a tension of fear, their eyes on the now-open door of the house, as the sun rimmed the horizon far away and began to gather its light into itself once more.

Then she appeared, a tall, red-tunicked form darkening the doorway, pulling the firelight with her as she sprang onto the porch. Venutius’s cousin gave a little cry. Sine felt an ache for her arviragus begin deep inside her, for this woman was beautiful despite the gray-streaked hair and the loose, age-marred face, and a man might lose his way in those hooded black eyes and forget who he was. Aricia slipped toward them, then halted. Sine held her breath.

“Greetings, Andocretus,” the sweet, rich voice fluted. “You have done well. Now who is the creature that presses against you with such passion, and where is Venutius?”

Andocretus could not trust himself to answer her, and while he struggled, Sine’s clear tones rang out across the gathering gloom. “Greetings, Lady. I am your husband’s oathed freewoman. He waits for news of you in your hall. I will bring him to you.” She released Andocretus, and Manaw and his wife turned with her as she walked boldly to the gate.

“No, you will not,” Aricia called sharply. “Andocretus, you fetch him. You know what to do.” Sudden suspicion edged her voice, then certainty exploded as Sine and the other two began to run. Andocretus slumped to the ground where he squatted, a hand to his oozing wound and his head reeling, and the rebels flung themselves upon the gate, clawing frantically, with desperation in their fingers and their scrabbling feet.

“Take them!” Aricia shouted, and her men leaped forward. Rough hands tore Sine and the others away from the gate, and there was no time to draw sword, no time to fight. Aricia walked to them with rage bubbling in the jet-studded fingers, the stiff, jet-hung shoulders. With one savage movement she tore the wolf mask from Sine’s face, and Sine, imprisoned by strong arms, gazed back at her, panting a little. Her life was over and she knew it, yet the eyes that met Aricia’s own were steady. To end like this, she thought. How wasteful, how needless. Yet the arviragus is safe and surely nothing else can matter.