The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] (30 page)

‘You should have had the ring to take with you, as a man takes his weapons and his favourite hound.’

‘I see,’ said Marcus. From the ring he looked back to Liathan, suddenly half smiling. ‘When you go back to your own place, say to Tradui that I thank him for the gift of my father’s ring.’

Esca’s step sounded on the stairs and a moment later he ducked out into the evening light. ‘All is well with the ponies,’ he said. ‘Also I have looked round a little, and seen that our way lies down the glen westward. That way there is birch cover almost from the first, and moreover the hunt went towards the sunrise.’

Marcus glanced up at the sky. ‘The light will be gone in the half of an hour, but much can happen in that time, and it is in my heart that we will go now.’

Esca nodded, reaching him a steadying hand as he rose; and in so doing, saw the flawed emerald, and gave him a quick, questioning glance.

‘Yes,’ said Marcus. ‘Liathan has brought me my father’s ring as a gift from his grandfather.’ He turned to look down at the tribesman. ‘We shall take two of your ponies, Liathan, to carry us to the Wall, but we will turn them loose when we have done with them, and with good fortune you will find them again—later. I hope you do, because you brought me my father’s ring … See to the gag, Esca.’

Esca saw to it.

Meeting the furious eyes above the gag, Marcus said, ‘I am sorry, but we can ill afford to have you shouting the moment we are gone, lest there be someone within hearing. It will assuredly not be long before your swordbrethren return and find you, but to make all safe I will see that word of your whereabouts reaches the tribesmen, when
we
have reached the Wall. That is the best that I can do.’

They crossed to the stairhead. Esca paused to collect the tribesmen’s weapons from the place where he had stacked them, and sent them—all save one spear, which he kept to replace his own—over the parapet into the tarn below. Marcus heard them take the water in a stutter of faint splashes, while he bent over the other two captives, both conscious and hating hard by this time, to make sure that they had not yet contrived to slacken their bonds. Then they ducked through the doorway into the descending darkness.

The strain of their escape had taxed Marcus to the uttermost, and the respite in the signal-tower, short as it had been, had been long enough to let the old wound begin to stiffen. He had to nerve himself to every step, and there seemed a great many more steps on the way down than there had been on the way up. But they reached the bottom at last, and came out into the little courtyard, where three ponies stood with their reins over their heads.

They chose the two of them, a black and a dun, who seemed the freshest and, hitching the reins of the third one over a fallen timber to prevent him following, led them out through the narrow gateway. ‘The last lap,’ Marcus said, drawing a hand caressingly down the neck of the black pony. ‘We will break fast in one of the Wall stations tomorrow morning.’

Esca helped him to mount, before he himself swung on to the back of the dun. For a few moments Marcus had all he could do to master his mount, for the fiery little brute objected strongly to an unfamiliar rider, snorting and plunging like an unbroken colt, until, seeming suddenly to tire of the fight, it answered to his hand and set off at a canter, shaking its head and spilling foam over its chest and knees.

Esca ranged alongside on the dun, and they swung over the steep scarp of the spur, and headed downhill for the woods below them. ‘Praise be to Lugh, they are yet fairly fresh; for we’ve a hard ride before us.’

‘Yes,’ said Marcus, rather grimly; and shut his teeth on the word. That plunging tussle with his mount had taken most of the endurance that was left in him.

The light was going fast, as they swung into the long southward curve of the glen. The wind was surging through the birch and hazel of the woods, and overhead the sky between the hurrying clouds was kindling yellow as a lantern.

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A long while later, a sentry on the northern ramparts of Borcovicus thought that in a lull of the tearing wind he heard the beat of horses’ hooves somewhere far below him. He checked his pacing to look down, far down where the burn cut through its wild glen a hundred feet below the fortress walls, but a racing, silver-fringed cloud had come across the moon, and the glen was a black nothingness below him, and the wind swooped back, blowing away all sound. Curse the wind! There was always a wind—save where there was mist—up here on the highest lift of the Wall; nothing to hear all day and all night but the wind and the peewits calling. It was enough to make a man hear worse than horses’ hooves inside his head. The sentry spat disgustedly down into the dark abyss, and continued his measured pacing.

Some while later still, the guard on duty at the North Gate was surprised by a most imperious beating on the timbers and shout of ‘Open in Caesar’s name!’ So might a bearer of dispatches announce his arrival, if it were at any other gate; but the few who came from the north—horse-dealers, hunters, and the like—did not hammer on the gate as though they were the Legate himself demanding entrance in the name of the Emperor. It might be a trick of some kind. Leaving his gate-guard turned out and standing ready, the Optio clanked up to the look-out above the gateway.

The moon rode clear of the clouds now, and faintly, by its reflected light, the Optio could pick out two figures directly below him in the shadow of the arch. The sheer drop of the hillside was in shadow, but there was enough light to show it empty of men, clear down to the white streak of the burn. Not a trick, then.

‘Who demands entrance in Caesar’s name?’

One of the figures looked up, his face a pale blur in the darkness. ‘Two who have urgent business with the Commander and would fain keep whole skins if possible. Open up, friend.’

The Optio hesitated an instant, then turned and clattered down the few steps. ‘Open up,’ he ordered.

Men sprang to obey him, the heavy oaken valve swung smoothly outward on its stone socket, and in the opening, clearly lit now by the yellow light from the guard-room doorway, appeared two wild, bearded figures, who might have been born of the autumn gale. One of them was leaning heavily on the shoulder of the other, who seemed to be supporting him by an arm round his waist; and as they stumbled forward, the Optio, who had begun curtly, ‘Now what—’ went kindly enough to steady him on the other side, saying, ‘Run into trouble, eh?’

But the other laughed suddenly, his teeth showing white in the dark tangle of his beard; and staggering clear of his friend’s supporting arm, propped himself against the guard-room wall, and drooped there, breathing hard and fast through widened nostrils. Clad in filthy rags, gaunt as famine and well-nigh as dirty, scratched and blood-smeared as though from contact with many furze bushes, he was as villainous an object as the Optio had seen for a long time.

As the gate clanged shut behind him, this apparition said in the cool, clipped accents of a cohort centurion, ‘Optio, I wish to see the Commanding Officer immediately.’

‘Ugh?’ said the Optio, and blinked.

Presently, after a queer confusion of changing faces, of brusque soldiers’ voices and clanging footsteps, and long wavering alleyways between buildings whose corners never seemed to be quite where he expected them, Marcus found himself standing on the threshold of a lamp-lit room. It flowered suddenly golden on his sight, out of the windy dark; a small room, white-walled, and almost filled by a battered writing-table and records chest. He blinked at it with a queer, dreamlike sense of unreality. A square-built man in half uniform rose from the camp-chair, and turned inquiringly to the door. ‘Yes, what—’ he began, much as the Optio had done.

As the door closed behind him, Marcus looked at the stocky familiar figure, the square face with the dark hairs growing out of the nose, and felt no surprise. He had come back to a familiar world, and it seemed only natural that he should find old friends in it. ‘Good evening to you, Drusillus,’ he said. ‘My congratulations on—your promotion.’

The centurion’s face was puzzled, and his head went up a little stiffly.

‘Do you not know me, Drusillus?’ Marcus said almost pleadingly. ‘I am—’

But light had already dawned on his old centurion, and the bewilderment in his square brown face became blank astonishment and then lit into incredulous delight. ‘Centurion Aquila!’ he said. ‘Yes, sir, I know you. I would know you in Tartarus itself, now that I come to look at you!’ He came tramping round the table. ‘But what in the name of Thunder brings you here?’

Marcus set his bundle carefully on the table. ‘We have brought back the Hispana’s lost Eagle,’ he said, rather muzzily, and very quietly crumpled forward on top of it.

T
OWARDS
evening of a day in late October, Marcus and Esca came riding up the last lift of the Calleva road. Having learned at Eburacum that the Legate Claudius was not yet returned, they had pushed on south, knowing that they could not miss him by the way, to wait for him at Calleva.

They were rid of their beards and reasonably clean once more, and Marcus had had his hair clipped short again in the Roman manner; but still clad in the tatter-demalion clothes of their adventuring, still gaunt and hollow-eyed and disreputable, they had more than once needed the permit provided by Drusillus to save them from the awkward charge of having stolen the army post-horses on which they rode.

They were tired, bone tired, and without any glow of triumph to warm the leaden chill of their tiredness; and they rode with the reins loose on their horses’ necks, in silence save for the strike of shod hooves on the metalled road and the squeak of wet leather. But after many months in the wild aloofness of the north, this gentler and more friendly countryside seemed to Marcus to hold out its arms to him, and it was with a sense of homecoming that he lifted his face to the soft grey mizzle, and saw afar off, beyond the rolling miles of dappled forest, the familiar and suddenly beloved outline of the South Downs.

They rode into Calleva by the North Gate, left the horses at the Golden Vine for return to the transit camp next day, and set out on foot for the house of Aquila. In the narrow street, when they turned into it, the poplar trees were already bare, and the way slippery with shrivelled wet leaves. The daylight was fading fast, and the windows of Uncle Aquila’s watch-tower were full of lemon-pale lamp-light that seemed somehow like a welcome.

The door was on the latch, and they pushed it open and went in. There was an air of most unwonted bustle in the house, as though someone had lately arrived or was expected to arrive at any moment. As they emerged from the narrow entrance closet, old Stephanos was crossing the atrium towards the dining recess. He cast one glance at them, uttered a startled bleat, and all but dropped the lamp he was carrying.

‘It is all right, Stephanos,’ Marcus told him, slipping off his wet cloak and tossing it over a convenient bench. ‘It is only the Golden Vine that we are sprung from, not the realms of Hades. Is my uncle in his study?’

The old slave’s mouth was open to reply, but nobody ever heard what he said, for his voice was drowned by a frenzied baying that rose on the instant. There was a wild scurry of paws along the colonnade, and a great brindled shape sprang over the threshold and came streaking across the floor, skidding on the smooth surface, ears pricked and bush tail flying. Cub, lying dejectedly in the colonnade, had heard Marcus’s voice and come to find him.

‘Cub!’ Marcus called, and sat down hurriedly on top of his cloak, just in time to save himself from being bowled over like a stoned hare as Cub landed with a flying leap on his chest.

They slid together off the bench with a resounding thump. Marcus had his arms round the young wolf ’s neck, and Cub thrust against him, whining and yelping, licking his face from ear to ear with frantic joy. But by now news of their return had burst through the house, and Marcipor came scuttling with dignified haste to one door while Sassticca ran in through another, still clutching a large iron spoon; and somehow, between Cub’s joyful onslaughts, Marcus was turning from one to the other, greeting and being greeted. ‘You have not got rid of us, you see, Marcipor! Sassticca, it is like the flowers in spring to see you! The nights that I have dreamed of your honey cakes—’

‘Ah, I thought I heard your voice, Marcus—among others.’

There was a sudden hush; and Uncle Aquila was standing at the foot of the watch-tower stairs, with old grey-muzzled Procyon at his side, and behind him, the dark, austere figure of Claudius Hieronimianus.

Marcus got up slowly, one hand still on the great savage head that was pressed against his thigh. ‘It seems that we have timed our arrival well,’ he said. He started forward at the same instant as his uncle strode to meet him, and next moment they had come together in the middle of the atrium, and Marcus was gripping both the older man’s hands in his.

‘Uncle Aquila! Oh, it’s good to see you again. How goes it with you, sir?’

‘Strangely enough, it goes the better for seeing you safely home once more, even in the guise of a Tiber rat,’ said Uncle Aquila. His glance went to Esca and back again. ‘In the guise of two Tiber rats.’ And then after an instant’s pause, very quietly, ‘What news?’

‘I have brought it back,’ Marcus said, equally quietly. And that was all for the moment on the subject of the lost Eagle. The four of them were alone in the atrium, the slaves having slipped out to their own duties when the master of the house appeared, and Uncle Aquila gathered both young men after him with an imperious gesture to where the Legate, who had drawn aside from their meeting, was quietly warming himself at the brazier. In the general shifting Cub circled for an instant to thrust his muzzle into Esca’s hand in greeting, then returned to Marcus again. Procyon greeted nobody, he was a one-man-dog to the point of seldom appearing conscious that other men existed.