The Raven Warrior (36 page)

This impossible Igrane’s eyes were fixed on his face, and her smile grew more predatory by the moment. He felt as he had the night when the evil sorcerer spoke to him, a sharp sense of imminent doom. It seemed time stood on one side of him and death on the other, both ready to lead him to the marriage bed of the devouring witch. She would suck the seed from his loins and like a drone bee confronted at his once and final wedding with that immortal queen, he would wither away into the shadows, dying both ravished and emasculated.

He had seen the queens land after mating flights, the male insect’s gonads tailing from the tips of their bellies, and wondered what it must be like for the drone meeting her high in the sky. The triumphant she—being the whole object of his existence and her merciless love his doom. Genitals ripped away, the lust spasms of his ravaged body transferring this ultimate seminal flow into the future of the race. Glory and death . . .

Aife touched his hand and the illusion of death and desire shattered the way a still pool fragments when a gout of rain troubles the surface. The frightening mixture of love and death vanished, and he was engulfed by the rank, reptilian smell of the snakes and the charnel stench of the pit. Igrane’s face twisted in a spasm of fury so brief that Uther was sure no one else saw it. Then she turned to Severius, smiled, and pointed to him.

But the crowd of hangers-on and well-wishers was growing by the moment, and they surrounded the glowing couple and pushed Aife and Uther away from the objects of their veneration. Aife stood quietly, holding Uther’s hand as the pair moved away, taking the company with them.

“Can’t you feel it?” Aife shivered. “It’s cold, so cold. She freezes my blood. My brother said he had been approached by a wealthy heiress from the north.”

“Did he tell you her name?” Uther asked.

“Saraid,” Aife said.

“Best,” Uther translated. “It’s hardly a name, but I suppose she is in some ways the best.”

Aife lifted his hand. “Good,” she said. “It’s not cold any longer. When I saw her come in, it seemed the entire hall was pervaded with shadows and an icy chill. But look.” She pointed to the windows above. “The sun is shining. The gray skies are gone.”

Uther hadn’t realized the windows were glazed, so dark had the day been, but now those to the west sent down long shafts of dusty light into the gloom-struck dining hall, almost making it look pleasant. The snake pit was empty; the pale serpents’ eyes were sensitive to bright light, and they had taken refuge in the snake tubes that surrounded the open part of the pit. Here and there a rat’s mirrored eye flashed as stray rays of brighter light found their way into the darkness at the bottom.

“She will be his newest.” Aife glanced through the double doors of the hall to the formal gardens where her brother and his entourage drifted toward the large main reception hall.

“Newest?” Uther questioned.

“Yes. He dangles the prospect of marriage to his vast lands and his influence with the Franks in Gaul before the face of every propertied woman he meets. They give him expensive gifts, then find they haven’t enough money to persuade him to part with his freedom. They’re probably lucky. Within a few months of marriage, they’d be dead. That’s the name of the game in Gaul. Boys are paired with aging women. The women seldom last long enough to enjoy their pretty little plums. Not unless they are served by clever physicians who keep watch on their food. Sweet twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls are bestowed on mumbling old men.”

“Ummm,” Uther said. “In that case, I suppose it’s sufficient to let nature take its course. With that type of incentive, I suppose most of them . . . overdo it.”

Aife shrugged. “Come to my rooms. Play for me.”

“I have no songs for women,” Uther said.

This was true. The music of his time was built around war. That was why some of the Greek thinkers hated and feared it. The other problem was that music could not be fully grasped by reason but spoke directly to the emotions and from them was imparted to the soul.

Those very rational Greeks and Romans feared and hated anything that would not yield to their vaunted rational analysis: music, religion, and woman are all mysteries, so they were feared, excoriated, and avoided by the philosophers.

Aife dropped Uther’s hand and looked toward the snake pit, her eyes closed, lashes sweeping down to rest against her cheeks. A ray of sunlight illuminated her hair and sparked on the fair, golden lashes. Then she turned her face toward him and opened her eyes. The sunlight glowed out of them as it had when he struggled in illness and raging fever, sure he would die of the infection in his arm and just wanting the endless pain and uncertainty to be over. That bright, compelling, terrible gaze held his and would not let him turn and wander away into the final dark.

“Yes,” she said. “Music speaks to war and warriors use the paean to drive themselves into a frenzy. The war horn drowns out the cries of the dying when armies clash face-to-face. The praise song is for heroes—those who die are always heroes—and they are seen in epic song to be immortal in the minds of other men. But that is not where music was born, not where it attained its fullest beauty and power. Music is a creature of unreason, but then, so are love and death. Music is the speech the soul of man has with God, or whatever can answer the question. Why anything? Why not nothing? Why should the anything that is you or me, or the birds beyond the high windows that fly between us and the cloud-scattered blue sky, exist? Be here now together, breathing the air of spring? Oh, yes, my love, my beloved. When we reach my bower, you will have music for me.”

Black Leg treated the Huns as a wolf would. They analyze any sort of prey.

There were twelve of them, and in spite of the oldest, most seasoned warriors being Hun, the leader was a Pict. Since Kyra taught him the tribal Pict markings, Black Leg knew this one must be from near the Irish seacoast. The Huns had campaigned in the south of France, and this Pict had probably taken service with them.

Eight, by their weapons and armor, were Hun. Furred caps, oval shields, squat ponies, and a somewhat Eastern cast to their features. The Pict rode a tall horse, dark, as the Pict horses usually were. He remembered Kyra telling him that even the Romans had gone out of the way to try to capture horses from the Painted People. Being mounted on such a beast alone marked the Pict as a senior man and a dangerous killer.

The remaining three warriors were so scruffy that he could only make a general guess at their origins. He suspected they didn’t have an affiliation with any people—not in the sense the Huns or the Pict did. The Pict probably had a family and some children. He might share his wife with a couple of brothers. But they would honor him if he returned and mourn him if he didn’t. The Huns—he knew little of their social arrangements, but the red markings that blazed from their shields were similar and they very well might be related to the great Hun chief Attila himself. He knew barbarian chiefly families could stretch out to the twelfth or thirteenth degree and include hundreds of people. Even the slightest connection to a successful warlord was cherished, nurtured, and, often as not, lied about and exaggerated.

No, the remaining trio were the last and least, the wretched residue of Roman conquest,
coloni
, slaves, serfs, bound to the land, doomed to wear out their lives in silent, unrewarded labor. Opportunists and runaways.

One man is no man,
he remembered Kyra saying. These were not men. They would die easily. The rest were the problem, and they would be a serious one, since they were escorting a wagonload of loot.

The contents of the wagon were tightly wrapped in oiled leather, but Black Leg could smell perfume, iron, gold, and silver. Yes, they have odors, especially when they rub against each other and small molecules are free to drift on the afternoon breeze. Silk, linen, and wool are rank to the wolf’s nose, and they formed part of the contents, too.

The party followed the bottom of the watercourse, down toward the lowlands. They would not be easy to take. By day as the ox-drawn wagon rolled along the stony, shallow riverbed, the Pict leader sent outriders to scout the path ahead and cover both sides of the riverbank to be sure no ambush was being prepared. He chose the spots where they camped well, the highest ground for miles. Or, failing an elevated position, he took a grotto or cave in the riverbank that could be fortified against attack.

Black Leg shadowed them for two days and saw they were close to reaching the lowlands where they would be beyond Cregan’s reach. In another two days, the river they were following would be out of the wilderness and snaking through cultivated fields on the plain. Black Leg was just about ready to break off his reconnaissance when he received proof that the dark Pict who led the party had spotted him.

The party had broken camp just at first light and ridden off into the pale, cool dawn mist when Black Leg entered the clearing on the river bottom where they had spent the night. He had to admire the leader’s disposition of his forces. He’d made a fire, unharnessed the oxen to graze but left the loot wagon near the fire, and strewn blanket-wrapped logs around it while he and his men took secure refuge in the broken rock formations that formed the high riverbanks. As neat a trap for a party of careless brigands as Black Leg had ever seen. They would ride in, attack the blanket-wrapped logs, and be slaughtered by the men hiding in the rocks.

The wolf sighed, then moved in, investigating the campsite with nose and ears. Fire, ashes wet, completely out, very good. No telltale traces of smoke left behind to call future foes.

His ears said the party was moving away at the expected speed in the expected direction. Blood, an attractive smell to a wolf, coming from near the food preparation area. Scraps of red meat, large ones. He was moving toward the pile of meat scraps with a view of wolfing them down when the man in him brought his body to a halt.

No! Why?

He was wearing the raven helm. Suddenly it was a bird and with a loud raven alarm cry, it vanished into an oak overhanging the riverbed. Black Leg stood quiet, studying the meat scraps. At least half a dozen, still red and oozing blood. Deer meat. They were small, all except for one. Black Leg walked toward it, then pawed it with one of his forefeet.

The thing came apart and revealed the sharpened and barbed end of a rib bone tied in a circle with a soft, rawhide strip. A trap adapted to the wolf’s gulp-and-swallow way of eating.

Had he carelessly swallowed the meat, his digestive juices would have dissolved the rawhide, and the rib would have sprung open and pierced his intestinal tract. Fighting such an injury with the change would have been a fierce and painful battle. One he might well have lost. Had he been a real wolf, he would have faced certain death.

The camp had been placed on a broad sandbank near a shallow ford between two deeper pools. Black Leg turned quickly and ran for the ford, but before he reached the water, the Pict loomed up before him on horseback, shield up covering his left, a large spear in his right hand.

Instinctively, Black Leg moved away from the spear. He didn’t see his mistake until the Pict turned his horse and, gripping one of the high saddle horns, leaned over and slammed the edge of his shield into Black Leg’s neck and shoulder.

The wolf gave a yell of sheer agony and panic as he felt his right leg go numb and his left collapse.
Death is upon me,
Black Leg thought, and felt only astonishment.

In a few seconds, he’d gone from early morning lethargy to mortal peril. He knew a second where his whole life was in the balance and was aware he must pass this test or die, because the Pict was turning and, within a second or two, his lance would be in Black Leg’s body, through his heart.

Black Leg tried to gather his legs under him and, while he couldn’t feel them, his kinesthetic senses indicated that his body had righted itself and was moving forward. The lance—its iron head edges gleaming as though newly honed—darted down toward him.

There was really only one place to go, only one chance. He used his powerful wolf haunches to push off, leaping between the horse’s forelegs at the saddle girth. It was padded leather, reinforced with twisted hemp cord. He tried and failed to sever it with his teeth.

His weight forced the horse back on its haunches, forelegs rising as it half reared. The Pict was confused. The wolf should be on one side or the other, making a break into the broad, shallow ford—an easy target for the Pict’s spear. But instead, it seemed to have vanished.

Black Leg chewed saddle girth as he had never chewed before, his half-numbed body swinging from side to side, the human in him praying to God that the Pict hadn’t figured out where he had gone. The horse knew, and spun wildly in a circle, trying to shake him off.

And the Pict figured out what had happened.

In a staggeringly fine bit of horsemanship, he brought his mount under control. In place of stirrups, the saddles of the time had four horns. When the rider bent left, the left horns folded over the thigh and held it in position. The right horns did the same at a right bend.

Black Leg felt the saddle shift in the girth and knew the Pict was reaching under with the spear.

Nooooooo . . .
It wasn’t even a thought any longer. He let go, crashing down limply into mud and water at the river’s edge. One of the wildly dancing horse’s forehooves slammed into his shoulder, nearly dislocating it, and driving the breath out of his lungs.

The Pict backed the horse, ready to drive his spear into the fallen wolf’s body . . . when . . . the saddle girth finally . . . at last . . . parted, sending the rider flying over the horse’s rump, into the shallow ford.

The wind tore at me again, and dust blinded me when my eyes cleared. I saw Meth was moving, albeit slowly and carefully, one step at a time around the tower. My body was pressed against Cateyrin’s and I felt her long sigh of relief.

“Oh—” she began.

“Be quiet!” I told her. “He’s moving. Be content! Follow him!”

“Y-y-yes,” she whispered, and suited her actions to her words.