Frontier Wolf

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘Even among the wolf pack, the courtesies must be maintained. The fort Commander must attend both the Burial Feast and the Chief-making. Lucius and I and the rest of us, save for a small escort who have to stay more than half sober to see you don’t get knifed or disgrace the Empire and bring you safe back again, shall miss all that. Aye me, it’s an unfair world.’

  ‘Not so unfair when you come to think of it.’ Lucius gently rolled the long scroll up on itself. ‘We shall also miss the aftermorning’s headache.’

  Below in the town, the women had begun to keen.

  The three Death Days passed; and on the third, with a tenman escort, Alexios duly represented the Frontier Wolves and the Empire at the feast that was at once funeral feast for the old Chief and Making-Feast for his son.

  The rath was packed and spilling over with the men of the Clan, and also with the stray-comers, horse-dealers and silversmiths and wandering harpers who always swarmed to such occasions as to a midsummer gathering. But in place of the usual cheerful hubbub, there was a heavy waiting quiet. Even the eating and drinking when the evening cauldrons of pig-meat stew were brought out, was done for the most part in silence; and from the inner court came the sound of the women keening.

  The day had been grey and heavy, threatening rain that never came; but towards sunset the sky began to break up; and when they carried the old Chieftain from his Hall, the West was barred with watery gold.

  Wrapped to the chin in his great deerskin cloak, his necklace of raw yellow amber pulled out to lie upon his breast, his sons and four others of his nearest kinsmen carried him shoulder high on a hurdle. Ahead of him walked the Priest-kind, led by Morvidd with his black hood laid back, and a garland of oak and yew upon his head. Before him also, and behind and on either side, men bearing torches that burned murky red and gave off little brightness in the fading daylight. And all the men of the Clan falling in behind him, as they bore him out through the gateway of the rath.

  Alexios and his Wolves walked in the honourable places allotted to them immediately behind the household warriors. He caught the resiny smell of the torches trailing back to him along the quiet evening air, and heard the muted throbbing of the drums. At his back he heard the marching feet of his well-drilled ten; a foursquare sound that was somehow alien among all the rest; and beyond that, the formless movement of the Clan following after, and the bleating and lowing of beasts for sacrifice. And behind all else, the keening of the women, growing fainter as they left the rath and headed south-east.

  Alexios knew where they were going.

  About four miles up-river from Castellum lay the Long Moss, a wide stretch of level country, inland marsh, and loch and winding waterways running a good three hours’ march from east to west. He had crossed it the day of his first coming to the fort, by the ridge of higher ground that carried the inland road from Trimontium. And in the past few months he had circled its sodden fringes more than once with the patrols. An empty sky-reflecting land alive with the crying and calling of wildfowl whose voices seemed to be the voice of its own loneliness. Once, in the clear light of a summer morning, he had seen far off something that looked like a group of great figures; figures turned to stone and checked for ever in some circling dance. Only a circle of standing-stones on one of the islets of firm ground that were scattered here and there amid the marshy waste. But his optio had told him that it was the Death Place of the Chiefs of the Votadini; all the Chiefs of the Votadini from the High King himself to the Lords of a Hundred Spears. No one went there in the ordinary way of things, said the optio, not even the Frontier Wolves. Only the Spirit Folk, and the marsh birds flying over. And afterwards, not thinking that Alexios noticed, he had taken a piece of his evening bannock from the leather bag at his saddle-bow, and crumbled it and let it fall behind him, as though he did not know what his fingers were doing.

  The pale gleam of westering sunlight had blazed up into a sunset that set all the West on fire when they came to the edge of the marsh country; and the standing water caught and gave back the mingled reflections of flaming sky and ragged-burning torches, as they still moved on by some unseen track that sniped this way and that, following the firmer ground. At last it seemed that they had reached the end of all solid land. A low broad bar of sour grass and alder scrub stretched to right and left of them; ahead lay only water, reed-patterned, dappled with sky reflections and the evening movement of the air. And across the water, already shadow-bloomed, the great stones that he had seen before circled in their frozen dance.

  The foremost torchbearers had come to a halt, the formless brushing of many feet fell silent, and the drums ceased their low rhythmic muttering. Now they were bringing up the beasts for sacrifice. Only sheep and cattle, Alexios saw with relief; seemingly the Chiefs of the Votadini did not take favourite hounds and horses with them, only food for the journey. He would have been sick at heart to see Shadow in that small wild-eyed knot of driven beasts.

  The head of the procession was moving off again.

  Alexios heard the optio’s voice low and warning in his ear. ‘This is as far as we go, Sir.’

  He nodded. Only the dead Chief and his priests, his kindred and household warriors and the beasts for sacrifice would go on from here. He knew that instinctively; but his escort were making doubly sure, feeling their responsibility for him as he felt his for them; and he knew that instinctively also. The knowledge brought with it a fleeting sense of warmth; and he could do with warmth just then, despite the milky heaviness of the evening.

  The leading torchbearers were well out into the shallows now; the men who bore the old Chief’s body were moving steadily down through the alder scrub and into the water after them. Then the household warriors, and the driven cattle showering up brightness from the dim golden water as they went.

  The blazing West was fading, and as the fires died, the loch water grew shadowy, and the flames of the torches began to bite. Watching them go, men and torches and lowing cattle, and the one lying still in their midst. Alexios saw that they were not streaming straight across, but following the same kind of sniping course that they had followed since they came into the Long Moss. The water came midway up the men’s thighs in places, never higher; and from the reed beds and the look of the surface, he guessed that it would not be much deeper on either side. It must be that along that hidden sniping causeway there was firm ground; and elsewhere? Who could say? Maybe the kind of hungry bottom that sucked men down into its own dark heart. A little chill seemed to come up off the water, and despite himself Alexios shivered under his wolfskin cloak. Then the heavy warmth came back, and he told himself not to be a fool.

  The torches had reached the further side. The red glare of them was moving to and fro among the tall stones of the Sacred Circle. No sound came back across the water. Even the lowing of the cattle was lost. The old Chief and his attendants had passed from one world into another; and presently from that other world the new Chief would return to them. Meanwhile there was nothing to do but wait.

  Those who might follow no further spread out along the alder ridge and settled down to their waiting.

  As though he had eyes in the back of his head, Alexios was aware of his men squatting motionless behind him, each man with his sword laid across his knees, and settled himself carefully into the same position.

  Presently, with a musical throbbing of wings, three swans flew over, with the last of the sunset tipping their flight pinions with fire. Almost all the gold was gone from the west, now fading to rose, to ash grey; the evening star hung moth-pale in the clearing sky. Far over towards the east, a faint wet murmur told where the familiar river that came out to the estuary below Castellum, gathered its waters among the lochans of the Long Moss and plunged down over rocky falls into the gorge that it had cut for itself. A faint mist began to rise from the surface of the loch, and the torches among the standing-stones were lost in it. The crying and calling of the wildfowl began to fall silent.

  Alexios was getting cramp. Th
e long waiting began to nibble like mice at his nerve ends. He longed to move, find an easier position, get up and walk about. But to do that would be gross discourtesy to the Clan – Cunorix’s Clan – and shame to his own men. He called up in his mind all that he had learned in nearly a year, of the ways in which a man in hiding on the scouting trail could sit hour after hour unmoving; and shut his teeth and sat on, his sword across his knees.

  Once, long after dark, when the mist rolled back a little, a ruddy smear of light spread for a while across the water, and then was lost again. The Death Pyre of Ferradach Dhu.

  The darkness was turning towards dawn, and the sky once again full of the haunting voices of marsh-birds, when they saw the torches coming back. Faint stains of light growing out of the mist, gathering strength and a fiercer brightness as they drew near. And their brightness caught and flung back in answering shards of broken light from the churned shallows as the dark figures came wading in towards the shore. The Dark Time, the Waiting Time during which the Clan was without a Chieftain, was over. The whole Men’s Side were on their feet now, but the silence still held them, as they stood, every face turned towards the figure who walked in the midst of the torches that made a golden smoke about his head.

  A magnificent deerskin mantle lifted and swung out behind him on the water, and the torchlight caught the great necklace of twisted gold and raw yellow amber about his neck. He was coming up out of the shallows now, wet and shining and flame-golden. Morvidd and the Priest-kind walked at either side of him, Connla, heading his household warriors, strode close behind. The drops of loch water scattered from him like sparks as he came up through the alder trees. He was the Chief, back from beyond the sunset, and the weariness of the journey was upon him, tangible as the fine new deerskin robe and the yellow amber of the Chiefhood at his throat.

  Alexios, standing within arm’s length of him, watched him come, taller, surely, than he had been, unless that was only that his head was held so high, and looking into his eyes that never moved to right or left, wondered what had happened to him in the Death Place of the Chieftains, and felt a little chill that was more than the mist and the coming dawn.

  The long waiting silence had fallen from the Clan, and they were greeting him with shout upon deep triumphant shout of welcome, each man bringing his spear or sword blade crashing down across his shield in salute, until the marsh-birds burst up and scattered in alarm, filling all the misty darkness with their cries and the beating of startled wings.

  And then Cunorix the Chieftain had passed by, and his household warriors after him, and Alexios and his ten Frontier Wolves, were turning in behind them; and at their back all the Men’s Side of the Clan. The torches were losing power as the first grey light of dawn began to water the dark. And the Death Place was behind them, and ahead, the waiting rath, where the women would have stopped keening, and the cooking pits would soon be opened. And they began to sing the song of bringing home the new Chief.

  7 Making-Feast for a New Chieftain

  IT WAS FULL dawn when they came back to the rath. They had left the mist behind them over the Marsh Country; and the torches were quenched and the first gold of the rising sun lay level across the threshold of the Chieftain’s Hall. And on the threshold Cunorix stood, beginning to look out of his own eyes again, one foot shod and the other bare and planted on the red oxhide spread there. And one by one, Connla and the chief men of the Clan came up to lay each man the flat of his right hand on the flat of the great spear that the new Chieftain carried, and take upon him the oath that was as old as the Tribes, and the Tribes that were before the Tribes. ‘If we break faith with thee, may the green earth gape and swallow us, may the grey seas break in and overwhelm us, may the sky of stars fall and crush us out of life for ever.’

  The cooking pits were already opened, and great joints of cattle and pig and deermeat were being lifted smoking from their beds of hot stones, while the women and the slaves brought out huge bowls of bannocks and curds and honey-in-the-comb, and deep jars of heather beer and the fermented mares’ milk that went to men’s heads like fever. And looking among the women, Alexios suddenly thought it strange that he could not see Shula the Chieftain’s woman anywhere. No woman had gone with them when they went to set the old Chieftain on his way; but surely now . . . He glanced past Cunorix into the shadows beyond the open doorway of the Hall. But there was no sign of her that way. Maybe her coming was a part of some later ceremony.

  The last of the warriors had sworn his faith, and Alexios realized that it was his turn now; and Cunorix was looking at him, waiting. This would need care. He could not swear faith like the Clan warriors, and he could not hold back from some form of greeting and acceptance to the new Chieftain who was his friend. Had been his friend. But he felt so far off from Cunorix now. ‘The sun and the moon on your path,’ Cunorix had said that last time they parted, as though one or other of them were going far away. He found himself walking forward, on the edge of raising his hand in the Roman salute, the formal Latin words of greeting and congratulation already in his mouth. And then Cunorix’s right hand came away from its two-handed hold on his great spear, and they struck palm to palm like men sealing a bargain, much as they had done in that Hall close on a year ago.

  ‘Good hunting to you on the new trail,’ Alexios said.

  The face of the ugly young man before him lit into a smile. ‘Let you give me time to get the feel of this new thing, as I gave it to you, last winter, and I am thinking that we will have good hunting on the old trails again, also,’ Cunorix said.

  It could have been only largesse, one man promising to another who asked, though the asking was without words. And then the sense of loss that had been with Alexios for three days would have become complete and for all time. But suddenly he knew that it was an asking as well as a promising; that the loss had been for Cunorix as well as for himself; and the morning sun was warm between his shoulder-blades and the smell from the cooking pits made him hungry so that the soft warm water came into his mouth, and life was good.

  And in that moment, above all the sounds of the morning, from somewhere beyond the Hall, in the direction of the Women’s Quarters, came the bleating cry of a newborn baby.

  So Alexios knew why Shula of the golden eardrops had not come out with the other women to take her place at the Chief-making. An old life had gone out from the Chieftain’s Hall, a new life had come into it.

  Cunorix heard the cry. Alexios saw him hear it, though he made no movement, only stood waiting, as it seemed suddenly that the whole crowded rath was waiting. Then something moved in the shadows of the Great Hall. It drew nearer, and the bleating with it; and someone laughed and someone else took up the laughter; and an old woman hobbled out into the sunlight, carrying a bundle wrapped in a spotted fawn-skin. From all over the broad forecourt Men’s Side and Women’s Side alike were gathering in.

  ‘What have you there, Old Mother?’ a big man shouted.

  And another answered him, ‘It’s a lamb. Cannot you hear it bleat?’

  ‘No lamb, as well as you know, oh makers of foolish jests.’ The old woman shrilled back at them. And to Cunorix she shouted, ‘Shula the Chieftainess begs forgiveness of her lord, that she cannot be with him at this rising of the Sun, for she has been about women’s work this night, and is weary. But see, she sends him his son in her place.’

  The bundle kicked and bawled as she held it out, and Cunorix suddenly flinging his great spear aside, took it from her. The creature’s eyes were screwed up against the morning light. It was furious at being torn from the warm darkness of its mother’s body, its face crumpled and scarlet as a bruised poppy bud. It was so newly born, they had not even washed it yet, and there was blood on its forehead and the birth smell about it that Alexios remembered from the lambing pens of his boyhood.

  Cunorix had it between his hands. He looked at it a moment with something between awe and amusement. ‘So small, and a warrior already!’ he said, and held it up into the morning sunlig
ht high over his head and the heads of the crowding Clan, and gave a great triumphant shout, ‘See, oh my brothers! See, all ye of the Clan of Dumnorix the son of Ferradach Dhu! As my father the old Chieftain had sons to follow after him, so now I also have a son to take the Chief’s collar from my neck and the spear from my hand when I am old and tired and full of sleep!’

  But Alexios who had drawn back into the throng, thought, looking at him, ‘He does not believe that he will ever be old, not at this moment!’

  And all about him the Men’s Side were shouting and tossing up their spears to the squalling bundle. The last shadow of the night that was over fell away behind them, and the day roared up like a bonfire when somebody throws barley spirit on the flames.

  Alexios had thought, in the first place, to return to Castellum as soon as the new Chief was made, but the Quartermaster had shaken his bald head. ‘One night for the old Chief, and one for the new. You will give offence to many if you do not wait for the feasting.’

  The Quartermaster had been long enough on the Frontier for his word to carry weight, and Hilarion was perfectly capable of taking over the command for two days, probably more capable than he was himself, Alexios thought. And so he stayed on through the feasting, squatting in his place of honour at the Chieftain’s own fire, the High Fire, with Cunorix and his kinsfolk and chief warriors, eating more than he wanted of sizzling boar meat and barleycakes and honey, drinking as little as might be of the wine and heather beer that the slaves and women carried round.

  All day the feasting went on, while from time to time the young braves would leave the fires and turn to racing or wrestling or javelin throwing one against another by way of a change, and then return to eat and drink again. Alexios wished that he could have joined them, instead of sitting here representing the Empire, listening to the talk of old warriors and the long involved story-songs of the harpers while the shadows crept from west to east. Och well, Cunorix must be wishing just as sorely, to be away to the Women’s Quarters to his woman and new son. Alexios tried to look as though he were spellbound by the harp-song, and took another honey-cake that he did not want from the dish that suddenly appeared before him.