Frontier Wolf

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Anthonius, with a drip on the end of his long twisted nose, looked questioningly across the rough grave at Alexios. And Alexios made a small gesture to him to carry on.

  The Medic began to speak the parting words for a man of his own faith. ‘Oh Lord God, receive into Thy loving hands –’

  But Alexios never heard the end of the short prayer, for at that moment, between gust and gust of the wind, a low whistling call, far off yet and on the outmost edge of hearing, reached him from the world outside the makeshift strong-point. One of the lookouts shouted something, and a pony in the picket-lines flung up its head and whinnied. As he clambered back out of the ditch heads were turning to listen, men reaching for weapons as they scrambled to their feet. From all round the fringes of the ruined settlement came the whistling calls, and joined with them now the deeper and fuller-throated yell of the Votadini on the bloodtrail.

  ‘Man the walls,’ Alexios ordered. And to the wounded men about the fires he said, grinning, ‘Anyone with an arm to use, carry on with the cooking. It may be that they will not attack today – they must be as weary as we are. But if they do, then assuredly we shall fight the better for the smell of supper cooking behind us!’

  A few moments later, crouching behind the barricade of half-charred timbers with which they had closed the gate-gap of the waggon park, he saw movement among the half-walls and fallen roof beams of the buildings beyond; figures slipping low from cover to cover in the fading light. The whole settlement was suddenly alive with moving shadows, closing in. So many shadows. The Frontier Wolves were still so desperately outnumbered; and in their spent and famished state, their Commander knew with a cold certainty that the next attack, if it came before they had had time for food and rest, would finish them. The half-ruined waggon park at Bremenium would indeed be the place of their last stand.

  The pony whinnied again, and was answered from somewhere on the outer fringe of the settlement, where the tribesmen must have left their own ponies before closing in on foot. Alexios had hoped desperately that they were only scouting, but they were too many for that. Too many shadows moving in, gaining substance as they drew near. It looked as if they were going to attack at once, hoping to finish the thing before the last of the fighting light was gone – while the spirits of those who died would still be able to find their way Westward by the hidden sunset.

  But meanwhile there was a kind of pause; the Frontier Wolves crouched behind their makeshift breastwork, swords in hands, eyes arrowed into the flurrying snow. The light was already too unsure for marksmanship, and they had too few arrows left in their quivers to risk wasting any of them. Among the ruined buildings ringing them round, the shadows crouched like hounds in leash. Soon, maybe in the next heartbeat of time, the leashes would be slipped and the attack would break upon them in a howling wave; but for the moment there was the pause, the waiting, the hush under the gusting wind.

  And in the waiting hush, as though from somewhere outside himself, the knowledge came to Alexios of what he had to do. It was a crazy idea, he knew that even as it came to him, but he knew also that there was just a chance it might work; might gain for his exhausted men the time to eat and regain some strength from the food, time for a few hours’ rest that would give them a better chance when the fighting came in the morning.

  He spoke to the optio beside him, ‘Ask the centenarius to come to me.’

  And as the man went off, he began to unbind from his waist the stained and tattered silken rags of the Ordo dragon.

  He had barely finished when the tall shape of Hilarion slipped low along the breastwork to his side. ‘Sir?’

  ‘Take charge of this,’ Alexios said, holding it out to him.

  Hilarion looked down at the flattened mask and bright rags, then up into Alexios’s face; and for once there was no trace of mocking in his own. ‘What would you be thinking of doing, Sir?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure. Playing for time, I suppose – no time to go into details; but if anything goes wrong, it will be for you to take over the command, so in Mithras’s name take this now and don’t argue.’

  But Hilarion argued all the same, briefly and urgently. ‘Better let me do it, Sir, whatever it is. Not supposed to be the Commander’s job to get his throat split open playing some lone wolf hero-game of his own.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Alexios said, ‘I am the only one who can play this particular game.’

  Their eyes met: and Alexios answered the unspoken question in the other’s gaze. ‘Because I am the one who killed Connla.’

  There was a sudden stirring among the settlement ruins; and all along the waggon park walls an answering tensing, a faint ruffle of sound that was scarcely sound at all, as men altered their stance and tightened their grip on their weapons. Hilarion took the wreckage of the Ordo dragon and began quickly to bind it round his waist.

  A long war-spear with a tassel of marten tails flying from its neck came in a high arc over the wall and hung quivering with its point in the ground close by.

  ‘Hold your throw!’ Alexios shouted, as all along the breastwork the spearmen’s arms went up and back in reply. He was running low for the place where the corner of a small shed built against the wall beside the gate-gap would give him a certain amount of cover.

  Standing in the shadow of it, he called ‘Cunorix, Lord of Six Hundred Spears!’

  There was a moment’s pause, and then the familiar voice shouted back, ‘I am here, Alexios of the Frontier Wolves!’

  ‘And of your spears? How many still to run forward to the killing-ground at your call?’

  ‘Not all that once there were; that you know; but with us a war-band of the Caledoni who have joined their spears with ours – enough to finish the thing.’ His voice turned mocking. ‘How many still of the Wolf-kind?’

  ‘Enough to finish the thing,’ Alexios flung back at him. ‘But first there are matters that must be spoken of between you and me.’

  ‘Na! There are no more words for speaking between you and me.’

  ‘A few. Come out into the open space before the gate-gap here, and bid your men to hold back their spears, as I will bid mine, that we may speak together.’

  ‘And why would I be doing this thing?’

  ‘Because if you do it not, the Children’s Children of the Clan will tell it round the fires on such winter evenings as this, how Cunorix the Chief dared not stand out from among his warriors, risking his neck in a certain matter – as a mere captain of a few score Frontier Wolves dared to do!’

  And even as he spoke, Alexios stepped clear of his meagre shelter and swung himself up onto the wall-top, and stood there, his belly clenched within him as he wondered whether the next thing he knew would be a flight of spears or a Pictish arrow. But nothing moved on either side of the breastwork. All he felt was the freezing feather-touch of snow on his face. And then out into the open space below him stepped Cunorix, with no spear in his hand, and his sword still in its wolfskin sheath.

  Alexios greeted him, holding his own hands well clear of his weapons. ‘You breed fine hunting dogs, and closely you have hunted on our trail these past two days; why then were you not swifter to pick it up at the outset?’ He was talking at random, anything to make the talk last as long as possible, aware with every word, of the light of the snowy day fading towards dusk . . .

  ‘We would have picked it up sooner – as soon as we found that the trail we followed at the outset was a false one – but that one sent us astray.’

  ‘So – and who was this one, that I may speak of him in gratitude to the Lord of Light?’

  ‘Speak then of a woman who we found by the Ford of the Rowan Trees. There was a dead child beside her, and she was washing its bloodstained clothes.’

  Alexios felt the hair rise at the nape of his neck, remembering old stories of the Washer by the Ford; remembering also the woman at the Rath of Skolawn. ‘I hope you tear each other’s hearts out,’ she had spat at them.

  ‘You have dreamed a dream,’ he said
. ‘That woman would have put you on no false scent for love of us.’

  ‘Na, no dream,’ Cunorix moved a pace nearer, and stood swaying a little on his heels and looking up. ‘A strange story though, and I will tell it you before we kill you. She cried out like a hawk, and caught up the child against her, and pointed eastward and said, “They went that way, towards the Sunrise. Follow swiftly, oh hunters of Annwfn, and when you come up with them may you tear each other’s hearts out!” And then she caught sight of our brothers the Painted People among us and she began to scream and scream, and turned to run and caught her foot in a tussock and fell, and went on screaming. And we knew by that that she was not – what at first we had thought she might be. So we killed her to stop her screaming, for she was putting fear upon the ponies. And then we cast eastward a while, until we picked up a trail. But it was two days’ old, and a trail of the Painted People at that. I am thinking she must have been one with her wits astray.’

  ‘I also,’ Alexios said, ‘so far astray that she confused even the hatreds in her heart, and mingled the Painted People, who killed her child and went on eastward, with the Frontier Wolves who came later and headed by another way.’

  ‘Och well; whatever the way of it, behold, the hunting is ended now, and the quarry stands at bay,’ Cunorix said. And looking down at him, Alexios saw in that one moment a likeness to Connla that he had never seen before, the same shimmer of laughter like summer lightning. But Connla was dead, and for that one moment it seemed to him that he was looking at a dead man.

  The moment passed, and out of the corner of his eye, he caught the sudden forward start of another figure, tall and black-cloaked and hooded like a gore-crow; and a high voice cried, ‘There has been enough of this! Kill! Kill!’ and a low growling murmur broke from the waiting warriors.

  Cunorix glanced that way and made a fierce gesture, ‘Back, old father! It is I who say when there has been enough!’ But to Alexios, he said scornfully, ‘Were these the words that we must speak together . . .’

  ‘No,’ Alexios said, still playing his desperate game for time, ‘no mere telling of tales, but a question that is for me to ask and for you to answer.’

  ‘What question?’

  ‘This: How long have the Clan of Cunorix of the Votadini, run as one pack with the Painted People, calling them their brothers?’

  Again there was a muttering among the warriors, and from somewhere the hissing wild-cat anger call of the Caledoni.

  ‘Since the People of the Eagle who once called themselves their friends slew Cunorix’s younger brother, for the mere matter of a horse-stealing that was half in jest.’

  ‘Nay,’ said Alexios, ‘but for the slaying of two Frontier Wolves and the breaking of the Frontier peace that was no jest at all.’

  ‘No matter! The thing is done. There is blood between us.’

  ‘Kill! Kill!’ cried the priest, his arms upflung, his hood fallen back so that Alexios saw clear as by the white light of its own malice, the skeleton face and huge brilliant eyes of Morvidd the Druid. There was a shifting and a slipping forward of the shadow warriors. But the daylight was fading every moment, and the snow falling more thickly . . .

  Alexios said, ‘It was I who killed Connla. I killed him to save him from an uglier death, and that you know. Nevertheless it was I who killed him, and his blood is between you and me.’ He knew that the moment was upon him, and he gathered himself to meet it. He was no longer talking at random. ‘Your warriors are as spent as we are. If you attack us now, it may be that you will overwhelm us. But whether or no you overwhelm us, many of your men will die.’

  ‘Those who die will go West of the Sunset by the Warrior’s Road! Do not heed him!’ screamed the priest.

  ‘Try telling that to the women beside the fires that they do not return to!’ Alexios flung at him, then turned back to Cunorix. ‘There is Blood Feud between you and me. So be it. Then as two who settle a Blood Debt, let us fight it out, here and now, your sword against mine; and if you kill me, then my men shall avenge me if they can; but if I kill you, then let the debt be wiped out, and I and my men be free to go our ways.’

  ‘Free to go your ways? Do you not know that the Painted People, and the White Shields too, by now, are between you and Habitancum?’

  ‘I do not ask that you promise for the Painted People, nor for the White Shields. We will take our chance with them, afterwards. I ask that you promise for your Votadini following.’ Suddenly his voice warmed, and he was speaking as friend with friend. ‘Cunorix, we have hunted together and eaten bread together, and laughed together at foolish jests, our arms laid across each other’s shoulders. Shall we not now do this last thing together, you for your warriors and I for mine?’

  And again there was silence under the booming wind. The shadow warriors made no further move nor murmuring; and behind the breastwork of the waggon park, the Frontier Wolves crouched tense and still. It was as though both knew that the thing had gone beyond them. Even Morvidd the Oak Priest had ceased his savage outcry, and the Painted People stood silent; this was no concern of theirs, they would make their own red trouble later.

  And, one standing on the low wall, his wolfskin hood hanging loose behind his war-cap, one standing just below, his tawny head flung far back on his strong neck, his thumbs in his belt, Alexios and Cunorix looked at each other as though they were alone on the high moors on a good hunting day.

  Then Cunorix said almost gently, ‘Now here indeed is a thing for the Children’s Children of the Clan to tell round the fire on winter evenings. So be it, Alexios of the Frontier Wolves. This last thing we will do together, you and I.’

  It did not take long to make all ready. The gateway barricades were heaved aside just far enough to allow one man to pass through the gap. Torches of roughly plaited straw or brands pulled from the cooking-fires were passed from hand to hand. An odd sense of ritual had descended on tribesmen and Frontier Wolves alike, as they lined the makeshift breastwork and drew closer from among the settlement ruins to ring with torch-flare the open space before the gateway.

  Alexios flung off his cloak and tossed it to the nearest man. There was a feeling of unreality on him as he drew his sword and hitched up a borrowed buckler on his left arm, and walked forward through the narrow gap.

  In the centre of the open space, Cunorix stood waiting for him. He too had flung off his cloak; his tawny hair was bound back into the warrior-knot, and the traces of war-paint showed red and black on cheeks and forehead, and the wind-ravelled torchlight played fierce and fitful on the naked blade in his hand.

  The trampled snow was yellow where the torchlight fell, blue beyond its reach, blurring away into the dusk that spun and whirled with falling flakes; and the flakes hissed when they eddied into the torch flames. Otherwise there was no sound in the long trough of quiet between gust and gust of the wind. The fighting-space was ringed with watching faces that hung like painted masks against the dusk behind them, a huddle of wolfskin cloaks, oxhide shields, fur or feather tasselled spears with the light catching jagged on their tips, the snarling wild-cat head on its spearshaft that was the ensign of the Painted People; the face of Morvidd the Oak Priest hawk-hovering over all. In one quick raking glance about him Alexios took it all in. Then deliberately turned his whole awareness to the man waiting for him sword in hand, and shut out all the rest; shut out, too, the memory of the high moors beyond Credigone and the shared hunting fires at the day’s end.

  He slipped one foot in front of the other, crouching a little, his eyes on the eyes of his enemy.

  ‘Watch the eyes,’ said his old drill instructor’s voice in his ears. ‘Don’t forget the sword hand, but always watch the eyes.’ The leaden weight of weariness had fallen away from him, and he felt light on his feet and very cold, with a bright inner coldness that had nothing to do with the east wind and the eddying snow.

  Cunorix crouched also, eyes wide above the bronze rim of his shield, swaying a little on the balls of his feet. Slowly they began
to circle, each waiting for the other to make the first attack. Alexios was realizing suddenly that he had no idea how good a swordsman Cunorix was, for they had never crossed blades before; and it would be the same for Cunorix also. So at the outset they fought delicately, warily, exploring each other’s skill, seeking for each other’s weaknesses; moving about each other with small padding footsteps as precise as those of a dance, with now the sudden bright flicker and ring of blades in slash and parry, and again the long watchful pauses in between.

  Beyond the ragged torchlight it was almost dark now; but Alexios had forgotten that he was playing for time; he had come near to forgetting that he fought as champion for the Frontier Wolves, with maybe the lives and deaths of his men hanging on his sword point. This was another thing altogether; a thing between himself and his friend, his enemy, with the stain of Connla’s blood lying between them.

  Cunorix made the first lunge in earnest, and sprang back as Alexios parried; and the wary circling began again, until Alexios sprang forward, his blade striking out an arc of light from the torch flare, and Cunorix sprang out sideways with a narrow thread of blood springing out of his forearm.

  A shout broke from the watchers. ‘First blood!’

  Again and again their blades rang together and broke clear, each had the other’s measure now, and the play was growing quicker and more deadly.