Sword at Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  On the evening of the fourth day, suddenly weary of Narbo Martius and its uproar that was so much more blurred and raucous than the uproar of a war camp, I did not at once return to the city when the selling grounds began to empty, but let the rest of the band go on without me, and myself strolled down through the ill-kept olive gardens that rimmed the open ground, and sat on the stone curb of a well, looking out over the pale levels toward the sea which was turning to pearl-shell colors as the sun westered. It was good to be alone for a while, and have quiet enough for my bruised ears to hear the faint hushing of the little wind that rose each evening, in the olive trees behind me, and the dark drip of water from the well, and the soft clonk of goat bells, and to watch, far off, the fishermen drawing in their nets. This would be our last night in Narbo Martius, and I knew that when I got back to the evening fire, every man of the Company would be there. On other nights, many of them had hurried through their supper and gone about their own pleasures; the laughter and rough horseplay in the wineshops, and the women of the city kind and not expensive. But I could not risk thick heads and maybe a hunt through Narbo Martius for some fool still dead drunk in a harlot’s bed, when the time came to break camp in the morning. So I had given the order and made sure that it was understood; but I knew that I must not bide long in my quiet place below the olive gardens, taking for myself the freedom for my own pleasure that I had denied to Fulvius and the Minnow and the rest. I think that few of them would have grudged it to me if I had, but it was not in the bargain.

  Just until the shadow of the low-hanging olive branches reached that crack in the stones of the well curb, I told myself. It had the breadth of a hand to travel yet ...

  That time I heard no step coming through the long grass under the olive trees, but a shadow, fantastically long in the westering light, fell across the wellhead, and when I looked up, Bedwyr was standing within a spear’s length of me, his figure blotted darkly against the sunset. ‘How does the horse buying go?’ he asked, without any other greeting.

  ‘Well enough,’ I said. ‘I have chosen all my stallions, all but one of my brood mares. Now we have all things ready for striking camp, and tomorrow I shall take the first reasonable beast that I can strike a bargain for, and with good fortune we should be on the road north by noon.’

  He came and sat himself on the ground at my feet, leaning his head back against the warm stones of the well curb. ‘There are yet three days of the fair to run. Why then so great a hurry, my Lord Artos?’

  ‘It is a long road north, and at the end of it a sea crossing. Even with good weather we must needs rest the horses at least one day in four. And at the best, we shall reach the coast with a month to spare before the autumn storms.’

  He nodded. ‘You will have transports of some kind?’

  ‘If Cador of Dumnonia has been successful – two trading vessels with the decks torn out for getting the horses into the holds.’

  ‘And how many horses do you reckon to get across at each trip?’

  ‘Two to each tub. To try for more would be to strike hands with disaster.’

  ‘So. I see wisdom of not lingering among the wine booths of Narbo Martius.’

  ‘That relieves my mind,’ I said gravely, and he laughed, then shifted abruptly to look up at me.

  ‘The Black One is still for sale.’

  ‘I have all my stallions.’

  ‘Sell one again. Or another stallion instead of the last mare?’

  ‘Certainly you do not lack for cool affrontery.’

  ‘You want him, don’t you?’

  I hesitated, then admitted it fully to myself for the first time. ‘Yes, I want him, but not enough to pay for him as I am very sure I should have to do, with the life of a man or another horse.’

  He was silent a moment, and then he said in a curiously level tone, ‘Then I ask another thing. Take me, my Lord the Bear.’

  ‘What as?’ I asked, without surprise, for it was as though I had known what was coming.

  ‘As a harper or a horse holder or a fighting man – I have my dagger, and you can give me a sword. Or’ – his strange lopsided face flashed into a grin, his one reckless eyebrow flying like a banner – ‘or as a laughingstock when you feel the need for laughter.’

  But though I had known, in a way, what was coming, I was not sure of my reply. Usually I can judge a man well enough at first meeting, but this one I knew that I could not judge. He was dark water that I could not look into. His reserves were as deep in their way as Aquila’s but whereas Aquila, whose past was bitter, had grown them through the years as the hard protective skin grows over an old wound, this man’s were a part of himself, born into the world with him as a man’s shadow.

  ‘What of Constantinople and the Emperor’s bodyguard?’ I said, a little, I think, to gain time.

  ‘What of them?’

  ‘And the splendor that does not lie in ruins, and the bright adventure and the service to take?’

  ‘Could you not give me a service to take? Oh, make no mistake, my Lord Artos, it was the other I wanted. That was why I got drunk yesterday; it was no use though. I am your man if you will take me.’

  ‘We have need of every sword hand,’ I said at last, ‘and it is a good thing to laugh sometimes – and to have the heart sung out of the breast. But ... ’

  ‘But?’ he said.

  ‘But I do not take a hawk without having made trial of him. Nor do I take an untried man into the circle of the Companions.’

  He was silent for a good while, after that. The sun was behind the mountains now, and the evening sounds of the olive grove were waking, the creatures that they call cicadas creaking in the branches, and the voices of the fisherfolk coming up faintly on the wind. Once he made a small swift movement, and I thought he was going to get up and walk away, but he stilled again. ‘You choose more delicately than they say the Eastern Emperor does,’ he said at last.

  ‘Maybe I have more need.’ I leaned down and touched his shoulder, scarcely meaning to. ‘When you are captain of the Emperor’s bodyguard, you’ll look back on this evening and thank whatever god you pray to, that the thing turned out as it did.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘When that day comes, I shall thank – whatever god I pray to, that it was not given to me to throw all that away, and go crawling back over those five hundred miles or so that I was already on my way, to die at last in a northern mist with the Sea Wolf’s fangs in my throat.’

  I said nothing, for it seemed to me that there was no other word to say. And then he turned to me again, his eyes full of a cool dancing light that was nearer to battle than to laughter. ‘If I get the Black One back to Britain for you, without its causing the death of himself or any other horse or any man, will that seem trial enough? Will you take me then, and give me my sword in recompense?’

  I was more surprised at that than I had been at his first asking to join us, and for a moment the surprise struck me silent. Then I said, ‘And what if you fail?’

  ‘If I have not died in the failing, I will give you my life to add to that of the man or the other horse. Is not that a fair bargain, my Lord the Bear?’

  Before I knew that my mind was made up, I heard my own voice saying, ‘We will go now and look into the Black One’s mouth and feel him over, for I have not even touched him as yet. And if the horse be all that he seems, then it is a fair bargain, Bedwyr.’

  And I remember that we spat in our hands and struck palms like men sealing a bargain in the marketplace.

  On a wild night of late September, with the first of the autumn gales beating about the thatch, we supped again in Cador’s mead hall, I with the great gaunt joyful head of Cabal on my knee; behind us the long road and the choking summer dust cloud rolling up through Gaul, behind us the urgent struggle to get the last of the horses across before the weather broke. And the torchlight and the heather beer seemed the more golden for the triumphant knowledge of fine big-boned Septimania stallions and the brood mares picketed within the rin
g fence of the Dun.

  Bedwyr, with dark smudges beneath his eyes – for the last crossing, with the Black One on board, had been no easy one, and he had not slept, even in his accustomed place at the great brute’s side, for two nights before it – had come from his fairly won place among the Companions and sat on the harper’s stool beside the hearth and sang for us, or maybe for himself, the triumph song of Arwas the Winged after he slew the Red Boar.

  chapter six

  The Laborer and the Hire

  THEY BROKE AT NOON, AND ALL THE REST OF THAT DAY AND most of the next we had driven them, among the willow-fringed islands and the reedbeds and the wildfowl meres; we had fired their winter camp (they should be well used to the stench of homesteads going up in flames). We had cut off the stragglers and burned their narrow dark war boats in the mouth of the Glein. Now, at evening on the second day, we came up from the river marshes toward the monastery on its island of higher ground, where we had left the baggage beasts.

  We were a full band, three hundred cavalry, four hundred counting grooms, drivers, armorers, et cetera – or we had been, two days ago. We were somewhat less this evening, but in a few weeks we should be up to strength again; we always were. There were no captives with us. I have never taken captives, save once or twice when I had need of a hostage.

  Cabal trotted as usual at my horse’s off forefoot. Bedwyr rode on my sword side, and on the other, Cei who had blown in like a blustering west wind to join us when first we made our headquarters at Lindum, just two years ago. A big, red-gold man with hot-tempered blue eyes, and a liking for cheap glass jewelry that would have become either a Saxon or a whore. Those two had proved themselves in the past summers when, sometimes alone, sometimes with the half-trained warriors of Guidarius, the local ruler, we had attacked the settlements of Octa Hengestson, and driven back his inland thrusts again and again. And the time was to come when I counted Bedwyr the first and Cei the second of my lieutenants.

  Bedwyr had unslung his harp from its accustomed place behind his shoulder, and was plucking the strings in triumphant ripples of notes that broke in waves of brightness, managing his horse with his knees the while. He often played and sang us home from battle. ‘After the sword, the harp,’ as the saying runs – and always it seemed to help our weariness and our wounds. When the tune was recognizable, Cei lifted up his voice in a deep grumbling buzz that was his nearest approach to singing, and here and there behind us a man took up a snatch of the familiar tune; but for the most part we were too spent to join in.

  The sun was sinking as we pulled up out of the rustling reedbeds, and the vast arch of the sky was alight with a sunset that seemed to catch its mood from Bedwyr’s harping and break in waves and ripples of flame. Never, even among my own mountains, have I known such sunsets as those of the eastern marshes, winged and shining skies busy as market crowds or streaming like the banners of an army. The standing water among the reedbeds caught fire from the sky, and overhead the wavering lines of wild duck were flighting.

  On the lower levels only just clear of the marsh, the monastery’s horses were grazing. It was horse country, though most of the beasts, sturdy though they were, were too small for our needs; too small, that is, if we had had any choice in the matter. But it would be seven or eight years yet before we could hope to draw much from the Deva training runs. We had lost upward of a score of horses in the past two days, and they would be harder to replace than the men.

  The countryman in charge of the herd (the horse herding and breaking was the only work of the community not done by the Brothers themselves) took one look at us from the hummock of land that was his lookout post, and tossing up his spear ran back toward the monastery building. We heard him shouting, ‘They are coming! They are back! Holy Brothers, it is the Count of Britain!’ And a few moments later the bell of the little church began to throb out its round bronze notes in greeting and rejoicing. ‘Truly, we are to have a hero’s welcome!’ said Bedwyr; and he let his hand fall from the harp strings, so that the weary smother of hoof-beats behind us grew suddenly louder.

  The fire was fading from the sky as we reached the gateway in the thorn hedge; the huddle of reed-thatched sleeping cabins and farm buildings about the church and wattle dining hall were dark against the fading brightness of the west, and the few wind-stunted apple trees of the monks’ orchard were pale and insubstantial clouds of blossom; and suddenly I thought of that other community over toward the sunset in the Island of Apples. The Brothers and the poor folk who had taken refuge with them had come crowding down to their gateway, save for whichever Brother it was who was still ringing the bell. Their hands reached out to us, their anxious faces were full of questioning; they called down blessings on us as we clattered through. They had brought a lantern with them, and by its light I saw the haggard face of a woman with a babe asleep at her shoulder, and that Brother Vericus the ancient Prior was crying.

  In the clear space between the ring hedge and the huddled buildings, I dropped from the saddle and pulled off my war cap. The others were dismounting all about me, clattering to a weary standstill, more than one of them swaying with the weakness of a wound. The sharp yellow gleam of the lantern was in my eyes, and people pressing about me, catching at my hands, or my knees, and I was aware of the tall spare figure of the Abbot moving toward me; aware that I was expected to kneel down for his blessing as I had done when we rode out. I wanted to get the wounded under cover, but I knelt down. Cabal lay beside me with a grunt.

  ‘How went the day, my son?’ He had a beautiful voice, like the bronze notes of the bell still floating out above us.

  ‘We burned their winter camp,’ I said. ‘There is one Saxon settlement the fewer to foul the grass, and this place may rest secure from the Barbarians, at least until the next thrust.’

  His hands were light as skeleton leaves on my head. ‘May the Grace of God be upon you. And may your shield, under His, be over all Britain, as it has been over us this day; and may you find His peace when the fighting is over.’

  But it was not the Grace of God that I wanted at that moment, it was salves and bandage linen and food for my men. I got to my feet again, slowly, for I was so tired that I could scarcely bear my own weight up from the ground. ‘Holy Father, I thank you for your blessing. I have wounded men with me – where may I send them for tending?’

  ‘Wounded men, alas, we had expected,’ he said. ‘All is ready for you in the hall; Brother Lucius, our Infirmarer, will go with you.’

  The drivers whom we had left behind with the baggage train were already busy with the horses, and some of the village men among them. I saw Arian lead off with my bronze and bullhide buckler clanking softly at the saddletree, then turned to the business of getting the wounded together. Gault, one of my best youngsters, had a long spear wound in the thigh, and slid half fainting into the arms of his friend Levin, who had ridden close beside him all the way; but the rest of us were able to walk, and we went up to the hall together. I had a gash in my sword arm – most of our scathes, as usual with horse soldiers, were in the sword arm, or in the thigh below the guard of the thick leather kilt – and it was still oozing red.

  In the hall they had hung extra lanterns from the rafters to see by, and pushed back the trestle table to make a clear space. There were small bundles of gear and possessions stacked within the doorway, easily to be caught up for a hurried flight. With the Sea Wolves so near, the Brothers and their refuging village folk had been prepared for flight when we came, and they had left all things ready in case the worst should happen after all.

  Those of us whose hurts were slight stood back against the wall while the more sorely scathed were tended. After the chill of the spring evening it was very warm in the hall, for they had lit a fire, to boil water and heat the searing iron. The smoke hung among the rafters and made drifting yellow wreaths around the lanterns; it grew hot, and there began to be a thick smell of salves and the sweating bodies of men in pain, and once or twice, when the searing iron cam
e into use, the sickening reek of scorched flesh. The first time the iron was used, it was on Gault, and the boy cried out, short and sharp as the scream of a hawk. Afterward he wept, but I think he wept because he had cried out, not for the pain.

  Brother Lucian, working with the sleeves of his habit rolled to the shoulder, and the shaven forepart of his head shining sweat-beaded in the lantern light, had two or three helpers, amongst them a young novice, whom I had noticed before. A yellow-haired overplump lad with a good straight pair of eyes, and a way of slightly dragging his left foot. Watching him now, somewhat anxiously at first, for he was so young that I doubted his skill, I saw that he knew what he was doing, and that he cared deeply for the doing of it. Once he glanced up and saw me watching him, but his eyes returned instantly to the work of his hands, without, I think, even being fully aware of mine. I liked the singleness of purpose in him.

  When it came to my turn, it so happened that the Infirmarer was still busy upon someone else, and the novice turned to me as I came forward to the table under the lanterns. I was just going to pull off the clotted rag, but he stayed me, with the authority of a man who is about his own trade.