Sword at Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Silence hung between us for a long tight-drawn moment, and then he gave his plump shoulders a little jerk, as though to straighten them, and I thought I saw beneath the pouchy lines of his face something of the fighting man he had been in his youth. I should not have to fear for the land between the Abus River and the Metaris after I was gone. ‘Then it seems that there is no more to be said.’

  ‘Something more – I want four hundred of your men to march north with me.’

  I thought his eyes would start clean from his head. ‘Roma Dea! Man, man, you have upward of a hundred of my best warriors sucked into the circle of those Companions of yours at this moment! And you must have had as many more through the years! What further would you have?’

  ‘Four hundred, of their own choosing and mine, to go with me as auxiliaries, as spearmen and archers on this campaign. There will be – I have told you before – no more trouble with the Sea Wolves for this year at least; and when the autumn’s fighting is over, and Earl Hengest safely out of Eburacum, I will send them back to you.’

  ‘Those that are left of them.’

  ‘Those that are left of them.’

  ‘And meanwhile, no man, not even you, my most war-wise Count of Britain, can say for sure what the Sea Wolves will do, for they are as unpredictable as the winds that bring them to our shores; and my fighting strength will not stand the loss of four hundred men.’

  I cut in on him. ‘No man, not even you, my most wise Prince of the Coritani, knows more surely than I do what is your fighting strength and what loss it will stand.’

  The new strength in his face was gathering itself against me now. ‘It is enough for us to hold the Sea Wolves from our own pastures; why should I send my young men to fight in the Brigantes’ country?’

  Suddenly it was I who felt old and tired and helpless. ‘Because if we stand alone, state and princedom and tribal hunting run each within our own frontiers – state and princedom and hunting run, we shall fall one by one, each within our own frontiers. It is only if we can stand together that we shall drive the Saxons back into the sea.’

  I do not know how long we argued the thing; but it seemed a very long time. I think once he came near to offering me the whole four hundred, if I would return for another year when the autumn’s fighting was over, but by that time we knew each other well – and he thought better of that particular offer before it was spoken.

  In the end I did none so badly, for I came away with the grudging promise of two hundred, on my oath on Maximus’s great seal that they should indeed come back when the fighting for Eburacum was ended.

  The mist had crept up from the lower town, scented with wood-smoke and sodden leaves, and was making a wet yellow smoke about the courtyard lantern as I passed out again into the street. The chill of it was on my own heart. How shall we stand against the Barbarian flood? What hope is there for us even for Ambrosius’s hundred years, if we cannot learn to stand together, shield to shield, across our own frontiers?

  The two days that followed were filled with the usual turmoil of a war host making ready for the march; rations and gear being issued and packed in the great leather-topped pack panniers, sheaves of arrows and spare weapons issued and checked, horses brought in from autumn pasture and fitted with new leather foot shackles, armor and war gear given a final overhaul to make sure that all was in perfect order; and all day and all night Lindum rang with the deep bell-clink of hammer on armorer’s anvil and the neighing of excited horses from the makeshift picket lines. During those two days also, there must have been many partings in and around the old fortress city. By this time upward of a hundred of the Companions were, as Guidarius had said, men from the Coritani, and many of the others had girls in the town. A few (God knows I had always tried to hold them back from that when I could) had married since we first made our headquarters there. Partings heavy with promises to come back one day, or send for the girl ... Partings taken lightly with a kiss and a bright new necklace and no promises at all ... Yet it was not all partings, for when we marched out at last, the strength of our baggage train was increased by twoscore or more of hardy girls, riding in the light carts that carried the mill and the field forge, or walking with a fine free swing, their skirts kilted to their knees, among the drivers and the laden pack ponies.

  It is not an ill thing for a war host to carry a few women with it, so that they be hardy and fierce enough to fend for themselves and not drag on the men; for their cooking has its uses, and their care can mean the difference between life and death to the wounded. The trouble, of course, with a few women among many men starts when several men desire the same girl at the same time, or when one man wants one especial girl for himself against all comers. That is when the Brotherhood starts to break. Dear God! That is when the Brotherhood starts to break. I let it be known through the war host that at the first whispering of trouble over the women to reach my ears, I should abandon the whole gaggle of them wherever we might happen to be. Then I let the matter rest.

  The young chieftain and the hunter who had brought me word of Hengest’s coming acted as our guides. For the first three days the hunter led us northwestward, by the road and then by looping marsh ways that followed the firm ground among the reedbeds and winding waters and thickets of thorn and sallows, where left to ourselves we should have been hopelessly lost within an hour, and where, even as it was, the horses were often fetlock deep in the dark sour-smelling ooze. One twilight we passed the burned-out remains of a Saxon settlement that had been our work in the previous year, and something – a wildcat, maybe – screamed at us from the ruins. After three days we began to pull up out of the marshes, into softly undulating country and low hills, where the wind over the dead heather made a sound that was harsh in our ears after the softer wind-song over the marshes that we had known so long. And on the fourth evening we struck the road from Lagentus to Eburacum and turned north along it. The hunter was out of his territory now, and turned back to his own hunting runs, and the young chieftain entering his own countryside took his place as guide.

  Two marches northward the road crossed a river by a broad paved ford, covered by one of the gray derelict guard posts that still stud the countryside. And there we met the Saxon war host under its white horsetail standards.

  Whether they had wind of our coming and were advancing to meet us, or whether they had thought to come down behind us in the old Lindum position and take us unawares, I do not know; nor does it matter now. We joined battle at first light of a squally October morning, the rain sweeping across the sodden wrack of last year’s bracken. They had the advantage of ground, their left flank on the soft ground by the river, their right guarded by dense thorn scrub. They outnumbered us badly, thanks to Guidarius, and the rain slackened our bowstrings, while of course it had no effect on the hideous little throwing axes with which many of them were armed. On our side we had the advantage of cavalry, which on that narrow front did no more than even the odds. By midday it was over; a small, wicked, bloody business. Neither of us gained the victory, and both were too badly mauled to fight again that year.

  Hengest and his war host fell back on Eburacum and we on Deva that men still call the City of Legions. It was an obvious choice for our winter quarters, with wide grazing behind us and the cornlands of Môn none so far away. But it cost us something to get there, and more than one of our wounded died on the road. We got through at last, none too soon, and rode into Deva in a full gale from the west and driving rain that was already turning the dried-out summer moors into oozing mosses; men and horses alike blind weary and on nodding terms with starvation. We were used to living on the country but among the mountains in October the living is not rich for man or beast.

  The young chieftain came with us, carrying a wounded shoulder, to see us well into the mountains, but would come no farther. His own village was scarce a day’s march eastward, he said, but when we came back in the spring, he would rejoin us. We gave him one of the pack beasts to ride, for he was weak with t
he wound; and he rode off on his different way from ours, turning once to wave from the skyline before his own hills hid him from view. I have wondered sometimes whether he reached his village. We never saw him again.

  chapter eight

  Wind from the North

  I DID NOT KNOW DEVA WELL, BUT THERE HAD ALWAYS BEEN friendly dealings between Arfon and the City of Legions; and I had been there once or twice when I was a boy, and again when we brought up the Septimania horses, and the last time only a few years since when I had seized the chance in an open winter for a flying visit to Arfon and Deva to see for myself how things went in the breeding and training runs, instead of sending Bedwyr or Fulvius in the spring, as I had done in other years. So now, as I heard Arian’s heavy hoofbeats crash hollow under the gate arch, I had a sudden sense of refuge and return to familiar things. And certainly it seemed that Deva remembered me. The people came running as we rode wearily up through the weed-grown streets toward the gray frown of the fortress; only a handful at first, then more and more as the word spread, until when we clattered in through the unguarded Praetorian Gate, half the city was running at our horses’ heels, calling greetings and shouting for news.

  In the gale-swept parade ground I dropped from Arian’s back, staggering as my cramped legs all but gave under me, and stood with a hand on the horse’s drooping rain-darkened neck, to look about me while the rest clattered in and dismounted likewise. I had thought that the old fortress might be already full of squatters from the city, but save for a few ragged ghosts that came spilling out from odd corners even as I watched, the place was as empty as the Legions had left it. The drift away to the country which was thinning most big cities nowadays had perhaps come about more swiftly at Deva, because Kinmarcus, who had no more liking for towns than had Cador, had gone back to make the capital of his little border princedom at the Dun of the Alderwoods where his forebears had ruled before the Eagles came. The town was dying in its sleep, as a worn-out old man dies; and meanwhile there was room to spare for everybody, and no need to spill uphill into the deserted fortress.

  Bedwyr and Cei were beside me, still holding their weary horses. Gwalchmai was busy among the mule carts as they rolled in with the wounded. ‘Get some of the barrack rows cleared out and the men under cover,’ I said. ‘We shall have to use some of the spare barrack rows and the main granary for the horses – there’ll not be stabling for above sixty; this place hasn’t been used since before the Legions took to cavalry.’ I turned on a soldierly-looking old man leaning on a finely carved staff, whom the townsfolk had made way for as for one in authority. ‘Old Father, do you command here?’

  His straight mouth twitched with sudden humor. ‘In these days I am never sure whether to claim the title of Chieftain or Chief Magistrate; but it is true that I command here, yes.’

  ‘Good. Then we need wood for the fires, food for ourselves and fodder for the horses. As you see, they are in no state to be turned out to graze at the present. Can your people manage that?’

  ‘We will manage that.’

  ‘Also fresh salves and linen for the wounded – the little man over there with the crooked foot will tell you what he wants, and whatever it is, for God’s sake give it to him.’

  ‘To the half of my kingdom,’ said the old man. He glanced about the throng of staring townsfolk, and changing his tone so that it might have been another man who spoke above the booming of the wind, quickly and without fuss called out this one and that and gave them their orders. Then as men and women scattered to do his bidding, he came, leaning on his staff, to stand beside me in the little shelter that the end of a barrack row gave from the driving rain. ‘It will be some time before the fodder can come, there is not so much fodder in Deva as will feed this number of horses, and we must send out to one or two of the big farms for it; but it will come.’

  ‘You are good hosts,’ I said, tugging at the thongs of my iron war cap and pulling it off.

  ‘Maybe we should be worse hosts to strangers, but are you not of the breed of the Lords of Arfon?’ (I smiled inwardly at the careful way that it was framed.) ‘And do not your brood mares graze as it were under our very walls? We count you as a friend – as Artos the Bear, before ever we remember you for Artorius, Count of Britain.’

  ‘It is a useful title. It gives me some kind of authority among the princes. But Artos the Bear has a more friendly sound.’

  Around me the Companions with the grooms and drivers were already hard at work. A starved-looking young priest had appeared from somewhere to help Gwalchmai with the wounded, and the weary horses were being led away. Amlodd, the cheerful freckle-faced lad who had taken Flavian’s place as my armor-bearer, came to take Arian from me, and I would have turned away about my own work, but the old man stayed me with a brief touch on my arm, his gaze following two of the Companions who stumbled past at that moment, supporting a third into the shelter of the nearest doorway. ‘You have been fighting and have come sorely out of the battle, and you will have other things to do tonight than tell the story; but remember, when you have the leisure, that we should be glad to know what has befallen – that is a matter which concerns us with the rest of Britain.’

  I said, ‘There is not much to tell – a drawn battle, south of Eburacum. But you can sleep tonight without fear of Saxon fire in the thatch. There’s no wolf pack on our heels ... Meanwhile there’s one thing more I need; one of your young men to saddle up and ride to the Dun of the Alderwoods with word for the Prince Kinmarcus that we are in his city and I would come to speak with him as soon as may be.’

  But I did not ride to the Dun after all, for three days later Kinmarcus himself rode in with a small band of hearth companions.

  We had been getting the best-recovered of the horses out to pasture, to ease the strain on the fodder situation, and I returned to the fortress to see him dismounting from a dancing wild-eyed pony mare on the parade ground before what had once been the officers’ block, while his men stood by with the carcasses of two red deer slung across the backs of a couple of ponies in their midst.

  He roared like a gale of wind when he saw me (a great voice he had for so small a man), and came to fling his arm around my shoulders as far up as he could reach. ‘Sa sa sa, my Bear Cub! It is sun and moon to my eyes to see you after this long while!’

  ‘And trumpets in my heart to hear you again, Kinmarcus my Lord!’

  He boomed with laughter. ‘The youngster brought me your word, that you were here in Deva and would come to speak with me; but I was for hunting in this direction, and so I but carried the trail a little farther, and here I am – with the fruits of my hunting for a guest-gift.’

  ‘A fine gift! We shall feast like heroes tonight!’

  He stood with his little legs straddled, and stared about him at my men and his own as they hauled away the carcasses for jointing, his bright masterful gaze disposing of them all in one sweep. ‘And meantime, while the feast is cooking, is there somewhere in this buzzing hornets’ nest where a man can talk with a chance of hearing his own voice without everyone else hearing it too?’

  ‘Come up onto the ramparts. We keep a lookout over each of the gates, but no pacing sentries between. We can talk in peace up there.’

  But when we had climbed the steps to the southwest corner of the rampart walk, he did not at once begin to talk of whatever it was that had brought him (for I was sure that, friends as we were, this was no mere friendly visit), but leaned beside me on the coping, looking away toward the mountains. The storms of the last few days had rained and blown themselves out; it was a day of broken light and drifting cloud shadow; and Yr Widdfa and his bodyguard of lesser heights stood clear, dark-bloomed with drifting shadows against the tumbled sky. It seemed to me, looking in the same direction, that the light wind that siffled across the ramparts brought with it the smell of the high snows, and the chill heart-catching scent of leaf mold the mossy north sides of trees that was the breath of the woods below Dynas Pharaon where I was bred. And then, as so
often happened when I turned toward my own mountains, it seemed that the whisper of peat smoke was on the same wind, and the aromatic sweetness of a woman’s hair. I wondered whether I had a son among those blue-shadowed glens and hidden valleys; a son seven years old, and trained in hate since first he sucked in the venom with his mother’s milk ... No, I did not wonder; I knew. One can feel hate at a distance, as one can feel love ... I caught back the scent of the woods below Dynas Pharaon, and clung to it in spirit as a man clings to a talisman in a dark place.

  I suppose I shivered, for Kinmarcus beside me laughed and said, ‘What is it? A gray goose flying over your grave?’

  ‘Only a cloud over the sun.’

  He glanced at me aside; it was a stupid thing to have said, for there was no cloud over the sun just then; but he did not press the thing further. ‘And now, let you tell me what has passed this autumn.’

  So it was to be my turn first. I told him. There was little enough to tell and the story was soon done.

  ‘And so you are come back here to Deva, to lick your wounds, and make your winter quarters.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘And what as to supplies?’

  ‘That was among my chief reasons for choosing Deva; the grazing ground for the horses, the Môn barley for us. I sent Bedwyr my lieutenant with the baggage carts and a small escort off to Arfon this morning, to get what he can. I’d have given them a few days’ longer rest, but with winter upon us, I daren’t. We can only pray to God, as it is, that they will get the grain through in time – and that the harvest has been good in Môn.’

  ‘And meanwhile?’

  ‘Meanwhile, we “live on the country.” I’ve paid your folk what I can. I can’t pay the fair price for our keep, there’s not enough in the war kist, there never is; and what there is goes mostly to the horse dealers and the armorers.’