The Mark of the Horse Lord

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘One more.’ He had already risen heedless of protests, and begun to strip off his necklaces and arm-rings, when he heard the dry tones of Sinnoch the Merchant, who had ridden in that day with his last reserves of horses, and turned to meet the faintly amused gaze under the horse-trader’s wrinkled lids. ‘If this were a war-trail, I would bide quiet in the shadows, as befits a man of peaceful ways – seeing also that I am but half-born to the tribe and carry no warrior patterns on my skin. But since it is no more than a hunting trail after all – will you take me for a fourth? I can still move with less noise than a boar, and I know these hills maybe somewhat better than the rest of you.’

  ‘The smuggling of mares has its uses,’ Phaedrus said. ‘Come then, and show us the way, peaceful merchant man.’

  And so in a little while, the four hunters stood ready to set out, each with the dirk in his belt for his only weapon, each stripped to the waist, his face and body daubed with fire-black over the blurred war-paint, and everything that could betray them by fleck of light or jink of sound laid aside. And already, in the light of the Council fire, they seemed to have become shadows; nothing quite distinct about them save for the eyes of the cat on Conory’s shoulder that caught the flame-light and shone like two green moons.

  ‘We are ready? Then good hunting to us all,’ Phaedrus said; and the other three caught it up and answered him:

  ‘Good hunting to us all.’

  Sinnoch the Merchant soon proved his value, for it seemed that he did indeed know these hills as other men know the ways of their own steading-yard. They fell in with no Caledonian picket or scouting band and not much more than a Roman hour by Phaedrus’s reckoning, after setting out, they were crouched among the furze and bilberry-covers above Craeg Dhu, the Black Crag, peering down at the watch fires of the Caledones. Fifty fires at least, Phaedrus reckoned, covering all the great out-thrust shoulder of the hill-side; and if one allowed for the usual count of fifty men to a fire . . .

  ‘There’s always the chance that they have spread the men more thinly, to make us believe them stronger than they are,’ Conory murmured.

  ‘It could be. There is no telling from here. I am going in for a closer look.’

  ‘I also.’

  ‘You also – and Baruch. You are not called the Grass-Snake for nothing, Baruch. Get across to the far side yonder, and see what chance an attack might stand by way of the eastern scarp. Sinnoch, let you bide here. It is best that one should stay, lest we need warning of danger, or a diversion making for us. At worst, someone to carry word of what has happened to us back to Gault.’

  ‘Have a care, then – remember that they may have dogs. Remember also that there will be watchers posted beyond sling-range of the camp.’

  ‘Sa, sa, all this we will remember. Do you remember to keep your eyes and ears open for any threat behind us. Give us a vixen’s scream for a danger signal, if need be.’

  And with the words scarcely spoken, Phaedrus was creeping forward again, Conory close behind him, and the little striped shadow that was Shân slipping ahead through the bilberry cover. Baruch had already disappeared.

  The furze thickened as they dropped lower, so that soon, instead of crouching from clump to clump, they were belly-crawling by narrow winding ways among the furze roots, oozing forward, hand’s length by hand’s length, every sense on the stretch for danger; but no warning cry came, no sudden leap of spearman or fanged war-dog. In the end it seemed as though it was the furze itself that would stop them; an impenetrable wall of furze, black-dark in the light of the moon that had begun to rise. Only, as they cast about for a way through, the smell of dog-fox led them to the mouth of a fox-run almost hidden among root-tangle and spiney branches, at which Shân arched her back and spat, before flowing forward into it like a liquid shadow. The two men followed her. The run seemed very long, and the stink of it came up into Phaedrus’s throat and almost choked him; but just as he began to feel that it must go on for ever, it curved sharply downhill and he caught a glint of fire-light at the end of it, and a little later found open ground before him, and one of the picket fires scarcely a spear-throw away.

  He froze instantly, putting back a foot to warn Conory behind him. He felt the other’s touch on his ankle in answer, and a few moments later Conory was oozing up beside him, with infinite caution parting a spy-hole for himself among the furze stems. Shân was crouching between them, and he felt the tense flick of her tail tip against his neck; but she would make no move on her own account, not when she was hunting with Conory.

  Crouching shadow-still in the furze, Phaedrus scanned the men about the picket fire for any sign of sleepiness, but they were awake and watchful, leaning on their spears and staring into the night. Well, he could see enough from here . . .

  Not much out of sling-range from where they lay, Bruide’s warriors had piled a breastwork of stakes and uprooted thorn-bushes across the open hill-shoulder, and drawn up their chariots just beyond, though clearly their chief defence on that side was the furze itself; while on all other sides they were protected by the steep drop to the glen woods and the river below. The Caledones had taken to themselves a magnificent defensive position, and Phaedrus cursed inwardly as he realized the hopelessness of any direct attack. The whole strong-place lay clear in the mingled white-and-ruddy light of moon and fires – and why not? he thought furiously; the People of the Cailleach had no need to hide their strength, and they would be knowing well enough that even from the edge of the furze, if any of the Dalriads should get so far, they were out of sling-range. Gods! for one Company of the Syrian Archers such as he had seen often enough ride through Corstopitum!

  He could see now that the number of fires had been no bluff; the broad hill-shoulder just below him was aswarm with men; men sleeping with their shields for pillows, men wakeful and leaning on their spears. He could hear one man call to another, the whinny of a tethered horse from the chariot line, the ding of hammer on field anvil where the smiths laboured to repair war-gear broken in that day’s fighting; the ceaseless, restless stir and lowing of captured cattle. In the midst of all, beside the Great Fire, the Royal Fire, two furze-built bothies stood close together under the grim stag-skull battle standard of Bruide the King. As he strained his eyes towards them, a tall figure rose from beside the fire and crossed to one of the bothies, then turned an instant in the door-hole, to look up at the dark hill as though aware of eyes watching her out of the furze cover. At that distance, and muffled in the folds of a cloak, there would have been no saying if it were man or woman; not even the gleam of barleypale hair in the fire-light told who it was, since among the Caledones as well as the Dalriads, many of the young warriors bleached their hair. But it was as though hate lent wings to Phaedrus’s vision, and he knew Liadhan the She-Wolf as surely as though she stood within hands’ reach of him. He had thought that he knew about hate before, but he had never known the kind of hate that gathered somewhere in the dry hollow of his belly as he watched; sharp and piercing hate for Midir’s sake, and for Murna’s, as well as a broader hate that was for the sake of the tribe. It seemed to go out from him through the fire-lit camp to reach her at the heart of it, so that it was small wonder she turned as at a touch, and stood so long staring out and up into the darkness . . .Then she turned again and went into the bothy.

  Phaedrus became aware of Shân crouched against his forward-thrust arm, and felt the little wicked currents running through her, and her fur lifting as she caught the hate from him. He felt a touch on his shoulder, a light backward pressure of Conory’s hand that meant ‘back, now’. Well, they had seen what they came to see, and to wait on, so near to one of the pickets would only be to bide looking for needless trouble. Yet everything in him revolted at the thought of crawling back up that stinking foot-run, and carrying the bitter word to the waiting War Host that to attack the Caledones’ chariot-ring would only be to fling themselves on inevitable disaster; that nothing could come at the enemy up the sheer rocks of Black Crag or through that bl
ack tide of furze on a slope that was beyond even the chariot horses.

  And then almost in the same instant, two things happened. Out of the dead stillness that had made the air seem thick to breathe all day, a soft breath of wind came siffling down the glen, wind that came, for the first time in many weeks, from the west. And quite suddenly, as though of its own accord, his mind said, ‘Fire could.’

  For a long moment he made no response to Conory’s warning touch, while the long, soft breath died away, and another starting far up the glen, came hushing towards them through the furze. There was a stillness in him like the stillness of revelation. Tuathal the Wise had told him once that it felt like that when the God spoke to you. After the summer drought, the furze and parched grass and the thin scrub that wooded the glen floor would burn like touchwood, and with even a light wind behind it, the fire would spread with the speed of stampeding cattle . . .

  He yielded at last to the touch on his arm, and slid backward from the mouth of the fox-run. Conory waited an instant to slip the end of the leash coiled about his wrist through Shân’s collar, and then came after. It seemed hours before at last they found space to turn round, hours more before they were heading up through the tongues and runnels of the looser furze, towards the place where they had left Sinnoch on watch.

  Baruch the Grass-Snake had arrived a few moments before them, but none of them spoke any word until all four were well clear, and halted in a little hollow of Ben Dornich well on their way back towards Dun Dara. Then Phaedrus broke the silence at last, speaking quickly and at half-breath – even here there was no point in making more sound than need be. ‘There must be well above two thousand of them still in fighting shape, and from the place where Conory and I lay hid, there was no sign of any possible way of reaching them, even supposing that we could gather up enough men for an attack. How was it from your side, Baruch?’

  ‘The same, what with the hill scarp and that black tide of furze, a few hundred could hold it easily against our number.’

  ‘So. Then what now, my children?’ Sinnoch’s voice was dry and crackling as autumn leaves.

  A small silence took them, and in it something made Phaedrus look round at Conory. His face was in black moon shadow, but the angle of his head told Phaedrus that the Captain of his Companions had turned to look at him also. After a few moments, he said softly, ‘Are you thinking what I am thinking?’

  ‘I am thinking that after this dry summer, the whole countryside would burn like a torch if one of those camp fires – or even our own, up on the short grass of Dun Dara – should chance to get out of control.’

  ‘Fire!’ Baruch whispered.

  And the little wind freshened through the long hill-side grass.

  ‘Or if a man chanced to drop, say, a burning twig into a grass tussock,’ Sinnoch said reflectively.

  Phaedrus nodded. ‘Where men cannot go, fire can,’ and felt the quickening attention of the other three. ‘A while ago, it was flat calm, but now there’s this small wind rising – and from the west! A wind that’s a gift from the Gods. If we fire the hillsides, up-valley, say about where the westernmost burn comes down from Ben Dornich, it will be on them almost before they know it.’

  ‘The captured cattle are corralled on the western side,’ Baruch said. ‘They’ll stampede, across the camp.’

  ‘Surely, and on down the glen, and with our own riders to help the fires along and deal with any breakaways, that should even the odds against us somewhat. At the least, it will clear them from Black Crag.’

  ‘Forest fire is like a wild beast on a chain,’ Sinnoch said, ‘not to be let loose lightly.’

  ‘So long as the wind holds from this quarter, we are safe; and the Firth will serve for a fire-break,’ Conory put in.

  ‘And if the wind changes again?’

  ‘Baruch,’ Phaedrus said, ‘will the wind change again before dawn? No, before tomorrow’s noon?’

  The little man was silent a moment, while they all watched him, his head cocked, his delicately twitching nose seeming, as it were, to finger the breeze. Then he shook his head. ‘Before noon it will have died away, but it will not go round. And I think it will not die before it has had time to do its work.’

  ‘Sa. Have you ever known Baruch mistake the wind?’ Phaedrus said. ‘We must pray to Lugh Shining Spear that he does not begin now.’

  Baruch, who could be a fiend incarnate in time of fighting, but was oddly gentle before and after, said, ‘Forest fire moves with the speed of a galloping horse. There’ll be wounded among them down there in the chariot-ring, some too sore hurt to get away.’

  ‘Would the Caledones hold their hands if the thing were the other way on?’ Phaedrus said ruthlessly. ‘If they have wounded, then their sword brothers must do for them what we have done for our own, before now.’ For in case of a forced retreat, the Dalriads had always knifed their own wounded to save them from the mercy of the enemy. Let the Caledones save their own wounded in the same way from the mercy of the fire. He looked round at the other three in the moonlit hollow. ‘I know what kind of wild beast fire is when one loosens it from the chain. I know it’s a wicked weapon we’ll be using, and a wicked hazard we’ll run in the using of it, but save for making the Caledones a free gift of Earra-Ghyl, is there any other way?’

  ‘No,’ Conory said after a moment, ‘there is no other way.’

  ‘Sa; and no moment to spare. Baruch, you are the swiftest runner of us all. Back with you to Dun Dara. Tell Gault what we have seen in the Caledones’ camp, and the thing we have to do, and bid him turn out every man who can still keep astride a horse and every horse that can still put one foot before another, and send three-fourths of them to meet me in the alder woods where the Westernmost burn comes down from Ben Dornich, and himself take the remaining fourth part across the river and down the north bank to the same point. And bid him also to see that five men of his band and ten of mine carry fire-pots under their cloaks.’

  Baruch was already crouching up with a foot under him. ‘Any other word, my Lord Midir?’

  ‘Bid him ride as though the Wild Hunt were on his tail. These summer nights are short, and we must set the fire upon them before the chariot-ring is astir at dawn, and be ready to throw in our attack the moment they break before the fire.’

  ‘I will tell him.’

  There was the faintest whisper of sound in the long grass, lost almost instantly in the soughing of the little west wind. And only the shadow of a furze bush in the moonlight, where Baruch the Grass-Snake had been.

  Phaedrus turned back to the other two. ‘We’ve a longish wait before us. Might as well be making up towards the meeting place, ourselves; at least up there we’ll be able to move freely without fear of a Caledonian scouting party on our necks, and we can be filling in some of the time gathering dry grass and branches for torches.’ He grinned at Conory. ‘I was wrong when I said we had already thrown in our last weapon; we’re throwing it in now.’

  17

  THE PROTECTION OF ROME

  BY NOON, THE west wind had died into the grass, and the white heat-haze danced again over the glen, over the silence and desolation that had been Glen Croe. The last weapon had done its work. The whole valley was reddened and blackened, the acrid smitch still rising here and there among the charred snags of furze and birch and alder, dead men and horses and cattle, and the jagged wreck of chariots. All across the mouth of the glen and up the Firth shore to its head, lay the same trail of dead and broken things, for the coracles beached where the glen ran down to the shore, had served to take off only the merest handful of the War Host, little more than a bodyguard for the wild and raging woman who had been Liadhan the Queen. And for the rest, there had been the desperate, broken retreat up to the head of the Firth, and the river ford. The dead and broken things lay thickest of all about the ford; some were scattered even on the farther side.

  Dead of the Dalriads among the many more dead of the Caledones. Conall and Diamid lay a little way below Black Crag
, shoulder touching shoulder as they had fought, and in the mouth of the glen the women, gleaning for wounded among the slain, had found Sinnoch the Merchant: Sinnoch who had never been a warrior, who had been killed, like more than one warrior with Caledonian war-paint on his face, not by enemy iron, but by the stampeding cattle. Maybe that was why his dead face had worn a look of wry amusement as though at a bad jest, when they turned him over.

  Where the slain lay thickest by the river ford, the stag-skull standard with saffron tassels torn away, propped drunkenly against an alder-tree with its bronze-tipped tines entangled in the branches, marked where King Bruide had turned with his Companions – those that were left of them – to cover the retreat of his tattered War Host. Presently, Phaedrus thought, they must raise a grave mound for him and his swordbrothers, when the death fires for their own fallen were burned out. The wolf and the raven could have the rest.

  Sitting his borrowed roan beside Conory on a little out-thrust nab of the hill-side, he looked down at that scene by the ford, and drove one clenched hand into the palm of the other with sudden baffled fury. ‘That is the second time! Bruide was a king worth the name, and he’s food for the ravens, this noon – while she . . .’ His voice strangled in his throat with loathing.

  Conory sitting oddly crooked on his own horse, said, ‘There will be a third time.’ And something, a kind of tightness in his voice, made Phaedrus look round. He saw the drawn expression about the other’s mouth, but connected it almost without thought, with the loss of Shân, for the wildcat had gone into battle with her lord as usual, and that was the last that anyone had seen of her – and his own fury claimed him again.

  ‘It looks like it, doesn’t it? She’ll be half across to Baal’s Beacon by now, while we sit here waiting for the word of the scouts. I was wrong; we should have pushed straight on—’

  ‘You were not wrong. To have hunted tired hounds blindly into those no-man’s hunting-runs would have been moon madness. At least the halt will give us a while to rest and bait the horses and put something into our empty bellies that may make us feel less like ghosts ourselves.’ Conory laughed. ‘I can smell the fat smell of cooking-fires: they do say that captured bullock meat tastes ever the sweetest.’