The Mark of the Horse Lord

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘Greeting to you, Midir of the Dalriads. You wish to speak with me across the Green Branch?’

  Phaedrus spoke for the benefit of the sentries, in Latin very much purer than their own. ‘Greeting to you, Commander. Did the mare make a good hunting-pony?’

  The dark eyes suddenly alerted in the soldier’s face, and he leaned forward across the breastwork. ‘I have seen you before?’

  ‘More than a year ago. I have somewhat changed, maybe.’ Phaedrus, meeting the questioning stare that had no recognition in it, was sharply aware of that change, the fine bronze-hilted dirk at his side, the tattooed device that was almost like a four-petalled flower on his forehead, half hidden by the blurred traces of war-paint, the great knotted scar that made havoc of one side of his face. ‘I was a pack-driver of Sinnoch the Merchant’s, and you were Captain of a troop of Frontier Wolves. Quick promotion, Commander.’

  ‘So-o, I remember. And now you are King of the Dalriads? Quick promotion, my Lord Midir; but by the look of you it did not come without fighting.’

  ‘It did not come without fighting. When we last met, I was on my road north to win back the kingship that Liadhan, my father’s half-sister, robbed me of when he died. I have fought for it; and many others fought with me, to free Earra-Ghyl from the She-Wolf. And we had the victory. But she escaped to the Caledones, and brought war between them and us, and now that her welcome among them grows thin, she escapes again, to take refuge under the shadow of the Eagles.’

  ‘It is a good story, but what has it to do with me?’

  ‘It has this to do with you, that you hold the She-Wolf even now within your gates, and I come to demand her return.’

  The dark gaze flickered over the little band of tattered and grey-weary riders. ‘You should bring a greater War Host with you when you come demanding to the gates of a Roman fort.’

  ‘There will be more of us in a while and a while,’ Phaedrus said with cool affrontery.

  ‘Then demand again, when you have enough men behind you to back your demand.’

  ‘You refuse, then?’

  ‘I refuse to hand over, merely because some usurping adventurer bids me, a Queen who has thrown herself upon the protection of Rome.’

  Rage rose scalding as vomit into Phaedrus’s throat, and he swallowed it, knowing that an angry swordsman was too often one with the edge of his skill blunted. ‘I am no usurper!’ (He had quite forgotten that that was exactly what he was.) ‘I am my father’s only son. This woman seized the rule, even as I told you, when he died. She would have had me slain, but that I – escaped – and for seven years she has ruled my people unlawfully and according to ways that were hateful to them. Therefore they rose against her at last, and I – came back to lead them. Does that make me the usurper?’

  ‘It was not so that the Queen told it,’ said Titus Hilarion.

  ‘Would she be likely to come to you for shelter with the truth – that truth – on her tongue?’

  ‘Maybe not.’ The Fort Commander settled his elbows on the parapet and leaned forward conversationally. ‘But even supposing that every word of this tale of yours is true, why trouble to hound her farther? You have your kingship back. She does not stand between you and the Sun. And myself, I’d say vengeance was inclined to be a waste of time.’

  ‘While she lives she is the Shadow of Death over the Dalriads.’ (No use to say, ‘You do not know her as you did not know Cartimandua, a hundred years ago. You do not know that if you keep her, you will listen to her, and as sure as there is thunder coming, you will find yourselves marching north one day to set her back in the Royal Seat, and believing that the peace of the Frontier depends on it.’ You could only say, ‘She is the Shadow of Death over the Dalriads,’ and leave it at that.)

  The Commander straightened from the breastwork, and stood looking down at the horsemen below him, his mouth turning straight and hard. ‘All that is nothing to Rome. Let the tribes beyond the Pale fight out their own feuds. The Queen has appealed to the protection of Rome, and until the Legate bids me give her up to you, I shall not do so. Is it understood?’

  There was a long silence, and in the distance a low mutter of thunder quivered along the skyline.

  Then Phaedrus said, ‘It is understood,’ and dashed the wayfaring branch to the ground. He brought the mare round in a plunging turn, snorting from the savage jab of his heel, and the bit tearing at her mouth. ‘Away!’

  There was no more talking to be done.

  18

  THE WHISTLER IN THE DARK WOODS

  GUIDED BY OLD Vron they holed up for the night in a shallow valley, where a burn that had barely enough water to cover its stones wound out through the low-lying forest to join Baal’s River on its way past Theodosia to the Firth of Cluta. And at dusk Phaedrus and the old fore-rider cut southward through the woods and marshes to the coast, and worked their way in for a closer look at the seaward side of the place. Theodosia had been a great Naval Station once, in the time of Agricola when the patrol galleys had come and gone as regularly as shuttles in a loom, up and down the Firth of Cluta; and the size of the old fort crouched on its crag above the empty docks and weed-grown slipways told its own tale of past power. Now, clearly, it was no more than an outpost fort for the Northern Wall, but strong, still. Phaedrus doubted bitterly whether there would be much that they could do against it, even when Gault brought up what was left of the War Host. And as he watched the towering rock mass turn black and menacing against the coppery sunset far across the pale waters of the Firth, where the low shore-line of Valentia lay like a bank of mist, a beacon fire sprang up from the Roman Signal Station. Theodosia might be far from the nearest fortress on the Wall, but it was in close touch across the water.

  Back in the glen where the hobbled ponies had lain themselves down too tired even to graze, the war band had made a fire. The Red Crests would know well enough that they had not simply ridden out of the district, so it seemed best to make no pretences at secrecy. They ate the last of the meat, which by now was stinking. Tomorrow and the next day they could keep going on the strips of smoked deer-meat and the last of the stir-about. After that, if the thing still dragged on, they would have to turn hunter – in a countryside that looked to have been long since hunted all but bare by the Red Crests.

  Now Phaedrus sprawled on one elbow by the fire, his thoughts ranging loosely, as the thoughts of a man will when he is too tired to keep them on any one thing. Faces came and went through his mind: Murna’s, and Conory’s, and Sinnoch’s dead face with that look of wry amusement as though at a bad jest; the dark face under the horsehair crest looking down at him from the ramparts of Theodosia . . . Sinnoch had said that he would command a fort before he was thirty, unless he was dead in a bog or broken for going too much his own way. But it was odd to see him again like this – as though the strange past year were coming full circle back to its starting-place again. Some pattern being completed, each loose end carefully secured as it was finished with, as the women fastened off each colour as it was done with, at the end of a pattern on the loom. And then he thought of Murna’s face again, and the way her hair smelled when it was wet . . .

  Midway between sleeping and waking, he heard something – a little plaintive whistling among the trees below the camp that might almost be the call of some night bird; almost, but not quite. Still half asleep, he cocked a listening ear. And as he listened, the whistling came again. It was the five-note call that he and Midir had used as a signal to each other in that shared month in the Onnum cock-loft!

  Now he was wide awake and listening with every nerve in his body. The call came again, softly insistent, and the faces of the others in the fire-light told him that they heard it too. Finn’s hand was stealing to his dirk, and he was up on one knee; others were making the same move. ‘Spy!’ somebody whispered.

  Phaedrus sprang to his feet. ‘Fools! Would a spy come whistling so near our fire. That is a call – and for me.’

  ‘Whose call?’ Dergdian demanded tersely
.

  ‘A friend’s – or a friend’s ghost.’

  ‘Leave it alone, Lord.’ Brys’s face was sharp with sudden fear for his Lord. ‘It is not healthy to answer such calls!’

  And Old Vron grunted in agreement. ‘The boy is in the right of it – I remember when I was a young man—’

  But Phaedrus was away, heading down the slippery grass slope that dropped away into the trees. Ahead of him, the call sounded again, farther off, as though whoever – whatever – it was that called had heard him coming and moved back. It was a dark night, seeming all the darker for the brief flicker of lightning from time to time far off among the hills, the old moon not yet risen, and a thin thunder-wrack covering the stars; and once among the trees, Phaedrus could scarcely see his hand before his face. These were no thin birch and hazel woods such as those of Earra-Ghyl, but the dense black fleece of forest that covered all the low country from the great hills of Valentia northward into the unknown; damp-oak forest, thicketed with yew and holly, and on the north skirts of the hills the tall, whispering pines. An ancient forest that seemed to Phaedrus to be watching with hostile eyes that could see in the dark like Shân’s. Low-hanging branches whipped his face, and time and again he blundered into a tree-trunk or stumbled into a hole left by the up-torn roots of some long-fallen giant; and always, whenever he checked to listen, the call came again, as far ahead as ever. It was leading him farther and farther from the camp. But he had no doubts – whether it was by some strange and almost unbelievable chance, Midir ahead of him, or Midir’s ghost, this following through the dark woods was some part of the pattern that was being worked out.

  The slope of the land had levelled out beneath his feet, and he could hear the small drought voice of the burn very close in the darkness; and at last he came out on to the bank just where it spread into a chain of pools and the tail of the last pool ran out into Baal’s River.

  It was at that moment that he suddenly knew that the whistler was no longer far ahead, but close beside him. It was no sound or movement, just the sense of somebody there in the darkness, within arm’s reach of him. He whipped round, and in doing so caught his foot in an arched root, and almost pitched headlong down the bank. He recovered himself, cursing under his breath, and something that was only a denser darkness moved close by, and he heard the merest breath of a laugh.

  ‘A blind man has the advantage in the dark.’

  ‘Midir! Is it you indeed? – or your ghost?’

  ‘Did you think it might be my ghost, then?’

  ‘I – was not sure.’

  ‘Yet you came.’

  ‘I came.’

  Hands came out of the darkness and fastened on his shoulders in the old familiar way; and they were warm and strong with life, as Phaedrus put his own up to cover them. ‘Feel. No ghost,’ Midir said.

  After the first few moments, their meeting again had slipped into place so that Phaedrus felt it to be something not at all surprising, that had simply been waiting for them in the future, until the time came for it to happen. He still did not know whether he liked Midir, and he still knew that that did not matter, that far down at the root of things, they belonged together, as though perhaps they had been meant to come into the world as one person and had somehow got split up and come into it as two.

  He said, ‘But I do not understand. How do you come to be here?’

  ‘You were easy enough to follow from the fort – I heard the way you went, and that gave me the start of the trail. Tired horses smell strong, and I had the smoke of your fire to guide me the last part of my way.’

  ‘Sa, that I see, but I was meaning, how do you come to be north of the Wall?’

  ‘My old master died, and still needing to eat now and then, I set out to find work for myself. Also I’d a mind to gain tidings if I could, of how this matter of the Horse Lord went, after we had taken so great pains with it. I came to Theodosia. There is always a welcome for a good leather-worker, wherever the Red Crests are. They were glad to see me in these parts.’ Midir’s tone changed. ‘And you? You are the Horse Lord sure enough – ach, I know: news travels on the wind in these parts. Beside, if the thing had gone against you, you would have been unpleasantly dead long before this, instead of standing here under my hands . . . But it seems that you have not yet taken my vengeance for me, as you promised.’

  ‘I will take it yet,’ Phaedrus said.

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe I will take it for myself, after all.’ There was a cold lingering softness in his voice that made something crawl in Phaedrus’s belly. But when Midir spoke again, his voice sounded as usual. ‘But I am wasting time, when there is little enough to spare. Listen, Phaedrus. The Fort Commander has sent word to the Signal Station across the Firth – the boat went at dusk. He has asked for a swift rowing-galley and an escort from the Wallsend Fort. And on tomorrow’s night-tide, they will send her across into Valentia.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Now you sound like a Red Crest. The British town that huddles under a fort generally knows more than the Fort Commander supposes.’

  Phaedrus was silent a moment, then he burst out, ‘Fiends and Furies! I had hoped that they would at least have held her until some word came from the Legate or the Governor!’

  ‘It is in my mind that the Commander, Titus Hilarion, seeks to get her away quickly lest the Frontier goes up in flames with her still on his hands.’

  Phaedrus was watching the pale swirl of the water. ‘The thing that is clear beyond all else,’ he said at last, ‘is that Liadhan must never set foot on board that galley.’

  ‘How many spears are there with you?’

  ‘Three-score, more or less.’

  ‘Not enough. Where is the rest of the War Host?’

  ‘Not at home eating honey-cakes!’ Phaedrus was up in arms on the instant to defend his own. ‘Dead, a good few of them. All summer we have been fighting; did that word not reach you? Three days since, we fought – aiee! quite a battle, and after, I could scarcely find three-score fit to bestride a horse, to ride this trail with me. Gault is bringing on all that he can raise, so soon as they and the horses can tell night from day, but flesh and blood is flesh and blood, for all the heart that’s in it. I doubt that they can be here for two days yet!’

  Midir said softly, ‘Yes! I was right, I was right! Assuredly you are the Horse Lord, Phaedrus, my brother.’

  ‘At all events I sometimes catch myself believing that I am.’ For an instant memory flickered up in Phaedrus, of the little Dark Chieftain and his magic. ‘Do you think that I am not the Horse Lord?’ he had said; and the little man had replied:‘I do not know. But when you see that feather again, you will be.’ But it was gone at once, leaving no more trace than the golden plover’s feather in the narrow dark hand.

  For a long moment there was no sound between them save the liquid running of the burn and the small night-time stirrings of the forest.

  Then Phaedrus said abruptly, ‘For the thing that must be done, I am thinking that one man might stand a better chance than a whole War Host.’

  ‘Two men, anyway,’ Midir said, and from his tone, Phaedrus knew that he had been thinking along the same lines.

  ‘Two?’

  Another silence. Then Midir broke it, speaking in short quick bursts with long pauses between, as though he were thinking the thing out as he went along. ‘Listen now; this could be the way of it. The galleys will not put in until well after dark and if they will wait for dark to put in, that can only mean that they intend sailing again before dawn. At dusk, you must send in—’ He checked. ‘Have you a good dirk-thrower with you?’

  Phaedrus’s mind had caught the direction now. ‘One or two,’ he said, and then, ‘One, at least.’

  ‘Sa; at dusk, then, send him in. In the general run of things, they do not keep guards down there; there’s not much to guard, in empty galley sheds and broken-down jetties, and they’d find it none so easy if they tried, with the town spreading into the dockyard all along the north
ern edge of the harbour and the fisherfolk storing their nets in the ruins, and no man to say where one begins and the other ends. But it is in my mind they’ll have a guard posted tomorrow night!’

  ‘And how does our dirk-thrower get through?’

  ‘Ach – I leave that to you – to him. Choose a man who is used to stalking game, and he’ll find a way through.’

  ‘So. And then?’

  ‘There’s only one way down the rock on the seaward side – very steep – so steep at the bottom that it ends in a wooden stair. They must bring her that way; even the Red Crests would not be fool enough to take her out by the Praetorian Gate and half-circle round through the town. There are the remains of store-sheds and the like close up to the stair foot on the north side – good enough cover, well within knife range. Let your man lie up there, and when she comes to the foot of the stair – they are bound to have a torch or two to light her down – that will be the time for him to throw – and to pray that he throws straight!’

  There was a little silence; and in the midst of the silence, somewhere away in the trees, the small, sharp sound of a snapping twig.

  The two froze as they stood, hearts suddenly racing. ‘What was that?’ Phaedrus whispered, and the other’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

  ‘Listen.’

  For what seemed an hour, they stood listening, every nerve on the stretch. But there was nothing more to hear but the little night-time rustlings and sighings of the woods behind them. At last Midir let his breath go with a little sigh. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I will be going to make sure.’

  ‘How?’ Midir said.

  No, there was no way of making sure – and no need, he had heard such little, sharp, unexplained sounds often before now. ‘The dry summer has made the forest noisy with dead twigs.’

  They listened a moment longer, all the same, then returned urgently to the point where they had broken off.

  ‘I’d not say it was a good plan,’ Phaedrus said, ‘but it’s possible, and I can’t think of a better. It has one sore spot in it, though – it will be death to the man with the dirk.’