The Mark of the Horse Lord

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Was Midir not there yet? Had something gone wrong? He whistled once again, and even as he did so, heard a stir of movement behind him. His hand was on his dirk but before he could whip round he felt a numbing blow on the back of his neck, and pitched forward into a darkness that buzzed and roared and was full of shooting-stars.

  It seemed to him that he never quite lost consciousness, but was aware of a vast army of hands dragging and wrenching at him, and hollow booming voices at a great distance all the while. But he was trapped in a kind of half consciousness like a swimmer trapped by weed below the surface of the water. He fought against it, heart hammering and blood roaring in his ears, and broke surface at last, to find that his hands were bound behind him and he was already being manhandled up the wooden stair. He began to struggle, and somebody struck him across the mouth with a hand that had a heavy ring on it, saying with a curse, ‘That’s enough of that!’ And he gave up struggling for the present. It was useless anyhow.

  So – he was in the hands of men from the fort. He had walked into a trap – fool and double fool that he was! But who had set the trap and who had sprung it? Confusedly, through the swimming and throbbing of his head, he remembered the stick that had snapped in the summer-dry forest!

  But who? – Who? That did not matter now; there was something else – someone— The sudden remembrance shot through him, bringing him back to full consciousness with a crash. If he had been betrayed, then so had Midir! Midir! What had become of Midir?

  As the little knot of Frontier Wolves, with Phaedrus stumbling in their midst, started up the steep track that ended at the Water Gate of Theodosia Fort, Midir was breaking out of the small, strong lock-up behind the main guardhouse.

  20

  THE HOSTAGE

  THE DECURION ON guard had ordered a small lamp to be left burning in a niche high on the lock-up wall, so that they could keep an eye on their prisoner through the grill in the door, for he seemed so crazily violent that he might be up to any lunacy. The Decurion had known such a man bite through his own wrists before now, and bleed to death under the noses of the guards, and he wasn’t taking any chances. The Commander had ordered the man to be kept close till morning and brought up for questioning again, and kept close and brought up for questioning, he was going to be.

  Midir, exploring his prison by smell and delicate sense of touch, had found the lamp within a hundred heartbeats of there being no more heavy breathing behind the bars of the door-squint. When he knew exactly where it was, so that he could reach it in an instant from any part of the cell, he began hammering on the door and yelling. Presently someone came and cursed him, and he quietened for a short while, and then returned to his hammering and shouting. As time went by, the shouts became a hoarse raging, rose above the nearing storm on a growing note of hysteria, a howling that sounded more like a rabid wolf than a man – and then fell suddenly and ominously silent.

  That silence fetched the Decurion at a hurried march, with one of the guards tramping behind him. When he looked through the grill, he saw the prisoner with the lamp in his hands, seemingly in the act of setting fire to his bedding straw. The Decurion shouted at him not to be a fool, cursed the Auxiliary for not having brought a torch, as he fumbled an instant with the padlock, and slammed up the door bar.

  At sound of the voice and the rattle of the key in the padlock, Midir turned a wild face towards the doorway, and seemed to hesitate. Then as the door crashed open and hobnailed feet pounded towards him, he pinched out the little flame and tossed the lamp aside, and springing up, side-stepped from the line of the suddenly stumbling rush.

  There was a startled shout, a curse, and then more feet. Two to one, but as he had said to Phaedrus, a blind man has the advantage in the dark. There were a few moments of chaos. Somebody pitched over his out-thrust leg, and crashing head foremost into the opposite wall, crumpled down it with a grunt. Midir’s hands found a man’s throat and closed on it, and his thumbs jabbed upward at the pulse under the angle of the jaw.

  Next instant he was outside, the door slammed behind him. He felt for and found the bar and dropped it into place. There was a groan and the sound of somebody retching their heart up, as he turned away in search of a hiding-place – a search in which a blind man did not have the advantage. However, he reckoned it would be a little while before there was any serious outcry from the lock-up to lead to the discovery of his escape.

  It would be too late to warn Phaedrus, but if he could escape recapture, there might be something he could do – he didn’t know what, but something – when they brought their second prisoner in. And even as he set off up what seemed to be an alleyway between high sounding buildings, a smother of voices and the clearcut orders of an officer sounded across the fort from the direction of the gate that gave on to the old water stair. And all was swallowed up in a whiplash crack of thunder and a long hollow booming as the storm that had circled them so long burst full overhead.

  He heard hurrying feet, men brushed past him, all going one way, tossing a word or a question from one to another, and he went with them, partly because he did not have much choice, partly because he guessed the meaning of the sudden stir, keeping his head well down, for somewhere not far off, he smelled the resin smoke of a pine-knot torch.

  To Phaedrus, sagging between his captors, in the open space inside the sea-gate, that clap of thunder seemed part of the dizzy roaring inside his own head. Vaguely, he was aware of torches, and the jink of torchlight on bronze, and faces pressing in, all eyes and mouths, and he was confronting the Duty Centurion. ‘So our friend in the fox-face hat was telling the truth!’ the Centurion was saying. ‘Bring him up to the Praetorian, the Commander wants a word with him.’ Then, rounding on the crowding Auxiliaries, ‘All right, you lot, get back to your barrack rows; there’s nothing more to see here.’

  A flash of lightning cut like a knife between earth and heaven, picking out every detail of the scene with a blue-white glare, and the thunder broke with a coughing roar, like the War Song of the wolfskin drums, as the onlookers began to melt away.

  But the Centurion was wrong, for as the white whip-crack of lightning came again, suddenly the challenge of the sentry sounded from the ramparts. ‘Who comes?’

  And a woman’s clear, scornful voice answered, ‘The Queen of the Dalriads.’

  And Phaedrus, wrenching round in the hands of his captors, saw in the white flicker that was now almost incessant, the tall triumphant figure of Liadhan standing at the head of the rampart stair, looking down at him. Strange to think that this was only the third time he had ever seen her. She had been so much part of his life, this past year . . . She seemed something that belonged to the storm; the lightning made a silver wild-fire of her hair, and the lightning was in her eyes. ‘I came to see this – this thing that would have called itself Horse Lord and King of the Dalriads in my stead; this thing that tonight would have slain me, who am the Goddess-on-Earth!’ And she laughed until her laughter was swallowed up in the echoing crash of the thunder.

  There was a moment of utter blackness, for after the lightning the flare of the torches was not so much light as a red flowering of the dark. And in the dark, Phaedrus sensed rather than saw something move in towards the foot of the rampart, and cast about oddly, like a hound seeking for a lost scent, until it came to the steps.

  It was half-way up when the Decurion of the Gate Guard saw it, and started forward, shouting, ‘Here! You—’

  The figure flung itself forward and up, and seemed to reach the rampart-walk at a bound. And in that instant the lightning flared again, and Phaedrus saw that it was Midir.

  Liadhan saw, too. Her eyes stared in her head, and her mouth opened to a cry. ‘Midir!’ But the name was blurred in her throat, and in the tumult and confusion of the storm, no one save Midir himself, and Phaedrus standing rigid in the grip of his captors, knew what name she cried.

  Midir spoke softly, bitterly mocking; and in the instant of prickling silence before the next thunderpeal
, every word came clear to those below. ‘Goddess-on-Earth, it was not wise to cry out,’ and sprang towards her. She flinched back and turned to run, with death close at her heels.

  The instant’s stillness exploded into action. Men were running from all directions. The Commander’s voice cut through the tumult. ‘Spear! Bring him down!’ A flung spear missed the blind man by a thumb’s breadth and thudded into the rampart timbers – but it was scarcely possible to believe in those moments that he was blind. Men were closing in on him, racing along the ramparts, up the rampart steps; another spear actually grazed his shoulder, and falling, tripped the man behind him and brought him sprawling down, causing an instant’s confusion, and in that instant, Midir’s outstretched hand found a fold of Liadhan’s mantle, and then his arms were fast round her. In the gloom it was as though the two figures far along the rampart fused into one. Liadhan screamed again and again, like a trapped hare.

  Then a searing flash split the night in two. For a long moment the whole sky was one flickering blast of greenish light that seemed to blind and dazzle and beat down at the very soul. And for that one last moment, Midir appeared poised on the very edge of the raised catapult platform, with Liadhan struggling in his arms, the lightning flare playing all around them both.

  Then, the woman still locked against him, he sprang outward into blazing space. In the same instant, the darkness cracked back again, and the pursuers blundered together in the place where he had been. The dreadful hare-like screaming broke off as though cut with a knife.

  Phaedrus thought of the black jagged rocks and the tide running far below.

  Then the thunder came, peal on clanging, crashing peal that seemed to shake the very roots of the great rock, and boomed hollow under the vault of the heavens, and rolled and reverberated away into the hills. For Phaedrus, the night had turned unreal, and the torchlight and the quick tramp of feet and the shouted orders seemed all a part of the chaos within his own throbbing head. The only thing he knew with any clearness, as his guards marched him away up one nightmare alleyway and down another, was that the first of the longed-for rain was falling in great spattering drops, and the smell of rain on parched earth rising all about him.

  They came to a square courtyard surrounded by buildings, and then there was the soft glow of lamplight on the lime-washed walls of a small, barely furnished room, with the rain hushing down outside, and the lightning stabbing beyond the small, high window, and the thunder booming fainter and fainter among the hills.

  Someone gave him a drink of the sour watered-vinegar that was the Legions’ marching-wine, and that and the steady light and enclosed quietness of the room cleared his head. He looked about him and saw a big writing-table with papyrus rolls on it, a couple of chests and camp-chairs, a gay native rug hanging half over an open doorway that gave a glimpse of a sleeping cubicle beyond. The Commander’s quarters . . . Somebody – sometime – had said something about orders that he was to be taken to the Commander’s private quarters in the Praetorium, and held under guard until the Commander came. There must have been orders about giving him a drink, too.

  He leaned against the wall, dragged down by a great weight of weariness, and stared at the little flame-tongue of the lamp, while the thunder boomed fainter and fainter into the distance and only the rain teemed down; not thinking very clearly of anything save that Midir had taken his own revenge, and for him the pattern was complete – and that Liadhan would never again carry the threat of destruction to the Dalriads . . .

  A quick, heavy step came along the colonnade, and the men on guard over him straightened to attention as the door was flung open and the Commander came striding in, pulling his sodden cloak from his shoulders and shaking himself like a wet dog. His quick glance took in Phaedrus straightening from the wall. ‘Ah, good – thanks, Optio, I shall not be needing you for the moment, but keep your men within call.’

  When the three had saluted and gone, he spoke to Phaedrus, not as captor to captive, but with formal courtesy, as one leader of men to another.

  ‘I regret that you have been held waiting for me so long.’

  ‘You have had urgent matters to attend to,’ Phaedrus said grimly.

  ‘I have had – urgent matters to attend to, yes.’

  The Commander crossed to his writing-table, but remained standing beside it, and Phaedrus understood perfectly, with a certain amused respect, that Titus Hilarion, for all his courtesy of speech, would not bid a prisoner to sit in his presence – the presence of Roman Authority, but that he would not sit down himself, while keeping the other standing.

  ‘What do you know of the man who did this thing?’ The question shot out and took Phaedrus unawares, for he had been expecting his own part in that night’s events to be the first matter for questions or accusation.

  ‘Know of him?’ he said, to gain time. ‘What should I know of him?’

  ‘Something, I imagine, since he went seeking you with word that we intended sending Liadhan across by galley intoValentia tonight, though how he came by that information Mithras alone knows – and to plot out with you this plan for killing her, which would quite possibly have succeeded, if you had not been overheard.’

  Phaedrus remembered the stick that had cracked in the dark woods. ‘Who was it?’ he demanded.

  ‘One of the three priests she has – she had with her. He noticed a certain likeness between you two, and when the man – he was a leather-worker in the native village, blind, poor devil – slipped away and headed for the woods last night, it seemed to the priest that there might be something to be gained by following him. An unpleasant little beast in a foxskin head-dress, and stinks like the Black Pit of Ahriman, but it seems his instinct was sound, and his report was a true one.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It is hard to see why a blind leather-worker should take so much interest in the death of a Queen. This one took a very great interest. Now why?’

  ‘Likely for the same reason as he killed her in the end.’

  ‘A grudge of some sort? Some real or fancied wrong to be avenged? Do you know what it was?’

  ‘The wrong was real enough – it was his wrong, and he avenged it. It has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘So you do know something of him?’

  ‘In the days when I was a gladiator he mended my sandal straps a few times.’

  ‘No kin to you, then? He flew the same coloured hair, and it seemed to me also, when I questioned him earlier this evening, that he shared a certain likeness with the Lord of the Dalriads.’

  ‘None that I know of,’ Phaedrus said. ‘There’s a good deal of red hair among the tribes, and it’s hard to judge the likeness between two men when one lacks eyes and the other has half a cheek torn away.’

  The level eyes of the soldier looked at him for a long considering moment, with a little frown. Then he shrugged and changed the subject, as one who is not at all sure that he has got at the truth, but knows that if he has not, he will get no nearer to it.

  ‘But it was not to ask you these things that I bade them hold you here against my coming.’

  ‘Na, I would be thinking not.’ The old faintly dangerous smile was on Phaedrus’s lips. ‘Say whatever it is that you have to say to your prisoner.’

  ‘I had rather think of you as – a possible hostage,’ the Commander said, and checked. ‘Not even quite that – as a bargaining counter.’

  ‘I – do not understand,’ Phaedrus said slowly.

  ‘Yet the thing is simple enough; I propose to hand you back to your own people, in exchange for one thousand of their young men, to serve with the Auxiliaries.’

  There was a long, harsh silence, filled by the drenching of the rain. Phaedrus felt for a moment as though he had taken a blow between the eyes. He was remembering the desolation of Valentia, the deserted raths, the pasture-lands gone back to heath and bramble, because of the young men gone to fill the ranks of the Auxiliaries along the German lines. And for Earra-Ghyl there would be a greater evil, f
or with a thousand of their remaining warriors gone, they would be left with none save the women to take up the swords when the Caledones seized their chance and came swarming in. No more children born, either; as it was, there were too many women, now, who would never go to a husband’s hearth.

  ‘That was the thing you had to say to me?’

  ‘The thousand would have to be paid first, of course,’ the Commander said.

  Phaedrus was still thinking, with an odd detachment, as though he stood outside himself, looking on. Strange that now it was he and not Liadhan who was the danger to the Dalriads. ‘And if they refuse to pay the price, or if I refuse to be ransomed by the lives of my best warriors?’ he said at last.

  ‘Then I shall most probably send you South to be safe held as – a guest of the Empire. In that case you might certainly be called a hostage. Of course there is an alternative. It might well be a simpler way, in the end, to crucify you for an example to your kind.’

  ‘An example? What am I supposed to have done?’

  ‘Nothing. You were merely taken in the attempt. That is the injustice of life.’

  ‘You are not afraid of bringing down the wrath of the North against your Wall?’

  ‘It is only when the Caledones and the Dalriads link shields, that there is danger to the Wall.’ The Roman’s voice and eyes were inflexible, but Phaedrus knew that the only feeling between them was liking; which made it all rather stupid and sad. Hilarion was a good soldier, doing his duty by the peace of the Frontier, and not enjoying it.

  ‘I – must have time to think,’ he said, slowly.

  ‘You have until sunrise.’

  ‘And whatever I decide, after my thinking, I must have speech with my own people, that they may hear it from my mouth.’

  ‘You shall have that also, as I had speech with you, from the rampart at the Praetorian Gate.’

  They looked at each other, a long, straight, steady look. Then Phaedrus said, ‘It is Liadhan, not Midir, who was the usurper, you know.’