The Lantern Bearers (book III)

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘Now! With me, my brothers!’

  They saw him stand for an instant against the drifting sky; then they rose like a wave and swept after him, across the crest and down over the slipping sand.

  The three raiders lay in the shallows, their dark bows on shore like so many stranded sea-beasts, and men were swarming up the beach, the moon on their weapons and the lime-whitened discs of their shields. The sea-raiders and the British—for all those who followed Ambrosius were British in that moment, with no thought of Celt or Roman—came together above the tide-line in the soft sand at the foot of the dunes, sword to sword, shield to shield, in a ragged burst of shouting. The Scots, taken by surprise when they had thought the surprise to be on their side, attacked furiously at first, shouting their battle-cry as they closed buckler to buckler and strove to break through; and for a time the fight hung in the balance, as now one side drove forward and now the other, the whole skirmish wavering this way and that like a banner streaming in the wind. Aquila’s ears were full of a great yelling, and the clash and rasp of weapons. The soft, shifting sand clogged his feet and the fine lime-dust from the enemy shields rose white in the moonlight. Cradoc was still at his shoulder, shouting some wild, rhythmic battle-song of his own people that rose and rose above the tumult of the fighting into a kind of triumphant raving that was horrible to hear. From the swaying line of warriors a tall Scot leapt in with war-axe upswung, and Cradoc’s war-song ended in a grunt. Aquila was aware of the place at his shoulder suddenly empty, and the moonlit flash of the axe blade raised to finish the work it had begun, and in the same instant he had sprung astride the fallen man, who was already struggling to his elbow among the trampling feet of the mêlée. He took the blow, as it came whistling down, on his upflung buckler, and the axe blade sheared through the bull’s hide and beaten bronze, so that it was hacked almost in two. He bore down with all his force on the shield with the axe blade still embedded in it, and stabbed wildly with shortened sword point, and saw the Scot fling wide his arms and stagger back, gaping stupidly, as the blow went home.

  He realized suddenly that the Scots were beginning to give ground, the wavering of the fighting line going all one way. Stubbornly, valiantly, fighting for every step before yielding it, they were back into the shallows now, the trampled spray sheeting up all about them in the moonlight, falling back more swiftly: no aim left them but to win back to their ships. But around the stranded ships also there was fighting, as more of the British, led by the Young Foxes, flung themselves upon the men who had been left to guard them; and suddenly, from one of the galleys, from another, from the third, yellow tongues of fire shot up, licking about the masts. Someone had brought a fire-brand from the village, and there was to be no escape for this band of raiders. A yell, a howl rose from them as they saw the flames, and they turned as a doomed boar turns at bay, to make their last stand in the shallows about their blazing ships.

  The silver of the moon was ousted by the angry gold of the burning vessels as the flames leapt higher, and there was gold in the hollow of every ripple that spread shoreward; gold, and then red … It was over at last, and the glare of the blazing galleys shone on dead men lying like sea-wrack along the tide-line; and the sea wind and the hushing of the tide sounded clear again. The British were taking stock of their own dead and wounded, and Aquila knelt over Cradoc, helping him staunch the blood that ran from the base of his neck.

  Cradoc looked up at him with a twisted smile. ‘Sa! It seems that they teach men to fight under the Eagles! It was a good fight; and that I am here to say so instead of lying in the sand with my head smitten from my shoulders is a thing that I owe to you. Also it is a thing that I shall not forget.’

  ‘In the heat of battle it is no more to ward a blow from a comrade than to ward it from oneself,’ Aquila said. ‘Hold still or I cannot stop this bleeding. It is not a thing for remembering afterwards.’

  A few paces off, in the full glare of the flames that leapt from the snarling prow of the nearest galley, Vortimer, with his gay crocus tunic gashed and stained and sodden about him, leaned on his reddened sword and smiled at Ambrosius as he stood in the gilded foam-fringe, starkly outlined against the flames. ‘It is a good covenant, and we have sealed it in blood, which is better than the mead of feasting.’

  12

  Brown Sister, Golden Sister

  CRADOC had exaggerated the richness of his own valley, Aquila thought, as he rode down from the low saddle of the hills, following the track that the man at the ford in the last valley had pointed out to him. The place was mostly under bracken—bracken beginning to turn now, and patched with bright buttercup gold where it had been cut for litter and not yet carried; and the hall that he glimpsed below him in the bend of the valley, with its huddle of turf bothies around it, was the usual squat, heather-thatched hall of every petty Chieftain, lord of a few mountain valleys, a few hundred cattle, a few score spears. But maybe one’s own valley, when one was away from it, was always richer than anyone else’s; one’s own orchard bore sweeter apples. Maybe even his own valley in the Down Country … He reined back his mind from the memory as he might have reined the red mare Inganiad back from a pit in the track before them.

  It was almost a year since he had come up with Eugenus the Physician to take service with the Prince of Britain. A year in which he had made some kind of mended life for himself, some kind of place among Ambrosius’s Companions, some kind of name for himself—and the name, he knew, was not altogether a pleasant one. The dark man with the scarred forehead and the frown always between his eyes had no friends. He went always in a kind of armour, and a man who does that cannot have friends. They called him the Dolphin, as old Bruni had done, because of the pattern on his shoulder; and they called him the Lone Wolf. Felix could have told them that he hadn’t always been like that; Felix, with whom he had laughed, and shot wild fowl over Tanatus Marshes. But Felix was like enough dead by now in the Padus marshes in defence of Rome. They said the Vandals were pressing down Italy again.

  Automatically he gathered the mare, steadying her for the stony, downward plunge of the track; but his thoughts went wandering back over the summer that had gone by since the Young Foxes had come in with their Chieftains behind them; the summer that he had spent training men as he had spent winter breaking horses, striving to hammer into wild, mounted tribesmen some idea of what made disciplined cavalry. It was odd to find himself something like a Decurion of Horse again.

  Only a few weeks ago they had heard that Vortigern, deserted by his sons and most of his followers, had fled north, to the lands held by Octa and his war bands, and now Ambrosius rode south to hold counsel with his new allies. It was so that Aquila, sent ahead of the main party, was riding down into Cradoc’s valley this still autumn day, to warn him that Ambrosius would be there by dusk, claiming lord’s shelter for himself and his Companions as they passed by.

  The Hall and its huddled bothies was drawing nearer, and he saw the hearth-smoke rising blue against the tawny flank of the mountain beyond, and a few people moving about the kale plots and the cattle-byres. The track swung right hand, towards the village, skirting a small orchard, an orchard cradled in the loop of the river, the apples ripe on the dipping branches of the little half-wild trees; and the bright shadow of a song came into his mind.

  ‘The apples are silver on the boughs, low bending;

  A tree of chiming, of singing as the wind blows by.’

  But these apples were homely russet, not silver, and no wind stirred the branches; only the still, autumn sunlight slanted through the orchard, casting each tree’s shadow to the foot of the next. But there was movement among the trees, a girl’s laugh, and the flicker of colours under the leaves, dark red and saffron and tawny, and a deep, living blue like a kingfisher’s mantle, and he realized that a group of girls were at the apple-picking.

  It seemed that they became aware of the rider on the track at the same moment as he became aware of them. Their laughter stopped, and there was a mo
ment’s hush among the trees, and then two of the girls broke away from the rest, and ran back towards the Chieftain’s Hall as though to carry word of his coming.

  He rode on slowly, the bridle loose on Inganiad’s neck. He heard the chink of a smith’s hammer on anvil as he came up between the bracken-thatched bothies, and a woman coming from the weaving-shed with a piece of new cloth over her arm, the long threads still dangling where it had been cut from the loom, turned to watch him as he rode by; and a child and a hound puppy were struggling for possession of a wild cherry branch with the coral and scarlet leaves still upon it. Then, as he rode out into the open space before Cradoc’s hall, he saw the two girls again, waiting for him in the doorway, and realized that they must be Cradoc’s womenfolk and had run ahead to receive him as a stranger should be received, on the threshold of the house.

  The taller of the two held a cup between her hands, and as he reined in and dropped from the saddle, she came forward, holding it out to him, saying in a very soft and gentle voice, ‘God’s greeting to you, stranger. Drink, and forget the dust of the journey.’

  Aquila took the cup and drank as custom demanded. It was an ancient cup of flame-grained birch inlaid with gold and age-blackened silver, and the drink was mead; a thin mead with the aromatic tang of heather in it. He gave the cup back into her hands, looking at her for the first time, and saw that her hair was bright in the sunshine, brighter than the gold clasp at the shoulder of her tawny kirtle, and he supposed vaguely that she was pretty.

  ‘God’s Grace upon this house. The dust of the journey is forgotten.’ He made the customary reply with cold courtesy. ‘Is Cradoc the Chieftain here, that I may speak with him?’

  ‘Cradoc my father is out hunting, and the other men with him,’ the girl said. ‘Let you come in, and be most welcome, while you wait for his return.’

  ‘I will come in,’ Aquila said. ‘But since my business cannot wait for Cradoc’s hunting, it seems that I must tell it to you. Ambrosius, Prince of Britain, is on the road here, and sent me ahead with word that he will be on your threshold by dusk, claiming lord’s shelter for the night, for himself and eight of his Companions.’

  The girl’s eyes widened. ‘Ambrosius? Tonight? Oh, then we must kill the pig.’

  ‘Must you so? You have my sympathy,’ Aquila said, with a flicker of contemptuous laughter.

  The girl blushed scarlet, and he saw her gathering her dignity about her as though it had been an embroidered mantle. ‘We must indeed. But that need not concern you. Let you come in now, and I will bring you warm water, for you are dusty and must be weary besides.’

  ‘What of my mare?’ Aquila asked.

  ‘I will take your mare and tend her,’ another voice answered him, a harder and lower voice, and looking round, he saw that the other girl had gone to Inganiad’s head. He had forgotten about the other girl; a little fierce, nut-brown creature who seemed even browner by contrast with the kingfisher blue of her kirtle. Seeing his look, she smiled, but her gaze was challenging. ‘I am used to horses, and I promise you that I am quite trustworthy.’

  Aquila’s hand tightened on the bridle. For the golden sister to bring him the Guest Cup in welcome, to bid him in and promise warm water after the dust of the journey, was no more than the duty of the mistress of the house towards the stranger within her gates; but, in some odd way, for the brown sister to take his mare and rub her down seemed a more personal thing.

  ‘Cannot one of the men take her?’ he said.

  ‘Did you not hear Rhyanidd my sister say that our father and the men have ridden hunting?’

  ‘All the men of the village?’

  ‘All who are not busy in other ways. Shall I call Kilwyn from his shoeing, or Vran from his own hut where he nurses a broken ankle?’

  ‘Ness, how can you?’ the elder girl put in in soft distress, but neither paid any heed to her.

  ‘I will take and tend her myself, if you will tell me where I may find the stable,’ Aquila said.

  ‘And let it be said that in my father’s house a stranger must stable his own horse at the journey’s end? This is so poor and outlandish a place that we must kill a pig to feed the Prince of Britain—though I daresay that pigs have been killed for him before—but at least no guest need tend his own horse.’

  He realized that she was angry with him because he had laughed at her sister about the pig—no, not because he had laughed, because of the way he had laughed—and he liked her the better for that. Her hand was beside his on the head-stall now, and he had no choice but to let his own hand drop.

  ‘Then it seems that I can only thank you and give you your will,’ he said stiffly.

  He stood a moment watching as she led the red mare away, then turned back to Rhyanidd. She was still flushed foxglove pink, and he wondered if she were going to make some sort of apology for her sister. But she did not. She said only with gentle dignity, ‘And now come you in and rest, while we make all things ready for Ambrosius.’ They were loyal to each other, those two.

  At cow-stalling time, Ambrosius and the hunting party arrived almost together. And that night there was feasting in Cradoc’s hall, and next day they rode out after wolves—Cradoc was proud of the hunting in his runs—and brought home three grizzly carcasses to be shown to the women and hung up for trophies in the hall before they were flayed and the meat given to the hounds. That night, when the feasting was over and the time came for sleep, Ambrosius sent for Aquila to attend him, instead of his armour-bearer, who, being young and weak-headed and proud of his part in the wolf hunt, had drunk too much of the thin, heather-flavoured mead, and was asleep under one of the hall benches.

  The guest place reminded Aquila of the little beehive hut of Brother Ninnias, where he had slept with the gall of the Saxon thrall-ring still smarting on his neck. Only there were fine roe-deer skins on the bed-place, and feather-stuffed pillows of blue and violet cloth; and someone had set a bowl of apples on the stool beside it; apples whose smooth gold was flecked and feathered with coral colour, and the scent of them mingled with the aromatic breath of the herbs burning in the white, honey-wax candle.

  Ambrosius, sitting on the bed-place, had taken an apple from the bowl, and sat turning it in his hands, examining the delicate flecking and feathering of the skin. ‘What a beautiful thing an apple is. One so seldom notices … ’ He looked up suddenly at Aquila, where he stood against the central king-post, rubbing up the bronze boss of the light wicker hunting shield that his lord had carried that day. ‘Does it seem very strange to you, this life among the mountains, Dolphin?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aquila said, ‘but not so strange as it did a year ago.’

  ‘It is so familiar to me. The only life that I have known since I was nine years old.’ He had returned to the apple in his hand, turning and turning it. ‘It seemed strange enough to me then … I was brought up to wear a Roman tunic and read with a Greek tutor. I remember the baths at Venta, and the high, square rooms, and the troops of Thracian Horse trotting down the street looking as though all the world were a bad smell under their noses. It is an odd thing to belong to two worlds, Dolphin.’

  ‘But a thing that may be the saving of Britain,’ Aquila said in a moment of clear seeing. He breathed on the bronze boss and rubbed harder to get out a spot of wolf ’s blood. ‘A leader who was all Britain, or all Rome, would be hard put to it, I’m thinking, to handle such a mixed band as we are, when the day comes for fighting.’

  ‘When the day comes for fighting,’ Ambrosius said broodingly. ‘It is in my mind that next spring comes all too soon.’

  There was a sudden silence. Aquila raised his eyes quickly to Ambrosius’s face, finding there a white gravity which startled him, after the harp song and the easy merriment in Cradoc’s hall. His hand checked in its burnishing.

  ‘Next spring?’

  ‘Aye, with the Saxons already beginning to hum like a swarming hive, we daren’t delay an attack any longer.’

  Aquila’s heart was suddenly beating
a little faster. So it was coming at last, the thing that they had been waiting for so long. But something that he sensed in the other man puzzled him, and he frowned. ‘Daren’t? Why do you wish to delay longer?’

  ‘I suppose I sound as creeping cautious as an old man.’ Ambrosius looked up again. ‘Dolphin, I am as eager to be at the Saxon’s throats as the wildest hothead among us. But I have to be sure. If Aetius in Gaul had sent us one legion, we could have done it; when Rome failed us I knew that it must be years before we were strong enough to take up the fight alone … I have to be sure; I can’t afford to fail once, because I’ve nothing in reserve with which to turn failure into victory.’

  ‘Have the Young Foxes not bettered things by coming over to our standard?’ Aquila said after a moment.

  ‘If I could be sure of them, yes,’ Ambrosius said. ‘Oh, I’m sure of the Young Foxes themselves, their personal loyalty. For the rest—I don’t know. I am seldom quite sure of my own kind; we dream too many dreams, and the dreams divide us … That is why we must make closer ties between ourselves and these new friends of ours.’

  ‘What sort of ties?’

  Ambrosius set the apple back in the bowl with the air of coming to a decision. ‘Dolphin, let you take one of Cradoc’s daughters for your wife.’

  At first Aquila thought it was a jest, and then he realized that it was not. Along with the rest of the Companions, he had been waited on by Cradoc’s daughters; he had spoken a few words with them, but that was all.

  ‘I have had no thought of taking any woman from her father’s hearth,’ he said after a moment.

  ‘Think of it now.’

  There was a long silence. The two men looked at each other levelly in the candle-light.

  ‘Why should Cradoc give me a daughter from his hearth?’ Aquila said at last. ‘I am a landless man, owning nothing but my horse and my sword, both of which you gave me.’