The Lantern Bearers (book III)

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Only three days ago, the whole frontier had gone up in flames. The break-through had come just below Cunetio, and Hengest with Guitolinus and the Scots had swept like a flood through a broken dam down the road south, hurling back the British skirmishing bands sent up to clog their advance and slow them down while the main defence made ready. A few hours since, and a few miles short of Sorviodunum, they had swung south-eastward for the gap in the downs where the Calleva road passed through. Once through that they would be free to march on Venta itself, or, more likely, sweep down the broad river valley the last few miles to the head of Vectis Water, so cutting Ambrosius’s little kingdom in two. Free, that is, save for the British standing in the way, the hastily gathered host of lowland foot-soldiers and mountain cavalry, the bowmen of Cymru and a few untrained, late-joined companies from the nearest fringes of the Dumnonii.

  Ambrosius had called in almost the whole of the British host, staking everything on this one great battle; for Ambrosius, as well as Hengest, knew how to be a gambler. If they were beaten now, that was the end. ‘I can’t afford to fail once,’ Ambrosius had said, years ago, ‘because I’ve nothing in reserve with which to turn failure into victory.’ It had been a curb then, holding them back; now it was become a spur. An odd change, that, Aquila thought, listening to the confused hum of the camp behind him. Five years ago the mood of the British camp had been somehow deadened with long waiting. It should have been worse now, worse by five years, but it was not. Maybe it was a kind of desperation, the knowledge that this time there could be no agreed peace, that nerved them. But whatever it was, Aquila had felt the change of mood at once when he rode in at noon with his own men; had felt something rising like a dry wind through the whole host. Unaccountable were the ways of men, and still more unaccountable the ways of hosts that were quite unlike the ways of the men from which they were made.

  Aquila turned and went on his way. The whole camp was throbbing like a lightly tapped drum as he went down through it. Men came and went, horses stamped, he heard the ring of hammer on field anvil where the armourers were busy on last-minute harness repairs; arrows were being given out from the fletchers’ wagons, and the smoke of many cooking fires spread and billowed across the darkening hill-top before the rising wind.

  There was a fire down by the near end of the horse-lines, and some of his own men gathered about it. And there, standing a little uncertainly on the edge of the firelight, he found Flavian.

  Flavian was wearing a weather-worn leather tunic too big for him across the shoulders, and he must have been to the armourers’ wagons, for a long sword in a plain wolfskin sheath hung at his side. The wind was blowing his dark, feathery hair sideways across his forehead like a pony’s forelock, and the five-year-old scar showed white in the wind-driven firelight. To Aquila, stopping abruptly in his tracks at sight of him, he looked very surprisingly like a man.

  ‘Flavian! What do you suppose you are doing here?’

  ‘I came out to take my part against the Saxons,’ Flavian said, and came a step nearer into the firelight. He was as tall as his father already; a tall, grave boy with level eyes. ‘They were saying in Venta that every man who could carry a sword would be needed.’

  ‘Every man, yes,’ Aquila said.

  ‘You always said that I should have my shield when I was fifteen, Father.’

  ‘You have miscounted. You are not fifteen yet.’

  ‘I shall be in a month’s time,’ Flavian countered, quickly.

  There was a small silence, and then Aquila asked, quietly, because he did not want to shame the boy in the hearing of the men round the fire, ‘You did not come without word to your mother?’

  Flavian shook his head. ‘No, sir; Mother sent me.’

  Again there was silence. They looked at each other through the smoke of the windy fire, through the barrier that had always been between them. They had never got back to where they had been in the sunny courtyard five years ago. The whole summer had gone by before Aquila returned to Venta again, and by that time it had been too late. Just for the moment Aquila had thought that the boy had come to him of his own accord. But Ness had sent him …

  ‘Very well, then,’ he said, with no softening of his stern manner. ‘I take you. Did you ride Whitefoot?’

  ‘Yes, sir, but—’

  ‘Where have you picketed him?’

  ‘In the same row as Falcon, sir, for the moment, but—’

  Aquila’s brows snapped together. ‘For the moment?’

  ‘Yes; you see—’ Flavian hesitated, and his father saw him swallow. ‘Sir—when I got here, they told me you were in council with Ambrosius, and I had to picket him somewhere until I could see you and ask your leave. Sir, I want to take my sword to Artos and ask him to let me ride in his wing.’

  Aquila was wincingly aware of his own men gathered about the fire and looking on, listening. ‘At least this time you have thought fit to ask my leave in the matter,’ he said coldly. ‘I suppose that I should be gratified by that.’

  ‘Then I may go to Artos?’ Young Flavian was already poised to be away in search of his heart’s desire.

  ‘No,’ Aquila said, ‘I am afraid not.’

  ‘But, sir—’

  ‘I am afraid not.’

  For an instant Flavian seemed about to fly out at him with some furious protest, but he choked it back, and asked in a tone as quiet as his father’s, ‘Why, sir?’

  Aquila was silent a moment. He was letting this tall, almost unknown son of his go into battle before the time that he had meant to, but at least he would keep him close to himself. It was not jealousy, it was a feeling that he would be safer there. He knew that that was confused thinking, a Saxon arrow was as likely to find him in one part of the battle as another; but somehow he felt that he owed it to Ness, who had sent him his son on the eve of battle.

  ‘Possibly one day I may give you my reasons,’ he said at last. ‘For the present, I fear that you must accept blindly the fact that I forbid you to take that sword that you have come by to Artos.’ He waited for an answer, and then as it did not come, said sharply, ‘Understood?’

  Flavian stared straight before him, no longer looking at his father. ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘Very well. You had best join yourself to Owain’s squadron; tell him I sent you. You will find him by the lower fire down yonder.’

  Flavian drew himself up stiffly in the Roman salute that he had seen some of the old soldiers give; and turned without another word, and walked away. Aquila, watching him disappear in the dusk, thought suddenly and painfully of all the things he would have liked to say to the Minnow before his first battle.

  In the darkness before dawn, suddenly a spark of red fire woke on the black crest of the downs, signalling to the watchers in the British camp that the Saxons were showing signs of movement. The hosts of Ambrosius rose and shook themselves, and turned themselves to the business of the day. Dawn, when it came, was a wild one, a fiercely shining, yellow dawn that meant storm and tempest; and the wind that had been rising all night was sweeping like a winged thing down the valley; and overhead the great, double-piled clouds racing from the west were laced and fringed with fire. And from the topmost spray of the whitethorn that grew high on the ancient ramparts a storm cock was singing. His song, fiercely shining as the morning, was sometimes scattered by the wind, sometimes came clearly down to the waiting cavalry on the slopes below.

  Aquila heard his song, a song like a drawn sword, cutting through the formless sounds of a gathering army. From here on the slopes of the fortress hill he could see the whole battle line strung across the shallow trough of the valley; the main body of spears in the centre, where in the old days the legions would have been, the long-bow men behind them, and on either side the outspread wings of cavalry and mounted archers. The wild, changing light splintered on spear-point and helmet-comb, picked out here the up-tossed mane of a horse, there a crimson cloak flung back on the wind, and burned like coloured flame in the standards that the
wind set flying: Pascent’s standard, a mere flicker of blood red above the far cavalry wing; his own with the silken dolphin that Ness had worked for him when first he came to command a whole wing; and away down in the midst of the host the great, gleaming, red-gold Dragon of Britain, where Ambrosius in battered harness and cloak of the proud Imperial Purple sat his huge black stallion with a knot of his Companions about him.

  Artos, with his standard flying above the flower of the British cavalry, was out of sight round the flank of the fortress hill, waiting for his moment to come. He was all the reserves they had; and save for him, the whole hope of Britain was strung across that shallow downland valley. Aquila wondered suddenly whether Flavian minded desperately being with him instead of with Artos, and glanced round at the boy sitting his horse just behind him. Flavian looked rather white. He was smiling a little, but the smile did not touch his eyes; and as Aquila looked, he ran the tip of his tongue over his lower lip as though it were uncomfortably dry. It was the look that Aquila had often seen before in the face of a boy going into battle for the first time. Flavian caught his eye and flushed painfully, as though his father’s look made him ashamed, and stooped to fiddle with Whitefoot’s harness. Aquila looked face-forward again. Amid the whole British host, he suddenly felt very much alone.

  The day had fully come—a day of broken lights and grape-coloured shadows racing across the tawny hills—when a darkness that was denser and slower than a cloud shadow came into view, creeping towards them along the fringe of the downs. Knowing that it would be hidden as yet from the main battle line, Aquila flashed his sword from its sheath, and rising in his stirrups flourished it in great circles above his head, and from the knot of horsemen about the golden dragon, far off and small and bright with distance, he saw Ambrosius fling up his own sword arm, and knew that his signal had been received; he felt in himself the kind of ripple that ran down the long curve of the battle line like a deep-drawn breath. The dark swarm of the advancing host drew nearer. When the cloud shadows sped across it, it was merely a dark mass, but when the sun touched it, it woke to a kind of pulsing, beetle-wing brilliance with here and there a blink of light from a bronze shield-boss or the curved top of a Chieftain’s helmet. A faint haze of white chalk-dust hung like a cloud above the rear of the Saxon host, for it had been a dry summer; and behind them, north-westward, the sky and the hills seemed to darken as they came, as though they trailed the storm like a cloak behind them. And away over the downs, for a jewel in that sombre cloak, Aquila saw the ragged, torn-off end of a rainbow brightening against the gloom of the massing storm-clouds.

  He pointed. ‘Look, lads! Already the Rainbow Bridge is run out for the Saxon kind. Surely they make ready to welcome Hengest in the Valhalla tonight!’

  There was a laugh behind him, and little fierce Owain, who had stood with him to hold Durobrivae Bridge fourteen years ago, cried out, laughing also, ‘Na, na! It is but the stump of a bridge. They have cut through Bifrost to keep him out!’

  The Saxons were so near now that he could see the white gleam of the horse’s head borne on a spear-shaft that was Hengest’s standard, and hear plain above the wuthering of the wind in his ears the formless smother of sound that was the voice of an advancing host. A Saxon war-horn boomed, and was answered by the higher, brighter note of the Roman trumpets; challenge and answering challenge tossed to and fro by the wind. The Saxon war host came rolling on, not fast, but remorselessly, shield to shield, with Guitolinus’s light cavalry scouring on either side. They seemed appallingly strong, but Aquila, sitting with his bull’s-hide buckler high on his shoulder, and the flat of his drawn sword resting across Falcon’s neck, saw that though they outnumbered the waiting British by upward of two to one, they were for the most part a foot army, and had nothing to compare with Artos’s great hidden cavalry wing.

  They were within bowshot now, and there came a sudden flicker of movement among the knot of archers behind the British spearmen, and a flight of arrows leapt out over the spears to plunge into the advancing battle-mass of the Saxons. For a few moments the enemy ranks had the look of a barley field hit by a sudden squall, as men staggered and dropped in their tracks; but the rest closed their torn ranks and pressed on, yelling. The British long-bow men got in one more flight, before the Saxon short-bows came into range; and after that the deadly hail of arrows was a two-way thing, tearing its gaps in the British ranks as it had torn them in the Saxon. And in the midst of the killing hail, the two hosts rolled together, seeming at the last instant to gather themselves like two great animals, then spring for each other’s throats.

  A few moments later, without ever taking his eyes from the reeling press below, Aquila said to the man beside him, ‘Now! Sound me the charge!’ And the dull roar of battle and the storm cock’s shining song were drowned in the ringing tran-ta-ran of the cavalry trumpet. Falcon flung up his head and neighed, adding his defiance to the defiance of the trumpet, not needing his rider’s urging heel in his flank as he broke from a stand into a canter, from a canter into a full flying gallop. Aquila heard behind him the hoof-thunder of the cavalry wing sweeping down the hillside into the teeth of the westerly gale. He was yelling the war cry, ‘Constantine! Constantine!’ And he heard it caught up in a great rushing wave of sound. Guitolinus’s cavalry wheeled about to meet them, and as they thundered down upon each other, Aquila’s sight was full of a wild wave of up-tossed horses’ heads, the dazzle of the stormy sunlight on shield-rim and sword-blade, a nearing wall of faces with staring eyes and open, yelling mouths. He caught the glint of gilded bronze and the emerald flash of a wind-torn silken cloak where Guitolinus rode among his men. Then they rolled together with a shock that seemed as though it must shake the very roots of the fortress hill.

  Guitolinus’s cavalry crumpled and gave ground, then gathered again for a forward thrust. And for Aquila the battle, that had been clear in view and purpose as he sat his horse above it such a short while ago, had lost all form, become a sheer, blind struggle. He had no idea of how things were going with Pascent in the left wing, or even what was happening along the centre; all he knew was the cavalry struggle going on around him, the shock of charge and counter-charge, until at last, above the roar of battle, his ear caught the sound that all the while it had been waiting for: the sound of a hunting-horn ringing like the horns of the Lordly Ones from behind the shoulder of the fortress hill. It was like Artos to sweep his men into action with the gay notes of a hunting-horn. The sound rose above the battle din, high and sweet and shining as the song of the storm-cock in the whitethorn tree. A great warning cry went up from the nearest ranks of the enemy, and snatching one glance over his shoulder, Aquila saw the flower of the British cavalry sweeping towards them along the tawny slope. There was a swelling thunder of hooves in his ears, and the wild, high song of the hunting-horn as the great arrow-head of wild riders hurtled down upon the battle. At the shining point of the arrow-head, Artos swept by, his great white horse turned for a flashing moment to silver by the burst of sunlight that came scudding down the valley to meet him, the silver mane streaming over his bridle arm, and the sods flying like birds from the great round hooves. His huge wolfhound, Cabal—son to the Cabal of his boyhood—bounded at his side, and half a length behind him galloped Kylan, his standard-bearer, with the crimson dragon streaming like a flame from its upreared spear-shaft. Just for the one instant they were there, seen out of the corner of the eye, with the white, fierce brilliance of figures seen by lightning; then they were past, and the following cavalry thundered after, to hurl themselves into the cavalry of Guitolinus—into them and through them, scattering them as dead leaves scatter before a gust of wind, and on.

  Aquila swept his own men forward into the breach that Artos had made.

  ‘Constantine! Constantine! Follow me!’

  He heard the hunting-horn again, and again the wild riders were sweeping towards them. They circled wide to charge from the flank, hurling Guitolinus’s cavalry back in confusion on to the Saxon shield
wall. Ambrosius’s hard-pressed centre, relieved for the moment from the deadly thrust against them, drove forward again, cheering wildly, into a charge of their own. From the far wing also, from Pascent’s cavalry, the cheering had begun to rise. Aquila, charging again and again at the head of a wedge of his own men, knew nothing of that; he knew only that there was no longer a solid mass of cavalry before him, but isolated knots of desperate horsemen. Indeed, the whole battle seemed breaking up, disintegrating, while in the midst of the spreadings chaos the core of the Saxon host strove desperately to form the shield burg about the white-horse standard of Hengest.

  Shouting to his men, Aquila drove his heel into Falcon’s flank and rode straight for the half-formed shield burg.

  Under his barbaric standard, Hengest stood head and shoulders taller than any of his house-carls, wielding his great war-axe at arm’s length, blood striping the hair under his bull-horned helmet, blood on his shoulders and crimsoning the down-sweeping blade, and in his berserker’s face the eyes full of a grey-green flame.

  But it was not Hengest’s wild features that started out at Aquila as the shield burg reeled and crumbled. It was the face of a young warrior glaring up at him over a broken shield-rim. A dark, fine-boned face, distorted now with rage and hate, that was yet as like to Flavia’s face as a man’s can be to a woman’s.

  Only for an instant he saw it, for a jagged, sickening splinter of time; and then a half-naked Scot sprang in under Falcon’s head, his reddened dirk stabbing upward under Aquila’s buckler. He wrenched sideways half out of the saddle, and felt the blow that should have ripped up his belly like a rotten fig gash through his old leather tunic, nicking the flesh like a hornet sting. Falcon reared up with lashing hooves, but he brought him down again with a blow of his shield-rim between the ears, and thrust in, in his turn, above the Scot’s buckler; and the man was gone as though he had never been, under the trampling hooves of the mêlée.