B007IIXYQY EBOK

by Gillespie, Donna

  There were moments of sad silence and glances at Baldemar’s empty seat. Then finally, hesitantly, people rose to propose names. Thorgild waited through the first ten or twelve; each brought cheers from one section of the folk and volleys of gnawed bones and rotten fruit from another. Then he stood and shouted Sigwulf’s name. Spears were clashed against shields and a greater noise was made than for any other candidate. This was as they expected.

  And then a little-known man among the free warriors proposed Thorgild’s name. The cheers raised up were equal in passion to those given to Sigwulf.

  “Who is that fool? I’ll have his head on a spit,” Sigwulf muttered.

  “Geisar paid him well, you can be certain,” Thorgild said.

  What followed did not surprise them. Geisar came forward and humbly announced, “Since we cannot agree, the law demands I decide between them, or offer you a third choice. Sigwulf and Thorgild are of equal eminence—it is impossible to choose. Therefore…” Geisar paused.

  There was some disturbance at the back of the throng, and the sound of determined chanting. Geisar strained to see and hear, but the participants were too distant. He exchanged an anxious look with Sigreda. She gave the barest shrug.

  “Therefore,” Geisar continued, “I name Unfrith.”

  “The viper. He has done it,” Sigwulf said in a covered voice. “He might as well have named one of Wido’s sons.”

  The man called Unfrith stepped nimbly to the front, a faintly amused smile on his face. His trappings spoke of new wealth: A fine cloak of ermine swept the ground; his swordbelt was of polished new leather, its buckle of heavy gold. That calfskin tunic and those high-laced boots had never seen mud. Had he traveled here in a Roman covered carriage? Sigwulf wondered with contempt.

  The response was half-hearted, uncertain. Hasty looks were exchanged to see what others thought of this.

  “The fox,” Thorgild agreed, slowly nodding while his hand moved unconsciously to the hilt of his sword. “And the people have no notion. He named a relation of the father’s side. Were it the mother’s, he knows well they would tear him apart.”

  Where they trusted the priest, they applauded loudest, from piety more than enthusiasm. But there were pockets of silence all through the throng. The common famrers did not consider Unfrith a close relative of Wido’s at all—only those of higher rank counted relations in the Roman fashion, through the paternal line—and so suspected nothing on the face of it. But with the animal sense of crowds they scented something was amiss; Geisar seemed too pleased to announce this man. And Unfrith was an unworthy replacement for Baldemar.

  Sigwulf knew Wido counted Unfrith a close kinsman; privately Wido imitated closely the customs of his Roman masters, even as he belittled them. The betrayer’s influence would live on. Unfrith would quickly acquire fame if the battle were won, and Baldemar, when he recovered, might never again reclaim the standard.

  Geisar was working himself into a fury anyway, Sigwulf saw, pacing fitfully while stabbing at the ground with his staff. The response was too tepid for him and he was insulted.

  Geisar paused to look once more toward the black depths of the forest, his hair floating out like ghostly wings. The chanting and the cries from the back were gaining in force. It had a rebellious note that stiffened the priest’s spine. From his vantage point he could see a knot of people far down on the slope; the crowd made way for them as slowly they worked their way toward the Midsummer Oak.

  Now he could hear what they cried.

  “Daughter of the Ash! Lead us out!”

  Earlier in the night while the new warriors were still being made, a muddy urchin clad in a bramble-dotted cloak fastened with thorns had emerged from the forest. When she approached the nearest of her countrymen, a black-bearded smith, and asked where Baldemar was, he answered with a scowl and silence. When she told him who she was, he gave a mocking laugh.

  “This mud-hen calls herself Baldemar’s daughter? A pity no one’s told you Wido’s got her, and she’s better guarded than a Roman fortress. Off with you.”

  She nearly lost heart then, and slipped back into the forest. She had walked all day and most of the night, sleeping for a short time at midday, curled in a hawthorn thicket among beetles and ants and the noise of birds. She was exhausted and dirty. For a moment she could not remember why she ever wanted to take the oath. Perhaps marriage to Witgern….

  But Witgern was a prisoner. Her brother was dead, slain by the Romans. Neither her mother nor father could walk without help. Her family was dying, and it would live again only if one of its members claimed vengeance for the bloody harm done them by Wido. The Assembly would disperse at moonset; she must go forth now or not at all.

  She approached an old farm woman with the same question; she proved to be Herwig, whose lands lay alongside her family’s.

  “Auriane, it truly is you! Your father fares well, but not so well that he was able to journey here.”

  Gradually others turned to look and knew her too. They gathered round to gape.

  “It is a prodigy,” a voice called from the dark.

  “She cannot have escaped, yet she has!”

  One old woman tentatively reached out to touch Auriane, as though to make certain this was a woman of flesh and bone, not some spirit-double sent forth from her place of imprisonment.

  “The Fates have truly freed her,” she muttered.

  “She comes to save us from Wido’s harm!” shouted another.

  To save us? Auriane thought. What madness.

  “Daughter of the Ash!” came a triumphant cry. Others liked the sound of those words and quickly took them up.

  She struggled to get past them. “Let me pass. I’ve little time left—I mean to take the oath.”

  “Not looking so, you won’t,” Herwig called out, producing a bone comb and holding Auriane fast. She tried to drag it through Auriane’s hair, but after a short struggle she gave up; the mud had dried in it. A wealthy herder who had several cloaks he meant to sell placed one over Auriane’s mudstained cloak to conceal it. Quietly she thanked him and moved on.

  As she moved forward, the scattered cries, “Daughter of the Ash! Lead us out!” melted into a unified chant, then took on a joyous, aggressive rhythm that was irresistible; first dozens, then hundreds joined in.

  As more in the throng recognized her, it was as though they caught fire. If Baldemar had appeared among them, they could not have felt more exultant. By the time Geisar brought Unfrith forward, two hundred and more followed her closely—a makeshift honor guard drunk on mead and moonlight, conducting her to the oak.

  They half dragged Auriane up the hill like some unwilling donkey. The crowd’s abandoned wildness was beginning to frighten her; it seemed but a breath away from murderous frenzy.

  Only gradually did she understand that they meant for her to take Baldemar’s place.

  When the twenty-two surviving Companions Baldemar had sent to take her south caught sight of her, it was as though fresh logs were thrown onto a bonfire.

  “Ganna! Ganna!” they cried. Already they had spread everywhere the tale that she had saved their lives when she gave up her freedom to Odberht. And the story of the encounter with Ramis had been embellished with each retelling, until it became a war of magicians, which they assumed, because Auriane survived, she must have won.

  Unfrith scented the crowd’s dislike of him and wisely yielded, falling back into the throng. Geisar’s shrieks for order went unheard; the people seemed to have forgotten him.

  Hylda came forward from among the Holy Ones and took Auriane’s hand in a wiry grip. As Hylda braved the thickest part of the throng, leading Auriane, she showed her cursing finger to any who seemed ready to bar the way. Eventually they gained the hallowed circle about the oak.

  Sigwulf viewed it all with relief and hope—Baldemar’s power would not be wrested from him while he lay wounded. But when he saw Auriane, relief became pity. She was more gaunt than he remembered, and seemed tragically olde
r; in one summer she had passed from wise child to care-fraught young woman. He saw her brave struggle to hide her weariness; she stood stiffly straight, eyes cast down, her tangled hair making her appear some orphaned maid abandoned to the forest. Her only ornament was the chaplet of vervain someone had set on her head.

  Geisar stopped before her. He seemed some frail thunder god, debating whether to hurl a bolt of fire.

  “You make a mockery of sacred law,” he hissed, lifting Auriane’s chin. “Off with you, before I break my staff and condemn you.”

  She met his gaze calmly, too weary to feel fear. “It was never in my mind to carry the standard, only to take the oath. And I mean to take it.”

  “You are the last child of your family. You are needed to produce heirs.”

  “It is not to be, Geisar. Baldemar has charged me to tell you—I am the appeasement gift. This is my father’s sacrifice. He offers me to war, and we willingly yield up all hope of heirs.”

  She saw a spark of alarm in his eyes as he realized her full purpose. “Never on this earth. I will not allow it.”

  “He will not allow it!” shouted a man of thunderous voice for the benefit of the crowd. This brought an angry groan from the people, followed by another rain of refuse—Geisar was narrowly missed by fishbones, entrails, broken crockery and dung, while Auriane and Hylda shielded themselves as best they could. Those at the front of the throng watched open-mouthed—never had they seen Geisar abused so.

  Geisar struggled to maintain a look of outraged dignity, but fright undermined him. The fearful respect he always commanded was so swiftly withdrawn he had not time to fully accept that he was naked of it, and vulnerable. Though he always counted his hold on the people a fragile thing, its means mysterious, he had long lulled himself into thinking of it as unshakable.

  From far back in the crowd, someone cast a spear. It bit deep into the earth, striking within a finger’s breadth of the priest’s foot.

  Geisar gave a hoarse shout, eyes blank, face agonized as though his heart had been pierced. He sank to his knees, tearing at his hair, writhing and wailing, certain this was a sign he angered Wodan, god of the spear. Sigreda, terrified too, rushed forward, pulled him up, and had him led off to the deerhide shelters on the far side of the circle.

  To soften the throng, Sigreda ordered the two sacrificing priests to give Auriane the oath.

  When all was in readiness, Auriane was veiled as a bride. She faced Sigreda across the firepit, where precious woods smoked and burned. Sigreda wore the mask of a cat; to the people she was possessed of the soul of Fria. Beside her was a priest whose face was half concealed beneath the drooping hood of his cloak, leaving one doleful eye visible; he held a short silver spear in his hand. He embodied Wodan. An assisting priestess made her way slowly toward the fire and put a bone flute to her lips; she was clad in a bloodied boar’s hide, her face reddened with ocher.

  The flute brought a spirit-filled silence to the people as its light note darted about, dipping low, soaring suddenly, then dissolving into ripples as though wind disturbed the surface of a lake, its tone unpredictable as life, first sweet, then sour, always achingly clear. Auriane’s eyes glistened with sadness, and she was not certain why—she felt some terrible jest was being played on all creatures living, and she was helpless against it.

  A sacrificing priest took a bit of boar’s heart from the great bronze bowl atop its tripod, spitted it, then thrust it into the sacred fire.

  Then Wodan spoke to Fria: “Tree of life, whose roots go down and down into nether rime, we bless you and praise you. I who am the steed of the dead, give breath to all living and put poetry on the tongues the wise, I who suffered and died to know the secrets of the Well of Urdr, take this woman as bride.”

  And Fria responded: “I am memory. I am Chaos from Chaos in the time before time. I brought the age of Ice then took it away. I see all that flourishes in the Nine Worlds. Close friend to the Fates, I create and destroy with one hand. The Sun and almighty Moon are my eyes. God of the Spear, I bid you, raise the veil.”

  With the point of his spear Wodan lifted the veil from Auriane’s face. The act married her to him.

  “Now I mark her as my own,” the priest who was Wodan intoned. He bared Auriane’s left upper arm and, with a bone dagger, carved into her flesh the runic mark that signified the strength of a wild ox. Auriane’s tears flowed freely from the pain. Then Fria reddened her finger in the boar’s blood and drew the same sign on Auriane’s forehead.

  Next the assisting priest held out to her the roasted heart. It was still dark and bloody. Auriane ate slowly, using all her strength not to vomit.

  “This heart gives her the heart of a boar that never falters in the charge,” Wodan proclaimed. “Now, draw forth a plait.”

  As Auriane obeyed, she felt boar-spirit surging in her. She saw herself with fierce, bright eyes and a dark heart pumping angry blood.

  Mother, a maid cannot protect you well. But a boar can, the dim words came half formed in her mind.

  Auriane then chanted the words of the oath along with the priest who was Wodan:

  “I foreswear mead shed, hall, and farm. I foreswear peace while my enemy lives. I foreswear all mortal marriage. Vengeance is my meat, blood is my mead—”

  They were interrupted by a furious beating of heavy wings. An owl dropped out of the night, flapped angrily before Auriane, then was off. She heard murmurs of unease all around. The bird was strangely bold; Auriane felt it knew her.

  I feel Hertha’s spirit in that bird. This ceremony is hateful to her; she wants it to stop. She is certain it leads to some great evil. Hertha, you harried me enough in life! Stay with the dead.

  “In your name, Wodan, I redden my spear with enemies’ blood. Bringer of victory, I am your own.”

  “Hail, Day. Hail, Night. Hail, all hail,” the masked Sigreda responded softly.

  The priest who was Wodan then placed a twisted ring of silver on Auriane’s right arm. When she felt the weight of the warrior’s ring, she had a sense of welcome emptiness. Now the bridge was crossed and torn down. She found herself alone on a wilder shore, a bleak and dangerous place, but at least it was a place of hope.

  Hylda took up iron shears and began cutting off Auriane’s hair. A woman’s hair was a house of spirits, rendering her too holy to touch weapons of iron. As the heavy tresses fell and collected in the dirt, Auriane for one horrified moment knew them as sentient things, severed and bleeding. She was taunted by Ramis’ words, “Never forget the power in hair.”

  But I shall forget it, Auriane decided. Take your shadow life from me.

  As Hylda swiftly wove the shoulder-length remains into one thick braid, Auriane felt her neck exposed to the chill breath of night spirits. She felt too light, as if her hair had anchored her down—now she might float off and be swallowed by night.

  Hylda burned the cuttings in the fire, lest anyone retrieve them and use them to work magic against Auriane or her family.

  “Bring forth the standard,” a voice from the throng cried out, followed by an eruption of cheers and a resumption of the chant—Daughter of the Ash. Lead us out.

  Sigreda debated briefly, not wanting to do the bidding of an unruly crowd, but she was wise enough to know that on this night the battle was lost and the throng was victorious. She nodded to the assisting priest, who approached with the standard.

  The standard of the army was a cat skull mounted on a short pole hewn of hazelwood. As Auriane took it from Sigreda, the throng raised up a mountain of noise that surely was heard, Auriane thought, in Roman Gaul. As the joyful thunder went on and on, Auriane watched the firelight play on Sigreda’s silver cat-mask with its great staring eyes, warping it into forbidding shapes. In one moment Auriane saw the living eyes within the holes bored into the black-painted eyes of the mask; Sigreda held her gaze for a time to make certain Auriane was aware of the cold hatred there.

  Auriane knew then Sigreda held her to account for the humiliation of Geisar. She
knew, too, of Sigreda’s vindictiveness, and her long memory.

  She will work and plan for as long as is necessary until she finds a way to condemn me to some shameful death.

  When the midsummer bonfires died and the Assembly dispersed, Auriane rode with the Companions to Elk Ridge, where Baldemar was camped. Her arm burned with pain from the god’s mark—but never had pain been so welcome. The oath protected her from Wido better than any high palisade; he might murder her, but no power on earth could marry her to one of his sons, for she was married already. In some moments she felt a great hollowness, and envied other women their mortal husbands.

  The tribal warriors followed at a slower pace; by the second day ten thousand were camped among the beech trees on the ridge. Before Auriane presented herself at Baldemar’s tent, she looked long at Wido’s encampment on the grassy plain below. It was a busy ant colony atop its gentle mound of earth. Roman order had had but a slight effect on barbarian disorder, and the placement of buildings and tents was to Auriane familiar chaos. Roman military wagons moved in both directions through the fort’s main gate, which had been rebuilt in the fashion of the drop-gate of a Roman fortress. A cavalry exercise seemed to be in progress.

  The camp was a festering wound on the body of her country. Hopelessness fell on her like a yoke. The numbers of Wido’s troops and their supplies were inexhaustible.

  The guard of honor before Baldemar’s tent let her pass unannounced.

  She paused to let her eyes know the dark. The tent’s smoke hole was open; Baldemar sat isolated in thought before a small yew fire, birch rod in hand as he drew symbols in the dirt representing land features and men. The leg, heavily bandaged, lay on a pile of hides.

  “Father, I am here.”

  Baldemar did not look up. She smiled, doubting he heard. Then she moved close and began studying his marks in the dirt. Soon she was as absorbed in the battle plans as he.

  “The pits and the stakes—so that is how they are set out,” she said intently.

  “Yes. The thrall you brought with you calls them lilia—that is their Roman name. See how they are dug in patterns of five. It explains why Wido waits for us to attack. The Romans see no dishonor in trapping an enemy like a hare.”