Dahut

by Poul Anderson

  He hauled his mind back from the past and addressed the priestess in Ysan: “Greeting, my lady. Prepare yourself. I bear dreadful tidings.”

  It might have been astonishing how steadily she looked back. Most often the house mother at the Nymphaeum was elderly, seasoned in dealing with people. Runa was in her mid-twenties. However, she was the daughter of Vindilis by Hoel. You would expect forcefulness, and persuasiveness too when she cared to employ it. He had never known her well, either, and as the rift widened between him and her mother, they met less and less. He knew that after she completed her vestalhood without the Sign coming upon her she married Tronan Sironai. The union was without issue and evidently not happy. Though she did not terminate it, she re-entered the Temple of Belisama and occupied herself mainly with the activities of an underpriestess.

  “We have wondered,” she said low. “We have prayed. Clear it is that the Gods are angry.” At you, said her gaze.

  Riding here, he had thought and thought how to tell what he must. Everything that had occurred to him had dropped out of his mind. He could merely rasp forth: “I am sorry. Ys is gone. Somehow the sea gate opened during the storm. Ocean came in and destroyed the city. The Gallicenae have perished. Most of the people have. I do not know that your husband, or any near kin of any among you, is alive. We must look to our survival—”

  What followed was never afterward clear in his memory. Runa yowled and sprang at him. His left cheek bore the marks of her nails for days. He fended her off before she got to his eyes. She cursed him and turned to her vestals. One had swooned, others wailed or wept; but Gratillonius’s Nemeta stood apart as if carven in ivory, while Gratillonius’s Julia tried to give comfort. Likewise did Corentinus, in his rough fashion. Runa slapped feces, grabbed shoulders and shook them, demanded self-control. Gratillonius decided it was best he seek the guardhouse and the Ysan marines barracked there.

  That was bad enough, though they refrained from blaming him. Three among them reviled the Gods, until their officer ordered them to be quiet. He, a burly, blond young man named Amreth Taniti, accompanied Gratillonius back to the Nymphaeum.

  In the end, as memory again began clearly recording, those two sat with Corentinus and Runa in the priestesss room of governance. It was a chamber light and airy, furnished with a table, a few chairs such as were—had been—common in Ys, and a shelf of books. Three walls bore sparse and delicate floral paintings. On the fourth the blossoms were in a grassy field where stood the Goddess in Her aspect of Maiden, a wreath on Her flowing locks, arms outspread, smile raised toward the sun that was Taranis’s while at her back shone the sea that was Lir’s. Beyond the windows, springtime went on about its business just as joyfully.

  Runa stared long at Corentinus. Her knuckles whitened on the arms of her seat. At last she spat, “Why have you come?”

  “Let me answer that,” said Gratillonius. He had quelled weariness and despair for this while; he moved onward through what was necessary, step by step. So had he once led his men back from an ambush, through wilderness aswarm with hostiles, north of the Wall in Britannia. “I asked him to. We deal—I suppose we deal with Powers not human, as well as our mortal troubles and enemies. You know I am a Father in the cult of Mithras. Well, Corentinus is—a minister in the cult of Christ. Between us—”

  “Do you include me?” she demanded rather than asked.

  “Of course. Now hear me, Runa. We need these voices of different Gods so we can agree to set every God aside. Aye, later we can pray, sacrifice, quarrel, try coming to terms with the thing that’s happened. But first we have the remnant of a folk to save.”

  Her glance raked him, the big frame, rugged features, grizzled auburn hair and beard. “Then you deny that your deeds caused the Gods to end the Pact,” she said flatly.

  He tautened. “I do. And be that as it may, ’tis not worth our fighting about. Not yet.”

  “That’s true, my lady,” Amreth said almost timidly. “Bethink you what danger we’re in.”

  Corentinus raised a bony hand. “Hold, if you will.” Somehow his mildness commanded them. “Best we understand each other from the outset. I shall say naught against your beliefs, my lady. However, grant me a single question.” He paused. She nodded, stiff-necked. “Ever erenow, when a Queen died, a red crescent instantly appeared on the bosom of some vestal. This marked her out as the next Chosen to be one of the Gallicenae, bride of the King and high priestess of Belisama. True? Well, the Nine are gone in a single night. Here are the last of the dedicated maidens. Has the Sign come upon any of them?”

  Runa sat straighter still. She passed tongue over lips. “Nay,” she whispered.

  The knowledge had already seeped into Gratillonius, damping the fear, but to become sure of it was like a sudden thaw.

  “I utter no judgment concerning your Gods,” Corentinus said quietly. “Yet plain is to see that we have come to the end of an Age, and everything is changed, and naught have we to cling to in this world unless it be our duty toward our fellow mortals.”

  Visibly under the close-cropped beard, a muscle twitched at the angle of Amreth’s jaw. “Right that is, my lady,” he said. “We marines will stand by you and the vestals to the death. But this place was under the ward of the Gods, and no raiders or bandits ever dared put us to the test. Now … we number a bare dozen, my lady.”

  Runa sat back. She had gone expressionless. Gratillonius studied her. She was tall; beneath the blue gown, her figure was wiry but, in a subtle fashion, good. Her face was thin, aquiline, with a flawless ivory complexion. The brows arched above dark eyes. Beneath her wimple, he knew, was straight hair, lustrous black, which could fall past the shoulders. Her voice was rather high but he had heard her sing pleasingly.

  She turned and locked stares with him. “What do you propose?” she asked.

  Halfway through, he noticed that he had fallen into Latin. She followed him without difficulty. Amreth sat resigned.

  “Ys is lost. Nothing left but a bay between the headlands, empty except for ruins.” He forebore to speak of the dead who littered the beach and gulls ashriek in clouds around them. “Many people died who’d taken shelter there out of the hinterland. Very few escaped. Corentinus and I led them up the valley and billeted them in houses along the way. Those who don’t succumb in the next several days ought to be safe for a while.

  “Just a while, though. The granaries went with Ys. It’s early spring. There’s nothing to eat but flocks and seed corn, nothing to trade for food out of Osismia.” He could certainly not make anyone go back and pick through the ghastliness in search of treasure. “Soon all will be starving. And the barbarians will hear of this, Saxons, Scoti, every kind of pirate. Ys was the keystone of defense for western Armorica. The Romans will have more than they can handle, keeping their own cities, without worrying about us. Most of their officials never liked us anyway. If we remain where we are, we’re done. “We have to get out, establish ourselves elsewhere. Corentinus and I are going on to search for a place. I am a tribune of Rome, and he’s a minister of Christ, known to Bishop Martinus in Turonum, and—But meanwhile somebody has to give the people leadership, those we brought from the city and those who held on in the countryside. Somebody has to bind them together, calm and hearten them, ready them for the move. A couple of landholder Suffetes are already at it, but they need every help they can get. Will you give it, my lady?”

  The woman sat withdrawn for space before she said, “Aye,” in Ysan. “Between us, I think, Amreth and I may suffice. But first we must talk, the four of us. Grant me this day. Surely you can stay that long.” The hand trembled which she passed across her eyes. “You have so much to tell.”

  —Nonetheless, throughout words and plain meals and tearful interruptions from outside, she held herself steel-hard. As the hours wore on, the scheme took shape, and hers were two of the hands that formed it.

  —At eventide, the vestal Julia led her father and Corentinus to adjacent guestrooms, mumbled goodnight, and left them. T
hey stood mute in the gloom of the corridor. Each had been given a candle in a holder. The flames made hunchbacked shadows dance around them. Chill crept inward.

  “Well,” said Gratillonius at last, careful to keep it soft and in Latin, “we had to work for it, but we seem to have gained a strong ally.”

  Darkness ran through the gullies in Corentinus’s face. “We may hope. Still, be wary of her, my son. Be wary of them all.”

  “Why?’

  “A dog abandoned grows desperate. If it does not find a new master, it goes the way of the wolf. These poor souls have been abandoned by their Gods.”

  Gratillonius tried to smile. “You offer them another.”

  “Whom they will perhaps not accept, as long as the old smell haunts them.”

  “But the Gods of Ys are dead!” Gratillonius exclaimed. “They brought Their city down on Themselves—” down and down into the deeps of the sea.

  Corentinus sighed, “I’m afraid it’s not that easy. The Enemy never gives up, not till Judgment Day.” He clapped his friend’s shoulder. “Don’t let him keep you awake, though. You need your rest. Goodnight.”

  —Gratillonius recognized the chamber assigned him. Here he and Dahilis had lodged when they came to ask a blessing on their unborn child, she who would become Dahut. He gasped, knotted his fists, and struggled not to weep. Only after he had surrendered did sleep come to him, full of fugitive dreams.

  3

  Southbound out of Gesocribate, Niall and his men passed within sight of the island Sena. Low it lay in the heaving seas, bare of everything but sere grass and brush, a pair of menhirs near the middle, and some stones of the building at the east end. Wind whistled as it drove smoke-gray clouds overhead. Waves ran murky, streaked with foam, bursting in white where they struck rocks. A few seals swam in them, following along with the ship at a distance as if keeping watch. Cormorants rode the surges, dived, took flight on midnight wings.

  Niall nodded. “Lir was more wrathful that night than ever I knew,” he said slowly.

  A shiver passed through Uail maqq Carbri, and him a hardened man. “I do think the Goddess willed it too,” he muttered. “That was Her house.”

  “Like the Ulati when they burned down Emain Macha before we could make it ours. Someday men will dare settle here again because of the fishing grounds. They will take those stones for their own use. Then the last trace of Ys on its holy isle will be gone. But I have seen the ruins. That is enough.”

  Uail’s gaunt countenance drew into a squint as he peered at his lord. “Was it for your enjoyment you had us come this way?”

  Niall straightened, taller than any of the crew, a tower topped with the silvering gold of his hair. “It was not,” he said grimly. “Let no man gloat that Ys is fallen, for a wonder and a glory it was in the world. When we return home, I will be forbidding poet and bard to sing this one deed of mine.”

  Uail kept silence. The King had told how he destroyed Ys, then laid gess on further talk about it unless he spoke first. He could not thus keep the story from spreading, but it would take root more in humble dwellings than in high. Most likely after a few lifetimes it would be forgotten, or be a mere folk tale with his name no longer in it.

  Niall’s eyes were like blue lightning. “I did what I did to avenge my son and my brave men, a sworn duty,” he went on. “Else would that never have been my desire. As was, at the end I must … force myself.” He gripped the rail and looked afar. The handsome visage was briefly twisted out of shape.

  “You need not have this pain, dear,” Uail ventured to say. “We could have gone directly back to Ériu.”

  Niall shook his head. “I must see what I wrought and make sure the vengeance is complete.”

  The ship toiled on eastward under oars. Ahead cruised her two attendant currachs, each with a pilot who had knowledge of these waters, picking a way among the reefs. The horns of land loomed ever more high and massive in view. Between their ruddy-dark cliffs there gleamed no longer the bulwark and the towers of Ys. Remnants thrust out of the bay, pieces of wall, heaps of stone, a few forlorn pillars. Waves chewed at them. The overturned carcass of a vessel swung about like a battering ram wielded by blind troops.

  With care the crew worked their way toward Cape Rach. They saw the pharos on top, as lonely a sight as they had ever seen, and lost it as they passed along the south side. Flotsam became frequent, timbers, spars, but no other sign of man apart from a fragment of quay. The storm had swept away the fisher hamlet under the cliffs.

  The beach was still Scot’s Landing, laughed the men. They could go ashore. Their ship was no war galley capable of being grounded and easily relaunched; in accordance with their guise of peaceful traders, she was a round-bottomed merchantman. But they could drop the hook, leave three or four guards aboard, and ferry themselves in the currachs.

  Niall led them up the path to the heights. It was slippery and had gaps, demanding care. Caution was also needful when foes not spied from the water might lurk above.

  None did. Only the wind and a mutter of surf had voice. Standing on the graveled road that ran the length of the cape, the men saw bleakness around, desolation below in the bay. Such homes as they glimpsed, tucked into the hills above the valley, seemed deserted. On their left were ancient tombs, beyond them the pharos, and beyond it nothing but sky. The air felt suddenly very cold.

  Niall raised his spear and shook it. “Onward for a close look and maybe a heap of plunder, boys!” he cried. “It’s glad the ghosts are of those who died here these many years agone.”

  That rallied their spirits. They cheered and trotted after him. His seven-colored cloak flapped in the wind like a battle banner.

  A paved road brought them down to the bayshore. Part of the southern gateway rose there, a single turret, an arch agape, a stretch of wall which had irregularly lost its upper courses. Inland, on their right, the amphitheater appeared undamaged, or nearly so; but an oakenshaw north of it had flamed away on the night Ys died, was blackness whence thrust a few charred trunks.

  No matter that Niall of the Nine Hostages was their chief, the awe of a doom fell upon the men.

  Waves rushed and growled above the remains. Amidst and beyond the wreckage above the waterline lay strewn and heaped incredible rubbish. Waterlogged silk and brocade draped broken furniture. Silver plates and goblets corroded in torn-up kelp. Tools and toys were tumbled together with smashed glass and shattered tiles. Copper sheathing lay green, crumpled, beside the debris of cranes and artillery. Paint or gilt clung to battered wood. Calmly smiling, a small image of the Goddess as Maiden nestled close to the headless, gelded statue of a man that might well have stood for the God. And skulls stared, bones gleamed yellowish in the damp, everywhere, everywhere.

  Smells were of salt and tang, little if any stench. In the past few days, gulls at low tide and crabs at high had well-nigh picked the corpses clean, aside from what hair and clothing clung. Many birds walked the sands yet, scavenging scraps. They were slow to flee men who shouted or threw things at them. When they did, they flapped awkwardly, stuffed fat.

  That was after the hush among the warriors broke. “Ho, see!” yelled one. He bent over, picked an object up, and flourished it: a pectoral of gold, amber, and garnets. Immediately his fellows were scrambling, scratching, casting bones away like offal, wild for treasure.

  Niall stood apart, leaning on his spear. Uail did likewise. Presently the King said, distaste in his tone and on his face, “You too think this is unseemly?”

  “It is that,” Uail replied.

  Niall seized his arm so hard that he winced. “I am not ashamed of what I did,” hissed from him. “It was a mighty deed. But I must needs do it by stealth, and that will always be a wound in me. Do you understand, darling? Now we shall give Ys its honor, for the sake of our own.”

  Again he shook his spear in the wind. “Lay off that!” he cried. The sound went above the surf to the farther headland and back. Men froze and stared. “Leave these poor dead in peace,�
� Niall ordered. “Well go strip yon houses. The plunder should be better, too.”

  Whooping, they followed him inland.

  —Toward sunset they returned to Cape Rach. Besides what they had taken from the mansions, they brought firewood off the wind-demolished, nearly dry buildings that had stood outside the main land gate. Niall sent a currach party to relieve the watch on the ship, who were to bring camping gear for all with them. When they arrived, he gave them gifts to make up for the looting they had missed. “Will we do more tomorrow?” asked one hopefully.

  The King frowned. “We might. I cannot promise, for it may be we shall have to withdraw fast. Soon the Romans are bound to come for a look, and they will sure have soldiers with them. But we shall see.”

  —He could not sleep.

  The wind whispered, the sea murmured. More and more as the night grew older, he thought he heard a song in them. It was music that keened and cut, cold, vengeful, but lovely in the way of a hawk aloft or a killer whale adown when they strike their prey. The beauty of it reached fingers in between his ribs and played on his caged heart until at last he could endure no more. He rolled out of his kilt, stood up, and wrapped it back around him against the bleakness of the night.

  Banked, the fire-coals glowed low. He could barely make out his crew stretched in the wan grass and the gleam on the spearhead of him who kept guard. That man moved to ask what might be amiss. “Hush,” breathed Niall, and went from him.

  Clouds had gone ragged. Eastward the moon frosted those nearby and seemed to fly among them. Time had gnawed it as the tides gnawed what was left of Ys. Dew shimmered on the paved road, wet and slick beneath his bare feet. Between the hulking masses of headland, argency flickered on the bay. As he came closer, walking entranced, wind shrilled louder, waves throbbed deeper.

  He stopped on the sand at high water mark, near a shard of rampart and the survivor of those two towers which had been called the Brothers. Looking outward, he saw how ebb tide had bared acres of ruins. When last it did I was ransacking undefended houses, he thought in scorn of himself. By this dim uneasy light he discerned fountains, sculptures, Taranis Way running toward what had been the Forum. Across Lir Way, a particular heap had been the Temple of Belisama, and Dahut’s house had stood nearby. A skull lay at his feet. He wondered if it had been in the head of anyone he knew, even—He shuddered. It was a man’s. Hers would have the strong sharp delicacy of a brooch from the hand of an ollam craftsman in Ériu.