Sun Horse, Moon Horse

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Then Dara and Teleri took the cup, their hands touching on its curved sides, according to the custom, and drank, and the thing was done.

  Lubrin, watching them, the way they stood together, their hands on the cup, thought that though they had not chosen each other, all would be well between them, in a while, and tried to be glad.

  Afterwards, the cooking-pits were opened, and, gathered about the Fire of Seven Woods, the whole dun feasted, the women carrying round the great jars of wine and barley-beer, through the firelight and the late summer dusk. And later still, when the full dark had come, they danced the Man-and-Woman Dance. They danced in two long lines facing each other in the beginning, advancing and retreating, slowly at first then faster and faster, to the high white shrilling of the pipes and the throb of wolfskin drums struck with fist and fingers and open palm. Then the two long lines became a snake, as, led by Dara and Teleri each warrior caught the hand of the woman opposite to him, and peeled off, circling the fire; spinning sunwise, faster and faster yet, shadows whirling out from them like vast black moths in the firelight. But suddenly Lubrin, dancing with a laughing red-haired girl from one of the outland settlements, thought that he felt another throbbing behind the rhythm of the drums. More urgent – desperately urgent – sweeping nearer, passing from sensation into sound. Others heard it almost in the same instant, and one by one the drums fell silent, and the dancers ceased their swaying and stamping, and stood as though they had taken root, every face turned in the direction of the one remaining gateway. Horse hooves on the summer-hard track, the broken rhythm of a horse near to foundering, yet sweeping nearer without any slackening of breakneck speed. Now the sound was on the causeway, plunging on through the gateway, out of the darkness into the flare of fire and torches. A rider on a spent horse, shouting his news before he reined to a stumbling and swaying halt, and dropped from the poor brute’s back.

  ‘The Attribates! The Attribates are on the war-trail – heading north!’

  So the thing that the old men talked of had happened at last. And the night that had begun as a wedding feast ended as a ready-making for battle. Horses were rounded up and herded into the secret places of the Chalk and the forest for safety – to bring the herds into the dun was well enough in face of a raid, quickly come and quickly over; but in face of a long drawn-out attack the water stored in the rain pits would serve only for the people and the war-ponies and a few cattle for slaughter, and the rest must take their chance in the forest fastnesses, where there was water, and grazing of a kind. Chariots were being made ready, war-bannocks hurriedly baked; warriors sharpening sword and spear-blade on the tall black weapon-stone.

  Twice more before dawn, scouts came up from the southern runs, with word of the enemy war-host – for it was a war-host, and no mere raiding party; three hundred chariots and more ran the word, beside the horsemen – heading for the great pass of the Downs westward. And once through that, all the northern runs would be open to the Attribates, and the great dun of the Iceni here on the High Chalk surrounded like a bear brought to bay.

  Dawn came, unfurling mare’s-tails of faint wind-cloud across the sky that was already beginning to shimmer with larksong; and while the shadows still lay long over every lift and hollow of the turf, the chariot teams were being led under their yokes, and the warriors standing ready to mount. And in the stable court, Lubrin Dhu, who had been out all night on the round-up, confronted his father, raging.

  ‘Why?’ he was demanding. ‘Why and why and why?’

  ‘Because I give the order. Is that not enough?’

  ‘Would it be enough for Brach or Corfil?’

  The Chieftain was silent a moment, settling the great wolfskin cloak on his shoulders. Then he said, ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Yet it should be enough for me? If I am not to go with the chariot column, you shall tell me why?

  One of the red ponies – Tigernann always drove a red team – jerked up its head, side-flung into its yoke-mate; and the charioteer cursed softly in the background.

  ‘Never you show your teeth to me, black puppy.’ The Chieftain brought his hands down in a sudden grip on Lubrin’s shoulders, but his tone was not as harsh as his gripping fingers. ‘Listen, now, and understand. Dara, who will be Chieftain after me, must be beside me in the war-host, my sons also. Yet one son I must leave here with Drochmail who I leave in command, lest we fail and the dun be left to hold against these men from the south. Also lest, when we ride away, those we leave behind should feel already that we have abandoned them. Do you not see? They must have one of the Chieftain’s sons with them.’

  ‘With the women and the boys and the old men,’ Lubrin said furiously.

  ‘With the women and the boys and the old men; also with Drochmail, who is no better pleased than you, though he makes less yelping than you, being an older and a wiser hound.’

  But Lubrin was not listening to that part of what his father said. ‘And it must needs be me that stays? Because I am small and different from my brothers? Because I am the black puppy?’

  ‘Not because you are the black puppy, but for a better reason than that—’

  ‘I can ride, or handle a chariot, as well as Brach or Corfil!’

  ‘Hear me, I said!’ It was a sudden roar, and the grip tightened on his shoulders until the fingers bit to the bone. Then the Chieftain’s voice grew quiet again, quieter than before; a voice only meant for the one hearer. ‘I have been patient, and I have no time for patience. I can trust Brach or Corfil, or Dara to press home a chariot charge. For this, that may be a harder thing, I am not sure of them. But for this, I can trust you.’

  And under his father’s gaze, the rage died in Lubrin Dhu. So – not for him the splendour and the rush and the shining of the chariot charge, with Dara beside him. For him, the slow waiting behind ramparts; no proud place among the warriors if his clan gained the victory, only the unsung bloodiness of the last stand, if it was defeat. He accepted what must be. ‘I hear you, my father,’ he said.

  So the chariots rolled out through the great gate, the horsemen flanking them; the first level shafts of the morning sun bright on iron blade and bronze harness ornament, on the strings of Sinnoch’s harp and the tall crescent head-dress of Ishtoreth of the Oak; for always the chief priest must be with the war-host, to call down the strength of the gods, and the harper to make a story-song of the battle that ends in victory. The thunder of hooves and wheels died into the distance; and the white dust-cloud of late summer along the Chalk rose behind them and swallowed them up.

  And standing on the rampart where it flanked the great gateway, Lubrin saw inside his head how the little knots of chariots and horsemen would be coming in to join them as they went, by tracks and drove-ways from lowland settlements and steadings in side-valleys of the Chalk. Saw them strung across the broad pass that was the way through for any war-host from the south. Would the fighting come this evening? he wondered, with the shadows of the chariots spinning long across the land; or would the night see watchfires all across the pass, and the fighting be for tomorrow? How long to wait? And how would the waiting end? His people were a small people, and the Attribates a great one. Even if they had sent only part of their fighting strength, there would be more, and more, and more to follow up if need be; like the cloud shadows drifting up on the south wind, and always another scudding out of the blue distance before the last one had passed over . . .

  Beside him, old scarred Drochmail said harshly, ‘Come. No good to stand here like two love-struck girls mooning after the war-host. There is work to be done, as well as waiting.’

  6

  The Conquerors and the Conquered

  There was work, and there was waiting enough, that long day. In the early part of it, a few little bands from the eastern runs came by, checked to shout for news to the men on the ramparts, who had no more news to give them, and then thrust on westward, to be lost in the cloud of white summer dust. After that, no more. All the warriors of the clan were gone to join the host
ing in the pass. And behind them in the dun, the boys and the old men and the anxious-eyed women went about their own grim preparations under Drochmail’s orders.

  Food was cooked, for there might be no time for cooking later; and the store cattle and few remaining horses were taken down the southern slope to the springs for the last time. After that there would be nothing for them, or for the human defenders of the dun, but the water in the rain-pits, as long as it lasted out. Lubrin and a handful of seventh-year boys from the Boys’ House herded them down and back, for the Dark People, the Old People after the way of their kind, had melted into the landscape. Fighting among their overlords was no concern of theirs. Drochmail, shut-faced and dangerously quiet, saw to the issue of weapons. None of the women had gone with the war-host as the women of some tribes did, but they all knew how to handle a spear; and the boys swarmed up, fiercely joyful, to collect their slingstones and javelins; and as the day wore on, there began again to be a great sharpening of blades on the tall black weapon-stone in the Chieftain’s forecourt.

  There was a soft blustering wind from the south-westward all that day; and once, towards evening, they thought they heard the boom of warhorns far off. But though everyone checked in whatever they were doing, to listen with straining ears, there was nothing more to hear. Only the soughing of the wind along the curve of the ramparts, and the lowing of the few cattle penned in the berm between the inner and outer banks. But Lubrin took his sword back to the weapon-stone for another honing – whitt-whitt-whitt – as though the edge was not already as keen as honing could make it.

  A girl stepped up behind him, and when he looked round he saw that it was Teleri, with the smudged remains of the moon pattern still white on her forehead, though the tall silver head-dress had long since been laid aside, and her hair was knotted back with an old thong, to be out of her way. She gave him the spear she carried. ‘Make it sharp for me. Make it very sharp, Lubrin my brother.’ He had always thought her a soft little thing. But she showed her teeth like a young vixen.

  ‘I will make it sharp enough to draw blood from the twilight,’ he said.

  ‘So long as it will split the throat of a man!’

  The night dragged by, and it was another day. And a while past noon there came the beat of horse’s hooves along the track once more. But this time from the west. A single horse, hard pressed. And those who waited and watched in the dun swarmed to the ramparts to see who came – what came. They saw a single rider on a horse near to foundering, with another man, or the body of a man, slung before him across its withers.

  People ran for the great timber gates, heaving them back just wide enough for horse and rider and bloody burden to pass through. The horse stumbled to a halt of its own accord, and stood with hanging head and distressfully heaving sides, while the rider half slid half tumbled from its back. And Lubrin, starting forward with a couple more, to lift down the man still hanging there, saw that it was his brother Corfil.

  Corfil with his mouth open in a fixed grin not at all like his old wide scornful laughter, and the broken-off head of a javelin sticking out from between his ribs.

  They lifted him clear and laid him down. All around, people were shouting questions. The horseman gave at the knees and sat down, his head in his hands. There was a great gash along his left forearm still oozing crimson, and his eyes were red-rimmed in the white dust that masked his face. ‘Water,’ he croaked. ‘Thirsty—’

  Someone brought a cup, and it juddered against his teeth as he drank. ‘They’re four to our one. They cut us to pieces.’

  ‘The Chieftain?’

  ‘Dead. And Brach. Most of us.’

  Lubrin, with his brother’s head on his knee, wanted to say, ‘Dara?’ But he did not speak the question. It could make little difference now, anyway. They would all be dead soon enough.

  ‘Get the gates barred again.’ Drochmail’s voice cut through the rest. And to the rider he said, ‘How close behind you?’

  The man shook his head. ‘Close enough.’

  And with the words scarcely out of him, they heard again, much closer this time, the boom of warhorns on the soft south-west wind.

  So the fighting came. And when dusk rose in the hollows of the Downs, it was over. The dead lay sprawling in the broad ditches and across the ramparts, men, women and children. Attribates and Iceni spilled across each other, for Lubrin’s people had not gone down tamely like cattle in time of sacrifice. And the kites and the ravens were circling lower in the sky. In the one remaining gateway, the dead lay thickest, where the Boys’ House had fought their first and last fight; and the gates themselves were jagged mounds of charred and smouldering timber; the Attribates had set fire to captured chariots and sent the maddened teams against their own gates; and for all the spears of the defenders, some had got through, and there had been too little water to quench the blaze once it got a hold. And so after a time of blasting flame and screaming horses, the forefront of the enemy chariots had swept lurching and rocking in over the clotted masses of the dead.

  Afterwards Lubrin remembered dimly some kind of last stand before the Chieftain’s hall. Drochmail had been dead by then. He remembered stumbling over a body, and glancing down and seeing that it was the red-haired girl he had danced the Man-and-Woman Dance with, two nights ago. He remembered the breakthrough of enemy chariots, and the Attribates’ terrible horse-skull standard with its blind eyes and streaming saffron tassels, rushing towards him, rearing over him like something in a nightmare. And then a thing like a jagged flash of lightning happening in the right side of his head.

  After that there was a gap, not even darkness, just a piece lost out of time. And then, the world still swimming round him, he was standing with his hands bound behind his back – not sure how he came to be where he was, his head full of rags of half memories, of being a shadow penned somewhere among other shadows: of being kicked to his feet and dragged out of the penned place, of being sick. Unless it was all a dream. . . . No dream now. He was standing in his father’s torch-lit forecourt with bound hands, before a man who stood leaning somewhat wearily against the side of his reeking chariot.

  The wheels of the chariot were juicy-red, and a severed human head hung by it own bloodstained hair knotted to the chariot bow. He looked at it, and saw that it was his father’s, and saluted it inside himself, ruefully. ‘I have done no better than Brach or Corfil would have done, after all, my father.’ He didn’t seem to feel much, but after that first look, he was careful not to look again. He kept his gaze locked with the narrow blue gaze of the war chieftain. And he saw that it was the man he had ridden with at the autumn round-up, two years ago.

  ‘I would not have shown you our horses, if I had known,’ he said dully, and shook his head to clear his eyes of the blood trickling from the half-dried gash on his temple.

  ‘I am very sure that you would not.’ The fair man reached out and laid a finger on the slim bronze collar about Lubrin’s neck. ‘You are the Chieftain’s son? I bade them bring me a Chieftain’s son, if one yet lived.

  ‘This morning I was one of three,’ Lubrin said.

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I am the Chieftain’s yet living son.’ And that was true. There had been a breath of life still in Corfil when they lifted him down from the foundered horse, but when they had drawn out the spear barb, the life had come too.

  ‘So,’ said the war chieftain, ‘then you shall answer to me for your people, who I hold now between my hands. And when I would speak with them, you shall be the ears and the mouth between.’

  ‘And if I will not be the ears and the mouth between you and my people?’

  ‘I am thinking that you will.’ The chieftain’s narrow blue gaze flashed open.

  ‘Why will I?’

  ‘Because you are their old Chief’s son, the nearest thing to their Chief that your clan still have left to them; and always it is for the Chief to stand between his people and the gods. Between his people and Fate, we both know that, you and I.’


  And before Lubrin’s inner eye rose the figure of his father standing here on the threshold of his hall, with the god-mask on his face, and the strangeness playing like summer lightning all about him. Yes, they both knew that, he and this war chief of the enemy.

  So Lubrin Dhu took the weight of the chieftainship upon his shoulders, since it seemed that there was no one else left to take it.

  And then his wrists had been loosed, and he was back in his penned place; seeing it now for what it was, the horse corral between the inner and outer banks, where the captives had been herded; seeing faces in the light of the guards’ torches, black jagged figures half lost in the darkness between. The faces were turned towards him, and he searched among them for any that he knew; and found a few. A handful of warriors who must have been dragged back captive from the fighting in the pass; women, a few children. Others, stranger faces from the outland settlements, that he did not know, but were still the faces of his people. And on all of them the terrible stony look of defeat. Hardly any of the small desperate crowd seemed to be unwounded. Somewhere a man groaned, bubblingly, as though breathing his own blood. Somewhere a child was screaming, and a woman trying to hush it. On the edge of the torchlight, Teleri was kneeling over the body of a fallen man. The faint traces of the moon marks were still on her forehead; it was by that that her brother knew her.

  The faces looked at him as though he was something that they had not thought to see again. They were asking questions in voices as numb as their eyes. Standing braced before them, Lubrin answered the questions. ‘Na, I am not wolf’s meat. Not yet, none of us yet, I think. I have stood before their chieftain up in the forecourt, my father’s head tied to his chariot bow. And I have listened, while he told me that when he would speak with you, who are in the hollow of his hands, he will speak through me, who am to be the ears and mouth between him and you.’