Caradoc looked up at the endless gray sky, the shining wet roof of the Great Hall. He felt Eurgain’s hand under his elbow, the pulse in his throat, the sword lying heavy against his breech-clad leg. Then he grinned, slowly, a wolfish, blood-scenting grimace, and his men found themselves looking into the wily, slit eyes of Cunobelin.
“Kill him,” he said.
Chapter Ten
THREE days later Togodumnus and his chiefs, with their wives, children, and baggage, straggled back to Camulodunon and were welcomed with a night of feasting. Caradoc sent scouts to watch the coast, and the winter plodded on. “How do we know which part of the coast to observe?” Togodumnus had asked him, but Caradoc knew. The Romans would land where Julius Caesar had landed, on the Cantiacan peninsula, and he sent emissaries to the Cantiaci, requesting a joint Council. He also sent men to all the other tribes while the moon waxed and waned, and the rain gave way to hard frosts. Togodumnus went to bed each night with his hut surrounded by sleepless, armed chiefs. He was taking no chances and was quite open in his mistrust, but Caradoc made no move against him. All his thoughts, all his will, were bent on the clash with Rome that he knew would come, and he had no time or inclination to cross swords or hard words with his brother. He ordered regular sword practice for the women, and once more Eurgain and Gladys sparred on the frozen earth, weighed down by the shields he insisted they carry. Llyn was nine now, a short, sturdy boy, and Caradoc ordered Cinnamus to give him a sword of iron. The wooden sword was put away, and Llyn sweated and shrieked happily, slashing at Cinnamus, toppling to the ground, taking scratches and cuts from his teacher’s lethal blade with joyous unconcern.
One by one the emissaries returned, and the wind swung into the west, bringing more warm rain and a faint, odorous whiff of spring. The Cantiaci would sit on a joint Council. So would the fierce Durotriges, the Dumnonii, and the Belgae, Cunobelin’s old allies. The men of the west, the uncouth Silures and Ordovices, said that they would wait and see what happened. They wanted no truck with Rome, but neither did they want to mingle with the pleasure-loving Catuvellauni. The Iceni, the Coritani, the Dobunni, and the Atrebates, the remnants of Verica’s people, all rudely and gleefully refused any aid to the House Catuvellaun, and Caradoc heard the growing number of nays with a mounting despair. He felt that he alone knew what they were facing, and he was afraid. Togodumnus scoffed angrily. “Just wait until Rome runs,” he swaggered. “Then we will turn and finish off these stupid peasants. They will be sorry they refused us aid. What did Aricia say?”
“She said she will not be allied with a tribe that sees no boundaries. She hopes that the legions grind us into the dirt.” The words came hard. Yearning and bitterness flared within him even as he spoke them, and he felt a kindling in his loins. He wanted to beat her and fling her to the ground, to hear her beg for mercy.
“Then we will do without her,” Tog declared. “The obstinate vixen! When I get my hands on her she will cry— Enough!”
“Before the chiefs leave their territories we must do something about the traders,” Caradoc said, changing the subject determinedly. “They will have to be rounded up and imprisoned until the battle is over. Otherwise they will be forever running back and forth, taking our plans to Caesar. He must already know that something is afoot. He would not be fool enough to expect to find us totally unprepared.”
“I say kill them all,” Tog pressed. “If we imprison them we will have to feed and guard them, and we are going to need all the grain and salted meat we can carry if we are to journey to meet the le gions.” Caradoc saw the logic in Tog’s argument, but he was loathe to act so callously. Many of the traders were acquaintances of his, men he had passed the time of day with when his father was alive, and though he did not respect them, regarding them as peasants of Rome with no honor-prices and no morals, he was not so blithely prodigal with human life as was his brother. But he had to agree. The traders must die. It was only good sense.
“You and your chiefs can see to it,” he told Togodumnus testily. “I hate useless slaughter.”
“Not useless,” Tog retorted. “Where’s your stomach, Caradoc? I like it no more than you.” It was true. Togodumnus liked to kill, but only when there was an element of sport or a matter of honorable gain. There was no sport in the slaying of men who lived by their wits and not by their long, thin knives. So it was done, quickly and secretly.
The lords and chiefs of other tuaths began to arrive for the Council, with their flashy, quarreling wives, their gaudy, patterned cloaks, their bronze helms made to resemble claws or bulls’ horns or high, glinting feathers. They were housed in empty huts, in stables and tents, their retainers strutting about, bullying the Catuvellauni freemen and picking fights, and Caradoc spent his time running from circle to circle in the town, pacifying irate chiefs and punishing peasants. Camulodunon became one vast, sprawling ant heap, crawling from morning until night with men and women jealously striving to assert their superiority. They consumed vast quantities of imported wine and they ate constantly, and Caradoc was very glad when the night of Council came.
“It will be like this all the time if we have to fight together,” Togodumnus reminded him, mockingly wagging a finger under his nose, and Caradoc wondered grimly how this brawling, shouting mob could ever be persuaded to join any cause. But he need not have fretted. The Council went on all night. The Dumnonii and the Durotriges had brought Druids with them, and the Druids guided the proceedings with calm skill. Joke after joke was told as the air in the Great Hall became stuffier and hotter, and serious things were discussed, but there was no fighting, though many of the chiefs became very drunk. Songs were sung, poems chanted, and there was even some impromptu dancing, but Caradoc, wedged in the forefront between Cinnamus and Caelte, sensed the devious, halting path the Council was taking. The tribes disliked one another, but were all mistrustful of Rome. Though they could slit each other’s throats without compunction, steal each other’s cattle, and feud among themselves over women or honor-prices, they all shared one fear—slavery. Slavery was the ultimate disgrace, the state worse than that of a peasant. A slave was not human any more. A slave was an animal. The Romans would come and turn them all into slaves unless they resisted, as Caradoc and the Druids pointed out forcefully time and again, and in the end, when another dawn flowed quietly into the town, they piled their swords together and swore unity. It was temporary, of course, and Caradoc could not hope for more, but he watched the gleaming tangle of metal with tired satisfaction.
The tribes went home, and Caradoc settled down to wait. The weather changed again, became mild, and the trees sent forth sticky brown buds. In the meadows, under the shadow of the earthwalls, the pristine snowdrops arched and the air became thick with the strong taunting odors of the stirring soil. The peasants put aside their weapons and took out their plows, and still Caradoc waited, his spies coming to him day after day with nothing to report. He began to wake in the night, an anxious sweat on him, wondering if he had been wrong, and Togodumnus’s cheerful sarcasm did nothing to reassure him. Then one of his men came to him, riding wearily through the warm, somnolent afternoon, and slid from his horse to face Caradoc, Togodumnus, and the chiefs clustered in a lazy group upon the slope before the fetid dyke. They rose and greeted him warily, sensing news, and Togodumnus sprang forward.
“Tell us quickly,” he said, disregarding the formal offering of bread, meat, and wine. “Is the time here?” The man sank to the long, dry grass.
“It is here,” he said. “Scouts from Gaul braved the neap tides to bring us word. Rome is camped on the beaches of Gesioracum. Rafts and sturdy boats wait to carry the soldiers across the water, and the sands are piled high with provisions.” He peeled off his dirty, sweat stained tunic and flung it away so that the wind could cool his body. “It is no expedition, Lords. It is invasion.”
Caradoc squatted before him. “How many legions?” he barked.
“Four.”
Togodumnus swore loudly. “Mighty Camulos!
So many men?”
Caradoc had a sudden and chilling picture of them, swarming like metal-clad insects on the beach. Forty thousand fighting men. Oh, sweet Raven of Nightmares, Queen of Battle, help us now! “Who commands?” he asked huskily.
“Aulus Plautius Silvanus, ex legatus augusti in Pannonia. He is bringing with him his own legion, the Ninth Hispana, and Thracian auxiliaries, also from his Pannonian garrisons. The other three are the Second Augusta, the Fourteenth Gemina, and the Twentieth Valeria. All with their auxiliaries.”
Caradoc closed his eyes. Forty thousand men. Togodumnus was thoughtful, chewing on his lip and studying the ground while the scent of crushed grass wafted around him. The messenger looked up at them, lines of weariness around his mouth.
“There is more,” he said. “Geta is coming.”
The chiefs stirred and muttered. Caradoc and Togodumnus were silent, but Cinnamus cried out, “Mother! Hosidius Geta! Conqueror of Mauretania! They send their elephants to crush the mice!” Then Caradoc’s mood lightened. He smiled up at Cinnamus and rose easily to his feet.
“It is said that elephants fear mice, Cin,” he said. “And these elephants are disadvantaged. They will go blundering about in a country they do not know. We, too, have many thousands of chiefs and freemen, and chariots, and bright swords. They come knowing that they have failures behind them. We face them victorious.”
Togodumnus muttered something rude under his breath, then he spoke aloud. “We must send for the allies,” he said. “The sword count must begin.” He stretched luxuriously, breathed deeply, and beamed on all of them. “Then we move! To the coast!”
The messengers went out and the scouts resumed their lonely watch lying high above the empty, wind-swept beaches of the south while the Catuvellauni prepared to empty Camulodunon. An atmosphere of excited anticipation pervaded the town, and the clash of weapons and the thunder of chariot wheels hung in the air. The servants began to pack the wains with food and spare clothing and the women ran to and fro, chasing the children who became infected by the charged mood of nearly hysterical elation, and darted about the busy huts like mad, fluttering sparrows.
Caradoc entered his house one morning to find Eurgain standing in the middle of the sleeping room, her face flushed, and her eyes clouded with preoccupation. A small box lay open on the table, newly filled with her star maps and her crystals. Her tunics and cloaks were piled on the bed in bright profusion, and her jewels lay scattered on the skins, winking and glittering as the firelight caught them. Her sword stood against the wall, a whetstone and a bowl of water beside it, and Tallia moved quietly amid the wreckage of a once peaceful home. He could hear the little girls laughing and talking under the window, but there was no sign of Llyn. Eurgain glanced at him, a frown creasing her smooth forehead.
“Eurgain!” he exclaimed sharply. “What are you doing?”
“Packing, of course,” she answered absently. “No, Tallia, don’t include the gold and amethyst belt. I would be upset if it were lost or stolen. Put it back. But I will take the three leather ones.”
Caradoc advanced carefully, threading his way through the gay debris. “You can put it all away, Tallia,” he said. “Eurgain, you are not going.”
This time she did not even bother to look at him. “Don’t be silly, Caradoc. Tallia, five tunics should be sufficient. Don’t forget my short ones, and my breeches. If you neglect to put them in the boxes I shall have to fight in a long gown.”
“Eurgain,” he said again, more loudly. “You are not going.”
Now she turned to him, impatience evident in the angry set of the shoulders. “What do you mean, Caradoc? Of course I am going. All the women are going, and the children, too. It is the custom.”
He came and grasped her stiff, yellow-clad arms. “What the other women do is no concern of mine, but you are staying here, in safety, with the girls.” Annis paused to listen and Eurgain spoke angrily. For the first time Caradoc saw her cool imperturbability shaken, and a fiery, proud woman blazed out at him as he sought her wide eyes.
“I will not cower here like a trembling winded doe while the other women fight and die! I am a sword-woman. Have you forgotten, my husband? If I do not go I will lose the respect of my sisters, and I will have to battle my way into their esteem once more. What do you fear?” she said scornfully. “For myself, I fear nothing.”
“Eurgain,” he said quietly, emphatically, “This is not a raid, or a blood feud, or the clash of two warring tribes. We face men who fight day and night, every moment of their lives, like mindless tools of war. And that is what they are. Tools. They have no champion. They are all champions, without mercy and without honor. Either we kill them all or we die. They will not fight as we do. Their tactics are unfamiliar to us and that makes this war twice the gamble.”
Her cheeks flamed suddenly like red corals. “But you let Llyn go! And Llyn could be slaughtered by a blind old man with no hands!”
“Llyn does not go to be blooded, as you know full well. He will watch from a place of safety, and learn.”
“Gladys will go!”
“Gladys has no husband and no children. Besides, she fights as well as Cinnamus.”
“And I suppose that I do not!” The color left her face and her skin became white as chalk. The deep eyes burned like two incandescent caverns, and beneath his hands he felt the rigidity of supreme rage. “What have I become to you, Caradoc ap Cunobelin! A soft, lazy tired servant, living on milk and bread, able only to snore in the sun and bear children? You dishonor me! I will fight you for the right to go! I am a warrior, not a stinking wet-nurse!”
He grasped her shoulders and shook her viciously. “Remember your oath to me, woman!” he shouted. “You will not go, you will not go!”
She wrenched herself free and slapped him soundly across the face. Quick, stinging tears came to his eyes and he stepped backward. “Eurgain,” he said. “If we are wiped out and do not come home again then you must fight alone, with none to sing of how you fell in the silent streets of Camulodunon. Can you say that such a fate is without honor? I want all the chiefs to persuade their women not to go, for this very reason. Slavery or death is not only the alternative open to the freemen warriors. It extends to the freewomen warriors too.”
“I understand,” she said bitterly, folding her arms tight to her breasts. “The men attack, and we defend.”
“Yes, that is so, this time.”
He went out quickly and Tallia waited, arms full of belts and trinkets, but her mistress continued to stand and stare at the doorway.
The tribes began to assemble and the sword-gathering began. Lords, chiefs, and freemen, farmers, blacksmiths, artists, metalworkers, swarmed over Camulodunon and spilled out into the woods and little fields between the town and the river. By day the forest rang with talk and laughter, and by night the countryside was dotted with the orange eyes of cooking fires. Caradoc had armed the peasants, but as unfree men they were not required to go to war. He gave them weapons only to defend themselves and their huts and farmsteads if the warriors did not come home. For a week the lords and chiefs held Council in the sweet, blossom-heavy air of spring, then they harnessed their chariots, yoked the oxen to the wains, and set out for the coast. The cups of farewell were shared, passing from hand to eager hand, and Caradoc embraced and kissed his wife in the soft, pearly dawn, while Togodumnus paced restlessly in a fever to be gone.
“Remember my instructions,” he told her. “If Rome wins through, tear out the gate and fill the hole with earth and stones. Destroy the bridge over the dyke. If the earthwalls are taken, ring the Great Hall with your women. Do not put the children together in any one hut, for the Romans will fire it. Drive them into the woods, send them west. Sacrifice to the Dagda while we are gone.”
She listened, a faint, tremulous smile on her lips. Neither of them had slept well. Caradoc had dreamed, terror waking him to sweat and anguish, but there was no comfort in the warm dimness, or in Llyn’s loud snores, and he could n
ot sleep again. Eurgain had woken then and they had lain side by side holding each other, talking quietly until Fearachar came to rouse them.
Now she lifted mauve-shadowed eyes to his own. “Go in safety, walk in peace,” she whispered, and suddenly they clung together as if it were farewell, and time, feeling their love and bitter grief, faltered and stood still to watch them wrapped tightly in each other’s arms, holding the Raven of Panic at bay.
“Make haste, Caradoc!” Togodumnus called. “Already the chiefs are quarreling over who should have precedence on the march.” Caradoc pulled Eurgain’s warm arms from around his neck, smoothing down her hair with both wistful hands. Then he knelt and kissed his daughters, their big, solemn eyes fixed on his stern face. He hitched at his sword, took one last look at the huts of his town, empty now, cold and forlorn, and strode down to the gate.
For five days the singing, drinking, squabbling horde moved slowly across the countryside, while the apple trees burst forth into clouds of perfumed white blossoms and the trees opened suddenly, proudly, displaying the delicate freshness of their new green leaves to a low, admiring blue sky. They crossed the Thamus, rattling over the narrow wooden bridge, the water flowing slowly and peacefully below them, and the swifts and swallows looping and diving with high cries around them. Each night Caradoc sent out hunters who slipped quietly through the woods and brought back deer and rabbits. He worried constantly about food, for winter stocks were running dangerously low. He and the other lords had brought with them all the grain and salted meat and fish that the wains could carry, but already the wains rolled lighter and men’s bellies rumbled, never comfortably full. In another three months the new crops would be almost ready for harvest and the woods would be full of edible green things, but Caradoc, walking from campfire to campfire, watching the men wolf down their rations, wondered how many of them would return to their farmsteads and hill forts to celebrate Samain.
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