Outcast

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  He had seen this happen once before, when a hunter had broken the laws of the Tribe—the accused man standing with his weapons, here before the Chieftain’s place, for the judgement of his Spear Brothers. If the judgement was for him, he would leave the Council Fire carrying his weapon as he had come; if he were to die or be driven out, he would leave his weapons to lie beside the Council Fire, since he had lost the right to them.

  ‘I have brought Beric, my foster son, even at the bidding of the Council,’ said Cunori’s voice behind him.

  The Chieftain looked up, fondling the head of a favourite hound as it rested on his thigh. ‘Does Beric, your foster son, know why he comes here?’

  ‘Aye, he knows.’

  ‘Then there is little more that need be said’ The Chieftain glanced round the circle of firelit faces. ‘Look well upon this Beric of the household of Cunori; look well, my brothers, and say, once and for all—what is your judgement?’

  ‘Aye, look well!’ It was Istoreth, leaning forward into the firelight and pointing at him, half jeering, half in bitter earnest. ‘Look at him, standing in your midst, people of the Dumnonii! Look at him, Cunori son of Cuthlyn, you who brought him among us to bring ruin on us all! What did Merddyn the Druid foretell in the day that you took him from the sea? Woe and wailing and the wrath of the gods upon the Clan—upon the whole Tribe—if ye brought into it a whelp of the Red Crests. Merddyn warned ye, all of ye, but ye would not listen; and see what has come of it! Lean harvests and dead ewes, bad hunting and pestilence!’ He looked round at the rest, his lips drawn back in a snarl, his dark eyes glittering in the firelight. ‘Now, before it is too late, before yet greater evils fall upon the Clan, we must drive him out! Drive him out, I say, that he may take the anger of the gods with him, and the good times may return!’

  All round the fire there rose a fierce muttering of agreement; and behind him, Beric heard Cunori’s voice raised in furious protest. ‘Amgerit the Chieftain, you who are also my brother, is there no justice left in the Clan? Beric my foster son has done no wrong; he has kept the laws of the Tribe, and there is no fault in him that you should drive him out!’

  ‘All this you have said before, and many times, Cunori my brother.’ The Chieftain’s mouth was grim under the drooping red wings of his moustache. ‘All this we know well enough. It is for no wrong that he has done that we drive him out, but for what he is—for the blood that beats in him which is not our blood and which has brought down on us the wrath of our gods. That also has been said many times.’

  Yes, it had all been said, Beric thought drearily, in the brief hush that followed—everything that there was to say, over and over again. It was finished; and they were going to drive him out. He looked round at the crowding circle of warriors, their fierce faces set against him in the leaping flame-light; looked round at them with a kind of numbed horror. He had known no other life than life among these men. They were his world, as surely as though he had indeed been born to Guinear his mother in the house-place up yonder. They were his kin in all but blood; the young men who had hunted with him, the old ones who had taught him all he knew. And now they were casting him out, and for no fault —for mercifully it never occurred to him to wonder if he had indeed brought the anger of the gods upon them.

  But the firelight showed him two faces that differed from the rest: Cathlan’s face, the eyes in it wide and bright and hot, and the face of Rhiada the Harper, sitting on his deerskin at the Chieftain’s feet; and Rhiada’s mouth looked wry, as though he had bitten a sloe. As you looked into other men’s eyes to know what they were thinking, so you could tell what Rhiada was thinking by looking at his mouth. They had been fighting for him, those two; but what could they say? ‘He has not broken the laws of the Tribe,’ Rhiada might have said, as Cunori his father had done; and Cathlan might have said, ‘He is my friend, and he saved me from a wolf last winter.’ That was all that there was for them to say, and it was useless. If old Ffion had not gone beyond the sunset there would have been one more voice raised for him, but it would still have been useless.

  Again the murmur was running through the crowd, soft, but fierce, and rising fiercer moment by moment. ‘Drive him out!’

  Rhiada flung up his head. ‘Through he is not of the Tribe by his first birth that brought him into the world, is he not of the Tribe and the Clan and the Men’s Side of the Clan by the second birth of his initiation, that brought him into the Spear Brotherhood? We call ourselves a free people; shall he not at least have freedom to speak for himself in this matter?’

  ‘Be it as you say, then; let him speak,’ said the Chieftain after a moment.

  Six harvests ago Beric had spoken for himself in this circle; he had fought for his place in the Clan, and won. But he knew that the time for fighting had gone by. He made a tiny, hopeless gesture. ‘Oh, Elders of my Clan, and you, my Spear Brothers whom I have fought and hunted with from the day that I could crawl, what is there for me to say, save that which my father—my foster father—has said already? I have not broken the laws of the Tribe, for I thought that it was my Tribe also. I have the marks of a wolf’s teeth here on my shoulder that I got three moons ago defending your lambing pens. I have been one with you in all things, without thought of another people; and if the Red Crests came against us I would have stood with you to fling them back. I would have died with you, without question, because you were my own. Bad times have come upon the Clan, as doubtless they have come before and will come again, and you say that it is my doing, because I am a stranger, and you cast me out.’ A great choking sob rose in his chest, and he fought it down. ‘So be it, then; cast me out. I go to my own people.’

  Heedless of the harsh splurge of voices that broke in over the end of his words, he strode forward to the hot verge of the Council Fire, and cast down the bronze and bull’s-hide shield clanging into the white ash. Setting his teeth, he took his heron-tufted war-spear and broke it across his knee, and laid the pieces beside it.

  Then he turned for the last time to the Chieftain, holding himself erect and braced as though he were another spear in the firelight. ‘May I go back to the house-place, to take my leave of Guinear my mother, before I go?’

  The Chieftain was still caressing the head of his favourite hound. ‘You have until the moon rises,’ he said.

  Beric turned, and went back up the path that opened for him.

  A few moments later he was standing once again in the doorway of the familiar house-place that had been home, and was home no longer. ‘I have until moonrise to be away, my mother.’ He was not conscious of speaking the words, but he heard them hanging in the smoky air; and Guinear must have heard them also, for she cried out sharply, and hurried to him in the doorway, and put her arms round him as though to hold him back.

  ‘No! Oh no, no!’

  He let her draw him to the fire, but stood there, rigid and unresponding, as though he had been a pillar of grey granite, so that after a moment she released him with a little sob, and let her hands drop to her side.

  ‘They say it is through me that evil times have come upon the Clan,’ he said dully. He was vaguely aware that Cunori had entered behind him and was standing by the doorway, and that Arthmail and Arthgal had appeared from somewhere, frightened and subdued.

  His mother put out her hands to him again, her eyes straining in her head. ‘What will you do? Where will you go?’

  ‘I will go to my own people,’ Beric said.

  There was a long silence, and then his mother said in a dry, harsh voice: You will need food—food and money; wait, and I will get them.’

  While he stood beside the fire, staring blindly down into the flames, she began to move about, gathering dried meat and barley cake and stowing them in a leather bag. She fetched a slender hunting-spear that had been his companion on many game trails; she brought out a new cloak, warm and thick, of her own weaving; and going to the kist in the inner chamber, took from it some money. ‘It is Roman money,’ she said, as she tied it in a scrap
of cloth and added it to the food in the leather bag. ‘You will need money in the place that you go to.’

  And still Beric stood rigidly beside the fire, watched by the scared boys and uneasy hounds; and Cunori stood in the entrance, peering out. ‘The sky grows light to moonrise,’ he said, without looking round. ‘Are you nearly done?’

  ‘I have done now,’ Guinear said, in the same dry, harsh voice. She returned to Beric by the fire. ‘Here is food for your journey, and money, and a spear, and a new cloak to keep you warm.’

  He took them from her, and flung the cloak round him, and was just stabbing home the pin of the bronze shoulder-brooch when someone else thrust past Cunori in the doorway, and he swung round to see that it was Cathlan, carrying a light hunting-spear.

  ‘I was afraid you would be already gone,’ Cathlan said breathlessly. ‘It is my best throw-spear, and you will be needing a spear. Take it, Beric.’

  ‘I have spears of my own,’ Beric said, ‘but I take it for the good hunting that we have had together. Do you take this one of mine, for the same reason.’

  As the weapons changed hands, Cathlan asked: ‘What will you do, among your own people?’

  Beric glanced a little uncertainly at the spear in his hand, then up again at the friend who had given it to him. ‘Maybe I will join the Eagles.’

  For a moment he knew that it was on Cathlan’s tongue to say, ‘I will go with you.’ But the moment passed, and Cathlan said: ‘Good hunting to you, my brother.’

  ‘And to you,’ Beric said, turning with him to the doorway. For an instant he felt Cathlan’s arm hard and heavy across his shoulders; and then his friend was gone, as quickly as he had come.

  ‘The first rim of the moon is above the hills,’ said Cunori.

  ‘Bid the moon tarry but for a single heart-beat,’ Beric said, and turned again to his mother. ‘Guinear, my mother, you do not believe that I have brought trouble upon the Clan?’

  ‘I do not know. I do not care.’ Guinear held him close, and his head was down on her shoulder. ‘I know only that you have always been my son, my little first-born son, and that I love you … .’

  ‘Oh, Mother! Mother!’

  ‘Send me word,’ she begged. ‘Find means to send me word, one day——’

  ‘One day, when I have made a new life among my own people, I will send you word,’ Beric promised. ‘Once, that you may know that it is well with me, and then never again. Better you forget that there were ever three sons at the hearth fire.’

  ‘I shall not forget, not the son that was my first-born.’ His mother strained him close an instant, then thrust him away. ‘The Sun and the Moon be with you, little Cub.’

  ‘And with you, my mother.’ Beric stooped for his bundle and the spear that lay beside it. He shook off his weeping brothers and the troubled and bewildered hounds that thronged about him, and thrust through them to the doorway. Cunori’s hand came down on his shoulder, halting him an instant; and he looked round, seeing the lean red head of the man who had been his father lit on one side by the friendly firelight, on the other by the remote silver of the rising moon. ‘Already the fever is growing less; there will be good times again for the Clan,’ said Cunori. ‘And when the good times come, they will forget. It may be that in a few years——’

  Beric shook his head. ‘The Clan has cast me out. If, when the good times come again, they forget, it would be but till the next bad harvest. Even you, my father, though you fought for me down yonder by the Council Fire, are you sure in your heart that it is not through me that the bad harvest and the fever came?’

  He waited an instant with a faint hope of denial; but Cunori was a very truthful soul.

  ‘The gods be good to you, my father,’ Beric said, and felt Cunori’s hand slacken and slip from his shoulder as he plunged out into the young night.

  The Council Fire was dying down, but the whole village was still gathered in the open space and around the gateway in the stockade. They drew back from him, silent, hostile, leaving him a wide road; and he strode down it, looking to neither the right nor left. Here and there they cried out after him, words for the averting of evil. They crowded in behind him, and he felt the pressure of their hate thrusting him out; felt it far more clearly than he heard the rattling of spear-butts on shields to drive away evil spirits. He refused to be hurried; he strode steadily on, his shoulders braced and his head up. He reached the gateway, and passed out between the turf banks and the thorn hedge where the blossom showed through the shadows, like foam-curds in a dark wave. A knot of young warriors thrust into the gateway behind him, jostling out on his track, giving tongue like a wolf-pack in full cry; and a flight of stones came whizzing viciously after him.

  The light of the rising moon made for uncertain aim, but even so one caught him in the shoulder and another grazed his cheek. He knew that it was not Beric they were stoning, but the bad harvest and the fever. ‘Still,’ he thought, ‘they need not have thrown stones! They need not have thrown stones!’ Another caught him full behind the ear and made him stagger in his tracks. He broke into a stumbling run. The shouting and the shield-drumming were growing fainter behind him; and a last stone, flung at extreme range, thudded into the grass beside him.

  ‘They need not have thrown stones,’ he thought dully, over and over again. ‘They need not have thrown stones.’

  How quiet the field-strips were in the first glimmering of moonlight. Kind, the earth was, kinder than men; the familiar field-strips did not throw stones.

  He came to the edge of the oak woods and, slackening his pace, struck into the game-track that led eastward into the moonrise; eastward toward his own people. Presently he might look for a place to sleep, but hunter that he was, he could travel as well by night as by day, and his one thought was to push on, to get away from the village, as far as ever he could, before he stopped to rest.

  There was a sound of flying paws behind him, and the rustle of something slipping low through the undergrowth, and even as he turned to face it, with his hand tightening on his spear-shaft, Gelert brushed by against his leg, circled round, and stood looking up at him, his tail lashing, and the star-shaped blaze on his forehead silver in the moonlight.

  Out of his old life, one living thing—Gelert his dog—had kept unswerving faith with him; had come to be with him. The consciousness that he was a warrior with more than half a year of grown manhood behind him, which had stiffened Beric until now, suddenly deserted him. He squatted down, and with his arms round the great dog’s neck and his face buried in the thick, harsh hair, he cried as Arthmail or even Arthgal might have done, while Gelert licked and licked at his bare arm.

  But he could not take Gelert with him, not into the Legions; for the Red Crests did not use dogs in war, as the Tribesmen did. After a little while he scrambled to his feet and pointed back the way he had come. ‘Home. Go home. We are not hunting to-night, brother,’ he said huskily.

  The dog stood still. He looked uncertainly in the direction of Beric’s pointing finger, and then up into his face, whimpering.

  ‘Home,’ Beric said again, and walked on. Gelert padded after him.

  Beric halted again, and stooping, turned the dog round to face homeward. ‘Home,’ he ordered. ‘Off! Home, brother!’ and pointed his meaning with an open-palmed slap on the brindled rump.

  Still Gelert hesitated an instant, then he slunk off a little way, and checked, one paw raised, looking back. But Beric still pointed ‘Home! Go Home!’ and with drooping tail, Gelert went.

  Beric stood in the middle of the track, and watched until the last flicker of the brindled hide was lost in the criss-cross black-and-silver shadow-pattern of the moonlit forest. Then he turned his face once more towards his own people.

  IV

  THE MEN FROM THE SEA

  THREE days later, in the first fading of the spring twilight, Beric stood before the north gateway of Isca Dumnoniorum, watching the few people who still came and went through the archway, wanting to go in himself, but
hesitating, wary as a wild animal that scents a trap. The battlemented walls of the frontier town looked unpleasantly strong, as though once inside there might be no getting out again … . But that was stupid, of course, and he could not stand here all night. A man went past him leading a string of three ponies with bales of merchandise on their backs, and Beric straightened his shoulders and, joining the tail of the string, followed it in under the massive arch, past the men in leather tunics and steel caps, with long spears in their hands, who stood on guard there.

  Just within the gates he came to another halt. So this was a town! A town such as his own people built! His first impression was of straight lines everywhere, straight walls and roof-edges, a long street running away from him straight as a spear-shaft until it lost itself in a confusion of deepening shadows. And the people! The shifting, busy, many-coloured crowd! Beric stood there in bewilderment until he found somebody shouting curses at him, and he had to leap aside to save himself from being run down by a fast mule-carriage sweeping out of a side street.

  ‘Are you deaf?’ someone was demanding. ‘Or just tired of life?’

  The mule-carriage rattled on, the little bells on the harness jingling, and Beric, gathering himself together, decided that the middle of a Roman street was no place in which to stand and stare. Without more ado, he set off towards the fort, which was his reason for coming to Isca Dumnoniorum, and which he could see rising unmistakably above the end of a short side street.

  He turned in towards it, but where the few houses ended under the shoulder of the little hill, halted again, looking up the steep flinted road that lifted between vegetable plots to the gate of the fort. He had seen the fort from a long way outside the town, but somehow it had not looked so large and formidable as it did now: a lean, red, frowning fort, its gate-towers sharp edged against a watered sky. He had meant to go up there to-night, and tell whoever it was that one told these things to that he had come to join the Eagles; but it was growing late, and the light was going fast, and perhaps they would not let him in when once the light was gone. In the gathering shadows the fort seemed to crouch, watchful and faintly menacing, on its hill-top. Perhaps in the morning it would look less dangerous. If he went up there in the morning, it would be just as good as going up now. He had money for a night’s lodging—the money that Guinear had given him. He would come back in the morning; and meanwhile he would see something of this strange and wonderful thing that was a town.