“Go,” I cry. “Get everyone else out before more are wounded.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll join you by the ruined bridge. Just give me a second.”
“Don’t do anything foolish,” he says, before kicking his horse’s sides again.
My heart racing, my breath short, I wait until all the Iutes turn tail and ride off downhill. Haesta’s men rush for their mounts to start a pursuit — Haesta himself joins them at first, then turns slowly towards me, noticing I still haven’t left the camp.
I launch into a charge with both hands on the reins, aiming past him; he wavers: he could get out of my way and lose a chance to strike at me — or risk getting trampled under my pony’s hooves, if his attack fails. He chooses the latter, assuming a battle stance with the sword over his head. Just as I come near him, I tug on the reins and push with my rear; the pony slides in the sand and stops, suddenly. Haesta strikes a blow, but he misses by a good foot, misjudging my position. I lean down from the saddle, holding to the reins with one hand, and grab Basina’s bow from his shoulder. The string tenses for a brief moment — then snaps, sending Haesta flying to the ground.
With the string-less bow in my hand, I dodge another mercenary springing before me, his axe swinging past me, climb up the earthen bank and leap down the other side. I look back: several of Haesta’s men have already mounted up. Haesta scrambles from the ground and yells at them to go after me.
I holster the bow and swerve northwards, into the woods. I can’t let them chase after the others — on the paved road, their war horses are bound to catch up to the moor ponies, even in the darkness. In the forest, I may have a chance to lose them.
An arrow flies past my ear. One of Haesta’s men is riding and shooting after me, Hunnish style. I lower my head and kick the pony’s flanks, but the poor beast is, like myself, too weary after the long night to make any more effort. Foam flies from its mouth, I can hear it wheezing desperately.
“Over here, lord!” I hear a call from somewhere to my right — a call in the Vulgar tongue, not Iutish. I turn towards the voice. Somehow, in the darkness my pony senses a ditch and leaps over it, but the leap costs it its last reserve of strength. The pony stumbles, whinnies, and falls under me.
I roll off it into the scrub. The man who called me appears with a small oil lamp — it’s one of the woodsmen who was with us on the night of Odowakr’s attack. I stir away, remembering the betrayal — but he puts his hand on my mouth and pulls me down to the ground. He covers us both with a cloak, with leaves and branches sewn into the cloth, until we resemble an overgrown boulder.
Haesta’s men thunder past just a few feet away, noticing neither us nor the poor pony, lying motionless in the heather.
“You need to silence the beast,” the woodsman whispers. The pony stirs and starts to snort and whinny again. “Before the others come.” He nods at the approaching second wave of Haesta’s riders, this one led by Haesta himself. Deep down, I know he’s right, but the decision breaks my heart. I crawl up to the pony, cover its eyes with one hand and, with the other, I draw a knife across its neck. The woodsman pulls me away as the pony kicks its legs in silent agony.
“Come.”
He drags me deeper into the ferns and heather and, again, we drop to the ground. Haesta and more of his men ride past: he slows down, sensing something’s amiss; but by now, the pony has fallen silent. I hold my breath; we are invisible and noiseless. Haesta tuts and rides on with the rest of his men in tow.
“I need to get down to the river,” I whisper. “Quickly.”
“I know the way. Follow me.”
“Wait.” I grab his arm. “How do I know I can trust you? You could be taking me into another trap.”
“That was all Kila’s doing, lord,” the woodsman explains apologetically. “Please, there’s no time…” He pauses and notices I’m still not convinced. He makes a quick sign of the cross. “I swear by the Almighty God and all his Saints, I mean you no harm.”
I may not believe in the Roman God myself — but I know a believer when I see one. These Christian peasants would never take their God’s name in vain like that — not even when threatened by an entire heathen horde.
“Fine,” I say. “Lead the way. But if you try anything, not even God and his Saints will save you from my wrath.”
“At last!” Audulf exclaims, emerging from the tall reeds into the slowly creeping light of dawn. “We’ve been waiting for an hour. We thought they got you.”
“I got held up.”
“Who’s that?” he asks, nodding at the woodsman.
“He’s one of the serfs who betrayed us to the Saxons,” says Seawine, approaching the woodsman with an axe drawn. “Step back, Octa, I’ll deal with him.”
I stand between them. “It’s alright, Seawine. He saved me from Haesta.”
Along the way, while avoiding the riders searching the flood plain between the forest and the riverside, the woodsman explained how Kila convinced them to give us away to Odowakr with the promise of gold — and freedom from the gruelling work on the siege machines.
“But we got no gold,” he said. “And they forced us to fell another ancient oak the next day. These are sacred trees, they should not be cut down,” he added, making a sign warding off an evil spirit, and thus betraying the traces of heathenry still running deep among the people of the forest, despite there having been a Bishop at Trever for more than a century.
“We ran away when your men attacked again,” he said, “and when the four warriors got captured, we watched the camp, hoping to find a way to help them. But we were too few. We are not warriors.”
“You did well enough.”
“Where’s your pony?” Ursula asks me.
“I… lost it. I will need to ride with one of you.”
“You can have Huda’s,” says Seawine grimly. I follow his gaze — one of the four captives, the one most beaten-up, is hanging limply from the saddle. “He didn’t make it.”
“We should bury him,” I say. “We can’t carry him all the way to…”
“There’s no time,” says Audulf. “Haesta’s men will find us any moment now. They already passed us once. They won’t miss us again,” he says, nodding towards the rising sun.
“We will take care of your fallen,” says the woodsman. “It’s the least we can do.”
“Are you sure? You’ve already risked enough to get me here.”
“We will give him a proper burial,” he insists.
“He wasn’t a Christian.”
“It matters not in God’s eyes.”
I help him take poor Huda from the pony and mount up myself. I look to the South.
“We need to find another way than this road,” I say. “By now it will be brimming with patrols, looking for us.”
“If you’re going west, you can cut through the hills, along the Kelb River,” says the woodsman. “There’s no road, but there’s a good shore path the charcoal burners use. Your ponies should have no problem.” He looks at Audulf’s war horse. “Might be a bit tight for this one.”
“Slippy will manage just fine,” says Audulf, patting his mount’s mane.
“Slippy?” I raise my eyebrow and chuckle. Ursula looks at us, not understanding the joke among the heathens. “You named your horse after Wodan’s steed?”
“He proved he’s worth it.”
The Iutes mount up in a hurry. I bid farewell to the woodsman, burdened with Huda’s corpse. Ursula rides up to me and studies the string-less bow, holstered at the saddle.
“Is this what you went back for?” she asks.
My cheeks burn. “Yes.”
She laughs. “I’m sure Basina will be… suitably impressed.”
I spur the pony to a gallop, towards the dark line of the hills.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAY OF BETULA
After four days of marching — and riding, where possible — along the winding, wooded banks of the Kelb, we run out of the dry bre
ad and salted pork we brought from Trever in our saddlebags. We have no time to forage or hunt — I want to reach the Roman-held territory as fast as possible. All the villages we pass are long abandoned, the villagers having fled in the same direction we’re heading now.
On the fifth day, tired, hungry and saddle-sore, we reach the Roman road again, right by the border fortress of Icorig. The town is heaving. There seems to be even more people here than when we left. We make our way to the town’s largest inn, and the innkeeper, seeing the state we’re in, and hearing we’ve come from Trever, lets us all stay for free — in the stable, turned into one large dormitory; most of the horses are gone, and I dread to think what fate befell them in the town that, squeezed between Hildebert’s Franks on one side and Odowakr’s Saxons on the other, is as much under siege as Trever.
I sleep until late that night. The sun is high up already when Ursula wakes me.
“There’s a messenger downstairs,” she says. “From the Praetor.”
I groan and rise from the straw. “I feared this would happen. We must be the first visitors from the South they’ve had in weeks. Tell him I’ll be right over.”
She throws me the tunic and breeches and leaves me to wash myself. I’m in no hurry to see the Praetor. My head hurts, my stomach grinds and growls after days of sitting in the saddle and eating nothing but oatcakes and salted meat. Still, I remind myself, I need to speak to him too, to see if he has any news from the North, before we enter the land of the River Franks.
“Where did all these people come from?” I ask, after recounting the situation in Trever.
“Tolbiac,” the Praetor replies. He calls himself Falco — but I can’t tell if it’s his real name, or just a nickname based on the falcon-beak shape of his nose.
“Did the Franks take it?”
“Not yet — and I don’t think they’re planning to, not until the siege of Trever ends, one way or another. This Hildebert is too shrewd to try another city battle so soon after Coln. But he moved his camps closer, as a show of force; too close for some. They lost their nerve and fled here.”
“You must be running out of supplies yourself. I’ve seen the stables…”
He winces. “It hasn’t been easy. But we’re not giving up. Even if Trever falls, even if the Saxons and the Franks ally against us, we will not go down without a fight. I’m not giving my town away like Pinnosa.”
“You are a soldier,” I say, nodding. I sense resentment in his voice. “In command of a fortress. Pinnosa was a Comes, leading a city full of civilians. He did what he had to do.”
“I know, I know.” He sits back with a sigh. “I would be the last to deny him valour. I remember him standing against the Huns when all the other towns fell. If he decided Coln was no longer defensible, he must have been right. His death is a great loss to us all.”
He wraps his hand over his head and twiddles his thumbs. “What orders from Trever, then?” he asks. “Do they want us to come to their aid? Is a rescue effort mounting?”
“I have no orders from Trever,” I say. “Not for you, anyway.” I look around the room — the Praetor’s simple office in the corner of the barracks; its raw stone walls, unadorned with as much as a single painting or tapestry, once plastered white, are now grey with soot of the fireplace. It’s a far cry from the opulent Praetorium halls of Coln or Trever, but I know that in such offices, in such barracks, was decided the fate of the Empire. That it was up to the commanders of the border fortresses, like the man sitting before me, to defend Rome’s frontier.
He looks at me suspiciously. “Then why are you here? We are the last outpost of the Legions on this road.”
I don’t know how much I’m allowed to tell him. If Hildebert accepts the pact proposed to him by legatus Aegidius, Icorig would be one of the places given up to the Franks without a fight. How would the Praetor and his men react to this? If I was in their place, I would deem it a gross betrayal. They are ready to fight to the death to defend the fortress and the pass, to give their lives for men like Aegidius — but for the legate and his likes, they are mere markers to move around the map as the interests of the Empire dictate.
He slams the table. “They have sent you to do some deal with the barbarians, haven’t they? I always knew this half-Frank could not be trusted.”
“Trever will not last a month,” I reply. “And I was sent on the Imperator’s orders, not Arbogast’s.”
“Imperator — which one?”
“You know about the Usurper in Lugdunum?”
“We are not completely cut off from the world, yet,” he replies. “I see they told you to call him a Usurper — but I know Agrippinus well and trust him better than some general from Italia. He would never consider making deals with the River Franks.”
“He made a deal with the Burgundians — and the Goths.”
“And who told you that?”
“His enemies,” I admit. I am not prepared to argue with him about the politics of the Empire. “I’m only a messenger,” I say. “I’m not even from around here. I want to go back home to Britannia as soon as all this is over.”
Falco rubs his cheeks, then points at me. “If I hold you here, you will never get to Hildebert.”
“Then Trever will fall. And you with it.”
“Better to die fighting than to give the fortress to the heathens without a javelin thrown.”
“You sound like a heathen yourself,” I say with a smile. “Wodan would gladly welcome you to his Mead Hall.”
“You heathens are not the only ones who appreciate a warrior’s death,” he says, then adds: “All of us here have some Frankish or Alemannic blood in our veins. Maybe we are more alike than either of us think.”
He picks up a stylus and doodles a few random lines on a tablet in thought.
“If Pinnosa had lived, he would never have agreed to this deal,” he says. “It’s one thing to give up a city that’s already doomed to fall — and save its soul in exchange… But to surrender like this, when there are still men willing to fight…” He points the stylus at me. “There is something else going on,” he says. “If they’re willing to give up Icorig, then they must be ready to give up Trever as well. They know we’re all that stands between the Franks and the city… This means that Imperator of theirs is afraid of something other than the Saxon warband.”
I remain silent. If Aegidius wanted his courier to argue his cause with fellow Romans, he should have sent someone more eloquent and familiar with the Empire’s politics.
Praetor Falco shrugs and puts down the stylus. “I’m just a soldier. And you’re just a courier. This is all above both our heads. In the end, we are all just doing what we are ordered. If I keep you here, they will send someone else in your place. And you don’t deserve the punishment for someone else’s sins — not after what you and your men have been through.”
“I appreciate your clemency.”
“You will have no trouble finding the Franks. They have their camps scattered everywhere between Tolbiac and Ake.”
“They didn’t take Ake, either?”
“Maybe Hildebert bit more than he could chew with Coln. It is a lot of a city for a barbarian to rule over.”
“If he can’t control Coln, he might be in trouble having to rule an entire province,” I blurt out before realising. I put my hand to my mouth, but it’s too late.
“So that’s what they’re promising,” Falco says and chuckles. “Fine.” He waves his hand. “Go, do your politics. After all, you’re a foreigner in a foreign land, none of this concerns you. Maybe that’s why Aegidius chose you for his messenger.”
“The fate of the Empire concerns me. That is why I came here in the first place.”
“Then you better pray to your pagan gods that the men who sent you are doing the right thing. Because I can’t see how giving any more of our land to those barbarians helps the Empire continue. But what do I know, I’m just a simple soldier?”
He gives me a nasty glance, and I know h
e counts me among the “barbarians” threatening Rome’s survival. Iutes, Franks, Saxons — it makes no difference to him. To men like him, it never did.
“We are not all the same,” I murmur, but too quiet for him to hear. I bid him farewell. He says nothing; as I leave, I hear him call the servant to bring him a bottle of the strongest Frankish mead.
Tolbiac is, indeed, half-empty when we reach it: a desolate shell of a town, with only those too infirm or too stubborn to leave still roaming its now too-wide streets. We don’t stay there long, and I refuse a summons to meet with its magistrates, not wanting another futile conversation in which I would be required to answer the questions meant for Aegidius and, ultimately, the Imperator himself.
I don’t have such choice when it comes to an invite from the Franks. A clan of them set up camp just outside the town’s outskirts, between the road to Coln and a small, shadowed brook. His men intercept us on the highway and escort us to the sprawling tent of their chieftain. I recognise some of them along the way; and I recognise their chief, Weldelf.
“You’ve lost some men,” he says, eyeing our group.
“I’m surprised you remember, chieftain.”
“A dozen was an easy number to remember.” We’re now down to seven Iute riders — Audulf, Ursula and I round it up to a ten. “The walhas girl survived,” Weldelf grins at Ursula. “I am glad.”
“I’m glad, too,” says Ursula. She dismounts, walks up to a guard drinking some ale, grabs it from his hand and downs it in one. She wipes her mouth and belches. “Finally, some good drink!” she says. “I’ve had enough wine for the rest of my life.”
The Franks around her laugh. “There’s more of it inside,” says Weldelf, inviting us to his tent.
“We can’t stay long,” I say as we settle down on the bearskins scattered on the floor. The shieldmaidens roll in a barrel of ale and crack it open. Ursula is the first to plunge her mug into it. “We took too long to get here as it is.”
“Where are you going in such a hurry?”
“We’re on our way to see your Drohten. I can’t say any more.”
The Blood of the Iutes: The Song of Octa Book 1 (The Song of Britain 4) Page 29
