The Eagle of the Ninth

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘Well, we made an end. There will be no more Red Crests going to and fro in our hunting grounds. We left them to the raven and the wolf, and also to the bog. Bog country is swift to swallow the traces of fighting. Yes, and we brought back the winged god; we, the Epidaii, claiming it as our right because it was the warriors of the Epidaii who were First Spear at the killing. But there was heavy rain later, and the rivers coming down in spate; and at a ford the warrior who carried the god was swept away, and though we found the god again (three lives it cost us, in the finding), the wings, which were not one with it but fitted into holes in its body, were gone from it, and so were the shining wreaths that hung from its staff; so that when we brought it to the Place of Life it was as you saw it tonight. Still, we gave it to the Horned One for tribute, and surely the Horned One was well pleased, for have not our wars gone well for us ever since, and the deer waxed fat in our hunting runs? And I will tell you another thing concerning the Eagle-god; it is ours now, ours, the Epidaii’s; but if ever the day comes when we host against the Red Crests again, when the Cran-tara goes out through Albu, calling the tribes to war, the Eagle-god will be as a spear in the hand of all the tribes of Albu, and not of the Epidaii alone.’

  The bright old eyes turned at last, consideringly, to Marcus’s face. ‘He was like you, that Chieftain of the Red Crests; yes. And yet you say that you are a Greek. Surely that is strange?’

  Marcus said, ‘There are many of Greek blood among the Red Crests.’

  ‘So. That might be it.’ The old man began to fumble under the shoulder-folds of the chequered cloak he wore. ‘They were truly warriors, and we left them their weapons, as befits warriors… But from that chieftain I took this for the virtue in it, as one takes the tush from a boar who was fierce and valiant above others of his kind; and I have worn it ever since.’ He had found what he wanted now, and slipped a leather thong from about his neck. ‘It will not go on my hand,’ he added, almost fretfully. ‘It must be that the Red Crests had narrower hands than we have. Take it and look.’

  A ring swung on the end of the thong, sparkling faintly with green fire in the torch-light. Marcus took it from him and bent his head to examine it. It was a heavy signet-ring; and on the flawed emerald which formed the bezel was engraved the dolphin badge of his own family. He held it for a long moment, held it very gently, as if it were a living thing, watching the torch-light play in the green heart of the stone. Then he gave it back into the old man’s waiting hand with a casual word of thanks, and turned his attention again to the dancers. But the fierce whirl of the dance was blurred on his sight, for suddenly, across twelve years and more, he was looking up at a dark, laughing man who seemed to tower over him. There were pigeons wheeling behind the man’s bent head, and when he put up his hand to rub his forehead, the sunlight that rimmed the pigeons’ wings with fire caught the flawed emerald of the signet-ring he wore.

  All at once, with over much finding-out for one day, Marcus was tired to the depths of his soul.

  •    •    •    •    •

  Next morning, sitting on an open hill-shoulder where they could not be overheard, Marcus laid his plans very carefully with Esca.

  He had already told the Chieftain that he was for starting south again next day, and the Chieftain, and indeed the whole dun, were loath to let him go. Let him stay until spring; maybe there would be more sore eyes for him to salve.

  But Marcus had remained firm, saying that he wished to be in the south again before the winter closed in, and now, with the great gathering for the Feast of New Spears breaking up and going its separate ways, was surely the time for him to be going too. The friendliness of the tribesmen gave him no sense of guilt in what he was going to do. They had welcomed and sheltered him and Esca, and in return Esca had hunted and herded with them, and he had doctored their sore eyes with all the skill that he possessed. In all that there was no debt on either side, no room for guilt. In the matter of the Eagle, they were the enemy, an enemy worthy of his steel. He liked and respected them; let them keep the Eagle if they could.

  That last day passed very quietly. Having laid their plans and made what few preparations were needful, Marcus and Esca sat in the sun, doing—to all outward seeming—nothing in particular, save watch the delicate flight of the sand-pipers above the still waters of the loch. Towards evening they bathed; not their usual plunge and splash about for pleasure, but a ritual cleansing in readiness for whatever the night might bring. Marcus made his sunset prayers to Mithras, Esca made them to Lugh of the Shining Spear; but both these were Sun Gods, Light Gods, and their followers knew the same weapons against the dark. So they cleaned themselves for the fight, and ate as little as might be at the evening meal, lest a full stomach should blunt their spirits within them.

  When the time came for sleep, they lay down as usual with Tradui and the dogs and Liathan in the great living-hut; lay down in the places nearest to the door, which also was usual with them, for they had always had it in mind that a time might come when they would wish to leave quietly in the night. Long after the rest were asleep, Marcus lay watching the red embers of the fire, while every nerve in his body twanged taut as an overdrawn bowstring; and beside him he could hear Esca breathing quietly, evenly, as he always breathed in sleep. Yet it was Esca, with a hunter’s instinct for the passing of the night, who knew when midnight was gone by—the time at which the priest-kind would be making the nightly offering—and the Place of Life would be deserted again; and told Marcus so with a touch.

  They got up silently, and slipped out of the hut. The hounds raised no outcry, for they were used to night-time comings and goings. Marcus dropped the deerskin apron silently into place behind him, and they made for the nearby gateway. They had no difficulty in getting out, for with the dun full of guests and so many of the tribe encamped outside, the thorn-trees that usually blocked the gate at night had not been set in place. They had counted on that.

  Turning away from the camp-fires, the sleeping men, and the familiar things of this world, they struck off uphill, and the night engulfed them. It was a very still night, with a faint thunder haze dimming the stars, and once or twice as they walked a flicker of summer lightning danced along the sky-line. The moon had long since set, and in the darkness and the brooding quiet the mountains seemed to have drawn closer than by day; and as they dropped downward into the valley of the Place of Life, the blackness rose around them like water.

  Esca had brought them into the valley from its head, behind the Place of Life, where the sun-dried turf would make no sound at their passing, and carry no track afterwards. But in one place the heather came down almost to the foot of the standing-stones, and he stooped and broke off a long switch of it, and thrust it into the strap about his waist. They reached the lower end of the temple, and stood for what seemed a long time to listen for any sound; but the silence was like wool in their ears; not a bird cried, even the sea was silent tonight. No sound in all the world save the quickened drubbing of their own hearts. They passed between the standing stones and stood in the paved forecourt.

  The black mass of the barrow rose above them, its crest of thorn-trees upreared against the veiled stars. The massive granite uprights and lintel were a faint pallor against the surrounding turf; it swelled on their sight as they walked towards it. They were on the threshold.

  Marcus said softly but very clearly, ‘In the Name of Light,’ and feeling for the edge of the sealskin curtain, lifted it back. The bronze discs on it grated and chimed very faintly as he did so. He ducked under the low lintel, Esca beside him, and the curtain swung back into place. The black darkness seemed to press against his eyes, against his whole body, and with the darkness, the atmosphere of the place. The atmosphere: it was not evil, exactly, but it was horribly personal. For thousands of years this place had been the centre of a dark worship, and it was as though they had given to it a living personality of its own. Marcus felt that at any moment he would hear it breathe, slowly
and stealthily, like a waiting animal… For an instant sheer panic rose in his throat, and as he fought it down, he was aware of a rustle and a faint glow, as Esca fetched out from under his cloak the firepot and glim they had brought with them. Next instant a tiny tongue of flame sprang up, sank to a spark, and rose again, as the wick in its lump of beeswax caught. Esca’s bent face grew suddenly out of the dark as he tended the little flame. As it steadied, Marcus saw that they were in a passage, walled, floored, and roofed with great slabs of stone. How long it might be there was no guessing, for the little light could find no end to it. He held out his hand for the glim. Esca gave it to him, and holding it high he walked forward, leading the way. The passage was too narrow for two to walk abreast.

  A hundred paces, the darkness giving back unwillingly before them, crowding hungrily in behind, and they stood on the threshold of what must once have been the tomb chamber, and saw, set close before them on the slightly raised flagstone at the entrance, a shallow and most beautifully wrought amber cup filled to the brim with something that gleamed darkly and stickily red in the light of the glim. Deer’s blood, maybe, or the blood of a black cock. Beyond, all was shadow, but as Marcus moved forward with the light, past the midnight offering, the shadows drew back, and he saw that they were standing in a vast circular chamber, the stone walls of which ran up out of the candle-light and seemed to bend together high overhead into some kind of dome. Two recesses at either side of the chamber were empty, but there was a third in the far wall, opposite the entrance. In it, too far off for any spark of light to catch its gilded feathers, something was propped a little drunkenly, blotted dark against the stones; that must surely be the Eagle of the Ninth Legion.

  Otherwise the place was empty, and its emptiness seemed to add a hundredfold to its menace. Marcus did not know what he had expected to find here, but he had not expected to find nothing—nothing at all, save that in the exact centre of the floor lay a great ring of what appeared to be white jadite, a foot or more across, and a superbly shaped axehead of the same material, arranged so that one corner of the blade very slightly overlapped the ring.

  That was all.

  Esca’s hand was on his arm, and his voice whispering urgently in his ear: ‘It is strong magic. Do not touch it!’

  Marcus shook his head. He was not going to touch it.

  They made their way round the thing, and reached the recess in the far wall. Yes, it was the Eagle all right.

  ‘Take the glim,’ Marcus whispered.

  He lifted it from its place, realizing as he did so that the last Roman hand to touch the stained and battered shaft had been his father’s. An odd, potent link across the years, and he held to it as to a talisman, as he set about freeing the Eagle from its staff.

  ‘Hold the light this way—a little higher. Yes, keep it so.’

  Esca obeyed, steadying the shaft with his free hand that Marcus might have both hands free to work with. It would have been easier to have lain the thing on the ground and knelt down to it, but both of them had a feeling that they must remain on their feet, that to kneel down would put them at a disadvantage with the Unknown. The light fell on the heads of the four slim bronze pegs that passed through the Eagle’s talons, securing them through the crossed thunderbolts to the shaft. They should have drawn out easily enough, but they had become corroded into their holes, and after trying for a few moments to shift them with his fingers, Marcus drew his dagger, and began to lever them up with that. They came, but they came slowly. It was going to take some time—some time here in this horrible place that was like a crouching animal waiting to spring at any moment. The first peg came out, and he slipped it into his belt and began on the second. Panic began to whimper up from his stomach again, and again he thrust it down. No good hurrying; once he started to hurry he would never get these pegs out. For a moment he turned over in his mind the idea of taking the whole standard outside and finding some hide-out among the heather, and doing the job in the clean open air. But the job would have to be done, for the whole standard was too big to hide in the place that they had in mind; time was limited, and he could not work quickly without light, and light, anywhere outside, might betray them, however carefully they shielded it. No, this was the one place where they might be safe from interruption (for unless something went wrong, the priest-kind would not return until the next midnight)—from the interruption of men, that was.

  Marcus began to feel that he could not breathe. ‘Quietly,’ he told himself. ‘Breathe quietly; don’t hurry.’ The second pin came out, and he thrust it into his belt with the other; and as Esca turned the shaft over, began on the third. It came more easily, and he had just started on the fourth and last, when it seemed to him that he could not see as clearly as he had done a few moments ago. He looked up, and saw Esca’s face shining with sweat in the upward light of the glim; but surely the glim was giving less light than it had done? Even as he looked, the tiny flame began to sink, and the dark came crowding on.

  It might be only bad air, or a fault in the wick—or it might not. He said urgently, ‘Think Light! Esca, think Light!’ And even as he spoke, the flame sank to a blue spark. Beside him he heard Esca’s breath, whistling through flaring nostrils; his own heart had begun to race, and he felt not only the many-fingered dark, but the walls and roof themselves closing in on him, suffocating him as though a soft cold hand was pressed over his nose and mouth. He had a sudden hideous conviction that there was no longer a straight passage and a leather curtain between them and the outer world, only the earth-piled mountain high over them, and no way out. No way out! The darkness reached out to finger him, softly. He braced himself upright against the cold stones, putting out his will to force the walls back, fighting the evil sense of suffocation. He was doing as he had told Esca to do, thinking Light with all the strength that was in him, so that in his inner eye, the place was full of it: strong, clear light flowing into every cranny. Suddenly he remembered the flood of sunset light in his sleeping-cell at Calleva, that evening when Esca and Cub and Cottia had come to him in his desperate need. He called it up now, like golden water, like a trumpet call, the Light of Mithras. He hurled it against the darkness, forcing it back—back—back.

  How long he stood like that he never knew, until he saw the blue spark strengthen slowly, sink a little, and then lick up suddenly into a clear, small flame. It might have been only a fault in the wick… He realized that he was breathing in great shuddering gasps, and the sweat was running down his face and breast. He looked at Esca, and Esca returned his look; neither of them spoke. Then he started again on the fourth pin. It was the most stubborn of the lot, but it yielded at last, and Eagle and thunderbolts came loose in his hands. He lifted them off with a long, shaken breath, and sheathed his dagger. Now that it was done, he wanted to fling the staff aside and make a blind dash for the open air, but he schooled himself to take the staff from Esca and return it to its place in the recess, to lay the thunderbolts and the four bronze pegs on the floor beside it, before he turned at last to go, carrying the Eagle in the crook of his arm.

  Esca had taken the branch of heather from his belt, and, still carrying the glim, followed him, moving backward to brush out any recognizable tracks they might have left in the dust. His own tracks, Marcus knew, were all too easily recognizable, because, however hard he tried not to, he dragged his right leg a little.

  It seemed a long way round to the other side of the tomb chamber, and every few instants Esca glanced hastily aside to the ring and the axehead, as though they were a snake about to strike. But they gained the mouth of the entrance passage at last, and began to make their way down it; Esca still switching out their trail. Marcus moved sideways along the wall, guarding his own back and his friend’s. Esca’s crouching figure blotted out most of the light from the glim he carried, save where it fell on the dusty flag-stones and the flicking heather-switch, and his shadow swallowed up their way, so that every step Marcus took was into the edge of the darkness. The passage seemed muc
h longer than it had done when they followed it inward; so long that a new nightmare grew on Marcus that either there were two passages and they had chosen the wrong one, or the only one had ceased, since their coming in, to have any end.

  But the end was still there. Suddenly Esca’s giant shadow ran on to the sealskin curtain, and they had reached it.

  ‘Get ready to douse the light,’ Marcus said.

  The other glanced round without a word. Marcus’s hand was on the curtain when they were plunged in darkness. He drew it back slowly, with infinite care, ears and eyes straining for any hint of danger, and the two of them ducked out under the lintel. He let the curtain ease back into place behind them, and stood with his hand on Esca’s shoulder, drawing in great gasps of the clean night air with its scent of bog myrtle and its salt tang of the sea, and gazing up at the veiled stars. It seemed to him that they had been many hours in the dark; but the stars had swung only a little way on their courses since he saw them last. The summer lightning was still flickering along the hills. He realized that Esca was shuddering from head to foot, like a horse that smells fire, and tightened his hand on his friend’s shoulder.