The Dog and the Wolf (19 page)

“Good work, Timbro!” Ullus bellowed. “Keep ’er for us too!” He swung to advance on Evirion. The billman and the clubber hung back. “Move, you scuts! Hold him busy and I’ll hit him from the rear.”

They gathered courage. Evirion thought he saw the dawn of pleasure on them. Ullus was triumphant. He had no reason to hide his plan. It was clear and certain. He sidled across the avenue, around the Ysan.

To stand and fight would be to die, uselessly. The spearman had Nemeta down on the pavement. She strugled. His fist struck her beneath the jaw. Her shrieks dropped to a thin wailing, her movements to feebleness. Between them and Evirion were the rest of the band.

He sheathed his sword, whipped about, dodged out onto the Forum, and ran.

For a brief while he heard shouts and footfalls at his back. Then he was alone. None of them could match his fleetness; and even now, he had some knowledge of Ys. He zigzagged, climbed, slipped in and out among huge shattered remnants, until he had shaken pursuit. Still he kept on. He knew not why. It was as if the sea drew him.

Yet hard was the way he must fare. Down here the stones only saw sky when water was very low. Shells encrusted them, for hands and knees to flay themselves. Green weed wrapped them, slimy to make feet lose footing. Strange things grew, swam, scuttered in pools between. Fog swirled ever thicker and more cold. Through the blindness that it wove beat ever louder the rumble, rush, plash, smack, growl of waves. Evirion cast himself down at their verge.

He could dimly see a few feet in the wet smokiness. A rock lay fallen upon lesser ones. They were paving stones and building blocks; it was rudely hewn, if men had ever given it any of its shape—a megalith. He had come to Menhir Place, where Ys preserved a relic of an age ere ever the city was. What, had this first and last piety also
been overthrown? Or was its raw mass the sign of a doom spoken at the founding of the world?

Evirion’s panting faded into a sigh. He knew just that he too was broken. His emprise had enriched barbarians (aye, barbarians swarmed out of Rome as well as the wild lands; a carcass breeds maggots) and destroyed a girl. His strength had drained away with his hopes. The shoulder that the bludgeon had scraped throbbed with pain. The rent cloth around it hung sodden with blood. Water licked him, higher at every wave. The fog hooded his eyes, laid salt on his mouth, like tears.

Through the blood-beat in his skull he thought he heard a song again. Peace without end, love to enfold him as does the sea, all he need do was abide and she would come. Did the mists eddy together and form a wraith of her whiteness in the dusk? It was her lips that tasted of salt, her kiss.

Desire torrented upward. He rose, spread his arms, called into the deep noises, “Here I am. We’ll go and snare the rest, won’t we? I’ll bring you their bones to play with out on the reefs.”

A snarling gave answer, and a giggle in the wind.

The wind lifted. It blew him back shoreward. Or else he was the wind and the fog and the following sea. He flowed across rocks, poured along broken pillars, swept over tumbled roofs, a salmon bound upstream, an orca in the final shearing rush at a seal. The sword flared free.

In Taranis Way, the last man got up and belted his breeches. The red-haired girl sprawled at his feet. “Ready for another go, anybody?” he crowed. He was young, the fuzz thin across a face raddled with sores and pimples.

Nemeta stirred. Her eyes stayed shut, but she pulled at the hem of her tunic, trying to bring it down, while she squirmed about so as to lie curled tightly on her side.

“Nah,” said Ullus. He cast an uneasy glance west across the Forum. Wind rumpled his beard and shrilled in his ears. Darkness advanced yonder, a wall of it from which gray tatters flew. “We’ve spent too much time with her as is. Might be sunset—who can tell through that stuff? Back to camp, their camp where the gold is, while we can still see what we’re doing.”

“Tomorrow’ll be soon enough for work,” agreed the spearman. He nudged the girl with his foot. “Up, you.” When she merely shivered, he kicked.

“Hey, easy,” said the youth. “Don’t spoil that nice, tight thing. If she can’t walk, gimme a hand with her.”

“Ah, she can walk, all right.” The clubber spat. “Stubborn bitch. I’ll teach her better.”

“Move!” rasped Ullus. “Never saw fog come in so fast or so heavy.”

The boy and the pikeman dragged the girl half upright and shoved her along. She stumbled between them, eyes still closed. A bruise was starting to blossom on her jaw. Blood trickled down her thighs.

The vapors whirled around. Ullus swore. “Stick close. We’ll have to feel our way. If anybody strays, he’ll likely be lost till morning in this damned spook-hole—”

He with the sword sprang out of the brume. Steel smote. Ullus staggered, dropped his ax, clutched his belly, stared astounded at the red and the entrails that fell out between his fingers. “Why, why, can’t be,” he mumbled and went down on his face. There he threshed for a short while. The tall man with the sword was gone.

The three yelled fury and threats. They formed a triangle, back to back. The wind snickered and flung a deeper blanket over them.

The spearman shouted, “There!” and jabbed at a shadow. It was only a clot of mist. The tall man glided under the shaft and struck upward, into the throat. The club whirred at him but he was gone and it smote a toppled statue. That blow knocked a chip out of the sculptured mouth so that it no longer smiled but sneered.

Nemeta’s eyes were open. The two who were left had none for her. They stood gaping into sightlessness. She slipped from them.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” gasped the clubber. “You face right, I’ll face left. Crabwise, got me?”

They advanced a few paces, reached a wall whose remnant top they could not see, moved along it. He with the sword leaped from above. He landed on the shoulders of the clubber, who went down with a sound of breaking spine and ribs. The clubber lay where he had fallen, for he
had no movement below the waist. He flailed his arms about and ululated. The spit bubbled red in his beard.

“No!” yammered the boy. “Please, please! I’m sorry!” He dropped his bill and fled. The tall man followed leisurely.

—Evirion found Nemeta halfway up Taranis Way, resting on a wing that had fallen off a stone gryphon. His blade dripped, but the hue was pale, fog settling on the steel and running down to carry the blood away. Surf noises sounded louder. The wind had died.

He stood and stared at her, barely able to see through the murk. “How are you?” he asked hoarsely.

She raised her head. “I live,” she answered without tone. “I can travel if we go easily. And you?”

“Unhurt save for this shoulder, which isn’t too bad.” He left off mention of scrapes, cuts, and bruises from his scramble to the sea. “Tomorrow the carrion birds will make dung of those bandits.”

“How did you do it?”

“I know not. Something other than my own spirit had me. Something that laughed as It bargained—four lives in exchange for our two.”

She hugged herself, bit her lip, climbed painfully to her feet. “Then the deal is completed, and we’d best depart while we can,” she said.

“Aye.” He gave her his free arm to lean on. “Nor ever return. Unwise was I to come. The Gods I trusted are evil, or mad. Never can I make amends to you.”

She looked before her, into the unrestful gloom through which they groped. “You did not compel me,” she said wearily.

“At least,” he vowed, “you shall have your full share of what we did win.”

She shook her head. “I’ll take none of it. Cast it from you.”

“Hoy? After what ’tis cost us?” He overcame his shock. “And what it means to my life. How can you say that? What knowledge have you?”

“No more than you have of what happened this eventide—” All at once she could walk no farther. She swayed, her knees buckled. He caught her.

“Poor lass,” he mumbled. “Poor hurt lass.” He sheathed
his sword and took her up. “Here, lay your arms around my neck. Ill carry you back. At dawn we’ll leave. If you refuse the gold, well, you may always call on me for whatever else is in my gift. Always.”

She nestled her head against him. “I’ll remember that,” she whispered.

2

Mons Ferruginus and the woods beyond the Odita blazed with autumn, red, russet, yellow under the earliest sun-rays. Dew glittered on grass, vapors curled white above the stream. It ran through an enormous silence, beneath blue spaciousness. Air lay chill but already full of earth odors.

No one else was about when Gratillonius left Aquilo. Folk were sleeping late after last night’s festivities. Tables had been modestly spread, in this year when the neighborhood divided what it had with the survivors of Ys, but drink was plentiful and merriment, after a while, feverish. As early as manners allowed, he had retired to a bed in the Apuleius home. His own was too close to the noise.

Not that he begrudged the people their celebration. They had earned it. They were alive, safe, housed; more toil and hardship lay before them, but nothing they could not overcome. When Corentinus dedicated Confluentes, he simply gave utterance to the fact of the colony. It was built. Most of its inhabitants occupied their dwellings, the rest would as soon as they had finished whatever obligations they had assumed in the course of earning their keep. Well might they cheer for Gratillonius their tribune, Grallon their King.

Wryness twisted the man’s mouth. He was neither, of course. If his appointment was not revoked, that was merely because no one in the Imperial administration had thought to do so. As for his throne, it was under the sea with the bones of his Queens.

He strode on. Gravel scrunched underfoot. He needed something to do, anything. Well, he had no lack. But decision, organization, leadership required others be present.
He thought he’d seek the manor, where Favonius was stabled, saddle the stallion and ride into the forest. Take spear and bow along; he might have a chance at a deer or a boar. Afterward, the tension out of him, maybe he could start arranging the woodworking shop he wanted. The one in Ys had given him pleasure and, aye, peace.

Should he have become a carpenter? He might this day dwell quietly in Britannia with wife and … sons; oh, daughters too, the older ones married and giving him grandchildren. But he wasn’t born to that station. Anyway, somebody had to keep guard over the carpenter’s hearth.

At the upper bridge he lingered a few minutes. The air was so pure, the river so serene. How different from yesterday. Here Corentinus had stood and preached his sermon, while the bank and the harvested field beyond were packed solid with people, not simply those of Ys—of Confluentes but nearly everyone in Aquilo. After all, Corentinus was their bishop now, the first resident bishop they had ever had. Old Maecius had retired to the monastery at Turonum. You could sense a new order of things being born. Conversion of the pagan immigrants to the Faith would be just the beginning.

The rough voice echoed in Gratillonius’s head: “—thanks to almighty God and His Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, for Their manifold mercies. May the Holy Spirit descend to sanctify and bless these homes—” Mainly, however, as usual, Corentinus had talked to the commoners like one of their own. “—‘Love your neighbor’ isn’t any simpering bit of goody-goodyness, you know. It’s as tough a commandment as was ever laid on a man. Often you d like to bash your neighbor’s head in, or at least kick him in the butt. You Aquilonians, and I include the surrounding tribesfolk, you’ve been mighty kind to these outcasts; and you Ysans have been brave, and mostly done your best to make some return; but I know of quarrels, or outright blows, wrongs done on both sides, and it could get worse instead of better as time wears on. Doesn’t have to, though. We’re none of us saints, but we can be honest and reasonably patient with the neighbor. We can all stand together against whatever troubles come on us, in
this world where Satan always prowls on the lookout for souls he can snatch.—”

Gratillonius wondered why the words stayed with him. He’d heard their like aplenty during the years Corentinus was in Ys, and they’d never been anything startling in the first place. Was it their impact on Julia that drove them into him? Lanarvilis’s daughter had stood unwontedly solemn, intent, listening. Most times she was calm, even cheerful; when the memory of what she had lost struck fully into her, she didn’t weep or brood or get drunk like many survivors, she grew quiet and kept extra busy. Suddenly she had seemed beautiful to him. Before, she was merely a large girl, well filled out, roundfaced, snub-nosed, blue-eyed, her best feature the wavy reddish-brown hair.

Well, if she was to find consolation in Christ, good for her. Likewise had Gratillonius’s mother, for whom he named the child. He hoped the religion wouldn’t estrange her from him. It was a glow near the middle of the cold and hardness in him that she, after the alienation of the final months in Ys, again gave him not bare filial obedience but, he thought, some love.

As Forsquilis’s daughter Nemeta had not—secretive, rebellious, runaway Nemeta. Since her vanishment in late summer Gratillonius had had no heart for revelry. They were dancing on the ground outside the ditch, beneath torches lashed to poles, when he left. Julia and young Cadoc Himilco had looked very happy together. Let them savor it for whatever short while they could.

Gratillonius shook himself. No use moping here. He crossed the bridge. It was of wood, like the one above the Aquilonian waterfront, but smaller, meant for workers on the Apuleius estate and in the forest to convey their produce. Confluentes would bring more traffic than that; something better was necessary. He found refuge in thinking about ways and means.

On the opposite shore, three sentries paced back and forth between the Stegir and the south end of the eastern earthworks. Regulars, but local, they were not legionaries nor outfitted like legionaries; that was a thing of the past. However, they did wear helmets and coats with iron rings
sewed to the leather, they did carry swords, spears, and small round shields. If their bearing and movements weren’t soldierly by ancient standards, at least they were alert and reasonably smart; they had learned from Maximus’s veterans. The nearest of them recognized Gratillonius and snapped to a halt, thudding his spear down in salute. No law entitled Gratillonius to that, but so men did in these parts. He made an acknowledging gesture and passed on.