The Dog and the Wolf (5 page)

“You need not have this pain, dear,” Uail ventured to say. “We could have gone directly back to Ériu.”

Niall shook his head. “I must see what I wrought and make sure the vengeance is complete.”

The ship toiled on eastward under oars. Ahead cruised her two attendant currachs, each with a pilot who had knowledge of these waters, picking a way among the reefs. The horns of land loomed ever more high and massive in view. Between their ruddy-dark cliffs there gleamed no longer the bulwark and the towers of Ys. Remnants thrust out of the bay, pieces of wall, heaps of stone, a few forlorn pillars. Waves chewed at them. The overturned carcass of a vessel swung about like a battering ram wielded by blind troops.

With care the crew worked their way toward Cape Rach. They saw the pharos on top, as lonely a sight as they had ever seen, and lost it as they passed along the south side. Flotsam became frequent, timbers, spars, but no other sign of man apart from a fragment of quay. The storm had swept away the fisher hamlet under the cliffs.

The beach was still Scot’s Landing, laughed the men. They could go ashore. Their ship was no war galley capable of being grounded and easily relaunched; in accordance with their guise of peaceful traders, she was a round-bottomed merchantman. But they could drop the
hook, leave three or four guards aboard, and ferry themselves in the currachs.

Niall led them up the path to the heights. It was slippery and had gaps, demanding care. Caution was also needful when foes not spied from the water might lurk above.

None did. Only the wind and a mutter of surf had voice. Standing on the graveled road that ran the length of the cape, the men saw bleakness around, desolation below in the bay. Such homes as they glimpsed, tucked into the hills above the valley, seemed deserted. On their left were ancient tombs, beyond them the pharos, and beyond it nothing but sky. The air felt suddenly very cold.

Niall raised his spear and shook it. “Onward for a close look and maybe a heap of plunder, boys!” he cried. “It’s glad the ghosts are of those who died here these many years agone.”

That rallied their spirits. They cheered and trotted after him. His seven-colored cloak flapped in the wind like a battle banner.

A paved road brought them down to the bayshore. Part of the southern gateway rose there, a single turret, an arch agape, a stretch of wall which had irregularly lost its upper courses. Inland, on their right, the amphitheater appeared undamaged, or nearly so; but an oakenshaw north of it had flamed away on the night Ys died, was blackness whence thrust a few charred trunks.

No matter that Niall of the Nine Hostages was their chief, the awe of a doom fell upon the men.

Waves rushed and growled above the remains. Amidst and beyond the wreckage above the waterline lay strewn and heaped incredible rubbish. Waterlogged silk and brocade draped broken furniture. Silver plates and goblets corroded in torn-up kelp. Tools and toys were tumbled together with smashed glass and shattered tiles. Copper sheathing lay green, crumpled, beside the debris of cranes and artillery. Paint or gilt clung to battered wood. Calmly smiling, a small image of the Goddess as Maiden nestled close to the headless, gelded statue of a man that might well have stood for the God. And skulls stared, bones gleamed yellowish in the damp, everywhere, everywhere.

Smells were of salt and tang, little if any stench. In the past few days, gulls at low tide and crabs at high had well-nigh picked the corpses clean, aside from what hair and clothing clung. Many birds walked the sands yet, scavenging scraps. They were slow to flee men who shouted or threw things at them. When they did, they flapped awkwardly, stuffed fat.

That was after the hush among the warriors broke. “Ho, see!” yelled one. He bent over, picked an object up, and flourished it: a pectoral of gold, amber, and garnets. Immediately his fellows were scrambling, scratching, casting bones away like offal, wild for treasure.

Niall stood apart, leaning on his spear. Uail did likewise. Presently the King said, distaste in his tone and on his face, “You too think this is unseemly?”

“It is that,” Uail replied.

Niall seized his arm so hard that he winced. “I am not ashamed of what I did,” hissed from him. “It was a mighty deed. But I must needs do it by stealth, and that will always be a wound in me. Do you understand, darling? Now we shall give Ys its honor, for the sake of our own.”

Again he shook his spear in the wind. “Lay off that!” he cried. The sound went above the surf to the farther headland and back. Men froze and stared. “Leave these poor dead in peace,” Niall ordered. “Well go strip yon houses. The plunder should be better, too.”

Whooping, they followed him inland.

—Toward sunset they returned to Cape Rach. Besides what they had taken from the mansions, they brought firewood off the wind-demolished, nearly dry buildings that had stood outside the main land gate. Niall sent a currach party to relieve the watch on the ship, who were to bring camping gear for all with them. When they arrived, he gave them gifts to make up for the looting they had missed. “Will we do more tomorrow?” asked one hopefully.

The King frowned. “We might. I cannot promise, for it may be we shall have to withdraw fast. Soon the Romans are bound to come for a look, and they will sure have soldiers with them. But we shall see.”

—He could not sleep.

The wind whispered, the sea murmured. More and more as the night grew older, he thought he heard a song in them. It was music that keened and cut, cold, vengeful, but lovely in the way of a hawk aloft or a killer whale adown when they strike their prey. The beauty of it reached fingers in between his ribs and played on his caged heart until at last he could endure no more. He rolled out of his kilt, stood up, and wrapped it back around him against the bleakness of the night.

Banked, the fire-coals glowed low. He could barely make out his crew stretched in the wan grass and the gleam on the spearhead of him who kept guard. That man moved to ask what might be amiss. “Hush,” breathed Niall, and went from him.

Clouds had gone ragged. Eastward the moon frosted those nearby and seemed to fly among them. Time had gnawed it as the tides gnawed what was left of Ys. Dew shimmered on the paved road, wet and slick beneath his bare feet. Between the hulking masses of headland, argency flickered on the bay. As he came closer, walking entranced, wind shrilled louder, waves throbbed deeper.

He stopped on the sand at high water mark, near a shard of rampart and the survivor of those two towers which had been called the Brothers. Looking outward, he saw how ebb tide had bared acres of ruins. When last it did I was ransacking undefended houses, he thought in scorn of himself. By this dim uneasy light he discerned fountains, sculptures, Taranis Way running toward what had been the Forum. Across Lir Way, a particular heap had been the Temple of Belisama, and Dahut’s house had stood nearby. A skull lay at his feet. He wondered if it had been in the head of anyone he knew, even—He shuddered. It was a man’s. Hers would have the strong sharp delicacy of a brooch from the hand of an ollam craftsman in Ériu.

Unshod, he did not wish to go farther, through the fragments. He folded his arms, gazed at the white unrest-fulness of the breakers, and waited for that which had called him.

The song strengthened. It was in and of the wind and the waves, but more than they, from somewhere beyond.
It yearned and it challenged, a harp and a knife, laughter and pain, endlessly alone. Someone sported in the surf, white as itself, like a seal but long and lithe of limb, high in the breast, slim in the waist, round in the hips, plunged and rose again, danced with the sea like a seal, and sang to him. Vengeance, it sang, I am vengeance, and you shall serve me for the love I bear you. By the power of that love, stronger than death, I lay gess on you, Niall, that you take no rest until the last of Ys lies drowned as I lay drowned. It is your honor price, King on Temir, that you owe her whom you betrayed; for never will her love let go of you.

Long and long he stood at the edge of the fallen city while the siren sang to him. He remembered how he had called Mongfind the witch from her grave, and knew now that once a man has let the Otherworld into his life, his feet are on a road that allows no turning back.

But he was Niall of the Nine Hostages. Fear and regret were unbecoming him. At the turn of the tide, she who sang fell silent and swam away out of his sight. He strode back to the camp, laid himself down, and dropped quickly into a sleep free of dreams.

—In the morning he ranked his followers before him. They saw the starkness and were duly quiet. “Hear me, my dears,” he said.

“A vision, a thought, and a knowledge came over me in the night. You will not be liking this, but it is the will of the Gods.

“Ys, that murdered our kinsmen, must do more than die. Overthrown, she could yet be victorious over us. For folk will be coming back to these parts and settling. If they saw what we see, they would recall what we have heard, the tales and the ballads, the memory of splendor; and in their minds
we
would be the murderers. Shall they found a new city and name it Ys? Shall they praise and dream of Old Ys till heaven cracks open? Or shall, rather, the city of treachery die forever?

“Already, I have told you, I want no word of it bound to my own fame. Today I tell you that
nothing
of it may abide.

“Our time here
is
short. We cannot do the whole work
at once. But this is my command, that we leave the valley houses be—others will clean them out soon enough—and start the razing of yonder lighthouse which once guided mariners to Ys.”

—Dry-laid, it yielded more readily to strong men than might have been awaited from its stoutness. They cast the blocks over the cliff. When they set sail, half was gone. Niall thought of a raid in summer, during which the rest could be done away with. Of course, warriors would require booty. Well, much should remain around the hinterland, as well as in settlements on this whole coast.

He grinned. They might find a party of Gauls picking over the shards of Ys, and rob them. In the song of the siren had been promise as well as threat.

He sobered, and men who noticed slipped clear of his nearness. She had laid a word on him. Year by year, as he was able, he must obey. Untouched thus far on Cape Rach stood the necropolis. He must level it. First would be the tomb of Brennilis.

1

The sun was not yet down, but the single glazed window was grayed and dusk beginning to fill the room where Apuleius Vero had brought his guests. It was a lesser chamber of his house, well suited for private talk. Wall panels, painted with scenes from the Roman past, were now vague in vision. Clear as yet sheened the polished walnut of a table which bore writing materials, a pair of books, and modest refreshments. Otherwise the only furniture was the stools on which the three men sat.

The news had been brought, the shock and sorrow
uttered, the poor little attempts at condolence made. It was time to speak of what might be done.

Apuleius leaned forward his slender form and regular features. “How many survivors?” he asked low.

Gratillonius remained hunched, staring at the hands clasped together in his lap. “I counted about fifty,” he said in the same dull voice as before.

The tribune of Aquilo drew a sharp breath and once more signed himself. “Only half a hundred from that whole city and … and those from outside whom you say had taken refuge? Christ be with us. Christ have mercy.”

“There may be two or three hundred more who stayed in the countryside, including the children. We’ve tried to get in touch with them.”

Corentinus’s fist knotted on his knee. Tears gleamed under the shaggy brows. “The children,” he croaked. “The innocents.”

“Most will starve if they don’t soon get help,” Gratillonius said. “Afterward the reavers will come.”

Apuleius forced business into his tone. “But I gather you have leaders for them while you are off seeking that help. Where have you been?”

“Thus far, only Audiarna. The reception we got there decided me to come straight to you.”

“What did they say?”

Gratillonius shrugged. Corentinus explained, harshly: “The tribune and the chorepiscopus both told us they had no space or food to spare. When I pressed them they finally cried that they could not, dared not take in a flock of pagans who were fleeing from the wrath of God. I saw it would be useless to argue. Also, they were doubtless right when they said our people would be in actual danger from the dwellers. Ys is—was near Audiarna. The horror of what has happened, the terror of more to come, possesses them in a way you should be free of here at your remove.”

Apuleius looked at Gratillonius and shook his head in pity. The centurion of the Second, the King of Ys had lacked strength to dispute with a couple of insignificant officials and must needs leave it to his clerical companion.

“We can take in your fifty at once, of course,” Apuleius
told them. “A trading town like this has a certain amount of spare lodging in the slack season. It is not a wealthy town, though. We can find simple fare, clothing, and the like for that many, but only temporarily. The rest shall have to stay behind until something has been worked out with the provincial authorities. I will dispatch letters about that in the morning.”

“God will bless you,” Corentinus promised.

Gratillonius stirred and glanced up. “I knew we could count on you, old friend,” he said, with a slight stirring of life in his voice. “But as for the tribunes or even the governor—I’ve given thought to this, you understand. They never liked Ys, they endured it because they had to, and some of them hate me. Why should they bestir themselves for a band of alien fugitives?”

“Christ commands us to succor the poor,” Apuleius answered.

“Pardon me, but I’ve never seen that order very well followed. Oh, Bishop Martinus will certainty do what he can, and I suppose several others too, but—”

“I’ll remind them that people who become desperate become dangerous. Don’t fret too much.” With compassion: “It’ll take time, resettling them, but remember Max-imus’s veterans. Armorica continues underpopulated, terribly short of hands for both work and war. We’ll get your people homes.”