The Dog and the Wolf (63 page)

“Have you fared so ill here that you would liefer hazard a journey into war?” he asked. “Come back with me then
to Confluentes. You shall have a decent home and due respect. Aye, you’ll have friendship. We who remember Ys—”

“I’m going to civilization,” she interrupted in Latin, still keeping her face from him. “You’ve destroyed it here.”

“Now, wait!” he protested in the same language. “We’re behaving ourselves a sight better than Romans do when they take a city—no, their barbarian hirelings and allies. Turonum could well be an ash heap if we hadn’t stopped the Germani in Lugdunensis Tertia. It wasn’t me who ordered away the last defenders of Britannia to fight against fellow Romans. Destroy civilization? All we want is a chance to save it!”

She did finally give him a steadfast glare. Words ran forth, cold as a river in winter spate. “Oh, you’re quick with your excuses. You always have your noble-sounding plans for the public benefit. It frees you to ride roughshod over mere human beings, doesn’t it? Not that you dismiss their cries. You don’t hear them. You never hear anything you don’t: want to hear. Nor see, nor feel. You don’t suppose you ever hurt me, because you cannot imagine how you might ever. You’re more alien than the bloodiest barbarian. At least he has a heart, though it be a wolf’s, where you have a stone. Go back to that simpering little wife I
hear
you’ve taken. Poor creature, I hope she likes pain; I hope she is very happy with you. Go back—”

“Thank you, I will,” he said, and rode off.

She wouldn’t be pleased if she learned that his sole feeling was of relief. She’d closed a wound in his conscience which had sometimes bothered him, and he need give her no further thought

3

Salomon was at Confluentes, in charge while Gratillonius took the army away, when a boy on a spent horse galloped in from the west. Morning was young, shadows long across meadows where dew still sparkled and heaven startlingly blue over city roofs. The prince, as Latin speakers were
already calling him, had just come up from Aquilo to his matutinal duties at the basilica: conferences, mediations, judgments. He found most of the work unspeakably tedious, but Gratillonius insisted it was part of being a ruler. Later he’d go hawking.

Hoofs stumbled over cobblestones and stopped his feet on the stairs. Men stared at the desperate lad on the lathered animal. His cry seemed to echo through an immediate silence. “Help, the Scoti are at Audiarna, they’re enough to overrun us, in God’s name help!”

Salomon ran down to meet the messenger and conduct him inside. Gratillonius had instituted the practice of posting two sentries at the basilica during the hours it was open. Salomon told them to keep the gathering crowd orderly and as calm as possible. He led the boy on into the private room, sat him down, sent a housekeeper off for mead, and said with a control that amazed himself: “All right, you reached us, you’re safe. Catch your breath and cool off a bit first.”

The slight frame shuddered. A wrist rubbed eyes that stung from sweat. “Sir, they, they—Scoti, hundreds and hundreds—at Audiarna—”

Eeriness thrilled through Salomon. He had gotten no hint of pirates anywhere closer than the north coast, off toward Fanum Martis and Saxons at that. Fishers who spied strange ships on the horizon would promptly have put in and delivered a warning. Gratillonius’s network of beacons, runners, riders would carry the news to him before the crew got ashore.

The servant brought the mead. A long draught brought balance. “They came up the river about moonset, when dawn was barely in the sky. By the time the watch had seen and roused us, they’d landed and were spilling around our walls. We counted forty leather boats. The commander ordered a sally just to get me through them and away. I heard the roaring and screaming for a long while afterward. That was … more than an hour ago? How has the battle gone? Sir, can you help us?”

Forty Scotic vessels. Salomon’s reckoning went meteor-swift. If they were large, that meant some four hundred barbarians, maybe even five hundred. Gratillonius had not
stripped Armorica of fighters for his expedition—by no means—but he had taken the best of them, or nearly so. There remained a great many members of the different brotherhoods, scattered in their daily occupations, plus a leavening of crack troops left behind against contingencies that had seemed unlikely.

Now that ordinary men were openly taken into the guard and drilled, Audiama might give a better account of itself than the Scoti expected. On the other hand, those men were, as yet, largely raw recruits; and the city had never regained the population it lost to the epidemic six years ago. The Scoti had no skill at siegecraft; they would take the place by storm or not at all. Whatever happened, tomorrow morning at latest would see it finished.

Salomon beckoned. “Come,” he said, and led the messenger to the council chamber. People waited there, impatient at his delayed arrival, a couple of chiefs, various yeomen, artisans, merchants, sailors, woodsmen, three women such as Gratillonius encouraged to bring their grievances before him. They grew quite still when they saw the face of Salomon. He mounted the dais. “Put your business aside and hear this boy,” he told them. “Meanwhile bring me my couriers.”

—Evirion answered the summons at a dead run from his home in the pastures. He still gulped for air as Salomon drew him aside and described the situation. That rekindled him. “Michael and Heavenly host!” he exclaimed. “What would you have me do?”

“How quickly can you take your ship to Audiarna?” the prince asked.

Evirion started, recovered, moved his lips in calculation. “No pledges, of course,” he said. “I can board my crew in time to catch this outgoing tide, but travel’s always slow on the river. If you can provide plenty of strong backs for the towboats—You can? Good. Once we’ve cleared the bar, the wind is anybody’s guess, but mine is for a rather light, steady sea breeze. We’ll have to work well southwest, which’ll also be slow, but then we should have a run almost straight downwind. Before sunset is about the best I can say, and when we get there we’ll have the tide against us.”

“God grant you better luck. Your cargo will be the keenest men from these garrisons.”

“I never bore any more gladly.” Evirion looked beyond the walls. “Grallon was right. My seamen and I chafed when he made us stay behind, but he was right. We careened
Brennilis
, you know, cleaned her bottom, made everything shipshape, and became a crew again after that long year on the beach. Did he foresee this need?”

“Hardly, or he’d have left us more strength,” Salomon replied. “But—the way he puts it—he hedges his bets.”

That was not in the nature of a young man afire to go fight. Salomon hoped fleetingly that in the years to come he would learn. If those years be granted him and his mentor.

—They were not a real cavalry force whom he led west, though all went mounted. Some had mastered the lance, more could strike from the saddle without risk of losing their seats or having their steeds panic, a few had trained themselves into horse archers. The choicest such were afar in the Liger Valley. Most of Salomon’s were fighters afoot, who rode in order to reach the scene quickly. He made them, too, vary the pace, spare the animals. A long afternoon lay ahead in which to spend four-legged strength.

4

Smoke and soot drifted from burnt-out farmsteads. Thrice had the Scoti hurled themselves at the city. Thrice had men on the walls sent them back, but at a cost to their own ranks that they could ill afford. Each wave came higher than the last.

A cheer lifted thin when the oncoming armor blinked into view. The attackers abandoned their improvised scaling ladders and swarmed snarling, yelping, turbulent, to meet the newcomers.

Salomon leveled spear. The standard of blue and gold flapped furiously in the van of his charge. A warrior stood before him, half naked, sword awhirl over a face contorted by a wildcat scream. Salomon’s point went in with a dull
impact. The man stumbled against another. Blood spouted from his belly. Salomon hauled the lance out. Loops of gut snagged it. He shook them free while he clubbed the next enemy with the shaft. A tug on the reins, a nudge of the spurs, and his horse reared, appallingly tall, blotting out the sun. Bones splintered under descending hoofs. Salomon pressed inward. An ax chopped his spear half across. He dropped it, grabbed sword, hewed around him.

Not very far in, though. The Scoti were too many. His riders could drown in the whirlpool of them. He signalled the trumpet at his back to sound retreat. The troopers beat their way out of the crowd. They rejoined the larger number of comrades who had jumped to earth and fought as infantry—a barely organized infantry, armed and outfitted in wildly diverse fashion, but stark in its determination.

The barbarians fell away, disordered. They rallied fifty yards off, shouted and glowered and threatened, but made no move at once to counterattack. The dead who sprawled and the wounded who writhed on the red sod between held far more of them than of Armoricans.

Their living remained vastly the superior. A concerted rush would drag down Salomon’s band as hounds drag down an elk. The price would be high, though, even to men who disdained death. It could well end any hope of capturing the city. Salomon saw a lean gray wight lifted on a shield in the ancient Celtic manner. He seemed less to harangue the war
party
than address it. There followed lengthy, often florid argument, also in the ancient Celtic manner. Excellent, Salomon thought. Every minute that passed was a minute in which to rest, a minute wherein friends drew a bit nearer.

The sun trudged down the sky. Decision came. The mass of the foe turned back to Audiarna, leaving about a hundred to deal with the Armorican reinforcements.

That was as Salomon had hoped. The Scoti evidently didn’t know how many more he had on call. Unless sheer thirst for blood and glory made them indifferent. You never really knew what went on in those wild heads. What he must fight was a delaying action.

His immediate opponents howled and attacked. They had the numbers but he had the horses and, in his foot, at
least the seed corn of legionary discipline. Those men closed ranks and held fast. His riders harried flanks and rear. The charge broke up, bloodily.

After that the battle became a series of skirmishes. Salomon’s command beat off assault after assault. In between, it struck at the main body of the Scoti, now here, now there. The tactics were simply to reap and retreat. That alone was confusing to warriors who knew of nothing but headlong advance, except when “the dread of the Mórrigu” stampeded them altogether. It blunted their onslaughts against walls to which a heartened garrison clung tighter than before.

Though the Armoricans took losses, their count swelled. Osismii who had gotten the word arrived in groups, hour after hour, to join the blue standard. At last the core of the Confluentians appeared. They were not fresh, after their forced march; but by then, neither was anyone else on the field.

The Scoti left the walls. They collected into a single huge pack and moved toward their foe to tear his throat out. Quite likely they could do that much, a consolation to them for the survival of a city they would thereafter be in no condition to take. “We are in the hands of God,” Salomon called to his troops. “Know that and keep your hearts high. Let our battle cry be—” not religious, with all the pagans here—“
Armorica and freedom.
”

Should he have said “Osismia” instead? The idea of Armorica as a nation was barely in embryo … No, let him nurture it, let him feed it with his blood.

A shout lifted. Among the enemy it turned into a screech, wail, death-dirge.

Up from the sea and into the river mouth came a ship. Her sail spread like a wing on the evening wind that drove her majestic against the tide. Black with a red stripe, her hull flaunted a scrolled bowsprit whose gilt blazed in the long sunbeams. From her stern reared the head of a gigantic horse, as if Roman cavalry also rode over the waves. Yet somehow she was not of Rome. She might have been a ship of Ys risen from that drowned harbor to carry Nemesis hither.

Her deck pulsed with men armed and armored. She
grounded among the boats, crushing two of them under her forefoot. A catapult near the prow throbbed. Its bolt skewered three men of Hivernia. The crew sprang out or slid down ropes, waded ashore, formed and moved forward, a walking thicket of pikes. A few stayed behind and began demolishing the rest of the boats.

That broke the Scotic will. Warriors turned into a shrieking blind torrent. It gashed past the city, down to the riverbank, to get at those craft and away before every man of it was trapped into exile. The Armoricans pursued, smiting.

Their harvest was large. It cost them. Even demoralized, a barbarian was a dangerous beast. The wrecking gang must scramble clear, and several were too slow. The squadron from the ship barely held its ground while the escapers poured around it. The sailors left aboard were hard put to fend off valiant savages who tried to climb the sides. In the end, perhaps two-thirds of the Scoti crowded into what boats were left, bent to their oars, and vanished seaward.

Well, Salomon thought, they would bring back a tale that should give pause to future pirates. And Audiarna had been saved. The story his followers told would be of hope reborn. He wiped and sheathed his sword, lifted his hands aloft, and from the saddle gave thanks to the Lord God of Hosts.

5

Clouds had risen on the rim of Ocean and a vast sunset filled the west, layered flame and molten gold, smoky purple slowly spreading as night moved out of the east. The moon lifted enormous above trees as black as the battlements close by. Heaven overhead preserved for a while a greenish clarity. Across it winged a flight of cormorants, homeward bound to the skerries outside Ys. Waves and the river went
hush-hush-hush.
Wind had lain down to rest in the cool.

Before he sought his own sleep behind yonder gates,
Salomon had much to do. He must see to quartering and feeding his men, as well as what horses they had left; the badly wounded required special conveyance into town; the dead wanted care too. Fallen Scoti could wait where they were for a mass grave in the morning, but the Armorieans should rest together under reverent guard until their brethren bore them home.