The Mark of the Horse Lord (29 page)

Towards evening, three days later, the little war band rode out from the thick breathless shadows of Coit Caledon, the Wood of the Caledones, and checked among the tangled thickets of hazel and elder that made up the forest verge, looking out across the emptiness of cleared land that shone tawny pale in the hazed sunlight, and up the steep tumble of thin grass and black outcrop to where the old fortress of Theodosia crouched on the crest of its great out-thrust rock above the waters of the Cluta. It might have been a further outcrop itself, it seemed so deeply rooted in its rock, with the white wing-flicker of the gulls rising and falling all about it. Even at that distance it had a half-deserted look, but Roman standards hung limp and straight in the still air above the Praetorian Gate, vivid as streaks of coloured flame against the sombre masses of storm-cloud piling up behind. And as Phaedrus sat his tired horse under the broad eaves of the forest verge, and looked up towards it with eyes narrowed against the glare, the brooding stillness was torn across by the sound of Roman trumpets that he had not heard for a year.

All their efforts to ride the She-Wolf down before she could reach the shelter of the old Naval Station had been hopeless from the start, for she had fresh horses, while their own poor beasts had been far spent before ever they began that ride. They had had to rest them again and again, and more than once they had had to lie close to avoid an Auxiliary patrol, which had not made for speed. And so – Liadhan was safe behind Roman walls. And what now?

‘What now?’ Dergdian asked, like an echo of his own thoughts.

‘We will try first what the mere asking will do,’ Phaedrus said, his gaze still on the distant gatehouse. ‘That may at least tell us whether she is still within the fort.’

And so, when they urged the weary horses on again, each man carried his spear reversed, for a token that he came in peace; and Phaedrus, riding a little in advance, had broken a green branch from a wayfaring tree and carried it in his hand.

Trumpets sounded again, high above them, as they passed through the huddle of the small, native town at the foot of the rock and headed up the zigzag track beyond. And when Phaedrus let the red mare stumble to a halt – poor beast, he had no need to rein her in – before the high timber gate, the ramparts were manned on either side, and an Auxiliary Centurion looking down from the Guardhouse roof, demanded, ‘Strangers, what is your business here?’

‘To speak with your Commander.

‘And who would you think you are, to demand to speak with the Commander?’

‘I am Midir, Lord of the Dalriads. I come in peace.’ Phaedrus raised the green branch in his hand. ‘But it would be well that the Commander come out to speak with me, none the less.’

‘Midir of the Dalriads, d’ye say?’

Knowing that with Liadhan behind those walls, the name must have an effect one way or the other, he had gambled on it working in the way they needed. He could only hope that it was doing so, when the Centurion stared a moment, muttered something half under his breath, and disappeared. There was a quick barking of orders from within the gates, and then nothing more for a while.

He sat the red mare in the sultry sunlight, on the ditch causeway, reining her head up with a ruthless hand, and ignoring the sallies that the sentries on the ramparts did not suppose he understood, about One-Valley kings riding broken-winded nags and mistaking themselves for Caesar.

At last the sentries grew abruptly silent, and stood back, and a new head and shoulders appeared over the timber breastwork above him. A bronze helmet shimmered in the veiled sunlight and a red horsehair crest cut its own shape out of the heat-pearled sky; and under the forehead band was a thin, dark face with a nose too big for it, that he had seen before.

‘Greeting to you, Midir of the Dalriads. You wish to speak with me across the Green Branch?’

Phaedrus spoke for the benefit of the sentries, in Latin very much purer than their own. ‘Greeting to
you
, Commander. Did the mare make a good hunting-pony?’

The dark eyes suddenly alerted in the soldier’s face, and he leaned forward across the breastwork. ‘I have seen you before?’

‘More than a year ago. I have somewhat changed, maybe.’ Phaedrus, meeting the questioning stare that had no recognition in it, was sharply aware of that change, the fine bronze-hilted dirk at his side, the tattooed device that was almost like a four-petalled flower on his forehead, half hidden by the blurred traces of war-paint, the great knotted scar that made havoc of one side of his face. ‘I was a pack-driver of Sinnoch the Merchant’s, and you were Captain of a troop of Frontier Wolves. Quick promotion, Commander.’

‘So-o, I remember. And now you are King of the Dalriads? Quick promotion, my Lord Midir; but by the look of you it did not come without fighting.’

‘It did not come without fighting. When we last met, I was on my road north to win back the kingship that Liadhan, my father’s half-sister, robbed me of when he died. I have fought for it; and many others fought with me, to free Earra-Ghyl from the She-Wolf. And we had the victory. But
she
escaped to the Caledones, and brought war between them and us, and now that her welcome among them grows thin, she escapes again, to take refuge under the shadow of the Eagles.’

‘It is a good story, but what has it to do with me?’

‘It has this to do with you, that you hold the She-Wolf even now within your gates, and I come to demand her return.’

The dark gaze flickered over the little band of tattered and grey-weary riders. ‘You should bring a greater War Host with you when you come demanding to the gates of a Roman fort.’

‘There will be more of us in a while and a while,’ Phaedrus said with cool affrontery.

‘Then demand again, when you have enough men behind you to back your demand.’

‘You refuse, then?’

‘I refuse to hand over, merely because some usurping adventurer bids me, a Queen who has thrown herself upon the protection of Rome.’

Rage rose scalding as vomit into Phaedrus’s throat, and he swallowed it, knowing that an angry swordsman was too often one with the edge of his skill blunted. ‘I am no usurper!’ (He had quite forgotten that that was exactly what he was.) ‘I am my father’s only son. This woman seized the rule, even as I told you, when he died. She would have had me slain, but that I – escaped – and for seven years she has ruled my people unlawfully and according to ways that were hateful to them. Therefore they rose against her at last, and I – came back to lead them. Does that make me the usurper?’

‘It was not so that the Queen told it,’ said Titus Hilarion.

‘Would she be likely to come to you for shelter with the truth –
that
truth – on her tongue?’

‘Maybe not.’ The Fort Commander settled his elbows on the parapet and leaned forward conversationally. ‘But even supposing that every word of this tale of yours is true, why trouble to hound her farther? You have your kingship back. She does not stand between you and the Sun. And myself, I’d say vengeance was inclined to be a waste of time.’

‘While she lives she is the Shadow of Death over the Dalriads.’ (No use to say, ‘You do not know her as you did not know Cartimandua, a hundred years ago. You do not know that if you keep her, you will listen to her, and as sure as there is thunder coming, you will find yourselves marching north one day to set her back in the Royal Seat, and believing that the peace of the Frontier depends on it.’ You could only say, ‘She is the Shadow of Death over the Dalriads,’ and leave it at that.)

The Commander straightened from the breastwork, and stood looking down at the horsemen below him, his mouth turning straight and hard. ‘All that is nothing to Rome. Let the tribes beyond the Pale fight out their own feuds. The Queen has appealed to the protection of Rome, and until the Legate bids me give her up to you, I shall not do so. Is it understood?’

There was a long silence, and in the distance a low mutter of thunder quivered along the skyline.

Then Phaedrus said, ‘It is understood,’ and dashed the wayfaring branch to the ground. He brought the mare round in a plunging turn, snorting from the savage jab of his heel, and the bit tearing at her mouth. ‘Away!’

There was no more talking to be done.

GUIDED BY OLD Vron they holed up for the night in a shallow valley, where a burn that had barely enough water to cover its stones wound out through the low-lying forest to join Baal’s River on its way past Theodosia to the Firth of Cluta. And at dusk Phaedrus and the old fore-rider cut southward through the woods and marshes to the coast, and worked their way in for a closer look at the seaward side of the place. Theodosia had been a great Naval Station once, in the time of Agricola when the patrol galleys had come and gone as regularly as shuttles in a loom, up and down the Firth of Cluta; and the size of the old fort crouched on its crag above the empty docks and weed-grown slipways told its own tale of past power. Now, clearly, it was no more than an outpost fort for the Northern Wall, but strong, still. Phaedrus doubted bitterly whether there would be much that they could do against it, even when Gault brought up what was left of the War Host. And as he watched the towering rock mass turn black and menacing against the coppery sunset far across the pale waters of the Firth, where the low shore-line of Valentia lay like a bank of mist, a beacon fire sprang up from the Roman Signal Station. Theodosia might be far from the nearest fortress on the Wall, but it was in close touch across the water.

Back in the glen where the hobbled ponies had lain themselves down too tired even to graze, the war band had made a fire. The Red Crests would know well enough that they had not simply ridden out of the district, so it seemed best to make no pretences at secrecy. They ate the last of the meat, which by now was stinking. Tomorrow and the next day they could keep going on the strips of smoked deer-meat and the last of the stir-about. After that, if the thing still dragged on, they would have to turn hunter – in a countryside that looked to have been long since hunted all but bare by the Red Crests.

Now Phaedrus sprawled on one elbow by the fire, his thoughts ranging loosely, as the thoughts of a man will when he is too tired to keep them on any one thing. Faces came and went through his mind: Murna’s, and Conory’s, and Sinnoch’s dead face with that look of wry amusement as though at a bad jest; the dark face under the horsehair crest looking down at him from the ramparts of Theodosia . . . Sinnoch had said that he would command a fort before he was thirty, unless he was dead in a bog or broken for going too much his own way. But it was odd to see him again like this – as though the strange past year were coming full circle back to its starting-place again. Some pattern being completed, each loose end carefully secured as it was finished with, as the women fastened off each colour as it was done with, at the end of a pattern on the loom. And then he thought of Murna’s face again, and the way her hair smelled when it was wet . . .

Midway between sleeping and waking, he heard something – a little plaintive whistling among the trees below the camp that might almost be the call of some night bird; almost, but not quite. Still half asleep, he cocked a listening ear. And as he listened, the whistling came again. It was the five-note call that he and Midir had used as a signal to each other in that shared month in the Onnum cock-loft!

Now he was wide awake and listening with every nerve in his body. The call came again, softly insistent, and the faces of the others in the fire-light told him that they heard it too. Finn’s hand was stealing to his dirk, and he was up on one knee; others were making the same move. ‘Spy!’ somebody whispered.

Phaedrus sprang to his feet. ‘Fools! Would a spy come whistling so near our fire. That is a call – and for me.’

‘Whose call?’ Dergdian demanded tersely.

‘A friend’s – or a friend’s ghost.’

‘Leave it alone, Lord.’ Brys’s face was sharp with sudden fear for his Lord. ‘It is not healthy to answer such calls!’

And Old Vron grunted in agreement. ‘The boy is in the right of it – I remember when I was a young man—’

But Phaedrus was away, heading down the slippery grass slope that dropped away into the trees. Ahead of him, the call sounded again, farther off, as though whoever – whatever – it was that called had heard him coming and moved back. It was a dark night, seeming all the darker for the brief flicker of lightning from time to time far off among the hills, the old moon not yet risen, and a thin thunder-wrack covering the stars; and once among the trees, Phaedrus could scarcely see his hand before his face. These were no thin birch and hazel woods such as those of Earra-Ghyl, but the dense black fleece of forest that covered all the low country from the great hills of Valentia northward into the unknown; damp-oak forest, thicketed with yew and holly, and on the north skirts of the hills the tall, whispering pines. An ancient forest that seemed to Phaedrus to be watching with hostile eyes that could see in the dark like Shân’s. Low-hanging branches whipped his face, and time and again he blundered into a tree-trunk or stumbled into a hole left by the up-torn roots of some long-fallen giant; and always, whenever he checked to listen, the call came again, as far ahead as ever. It was leading him farther and farther from the camp. But he had no doubts – whether it was by some strange and almost unbelievable chance, Midir ahead of him, or Midir’s ghost, this following through the dark woods was some part of the pattern that was being worked out.

The slope of the land had levelled out beneath his feet, and he could hear the small drought voice of the burn very close in the darkness; and at last he came out on to the bank just where it spread into a chain of pools and the tail of the last pool ran out into Baal’s River.

It was at that moment that he suddenly knew that the whistler was no longer far ahead, but close beside him. It was no sound or movement, just the sense of somebody there in the darkness, within arm’s reach of him. He whipped round, and in doing so caught his foot in an arched root, and almost pitched headlong down the bank. He recovered himself, cursing under his breath, and something that was only a denser darkness moved close by, and he heard the merest breath of a laugh.