B007IIXYQY EBOK (16 page)

Now Witgern did see signs of sorrowing in Baldemar’s face. His gaze seemed to look fixedly, imploringly, on the dead, and he sat too solemnly still, as if he were before an altar stone in a sacred grove.

“And as for her prodigal deed in the Ash Grove—Witgern, it is a sign of battle luck so rare the She-Wolf had not yet suckled Rome when last it happened among us. So you see, the god had cast a lustful eye on her already, before I ever conceived of this divine marriage.”

Witgern listened in sad, bewildered agreement, thinking, Baldemar commands even the Fates, for they have so neatly worked his will. The old fox. The clever, beneficent fox. Father and daughter are alike. Now they’ll hunt together forever, Romans instead of hares and deer. Always he has wanted her near, daring what he dares, living as he lives. That is the sort of immortality that pleases him, not the fleshly sort. He would see his spirit gallop on, head up in the wind. Yes, there is the same wild horse spirit in them both.

“Battling Rome is like carrying water in a sieve,” Baldemar went on. “Perhaps
she
will be the one to arrest the plague. Sometimes I think her spirit is mine, purified. What I do with might, she does with innocence. And she has no notion of it, none whatever, no more than the doe of the field. She might slay a dragon with innocence…”

The cry of a battle horn rose up like a high wind.

“Wido!”
Witgern whispered, half turning round. “Do you not hear him? Did I not tell you? Baldemar, I beg you listen. They are leaving!”

“Why yes, I do hear it. Wido is indeed leaving.”

“I do not understand you! Your Companions are leaving, too. Did you know twenty more deserted you just this morning?”

“Twenty-three, to be precise,” Baldemar replied. “When a tree’s given a light shake, the rottenest fruit always falls first.”

“I can abide this no longer! Every moment we delay punishing the Hermundures shames us!” At these words Witgern felt his face redden. It was too close to open criticism. And had he not earlier heard Wido speak nearly the same words?

But to his surprise Baldemar was not angry; instead he grew reflective. “A more intriguing question is one you did not ask—where is Wido’s wealth coming from? All those new Companions gathered so quickly, all those fresh foreign faces. How does he provide them all with longswords when he scarcely leads a raid?”

“Curses, I do not know. The hoard, I suppose, that he always claims he found buried…. I beg you, stop him! Why do you not fight for yourself! If you will not, then I will!” Witgern wheeled around and began to stride off, his sword drawn.

“Halt!” Baldemar’s voice rang out like iron striking iron. Witgern froze in mid-step. “You’re an overeager pup that needs a tight leash,” Baldemar said sharply. “Turn round.”

Witgern slowly obeyed. “Precisely,” Baldemar continued, his tone casual and expansive once more. “A generations-old hoard, Wido claims. Well, I’ve had some of it brought to me. Those coins have images of Nero on them—Nero, by all the gods! What does Wido take me for? It’s a fool who assumes others are fools.”

“You are too quick for me on these matters, Baldemar, but I know my enemy.”

“Do you, truly? Witgern, we were not attacked by Hermundures.”

“Not attacked by—but—with all respect, they were seen. They were seen by many.”

“And what is even more interesting is that Wido, that scoundrel,
knows
it.”

“This is beyond belief.”

“If Wido goes anywhere, he’s leading his men in the wrong direction. But don’t worry over Wido sneaking off with the army. Romilda won’t follow him. If he goes anywhere, he fights without food. Wido won’t fight without food.”

“But already she has drawn up her carts. All twenty of them.”

“Of course. I asked her to do that. Watch what happens if they try to go past her. You must have more faith in our people. There are enough of us left yet who will not be slaves. You may leave me now.”

Once more out in the thin morning light, Witgern saw a dismaying scene in the valley below: The mass of the army was sluggishly making its way through the high sedgegrass to the valley’s narrow opening, where Romilda waited at the head of her winding train of provisions carts. The tribesmen’s rage at the enemy was a dark, musky scent on the air. Several hundred lagged behind, still not ready to give up on Baldemar; their hoarse cries, “Baldemar! Lead us out!” had taken on the sound of a captive begging for his life.

Witgern felt joy and hope drain out all at once, like mead from a tipped horn. This, then, was the end.

Witgern gave Sigwulf a terse account of the meeting with Baldemar. “Either his mind’s going,” Sigwulf said, “or his vision has become as acute as the gods’. Not Hermundures? What were they then, wood sprites?”

As they watched, Wido’s mount burst into a canter, carrying him to the front of the line. Only Wido, his two sons, and a picked force of five Companions who served as his bodyguards were on horseback; the common warriors, as always, moved and fought on foot. Wido sat rigidly upright on his horse, his hands high on the reins, his narrow chin thrust forward, determined all should see him in his moment of hard-won glory.

“A lot of good you did,” Sigwulf muttered. Witgern ignored him.

Suddenly scattered cries of “What goes? What has happened?” came from the warriors who trailed the march. Witgern realized that those at the front of the march were coming to a clumsy halt. Wido’s horse reared, nearly pitching him off. Those behind crowded into the men ahead of them as though the river of warriors had been dammed. Had some impassable barrier sprung out of the ground? Witgern tore off his cloak and climbed partway up a leaning pine. And then he understood.

“He’s got them!” Witgern shouted out gaily. “Hail Baldemar! He’s got them!”

Romilda barred their way with the provisions carts.

At a signal from Romilda, all thirty carts came together, those in front speedily backing up, the ones behind moving forward until the gaps between them were tightly closed. It was a quick, precise maneuver that must have been foreplanned. Witgern saw the women in them rise up all at once, holding their spears horizontally across their chests in a gesture that meant, “Do not pass.”

The threat was not a physical one—there were but two hundred or so women in the carts, some mere girls, others with infants slung across their backs, and their spears were no more than fire-hardened sticks. What dampened the men’s battle frenzy was the women’s readiness to die where they stood. Each forbidding face promised that should anyone attempt to force a way past, they would have to maim or kill, and this was unthinkable, not only because the blood-price for the murder of a woman was twice that of a man, but because they believed that in women there resided a fearsome holiness, a power over forces dark and light that was a mystery not to be trespassed upon. Nor would they seek a way around this obstruction: The venture would be ill-omened without Romilda’s blessing.

Later, Witgern would hear around the campfires what Wido shouted at the implacable Romilda while she met his eyes fearlessly: “Lovers of the Hermundures! I trust you like their foul embraces as well as your husbands’! What gifts has Baldemar lavished on you in exchange for your honor? Nidings! Hoary hags from the reeking halls of Hel!”

Wido then galloped up the rise to Baldemar’s tent, flanked by his two sons and five Companions. He pulled his mount to a rearing halt and with casual grace unsheathed his sword.

Wido is a sight to terrify the steadiest heart, Witgern thought.

Wido had removed his boar-tusk helmet, and his hair, matted to his skull with bear’s fat, had been loosened by the wind so that it sprang free in coiled clumps, as though serpents wriggled from his head. His eyes were wild and cruel. Sharp, straight teeth showed beneath a scraggly untrimmed mustache. A bloody bandage on his right arm where a sword wound had been dressed was half unwound and flapped free. Wido himself had the look of small vicious rodents active at night: prominent nose, negligible mouth, gleaming black eyes. He was not massive in size but flexible and strong. His colorless skin and sunken eyes gave him a curious, drained appearance that Baldemar’s Companions liked to attribute to the sexual insatiability of his wife, Grimelda, who was heavier than him by half, had many murders to her credit and was never without her axe.

“Baldemar!” Wido cried out. “Thief of glory! Serpent that crawls by night! Crawl out of there and order that Hel-hag to let us through!”

The better part of Wido’s Companions, some of whom had followed at a run, began to collect about him now. Wido’s younger son, Ullrik, sat a horse at Wido’s left. He was a youth of sixteen; in features and size he favored his father. It was said he bayed at the moon and that his first kill had been carefully arranged for him. But for the eminence of his father, he would have lived out his life begging by village wells. He had a vulnerable face, eyes that had learned not to trust, and was visibly unnerved by the hostility of Baldemar’s Companions.

The other son was Odberht, who was nearer twenty, and of him it was said when the Fates formed him they gathered up all that was most brutish in both parents, blended these traits and increased them in fivefold measure. In features and body he favored Grimelda: He had his mother’s bovine bulk, her coarse, dark blond hair, her crude, rounded shoulders that seemed they could take an ox yoke, her thick, square face in which a small, delicate mouth seemed almost lost. The balefire that flickered in Grimelda’s eyes was present in Odberht’s as well—at feasts they liked to drink together from the gilded skull of a wayfarer who’d had the poor judgment to take shelter too close to one of Grimelda’s prized milch cows and so had become one of the many victims of her axe. While Odberht had gotten a good share of Wido’s sensitivity to ridicule, he had received a smaller portion of his father’s cunning, and none of his sense of balance. Nothing about Odberht was fine or small; his hands as he guided the horse moved in brutish sweeps; his stout legs seemed ready to squeeze the breath out of his too-small mount. Two seeresses at different times had told him with confidence, “You shall not die by the sword.” Odberht took this to mean he would not be slain in battle at all, and this had made him recklessly bold: He had taken his first man at fifteen, and had already begun forming a small retinue of his own, leading secret raids across the borders and harassing the weaker tribes with whom the Chattians had treaties of friendship.

Odberht grinned at Witgern to let him know he approved of his loss of an eye. Wido’s older son had perfected a sort of bullying rudeness all his own that threatened to punish you if you took notice of it, while promising to mock you if you did not. Witgern met his gaze with a look that was bold and blank, which irritated Odberht so much he spat loudly on the ground.

Baldemar emerged at once. He stood in solemn silence, regarding Wido; his gaze was a sharp, subtle weapon aimed at a vital place. The sight of him brought relief to his Companions—in the lift of his head, in that proud wariness, there was as ever something of the indomitable wild horse, unaware of its rough beauty while never forgetting its strength. Grief was a fire Baldemar would use to consume his enemies; it would never burn him to ash.

Wido had expected to see a crippled spirit; to cover his unease, he spat noisily on the ground. Witgern smiled, amused, realizing Odberht’s spitting was a habit adopted from his father.

“Friends!” Baldemar said. That voice commanded immediate silence. “Every man of us lost treasures in that raid, and mothers and fathers and daughters and sons. How is it Wido lost nothing and no one?” Baldemar allowed himself an overlong pause, letting the people’s impatience gather; instinctively he knew how to heighten attention. Then he trumpeted: “It is because he removed all to safety on the day before!”

The words fell like an axe blow on the neck of one who sleeps. The silence was vast and full of terror and awe. When the crowd stirred again, murmurs of startlement traveled through the throng, swift as wind-blown ripples over water. Surely collusion with the enemy was too great an act of treachery even for Wido. But it was just as inconceivable to them that Baldemar would level such a charge without cause.

Wido was a master of concealing feeling; he threw back his head and let out a careless, staccato burst of laughter. But the men were quick to notice Odberht’s hands shivered visibly on the reins, and Ullrik looked steadily down, as if he believed that if he met no one’s eye no one would see him.

“Of course he speaks so,” Wido called out with a grand sweep of his hands. “Nothing would gladden his heart more than my destruction.” Witgern reluctantly admired Wido’s calm. “Who will listen to the lies of a wasted old man, envious because his war luck has fled, and jealous of me because even his own Companions are wisely deserting him for my camp? Baldemar, if
I
were your dam I, too, would have walked into flames—it’s a kinder fate than watching you hobble to your end.”

Wido laughed again, but now his laughter seemed to rattle in silence, a lone pebble in an empty pot. Grim faces searched Wido’s, then looked inquiringly to Baldemar.

Undaunted, Wido continued. “The property he says was moved,” he said, indicating Baldemar, “was moved by
him.
What of those twelve mares, you rogue? You borrowed them, I suppose, and mean to give them back.”

Baldemar’s look said clearly, the charge is too ridiculous to deny.