Calgaich the Swordsman (28 page)

“
I
had been like a son to him. He was my tutor in the ways of the sword." Calgaich was now beginning to understand the horrible chain of events that had been set in motion by Morar’s accusation. He had had to flee his country and had not been there to defend his father from Bruidge’s thirst for power and revenge. He felt sick.

“Morar played you for a fool. You must beware of her," Fomoire said from the shadows. He passed Calgaich the jug. “This Ordovician woman, the
cumal,
does she mean much to you?"

Calgaich shrugged, still lost in memories of past treachery. “She’s a chattel, no more."

Guidd winked at the Druid.

“Morar doesn’t think so," Fomoire asserted. “Why else would she have saved the
cumal
from the bed sty of that rutting pig of a quaestor?"

“But
why d
id she rescue the
cumal?
And what will happen to the woman now that she is in Morar’s service?" Guidd asked. “No good can come of Morar owning the Ordovician woman. What were Morar’s reasons, Calgaich?"

Calgaich had no answer. It had bothered him at the time to see Cairenn led away to Morar’s quarters. Now that he knew of Morar’s evil ways, he was sure that Morar had a dark reason for her intervention. But he kept his fears to himself; he did not like to admit in front of his companions that Cairenn meant anything to him at all. He no longer felt so sure of his emotions. Could any woman be trusted? He tried to put these thoughts out of his mind. “Pass me the jug again,” he said to Guidd. It would be a long night.

The long column of prisoners was headed by the entourage of Quaestor Lucius Sextillius as it traveled slowly and steadily southward toward the channel that separated Britannia from Gaul. The quaestor, his women and his servants rode comfortably in horse litters and in curtained wagons, with a suitable distance between them and the prisoners, due to the growing stench of the unwashed Celts, Picts, and a group of condemned criminals and deserters from the legions or their auxiliaries—Asturians, Dacians, a Thracian or two, and one lone Syrian. The prized wolfhounds had it better than the human prisoners, for they rode in barred carts at the rear of the column, the better to preserve their strength and ferocity for the arena.

Tribune Ulpius Claudius commanded the entire column and its escort of Dacian horsemen. Centurion Decrius Montanas was in charge of the prisoners, whom he ruled with a brutal, heavy-handed authority that was held in check only by the constant supervision of the tribune. It was not a question of humanity with the tribune: he knew his ticket to Rome, as well as his future there, depended on his uncle, Quaestor Lucius Sextillius, who wanted those prisoners in fairly reasonable shape when he arrived in Rome.

The captives had been fitted with iron collars attached to chains, which passed back along each file of the column of fours. In addition, chains had been fitted about the waist of each man and then attached to the next man, so that each quartet was bound together laterally, as well as longitudinally. Thus the column moved as one man, a long and snakelike line of silent, trudging men.

On each side of the prisoners rode Dacian auxiliaries, while two sets of fours followed the rear of the column. Centurion Decrius Montanas and one of the decurions of the Dacian cavalry led the column. The leading quartet of prisoners was composed of those considered most dangerous—Calgaich, Guidd, Fomoire and Niall, a lean Selgovae with a shock of red hair, who thought he was a cousin of Calgaich’s, from his mother’s side of the family. On dry days the dust from the horses’ hoofs swirled about the prisoners and whitened their faces and clothing while it furred their nostrils and parched their throats. On wet days thick mud splashed back from the hoofs, and always the heavy droppings of the two stallions splashed up to cover the legs of the prisoners. Montanas had said, when the lead quartet had been selected personally by him, "You shall act as the shield of the prisoners behind you.” His hard face had smiled, but his eyes had not.

The farther south the column traveled the more obvious was the undercurrent of fear of the Roman Britons. The gateways of the towns through which they passed had been narrowed and the walls had been built higher, just as Guidd had described concerning Luguvalium and the Wall of Hadrian. Many once-prosperous farm villas were now dark and empty.

Fomoire knew the country well. He had often traveled the same roads and visited the same towns in his guise as a leech, seeking knowledge of the Roman Britons for his secret brotherhood. "There are many fewer people here now, Calgaich, than in years past,” he had said one day as their column trudged through the midlands of Britannia. "Once this road and others were crowded with traveling merchants and the thriving business of the province. Now those who have not fled to the south, or out of Britannia altogether, shelter themselves behind the town walls. Even the Roman soldiers seem fearful of the future.”

"Britons, serving the damned red-crested Roman bastards! I’d like to show them a thing or two about love of the country that gave them birth!” Calgaich had snapped.

"When, and
how?”
Fomoire had queried quietly.

"If I survive Rome, priest. All I have to do is to get back to Albu, drive my drunken uncle from the chieftainship of the clan and organize the Novantae. Then the
cran tara
will be carried through the hills and glens to raise the people against the Red Crests. I’d even consider fighting beside the damned Picts.”

"And the Saxons and Jutes as well?”

"I’d use them and then turn on them after they had served my purpose.”

"The trustworthiness of the Caledonians.”

"They’d do the same to us.”

"Truly spoken. Even now it is said in many places that Rome struggles more and more each year to keep the raiding barbarians from entering the Empire. Once I heard a rumor that she eventually plans to withdraw her three legions from Britannia to defend her other borders. You know what will happen then.”

Calgaich had nodded. "All the more easy for us. Still, I’ll not count on it, Fomoire.”

Days later Fomoire and Calgaich had taken up the same discussion again. It was always the Druid who instigated these talks. “You are a warrior and a leader, Calgaich. None of us here can know our fate in Rome, or even if we’ll ever get there. But if by any chance the opportunity comes for you to escape and return here to Britannia, let me stand by your side when we drive these accursed Romans into the sea.”

Guidd laughed dryly. "We’ll likely need every man we can get. Even you, priest.”

"There is much we can teach each other, much we can learn from the Romans. Remember, they have ruled the known world for many centuries, and not by the fortunes of the gods. When in Rome, I hope to gain the confidence of Lucius Sextillius. I think he means to use my poor abilities to help him advance his career. He seeks publicity and fame. In so doing, he must be seen in many places— the homes and palaces of the great and powerful. I mean to be near him when he does so. There is much I can learn.”

"While I rot in prison, awaiting the day I will be called out and given the tools of my trade, either to live for a short time or die suddenly.”

"You shall not die that way. I
know
”

Calgaich laughed. "It is said you Druids can forecast the future by staring entranced into the steaming guts of a freshly slain man. Let's hope you do not have to read my future in such a way.”

Calgaich became pensive. During the march, he had kept quiet counsel to himself, but the hidden spark of his burning vengeance still flickered deep within his soul. Even if he paid for his wonted vengeance with his life, the risk would be worth the gamble. The sweetness of the revenge would overcome the bitterness of death, and, after all, was not
Tir na n’Og
the Beautiful Land of Youth, where there was no pain, disease or death?

Now and again he also thought of Bronwyn, who was riding ahead of the column in the entourage of the Perfumed Pig. He had always thought of her as a mere, undeveloped child, that is, until the night she had come to him at the
mansio.
The memory of her lush young body often returned to him, to the exclusion of the golden beauty of Morar and the dark lunar beauty of Cairenn.

“Bronwyn,” Calgaich said aloud one day, when the going was particularly grim.

“The young slim one?” Fomoire asked, overhearing him. “I thought it was Morar who had snared you in a net of her golden hair.”

“Perhaps I have been blind,” Calgaich mused.

“Listen to him,” Guidd jeered.

“She was only a child when you left Albu,” Fomoire said. “How could you have known she'd have changed that much?”

Calgaich shrugged. “I should have known. She came to me the night Guidd and I escaped from the villa. Without her help I could not have freed Guidd and my father. She wanted to go with me, but I refused. Her safety would have kept me from my task. I sent her back to her quarters. She, too, like Cairenn, is at Morar's mercy.”

His voice died away for a time. He began again, “She came to me in the flesh, as Morar had so often come to me in the spirit after battle in Eriu.”

“Tell me of this,” Fomoire requested. “When and how did she come?”

“It was always after battle. When the blood was still drying on the blades and the cries of the badly wounded sounded through the darkness until we put them out of their misery. I would help to finish the bloody work, and then I’d fling myself down on the bare earth to sleep. It was always then that she’d come to me, across the heaps of bloody dead, like a spirit from the shades. My spear brothers never saw her, of course. It was only I who saw her-— warm, soft, perfumed, and taunting me with that mysterious half-smile of hers. It was almost as if the mingled odors of the fresh blood and the foul air that leak from the bodies of the swollen dead had drawn her to the scene.”

Fomoire nodded. “I thought so.”

“You know of these things?”

“I do.”

“How can a man be blinded by such utter foolishness in such a beautiful form as Morar?”

Fomoire waved a hand. “She has the power to blind a man until she is through using him.”

“But she can’t blind
you,
eh, priest?”

“No, but sometimes I think she
knows
who I really am.”

“How can she know that?”

“How has she risen from a stinking
dun
beside a lowly
rath
in Caledonia, now to be borne in a fine horse litter to the channel and thence to Gaul, and eventually to Rome itself? How could she cross the Hibernian Sea to Eriu to find you after bloody battle and to tempt you with that never obtainable and magnificent body of hers? She
was
drawn by blood and terror! That is what gives her spiritual strength to do such things. She will let nothing stand in her way until she has reached the pinnacle of the living. Nothing can stop her!
Nothing,
I tell you!” His voice rose in pitch, so much that Decrius Montanas rested his hand on the cantle of his saddle to look back at the plodding prisoners.

“Watch yourself!” Calgaich hissed out of the side of his mouth.

The centurion turned his head to look forward, then slowly, looked back again and his hard eyes met Calgaich’s.

“If you think she knows who and what you are, Fomoire,” Calgaich suggested, “why has she not turned you in?”

“Because she fears me, Calgaich. Perhaps in her devious, twisted mind she thinks I might be of some use to her in Rome. Who knows? But,
fian,
fear that woman more than the sight of a legion cohort charging you with bared
gladii!”

It rained the two days the column waited in the filthy slave pens on the outskirts of Londinium while Lucius pampered Morar and Bronwyn in the shops and homes of the important. Then the column had been driven out onto the highway by the .whips of the Dacians.

Now the column was trudging through the mud of a neglected road. The leading prisoners were so covered with mud and manure that they were not distinguishable one from the other except by height. They trudged on and on, soaked to the skin, with bared heads bent and eyes almost closed.

"How much farther is it?” Niall, the Selgovae, asked.

"Dubris is ahead,” Fomoire croaked. "You'll soon smell the sea.”

The salt smell of the channel came to them on the wind from the south and east. Already the entourage of the quaestor had increased their speed in anticipation of the warm and comfortable quarters due an official of his standing at Dubris. The carts and horse litters vanished into the mist.

"What happens when we get there, Fomoire?” Niall asked.

"We take ship across the channel to Gesoriacum in Gaul.”

"And then?”

"We march south through Gaul to Massalia, a port on the Mediterranean. From there we take ship for Portus Ostiensis, the port of Rome, which is about eight days sail from Massalia.”

"How far is Massalia from the channel?”

Fomoire stumbled in his stride. He was a man of great spiritual strength, but he lacked the toughness and endurance of the warriors, huntsmen and herders who made up the bulk of the prisoners. Calgaich caught him up under one arm and Guidd the other.

"Fomoire?” Niall asked.

"Perhaps six hundred Roman miles.”

"On foot?” Niall asked incredulously.

Calgaich grinned through the mud plastering his face. “How else?” he asked.

“We’ll never make it, Novantae,” Niall said gloomily.

“You’ll have to make it, Selgovae!” Calgaich snapped. “March, or die in the dust of a Gaulish highway with an auxiliary’s dagger drawn across your throat.
I
will make it!”

They passed slowly through the narrow, busy streets of Dubris. Rome’s great strength still gave a feeling of some security to the people. Many Roman warships were stationed along the coast, which was protected by forts of the Litus Saxonicum, the Saxon Shore. The ships were not the huge biremes and triremes of the calmer Mediterranean, Adriatic and Ionian Seas, but rather lighter galleys used to fight the Saxon vessels in the stormy Northern Sea. Even so, it was rumored that the Saxon wind was blowing ever stronger each year against the low coast of southeastern Britannia, while the Caledonian wind was blowing ever stronger from the north.