Druids (29 page)

The people crowding around the traders’ wagons had never stood below an auction block as slaves were being sold.

178 Morgan Llywelyn

I breathed a deep sigh of relief as the last of the wagons trun-dled out the gate. I had only bought us a little time. Tasgetius had sided with the Romans. Soon I would be forced to confront him openly—but by then I hoped to be better prepared.

Unfortunately, I let my personal dislike of the man blind me to the possibility that he might be clever.

I stood al the gates for a long time, watching until the last dust had settled behind the departing traders. Just as I turned away, I felt a tug on my arm.

“Ainvar!” gasped a wide-eyed Damona. “Come to your lodge, hurry!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Lakutu’s ill. I think she’s dying!”

Iran.

Lakutu lay across the foot of my bed, curied into a knot. Her

arms were clamped across her belly, her contorted face was livid. When I spoke her name, she moaned, then vomited a thin stream of yellow froth that smelled like bitter fruit.

“What happened, Damona?”

“After you ordered the traders to leave I came in here to help Lakutu; I’ve been teaching her to sew. One of the traders came to the door with a basket of dried figs he said were for you. When she saw the fruit Lakutu was very excited. She grabbed one and ate it before I could stop her. As soon as I realized it had made her sick, I threw the rest on the fire, but it was too late.’*

Too late for Lakutu, suddenly faced with a sun-kissed treat she had not seen in seasons, a familiar food from the south. She could be forgiven her greed, for it had cost her dearly. She had eaten poison meant for me.

Tasgetius must have ordered the traders to kill me if I refused them again.

Only this time he had hurt the most helpless among us. For Lakutu, even more than for Menua and Nantorus, I would make him pay. In my own time, in my own way, in a style appropriate to his crime, i

Lakutu convulsed. I abandoned thinking and ran for Sulis.

At the door of me family lodge, Sulis’s old mother told me, “She isn’t here, Ainvar. She went downriver early this morning, one of the fannsteads sent for her. A man was gored by an ox.”

I spun on my heel and ran forCrom Daral’s lodge. “Briga!” I shouted, pounding on the door. “I need you!”

Crom Daral’s hostile voice answered. “Go away, druid.”

“Briga!” I cried again. I threw my weight against the door,

DRUIDS 179

which he had not thought to bar against me. It gave way, the heavy oak planks making the iron hinges squeal. Briga was on the far side of the lodge, rubbing a copper bowl with damp sand to polish it. She stood up as I entered, her mouth half-open in surprise. I crossed the lodge in one bound. “Come with me, I must have someone who can heal.”

Crom Daral hit me a ringing blow on the side of the head. I staggered back. He was on me in an eyeblink, pounding at me. His doubled fist caught me on the side of the jaw and stars exploded behind my eyes. As I fell, I was distantly aware that he was reaching for some son of weapon …

… with a massive effort I clung to consciousness.

Crom Daral was facing me in a half-crouch. Firelight glinted on the weapon in his hand.

I launched myself from knuckles and knees and hit nun squarely

under the chin with the top of my head. He grunted and fell backward. The iron poker clattered onto the stone hearth. Even as he fell, Crom twisted his body, reaching for it again.

I threw myself onto him and pressed my forearm across his throat with all my weight behind it. He bucked, writhed, fought for breath, but I held on grimly until he went limp. Then I sat back on my heels, breathing hard.

Crom was still alive, his ragged breathing filled the lodge. He would recover soon. In the meantime, I turned to Briga. “I mean ft, I need you.”

“You said you needed someone who can heal. What about Sulis?”

“She’s away from the fort, and she’s the only healer who lives here. Except for… will you come?”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” she said in a small voice. But she took her cloak from the peg and followed me from me lodge.

The day was dying.

JL^i

9 ft T^ RING YOUR HUSBAND,” I snapped at Damona as we r^entered my lodge. “Have him stand guard at the A^ doorway and let no one else enter— particularly Crom Daral, do you understand?”

Damona nodded and hurried off. Tbymon the smith was not a young man, but I felt confident he could repel Crom if necessary. Though on second thought. . ,

‘ ‘Bring the Goban Saor as well!” I shouted after her.

Damona had lighted all the lamps both she and I possessed and placed mem around the lodge, filling it with light. Lakutu was lying twisted among my blankets, her face drained of color. Her half-open eyes showed white crescents below the lashes, and occasionally she made a feeble, retching sound. One hand beat ineffectually on the bed.

Briga turned to me- “What am I to do? I don’t know how to help her.”

Menua had trained me to follow him; to instruct, to inspire. But not to impart the sum total of that training between one heartbeat and the next. “Just listen to the spirit within you,” I said desperately. “Open yourself up to it; do what feels right to you.”

Lakutu moaned. Without hesitation, Briga knelt beside her and put one hand on either side of the woman’s face in an instinctive gesture of sympathy.

Lakutu’s body spasmed and she vomited, the stinking fluid spattering Briga-1 smelled again the odor of bitter fruit.

Briga wasted no time cleaning herself. Gathering Lakutu into her arms, she cast one final, frantic look at me, then closed her eyes.

Her face assumed a fixed, concentrated expression as if she were listening to faraway music.

180

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As I watched, Briga stretched out on me bed beside Lakutu and pressed her body the length of the other woman’s—breast to breast, hip to hip, knee to knee. Lakutu writhed, but Briga held her with unsuspected strength.

I heard Damona return with me men to guard the door, but I did not look up; I kept my eyes fixed on the pair on the bed.

Lakutu writhed a second time. “Do you have some milk, Ain-var?” Briga asked softly.

“Milk? No… .”

“Find some. Hurry.”

“My daughter is nursing an infant, I’ll bring her,” offered Damona. She soon returned with a younger woman, who stopped to stare openmouthed at the figures enclasped on the bed.

“Hurry,” Briga urged.

Impatiently, I grabbed Damona’s daughter and tore open me round neck of her gown. Her breasts were leaking thick, ropy milk.

I found a bowl and gave it to Damona. “Milk her into this.”

When the bowl was half full, I took it to Briga-She eased herself away from Lakutu and sat up, still wearing that intent, listening look. Then she spat several times into the milk.

The tension of magic closed around us like a closing fist.

When Briga tried to get Lakutu to drink, the other woman clenched her teeth and made a peculiar grinding noise. Briga summoned me with her eyes. Using thumb and forefinger, I pried open Lakutu’s mouth. Her tongue was swollen and black. Briga poured in a little milk, closed her mouth, stroked her throat. Lakutu vomited the milk. Briga tried again. At last a little seemed to go down and stay.

Then Lakutu spasmed so violently she flung Briga into my arms. The Sequanian rested against me for one heartbeat before pulling away, back to the sufferer.

Time, which can sprawl or clench, sprawled that night. By lamplight and firelight, we kept vigil. Damona’s daughter had not covered herself, forgetting that her breasts were bare. The fight for life commanded our attention.

Briga lay beside Lakutu, holding her, constantly stroking various parts of her body. I watched her press her face against Lak-utu’s smeared face, nostril to nostril, exchanging bream. Briga murmured softly, a gentle, repetitive sound without words. After a timeless time, she helped Lakutu sit up so she could vomit again, this time with a great outpouring of stinking liquid. After-182 Morgan Llywelyn

ward Lakutu slumped exhausted in Briga’s anns, but for just one moment her eyes seemed awake and aware.

There was a commotion at the doorway. Crom Daral shouted, “You can’t keep my woman from me!”

I heard both Teymon and me Goban Saor arguing with him;

then a sound like a thump.

Silence followed.

“Poor Crom,” sighed Briga.

The fire in the stone pit crackled and roared and eventually subsided into a lake of shimmering coals. Briga resumed stroking Lakutu *s body, leaning over it and murmuring as if she were talking to the organs within. Her fingers repeatedly kneaded the soft belly, then moved up the torso toward the throat with long, sure strokes.

Lakutu went rigid. Her eyes flared with terror. Briga helped her sit up, and she vomited again, another gush of vile liquid that soaked both of mem. More stroking, more murmuring. An additional outpouring of less quantity, followed by a final stream of clear fluid with hardly any smell to it.

Lakutu rolled her eyes toward Briga.

* ‘It’s all right now,” the Sequanian assured her in a voice shredded by exhaustion. “It’s all out of you.” She stroked the matted black hair tenderly.

Lakutu did not need to understand words; the language of touch and tone was quite clear. The fear went out of her face. Her eyes drifted closed and she sank into a natural sleep.

Briga eased Lakutu into a comfortable position on my bed, men stood up stiffly, massaging the small other back. “That’s all I can do, Amvar.”

“It’s enough,” I said gratefully. Filthy as she was, I ached to take her into my arms, but I contented myself with standing close, towering over her like the great pine tree to which she had once compared me. “You’re exhausted,” I told her. “Go rest for your own sake.” Into my voice I put all the emotion I could not express

with words. The most important things are never said with words.

I went to the doorway and looked outside. Crom Daral was stretched on the earth—with Terynon sitting on his chest-The Goban Saor was lounging against the wall beside me door, occasionally rubbing his knuckles.

I went back for a lamp so I could take a closer look at Crom. When the flickering light fell on his swollen face, he opened his eyes and stared up at me. “What are you doing to my woman?”

“I’m not doing anything to her. She is helping me.”

DRUIDS 183

“I forbid it!”

“You can’t, Crom.”

“You’re forcing her against her will!”

Just behind me, Bnga’s hoarse little voice, sounding weary but self-possessed, spoke up. “No one has ever been able to force me to do anything I did not want to do, Crom-You of all people know that by now.”

She pushed past me and went to kneel by Crom Daral. “Let him get up,” she told Teymon.

The smith looked to me. I shrugged.

Waggling his jaw with his fingers, Crom got to his feet. I thought he made a more clumsy business of it man necessary, encouraging Briga to help him. “They tried to kill me,” he told her. “Come away with me now. I need you.” In the lamplight he stood like a sulky child, with his lower lip thrusting through his drooping moustache,

“The woman inside needs me, Crom.”

“What can you do for her?” he asked petulantly.

Before Briga could answer, I interjected, “She just saved her life.”

Crom looked to me, men back again to Briga. “You couldn’t do that.”

I told her quickly, “You did. You know you did.”

“You’re not a healer,” Crom insisted. “How could you know what to do?”

Briga shook her head, a small, helpless gesture. “I cannot say. ljust… knew.”

I marveled that she was able to stand on her feet. Exhaustion was pouring off her in waves I could hear and smell. When she swayed from fatigue, both Crom an41 reached out to steady her and our gazes crossed like swords. “She’s my woman, Ainvar,”

he growled, taking hold of one of her arms.

I promptly took the other; it was trembling. “She’s a woman with a precious gift,” I said, as much to her as to him. Then I dropped my voice and addressed her directly as she stood pinioned between us, ‘ ‘You do admit that now, don’t you? You must let Sulis train you.”

“But what about me?” moaned Crom.

Briga took a deep breath and squared her tired shoulders. * ‘Poor Crom,” she said for a second time, and though I did not want to acknowledge it, I heard an unmistakable affection in her voice.

I had misunderstood whatever was between them, I thought ruefully. My efforts to rescue women seemed invariably mis—

184 Morgan Llywelyn

guided. I loosened my hold on her arm. She glanced at me so briefly I could not read her spirit in the light of the lamp I still held in my other hand; then she turned to Crom Daral. He folded her into an embrace, pressing her head against his shoulder with a gentleness I would never have expected of him. “I’ll lake you home now,” he said.

He led her away unresisting, we three men staring after them. The first dawn glow was rising around us, but the sky was textured with lowering clouds; there was not enough light to see clearly. I wanted to believe she cast one glance back at me, but I could not be sure.

The first dawn glow …

With a shock, I realized that an entire night had passed. Time, which can clench or sprawl, had lost its meaning. Now my blood quickened with an invisible summons.

After the fetid atmosphere of the lodge, the sharp, cold air was sweet. Filling my lungs with it, I began to sing the song for the sun.

Terynon and the Goban Saor joined in. Teymon had a pleasant voice; the master craftsman sang with a deep bass thunder. Doors creaked open throughout the fort. One by one at first, then in a lyrical flood, my people added their voices to ours as streams rush to swell a river.

Together we sang the light into being.

Lakutu was asleep when I returned to the lodge. Damona had sent her daughter home and stayed to tend Lakutu by herself, insisting she was not tired though we both knew better.

“Men are no good at nursing the sick, Ainvar. You just sit there on your bench and let me clean her and give her some fresh bedding. She’ll rest the better for it.”