The Circle of the Gods (18 page)

“You would offer me service and bring others of the same mind?”

Gelliga shrugged his shoulders. “Why not? Three weeks past you stole my mount, a grey mare. We were both tired of empty drills and empty words. I come to join her. And there are others like me.”

For a moment or two Arturo said nothing, but there was in him now, growing fast, a rising exultation. The gods took and the gods gave. But in loss or in gain a man should never cease to honour and trust them. Volpax was gone. But was it not true that the very lifeblood he had shed on grass and leaf had brought one to stand in his place and he, a man from whom trust shone without flaw, one who should bring others?

He said, “I am Arturo, and the gods have been kind. Go back to your friends. Tell them of this place and be here with them at the next full moon. I shall come to greet you and lead you to those who have already sworn service.”

“You will come alone?”

Arturo smiled. “Why should I not? The gods have marked me, and now they have marked you. I give you and your comrades my trust. To do other would shame me before the gods.”

Arturo found Durstan waiting for him at the horse keeper's steading. Between them they led ten of the horses back to the Villa of the Three Nymphs through two days of wind and rain. On hearing of the death of Volpax and the promise that Arturo had made to go back and meet Gelliga and such men as would follow him, Durstan tried to argue Arturo out of such foolishness. But when he saw that Arturo, was adamant, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “So be it.”

Arturo, heavily cowled against the driving rain as they rode side by side, said, “The gods have willed it through the death of Volpax. While I am gone there is work for you to do. Ride eastward down the river. Talk to the farmers and the headmen of the villages. Take a good horse, dress well and carry a sword, and tell them Arturo sends his greetings, and that soon he will be riding with his comrades to clear the banks, the swamps and the woods of the upriver lands of all Saxon bands.”

Durstan's eyes widened in surprise. “In midwinter?”

“Aye, in midwinter. Is it not then that Saxons find their bellies empty and begin to raid our people to rob them of their corn and root stores? I shall have a company which has long itched for true action, already drilled and sharp-set for fighting. Tell our river people that we come to protect them and to clear the headwater valleys of the Saxons.”

Despite himself Durstan smiled, recognizing the note of exultation in his friend's voice. He said, “And in return you will take tribute for your protection?”

“That would be to do as the Saxons do. I take nothing, but accept whatever is offered freely for the service and protection we give.”

Twelve days later Arturo rode down the forest path under a full moon to the pool where he had first met Gelliga. He had dressed himself as proudly as he could from the meager possessions of himself and his friends at the villa. He wore a woolen cloak caught at the throat with a bronze brooch donated by Timo, long trews cross-gartered with deerskin hide thongs, his own tunic and belt from which hung his sword, sharply honed by Marcos, and on his head a leather cap with a stiff plume of white and red goose quills—the red quills so dyed by Durstan in the dark blood of a winter hare which had been trapped for the pot. He rode a chestnut stallion, the best of the stolen horses, and carried for lance a seasoned length of ash, the tip fire-hardened and capped with a sharp iron point fashioned by Marcos from a piece of scrap metal scavenged in the villa's ruins.

The moon threw ebony tree and branch shadows across his path, the stallion's breath plumed in the frost-sharp air and the ground rang under its hooves. Arturo came openly, armed and alert, but fearing no mischief; for this night, this meeting, he knew had been long ordained, and the knowledge—whose provenance he never questioned or thought to prove—filled him with a controlled but commanding arrogance. Openly he rode down to the hollow, came out of the cover of the winter-stark trees and brought the stallion to a halt at the side of the white-rimed reeds of the black waters of the pool. He sat and waited, curbing the horse firmly as it fidgeted. An owl called from the trees far up the valley side and the star reflections on the water were shattered into a maze of shifting silver as a water rat swam across its breadth. He sat there facing across the clearing, his eyes on the path by which Gelliga had first come to surprise him.

The owl called again and the waters of the pool grew calm.

A voice from behind him said quietly, “Greetings to Captain Arturo.”

Arturo wheeled his steed about to find Gelliga standing at the foot of the pathway which had brought him into the clearing. Touched with a moment's irritation at the conceit of the man's maneuver, Arturo said, “Greeting, good Gelliga. You come alone—and without horse?”

Gelliga shook his head. “No, my captain. There are six others with me and we bring four horses. There is a high wind of suspicion blowing through the camp now. Guards have been doubled and a curfew keeps all men in barracks after nightfall. There were those who would have come but could find no way. But they will with time.” Then with a slow movement he drew aside his long cloak, pulled his sword from its scabbard and thrust it upright into the hard ground before him, saying, “Here is my sword which I, Gelliga of Lavobrinta in the country of the Ordovices, pledge to you in true comradeship.”

He stepped back a few paces from his sword. As he did so another man moved out of the trees to his right. Heavily cloaked, tall and with a deeply wrinkled face, he, too, drew his sword, fisted it into the ground and said in a voice which was like the low growl of a bear, “My captain, I, too, Garwain from Moridunum on the banks of the River Turius in the country of Demetae, pledge myself to you.”

After him, and before Arturo could stir or say word, another man stepped out from farther along the ring of the trees and stabbed his sword into the ground. Short, lean and bowlegged, he said in a high voice, “Lacto of Calcaria in the country of the Parisi, my captain, gives his sword to you.” Then, clear in the moonlight, his face broke into a broad grin as he went on, “My horse you have already for you sit upon it now.”

Arturo answered, “It is yours again when we reach the Villa of the Three Nymphs.”

Then from beyond Lacto another man moved into the moonlit circle and, announcing himself, gave his sword and pledge, to be followed by three others so that Arturo sat the stallion within a crescent of swords. After Lacto came Borio from Deva, fresh-faced and big-handed; Tarius from Olicana of the Brigantes, lean, hard-bitten of face and older than all the rest; then Netio of the Catuvellauni with a hawkish, hooknosed face marked to one side by an old sword scar; and last of all one, the youngest of them all, Lancelo, short, broad-shouldered and with a round moon of a face set with smiling eyes, who came from Corinium.

Arturo sat his horse and let his eyes swing from one to another and slowly there rose in him the beginning of a deep pride. Here was the seed which would grow fast to bring him a great company of men, a comitatus, a firm brotherhood which in a few years could become an army. Truly now he was poised on the brink of a god-marked destiny, and he saw now that the drama staged for his benefit by Gelliga must surely have been put into the man's mind by the gods. Seven men to pledge their seven swords. There was magic in the number, and magic in this moment which he must meet appropriately.

He dropped his horse's reins, holding it firm and controlled by the clamping pressure of his knees alone, and he drew his sword with one hand, holding it upright before his face, raised his lance with the other hand and began to speak without thought because he knew the gods would put the right words into his mouth.

His face tight-drawn from the fervour which stirred in him, he said boldly, “With this lance I give you welcome and will be with you as straight and true in comradeship, in valour and in faith.” Then drawing his up-pointed sword to his lips, he kissed the broad, cold blade, and went on, “On this blade I make the oath-kiss and swear that I shall never ask of you that which I would not dare myself. I shall be your true captain and you my beloved brothers. Neither in distress nor want, nor in courage nor in victory shall there ever be shadow or stain on the love and duty which I hold dear toward you. Swear then to accept but one destiny, to rid this island of all those who do now and would further oppress us, to bring back the glory and the peace which once were lodged with our fathers and their fathers. Swear this by the god or gods who rule your hearts!” He kissed his sword again and raised it high.

Before him in one movement seven swords were drawn from the ground, flashing in the bright moonlight; seven swords were raised as one to take on their cold blades the oath-kisses, and as though in one voice the seven cried, “We swear! We swear!”

Then began, in the raw and savage days of midwinter, Arturo's true time as a captain of men. Durstan had returned to say that while he had been received with friendship by their own people none of them would move to help them or freely provision them. They had been left alone so long without help that the poverty and hardships of their life and the sudden attacks of raiding Saxons formed a pattern of their days which they met now with a practical stoicism. They hid in storage pits, cliff caves and woodland dells most of their harvest corn and lodged their lean cattle in secret pastures. When the Saxons came they withdrew to the woods and hills, the raiders took what they would from their poor huts, and when they were gone the homesteaders came back to repair the damage and to mourn wife or child or the aged who had been butchered. They lived in fear on the knife edge of want and prayed only for the coming of spring, when they could open their furrows and sow what seed corn was left and look to the farrowing and calving of what swine and kine they still held. Spring and summer were the easeful seasons, for the barbaric Saxon robbers had enough sense to leave them undisturbed to their cropping and folding against the fat time of autumn harvests and full cattle pens.

For a few days while his new comrades settled into the villa, Arturo sat for long periods in his room, planning his first move against the Saxons. More men would soon come to him, of this he was sure. But to hold a company of any size together he knew that he needed not only the friendship of the settlers, but a supply of stores and services from them. He had to find some shift by which, swiftly and surely, he could bring the settlers to his side and gain from them a confidence which would turn them to him in true gratitude. Slowly he came to a decision, but once reaching it he threw all doubts from his mind and moved to action.

Leaving Durstan and Lancelo with Timo and Marcos to guard the villa, he took the rest of his men and they rode out, scantily provisioned, on a morning of heavy, cold rain. They rode down the left bank of the river, skirting the swamps and the low-lying, winter-flooded pastures and when darkness came turned their horses into the marshes and swam them across the river. For the rest of the night they moved down its right bank. When dawn came they made camp in the shelter of a tree-covered knoll. That evening as early dark fell they left the knoll, each man knowing now the moves to be made.

The river Saxons, unlike those in the settled lands, who preferred to build their huts apart in widely scattered communities, lived in small groups by the waterside where they moored their boats for upriver raiding. At midnight, circling around such a Saxon village, Arturo's men took it by surprise from the east. Arturo rode at their head and with a great cry of “Arturo comes! Arturo comes!” he lowered his lance as they swept by the rough log-built and reed-thatched huts and speared from the heart of the watch fire a burning brand and lodged it in the roof of a hut. Behind him came Gelliga and his iron lance tip caught the throat of the startled, bemused Saxon on watch as he rose from sleep beside the fire. Behind Gelliga came the other comrades, spearing brands to fire the thatched hovels of the Saxons and then to wheel, following their captain, and with drawn swords cut down the Saxon men as they came tumbling, hands groping for seax and fighting axe, from their sleep into the flame-lit circle of huts. The victory was swift and bloody. No fighting man was spared. Most of them stood and fought, back to back, and died from lance point or sword's edge almost before their minds had time to clear. Spared only—and this long ordered by Arturo—were the women and children and the young boys whose chins had yet to know the roughness of a growing beard. These survivors were marshalled to the riverbank where the raiding boats were drawn up. There were seven boats and four were put to the flames. Into the others were hustled the women and children and two old men. Before these were pushed out onto the dark bosom of the racing stream Arturo spoke to one of the old men who, like many of them, understood his tongue and said, “Know well that I am Arturo and hold my words firm in your memory. This night has begun the cleansing of the valleys of all your kind. Go down the great Tamesis and to all your race give warning that, under the gods, I, Arturo, begin now the purging of the upper river lands.…”

Listening, watching the fire-lit faces of the people in the boats, Gelliga smiled quietly to himself. He was content—for, this night he and his comrades had tasted action which had long been denied them, and this night, too, Arturo had begun to make good his promise. But there was this about Arturo which all his comrades now understood and were content to accept—behind the high words lay the iron will which took men into battle ready to give their lives for him and his god-touched passion. He looked across at Netio, his hawk face wet with sweat, the blaze from the burning huts shadowing the great scar on his cheek, his blooded sword resting across his knees, and there was no surprise in him as the warrior gave him the winking flick of an eyelid and his tongue ran slowly along the underside of his top lip. Aye, he thought, they had found a man who would give them all the battle and bloodshed so long denied them by Count Ambrosius.