The Dog and the Wolf (66 page)

“And a glad greeting when he returns.”

“Pray God he does, heartened.”

He stood for a space quiet, until he shook himself and said with half a smile, “I think, before he leaves, I can jolly his men somewhat. They are the best we have, our chosen few. I’ll remind them of that—Celts do love flattery—and speak of new places they’ll see, adventures, celebrations, willing girls—It’ll help Gradlon’s spirits, having theirs high.”

“God bless you,” Verania murmured.

He turned grave. “And you, sister mine. Thank you for this.”

—When he reached the parade ground north of Con
fluentes, near his family’s old manor house, a squadron of infantry was at drill. To and fro they marched, wheeled, countermiarched. Their boots struck earth together, dust flew and thud racketed up into the wind. Each man was outfitted however he or his kin could provide, a wildness of mail, leather, kilts dyed in gaudy clan hues; but a ripple as through a ripening wheatfield went in the pikes that flashed aloft, and the officer who watched from horseback had no reason to shout commands. It was they who set their cadence, singing together, one of the many new songs that went about the country; and while the tune had been old among the legions, the language today was not Latin.

“When the Scoti come a-raiding, or the Saxons or the Franks,

It’s the horn of Gradlon calls us—Take your weapons! Form your ranks!

4

Sunset smoldered among the ragged dark clouds. For a while it reddened wave-crests, to bridge the waste between worldedge and
Brennilis
, but Ocean kept shattering the work. Then it died out and the west deepened from ice-green toward purple and thence black. Eastward the waves took a sheen more pale, also broken and fugitive, off a hunchbacked moon three days short of the full. Clouds yonder made it seem to fly, yet it stayed over the starboard rail, as if the ship too were rushing at wind-speed across endlessness.

The clouds were merely a wrack, fleet moon-tinged scraps. The brighter stars flickered visible, Eagle, Swan, Lyre, Dragon, a glimpse of the Bears sufficient to mark Polaris, by which Evirion steered. He fared thus through night, twenty miles or more from any land, not in recklessness but because the fortunes of wind and current brought him abeam of Ys, as nearly as he could gauge, at this chosen time. Every man agreed that the only wisdom was to pass those evil headlands as soon as might be.

Sharply heeled,
Brennilis
creaked; her forefoot hissed and smacked, cleaving water; lines aloft thrummed to the skirl of air; sometimes the leach of the straining spritsail snapped or its spar shifted about and boomed against the mast. The seas had a thousand voices of their own, deep drumroll, torrent, splash, whirr, growl, while their surges pitched the hull that rode them. Spray off their manes fell bitter on lips. The cold of them was a live thing that coiled and tugged and bit.

The wind was from the moon, though, not the sunset as men had dreaded. It thrust the ship off the reach of rocks beyond Sena, out onto the deeps where there were simply billows to do them harm. Powerful, it was not too much to beat across, holding a course that ought to make landfall somewhere on the west coast of Britannia. That was another reason Evirion had decided to sail on in the dark. Standing lookout at the prow, Riwal the Durotrigian
gazed homeward. He saw little more than the vague gray of the artemon, until across murk his vision met stars; but yonder lay the country of his birth, the fields and folk of his tribe, an upwelling of memories … the downs shouldering into a vast summer sky, chalk cliffs tumbling to water utterly blue, himself small and gorging on blackberries (the prickliness was part of the joy) with honeybees abuzz around him … No. Home was no longer there. In five years since he made his way to Armorica, and saved earnings till he could send after wife and children, they had struck new roots; and it was in a better place, in the lee of Gradlon, safer than most from the storms that savaged the world. Yet maybe his sons would remember together with him, maybe they would keep the dear music of the old speech and something of the old ways. For more and more Britons came over in search of refuge.

Nevertheless—

He felt mass betread the deck behind him. Turning his head, he recognized Evirion’s tall form. “How goes it?” asked the captain.

“All’s well, sir,” Riwal said. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I’ll sleep in the morning, when I know we’re clear of the Gobaean. We can’t hope to pass West Island by then, but any dangers will be natural ones.”

Riwal wiped his drenched mustache, cleared his throat, and ventured, “I’ve been wondering, sir. This isn’t too late in the year, but if we aren’t so lucky with the weather when our business is done and have to winter in Britannia—”

“We won’t,” Evirion vowed. “I’m going home—” He peered starboard. “Hoy, what’s that?” And in a roar: “Sheer off, you! Helmsman, hard a-lee!”

Riwal barely saw what came out of the night. A large fishing boat, sail filled with the wind that drove her straight at
Brennilis
, a last great leap, he had not quite understood when stem smote strakes and the doomsday crash hurled him backward.

He struck the port bulwark and grabbed after any handhold. The deck canted. It spilled men elsewhere into the sea. Sail flapped thunderous, masthead wavered crazily across the stars and then swept downward like a spear
dropped by a warrior who has taken an arrow in the belly. Now the deck slipped about and canted forward. Riwal lost his grip and tumbled back into the bows. There the starboard bulwark stood splintered above timbers torn loose from their fastenings. Through it he saw the boat. Her prow was deep in the hull of
Brennilis.
Impact had sheared loose her own mast, it lay in a tangle of rigging and sailcloth alongside, waves made it a ram to batter the ship. One billow cataracted across him. He heard a huge noise of water pouring in. Ballasted and laden, the ship was going down by the head.

From the helm of the boat flitted a whiteness that might have been foam. Riwal lost sight of it. Then suddenly it was over the rail and aboard with him.

Clouds broke from the moon. By its wanness he spied a couple of men amidships. They clung to the lashings of the lifeboat, which they were trying to cut. The nearer man was big—Evirion? The white thing passed up the slanted, sluggishly rolling deck. Wind blew the long hair from the shape of a naked woman.

Riwal screamed. The brawl of sea, the groan and sundering of wood smothered it. He cowered into the angle where he clung, and the mast cut off sight of what happened yonder. Maybe, whirled in his nightmare, maybe she wouldn’t notice him. Maybe she would swim off, sated; and at least a part of the ship might float a derelict till it washed ashore, Epona, Christ, give this, make it be!

A wave overran him. He got it in his open mouth and strangled. Somehow he coughed the water out and caught a breath before the next whelming.

The next, the next, the next, each deeper and wrenching harder than the last.

A weight ground its way along the splintered planks. He looked and saw the lifeboat, free of its moorings, somehow turned right side up. It slid forward at every pitch, cutwater aimed at him where he lay tumbled and trapped in the bows.

Blindly, he clawed himself up and went over the side. The sea swallowed him. He could swim, he flailed through the swirls of the dark and broke out into moonlight. In a black-and-white blur he saw waves heave, spindrift fly,
Brennilis
with stern aloft, a last bit of the craft that had gored her, and the boat, the boat. As the ship rolled, the boat slipped through a gap in the bulwark and floated free.

It floated toward him where he threshed.

She leaned forth and laid hold of his tunic. By the gibbous moon he saw her smile. She hauled him aboard, he fell into the bilge, and for a spell nothing was but a blackness that wailed.

When he crept back to himself he found mast stepped and sail full of wind. The boat bounded easily over long rollers where foam sparkled. They rushed and lulled. The moon shone ahead. Wind had swung clear around and now bore for Ys.

The woman sat at the helm. Moonlight quivered on her wet whiteness. She saw him see her and smiled. She was wholly beautiful, but he still burned from the cold of her touch.

He huddled where he was, afraid to stir or cry out.

Clouds blew away. The Milky Way shone across the great wheel of the stars. The moon climbed until it was crooked and tiny on high, then sank toward Ocean aft. Winter’s Orion strode gigantic up from the east. Wind boomed softly. Riwal began to feel no more chill, no more fear. Finally, corpse-numb, he felt no more time.

Point Vanis and Cape Rach followed Orion into heaven. The boat glided between their bulks and wove among the remains of Ys. Faint as a gnat’s football, Riwal heard its keel plow into the shore. The wind fell, the sail dropped lifeless. The moon was sunken but waters were metallic with the earliest dawnlight above eastern hills.

She left the tiller, stood up, beckoned to him. His cramped legs would barely move. He lurched to the rail, fell over, sprattled for a moment before he could reel to his feet.

She was gone. He blinked in dim puzzlement. Where was she? What did she want of him? He was hers. The sea had washed everything but obedience out of him.

She appeared from behind what had been a gateway and flowed over sand, cobbles, weed, shells, pieces of wreckage, to him. There was now enough light that he could see the gold of her hair; but no color was in lips or
nipples or nails, and the blue of the eyes had no depth, it was blank as Ocean under a dead calm. Though the air lay murmurous, pierced by the mew of an early wakened gull, silence and cold enclosed her.

In her right hand she held something which she reached toward him. He stared. It was a small carving in wood, long since water-logged and gone to the bottom. Paint was worn off and worms had riddled it, but the thought trickled through him that this was once a prancing horse, playfully shaped, with jointed legs, toy for a child.

She thrust it at him. His fingers closed on its soddenness. Hers brushed them, and the chill jagged to his heart. It shocked him back into terror. She gestured imperiously. He turned and shambled off inland as she commanded. Never did he dare look back to see if those empty eyes gazed after him. But as he, having passed the amphitheater, climbed to what was left of the eastbound road on the heights, his glance fell over the bay, and all he saw move there in the strengthening light were waves and a flight of cormorants.

5

Equinox almost a month behind them, nights drew in fast. The sun was down when Tera reached the shieling at the meadows. Autumn colors in the woods had gone dun, though as yet crowns were limned sharp against a sky where a yellowish glow lingered. A breeze sighed bleak over the grass. Fallen leaves rustled.

Candleglow spilled around Nemeta’s slight figure and burned in her tresses as she opened the door to the newcomer’s knock. “Welcome, oh, welcome.” Her tones shook. “Come in. My house is yours.”

“We’ll have scant need of it, I think,” said the stocky woman. Nonetheless she entered. Smoke off the hearthfire stung her at first; she sneezed and wiped a hand below her pug nose while she leaned her staff against the wall. Otherwise she carried an emptied water bag and a sack with lumpy things in it, tied to her back. Her weather
whitened mane was the brightest sight among the shadows. The years had begun to dull it.

“I have wine, food,” Nemeta offered.

Tera shook her head. “Well eat otherwise this night. Have you brought the foal I wanted?” After Nemeta had sent a runner to her, carrying simply the spoken appeal, “Please let me hear from you,” messages more confidential had gone between them on the tongue of her oldest son.

“Aye. He’s tethered behind the house. The horses are in winter quarters nearer Confluentes—But how have you fared? We’ve not met for long and long.”

“Since Maeloch’s death.”

“I should have sought you out,” Nemeta said contritely. “You earned my abiding thanks once.”

“Well, you’ve had full days of your own, dear, and—” The round face tightened briefly into a frown. “Some signs made me believe ’twere best to leave you to yourself.” A sad smile. “But that’s all past. We who remember Ys should stand together.”

“How
have
you fared?”

“Well enough. Drusus is a kindly man. My children are not ill content either, save that ’tis plain the son of Maeloch will never make a farmer.” Tera looked hard at Nemeta. The fire wavered and sputtered. “But you, lass, you’re more gaunt than ever, and you tremble as you stand there. What is it?”

“I want—I need—” Nemeta twisted her head right and left. “You know why I asked you here!”

“Somewhat,” Tera answered slowly. “News does reach us, though drop by drop and often muddied. A madman came back to Confluentes from the sea. You’d have me help you divine what it means because … he’d sailed with your man.”

Nemeta’s neck stiffened. She stared before her into the darknesses that wove over the cob wall and said fast: “Riwal, he is, or was, a Briton who moved hither several years ago. He was with a mission my Evirion led to his country a score of days past—less two—oh, I’ve counted, I’ve counted every one. A shepherd found him rambling aimlessly in the high pastures some leagues east of Ys. He
was half dead and could only mumble and moan. Folk nourished a little strength into him and brought him to Confluentes, where he was known—family, friends—When I heard, I dared go there myself, by day. He was under care at the church, but no physician could mend his wits, nor could Bishop Corentinus drive any demon out of him. All he can tell is that ‘she’ gave him something he must bring back. When pressed to say more, he fells into a weeping, whimpering fit. Otherwise he’s quiet, aye, sits unstirring for hours on end and gapes at the air. He knows the names of wife and children and likes it when they are nigh; he has a few words of his own and obeys simple commands as a dog might; Corentinus thinks he may in time be able to do rough labor for his keep.