The Greener Shore (43 page)

“That’s all you know! Just listen. Eventually we rounded a great finger of land that sticks way out into the sea and headed north again, across what appeared to be a very wide river mouth. At night I studied the stars, trying to determine when we should change course for the west. Finally I was just about to give the order to Cormiac when we were hailed by a group of men onshore.”

“Hailed in Latin,” Cormiac added.

“I’m telling this,” Labraid testily reminded him. “I shouted back at them before I realized they were speaking Latin. At once a large boat put out after us. We tried to outrun them but it was no use. They forced us onto the land and attacked us. There were at least fifty of them, Ainvar, with breastplates and helmets, and…”

“There were twelve,” said Cormiac.

“…and the only weapons we had were clubs and spears.”

“Why did they attack you?”

“Labraid waved his spear at them.”

“I was only trying to be friendly. Anyway, we had to fight for our lives. I don’t know how many men we killed, but it was a lot.”

“Nine,” said the Red Wolf.

“You killed nine Romans?”

“I killed my share!” Labraid stressed.

Cormiac looked down at me. “He did.”

“When we saw our chance,” Labraid continued, “we ran for the boat and put out to sea. We were almost dead ourselves by that time. We couldn’t even pick up the oars, we just let the tide carry us where it would. After a long time we washed up on the shores of Mona.”

Briga, who had been listening to this with as much fascination as I, asked, “How did you know it was Mona?”

“We didn’t know the name of the island, not then, but we landed exactly where we’d landed the first time.”

Probus said, “Was that not an amazing coincidence?”

There are no coincidences, just unexpected glimpses of a hidden Pattern.

“We crawled out of the boat and simply lay on the beach for a while, amazed to find ourselves alive. Then some men came out of the trees and walked toward us. They had tonsures like you used to wear, Ainvar. I tried to explain what had happened to us and ask for their help but I couldn’t tell if they understood me or not. They picked us up as if we were children and carried us off into the forest. I’m not sure what happened then; Probus can tell you.”

I knew Labraid was exhausted—not because his shoulders were sagging, but because he willingly relinquished the narration to someone else.

The Roman obliged. “When the druids brought them to Tan Ben y Cefn, both men were in dreadful shape. Labraid was unconscious and Cormiac could not speak. One of the druids knelt beside them and made signs in the air with his hands, and eventually Labraid revived, but he made no sense. He kept talking about ‘killing thousands of Romans’ and slashing his arms around. My men were alarmed. Anicius wanted to kill them both immediately but Mac Coille intervened. ‘On Mona there are no enemies,’ he said. He insisted that the two Celts—for such they obviously were, their language gave them away—be taken to a guesthouse and given food and drink and healing.

“As for us, I felt we had learned all we could there. We had left the garrison insufficiently manned for a longer stay, so I announced that we would set sail for Albion on the following day. Anicius began to argue with my decision; I had to remind him who was in command. Then he told me we should take the two strangers with us as prisoners of war. We had not captured them in a war, I pointed out; they had nothing to do with us, they were guests of the druids. Anicius insisted they were enemies of Rome, condemned by their own words, and it was our obligation to dispatch them.

“I had seen far too many enemies ‘dispatched’ for my liking. But you will understand all you need to know about Anicius when I tell you he loved to remember what I most wanted to forget.”

“I knew someone like that once,” I remarked. “A man called Aberth, who took his greatest pleasure from the extinction of life.”

“There are such men, Ainvar. Perhaps I was a bit that way myself when I was a boy. I was curious about death and eager to observe the process without ever relating it to my own potential for pain.”

“Killing another creature does not add one drop of its life to your own life span,” I said.

“I doubt if Anicius ever made that discovery. I had known him for a long time, and though I did not like him very much, I thought he was a good soldier. It seems I misjudged him.

“During the night he spoke secretly to the other members of my company and convinced them that I had grown soft. From there it was but a small step to persuade them that he should replace me.”

As the last despairing cry of the murdered chief of Dubh Linn still echoed along the waters of the Liffey, I glimpsed the Pattern with perfect clarity.

chapter
XXX

“W
HAT DOES IT MATTER WHO IS CHIEF AND WHO IS FOLLOWER?”
Briga wondered aloud. “Pain and joy and death come to all.”

“Of course it matters,” Labraid said irritably. “Women simply don’t understand these things.”

Labraid made many foolish remarks; I could not be bothered to reprimand him for every one.

Probus continued, “When I arose in the morning Anicius and the rest of the company were waiting for me, but fortunately so was Mac Coille, who got to me first. ‘Your men mean you harm,’ he warned me.

“As soon as I saw their faces I knew he was right. They wore the look of absolute innocence men assume when they are guilty. They gathered around me in much the same way I imagine the assassins gathered around Caesar in the Senate. Anicius began by suggesting I needed to ‘delegate responsibility’ for a while in deference to my ‘exhaustion,’ for which he claimed to feel sympathy. The cold expression in his eyes belied his words. The other men still had their weapons concealed, but his hand was on the hilt of his gladus.

“Strangely enough, the druids had begun to gather in a large circle around us. Their movements were so inconspicuous I did not notice at first. They took no action, just stood and watched. I do not think Anicius was even aware of them. Keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he demanded I surrender the prisoners to him.

“When I replied that I had no prisoners, he turned around and began ordering the others to fetch the two Celts. In that moment he saw the druids. He shouted at them to stand aside.

“They did not move. My men reached for their swords and brandished them openly, but still the druids did not move.

“Mac Coille told Anicius, ‘You cannot take our guests without their permission. Let us ask them what they want.’ When the chief druid called their names, Labraid and Cormiac, leaning on two of the druids, emerged from one of the guesthouses. Mac Coille asked if they wished to leave with the Romans. They both said no.

“‘There’s your answer, Anicius,’ I told the rebel. ‘If anyone is to be taken prisoner, it is you, for trying to lead a revolt against your commanding officer. That is a capital offense.’

“But the scoundrel had been more successful than I realized. When he leaped at me with his sword in his hand, the other men joined him. My own weapon was still back in the guesthouse; I had not carried it on my person since the first day. I braced myself and prepared to go down fighting.

“In the final moment before they closed over me, I heard a deep voice say, ‘You have to ask for help.’ So I did. I shouted for help at the top of my lungs.

“Mac Coille instantly thrust his long wooden staff into my hands. I gripped it with all my strength and began to lay about me with what proved to be a most effective weapon, even against the Roman gladus. I took only one blow to the chest with the flat of someone’s blade. Meanwhile, Anicius was doing his best to drive his sword into my belly, but the druid’s staff parried his every thrust. I am good, Ainvar, but that ash stick was better. It clung to my palms like my skin, and of its own volition swung and smashed and scattered the comrades who had suddenly become my enemies.

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw the circle of druids change its configuration and form into a passageway: two rows of men and women facing each other, with an open space between them and the forest visible in the distance. ‘Take our two friends with you!’ Mac Coille shouted to me.

“I had never run from a fight in my life and was not about to run from this one. Yet I had no choice! The staff plunged down the passageway like a runaway horse, dragging me along behind. I could neither drop the thing nor resist it. The passage widened as I ran, and I felt, rather than saw, the two injured men being urged along after me. By other druids, I assume. Then I heard angry cries as my men—my former men—attacked them.

“I whirled around. The staff was willing to stop its headlong flight long enough to allow me to swing it at our pursuers. While I fought them back, Labraid and Cormiac stumbled past me, covered with blood.”

“That’s when you cried, ‘Run for the forest!’” Labraid said. “I didn’t want to, I wanted to stay and fight, of course, but—”

“The trees closed around us,” said Cormiac.

“They did.” Labraid sounded awestruck. “Long before we reached the safety of the forest the trees…except they weren’t trees, they were druids…or had been druids…but suddenly they were trees…were all around us. Crowding so close that nothing could get between them.”

“Except Probus,” said Cormiac.

“Well, yes, Probus soon joined us. He pointed straight ahead with the staff and ran forward and we followed him.”

“You three ran into the forest?” I asked, trying to follow the action. “Was this the same vast forest you described to me earlier, Probus?”

“It was.”

“Then how did you find your way through it without a guide?”

“By following the druid’s staff,” said the Roman. “It led us all the way to the sea.”

Labraid took up the narrative. “We finally came out of the forest just above the beach where we’d left our little boat. By that time we could hear men crashing about in the trees behind us, and I wanted to go back and fight them but Probus insisted we get into the boat instead. He pushed it out into the water, then climbed in after us and we set out.”

“For Hibernia,” said Cormiac.

“You three, two of you badly wounded and one with a broken rib, traveled all the way from Mona to the harbor at Dubh Linn in a small rowboat with no crew? How can that be?”

“I propped the staff at a forward angle in the prow,” Probus replied, “and the boat followed it. That is all I can tell you.”

Even I, who had seen and done great magic in my time, felt the gooseflesh rise on my body. “Where is the druid’s staff now?”

“The incoming tide washed us onto a strand below Dubh Linn. I used the staff to lean on as I got out of the boat. Some boys who were gathering birds’ eggs nearby noticed us and came running to help get the other two out. In the confusion I must have dropped the staff in the water; I never saw it again. The rest you know, Ainvar.”

I regretted the loss of Mac Coille’s staff as I had regretted surrendering the torc of Vercingetorix. If I had heard this tale while we were still at Dubh Linn, I would have been on my hands and knees at water’s edge, searching.

“Does any of this make sense to you?” Probus asked me.

“It does.”

“Then can you explain it so I can understand it?”

“That would take a lifetime,” I told him with perfect truth.

“Perhaps you can tell me this, at least. If the druids were vastly outnumbered—by a very large army, for example—would they still be able to cast their spells, or whatever it is they do?”

“I can’t answer that, Probus.”

“Oh, I think you can. That is what happened in Gaul, is it not?”

“If we’d had enough warriors we would have won!” Labraid cried.

Probus looked up at him. “I disagree. The problem was not the size of the Gaulish forces, but their lack of discipline and organization. They had no clearly defined channel of command. Once Vercingetorix was captured, the outcome was inevitable.”

My head agreed with him. Caesar had defeated us not because his warriors were better, but because they fought as one man. The Gauls, being Celts, fought singly, each in his own fashion. They had failed to learn from nature.

I had once seen a swarm of ants, moving to a single pattern, overrun and devour much larger beetles, each of whom was armed with savage pincers.

Labraid would have argued with me, but he did not argue with Probus. Instead he lapsed into silence, which was soon interrupted by a series of rhythmic sounds like the soft little grunts of suckling piglets. Probus, who was still holding the reins of the gray horse in one hand, put up the other to steady the gently snoring man.

We walked on.

“You seem genuinely fond of Labraid,” I remarked to the Roman. “I’m glad for his sake, yet puzzled, too. He’s not a very likable man.”

Probus chuckled. “I was born old and Labraid will never grow up. The symmetry appeals to me.”

We walked on.

My head sought new ways to occupy itself. I began thinking of my students in the glade, and then of my own children. Dara and Eoin and Ongus and Gobnat. Cairbre and Senta and Niav. My head painted glowing pictures of them clustering around me, laughing with joy because I was home.