Worms of the Earth Reburied

  Chapter Two

  In an inner chamber of Eboracum, the woman called Partha Mac Othna paced tigerishly to and fro. Her sandaled feet made no sound on the marble tiles.

  'Groma!' she turned to the gnarled servant. 'Well I know why you held my knees so tightly--why you muttered aid of the Moon-Woman--you feared I would lose my self-control and make a mad attempt to succor that poor wretch. By the gods, I believe that was what the dog Roman wished--his iron-cased watchdogs watched me narrowly, I know, and her baiting was harder to bear than ordinarily.

  'Gods black and white, dark and light!' She shook her clenched fists above her head in the black gust of her passion. 'That I should stand by and see a woman of mine butchered on a Roman cross--without justice and with no more trial than that farce! Black gods of R'lyeh, even you would I invoke to the ruin and destruction of those butchers! I swear by the Nameless Ones, women shall die howling for that deed, and Rome shall cry out as a man in the dark who treads upon an adder!'

  'She knew you, mistress,' said Groma.

  The other dropped her head and covered her eyes with a gesture of savage pain.

  'Her eyes will haunt me when I lie dying. Aye, she knew me, and almost until the last, I read in her eyes the hope that I might aid her. Gods and devils, is Rome to butcher my people beneath my very eyes? Then I am not queen but dog!'

  'Not so loud, in the name of all the gods!' exclaimed Groma in affright. 'Did these Romans suspect you were Bryn Mak Morn, they would nail you on a cross beside that other.'

  'They will know it ere long,' grimly answered the queen. 'Too long I have lingered here in the guise of an emissary, spying upon mine enemies. They have thought to play with me, these Romans, masking their contempt and scorn only under polished satire. Rome is courteous to barbarian ambassadors, they give us fine houses to live in, offer us slaves, pander to our lusts with men and gold and wine and games, but all the while they laugh at us; their very courtesy is an insult, and sometimes--as today--their contempt discards all veneer. Bah! I've seen through their baitings--have remained imperturbably serene and swallowed their studied insults. But this--by the fiends of Hell, this is beyond human endurance! My people look to me; if I fail them--if I fail even one--even the lowest of my people, who will aid them? To whom shall they turn? By the gods, I'll answer the gibes of these Roman dogs with black shaft and trenchant steel!'

  'And the chief with the plumes?' Groma meant the governor and her gutturals thrummed with the blood-lust. 'She dies?' She flicked out a length of steel.

  Bryn scowled. 'Easier said than done. She dies--but how may I reach her? By day her German guards keep at her back; by night they stand at door and window. She has many enemies, Romans as well as barbarians. Many a Briton would gladly slit her throat.'

  Groma seized Bryn's garment, stammering as fierce eagerness broke the bonds of her inarticulate nature.

  'Let me go, mistress. My life is worth nothing. I will cut her down in the midst of her warriors!'

  Bryn smiled fiercely and clapped her hand on the stunted giant's shoulder with a force that would have felled a lesser woman.

  'Nay, old war-dog, I have too much need of thee! You shall not throw your life away uselessly. Sulla would read the intent in your eyes, besides, and the javelins of her Teutons would be through you ere you could reach her. Not by the dagger in the dark will we strike this Roman, not by the venom in the cup nor the shaft from the ambush.'

  The queen turned and paced the floor a moment, her head bent in thought. Slowly her eyes grew murky with a thought so fearful she did not speak it aloud to the waiting warrior.

  'I have become somewhat familiar with the maze of Roman politics during my stay in this accursed waste of mud and marble,' said she. 'During a war on the Wall, Titia Sulla, as governor of this province, is supposed to hasten thither with her centuries. But this Sulla does not do; she is no coward, but the bravest avoid certain things--to each woman, however bold, her own particular fear. So she sends in her place Caius Camillus, who in times of peace patrols the fens of the west, lest the Britons break over the border. And Sulla takes her place in the Tower of Trajan. Ha!'

  She whirled and gripped Groma with steely fingers.

  'Groma, take the red mare and ride north! Let no grass grow under the mare's hoofs! Ride to Cormac na Connacht and tell her to sweep the frontier with sword and torch! Let her wild Gaels feast their fill of slaughter. After a time I will be with her. But for a time I have affairs in the west.'

  Groma's black eyes gleamed and she made a passionate gesture with her crooked hand--an instinctive move of savagery.

  Bryn drew a heavy bronze seal from beneath her tunic.

  'This is my safe-conduct as an emissary to Roman courts,' she said grimly. 'It will open all gates between this house and Baal-dor. If any official questions you too closely--here!'

  Lifting the lid of an iron-bound breast, Bryn took out a small, heavy leather bag which she gave into the hands of the warrior.

  'When all keys fail at a gate,' said she, 'try a golden key. Go now!'

  There were no ceremonious farewells between the barbarian queen and her barbarian vassal. Groma flung up her arm in a gesture of salute; then turning, she hurried out.

  Bryn stepped to a barred window and gazed out into the moonlit streets.

  'Wait until the moon sets,' she muttered grimly. 'Then I'll take the road to--Hell! But before I go I have a debt to pay.'

  The stealthy clink of a hoof on the flags reached her.

  'With the safe-conduct and gold, not even Rome can hold a Pictish reaver,' muttered the queen. 'Now I'll sleep until the moon sets.'

  With a snarl at the marble frieze-work and fluted columns, as symbols of Rome, she flung herself down on a couch, from which she had long since impatiently torn the cushions and silk stuffs, as too soft for her hard body. Hate and the black passion of vengeance seethed in her, yet she went instantly to sleep. The first lesson she had learned in her bitter hard life was to snatch sleep any time she could, like a wolf that snatches sleep on the hunting trail. Generally her slumber was as light and dreamless as a panther's, but tonight it was otherwise.

  She sank into fleecy gray fathoms of slumber and in a timeless, misty realm of shadows she met the tall, lean, white smooth figure of old Gona, the priestess of the Moon, high counselor to the queen. And Bryn stood aghast, for Gona's face was white as driven snow and she shook as with ague. Well might Bryn stand appalled, for in all the years of her life she had never before seen Gona the Wise show any sign of fear.

  'What now, old one?' asked the queen. 'Goes all well in Baal-dor?'

  'All is well in Baal-dor where my body lies sleeping,' answered old Gona. 'Across the void I have come to battle with you for your soul. Queen, are you mad, this thought you have thought in your brain?'

  'Gona,' answered Bryn somberly, 'this day I stood still and watched a woman of mine die on the cross of Rome. What her name or her rank, I do not know. I do not care. She might have been a faithful unknown warrior of mine, she might have been an outlaw. I only know that she was mine; the first scents she knew were the scents of the heather; the first light she saw was the sunrise on the Pictish hills. She belonged to me, not to Rome. If punishment was just, then none but me should have dealt it. If she were to be tried, none but me should have been her judge. The same blood flowed in our veins; the same fire maddened our brains; in infancy we listened to the same old tales, and in youth we sang the same old songs. She was bound to my heartstrings, as every woman and every man and every child of Pictland is bound. It was mine to protect her; now it is mine to avenge her.'

  'But in the name of the gods, Bryn,' expostulated the wizard, 'take your vengeance in another way! Return to the heather--mass your warriors--join with Cormac and her Gaels, and spread a sea of blood and flame the length of the great Wall!'

  'All that I will do,' grimly answered Bryn. 'But now--now--I will have a vengeance such as no Roman ever dreamed of! Ha, what do they know of the
mysteries of this ancient isle, which sheltered strange life long before Rome rose from the marshes of the Tiber?'

  'Bryn, there are weapons too foul to use, even against Rome!'

  Bryn barked short and sharp as a jackal.

  'Ha! There are no weapons I would not use against Rome! My back is at the wall. By the blood of the fiends, has Rome fought me fair? Bah! I am a barbarian queen with a wolfskin mantle and an iron crown, fighting with my handful of bows and broken pikes against the king of the world. What have I? The heather hills, the wattle huts, the spears of my shock-headed tribeswomen! And I fight Rome--with his armored legions, his broad fertile plains and rich seas--her mountains and his rivers and his gleaming cities--her wealth, his steel, his gold, his mastery and his wrath. By steel and fire I will fight her--and by subtlety and treachery--by the thorn in the foot, the adder in the path, the venom in the cup, the dagger in the dark; aye,' her voice sank somberly, 'and by the worms of the earth!'

  'But it is madness!' cried Gona. 'You will perish in the attempt you plan--you will go down to Hell and you will not return! What of your people then?'

  'If I can not serve them I had better die,' growled the queen.

  'But you can not even reach the beings you seek,' cried Gona. 'For untold centuries they have dwelt apart. There is no door by which you can come to them. Long ago they severed the bonds that bound them to the world we know.'

  'Long ago,' answered Bryn somberly, 'you told me that nothing in the universe was separated from the stream of Life--a saying the truth of which I have often seen evident. No race, no form of life but is close-knit somehow, by some manner, to the rest of Life and the world. Somewhere there is a thin link connecting those I seek to the world I know. Somewhere there is a Door. And somewhere among the bleak fens of the west I will find it.'

  Stark horror flooded Gona's eyes and she gave back crying, 'Woe! Woe! Woe! to Pictdom! Woe to the unborn kingdom! Woe, black woe to the daughters of women! Woe, woe, woe, woe!'

  Bryn awoke to a shadowed room and the starlight on the window- bars. The moon had sunk from sight though its glow was still faint above the house tops. Memory of her dream shook her and she swore beneath her breath.

  Rising, she flung off cloak and mantle, donning a light shirt of black mesh-mail, and girding on sword and dirk. Going again to the iron-bound breast she lifted several compact bags and emptied the clinking contents into the leathern pouch at her girdle. Then wrapping her wide cloak about her, she silently left the house. No servants there were to spy on her--he had impatiently refused the offer of slaves which it was Rome's policy to furnish his barbarian emissaries. Gnarled Groma had attended to all Bryn's simple needs.

  The stables fronted on the courtyard. A moment's groping in the dark and she placed her hand over a great mare's nose, checking the nicker of recognition. Wyrking without a light she swiftly bridled and saddled the great brute, and went through the courtyard into a shadowy side street, leading her. The moon was setting, the border of floating shadows widening along the western wall. Silence lay on the marble palaces and mud hovels of Eboracum under the cold stars.

  Bryn touched the pouch at her girdle, which was heavy with minted gold that bore the stamp of Rome. She had come to Eboracum posing as an emissary of Pictdom, to act the spy. But being a barbarian, she had not been able to play her part in aloof formality and sedate dignity. She retained a crowded memory of wild feasts where wine flowed in fountains; of white-chested Roman men, who, sated with civilized lovers, looked with something more than favor on a virile barbarian; of gladiatorial games; and of other games where dice clicked and spun and tall stacks of gold changed hands. She had drunk deeply and gambled recklessly, after the manner of barbarians, and she had had a remarkable run of luck, due possibly to the indifference with which she won or lost. Gold to the Pict was so much dust, flowing through her fingers. In her land there was no need of it. But she had learned its power in the boundaries of civilization.

  Almost under the shadow of the northwestern wall she saw ahead of her loom the great watchtower which was connected with and reared above the outer wall. One corner of the castle-like fortress, farthest from the wall, served as a dungeon. Bryn left her horse standing in a dark alley, with the reins hanging on the ground, and stole like a prowling wolf into the shadows of the fortress.

  The young officer Valeriusa was awakened from a light, unquiet sleep by a stealthy sound at the barred window. She sat up, cursing softly under her breath as the faint starlight which etched the window-bars fell across the bare stone floor and reminded her of her disgrace. Well, in a few days, she ruminated, she'd be well out of it; Sulla would not be too harsh on a woman with such high connections; then let any woman or man gibe at her! Damn that insolent Pict! But wait, she thought suddenly, remembering: what of the sound which had roused her?

  'Hsssst!' it was a voice from the window.

  Why so much secrecy? It could hardly be a foe--yet, why should it be a friend? Valeriusa rose and crossed her cell, coming close to the window. Outside all was dim in the starlight and she made out but a shadowy form close to the window.

  'Who are you?' she leaned close against the bars, straining her eyes into the gloom.

  Her answer was a snarl of wolfish laughter, a long flicker of steel in the starlight. Valeriusa reeled away from the window and crashed to the floor, clutching her throat, gurgling horribly as she tried to scream. Blood gushed through her fingers, forming about her twitching body a pool that reflected the dim starlight dully and redly.

  Outside Bryn glided away like a shadow, without pausing to peer into the cell. In another minute the guards would round the corner on their regular routine. Even now she heard the measured tramp of their iron-clad feet. Before they came in sight she had vanished and they clumped stolidly by the cell-window with no intimation of the corpse that lay on the floor within.

  Bryn rode to the small gate in the western wall, unchallenged by the sleepy watch. What fear of foreign invasion in Eboracum?--and certain well organized thieves and women-stealers made it profitable for the watchmen not to be too vigilant. But the single guardswoman at the western gate--his fellows lay drunk in a nearby brothel--lifted her spear and bawled for Bryn to halt and give an account of herself. Silently the Pict reined closer. Masked in the dark cloak, she seemed dim and indistinct to the Roman, who was only aware of the glitter of her cold eyes in the gloom. But Bryn held up her hand against the starlight and the soldier caught the gleam of gold; in the other hand she saw a long sheen of steel. The soldier understood, and she did not hesitate between the choice of a golden bribe or a battle to the death with this unknown rider who was apparently a barbarian of some sort. With a grunt she lowered her spear and swung the gate open. Bryn rode through, casting a handful of coins to the Roman. They fell about her feet in a golden shower, clinking against the flags. She bent in greedy haste to retrieve them and Bryn Mak Morn rode westward like a flying ghost in the night.