There was a great quietness in him. The last of the mist was blowing clear away as the wind freshened; something that was almost sunshine brushed fleetingly across the old signal-tower, and he noticed for the first time that a clump of harebell had taken root in a cranny of the fallen parapet close to him, and, late in flowering because of the place in which it grew, still carried one fragile bell aloft on an arching thread-slender stem. It swayed as the wind blew over, and regained its place with a tiny, defiant toss. It seemed to Marcus that it was the bluest thing he had ever seen.
Up over the edge of the spur, three wild horsemen appeared heading for the gateway.
XIX
TRADUI’S GIFT
AS they dropped from their ponies in the courtyard below, Marcus and Esca drew back from the parapet. ‘Only three, so far,’ Marcus whispered. ‘Don’t use your knife unless you have to. They may be of more use to us living than dead.’
Esca nodded, and returned his hunting-knife to his belt. Life and the urgency of doing had taken hold of them again. Flattened against the wall on either side of the stairhead they waited, listening to their pursuers questing through storehouse and guard-room. ‘Fools!’ Marcus breathed, as a shout told them that the stairway had been spotted; and then came a rush of feet that checked at the floor below and then came on, storming upward.
Marcus was a good boxer, and much practice with the cestus last winter had made Esca something of a boxer also; together, weary though they were, they made a dangerous team. The first two tribesmen to come ducking out through the low doorway went down without a sound, like poled oxen: the third, not so completely caught unawares, put up more of a fight. Esca flung himself upon him, and they crashed down several steps together, in a flailing mass of arms and legs. There was a short, desperate struggle before Esca came uppermost, and staggering clear, heaved an unconscious man over the doorsill.
‘Young fools,’ he said, stooping for a fallen spear. ‘A hound puppy would have known better than that.’
Two of the tribesmen—they were all very young—lay completely stunned where they had fallen; but one was already stirring; and Marcus bent over him. ‘It is Liathan,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to him. Do you tie up and gag the other two.’
The young warrior groaned, and opened his eyes to find Marcus kneeling over him with his own dagger to his throat, while close by, Esca was hastily trussing and gagging the two unconscious men with strips torn from the cloak of one of them. ‘That was a mistake,’ Marcus said. ‘You should have kept with the rest of the hunt, not come thrusting in here on your own.’
Liathan lay looking up at him. His black eyes were hard with hate; blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. ‘Maybe we saw the raven and we sought to be First Spear, lest a lowland tribe claim the Eagle-god for its own,’ he said between shut teeth.
‘I see. It was a brave thing to do, but extremely stupid.’
‘Maybe; but though we fail, there will be others here soon.’ There was a gleam of savage triumph in the black eyes.
‘So,’ Marcus nodded. ‘When they come, these others, you will tell them that we are not here; that we must after all have slipped by in the mist; and you will send them back the way they came, over the main ridge yonder, towards the sunrise.’
Liathan smiled. ‘Why will I do these things?’ He glanced for a contemptuous instant at the dagger in Marcus’s hand. ‘Because of that?’
‘No,’ said Marcus. ‘Because when the first of your friends sets foot on the stair, I shall send the Eagle—here it is—into the tarn which lies below this place. We are still a long way from the Wall, and you will have other chances—you or others of the hunt—before we reach it; but if we die here, you will lose whatever chance you have of retaking the Red Crests’ god.’
For a long moment Liathan lay staring up into Marcus’s face; and in that silent moment there grew a light smother of hoof-beats and a distant burst of shouting. Esca rose quickly and crossed, half crouching, to the broken parapet. ‘The hunt is up,’ he said softly. ‘They have done with the furze cover. Aiee! Like a wolf-pack, they close in.’
Marcus withdrew the dagger, but his eyes never left the young tribesman’s face. ‘Choose,’ he said, very quietly. He got up and moved backward to the far parapet, unwrapping the Eagle as he did so. Liathan had risen also, and stood swaying a little on his feet, looking from Marcus to Esca and back again. Marcus saw him swallow, saw him lick the cut on his lip. He heard the sounds of the inclosing hunt, very near now, the men giving tongue like excited hounds; and from the emptiness at his back, only the plaintive cry of a marsh bird in the wind-haunted silence. He let the last violet fold fall from the Eagle, and held it up. The evening light, spreading as the mist thinned, struck on the savage, gilded head.
Liathan made a queer gesture of defeat. He turned and strode rather shakily to the broken parapet, and leaned over. The first of the hunt was almost at the gateway, and a shout from under the walls greeted his appearance. Liathan called down to them: ‘They are not here, after all. They must have slipped through the other way in this accursed mist.’ He pointed wildly, and his voice broke like the crying of a storm bird. ‘Try the woods yonder; they will likely have bolted that way.’
A confusion of fierce voices answered him and a pony whinnied shrilly; he drew back from the parapet as though coming hot-foot to follow his words, and as the hunt flung back on itself, turned once more to Marcus.
‘It was well done, was it not?’
Marcus nodded without speaking. Through one of the embrasures he was watching the hunt streaming back along the spur and into the furze cover of the main ridge, men on ponies and men on foot, calling to each other, gathering others as they went; dissolving into the last shreds of the mist. He brought his gaze back to the young tribesman. ‘Truly it was well done,’ he said, ‘but keep your head down, lest any straggler should look back and think it strange to see you still here.’
Liathan lowered his head obediently—and sprang. Sprang like a wild cat. But Marcus, warned by some flicker of his eyes an instant before, flung himself sideways, half falling, with the Eagle under him, and as he did so, Esca was upon the highlander and brought him crashing down.
‘You fool,’ Marcus said a moment later, staggering to his feet and looking down at Liathan, who lay squirming under Esca’s knees. ‘You young fool; there are two of us and only one of you.’
He crossed to the two bound men, and after satisfying himself that all was well with them, tore off some more strips from the cloak that lay beside one of them, and returned to Esca. Between them they bound the hands and feet of the young warrior, who had ceased to struggle and lay rigid with his face turned from them.
‘We can leave the gag for the moment,’ Marcus said when it was done. He picked up the Eagle and began to fold it close once more. ‘Esca, do you go and make sure the ponies are safe. We shall need them.’
When Esca was gone, he got up stiffly and turned to the southern parapet. The upland tarn lay clear and dark now beneath the steep fall of the spur. The hills were blown almost clear of the mist, though it still scarfed the glen with white; and the evening was coming swiftly, swiftly. And somewhere southward beyond those hills, not far now, surely, was the Wall.
‘Why did you come among us, calling yourself a healer of sore eyes, to steal from us the winged god?’
Marcus swung round in answer to the furious voice behind him. ‘In the first place, am I so lacking as a healer of sore eyes? At least your brother’s son will not be blind.’ He leaned one shoulder wearily against the parapet, and stood gazing down reflectively at his captive. ‘In the second, I came to take back—not to steal, for it was never yours—take back the winged god, because it was the Eagle of my father’s Legion.’ Instinctively he knew that with Liathan, as with Cottia, that was the part that would make sense; knew also that it was better for the peace of the frontier that the thing be kept a private feud between himself and the tribes.
There was a queer little flicker
in Liathan’s dark eyes. ‘So my grandfather was right,’ he said.
‘Was he? Tell me about this rightness of his.’
‘When the priest-kind found the winged god was gone,’ Liathan said, with a kind of defiant willingness to talk, ‘my grandfather swore it was you who had taken it. He said you had the face of that Chieftain of the Red Crests he had seen killed under the wings of the god, and that he had been blind and doting not to know you for his son. But when we had followed you and searched your gear and found nothing, we said among ourselves that the grandfather grew old and fanciful. Then Gault the fisherman found your ring-brooch by the shore of the loch, and the bank pulled down and a hollow place under the waterline. And later, we heard a strange tale from the rath where your sword-brother was taken sick; and we knew. And my grandfather said, “I was right, after all, who am never wrong,” and he sent for me, for my brother had been savaged by a seal and was too sick of the wound to go to the Hosting. He sent for me, and said: “It may be that it is you who will hunt him down, for there is a link of fate between his line and ours. If it be so, kill him if you can, for he has put shame on the gods of the tribe; but also give him his father’s ring, for he is his father’s son in more than blood.”’
There was an instant’s complete silence; and then Marcus said: ‘You have it now?’
‘On a thong round my neck,’ Liathan said sullenly. ‘You must take it for yourself, since my hands are bound.’
Marcus lowered himself on to his sound knee, and slipped a hand warily under the shoulder-folds of the other’s cloak. But it was no trick; he found the ring, which had worked round to the back, and drawing it out, cut the thong, and slipped it on to his bare signet finger. The light was beginning to fade, and the great stone that had been full of green fire when he saw it last, was coolly dark as ilex leaves, lit only by a faint surface reflection of the sky. ‘If the fortunes of war had gone otherwise, and Esca and I had fallen to your spears, you would have had small chance to give me my father’s ring. How, then, would you have carried out your grandfather’s bidding?’ he asked curiously.
‘You should have had the ring to take with you, as a man takes his weapons and his favourite hound.’
‘I see,’ said Marcus. From the ring he looked back to Liathan, suddenly half smiling. ‘When you go back to your own place, say to Tradui that I thank him for the gift of my father’s ring.’
Esca’s step sounded on the stairs and a moment later he ducked out into the evening light. ‘All is well with the ponies,’ he said. ‘Also I have looked round a little, and seen that our way lies down the glen westward. That way there is birch cover almost from the first, and moreover the hunt went towards the sunrise.’
Marcus glanced up at the sky. ‘The light will be gone in the half of an hour, but much can happen in that time, and it is in my heart that we will go now.’
Esca nodded, reaching him a steadying hand as he rose; and in so doing, saw the flawed emerald, and gave him a quick, questioning glance.
‘Yes,’ said Marcus. ‘Liathan has brought me my father’s ring as a gift from his grandfather.’ He turned to look down at the tribesman. ‘We shall take two of your ponies, Liathan, to carry us to the Wall, but we will turn them loose when we have done with them, and with good fortune you will find them again—later. I hope you do, because you brought me my father’s ring … See to the gag, Esca.’
Esca saw to it.
Meeting the furious eyes above the gag, Marcus said, ‘I am sorry, but we can ill afford to have you shouting the moment we are gone, lest there be someone within hearing. It will assuredly not be long before your swordbrethren return and find you, but to make all safe I will see that word of your whereabouts reaches the tribesmen, when we have reached the Wall. That is the best that I can do.’
They crossed to the stairhead. Esca paused to collect the tribesmen’s weapons from the place where he had stacked them, and sent them—all save one spear, which he kept to replace his own—over the parapet into the tarn below. Marcus heard them take the water in a stutter of faint splashes, while he bent over the other two captives, both conscious and hating hard by this time, to make sure that they had not yet contrived to slacken their bonds. Then they ducked through the doorway into the descending darkness.
The strain of their escape had taxed Marcus to the uttermost, and the respite in the signal-tower, short as it had been, had been long enough to let the old wound begin to stiffen. He had to nerve himself to every step, and there seemed a great many more steps on the way down than there had been on the way up. But they reached the bottom at last, and came out into the little courtyard, where three ponies stood with their reins over their heads.
They chose the two of them, a black and a dun, who seemed the freshest and, hitching the reins of the third one over a fallen timber to prevent him following, led them out through the narrow gateway. ‘The last lap,’ Marcus said, drawing a hand caressingly down the neck of the black pony. ‘We will break fast in one of the Wall stations tomorrow morning.’
Esca helped him to mount, before he himself swung on to the back of the dun. For a few moments Marcus had all he could do to master his mount, for the fiery little brute objected strongly to an unfamiliar rider, snorting and plunging like an unbroken colt, until, seeming suddenly to tire of the fight, it answered to his hand and set off at a canter, shaking its head and spilling foam over its chest and knees.
Esca ranged alongside on the dun, and they swung over the steep scarp of the spur, and headed downhill for the woods below them. ‘Praise be to Lugh, they are yet fairly fresh; for we’ve a hard ride before us.’
‘Yes,’ said Marcus, rather grimly; and shut his teeth on the word. That plunging tussle with his mount had taken most of the endurance that was left in him.
The light was going fast, as they swung into the long southward curve of the glen. The wind was surging through the birch and hazel of the woods, and overhead the sky between the hurrying clouds was kindling yellow as a lantern.
• • • • •
A long while later, a sentry on the northern ramparts of Borcovicus thought that in a lull of the tearing wind he heard the beat of horses’ hooves somewhere far below him. He checked his pacing to look down, far down where the burn cut through its wild glen a hundred feet below the fortress walls, but a racing, silver-fringed cloud had come across the moon, and the glen was a black nothingness below him, and the wind swooped back, blowing away all sound. Curse the wind! There was always a wind—save where there was mist—up here on the highest lift of the Wall; nothing to hear all day and all night but the wind and the peewits calling. It was enough to make a man hear worse than horses’ hooves inside his head. The sentry spat disgustedly down into the dark abyss, and continued his measured pacing.
Some while later still, the guard on duty at the North Gate was surprised by a most imperious beating on the timbers and shout of ‘Open in Caesar’s name!’ So might a bearer of dispatches announce his arrival, if it were at any other gate; but the few who came from the north—horse-dealers, hunters, and the like—did not hammer on the gate as though they were the Legate himself demanding entrance in the name of the Emperor. It might be a trick of some kind. Leaving his gate-guard turned out and standing ready, the Optio clanked up to the look-out above the gateway.
The moon rode clear of the clouds now, and faintly, by its reflected light, the Optio could pick out two figures directly below him in the shadow of the arch. The sheer drop of the hillside was in shadow, but there was enough light to show it empty of men, clear down to the white streak of the burn. Not a trick, then.
‘Who demands entrance in Caesar’s name?’
One of the figures looked up, his face a pale blur in the darkness. ‘Two who have urgent business with the Commander and would fain keep whole skins if possible. Open up, friend.’
The Optio hesitated an instant, then turned and clattered down the few steps. ‘Open up,’ he ordered.
Men sprang to obey him, the heavy oaken valve swung smoothly outward on its stone socket, and in the opening, clearly lit now by the yellow light from the guard-room doorway, appeared two wild, bearded figures, who might have been born of the autumn gale. One of them was leaning heavily on the shoulder of the other, who seemed to be supporting him by an arm round his waist; and as they stumbled forward, the Optio, who had begun curtly, ‘Now what—’ went kindly enough to steady him on the other side, saying, ‘Run into trouble, eh?’
But the other laughed suddenly, his teeth showing white in the dark tangle of his beard; and staggering clear of his friend’s supporting arm, propped himself against the guard-room wall, and drooped there, breathing hard and fast through widened nostrils. Clad in filthy rags, gaunt as famine and well-nigh as dirty, scratched and blood-smeared as though from contact with many furze bushes, he was as villainous an object as the Optio had seen for a long time.
As the gate clanged shut behind him, this apparition said in the cool, clipped accents of a cohort centurion, ‘Optio, I wish to see the Commanding Officer immediately.’
‘Ugh?’ said the Optio, and blinked.
Presently, after a queer confusion of changing faces, of brusque soldiers’ voices and clanging footsteps, and long wavering alleyways between buildings whose corners never seemed to be quite where he expected them, Marcus found himself standing on the threshold of a lamp-lit room. It flowered suddenly golden on his sight, out of the windy dark; a small room, white-walled, and almost filled by a battered writing-table and records chest. He blinked at it with a queer, dreamlike sense of unreality. A square-built man in half uniform rose from the camp-chair, and turned inquiringly to the door. ‘Yes, what—’ he began, much as the Optio had done.