The Crimson Chalice (7 page)

He stood swiftly, smoothly, and the slingstone hummed like a hornet as it sped across the water and took the drake with a vicious blow on the right shoulder breaking the wing joint. Baradoc whirled the sling again and aimed at the duck, which with a beating of wings and strong thrusts of its webbed feet had jumped into the air for flight. The stone narrowly missed the duck, which disappeared up the river calling with alarm. By the island the drake circled helplessly on the water, thrusting uselessly with one wing to find flight. Aesc, knowing her moment, slid into the stream and swam to retrieve the bird. She brought it back to Baradoc, who killed it quickly with a twist of the head which broke its neck. He pushed it into the front of his undershirt, looped the sling over his belt and turned to leave his cover.

As he reached out his hand to take the fish spear which he had thrust into the mud of the bank a voice said, “Touch it—and you get this through your head.”

Standing full in the center of the break in the reeds through which Baradoc had made his way to the river was a tall youth, dark-haired, his skin brown from dirt and sun, a straggling growth of beard covering his chin. He wore old, tattered woollen breeks to the knees, the rest of his legs bare. From his shoulders hung a brown cloak held tight about his waist with a broad leather belt from which hung a deep fringe of rusty, finely linked ring-mail to form a short skirt. On one side of the belt was looped an unscabbarded short broadsword, rusty and blunt-edged. Hanging from the other side was a leather quiver full of short arrows. His arms raised, he held a charged bow, the arrow aimed at Baradoc. He was flanked on one side by a lank-haired young woman with a long, ill-humoured face, an old scar deeply marking her right cheek. She wore strings of coloured beads around her thin neck, the long loops falling across a dirty, ragged, long-sleeved white stole striped with red and green diagonal bands. At his other side stood another youth, who, small and sturdy, dressed in a belted tunic of furs, heavy sandals on his feet, carried a light throwing spear.

Baradoc, making no attempt to touch the fish spear, said calmly, “You need not hold the arrow on me. I mean harm to no one. I hunt and kill for the pot alone.”

“You live around here?”

“No. I make my way west to join my people. I have been working up-country.”

“You had a master there?”

“Aye. But he is now dead. He gave me my freedom.”

The youth spat suddenly. “No masters are good. So you were a slave?”

“I was.”

The young woman said impatiently, “Leave him, Atro. Take his spear and sling if you will.” She laughed. “His clothes, too. And those good sandals and trews and the dagger at his belt. But leave him. We have better work at hand.”

“Shut your mouth, Colta.” Atro spoke roughly without looking at her. Then to Baradoc he said, “Come here.”

Baradoc moved through the reeds onto the grass and Atro stood back from him, the arrow still levelled.

Colta said, “Now what is in your mind, Atro?”

“That we have to live. That he means nothing to us. That there is no tie between us except poverty. These days that tie is a cobweb broken by a breath. So”—his mouth twisted angrily—“he is a freed slave. But who should take his word for it? There are those in Clausentium and Venta who will buy without questions—and crop his ears to mark their property. Enghus, tie him.”

But for the arrow tip a few feet from his head Baradoc would have made an attempt to escape. The iron-tipped arrow could not be denied. It would split his skull like an eggshell. Then the thought of Tia left alone stirred him to make a plea which came hard to his lips.

Baradoc said firmly, “Shared poverty holds no value these days. But we are of the same country and we have the same enemy. If you sell your own kind to slavery what can you expect for yourself when the new masters come? And come they will unless we hold together in a kinship bigger than this country has ever known since the old queen put Verulamium and Londinium to the sword and flame.”

Atro shook his head. “Now you talk big and fancy. Such talk means nothing. Old kings and queens or new ones mean nothing. Today it is each for himself. Bind him, Enghus.”

Enghus, giggling, danced around behind Baradoc while Colta knelt to a travelling bundle that lay on the grass at her feet and brought out rope lengths. She handed these to Enghus. Then, taking his light spear, she pressed the point against Baradoc's neck, saying, “Now, Big Talker of the good times to come, put your hands behind your back and stand calm.” She scratched the tip of the spear lightly across the skin of his neck and laughed.

Baradoc put his hands behind him. Enghus bound them tight and with another cord roped his arms to his body, grunting as he jerked at the knots.

Atro lowered his bow and withdrew the arrow. He reached forward and jerked the dead mallard from the inside of Baradoc's shirt and tossed it to Colta.

“Take it. Tonight you shall roast it at the shrine keeper's fire. Eh, Enghus?”

Enghus gave a giggle of pleasure and, jerking his head to the west, said, “But not until we have roasted him first to make him sing. The old fool, he burns his garden weeds, filling the sky with smoke as though the whole world moved at peace.” Then he shook his spear and pleaded, “But first, Brother Atro, promise, let me tease him a little with this to put him in the way of true speaking before the fire touches him.”

Atro laughed. “Maybe, Enghus, maybe. Just to make you happy, my little bloodthirsty brother.” Then, to Baradoc, he went on calmly as though there could be no hard feelings between them, “Enghus is my brother. When he was born the gods touched him with a happy madness. Even when he feels like weeping he laughs. He laughs at his own pain and the pain of all others. Now, since you know us all, tell us your name.”

“My name is Baradoc.”

Colta, now holding the fish spear, came up to him and touched his cheek and gave a sudden sharp tug to the beard growth on his chin. “If you were my slave I would beat you daily to take that proud look from your face.”

“Enough of that,” said Atro. “We move.” Then looking around, he asked, “Where is the dog?”

Enghus said, “It moved off a while ago. And such a pretty colour. I could have made myself a hood from its skin and a belt pouch from its ears.” He laughed to himself, jerking his head up and down.

Atro said to Baradoc, “Call the dog.”

Baradoc shook his head. “It would not come. It is a stray that joined me only this morning. But someone has trained it well.”

“So I saw when it took the duck. A dog like that could have been useful.”

Baradoc shrugged his shoulders and made no answer. Atro turned abruptly away and began to walk down the riverbank. Before Baradoc could move he was pricked none too lightly from behind with the point of Enghus's spear. He began to follow Atro with Enghus giggling behind him.

Baradoc knew that Aesc would return to Tia. What she would do now that she was alone he could not guess. But one thing was certain. If he did not manage to escape from this ragged, broken-down band soon and return to find her, the dogs would leave her after a few days and come seeking him. Beyond that point he shut his mind to her fate.

Ahead of him Atro marched now with his bow slung over his shoulder, the ring-mail skirt swinging about his thighs, the rusty links making a soft whispering music, the battered old broadsword bumping at his side. The sword was Roman and uncared for, and the bow, an old one, but serviceable still, was of the kind which in the old days the Parthian auxiliaries had used, cunningly made of alternate strips of wood and bone. To have been taken by these wanderers touched his pride sharply, but he could understand how it had happened. When a man hunted all his mind was on his quarry. Lost in a hunter's dream, he had crouched in the reeds, all his senses concentrating toward the moment of the kill, and had allowed Atro to move up behind him.

Whan Aesc returned, still damp from the river, Tia expected Baradoc soon to follow. But time passed and he did not appear. She got up, walked out of the willows and found a rise in the ground where she could look down the river. There was no sign of Baradoc. She went back and carried on with the work she had taken in hand, which was to repair a large slit in one of the bundle cloths made by a broken branch or thorns during the previous night's march. But when Baradoc still did not appear, she began to grow uneasy and troubled. For the first time the black thought touched her that something might have happened to him.

Almost as though this fear, newborn in her, had been some mysteriously understood signal for which the dogs were waiting, she heard Aesc whine. She looked up from her sewing.

Lerg had risen and stood near her, his head low, the grey-brown eyes full on her. Aesc moved restlessly to and fro behind Lerg, whining gently, while Cuna lay still on the ground, his eyes watching the other dogs as though he were trying to read the meaning of their change of mood. Only Sunset seemed untouched. Tethered to a slim willow trunk on a lengthened headrope, she cropped the sweet green grass, flicking her golden tall occasionally against the flies. Tia saw that Bran had flown down to the ground and sat now on an old molehill, plumage fluffed out raggedly, head and beak drawn down between his shoulders, a picture—so her imagination prompted—of unhappiness.

Resolutely, pushing her fears from her, she went on with her work. Almost as though in protest Aesc gave a sharp bark and moved to the edge of the willow glade and back.

Tia went out of the willows and began to walk down the river. Aesc ran ahead of her, nose to the ground, and she turned to see that Lerg and Cuna were following her. She walked a couple of bowshots but could find no sign of Baradoc. When she turned back the dogs came with her reluctantly.

In the willows, she stood undecided for a while. The afternoon was wearing away. The conviction came strongly to her that something
had
happened to Baradoc. Without him she would never get safely to Aquae Sulis. The selfish thought made her immediately angry. Baradoc might be in real trouble … even dead—and she thought only of herself. She had to find him. Suddenly she decided that there was no sense in just staying in the glade while fears mounted in her.

She began to pack up the camp. It took her some time to stow all their possessions and lash the bundles across Sunset. As she did so Aesc and Cuna fretted around her, but she threw them a sharp word and quieted them. When, finally, she led the pony out of the willows Lerg ranged himself at her side and Aesc, followed by Cuna, ran ahead. Tia followed the line which Aesc took.

Half an hour later Aesc stopped at the break in the river reeds where Baradoc had taken the mallard drake. Tia saw at once in the muddy soil the marks of footprints.

As Aesc sat whining in front of her she waved the dog on. Aesc, head low, began to move down the riverbank. There was no doubt in Tia's mind that the bitch was following Baradoc's scent. A little later she found proof that she was following Baradoc.

She stood on a sandy beach where the stream shallowed to a ford. In the damp sand at the edge of the water were the clear marks of the studded sandals that Baradoc wore. With them, some confused and some clear, were the marks of other prints, though she could not decide by how many people they had been made.

Across the river was a narrow strip of wild meadow and sedge land from which rose great terraces of dark forest.

Leading the pony, Tia forded the river, which nowhere came more than knee-high. Cuna alone had to swim in places. On the far bank were more confused prints.

Aesc, head lowered, was already moving across the marshy meadow toward the woods. As Tia followed, Bran came flying up from behind her and with a sharp
cark-cark
beat his way over the trees and disappeared.

The climb through the forest was hard and slow going. Aesc was clearly following a trail which was fresh. Looking up at the sun, Tia realized that the afternoon was fast wearing away. The thought of the coming darkness frightened her. And the thought that she might never see Baradoc again, perhaps never get to Aquae Sulis, put a dryness in her throat and a weakness in her body that made her despise herself. Silently she cursed herself for her weakness and her selfishness, for she knew that the strongest desire in her was to get safely to Aquae Sulis. If she could have been magically spirited there now, leaving Baradoc to whatever was to be, what would she have decided? she wondered. She escaped answer by cursing, stringing together all the old army oaths she could remember—and finding a strong comfort in them.

She stopped twice to drink at small streams and to rest herself. Her arm ached from tugging and leading Sunset, who faced some of the thickets reluctantly, and there was now a persistent nagging pain in her right thigh where she had slipped and twisted her leg.

The sun was treetop low in the sky when Aesc, who had disappeared ahead, came back and lay down on the track before her, panting, her long tongue lolling over the side of her jaws. She waved the dog on, but Aesc refused to move.

Puzzled, Tia looked ahead along the narrow trail they were following. The trees had begun to thin a little. Twenty or thirty paces ahead the track disappeared over a thicket-crested outcrop of stony ground. Looking up, Tia realized that the tall plume of smoke which now and again she had glimpsed in her march was very close. As her eyes came back from the smoke, Lerg, who had never gone more than a couple of paces ahead of her so far, slowly began to walk away on his own. When he reached the bottom of the rocky rise, he stopped and sat back on his haunches.

Tia hitched Sunset's halter around a branch and walked forward. Neither Aesc nor Cuna made any move to follow her. The behaviour of the dogs puzzled her, yet at the same time there was a strange comfort in it. She had a feeling that they knew—even Cuna—what lay ahead and, by their actions, obeyed some sure instinct. When she was with Lerg she stopped and looked back. Aesc and Cuna lay on the ground close to Sunset, who was cropping at the low leafy branches of a tree. Bran, who had shown himself only now and again during the march, dropped through the trees and settled on the ground near the dogs and began to peck at the grit of the narrow track.