Debt of Ages (26 page)

Ecdicius' expression had gone from inability to understand what Sarnac was talking about to rejection of an obvious absurdity, and then to dawning interest. "Massed crossbows in battle," he finally said, very slowly, and shook his head. "But nobody ever . . ." He trailed to a halt and thought for another moment. Then, with one of the dizzyingly abrupt movements that typified him, he leaned over in his saddle toward the man with the crossbow and asked to see it. Then he inspected the weapon in silence. When he spoke again his voice was matter-of-fact. "What about the disparity in rates of fire? A trained longbowman can release arrows a lot faster than any crossbowman can get off quarrels."

Sarnac released a quiet breath of relief. It was going more smoothly than he'd dared hope. But, then, this was Ecdicius. "I have an idea on that, Augustus. Perhaps you'll let me demonstrate it later." Actually, it wasn't his idea. The semi-historical Sun Pin had thought of it eight centuries before, when the newly invented crossbow was coming to dominate the battlefields of the Warring States, and Tylar had passed it on. Sarnac had once rhetorically asked his old friend Liu Natalya if the Chinese had invented
everything
. She'd pretended to think about it for a decent interval before nodding judiciously.

He examined the weapon. It was nothing like the steel arbalests of his history's Late Mediaeval Europe.
Those
things were designed to pierce the high-quality plate armor of their own era; here and now, that kind of steel-smashing power wasn't needed. And, by the same token, it didn't require any elaborate mechanical gizmos to draw it—and therein lay the practicality of his third-hand idea for overcoming the problem of its slow rate of fire. (Nobody in Europe would
ever
dream up a
repeating
crossbow like the Chinese
chu-ko-nu
, and there was no time to introduce it.)

They had reached the villa and were dismounting when a dusty courier rode in from the east. Basileus had a brief colloquy with him, then gestured to Ecidcius to join them. The three of them talked for a few moments, then Ecdicius returned to where Sarnac waited. His face really was hopelessly expressive; it told Sarnac what the message was before he even opened his mouth.

"The provincial border guards on the Rhine at Strasbourg report that the lead elements of the Army of Germania are within sight of the river. They'll be crossing over soon." Ecidcius's face abruptly transformed itself with a grin. "Maybe you'd better show me your idea for using crossbows this very evening!"

* * *

The barges passed back and forth in stately lines, depositing their loads of troops on the Gallic side of the Rhine and then going back to the eastern bank for more. Kai stood on a bluff overlooking the Gallic bank and the formations that were taking shape. It would have looked like chaos to a civilian, but Kai looked it over with a professional's eye and nodded.

Somewhere nearby, he'd heard, was the field where the Emperor Julian—a good general, for all his apostasy—had smashed the barbarians at the Battle of Strasbourg and saved Gaul, over a hundred and thirty years before. But Kai had no time for sightseeing. He had to deal with a constant procession of aides with requests from his officers for orders, clarifications and resolutions of disputes. He kept things in order with half his mind. The other half was on the riverside village he'd seen. Or what had once been a village.

He hadn't crossed over with the vanguard; there had been too much organizational work yet to do on the Germanian side. But one of Nicoles' troop of officials had. Kai couldn't really blame the officer who'd allowed himself to be led by the man, who after all claimed to speak with the voice of the Augustus. But . . .

He became aware of Nicoles' litter, coming up the path to the bluff. The bearers set it down, and the chamberlain emerged. "Ah, General! An inspiring sight, is it not?" Nicoles swept an arm out, indicating the coalescing army. "The unstoppable might of Rome, on the march!" He noticed Kai's expression and reined in his enthusiasm. "I understand that you had some questions concerning the activities of my underchamberlain Theophanes."

"I don't recall ever giving him permission to cross over with the first wave," Kai said stonily.

"Oh I
do
apologize, general! Doubtless we violated military protocol by not soliciting your permission. But I felt it was important to get a
personal
representative of the Augustus onto Gallic soil without delay. I would have done it myself, but I'm under instructions from the Augustus—and the Augusta, whose compassion is exceeded only by her beauty and wisdom—to avoid exposing myself to undue danger. And Theophanes is an excellent official, if occasionally prone to overzealousness."

"But . . . was
that
necessary?" Kai gestured vaguely in the direction of the charnel house that had been a riverside village.

"Oh, that." Nicoles made a little
moue
. "Most distasteful, I agree. But Theophanes assures me that the villagers displayed insufficient enthusiasm—indeed, outright surliness—when he raised the image of Wilhelmus Augustus. They actually offered violence to the image! He felt that an example should be made. Coming immediately after our entry into Gaul, it should have a salutary effect. Your own officer, I should add, came to agree; he was, no doubt, looking to the future—and his own career." For the barest instant, Nicoles' expression slipped, and Kai glimpsed something other than courtliness in his eyes. "Great changes are coming, General. Indeed, 'change' is the Augustus' watchword. There are even those"—an insinuating smile, seeming to say "Oh, aren't we being just too,
too
wicked?"—"who feel he uses it to excess." Kai had become used to this kind of ploy, and declined to rise to the bait. "At any rate," Nicoles went on, "we must all be prepared to bend with the shifting winds, General.
All
of us."

For a moment they looked at each other in silence, for nothing needed to be said; they both understood matters perfectly. Then Nicoles spoke briskly. "I understand your lieutenant Marcellus has completed his preparations for the landing in Britain."

"Yes. He's assembled all our available shipping at his base, near the Rhine's mouth, and built all the barges he needs." Kai didn't add that in the old days the Britons would have smashed the invasion at sea. But with the Saxons and other sea-raiders conquered and incorporated, the Saxon Shore Fleet had been allowed to rot away. Marcellus would have an unopposed voyage, he thought, carefully not trying to define his own feelings.

"Excellent! If all has gone according to plan, the Irish raiders should have already begun attacking from the west. So my last correspondence from our agent there assured me. He also assured me . . ." Nicoles hesitated uncharacteristically, and swallowed. "He assures me that the Fomorians have kept their bargain—in all respects."

Kai felt his neck hairs prickle. "You mean the . . . ?"

"Yes. By the way, the agent has learned the being's name. . . ."

* * *

"Balor, Lady. That what they call him. I saw him with my own eyes! I saw him as I lay in a ditch hiding while they passed by. May God strike me dead if I didn't!"

The Ordovician chieftain sat a the focus of a half-circle of listeners in the great hall at Cadbury, trembling in the grip of exhaustion and memory. His skin gleamed with sweat under the flaring torches.

The word had only just come that the Irish raiders, so long held at bay by the terror of Artorius' name, and crossed over in their leather curraghs and were spreading terror in Gwynedd. Just behind the news had come this man, fleeing south from his village's destruction. Now they listened to him with varying expressions: Gwenhwyvaer's unreadable, Cerdic's worried, Constantine's scornful, and Tiraena's perplexed as she tried to recall where she'd heard that name.

"So, fellow," Constantine said condescendingly, "you tell us that the Irish are led by some gigantic one-eyed man, eh?" Old Cador had died last year, leaving his son as chief of the Dumnonii. He was in an uncomfortable tangle of conflicting moods these days, afire with enthusiasm for Gwenhwyvaer's declaration of British independence but seething with resentment at having to fight alongside Saxons in defense of that independence. On one point he was absolutely certain: they needed to focus their attention on meeting the invasion everyone knew was coming from the Germanian coast. His tone left no doubt about what he thought of the distraction posed by this yokel and his wild tales.

But the man stood his ground, clearly not about to be intimidated by any Dumnonian princeling. "No! A giant indeed—half again the height of a man, and squatty for all that. And, yes, one eye—huge, glowing with an unsanctified light in the middle of his head. But he was
not
a
man
!" He shuddered with a fear that had nothing to do with Constantine, then took command of himself. "He stood upright on two legs, and had two arms, but there was nothing about him that was like a man—or anything of this world! It wasn't his ugliness. It was . . ." The shakes took him again. He turned to Gwenhwyvaer. "Lady, it was his
wrongness
! He's something that doesn't belong in God's creation!"

Cerdic leaned forward, frowning. "You're saying he's a . . . demon?" The
ealdorman
had finally received baptism—without noticeable improvement, Constantine had been heard to mutter. The Teutonic paganism he'd left behind had held giants. He would have preferred one of them to a denizen of the Christian hell.

"Well," Constantine said with forced heartiness, "if he is, we've nothing to fear. The priests can send him shrieking back down into the pit from whence he came!"

"Oh, I fear not," the man said in a near-whisper. Exhaustion was quickly taking him, but he smiled up at Constantine grimly. "A priest—I'd known the old fellow, but never dreamed he had the courage of any two warriors—advanced on Balor, crying out the formula of exorcism. The savages drew back, for they fear all holy men. But Balor smashed him to the earth with the great club he carries, then grasped him by his two ankles and pulled . . ." He couldn't continue. This was a man who had lived his life on the semibarbarous fringes of this brutal world, but he was obviously gagging on rising vomit. But he again mastered himself and continued. "And through it all, the monster was silent as always."

"What?" Gwenhwyvaer cocked her head to one side. "You say this Balor is mute? How, then, does he give his commands to the raiders?"

"No one ever heard
him
speak, Lady. But he wears an amulet of curious design around his neck, from which come words in a strange tongue, sounding as though spoken by a throat of metal . . ."

"Oh, this is too much!" Constantine flung himself back in his chair. "Talking amulets indeed! Must we waste any more time listening to this? I ask, you, Lady . . ." He turned toward Gwenhwyvaer, then stopped short, for beyond her he saw Tiraena. They all followed his gaze. She was sitting like a statue, with an expression none of them could read, in a silence none of them disturbed.

Over the last six years she had been an occasional visitor to Cadbury, known to be in Gwenhwyvaer's special favor. Most people made surreptitious signs when they saw the foreign-looking woman, for it was whispered that she gave counsels beyond the common knowledge of men. (Gwenhwyvaer had known about Artorius's death, and thus been able to begin implementing her declaration of independence, before anyone else had heard the news; and the tall woman had just arrived on one of her visits at the time.) Some claimed to have seen her standing distracted, as though listening to voices she alone could hear. And . . . she never seemed to grow any older.

And now she stared straight ahead at ghosts beyond their imaginings.

At length, Gwenhwyvaer reached out and touched her arm. "Lucasta, what is it?"

Tiraena blinked and seemed to awake from nightmare. "I . . . can't be certain yet, Lady. But I think this man speaks the truth."

"What?" Constantine blurted.

Gwenhwyvaer shushed him. "Go on, Lucasta."

Tiraena shook her head. "I can say no more until I'm certain. I must ride north and see for myself."

"No!" Cerdic started to protest, then stopped. The mysterious Lucasta went where and when she would.

Gwenhwyvaer looked at her gravely. "At least take Peredur and Cynric with you. Since I've assigned them to you as bodyguards, they'd feel disgraced if they weren't allowed to go along."

And you'd just send them after me anyway
, Tiraena reflected. She glanced at Cerdic, whose son Cynric would be going into danger for the first time. "Very well, Lady. But I leave at first light. There's no time to waste."

And
, she added silently,
pray to your God that I'm wrong!

* * *

They stopped briefly at the town of Wroxeter, where troops from the old legionary fort at Chester stood guard against the raiders operating to the northwest. Tiraena, finding little in the way of reliable eyewitnesses among the refugees huddling there, pressed on into the hills of Gwynedd.

Her unique mystery-woman status had enabled her to get away with wearing a practical riding outfit. And she'd been able to hone with practice her neural-implanted equestrian skills in the few subjective months she'd spent in Britain between spells in stasis over the last six years. So she could set her two bodyguards a stiff pace. It still bothered her to be taking them to face that for which their background had never prepared them, for she genuinely liked them.

It had been typical of Gwenhwyvaer to assign her a Briton and a Saxon. Peredur, quiet and self-contained, was in his early twenties and already a veteran of the Artoriani. Cynric Cerdicson, fourteen and therefore old enough to be a warrior in his culture, looked on the older man with something akin to awe but wasn't about to show it. His adolescent pride at being given his first responsible charge had bloomed into a fierce protectiveness which left Tiraena uncertain whether to laugh or cry but determined to do neither within the sight of those worshipful blue eyes.

They topped a ridge and gazed westward. There was, she'd been told, a village beyond the next rise, which the Irish marauders shouldn't have reached yet and which whould probably be sheltering refugees from further west. She urged her horse ahead of her guards and studied the skyline . . . and saw the rising smoke that told her that the raiders had, in fact, reached that village. . . .