Dreaming the Eagle (34 page)

‘Leave that. It will wait. You are as wet as the horses. We should find you dry clothes and something warm to drink and a place to sit out of the rain until the others come back.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Your family, I believe, are being entertained by our craftsmen. The mariners have gone to see the new ship. Segoventos would have ruptured a blood vessel if he was made to wait any longer so Togodubnos took them all down to the anchorage on barges. They will have met the rain so their return may be delayed until the worst of it has passed. We will gather again in the greathouse when they are back. In the meantime, would you like to see the whelp again? I understand she is to be a brood bitch to your war hound. Is that not so?’

‘If she grows into her promise, yes.’

‘Then you should spend time with her. Come, it’s not far.’

It was the stuff of fevered dreams and nightmares. Ban found himself drawn steadily away from the horse barns to the small harness hut near the greathouse where the bitch lay with her whelps. The dark-haired woman had gone, for which he was grateful, but otherwise the place was as he had left it.

Amminios, the man who bought and ordered slaves, lit the torches himself and kindled a small fire in the corner, well away from the pups and the straw. He took Ban’s cloak and hung it up on a wall hook and put his own beside it. He left for a moment and returned with two dry tunics and a jar of hot honeyed ale flavoured with wormwood and stinging nettle, and some oatcakes. None of these was pressed on his guest. Of his own accord, Ban stripped off his sodden tunic and slipped on the dry one. The food was left at the side where it could be reached by either party. Amminios sat in the straw by the bitch, who knew him as well as she knew the dark-haired woman, and lifted one of the dog whelps to eye height. ‘Odras has said I can have the pick of the dog pups from the litter. I had rather thought this one would make a good war hound. What do you think?’

It was the biggest of the dog whelps and a good iron grey. Ban lifted up one of its smaller, paler litter mates and passed it over.

‘This one will be better. That one picks fights with anything that crosses him but he gives up too easily. This one only fights when the others push him but he doesn’t stop until he has won.’

‘Let me see.’

They placed the two whelps in the straw. As Ban had said, the larger picked the fight with the smaller and lost. In the short time of watching, the pattern was repeated twice over.

‘You’re right,’ said Amminios, thoughtfully. ‘I had only seen that he fought well with the others. I had not noticed that the other waits and then wins. Was your war hound like that?’

‘He was born alone,’ said Ban. ‘He grew up with me as his brother. We don’t fight.’

‘Of course not. Brother should not fight against brother. The gods speak against it.’ Amminios smiled as he had done all along, warmly and with an unnerving intelligence. He clasped his hands and tapped the extended forefinger to his lips, thoughtfully. ‘You are not a warrior yet. It is right that you do not fight, but do you play?’

‘With Hail?’

‘No, with other men.’ A square board stood in the shadows beyond the fire. Leaning over, Amminios lifted it and the leather bag beside it. He laid both in the flat earth by the straw. The board was finely made, with a chequered pattern of pale and dark wood and bronze bindings at the corners. The playing pieces were red and yellow tablets, like small, flattened pebbles, smooth to the touch and uniformly made. Amminios tipped the bag and they spilled out, mutely clashing, onto the board. ‘The Gauls and the Romans call the game Merchants and Bandits,’ he said. ‘My father’s people call it the Warrior’s Dance. I prefer to think of it that way. Have you ever played?’

‘A little. Gunovic the iron trader brought a set with him these last two years. He taught me the essence of it; enough to see that it takes greater skill than I have got.’

‘A pity.’ Amminios scooped the counters into his palm and slipped them back into the bag. The board folded in half to protect the smooth inner surface. He laid them both against the wall. ‘In that case, we will have to content ourselves with watching the whelps test each other’s weak points until the seamen return.’

He reached for the ale jug and drank. It was a breathtaking breach of protocol, not to offer it first to the guest. Ban watched, speechless, as the man finished and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘You don’t trust me,’ said Amminios. ‘You would have thought it poisoned and turned me down, which would have been difficult for us both. I drink, therefore it is safe, I swear it. Will you share it with me?’

He held the jug out, one-handed. The smell of it was dizzyingly good, the rich, fiery, bitter-sweet memory of winters at home and kin-deeds told by the fire. Ban took it and drank; it would have been a gross discourtesy not to. It was stronger than the ale given out at the meal and more recently heated. The wormwood sang through his head and lit the fires in his guts. It was a pleasant feeling, but not a safe one. The elder grandmother - the old one - had used wormwood when she needed urgently to speak with the gods. It was not advisable to drink to excess when one needed to settle the affairs of men. Ban closed his eyes and let the heat spin out to the ends of his fingers and toes. He remembered Iccius and the second game of knucklebones. The lad was good and would have won had Amminios not interrupted them. He remembered the way the boy’s voice had changed when confronted.

Opening his eyes, he reached for the gaming board and bag of counters. ‘I would like to play with you,’ he said. ‘It does not take so much effort that we cannot watch the whelps at the same time.’

It was a simple game on the surface; a child could have learned it. Twelve counters of each colour were placed in a row along either edge of the board. The thirteenth was smaller and more densely coloured and Ban was not familiar with its use. Amminios, who played yellow, held his up between finger and thumb. ‘This is the dreamer piece. It can move three squares at a time, jumping sideways at will, but if it is taken, the game is forfeit. Have you played with this?’

‘No. Gunovic played only with the twelve. They can move one square or jump over another to move into a space. A piece is lost if the enemy warrior jumps over it. The winner is the one who clears the board of his enemy’s pieces.’

‘Then we will play that way. If you win a few, we may bring in the dreamers. As in life, they make the dance more interesting.’

The dreamer pieces were removed and placed carefully at the side. The remaining counters were lined up along the edges of the board. Ban, playing red, took first move. It was nearly a year since he had last seen a board and he moved slowly, as one waking after a long sleep, feeling his way into the strike and clash of the dance. He played the first game unimaginatively and lost. His first six counters were swept from play in a single, skipping race. The remainder were cornered and taken in pairs or singles. It was a swift, neat execution, achieved with no sense of hostility. At the end of it, Amminios scooped his own counters into his palm. He had lost three. ‘Again?’ he asked.

‘If you don’t mind playing against a novice.’

‘Not at all. You played well. You were learning to look ahead by the end. You will improve quickly with practice.’

The second game passed less swiftly but the result was the same, and the third. The fourth took longer. Towards the end of it, both were reduced to three pieces. The space on the board made it more difficult to trap an opponent into making a mistake. The brood bitch stood and stretched, yawning, and squeezed out through the door-flap to relieve herself. The players abandoned the game to deal with the sudden flurry of squalling whelps. On her return, soaked to the skin, they agreed on a draw.

That was the turning point. Ban won the fifth game. The joy of it surged through him, fiercely, like throwing a spear and hitting the sweet spot of the mark at its centre. Amminios, smiling, left him and returned with a fresh jug of ale. ‘This is not as strong as the other,’ he said, ‘but it is hot.’ He placed it on the ground between them. ‘Shall we play again?’

Ban won the next two games in a haze of elation and ale. They introduced the dreamers in the game after that and he lost. The new pieces had greater flexibility than the warriors and, as Amminios had said, they made the dance more exciting. It took Ban three games and another draw to become easy with their use. Soon, Amminios offered a second variation where a warrior reaching an opponent’s corner could, for one move, become a dreamer. The games moved faster and the play became more subtle.

On the twelfth game, with the fire built up and a whelp lying asleep on his lap, Amminios said, ‘Winning is good, but we should play for something more than this. I will lay my armband on the next game. Will you wager against it?’

They played Ban’s bronze armband against Amminios’ gold and Ban lost. He lost his dagger and his belt in quick succession and then won them back; his sword changed hands three times in as many games; Amminios placed his horse - a sharp, fine-blooded bay - and lost it. The game in which he won it back was played faster than any before it and left them both sweat-soaked and shaking.

They played on. Time stretched and lost its meaning. The world shrank to the swooning firelight and the shadows of the pieces on the board, to the rush of blood in the ears and the trickle of sweat down the back of one’s neck. Ban heard his name called, distantly, and changed his mind on the piece he had been going to move. The game had hinged on that move and he won it, thanking the gods for their timely warning. Beside him lay everything that had been bet; each game had been cumulative and all was placed on each win. In his tally, he owned the bay horse and its saddle, Amminios’ sword and its belt, a dagger, two armbands and a torc. Amminios stretched his arms, hooking his fingers back and cracking the knuckles. ‘One more,’ he said. ‘You were lucky on the last one. I want my horse back.’

Ban grinned. Runnels of sweat streaked his forehead and soaked the neck of his borrowed tunic. His legs were cramped and his bladder strained. His fingers reached for the counters even when they were not in play. He had rarely been so happy. ‘You lost your horse because you wanted your sword back, and lost your sword for your dagger. You should give up while you can. You have nothing else to lose.’

‘Oh, but I do. I have Iccius. I will lay him against my horse and the rest of my war gear.’ Amminios spoke easily, with disarming frankness. His grey-green eyes rested on the board, avoiding confrontation. A log cracked in the fire. Rain ran heavily from the roof. The hound bitch rolled over, sighing, and the whelps mewled in frustration at the temporary loss of the teats. Ban felt the sweat grow cold on his neck. The remains of the oatcakes churned in his guts.

‘You cannot rest another man’s life on a board game,’ he said.

Amminios arched a brow. ‘He’s not a man. He’s an eight-year-old Belgic boy who was sold by his father to a Roman in Gaul and I can do with him as I wish. I won him in a game; there is no reason I should not lose him the same way.’ He arranged the pieces on the board, smiling. ‘Except that I don’t plan to lose.’

It was the smile that made the difference, and the memory of the terror in a boy’s voice, and the backwash of the ale and wormwood, cold now, but no less potent. Ban lifted the two dreamer pieces from the board. Spinning them in his cupped hands, he held them out, one in each closed fist. ‘Your turn to pick for start.’

‘You accept, then?’

‘I do.’

‘What will you place against him?’

‘All of this.’ Ban swept his arm along the collection of worked gold, enamelled bronze, studded iron and leather at his side. ‘Mine as well as yours.’

‘And the horses?’

It was a careful trap, as well set as any he had sprung on the board. The jolt of it made Ban shudder, as if more than his mind had to swerve to avoid it. ‘I will place your horse,’ he said. ‘Not mine.’

Amminios grinned, sharply. ‘That’s not enough, warrior. If you have nothing to lose, you have no reason to play well. I have seen that. You take the most risks when you have the edge of fear behind you. It is no contest otherwise.’

It was true; they both played better when there was the greater loss on losing. It was not, at this time, the point. Ban said, ‘We are gambling with a boy’s life. That is fear enough.’

The man laughed. ‘With his life? You think that I will kill him if I win? Or you think that freedom with you would be better than slavery with me? Do not overrate yourself, Ban of the Eceni. Life in your roundhouse is not so good that those brought up in a civilized court would rush to join it. Iccius is happy with me. He would not thank you for suggesting otherwise.’

He was backing away from the board. Ban dropped the dreamer pieces onto the wood. They rolled together into the central hinge, red and yellow, the colours of blood and treachery. He felt the pulse throb at his temple. ‘You will not play?’

‘No. Not if you will not wager something you value. As it stands, if I win, I am no better off than I was when we started.’

‘If we do not play at all, you have lost your horse.’

Amminios shrugged. ‘I can buy other horses. In fact, I can gamble for other horses. There are those who are not afraid to wager that which they value.’ He stood, taking a step towards the door, then turned, shaking his head, as one shakes off bad feeling. His eyes were warm and bright; those of a friend. ‘Forget it. I take that back. You played well and it was a pleasure to match against you. My horse is yours and you may take him when you ride out. I will give Iccius your greetings and your best wishes for his future. He is a beautiful child. He will live better here where he is appreciated.’

Amminios lifted the door-flap. The rain had stopped. The afternoon had darkened into evening. Ban heard Airmid’s voice calling his name. It was not the voice of the gods, but of the one person he knew who could reach them most closely. The sound brought back the dream of the red mare and her white-headed colt. He imagined riding either of them with the memory of intense blue eyes and a shy smile and the fear on a boy’s face as he tried to hold his ground against Amminios. He remembered the dun filly and the details of her death that Caradoc had chosen not to tell him.