Wolf Blood (22 page)
Authors: N. M. Browne
I can’t spare any time to greet him. We are in the middle of the fighting now and in danger of being surrounded. To right and left our line has broken and the Romans are surging forward and upward. We need to withdraw. Someone cries the order.
‘Back!’
Our enemies are retreating only to regroup out of the reach of Morcant’s jaws and my sword. We have done better than most, but we have moments to avoid being engulfed. Morcant, my ghost of a companion, sees the danger and the wolf pushes me with his great head to drive me up the slime-slick slope. Without his solid four-legged sturdiness I would fall. My leather boots lack the hobnails of the Roman enemy and I keep slithering backwards. I put my arms around the wolf and together we run for the higher ground. Morcant urges me on. His arm is on mine. I almost give up. The Romans are pouring up the hill, more than I can count, more than I can ever kill. Then the horn blows to retreat and I let the wolf guide me away from the battle scene. I think I see Ger limping but still alive, heading for the fortress and his Bethan. I hope it is Ger that I see. He is almost there, at the highest point, and men are leaning down to haul him and the others with him up into the steepest part of the hill, behind the stone wall of the fortress. I’m glad for him but I won’t be following him. Caratacus urged us to save ourselves, to run back to our homes. I have no home but I run anyway, keeping pace with the wolf, putting miles between us and the stink of the battlefield. I’ve done my duty. Now I am free.
Chapter Thirty-two
The wolf could run for ever but even fear of being caught by the Romans can’t keep me going for long. I’m alive but that is about all that can be said of me. I’m beyond exhausted.
We stop by a tributary of the great Sabrina. I wash away the grime of battle from myself and from my sword. I inspect for wounds and drink deeply of the clear water, blessed by the goddess. I am uninjured. It hardly seems possible. I check Morcant too. His coat is matted with gore, which he permits me to wash off, but he himself is fine. I thank the gods we have both survived. I sing one of my tuneless little hymns of thanks and cut my palm as I’ve done before so that my blood can feed the earth. When I wash my hand, the cut heals at once. The goddess of the river is still my ally. That is the good news. The bad is that I have no idea what to do now. No idea where to go.
Morcant is still the wolf.
‘I don’t know what to do to make you change, Morcant,’ I say when I’ve caught my breath again. He lies down beside me as I squat by the river in the last of the day’s sun. I feel the warmth of his flanks against me. He licks my bare arm. His yellow eyes are bright with all the intelligence of the man and I have to fight back tears. There is nothing I can do. Morcant the man looks disconsolate, desperate even, and I know without being told that he fears he will be trapped in wolf form for ever. I can’t reassure him. I know that he will transform again, because he has to: in my vision I see him die as a man. I keep that to myself.
We rest for a while near the river in a protected spot. The wolf falls asleep quickly and I doze for a time. I ache in every limb. I don’t have any visions, which is a blessing. Maybe my eyes have seen all the horror they can comprehend for one day. My head is clear and I see only what everyone else sees, or so I believe. I like that.
In the late afternoon we walk on through the marshes and cross the rugged hillside of these wilder parts of Alba. There are other tribesmen retreating too, a steady flow of moving men. The enemy have not yet given chase. In any case the landscape favours the hunted, not the hunter. Several men raise their shields in acknowledgement of a fellow warrior but everyone keeps their distance from the wolf.
I think back over the battle scene. There were a lot of dead but many of them were Roman and, of the tribesmen, most of us got away. It was not a noble victory but nor was it an ignominious defeat. Caratacus chose his battleground well and the Romans are now deep in tribal territory. There will be other Roman losses, I’m sure. Once here, they will be at the mercy of raids and ambushes, night-time attacks and mysterious fires. Fewer will leave the territory of the Ordovices than arrived here. This will be a different kind of war.
Just before dusk we meet the other Brigante. They have carts and livestock as well as their women and children with them. Bethan recognises me and runs to greet me, ignoring the wolf as if he were not there.
‘We are going to join Idris and his family and settle out west with the Deceangli tribes. There is some land there we can farm and we can keep up the fight. Come with us.’ She sounds excited, almost hysterical with relief that Ger survived. And Ger did survive. He is limping and leaning on a staff but hurrying towards me as fast as he can.
‘Trista, cariad. I told Bethan you were safe, but she didn’t trust me. You fought well. You deserve a feast. Join us. We are going to camp here for the night. You’ll be safe with us.’
I hesitate but when I look at the wolf I can see that Morcant the man is beginning to sleep and it is the time of the wolf. He doesn’t have to tell me that he has to return to the she-wolf. I see it in his stance, the angle of his tail, the tilt of his head, the look in his eye. Perhaps I’m beginning to speak wolf or perhaps I just have an understanding of Morcant. I pat his back as if he were one of my father’s dogs.
‘Go,’ I say. ‘I’ll be all right.’
I watch him leave. When will someone run to me with such eagerness, such joy? The she-wolf is the lucky one. I try not to mind. It is Bethan who puts her hand on my shoulder. I am ashamed that I have to blink back tears.
‘He has to be with his own kind, cariad, and you must be with yours.’ I know she is being wise in her way, but the she-wolf is not Morcant’s own kind and Bethan and Ger, for all their loving kindness, are not mine. They are not touched by the gods, blighted by gifts they would be happier without. I have more in common with a wolfman than with them. They are good people and do not deserve the abrupt reply that is forming on my lips so I bite it back.
‘You do me honour,’ I say, though my voice sounds thick as if choked by the things I can’t say. ‘Thank you.’
I am greeted as an old friend by Ger’s people. I keep forgetting that they watched over me all the days of my sickness after I nearly consumed myself with fire. I struggle to remember that they know me perhaps too well when I don’t know them at all. They make space for me by their fire, comment on the length of my hair, my prowess in battle, the beauty of the scabbard that Caratacus gave me. They note every difference in me as if I were one of their children and could not be prouder of me if I were. I am warmed as much by their affection as by the fire and I lend the fire a little more heat of my own in gratitude.
It is both a celebration and a wake, for they lost men in the fray and were not able to collect their bodies. They drink to the dead and then to the living. They cry and laugh and sing and then drink again. I cry too, silent, salty tears, but I don’t drink much. I am afraid of what I’ll see if I close my eyes.
After a time I sidle away from the fire to a quiet spot on my own. I take a small bone beaker of wine with me. No one comments as I slink away, though I’m sure my retreat doesn’t go unnoticed. They are not my family. They treat me like a daughter but my family are all dead. If I half closed my eyes around Ger’s fire, I could almost believe I was at home, but I’m not. It is almost harder to sit round his fire than it was to lie in the cold of the Chief’s hall. I miss my own people more than ever before. I thought that wound had healed, but it hasn’t and my tears are for them and for Cerys rather than for the recent dead. I take a sip from my beaker and then pour the rest of the wine on the ground, a libation in their memory and in memory of the enemies whose lives I took today. I can still see their faces. I shut my eyes and try to banish their images to the storehouse of horrors in my head. The hairs rise on the back of my neck and on my forearm and I shiver. The gods are watching; I can feel it. I sense the intense gaze of a thousand unseen eyes.
Knowing that I’m watched without being able to see the watchers is making me jumpy. I take out Ger’s arm ring and immediately the untamed starlit land is alive with the Wild Weird. I have rarely seen so many. They float and flap through the air, crawl and slither at my feet. If they were observing me before, they look away now and go about their own incomprehensible business.
I watch them idly for a while. I know that something is going on, that someone is coming, by the scuttling of the many-legged Weird and the sudden excitement of the flying variety. I unsheathe my sword. I see a small party of cloaked figures a few moments later. One takes the lead and approaches me. There is little light so far from the fire but I can see that he wears a bloodstained cloak of Keltic make. I presume it is another survivor from the battle on the hill. Still I don’t sheathe my sword.
‘It’s a fine blade you have there, and a finer scabbard.’ I recognise the voice at once.
Caratacus.
‘Sir?’
He lets his cloak fall back and I see that it is indeed the King. His face is as pale as the moon and he is bleeding from a head wound. I leap to my feet to help him to the fire, and call out to Ger and Bethan, but he shrugs me away.
‘I’m glad you survived. I heard you acquitted yourself admirably and the earth ran red where you fought. The shapeshifter joined us too, I understand, and added more carcasses to your butcher’s tally.’ I’m amazed that the King should know so much about so small a part of the battle and wonder how he came by such information, but there are much bigger questions to answer.
‘Sir, why are you here?’
‘When the line broke – as I suspected it might – it broke so quickly that the high citadel was overrun and my wife and older children taken in an instant. My men urged me to escape and I have left most of them to free my family.’ He runs his hands through his hair, leaving a trail of blood. He looks defeated. ‘The Romans were looking for me so I swapped cloaks with a tribesman and made my escape. I don’t know if I did right.’
Kings of Caratacus’ status never let their doubt show; whatever they do is right, for who is to gainsay them? I can’t answer him. Perhaps all we can ever do is the least wrong at the time.
I’m about to say something of that sort when I hear the unmistakable cry of a baby.
‘What?’
‘My son’s wet nurse took him and ran when the Romans broke through our defences. She found me and I’ve been looking for someone I could entrust with his care until such a time as I’ve rescued his mother and . . .’
He may be a King but he is also a man and I reach out to touch his shoulder. I hear the rasp of metal as a sword is lifted from its scabbard. I do not shift my hand. Even a King deserves some human comfort.
‘I didn’t know what happened to the child, not till now, but I have seen him in the arms of a loving foster mother. I foresaw it months ago. I didn’t know the child was yours!’
‘He has to be brought up in the ways of our people, kept safe from the canker of Rome.’ Caratacus is babbling, exhausted, overwrought. He puts his hand over mine and I squeeze his shoulder reassuringly. I withdraw my hand and the guard who stands behind the King lets his sword slide back into its sheath.
‘That will be so,’ I say, ‘but now you must come to the fire and eat.’
It is not my place to offer hospitality, but Ger would be horrified if the King was left unwelcomed. He and Bethan are hurrying over to me now. The King looks at me with a kind of wild-eyed hope. ‘You know who will care for my son?’
It is only when Bethan takes the child from his nurse that I am certain. Then there can be no doubt. She holds the baby tenderly in her arms and it is just as I saw her in my vision. She and Ger will raise the child to manhood, I’m sure of it, and he will wield the sword that was briefly mine.
Chapter Thirty-three
After the King’s mounts and men are fed and watered and the King has held court at the fireside for a time, he brings a jug of wine and joins me in my quiet spot away from the others.
I think he is a little drunk, or perhaps he is merely exhausted. ‘I would ask something of you, Trista,’ he begins and my heart sinks.
‘Of course, sir . . .’ I cannot argue with a King.
‘I am going to Cartimandua to ask her in person to send your compatriots. Without her forces I cannot trap the legions west of the Sabrina where the land favours us and where the gods are on our side . . .’ His words make my stomach churn with apprehension. I don’t think he should go anywhere near the Brigante Queen. Every instinct cautions against it. I am about to interrupt, but he stops me with a raised hand.
‘Hear me out. I know there are risks and for that reason I charge you with the safekeeping of my son, and of my story. Watch over him for me and make sure that whatever else happens, when the time comes, he knows his heritage.’
Of all the things I thought he would ask me, I didn’t expect this, and of all the responsibilities I was prepared to accept, this is the one that suits me the least. I am a warrior and a seeress, not a nursemaid.
‘Sir, if that is what you command me, then that is what I’ll do, but please do not go to Cartimandua. In all my dreams I have seen you bound, in chains, and handed over to our enemies. Why would I have such dreams if not to warn you, to save you from such a fate?’ My mouth is dry. If he and the Queen are kin, which they may be for all I know, he might cut my tongue out for disloyalty: royalty sticks together when they are not at one another’s throat. I take a deep breath. ‘Sir, I believe the Queen will choose Rome over you. She will betray you.’