The younger of the two interpreter guides was Gwan, and he was a warrior, an aristocrat, and not a merchant. Over the course of a dozen stops on the Sequana, I gathered that this was a great adventure for him; that his father was deeply in debt to the Venetiae, and that his service was part repayment. He was of the Senones, the people who ruled the great river valley.
He loved horses, and he was the most profligate lover I think I have ever met. It was difficult to find time to talk to him, he was so busy lying with women. The men that Gaius sent to follow him always blushed to tell of his exploits. He was neither particularly clever nor particularly handsome, and yet, in every village, one or two young women seemed to leap on him with an enthusiasm that might have made me jealous, if I hadn’t been so busy.
What was his secret?
I have no idea.
At any rate, after twenty days we were in the upper reaches of the Sequana, and poling was hard, the current was fast even in autumn and we were all tired at the end of the day. Gwan rode ahead on horseback, and was waiting for us on the riverbank. We put up our tents in the fields, already harvested. Men and women with baskets were making a small market, an agora, for us to buy food.
Gwan was good at his job.
His partner was an older man, a fisherman. He was not an aristocrat, and he didn’t speak much. Or have the pure enjoyment of life that Gwan had. His name was Brach, and he was dark, tall and silent, and he walked with a stoop that looked sinister to a Greek.
Gaius and I were poling together with Seckla and a pair of Marsalian fishermen. I don’t even remember their names, but I remember they were both cheerful companions. We were singing hymns — Homer’s hymns, all we could remember. Seckla was laughing at the words — his gods were otherwise, and he found ours odd.
Brach was sitting in the stern. He’d poled for an hour, and it was his turn to rest. He was watching the bank, and I was watching him. He seemed alert, and afraid. When I stooped to get my wooden canteen and have a drink, I happened to stumble by him (try retrieving anything on a barge that is ten times as long as it is wide, and you’ll see why I stumbled). I got a whiff of him, and he was afraid. He smelled of fear.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
I could see Gwan standing on the bank, and I could see fifty or so farmers and local peasants with their baskets of produce. None of them was a warrior. You can disguise a warrior, but not if you pay attention. Men in top physical training stand and move differently from men who work the land for others. Men at the edge of violence have a different look on their faces. Not that I thought all these things at the time — merely to note that I was conscious that we had more than seventy giant ingots of tin and a lot of gold, too, and that in my heart I knew the Keltoi would try for it, sometime. I couldn’t see anything.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
Brach glanced at me, his face a dead giveaway, and shrugged. He stared at the water.
‘Armour,’ I ordered. I shouted the order sternwards to the next boat, and reached for the heavy leather bag with my thorax.
We were armoured and ready for anything in a quarter of an hour, and the farmers stood on the bank, puzzled, anxious and then downright fearful. They abandoned the bank, and many packed their goods and fled the market. When we landed, we looked like a war band.
Before the sun had set another finger, a dozen chariots appeared, and fifty Keltoi on horseback. I had forty men with spears and shields out as guards while we dragged downed trees to form an abatis — a wall of branches. Not a great defence, but enough to discourage casual looting and easy predation.
The local aristo had an eagle in bronze set on top of his helmet, and wore a knee-length tunic of scale — not a style of armour I’d ever seen before — and it looked as if it would weigh far too much for use in combat. Of course, the great gentry of Gaul travel to war in chariots. I wondered if this was what Lord Achilles looked like.
He spoke to Gwan, saluted and his driver rolled to a stop an arm’s-length from me. I had my pais offer him a cup of wine, and he took it, poured a libation like a Greek and drank it off.
‘Tell him that I apologize for frightening his people. Tell him, as one warrior to another, that I received a sign — perhaps from my ancestor, Heracles — and had my men get into their armour.’ As I spoke, I indicated the plaque that showed Heracles and the Nemean Lion that was affixed to the inside of my aspis.
He listened. And I’d say he understood, as he gave me a sharp glance, dismounted and offered me his hand to clasp. I took it.
He spoke slowly, paused, took off his helmet and spoke again.
‘He says, warriors must learn to understand and obey such signs. He says a party of armed men passed his outposts this morning, travelling quickly on horseback, and he has been in armour all day. He says, perhaps your ancestor is not so wrong, after all. He gives you his word that no harm will come to your people tonight.’
I let go his hand. Let me say that sometimes, between people, there is a spark of understanding. It can lead instantly to love, or friendship; to treaties, to alliances, to marriages. This man was clear-eyed and honourable. I would have staked my life on it. Gwan said his name was Collam.
We passed a few minutes looking at each other’s war gear. His scale mail was beautifully wrought: the scales were fine, the size of a man’s thumb or slightly smaller, and I’d say, as a bronze-smith, that there were four thousand of them in the whole tunic. His helmet was superb: very different from the helmets I made, and he took mine, put it on and moved like a fighter, trying it, while encouraging me with motions to try his.
I found his interesting — airy, open. The cheeks were hinged, the bowl was shallow, the neck curved down like my father’s to meet the armour at the back, like the tail of a shrimp or lobster, except without the articulation. There was a narrow brim over the eye, which, even late on an autumn day, kept the sun from my eyes.
Collam made a motion and grinned. He had bright blond hair and enormous moustaches — I don’t think I’d ever seen a man with so much moustache.
‘He wants to trade,’ Gwan said. ‘My father is his sister’s husband’s brother — does that make sense? We’re not close, but he’s a famous warrior and his words are true.’
I hadn’t needed Gwan to tell me that. I loved my helmet — I had made it with my own hands. It fitted me perfectly, and I trusted it.
But when you can’t give something away, you are a slave to it. And generosity is one of the virtues. Besides, his helmet was a magnificent piece of work — the eagle on top was an artwork.
I grinned. ‘Tell him it is his.’
We fed him. The farmers came back at dusk, when they saw their lord sitting on one of our stools, drinking our wine, and we bought pigs and grain. We also bought some dried fruit and meat.
I was so interested in Collam that I lost track of Brach, and so did Gaius. Collam was the sort of man that Gaius loved, and he sat with us. The Latins are not entirely Keltoi, but they have many words in common, and Gaius’s Keltoi was far better than mine, good enough that he could almost converse without Gwan. I missed Sittonax, and I missed Daud.
Play it as you will; it was morning — the night passed uneventfully — when we discovered that Brach was missing. Collam came down to the riverside with his corps of charioteers and cavalry to see us off. I was in my armour, watching the men load the barges and keeping an eye on Gwan, while Seckla and Gaius searched the fields and woods around our camp. Seckla could track. So could a number of the herdsmen.