“Prince Guidarius, we shall not be coming back, neither before the winter sets in, nor after,” I said.
He looked at me with his chin dropped. “Not — coming back?”
“Not coming back.”
He seemed suddenly older, and as though there was less bulk inside his skin. I leaned toward him, making myself sound reasonable. “We should have gone in the spring, in any case, that you know; and you will have no more trouble with the Sea Wolves through the winter. How then is it a worse thing that we go now?”
“Next spring is half a year away.” He made a small helpless gesture. “I suppose I hoped that you would change your mind before the time ran out.”
I shook my head. “You have two good leaders in Cradock and Geranicus, and I have broken in your men for you. They were brave men when I came, but a brave rabble; now they are trained troops — even disciplined after a fashion — and will rally to you swiftly at need. You should be able to hold off the Barbarians for yourselves now; and the most crying need for me is elsewhere.”
Silence hung between us for a long tight-drawn moment, and then he gave his plump shoulders a little jerk, as though to straighten them, and I thought I saw beneath the pouchy lines of his face something of the fighting man he had been in his youth. I should not have to fear for the land between the Abus River and the Metaris after I was gone. “Then it seems that there is no more to be said.”
“Something more — I want four hundred of your men to march north with me.”
I thought his eyes would start clean from his head. “Roma Dea! Man, man, you have upward of a hundred of my best warriors sucked into the circle of those Companions of yours at this moment! And you must have had as many more through the years! What further would you have?”
“Four hundred, of their own choosing and mine, to go with me as auxiliaries, as spearmen and archers on this campaign. There will be — I have told you before — no more trouble with the Sea Wolves for this year at least; and when the autumn’s fighting is over, and Earl Hengest safely out of Eburacum, I will send them back to you.”
“Those that are left of them.”
“Those that are left of them.”
“And meanwhile, no man, not even you, my most war-wise Count of Britain, can say for sure what the Sea Wolves will do, for they are as unpredictable as the winds that bring them to our shores; and my fighting strength will not stand the loss of four hundred men.”
I cut in on him. “No man, not even you, my most wise Prince of the Coritani, knows more surely than I do what is your fighting strength and what loss it will stand.”
The new strength in his face was gathering itself against me now. “It is enough for us to hold the Sea Wolves from our own pastures; why should I send my young men to fight in the Brigantes’ country?”
Suddenly it was I who felt old and tired and helpless. “Because if we stand alone, state and princedom and tribal hunting run each within our own frontiers — state and princedom and hunting run, we shall fall one by one, each within our own frontiers. It is only if we can stand together that we shall drive the Saxons back into the sea.”
I do not know how long we argued the thing; but it seemed a very long time. I think once he came near to offering me the whole four hundred, if I would return for another year when the autumn’s fighting was over, but by that time we knew each other well — and he thought better of that particular offer before it was spoken.
In the end I did none so badly, for I came away with the grudging promise of two hundred, on my oath on Maximus’s great seal that they should indeed come back when the fighting for Eburacum was ended.
The mist had crept up from the lower town, scented with wood-smoke and sodden leaves, and was making a wet yellow smoke about the courtyard lantern as I passed out again into the street. The chill of it was on my own heart. How shall we stand against the Barbarian flood? What hope is there for us even for Ambrosius’s hundred years, if we cannot learn to stand together, shield to shield, across our own frontiers?
The two days that followed were filled with the usual turmoil of a war host making ready for the march; rations and gear being issued and packed in the great leather-topped pack panniers, sheaves of arrows and spare weapons issued and checked, horses brought in from autumn pasture and fitted with new leather foot shackles, armor and war gear given a final overhaul to make sure that all was in perfect order; and all day and all night Lindum rang with the deep bell-clink of hammer on armorer’s anvil and the neighing of excited horses from the makeshift picket lines. During those two days also, there must have been many partings in and around the old fortress city. By this time upward of a hundred of the Companions were, as Guidarius had said, men from the Coritani, and many of the others had girls in the town. A few (God knows I had always tried to hold them back from that when I could) had married since we first made our headquarters there. Partings heavy with promises to come back one day, or send for the girl . . . Partings taken lightly with a kiss and a bright new necklace and no promises at all . . . Yet it was not all partings, for when we marched out at last, the strength of our baggage train was increased by twoscore or more of hardy girls, riding in the light carts that carried the mill and the field forge, or walking with a fine free swing, their skirts kilted to their knees, among the drivers and the laden pack ponies.
It is not an ill thing for a war host to carry a few women with it, so that they be hardy and fierce enough to fend for themselves and not drag on the men; for their cooking has its uses, and their care can mean the difference between life and death to the wounded. The trouble, of course, with a few women among many men starts when several men desire the same girl at the same time, or when one man wants one especial girl for himself against all comers. That is when the Brotherhood starts to break. Dear God! That is when the Brotherhood starts to break. I let it be known through the war host that at the first whispering of trouble over the women to reach my ears, I should abandon the whole gaggle of them wherever we might happen to be. Then I let the matter rest.
The young chieftain and the hunter who had brought me word of Hengest’s coming acted as our guides. For the first three days the hunter led us northwestward, by the road and then by looping marsh ways that followed the firm ground among the reedbeds and winding waters and thickets of thorn and sallows, where left to ourselves we should have been hopelessly lost within an hour, and where, even as it was, the horses were often fetlock deep in the dark sour-smelling ooze. One twilight we passed the burned-out remains of a Saxon settlement that had been our work in the previous year, and something — a wildcat, maybe — screamed at us from the ruins. After three days we began to pull up out of the marshes, into softly undulating country and low hills, where the wind over the dead heather made a sound that was harsh in our ears after the softer wind-song over the marshes that we had known so long. And on the fourth evening we struck the road from Lagentus to Eburacum and turned north along it. The hunter was out of his territory now, and turned back to his own hunting runs, and the young chieftain entering his own countryside took his place as guide.
Two marches northward the road crossed a river by a broad paved ford, covered by one of the gray derelict guard posts that still stud the countryside. And there we met the Saxon war host under its white horsetail standards.
Whether they had wind of our coming and were advancing to meet us, or whether they had thought to come down behind us in the old Lindum position and take us unawares, I do not know; nor does it matter now. We joined battle at first light of a squally October morning, the rain sweeping across the sodden wrack of last year’s bracken. They had the advantage of ground, their left flank on the soft ground by the river, their right guarded by dense thorn scrub. They outnumbered us badly, thanks to Guidarius, and the rain slackened our bowstrings, while of course it had no effect on the hideous little throwing axes with which many of them were armed. On our side we had the advantage of cavalry, which on that narrow front did no more than even the odds. By midday it was over; a small, wicked, bloody business. Neither of us gained the victory, and both were too badly mauled to fight again that year.