Dahut Read online

  Maldunilis finished her dish of comfits. “Are you through, dear? Time for sleep,” she said archly.

  Gratillonius rose. The wine buzzed faintly in his head, bees in a clover meadow where a youth and his sweetheart had found solitude. “Aye,” he answered, “I must be up early.”

  She giggled. “Indeed you must be up.”

  He turned his face from Zisa, lest the girl see him flush. Maldunilis had always lacked reticence. He knew what his daughter was thinking—you are going to father now—and would not have cared save that she appeared to gloat over it. Glimpses he had had, looks she cast him, tones and gestures, caused him to suspect she was given to listening at the bedroom door.

  Ahriman take that! If what he wanted most was a life free of folk peering, guessing, gossiping, sniggering, proclaiming how much better than he they could do his work, why, then he should long since have slipped away from Ys and become a hermit like Corentinus aforetime. But when his God spoke, Corentinus had had the manhood to obey orders.

  Gratillonius accompanied Maldunilis from the triclinium. The wine in his veins helped him ignore everything else. Likewise did the heat that began licking at his loins. Once a Queen of Ys had the King to herself, the Gods entered them both; and Belisama held supremacy over Taranis.

  Immediately after the door had closed behind them, Maldunilis flung her mass against Gratillonius. She kissed avidly, mouth wide open, tongue searching. “’Tis been a weary while,” she groaned.

  His hands wandered. His mind did also, under less control. For the thousandth time, he puzzled over the ninefold marriage that was his. Did the powers of the Gallicenae spring from their pent-up needs? Yet this bulk that he held could belong to any fishwife. Nor did the others claim much more—Innilis’s occasional healing, Forsquilis’s occasional visions or minor spells—than some barbarian witch might. Together they had summoned him, overthrown Colconor, wrecked the Scotic fleet, or so they believed; but that was, O Mithras, sixteen years ago, and they were frank in their doubts that they could do anything of the kind ever again. They did not feel they could. The Age of Brennilis was dying away.

  Gratillonius disengaged from Maldunilis and fumbled at his clothes. Let him find whatever surcease was in her, quickly. Most evenings they blew out the lights before they bedded. That was not so common among the Ysans of the upper classes, including his other wives, but this one didn’t care and in the dark he could pretend, after a fashion. At this season, though, daylight dawdled. She cast her own garb on the floor. Well, his member responded, and he would pillow his face in the softness between those heavy breasts.

  “A moment,” she laughed. Matter-of-factly, she slipped the lid off the pot and sat down. Somehow, the gurgling excited him further. No, not all the power of the Nine had left them.

  —It was as if lust were a dam, and when it had been broken, care flooded back through him. Lying there in the sweat-dampened sheets, he gagged on a breath.

  She stirred beside him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Naught, naught,” he demurred.

  Sometimes she could surprise him. Raising herself to an elbow, she looked down into his eyes and said diffidently, “I know I am a lackwit, but if you want to talk, if that will help, I can keep silence about it.”

  He sighed. She smiled and stroked his brow, ruffled back his hair. Maybe, if he spoke the matter forth, he really would sleep better.

  “No need for that,” he told her. “No secret. I’ll be setting it before the Council. A message came today from Turonum.”

  She caressed his head and waited.

  “The Romans—” He must gulp and search for words. “The Duke and the civil governor together have sent me a command, me, the prefect of Rome. About a month hence, there’ll be military exercises lasting for… a while, they say. It’s to be jointly with the regular forces of Ys. Our marine corps and such of our naval vessels as are not out are to report at Darioritum Venetorum and place themselves under the Roman general for the duration of the maneuvers.”

  “What? Has that ever happened erenow?”

  “Never. And Armorica faces no threat these days.”

  Maldunilis frowned into space. “I don’t see—What is bad about this?”

  “Why, that it is such a new thing, without any clear cause. Oh, the letter speaks of preparing against the future, and cites our offer to train crews for the ships we’ll build for Rome. I cannot refuse obedience and appeal to higher authority. As King of sovereign Ys, I must persuade Ys to do as I, the prefect of Rome, am bidden. The timing is skillful, this soon before our Midsummer Council. I’ll catch the Suffetes unprepared and ram an agreement through. I must.”

  “I’ll vote however you want, of course. But surely this is naught bad. Won’t our men make a grand showing! Will you go too?”

  He shook his head beneath her fingers. “Nay. The order is clear on that. I stay home to look after my ‘responsibilities’—Imperial interests. What are they planning, those men?”

  “Mayhap only what they say they are.”

  “You wish to believe that. I’d like it myself. Well, I see no choice before me.”

  “Then stop fretting.” Maldunilis lay back down. Her hand roved across his chest and belly, and onward. “Tonight, be simply Grallon the man.”

  2

  Flowing into the sea about ten road miles from Ys, the River Goana marked the southeastern frontier of the city hinterland; beyond lay Osismia. Nonetheless, Rome claimed Audiarna, the town on its right bank. The inhabitants were almost entirely Gauls, including the small garrison. It had been directed to report with the Ysan marines at Venetorum. That seemed peculiar, since the whole western tip of the peninsula would then be stripped of troops. However, Ysan naval patrols ought to keep pirates away, and there was nothing to fear from inland, was there? Rather, the exercises would be another step toward rebuilding an effective defense for all Armorica.

  The day was bright when the newcomers entered Audiarna. Sunlight flashed off pikeheads, high helmets, cuirasses whose lines and ornamentation called deep-water waves to mind. A breeze blew, making banners snap and plumes ripple brilliant. Though numbering a mere few hundred, the marines of Ys were the most impressive sight the sleepy little city could remember. They tramped through its gate and down its principal street in a unison that was not mechanical but flowed, like the movement of a single many-legged panther. Their officers led them on blooded horses. The pack animals that followed were nearly as mettlesome, the supply wagons graceful, playfully decorated, akin to chariots. No tuba brayed; drums thuttered, pipes shrilled, in rhymes whose alienness was of the tides and the winds.

  At their heads blazed beauty, a young woman on a great sorrel stallion. Her hair streamed free, gold and amber. Flamboyant as well as impudent, silver-worked blue tunic and kidskin breeks hugged the curves of her; a red cloak winged from her shoulders; a circlet set with gems glittered around her brow. When she drew rein in the forum, a kind of susurrus went through the people who had gathered to watch.

  The native company and its Roman cadre had been waiting. Abruptly their outfits looked shabby and their formation ragged. The chief centurion, himself mounted, lifted an arm in salute. The Ysan leader did likewise before clattering over the pavement to utter greetings. At his side rode the maiden, and it was she who spoke first. Being commissioned by a suzerain state and in charge of the superior force, the Ysan would have command over both as far as Venetorum; that concession had helped reduce unwillingness to go. When the centurion formally proffered a vinestaff, it was the maiden who took it and in turn gave it to her companion.

  Thereupon she wheeled her steed, rode back to the front of the marines, and cried while the stallion snorted and stamped beneath her: “Comrades of the road, farewell! Now I must return and you continue onward. Yet in spirit I will fare with you always. The legionaries who came to Ys with my father the King call me their Luck. Let me be yours too, as you travel among foreigners and hold high the honor of Ys.”

  �
��Dahut!” roared from the men. “Dahut! Dahut!”

  “The Nine Gallicenae will watch and pray and work their spells on your behalf,” she vowed. “So will every vestal, myself the foremost. Come home in joy. In the names of Taranis, Lir, and Belisama Queen of Battles, be you our strength!”

  Again they cheered.

  The centurion frowned. It was too much for the chorepiscopus at Audiarna. Although Dahut had used her own language, most of the onlookers knew enough of it to follow; it was not enormously different from theirs. A few registered indignation or made signs and muttered prayers. But many seemed excited, certain among them even uplifted. These also raised a shout.

  The chorepiscopus left his church, from the porch of which he had been watching, and pushed through the crowd around the market square. A heavy man, his gray hair tonsured in the style of Martinus, he strode until he stood before the towering horse and the beautiful rider. He raised his arms and bawled in Latin: “O people of Audiarna, soldiers of Rome, what is this work of Satan? Beware of your souls! This pagan witch is not content to flaunt herself in man’s clothing like a harlot, she invokes the demons she worships, here in our very midst, we, the subjects of the Augustus. Cast her from you before she leads you down into the fires of hell!”

  The Ysan marines growled. Most of them had understood. Hands clenched on weapons.

  Dahut quelled the trouble. She threw back her head and pealed forth laughter. Looking down at the cleric, she replied, also in Latin: “Have no fear, old man. If I lead anybody, it will be to nowhere hot, but the sea that is Ys’s. Besides, I am leaving now. Let me suggest first, out of kindness, that you study your grammar. What you did to your conjugations was utter horror. But then, your Jesus wouldn’t know the difference, would He?”

  Before the Ysans could whoop, and so make the Romans angrier, Dahut called to them: “Again, farewell! Fare ever well!” She spurred Favonius and sped from the forum. Her four-man escort had difficulty keeping up. In moments she was gone. The sound of hoofbeats on stone dwindled away. Men blinked at each other, mute, uncertain, as if they had just awakened from a dream.

  3

  “—Then as the fog lifted, taking soundings we found bottom at forty fathoms. Here fish abounded. We saw thick shoals of little fish like sprats, and rushing to eat them before they dispersed were multitudinous cod of twenty or thirty pounds. For three days we fished, cleaning and salting the catch until we bore ample food. Meanwhile, though rarely as yet, we sighted such birds as to make us think land must not be overly far. Our water casks were low and foul, since rain had not come for us to gather in our mainsail as had happened earlier. Therefore we bore on westward.”

  Bodilis paused in her reading aloud. Gratillonius looked across the table where he and she shared a bench. “Does this still ring true?” he asked.

  Maeloch, opposite, nodded his shaggy head. “Aye,” he rumbled. “’Tis pretty much a learned man’s words, but ye can hear through them that ’twas a plain fisher captain who told him the story. No mermaids, no magical isles, only a nigh endless waste of sea till at last yon crew came to a shore.”

  Gratillonius thrilled. It was not that he doubted the men of Saphon’s smack Kestrel had had a strange adventure, three generations ago. Throughout the history of Ys, craft had fared helpless beyond the horizon when a freakish storm sprang out of the east. Kestrel was among the few that won back. What kept the tale alive was that the return had been after months, as if from the dead. Gratillonius saw no reason either to question the claim that those men had found land. What he wondered about was how much their description had grown with the telling, year by year, lifetime by lifetime.

  When he spoke of it to Bodilis, she said that quite possibly someone had taken down the account in writing, soon after Saphon came home. She offered to search the library. That required patience; scrolls and codices were heaped on shelves in uncounted thousands. Finally, triumphantly, she found the one document. Having perused it himself, Gratillonius wanted an opinion from a master, preferably also a fisher. Osprey happened to be in port unloading a haul.

  The library was a curious place for such a tale. High windows between pillars admitted sufficient light into the cool dimness to read by. A mosaic floor depicted the owl and aegis of Minerva. If the Goddess Herself was represented on a wall, bookcases that reached to the ceiling had long since hidden Her. A caretaker padded about, dusting. At another table, a man sat reading and a vestal copied something from a tome, probably at the orders of a minor priestess who wanted information in convenient form. No sound penetrated from the Forum outside. Here was a cavern of mute oracles.

  “Go on, my lady, I pray ye,” said Maeloch eagerly.

  “You may not like what follows,” Gratillonius warned.

  “Ha? Why not, sir?”

  “Because it makes false those wonders that are in the mouths which today tell the story. There is no giant eel, no elven queen in her palace of illusion, no herd of unicorns—naught of the Otherworld at all.”

  Maeloch grinned. “Why, I’d be surprised if there was. What I’ve seen of weirdness—and that’s more than most—beggars men’s brags and boys’ daydreams. Ye’d nay ha’ bid me hither did the yarn lack real wonders.”

  “Wonders indeed,” murmured Bodilis: isles clustered in hordes along the ruggedness of a coast which stretched on and on, immensity behind it, forests of spruce and fir and birch, teeming with elk, bear, beaver, otter, and beasts and birds unknown to Europe, tribespeople broad-faced and black-maned who carried tools of stone. She cleared her throat.

  “Hark well,” Gratillonius directed Maeloch. “Afterward, think hard. It appears Kestrel reached a country huge, rich, and virginal. How much so, we can but guess; yet surely, as you said, the truth will dwarf any imaginings of ours.”

  The sailor gave him a keen stare. “Ye’d fain outfit an expedition.”

  “Aye. Two or three ships built especially for the voyage. It seems the way west is difficult but east is much easier, as if Ocean were in truth the world-engirdling river the ancients supposed. Knowing that, we can plan wisely. However, first I need experienced men to tell me if this can likely be done or is a mere fever-dream of mine.”

  “Ye’re nay given to wild notions, King Grallon. Carry on, my lady.”

  The hope flamed in Gratillonius. Yonder a new land, no, a new world—waiting for Ys, whose seafarers alone had the skill and boldness to reach it—colonies free of hoary hatreds, tyrannies, poverties, menaces, where civilization could be reborn and a palace worthy of elves might arise for Queen Dahut!

  “More and more birds did we see,” Bodilis read, “and presently driftwood.”

  A man entered the room and hastened to the table. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he muttered in Latin. “Urgent.”

  Annoyed, Gratillonius twisted about on the bench and recognized his legionary Verica. The two dozen Roman soldiers had stayed in the city when the marines left, to be the core of guardians on its wall and peacekeepers in its streets. Of course, he thought wearily, someone always knew where the King was to be found. “Well?” he rapped.

  “Sir, the beacon’s lit. Beyond Lost Castle. Nothing’s at sea except fishers and a couple of merchantmen. A party worth worrying about must be coming along Redonian Way.”

  Gratillonius tautened. Few of the signal towers wrecked by barbarians had yet been rebuilt, in these years of peace, but he had worked to have bonfires ready for kindling in a chain along the shoreline. They were intended to warn of pirates. If no hostile fleet was in sight, then an Ysan watcher had been alarmed by what he saw bound overland. Yet apparently no sign burned in Osismiic territory. Such would have been visible from Point Vanis. Which meant the Romans had observed nothing to fear. Which most likely meant that this was all harmless. And yet—and yet the fighting men of Ys were afar.

  Gratillonius rose. “I must go,” he said. “You two can continue.”

  “I’d have trouble listening,” Maeloch answered grimly. Anguish crossed Bodilis’s countena
nce. For a moment, her hand clutched Gratillonius’s.

  Verica at his heels, he went out into the Forum and up Lir Way to Warriors’ House by High Gate. The bustle and color around him had gone curiously distant, not quite real. He told himself he was foolish to conjure phantoms, that everything could well be a mistake, or benign; but he was no philosopher. He was a military man who needed to make contingency plans.

  The barrack echoed emptily to his footfalls. Only a couple of youths were there, from among those newly recruited as auxiliaries in the absence of the regulars. It took a while to devise instructions for them to carry out or pass on to the others, with the aim of getting all his legionaries together and providing some kind of replacements on the wall. Thereafter they were gone for a maddeningly long spell. He sent Verica to fetch his horse Favonius from the palace, and then in Dragon House had the man help him into his armor. Still he must wait.

  One by one, though, they arrived, his Britannic Romans. It struck him sharply how none of them was a young man any longer. Even Budic had furrows in his face, while Adminius the deputy was grizzled, nearly toothless, and gaunt as a twig in winter. Just the same, they snapped to their duties and followed him out the gate with a smartness he doubted the Imperial units now at Venetorum could show.

  By that time the strangers were in sight, headed down Redonian Way from its southward bend at the old station on Point Vanis. As Gratillonius led his handful to meet them, he saw a score or so detach themselves and leave the road, slanting southeast across the trails that crisscrossed the heights.

  This day was sunny. Wind chased small white clouds off an olive sea full of whitecaps that burst against skerries. Intensely green with summer, grass billowed over the headland, around its boulders and megaliths and shelters; sheep made flecks in the distance, driven away by frightened herders. The wind skirled. It bore salt odors. Gulls rode it beyond the cliffs, and a hawk immensely above.