Hag of the Hills, page 25
In the centre of our former camp, among the streaming libations of wine that mixed with the foam of the ocean, Sabella led Myrnna to me. Myrnna had been dressed in her brown cloak, her tawny dress, and her jet necklace. She had ruby lips and blued eyelids painted by borrowing Sabella’s make-up kit. She came bearing my sword in its leather-wrapped scabbard that Verc built for Vidav. Myrnna kneeled before me, unsheathed Vidav, and handed it to me. She then fitted me with my sword belt and scabbard, and I sheathed Vidav to my side. I thought we were ready for war, but then Verc cried from the west of the camp.
He came out of the rising sun, down from the hillock near the camp. The men surrounded me, all of them, even Cicarus, and they readied their weapons. Verc approached holding something, a bronze helmet fitted with two jagged bronze bullhorns. He stood before me and bowed.
‘Camulus guides our path. He has chosen you. Accept his horns.’
He placed it on my head. It was heavy and strained my neck, but its power ordained me. I knew I was the war god now. It was an uneasy feeling, but felt right.
‘Just remember,’ he said to me, ‘no matter what you call yourself – Leandros, if you must. Your father was a Celt. His father was a Celt. His father was a Celt. Lugus runs through your veins. Now you don the helmet of Camulus, and he leads us to war, as Celts.’
‘Now, breakfast!’ He shouted, and he, Antedios, and Cattos shouted together. ‘After, Camulus! War!’
CHAPTER XVIII
Luceo, I wondered how those two mules could ever carry such heavy burdens. They were loaded with our tents and the rest of our things, including big pots and ashwood for spear shafts. They rarely complained, and when they did, it was because their hooves had not been trimmed or that there were loud noises nearby. We left them in a valley, where we hoped to retrieve them if we survived, and there we buried our wealth in a cave.
I carried a hefty burden, Luceo. It was the helmet of Camulus. It fit awkwardly on my head, its brash edges braised my flesh, and when the sun lit it afire, it made my head hot. I dared not take it off, Luceo, for I was the war god that day, and I could not complain when I led my men down the foe-strewn stand that was the way to Dun Torrin.
We ate well that morning. We ate venison, boar, flounder, berries, herbs, and fruit. The hounds had meaty bones to gnaw on, as did we all. Our day’s god, too, had his share, and in that turbulent time, we had to placate him. We lit a great fire on the beach of our waste, and tossed whatever we would not carry or bury in it.
The men all donned their armour, yet I watched Artaxes in awe. Artaxes raised his shield, then he reached for his curved sword and fondled its handle. He donned his bronze helmet. He strapped on his bronze breastplate and bronze leg guards. He raised his spear to the sky. ‘Ares, why do you force my hand? I am war, but I am just a man.’
Marthelm, after he observed the Greek, donned a bearskin cloak over his shoulders, which he called Grandfather, he adorned a strand with an amber bead around his neck which he called Frau, he raised his shield that had a red-white spiral painted on its face, which he called Donor, and sheathed his sword in a red-leather scabbard which he called Tiwaz. He finally took his spear, which he called Father.
‘I see you admire them,’ Verc said. ‘And there is much to admire. They serve their gods well, and they are men! But don’t be jealous of them. You are a Celt. We are the manliest of all, for we fight without any defence except the finesse of our hands. Do not forget that, even with all of this Leandros business.’
I nodded to him.
The men and I marched southward down the strand, leaving the poor lass spreadeagled on the shale. Myrnna, Sabella, and Frowon were all in the rear with one-armed Orca and the hounds guarding them.
The sky was cloudless, the breeze cool, and the ocean calm. Our feet shifted along the shale and scree on the slither of strand between sea and hillside. We were all donned in our war gear, bearing our weapons, and an eagle then came from the wall of hills and flew over our heads.
‘Truly this is Camulus’ day,’ Verc said. He was hatless, but he had shaven the sides of his head, the haircut of the druid. I never knew why he had shaved his head in that manner.
‘I hope you all ate well today,’ Tratonius said.
‘Boar and venison, how could it get any better?’ I said. ‘But why do you say that?’
‘Boat,’ he said.
A boat slipped away somewhere along the rugged coastline.
‘Carnyxes!’ Verc shouted. ‘Play them, you idiots!’
Cattos and Antedios blew through the carnyxes. Their sound mourned over the strand. We kept apace, crossing streamlets that emptied into the sea from the hills. The coastline was jagged now and there in the distance was the silhouette of the peninsula where Dun Torrin lays. We can see it, Myrnna, we can see it. We’ll get you there.
Then came the Hillmen. They charged down the cliffside path ahead. They flowed down like so many ants from anthills, flint-spears forward. They were far away but would be upon us.
‘You’d better have eaten like kings!’ Tratonius shouted. ‘Arms! To arms!’
We all mobilized. Tratonius began to bark orders, and I hardly understood them as I fumbled, for he commanded the men that I should have been, yet I dared not speak up then, because he had more experience than I. Yet I had fought the Hillmen and he had not.
‘Listen to me!’ I shouted. ‘I fought them before!’
‘Listen to him then, by all the gods, by Dis Pater!’ Tratonius shouted back.
‘They gang up on you! They don’t fight one on one. They are cowards! They use their numbers!’
Artaxes grabbed me by the shoulder and his lip snarled over his front teeth like a dog.
‘Then put them at a disadvantage! You see that pass?’
There stood a crumble of boulders and shale all toppled over, three or four men high, that ran from the steep hillside to the shore of the beach. It looked like six men could stand abreast between it and the ocean.
‘Plug it like a boat! Now! Shields out!’
We all rushed to the entry and plugged it like a leaky boat, a completed wall of jammed spears and shields. Cattos, Antedios, and I had all been left out, since there was no room, but then Cattos ran into the shallow ocean. Antedios tested the space next to Cattos, but his foot went too deep. He and I stood on standby, waiting to replace a plank that would fall from our bulwark.
The Hillmen poured down in a wave. There were dozens of them, all armed with stonebladed spears, stoneheaded axes, and flint daggers. They browned the red-green moorlands and blue sea and grey stone and then a sea of brown just crashed into the men in front of me.
I could never describe the sounds, Luceo. It all happened too fast to discern. There were shouts in front of and behind me, dogs barked, men grunted, spears and shields and swords all rang, scraped, thumped, cut. Men cried and shouted. I saw one Hillman impaled through the balls on Aldryd’s spear, and Aldryd laughed so hard that his laugh carried over the tumultuous noise.
Another wave of Hillmen came down and pushed their comrades further into us. Antedios and I watched for bowmen among the Hillmen waiting above on the hill, but none came, and then more armed men ran down. Artaxes was either shouting orders or nonsense, for it was all in Greek and I could make out little, and then Tratonius started yelling in Celtic back and I found a moment in that battle to appreciate an Umbrian yelling in Celtic at a Greek.
Verc came out of the line, limping, an acerose flint-blade jammed into his side and broken at the shaft.
‘Hold the fucking line!’ Tratonius shouted.
I nearly knocked Antedios out of the way to jam myself betwixt Cattos and Marthelm, my leather shoes wet in the lapping ocean, shuffling through the shells. I had to prove myself to the men. I had to fight in battle. I had to seek vengeance upon the Hillmen.
A Hillman struck at me with his spear. I slapped the spear down with the edge of my shield. He ran forward, and I bashed him in the face with the shield. He stumbled back and Aldryd jammed his spear through his balls. Aldryd laughed again hard.
‘I’ve taken four balls today!’
More Hillmen clamoured down the path and marshalled their battleline against us.
We vied with our spears and swords. I hunkered below my shield against a raging Hillman, whose eyes blazed and whose mouth gaped open like a striking snake. He shoved against me, they all shoved against us, some of them falling to our blades when they came close, but more Hillmen kept pressing on. They attempted to dislodge us from our position so that they could swarm us, and we refused.
‘Hold it!’ Artaxes shouted in Greek, and I thanked him later that he had taught me the basics, since I could understand so much now.
‘Speak Celtic – you fucking idiot!’ Tratonius shouted at him.
‘I refuse – I will honour them!’ Artaxes cried in Greek, and I did not understand what he had said then, but was told later.
The Hillmen piled against us, like so many men pushing down a tree. A brute of a Hillman came against me and shoved shield-first. I slashed at him but I could do no harm, because my arm had been pinned down by the weight that was against me. A great pressure pressed upon me. My feet slid backward, through the gravely sand, a slimy fish brushed against my calf.
‘On count of three…’ Artaxes’ voice strained as he heaved against the enemy piling themselves to break the dam of sellswords.
‘One.’
The Hillmen piled on even harder, even Hillmen on the high pathway were pushing down on the backs of their comrades.
‘Two.’
The ocean wrapped around my ankles, I struggled to gain footing as I had stepped into a hole, and the Hillmen were splashing through and shoving us hard.
‘Three!’
The Hillmen launched back in a grand collective shove. They had all been cramped together. Many lost their balance, some fell, others tripped, and there was general disarray among them.
‘Murder them!’ Tratonius shouted and his voice cracked. ‘Murder them! Come on, murder them before they reform!’
Now iron was among the Hillmen, and blood mixed with sand.
We slaughtered them, Luceo. We slaughtered them there on the strand. We fought with the ferocity of cornered badgers, the stubbornness of hungry ravens, and the eagerness of unchained wolves. We hacked and stabbed and slashed and sliced by sword and spear and knife until our feet were wetter with blood than with seawater. The Hillmen panicked, heeled, and retreated, leaving their dead, dying, and wounded.
I approached a Hillman lying in the sand in a bloody crumple. I pointed Vidav at him. The Hillman looked back up at me, his eyes aglow, his face pallid, with the look of a man soon to be taken by death. His brown moustache twitched over his trembling lips.
Hatred overtook me, Luceo. I hated this invader, so unfortunate to fall within my grasp. I relished in slaughtering them and wished I could slaughter them all, and I would, one by one, starting with this one. They had killed my family, taken my land, sundered my homeland, enslaved women and children, and now dared to stand between Myrnna and Dun Torrin. He had to die, and I raised Vidav to strike his neck off his body.
‘Come back to the Slighan Hill,’ the dying Hillman said, not only in Celtic but even as an Ashaiger.
I began to sweat harder. Something had taunted me. I struck the foeman with my spear, and the life fell out of his eyes.
Dead Hillmen littered the area around us. Father War reaped his toll through me, for I commanded these men, and though I had not given them the orders, I had brought them here to conduct this slaughter. The whole ordeal happened so suddenly and with such brutality that it was like a passing breeze. The Hillmen army had attacked us and then they were defeated and now routed.
‘Hail Camulus!’ I cried out, raising my bloody sword skyward.
‘Camulus!’ Verc shouted. ‘Hail Camulus!’
‘Hail Athena!’ Artaxes shouted.
‘Mars, bloodstained Mars!’ Tratonius shouted.
‘Tiwaz – glory to his name!’ Marthelm shouted.
The Hillmen routed. They left the jagged pass and soon none were to be seen except the dead, wounded and some stragglers, who were in retreat.
Camulus, Athena, Mars, Tiwaz – indeed. ‘Kill them!’ I shouted, my eyes on two Hill-foes that were attempting to escape but who were caught between two jagged boulders.
‘Kill them, he said!’ Aldryd said and soon his knife was upon them. He crouched down near a Hillmen who gripped his knee, yet Aldryd just slashed his throat, and then the bloody mercenary headed over to his next prey and reaped the throat from that one, and again and again, and I had never seen Aldyrd smile except for then and his smile was wide.
‘Idiots! They could have been our ransom!’ Tratonius said.
‘Kill them,’ Aldryd said. ‘Kill them, big chief!’ He said as he held the knife to a pleading Hillman’s neck and pushed it in and then ripped it out.
I glanced over to Myrnna, who had her shoulders to her ears, and then I heard Artaxes. He was sobbing something in Greek and I looked at him. Without looking at me, but gazing down at the ocean, he spoke in Celtic.
‘We don’t deserve to live,’ he said.
‘What, man?’ I asked.
‘We don’t deserve to live when Leonidas and his glorious three-hundred died in such a way.’
‘Stop your babbling!’ Tratonius said. ‘We have to parley!’
‘No,’ Verc said, limping up to us. ‘Seonaidh said to march down the strand. Down the strand we go!’
‘It’s our only chance,’ Tratonius said.
‘Our only chance of what?’ Verc asked, the long bangs of the front of his head blowing in the wind. ‘Our only chance of living? Why do you want to live so long, Tratonius? Have you not lived long enough? Have you regrets in your life?’
‘It’s suicide,’ Tratonius said. ‘There are too many of them. We will just be killed and that’s it.’
‘And what of it? Why should we, as men, seek to prolong our lives so long, when we can end them shortly in glory?’ Verc asked.
‘Then you go first, if you’re so eager for glory,' Tratonius said.
Verc started down the strand, and I followed him. After I caught up, I took position in front of him. The rest of the men followed me.
The shells shifted beneath our feet as we walked down the narrow strand between the sea and the hills, the black hot Cuillins in the distance, the red hill of Slighan somewhere nestled beyond. Gulls screeched over our heads and crows cawed from copses afar. Waves crashed against the skerries in the shallows. The land swept westward into the sea, and when we traversed the bend of broken boulders and scree, the wave-knocked, wind-harrowed cliffside fortress of Torrin appeared on the horizon.
There, around Dun Torrin, a swathe of black-headed Hillmen pocked the moors like a man moribund with plague. There were so many of them, a flint-armed horde – more men than I had ever seen.
‘They’re around the fort, but they haven’t sent any more against us, but we can’t see too well here,’ Tratonius said. ‘Send some scouts ahead.’
‘Cattos – Antedios,’ I said.
Tratonius placed a hand out to stop Antedios at his chest. ‘Send Cicarus instead. He’s shorter and more agile.’
Cicarus and Cattos ran off ahead of us. They headed to a jagged rock formation and they both hauled themselves up, and then they split-up. We continued down the beach, silent, and I looked back at Myrnna near pithy, hairy Orca, and she just gazed back at me with those big, shiny brown eyes.
‘They should stay back,’ Tratonius said.
‘Stay back,’ I said. ‘Orca, be watchful of Myrnna!’
Cattos tumbled down from his perch, righted himself and rushed toward us. ‘Hundreds of them!’ he cried. ‘Hundreds of Hillmen, marching down toward us!’
The men mumbled a bit, and I ordered them to march on.
‘And Cicarus,’ Cattos said between breaths. ‘Cicarus ran!’
‘Ran where?’ I asked.
‘When he saw the Hillmen, he just ran away! He said something but I didn’t hear it.’
‘The coward!’ I shouted. ‘You hear me, Cicarus?! You coward!’
‘He owes you nothing,’ Tratonius said.
‘Let him go backward. We go onward,’ Verc said.
‘Madness!’ Tratonius said. ‘What is the purpose of this? What can we do against hundreds?’
‘Seonaidh said,’ I began, and Tratonius interrupted me.
‘What is wrong, lad? Had Luna smote you with her kiss in the night?’
‘We march,’ Verc said, and he limped forward. I followed. The rest followed.
‘Yeah, I get it,’ Tratonius said. ‘You Gauls are only afraid of when the sky falls down on you, or when the ground opens below you.’
Tratonius had been sarcastic, yet it straightened my spine.
‘Who said that?’ I asked.
‘The Gauls that met Alexander,’ he responded.
‘Who was he?’
‘The greatest king,’ Artaxes said. ‘So great that we are unfit to speak about him.’
‘He met some Gauls. He asked what they feared the most. Surely, anyone would say Alexander. Who could not? He had conquered all worlds. The Gauls just responded that they were afraid of the sky falling and hitting them in the heads, or the ground opening up and swallowing them whole. Alexander’s men had a good laugh, and he was grumpy for nine days.’
