Hag of the Hills, page 26
‘Then that is all I fear,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘You don’t care when you die, whether tomorrow or the next year, as long as men speak of your deeds. That’s what you Gauls say.’
‘I’ve never heard that,’ I said.
‘Well now you have,’ Tratonius said.
If all of us die today, and no bards witness our deaths, the sidhe will dance at our places of death and sing our deeds,’ Verc said.
‘I hope they are good at dancing, then,’ Tratonius said.
We rounded the bend and on the long, narrow grassy plain between us and Dun Torrin, hundreds of Hillmen were gathered. They stood in clusters of twelve, and half of the clusters moved toward us. I could see nothing but a swathe of black heads and brown woollen tunics. Bowmen stood rank by rank, marching toward us, arrows nocked. Seagulls wheeled over our heads. The ocean crashed against the cliffside fortress of Dun Torrin, hazy in the distance, but visible. I looked back at Myrnna. She was almost to Dun Torrin. All that stood in my way were hundreds, perhaps a thousand, foemen.
‘Forward,’ I said.
‘They’ll shoot you,’ Tratonius said.
‘Have trust and faith in me,’ Verc said. ‘And fill your heart with courage.’
Verc and I stood abreast, and Marthelm followed so closely behind me that I could feel his breath on my neck.
‘We are fearless – warriors, men, friends. Death and glory both draw near,’ Verc said.
‘Hubris,’ Artaxes said.
‘Befitting a lion-king,’ Verc said.
‘The gods will punish us,’ Artaxes said.
‘Then let them.’
We marched closer, edging toward the Hillmen. A tern flew down, its blue-white body dove at us, and squawked as it wheeled over our heads. We must have neared its nest, and now it was vexed. In those moments, I wondered why it could not understand that we were no threat to its eggs, and all the while it threatens us, a weasel could sneak into its nest and devour each of its young.
The Hillmen had spotted us long ago and their ranks advanced toward us, row by row, bowmen ready. Soon we would step into arrow range. I knew that. The tern flew away as I passed a glance over to the Slighan Hill. Then came the crows.
There was a storm of crows. Their squawking and cawing assailed me. They swirled around me, wings beating against my chest, their mouths gaped as they cawed. They whirlpooled around me, pecking at me. I raised my shield to my face and one perched upon my shield and squawked into my ear.
Come back to the Slighan Hill!
Hoarse and throaty crows cawed at me until I found myself crumbled over my leg. My shield thudded in the sand and Vidav clanged against it. The crows descended upon me and pecked and prodded with their hateful black beaks.
Badb herself flew among them, arresting me, imprisoning me to her wrath. I cowered on the ground, as still as bog water. Badb vanished when something else passed over me, something fleshy and red. I came out of it, and there I found myself crawling out from underneath Verc’s shield.
He had been pelted in arrows. He sighed. He died on top of me.
Hot hands grabbed me. The whirlwind of crows had vanished and now Tratonius hauled me down the strand. I hobbled on my now bad ankle.
A wedge of Hillmen rushed us. They passed over the body of Verc and toward us. They outnumbered us nine to one methought and they were armed with spears and maces and other flint weapons.
‘They’re going to fire again!’ Someone shouted, I don’t know who. The men all raced down into the confines of the rock outcrop jutting out of the hill, beyond the bend and out of sight of the Hillmen. I began to hobble back and then a scream, so shrill and loud and like a mother knows her babe, I knew my Myrnna.
The Hillmen had assaulted our rear. Orca dodged a blow from a mace and bound the foe’s weapon with his sword-arm and worked the sword-edge through the leather thongs of his enemy’s wooden hauberk. He stepped back and away and evaded another strike, the mountain of a man, still injured, finessed his way out. One Hillman shoved Sabella out of the way and another darted across the strand chased by Chaser and Groaner, and the last Hillman smote Myrnna across the face, and seized her as she fell, hoisting her onto his shoulders and darting up toward the inland slope.
I hobbled closer and closer, holding Verc’s shield close to me, my spear in my clutch. Myrnna rioted on the Hillman’s shoulders but she could not fall free. I whistled hard like Verc, and then came Groaner and Chaser and they loped across the beach, their snouts wet and red. They trailed the Hillman kidnapper until they came close. They forced the Hillman to turn around and retreat toward me, away from the slope, and then I prepared to take aim at the Hillman’s legs with my spear. Lugus, Long-armed, send me your aid, may I neither miss the Hillman nor strike Myrnna! Ambicatos, I will save your daughter!
Groaner screeched. Another Hillman had impaled him through the neck with a flint-spear. Groaner wheeled on the ground, grounded by the spear. Chaser snarled and barked at his enemy and before the Hillman could dislodge the spear from the dog, Orca was upon him. Like some kind of bear, he charged, grimacing, his face so red I could see it bright from so far away. The Hillman finally yanked the spear out from the lifeless Groaner. Orca raised his sword and cleft the Hillman’s head down to the jaw. Myrnna fell off the Hillman and she hit the ground, rolled up to her feet and rushed away. Chaser quarried the other Hillman toward me, his back to me, and I then raised the spear and tossed it. It went through the Hillman’s back. Orca was still screaming and now wildly slashing and stabbing at the two other Hillmen and Chaser ran over to them.
‘Here!’ Tratonius cried. ‘Come here!’
Myrnna fled toward him, and now I realized that the Hillmen would not shoot us if she were near us. They wanted her, for whatever reason, and by Camulus they would get her only if I lay as dead as Verc and Groaner. I hobbled to the men. We formed a circle with Myrnna in the middle.
‘Wait for Sabella!’ the slave mistress shouted, running toward the circle with Frowon trailing behind her. They joined Myrnna in the middle of us, and we all stood back-to-back, weapons drawn, with the Hillmen funnelling down the beach toward us.
‘Orca!’ Tratonius shouted, and he shouted again and soon we were all shouting at Orca as if he had been stricken deaf. He had been hacking at the Hillman who slew poor Groaner. The two Hillmen were dead and he and Chaser came back wet with blood. They joined the circle and Chaser stood next to me, hackles up, growling. Orca breathed so heavily and had been crying. I never thought I’d see such a brutal man cry.
There we stood, all seven of us in a ring, with Myrnna and the slave girls in the centre of us. The Hillmen now came, dozens upon dozens of them, from both sides of us. They were all armed with melee weapons, mostly flint daggers with blocky wooden shields, flint-tipped spears and polished stone maces and axes. They all had black hair, black as their flint, all black as bog oak, and their bodies adorned in wooden hauberks as brown as the sand below our feet. Soon we were surrounded by them, and Sabella handed Myrnna a flint-bladed knife.
‘It’s a better fate,’ she said to Myrnna.
The Hillmen assembled all around us, readying their spears. We all stood there in a circle, awaiting our fate at the hands of the Hillmen. The Hillmen walked over Verc, his lifeless body half covered in sand, and I realized how honoured I had been for him to give his life for me, and to carry his shield before I met a similar fate. We would all die there, with Dun Torrin in the distance, shrouded in mist.
‘Of all men to die like that! Such cowards the Hillmen are!’ Cattos said, his voice cracking, and he swallowed a sob.
‘Do not honour him by mourning, honour him by killing,’ Marthelm said.
I unsheathed Vidav from my hip, my wrist skyward, my thumb on the blade just like Verc had taught me. I’ll honour him by killing in his stance.
One Hillman shouted in front of us, and another behind us, and both sides crashed into us in successive waves. They pincered us, pressuring from each side, us just a shell of which to be pried open. I remember it well, Luceo. Their drab, dark clothes, their sandaled feet shuffling through the sand, kicking it up and dusting us, their black flint-tipped spears jabbing at us.
Tratonius had ordered us to spread out for room to fight and we defended ourselves.
A spear came at me and I slapped it away with the edge of Verc’s shield. I jabbed my sword at a foeman, a lanky man with a soot-stained face, and he held down my sword with his as another spearman jabbed right at me. I blocked with the shield, and now another spear came at my exposed body. I cringed, bracing myself for the strike, but Aldryd slammed the spear away with his own. Tratonius took a step forward, poised to strike one Hillman with his spear, but pivoted and jammed it into the exposed thigh of another Hillman. I blocked again, and again, the spears pounding my shield like a hammer on an anvil. Chaser lunged into the fray, his jaw wrapping around the arm of a spearman. They tumbled over and Artaxes jammed the fallen Hillman in the belly with his spear, and blood spurted over Chaser’s face. Orca whistled and Chaser fell back to our circle. An axman eyed me and swung at me, but I blocked with Verc’s shield. The enemy lurched forward but slipped in blood and fell and then another spear was upon him.
‘Hold them here!’ Tratonius shouted. ‘See your feet? Don’t move past them!’
They pressed on. We held them. Spears assailed the air around me, I blocked and ducked and jumped back away from them. I hopped in and out of the footprints in the sand that Tratonius commanded I do not pass. The swathe of brown and black parted and four Hillmen charged into us, all waving flint axes. I buckled behind the shield and struck one in the thigh with Vidav. Tratonius shield-bashed one and then was hit in the shoulder with the ax. He yelled and struck again, smashing the Hillman in his jaw with his spear. The Hillman staggered around, blood and splinters of bone where his face had been, and fell over. The other Hillmen shoved into us, they shouted and I thought I heard them shouting in Celtic but then the weapons beat against my shield, and I hunkered behind it until Tratonius yelled at me.
‘Vidav, attack them!’ He yelled. ‘Don’t just use the shield as a wall, use it as a weapon!’
I shield-bashed the nearest Hillmen. He sprawled backwards and landed in the sand with a crunch. Another Hillman wielding a stone mace swung it at me. I raised the shield and pain shot from my hand to elbow, right down to the bone. I faltered in my stance realizing that the shield had been split right down the middle.
‘What did I tell you?!’ Tratonius yelled at me, as he parried blows from a spear with his sword.
The Hillman swung at me, I caught his hand with my nearly ruined shield, remembering what Verc had done, and pivoted and slashed his head clean off with Vidav. The head rolled and one Hillman tripped on it, when he looked down at what he saw he screamed and then others began to flee, and then before my eyes, the Hillmen retreated. We survived, and the hundreds of them had been checked by the few.
‘They’re hesitating,’ Tratonius said, and laughed. ‘They’re hesitating! You’re hesitating, you cowards! Remember that! Remember that every night you go to bed – with your bone-dry wives – that seven men scared hundreds!’
‘Can we beat them?’ Antedios asked.
Tratonius looked as if he would shout at Antedios, but then just shook his head and laughed.
‘No, but it’s a good death.’
‘Then we can honour our gods of the dead,’ Cattos said.
Two loud, long notes from the carnyxes soared across the beach. I savoured the sounds. I remembered the old myth where the dead men ride down to the Underworld, where they are dipped into the cauldron of rebirth by Great Dadga, and then return to this world at the sound of the carnyx to live again. I died when I killed Brennus, and now I live again, in this world anew, as Vidav, commanding a tiny group of men that stood against hundreds. The carnyxes heralded both my life and my death.
The Hillmen chattered among themselves, their chatter incessant to me as I would rather hear the ocean roar, the wind whisper, and the gulls cry than them in my last moments. Before I wondered if they could understand us, for the ones that possessed shields beat their weapons against them in unison, shattering whatever tranquillity their momentary quietness allowed, and one of them blew a horn. They charged at us again.
We held them off. We defended. We blocked and parried. We struck with our swords and spears when the opportunity arose. We counterattacked them when they attacked us. Only three of the Hillmen laid dead around us, but when they backed off, and by the gods, Luceo, they backed off, we left dozens wounded and the lot of them spooked that seven had held hundreds back.
I tasted sweat, I tasted blood, and the last Hillman I killed that day tasted my sword for I cleft him from eye to chin and his eye popped out and he stepped on it and fell over into his two comrades, who proceeded to shove him away only to be met by a spear from Tratonius through the thigh, while Aldryd stabbed the other in the chest. The Hillmen kept coming now, there must have been hundreds of them surrounding us entirely, engulfing us in a sea of black and brown against a grey sky and sea. Aldryd, next to me, grinned as he danced out of range of the foe-blades, danced back in, and stabbed the enemy, whittling them down like one whittles a sharp stick.
Then came the singing, oh Luceo! We thought we would die that day, and there sang Artaxes: ‘Ares, you force my hand. I war for you, but I am just a man.’
He repeated that verse throughout, and I thought I ought to hear something Celtic before I died.
‘The carnyxes, men!’ I shouted at Cattos and Antedios. They dropped their spears and shields and raised the carnyxes from the ground and blew into them in hard spats, their spitting beast faces screeching out toward the Hillmen.
Now Orca and Tratonius sang something in their language. Tratonius was off-key but Orca sang beautifully, so unbecoming of the man. Soon Marthelm sang, too, in German. It was a discorded song, and it overawed me, as the carnyxes shot down the beach and carried the groans of the Otherworld to our enemies.
‘Your sword has drunk much blood,’ Aldryd said to me. ‘It was fun to kill with you.’
I nodded to him.
‘Do you resent me?’ I asked Tratonius, my heart sinking.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I knew it would end like this. I spent too much of my life sword-selling. It’s not so bad to die now, here with the son of Biturix.’
That was all I needed to hear, Luceo. I thought of my father, at my flank. If only he could have seen me, in Camulus’ horns, in a kingly torc, with Verc’s damaged shield, bronze brooch at my chest. I was covered in bronze, gold, and iron. Men stood at my side, my men, my comrades ready to kill and die for me. I even had a dog, a hunting dog. A dog had died bravely in defence of my oath. A man – a warrior – a friend, had died to save my life. The hardest part of my father’s death is that I could never tell him these things on Taman, and each day I walk and regret that, but perhaps when we meet in Otherworld, I will tell him of this day.
I imagined him at my side, and Bodvoc, at my other side, and Fennigus behind me, and Verc, and King Ambicatos, with their manly hearts ablaze watching me meet my painful end. Lappie and Groaner stood at my flanks. I have become war, I am Camulus!
The Hillmen charged. They hemmed us in from all sides now, a wall of shields, spears, and swords against a sea of flint. Flint-bladed spears decked in bright coloured feathers struck over my head, around my shoulders, between my legs, and clanged against Verc’s shield. A Hillman struck at me with a flint dagger, so I swung my sword inward, toward my ankle, just as Verc had taught me. I parried with the blade of my sword and then twisted my wrist to slash him across the leg. He backed off, and more came. Then came more spears, more axes, more maces, more swords, more Hillmen.
Soon hundreds surrounded us. We braced against them. Tratonius swung his shield around his pithy body, blocking blows and delivering his own through his spear which clanged against the wooden hauberk of a warrior. Aldryd ducked and skidded and danced against them, stabbing and marring them. Cattos and Antedios had dropped their war-trumpets and struck with their spears. Orca belted verses in Oscan while he slashed the throat of a Hillman, whose head wobbled and creaked and fell backwards as blood shot up from the sand. Chaser tore at the neck of another dead Hillman. Marthelm’s spear crushed the jaw of another Hillman who had just struck at me. Artaxes, his bronze form shimmering brighter than the sea next to us, tossed a javelin and it struck what looked to be a chief – marked by his red face-paint – right through his collar.
Myrnna stared at me. I knew she did. I could not meet her eyes, her big warm brown eyes – too busy I was in my warcraft. I parried a spear and blocked a blade and chopped the arm off a Hillman who had charged me and then Tratonius struck another through his belly and his viscera poured out like a cascade causing him to slip in it. Aldyrd shoved his spear into the groin of a man and shouted about how many balls he had gotten. It was eight. We injured, we slew, we forced them to heel, but they kept coming. They all backed off again, the ground left in ruts and turmoil and the sand caked with blood.
I turned to Myrnna now. Our eyes met.
‘I’ll kill her, Domine,’ Sabella said, and my gut wrenched. She was too eager. She wrapped her arm around Myrnna’s shoulder and put the black blade to her throat. Myrnna just stared at me with big dry brown eyes.
The old whore was right. I should have Myrnna killed. She would ideally kill herself; but it was better for someone else to, I had to have the certainly that Myrnna was dead rather than taken alive by the Hillmen. Her father would have wanted that, and it would be for the best.
I shook my head. ‘Not yet,’ I said, and my knees buckled. What if Sabella could not kill her quick enough? What if the Hillmen killed us, broke through our line, and apprehended her? And then what shall happen to her? Rape? Sell her off as a slave? They wanted her. They cared enough about her to not shoot us, to sacrifice their own lives in retrieving her, to stale in killing us and let us humiliate them on the beach, skirmish by skirmish. If Sabella does not kill her, will my oath be a failure?
