the new sun gilded the silver mask hanging from the high branch of the flowering tree, he drained the last of the milk and found the cup empty.
I don’t remember getting back to the rest where they waited looking, gazing at the fortress across the water. But I did.
I sat with them on the grass beside the mound that once held the signal tower and we waited. The wind from the ocean continued to blow the stench of the dead away from us. There was still some wine left from the supply we had taken from the Saxons. Ure and Gray shared it out among the rest of us, though I declined.
They held me, the dead. I knew, because Ure asked me a question. He got an answer. One of them spoke to him. Yes, the voice issued from my mouth, tongue, and throat, but I didn’t say the words, nor were they in a language I understood.
For a second he looked startled. Then he met my eyes with an expression of cold comprehension. And I knew he understood, somehow understood where I had been and what I had been doing. Then, features impassive, he strolled away behind me toward where Gray and the Wolf Lord, Maeniel, were standing. I didn’t follow him with my eyes. They were still under my control.
The two spirits within me were still fixed on vengeance and their minds, such as they were, remained directed at the fortress, a shadow against a horizon of gray clouds. As night closed in, sometimes it rained passing spatters or even brief, drenching downpours. After sunset there were lights at the fortress and some on a beach nearby.
It must have been near midnight when Ure whispered, “Everybody up and into the boats. ’Tis now or never.”
We rose as one. I couldn’t tell if any of us felt fear or not. Maybe it didn’t matter what we felt. Once a decision is made, the flow of events carries you on, the way a river in flood sweeps a fallen leaf onward toward an unguessable destination.
I had one consolation amidst the hatred and desolation that was battering my soul. I had summoned the most dangerous of the dead and could do no more.
The boats moved out over water invisible to our eyes. I am told that near cities it is easier to see at night because the light from the human dwellings reflects back from the clouds. But we were near no city or even any modest village or town. The marsh lay in utter Cimmerian blackness, relieved only by the brief apparitions of the quarter moon through occasional openings in the clouds. The water between ourselves and the fortress was a shallow, brackish lake dotted with islands of reeds and saw grass. Fireflies collected over the grassy hummocks, and we steered our boats between what looked like clusters of stars.
We knew we were close to the fortress when we felt the pull created by the river current as it flowed swiftly past the broken walls. We plied the oars with a will, crossed in spite of the current, and landed below the spot where the fortress stood. The Romans had located it on the highest ground for many miles, but even so, it was none too safe. The gates that once opened to face the river were gone, and the walls that once surrounded them were a high, unstable jumble of fallen masonry, fully as forbidding as the intact walls on the other three sides.
The hunger in my heart for vengeance pulled me hard, at a run. A run that began as soon as I left the boat.
Why not?
I thought. Gray, Maeniel, and Ure would know where to mass our forces.
Long ago the Romans moved the gates to one side of the fortress, the one that faced upriver. They would go there and wait. Wait for me to play my part. That was crucial. I must burn the pirates out.
“She,” the one who was drowned in the mud . . . or had she been buried alive? I wasn’t sure. “She” took my hand. I felt her fleshless fingers twine with mine. “She” played here as a child and under the water at the foot of the ruined wall was a quay where ships once docked. I could walk along its stones and reach the lowest point of the wall. True, the quay
I don’t remember getting back to the rest where they waited looking, gazing at the fortress across the water. But I did.
I sat with them on the grass beside the mound that once held the signal tower and we waited. The wind from the ocean continued to blow the stench of the dead away from us. There was still some wine left from the supply we had taken from the Saxons. Ure and Gray shared it out among the rest of us, though I declined.
They held me, the dead. I knew, because Ure asked me a question. He got an answer. One of them spoke to him. Yes, the voice issued from my mouth, tongue, and throat, but I didn’t say the words, nor were they in a language I understood.
For a second he looked startled. Then he met my eyes with an expression of cold comprehension. And I knew he understood, somehow understood where I had been and what I had been doing. Then, features impassive, he strolled away behind me toward where Gray and the Wolf Lord, Maeniel, were standing. I didn’t follow him with my eyes. They were still under my control.
The two spirits within me were still fixed on vengeance and their minds, such as they were, remained directed at the fortress, a shadow against a horizon of gray clouds. As night closed in, sometimes it rained passing spatters or even brief, drenching downpours. After sunset there were lights at the fortress and some on a beach nearby.
It must have been near midnight when Ure whispered, “Everybody up and into the boats. ’Tis now or never.”
We rose as one. I couldn’t tell if any of us felt fear or not. Maybe it didn’t matter what we felt. Once a decision is made, the flow of events carries you on, the way a river in flood sweeps a fallen leaf onward toward an unguessable destination.
I had one consolation amidst the hatred and desolation that was battering my soul. I had summoned the most dangerous of the dead and could do no more.
The boats moved out over water invisible to our eyes. I am told that near cities it is easier to see at night because the light from the human dwellings reflects back from the clouds. But we were near no city or even any modest village or town. The marsh lay in utter Cimmerian blackness, relieved only by the brief apparitions of the quarter moon through occasional openings in the clouds. The water between ourselves and the fortress was a shallow, brackish lake dotted with islands of reeds and saw grass. Fireflies collected over the grassy hummocks, and we steered our boats between what looked like clusters of stars.
We knew we were close to the fortress when we felt the pull created by the river current as it flowed swiftly past the broken walls. We plied the oars with a will, crossed in spite of the current, and landed below the spot where the fortress stood. The Romans had located it on the highest ground for many miles, but even so, it was none too safe. The gates that once opened to face the river were gone, and the walls that once surrounded them were a high, unstable jumble of fallen masonry, fully as forbidding as the intact walls on the other three sides.
The hunger in my heart for vengeance pulled me hard, at a run. A run that began as soon as I left the boat.
Why not?
I thought. Gray, Maeniel, and Ure would know where to mass our forces.
Long ago the Romans moved the gates to one side of the fortress, the one that faced upriver. They would go there and wait. Wait for me to play my part. That was crucial. I must burn the pirates out.
“She,” the one who was drowned in the mud . . . or had she been buried alive? I wasn’t sure. “She” took my hand. I felt her fleshless fingers twine with mine. “She” played here as a child and under the water at the foot of the ruined wall was a quay where ships once docked. I could walk along its stones and reach the lowest point of the wall. True, the quay
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