The Eagle and the Raven by Pauline Gedge

Author:Pauline Gedge
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)

Chapter Twenty-Three

FOR another three nights they journeyed, leaving the safe, dense woodland far behind. The two Catuvellauni hated the open country they now trudged across like wingless moths, exposed to the sweeping hot winds that flowed over the long grass and made it undulate like sea waves, and when they camped under the knots of stunted trees that sheltered in the valleys they were always reluctant to leave. Night after night the waxing moon hung fat and bloated above a vast, clean horizon, watching them complacently as they inched over the hills. The Brigantian urged them on. Hurry, he said, we will be too late, but they did not need his anxious whines to whip them on. With every step they were conscious that their fate lay waiting ahead of them. If they delayed it would contemptuously leave the meeting place and they would find only the impotent shreds of its capricious passing. They were oppressed by the landscape, by the long days of tension, by the silence that lay unfilled by any sound save the high calling of hawks. Sataida, Brigantia’s Goddess of Grief, seemed to permeate the very earth beneath them, and Caradoc began to see the miles behind him as huge stones, jagged and cruel, over which his wife tried to clamber after him, calling him with parched tongue. Once or twice they lay prone in the grass while a cavalry patrol cantered past, but they were not spotted and finally, toward midnight on their fourth day from the forest, they crested a long, slow-rising spur of land and saw lights below them.

The chief pointed. “Venutius should be there.”

“But that is a town!” Caradoc objected. “Venutius will be in an encampment.”

The man clucked impatiently. “Why? When Brigantia is strewn with villages, why should he make a camp? I tell you he is there. We will go down.”

Some sixth sense whispered a warning to Caradoc. Some old, long-forgotten memory stirred as he gazed down on the peaceful town. Was that the bulk of an earthwork in the center? The Brigantians did not erect earthwalls. But the man had already started down, Caelte after him, and Caradoc followed, his mind in confusion and his feet lagging. It was wrong, all wrong, it had been wrong ever since the accursed man had stepped out of the bush. He should have trusted his head, but it was too late. And really, he thought, I am almost too tired to care anymore.

Although the hour was late, the town bustled cheerfully. Traders carrying torches strolled to and fro, freemen sat before their doorskins and gambled or told tales, and here and there a soldier moved, bent on some business of their own. No one took any notice of the travelers as they passed through the gate sunk in the small defence wall, and there was no gateguard to challenge them. They began to climb the smooth, well-laid path that circled the town, rising in lazy spirals. To right and left of them the

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