The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff

Author:Rosemary Sutcliff
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Europe, Young Adult, Childrens, Action & Adventure, Fiction, Historical, Boys & Men, Ancient Civilizations
ISBN: 9780192751799
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2001-07-14T23:00:00+00:00

12

Brown Sister, Golden Sister

CRADOC had exaggerated the richness of his own valley, Aquila thought, as he rode down from the low saddle of the hills, following the track that the man at the ford in the last valley had pointed out to him. The place was mostly under bracken—bracken beginning to turn now, and patched with bright buttercup gold where it had been cut for litter and not yet carried; and the hall that he glimpsed below him in the bend of the valley, with its huddle of turf bothies around it, was the usual squat, heather-thatched hall of every petty Chieftain, lord of a few mountain valleys, a few hundred cattle, a few score spears. But maybe one’s own valley, when one was away from it, was always richer than anyone else’s; one’s own orchard bore sweeter apples. Maybe even his own valley in the Down Country … He reined back his mind from the memory as he might have reined the red mare Inganiad back from a pit in the track before them.

It was almost a year since he had come up with Eugenus the Physician to take service with the Prince of Britain. A year in which he had made some kind of mended life for himself, some kind of place among Ambrosius’s Companions, some kind of name for himself—and the name, he knew, was not altogether a pleasant one. The dark man with the scarred forehead and the frown always between his eyes had no friends. He went always in a kind of armour, and a man who does that cannot have friends. They called him the Dolphin, as old Bruni had done, because of the pattern on his shoulder; and they called him the Lone Wolf. Felix could have told them that he hadn’t always been like that; Felix, with whom he had laughed, and shot wild fowl over Tanatus Marshes. But Felix was like enough dead by now in the Padus marshes in defence of Rome. They said the Vandals were pressing down Italy again.

Automatically he gathered the mare, steadying her for the stony, downward plunge of the track; but his thoughts went wandering back over the summer that had gone by since the Young Foxes had come in with their Chieftains behind them; the summer that he had spent training men as he had spent winter breaking horses, striving to hammer into wild, mounted tribesmen some idea of what made disciplined cavalry. It was odd to find himself something like a Decurion of Horse again.

Only a few weeks ago they had heard that Vortigern, deserted by his sons and most of his followers, had fled north, to the lands held by Octa and his war bands, and now Ambrosius rode south to hold counsel with his new allies. It was so that Aquila, sent ahead of the main party, was riding down into Cradoc’s valley this still autumn day, to warn him that Ambrosius would be there by dusk, claiming lord’s shelter for himself and his Companions as they passed by.

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