The Dog and the Wolf (3 page)

Niall went on to overrun territories allied to the Ulati, against whom his grand design lay. He had not forgotten his curse on Ys, but must first complete his conquests in northern Ériu.

While preparations for this were in train, he made a massive raid on Britannia. In his absence, resentful Eochaid entered Mide at the head of an army and plundered it widely. Niall gathered his forces next year and broke the Lagini, ravaged their lands, and collected the ruinous Bóruma tribute. He also took back Eochaid and other high-born young men as hostages, and kept them harshly confined. This was contrary to his usual practice. He treated very well those from the north whom he had as sureties. They had earned him the nickname Niall of the Nine Hostages.

Gratillonius in Ys was maintaining an ever more uneasy balance, trying to keep his subjects content despite religious and secular conflicts, to build up the strength of Armorica despite Roman laws forbidding or Roman bureaucracy discouraging what he saw as necessary actions, and at the same time to keep from provoking the Imperium into ordering an invasion of the city. He made a number of domestic enemies, notably Nagon Demari, Labor Councillor.

As she grew toward maturity, Dahut became the belle of Ys, her frequent strangenesses overlooked for the sake of her beauty and vivacity. The death of her seal cast her into deep grief until her father offered her what consolation he could and vowed he would never forsake her. Thereafter, under the tutelage of Forsquilis, she cultivated more and more of her magical powers. It heightened her arrogance. Yet she bedazzled young men. Among these were three foreigners now resident in Ys, Tommaltach, the Gallo-Roman Carsa, and the legionary Budic.

By then Niall had invaded the country of the Ulati and subjugated much of it. While he was there, Rufinus came to Mumu and proceeded to Mide, ostensibly carrying a peace feeler, actually in the hope of stirring up trouble for
Gratillonius’s great enemy. He made the acquaintance of the wretched hostage Eochaid and engineered the latter’s escape. On his way home, driven half mad by hardship, Eochaid met and killed Tigernach. The slayer of a poet could not remain in Ériu, even in his native Fifth. Eochaid got some followers and went into exile as a pirate. Tigernach’s father Laidchenn satirized the Lagini for a year, bringing such a famine on them that for long afterward they were nearly powerless. These events sharpened both Eochaid’s vengefulness toward Niall and Niall’s toward Ys. The King began to prepare himself by learning the language and customs of the city.

There certain matters came to a head. Gratillonius brought criminal charges against Nagon Demari and got him dismissed. Doubly embittered, Nagon moved to Turonum and won somewhat the confidence of the provincial governor Glabrio and the procurator Bacca. These men saw renascent Ys as a threat to the shaky Imperium and Gratillonius himself as a threat to their careers. They conspired with Nagon.

Gratillonius had also made mortal enemies among the Franks at Redonum, Germanic barbarians who had forced Rome to let them settle there as laeti, responsible for much of the defense. They had hesitated to send challengers against him at the Wood, since he had always won, but Nagon persuaded them to come in a large body and pit a new man against the King every day. Eventually one must prevail. Glabrio and his colleagues arranged that the Ysan armed forces, who would have denied the Franks entry, would be off on joint maneuvers with the Romans.

Gratillonius overcame his first opponent but was hurt. Dahut again proved her powers by healing him with a touch. He then organized a band of Ysan civilians and his legionaries to attack the Franks, few of whom escaped. Otherwise, after his death, the city would have been occupied by them and suffered horribly. Nevertheless, this was another defiance of the old law, the old Gods. A further one occurred when, in fulfillment of a battlefield vow, he made a bull sacrifice to Mithras at the grave of Eppillus.

He overrode the magnates who considered this a sacrilege,
and the people remained on his side, but it seemed the Gods were now determined to break his spirit. Old Fennalis died, and the Sign came on Dahut.

Jubilant, she hastened to him. This would begin the new Age, of which she would be the new Brennilis. The union of King and daughter was not forbidden; there had been cases in the past. She was aghast, then enraged when Gratillonius refused. His faith forbade.

It brought a crisis in Ys. Under Vindilis’s leadership, most of the Nine refused themselves to the King unless he should give Dahut her rights. The one who did not suffered a disabling injury; yet he continued intransigent. Dahilis attempted to trick him into taking her, but failed. All omens that Forsquilis could read were evil. She even appealed to Corentinus; but he could only pray for God’s mercy, he who in the past had more than once worked a miracle.

It began to seem that Dahut might try something desperate. Rufinus sought her out and warned her against it; if necessary, he would kill to protect or avenge his King. Dahut in her turn got Vindilis to blackmail the Gaul into leaving. He was to go down to the South and be an observer and spokesman for Ys at the court of Emperor Honorius—or, rather, Stilicho, the half-barbarian Roman general who had become the effective dictator of the Western Empire. Though this would be a genuine service, Gratillonius was reluctant to let Rufinus depart, since the latter was still more valuable to him in Armorica; but the other man insisted, without really explaining why.

Certainly Gratillonius needed advocates. The Franks had failed to dispose of him for Glabrio, but the heavy casualties he inflicted on those laeti, “defenders of Rome,” gave the governor an opening to press any number of charges against him—illegal actions, dereliction of duty, outright treason. Apuleius helped him get prominent citizens such as Martinus to write testimonials on his behalf.

Meanwhile, with Rufinus out of the way, and with no word of her intentions to anyone, Dahut set herself to bring about her father’s death. A new King would wed her and so carry out the will of the Gods. First she secretly seduced Tommaltach. He challenged Gratillonius, who
killed him in the Wood. Carsa met the same fate. Suspicions of Dahut were voiced to Gratillonius, but only infuriated him—that anyone dared slander the child of Dahilis! Later she took him aside and assured him of her love, despite the unhappy matter dividing them. He believed her. And all the while she was seducing Budic.

This took a long time, he being a devout Christian as well as loyal to his centurion. Meanwhile she bedded Gunnung, a sea rover from Scandia who happened to come visiting in Ys. He promised to fight Gratillonius, but instead slipped away. She finally won Budic over. He challenged, and also died. Now Gratillonius, heartsick, could no longer pretend that suspicions of Dahut were totally unfounded.

Plans for an investigation, which he hoped would clear her name, were interrupted by a summons to Treverorum, to answer the accusations against him. He did to the satisfaction of the praetorian prefect, Ardens, who even promoted him to the rank of tribune. However, the journey there and back went slowly in the dreadful weather of that winter.

Hardly had he left when Niall arrived, in the guise of an aristocratic Hivernian trader looking for new markets. He soon met Dahut, and soon thereafter was in her bed. She fell wildly in love with him. At last she brazenly gave a feast in his honor and lodged him in her house.

Deeply troubled, Vindilis sought out Maeloch, who had always spoken fondly of “little Queen Dahilis” and afterward of her daughter. What was going on? Could Maeloch take his
Osprey
to Hivernia and try to find out something about this Niall, who he really was and what his intentions might be? Maeloch agreed and set sail, though a monstrous storm was brewing.

Gratillonius returned after dark and heard what Dahut had been doing. He was appalled and meant to dig out the truth; but first he should stand his full-moon Watch at the Wood, for in the eyes of the Ysan magnates he was already more than enough in the enmity of the Gods.

Niall persuaded Dahut to steal the royal key as the ultimate token of her love; he said it would give him the power by which he might prevail in combat and become
King. She went through the storm, cast a sleep spell, and took the thing from her father. When she herself was asleep, Niall left her. He got past the guards on the wall, unlocked and unbarred the sea gate, and started back to the ship and crew he had left in the Roman harbor town Gesocribate.

A prophetic dream roused Corentinus. Leaving the many people who had sought refuge from the weather in his church and throughout the city, he went to awaken Gratillonius. The dream had told him the King must be saved. Against Corentinus’s wish, Gratillonius, alarmed, mounted his horse Favonius and galloped back to Ys. A lantern, knocked over as he set forth, ignited the Wood.

He arrived just as the gate flew open and the sea came in. Barely did he stay ahead of the flood. Now his one desire was to save Dahut. He found her fleeing up a street and was about to draw her onto the saddle. Corentinus came striding over the waters and told him not to, lest the weight of her sins drag him down as well. He would have anyhow, but the holy man gave him a vision of the destruction of Ys, his Queens, everything. In his agony he lost hold of Dahut and the sea swept her away.

Somehow Gratillonius and Corentinus won to shore. The miraculous powers went out of the pastor. A handful of others had likewise escaped. Gratillonius recognized that his duty was toward them. But once their survival was assured—he did not know what he could do.

1

There was his hand, her father’s strong hand, closing on the arm she raised toward him. The waters roared and rushed. Wind flung a haze of scud off their tops. Barely through salt blindness could she know it was he and sense
the bulk of the horse he rode. Memory passed like a lightning flash: she had sworn she would never mount that horse again while her father lived. But he was hauling her up out of the sea that would have her.

There was then a shadow behind him in the murk and spume, a tall man who touched a staff to her father’s head. His grip clamped the tighter, but he did not now draw her onward. Waves dashed her to and fro. Tide went in flows and bursts of force. The noise filled heaven and her skull.

It was as if she sensed the sudden anguish, like a current out of his body into hers. The fingers slackened. A surge tore her from them. She screamed. The flood flung a mouthful to choke her. She had a glimpse of him, saw him lean forth, reach after what he had lost. A torrent swept her away.

Terror vanished. Abruptly she was altogether calm and alert. No help remained but in herself. She must hoard her strength, breathe during those instants when the tumult cast her high and hold the breath while it dragged her back under, watch for something to cling to and try to reach it, slowly, carefully. Else she was going to drown.

The sea tumbled her about, an ice-cold ravisher. She whirled through depths that were yellow, green, gray, night-blue. Up in the spindrift she gasped its bitterness and glimpsed walls crumbling. The violence scraped her against them, over and over, but bore her off before she could seize fast. Waves thundered and burst. Wind shouted hollowly.

The snag of a tower passed by and was lost. She understood that the deluge had snatched her from high ground and undertow was bearing her to the deeps. Surf brawled white across the city rampart. Already it had battered stone from stone off the upper courses, made the work into reefs; and still it hammered them, and they slid asunder beneath those blows. Right and left the headlands loomed above the wreckage, darknesses in wildness. Beyond them ramped Ocean.

A shape heaved into view, timbers afloat, fragment of a ship. It lifted on crests, poised jagged against clouds and the first dim daylight, skidded down troughs, rose anew. The gap closed between it and her. She gauged how she
must swim to meet it. For this chance she could spend what might was left her. With the skill of a seal, she struck out, joined herself to the waters, made them help her onward. Her fingertips touched the raft. A roller cloven by a rock sent it from her.

She was among the skerries. Fury swirled around them, fountained above them. Never could she reach one, unless as a broken corpse. Billows crashed over her head.

Dazed, the animal warmth sucked from her, she did not know the last of them for what it was. She was simply in the dark, the time went on and on, her lips parted and she breathed sea. The pain was far off and brief. She spun down endlessly through a whiteness that keened.

At the bottom of that throat was not nullity. She came forth into somewhere outside all bounds. Someone waited. Transfiguration began.

2

Fear knocked in the breast of Gratillonius as he approached the Nymphaeum.

Around him dwelt peace. The stream that fed the sacred canal descended in a music of little waterfalls. Morning sunlight rang off it. This early in the year, the surrounding forest stood mostly bare to the blue overhead. The willows had unsheathed their blades, a green pale and clear if set beside the intensity of the pasture-lands below, but oak and chestnut were still opening buds. Squirrels darted along boughs. Certain birds started to sing. A breeze drifted cool, full of damp odors.

What damage he saw was slight, broken branches, a tree half uprooted. The storm had wrought havoc in the valley; the hills sheltered their halidom.

Nothing whatsoever seemed to have touched the space into which he emerged Swans floated on the pond, peacocks walked the lawn. The image of Belisama Mother stood on its pile of boulders, beneath the huge old linden, above the flowing spring. Earth of flowerbeds, gravel of paths, hedgerows and bowers led his gaze as ever before,
to the colonnaded white building. The glass in its windows flashed him a welcome.

You did not let hoofs mar those grounds. A trail went around their edge to join one behind the Nymphaeum, which led on into the woods and so to the guardhouse and its stable. For the moment, he simply dismounted and tethered Favonius. The stallion snorted and stood quiet, head low. Despite having rested overnight at the last house they reached yesterday, man and beast remained exhausted. Recovery from what had happened would be slow, and then—Gratillonius thought—only in the body, not the spirit. Meanwhile he must plow onward without pause, lest he fell apart.