Читать книгу The Great Captains - Henry Treece - Страница 12

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The young man’s first reaction was to jump up and move to safety behind one of the heavy stones. Then he regained control of his shuddering muscles, remembering his own reputation among the Legion of Ambrosius as a wrestler and knifeman. Besides, the creature that faced him across the fire was small and old. The arms showed through his rags as thin as sticks, not the arms of a dangerous man. Medrodus gave a light laugh and rose to his feet in the firelight. His face, now darkly bearded with the stubble of three days, was set in a cruel smile. He moved, lithe as an animal, round the fire and stood before the bundle of rags that now sat rocking and crooning in the fire-glow.

“You are not welcome, my friend,” he said viciously. Then with a sudden violence he reached down and grasped the wrists of the stranger, meaning to fling him across the stones, away from the fire.

Yet the strong hands of Medrodus gripped nothing, and the thin dry wrists were outside his own taut fingers. Medrodus grabbed at the man again, and once more grasped only the air. And now the stranger flung the thick hair back from his face and was looking up at him, his eyes hooded, his toothless mouth open, black as a pit and grinning.

Medrodus was, despite his cruelty, a brave man who did not accept defeat readily. Yet he was also a man of imagination, sensitive as a leopard or a snake in spring. He stared down in wonder at the ragged watcher by the fire, and as he did so the man began to rise to his feet, unaided it seemed by any movement of the arms or legs, moving without effort, like a leaf caught in some slow upward turning of the winds.

For a moment the eyes of Medrodus seemed to deceive him, for the man rose and rose among the flickering shadows about the dying fire until he grew to a strange and supernatural height. Now he was taller than a javelin, and looked down, laughing silently, at the shrinking Roman, the long rags flapping about him with the scent of the tomb, his stark white ribs showing through the rents of his garment like the channel stairs to hell.

Then he held out his arms towards Medrodus. “Take my wrists now, little one,” he said. “Hold me fast a prisoner now.” There was menace, even death, in that invitation, the young man knew. He shuddered in the foetid breath that swirled about his face as the thing spoke, and his ears were suddenly bewildered with the cry of birds. Of carrion kites and crows. He shook his head and tried to back away. Yet as he moved, that dark shape seemed to bend over him, preventing his escape, smothering all his courage. He tried to cry out for Ambrosius, like a child for his father, but no sound came from his mouth and the ghastly blank face still smiled down into his. Medrodus made a great effort and half turned in his terror towards Ambrosius; but he could see that the old man was asleep, in a safe world of his own, crouched in the shelter of the flagstones, still clasping the great sword as a child might hold a favourite toy in slumber.

Then Medrodus felt himself falling, and rolled aside just in time to avoid tumbling into the hot ashes. He lay on his back, breathing heavily, on the warm stones, unable to speak. And when at last he dared to look up again in the long silence, he saw that the stranger was sitting once more beyond the fire, crooning and rocking gently among the shadows, the hair of his gaunt head hanging before his face, like some black waterfall of the night. And Medrodus said in fear, “Who are you, Master? Why are you here?”

For a while there was a great stillness again. Only the night wind swept across the open crumbling place, and the sparks blew up from the white ashes with a faint, purring crackle. The young man listened to his own voice asking the questions, and it seemed that the words would echo forever in his bewildered ears, like a pebble falling down an eternal well, striking one side and then the other, and never reaching the black waters at the bottom.

Then at length, as though coming on the thin wind from some distant wasteland, Medrodus heard a voice, the keening voice of the Ice Land, the voice of nothingness. “Look at my breast,” it said. “Look at my breast, Medrodus, and tell me what you see.”

Medrodus, his great eyes trancelike now, did as he was bidden and saw the great gold lunula that gleamed below the creature’s rags; the moon sign of the ancient priests, the druid symbol of holiness. Medrodus saw this and was afraid, for the tree-priests had been gone from the land for many centuries, wiped out at first by the Roman gods, destroyed at last by Christ Himself.

Medrodus bowed his head as a slave might do, for this thing was his master. He was nothing but a dog before such power, and he knew this in every beat of his frightened heart.

“You are of the old religion, Master,” he said humbly.

The man nodded, and held out his hands, one on either side of himself, at arm’s length. Then Medrodus saw a small snake rise from one of them, an adder; and from the other, a stoat. And these creatures stood still in the palms of this man’s hands for a while, their small unwinking eyes fixed on Medrodus. He stared back at them in awful fascination. He saw the adder leap suddenly from one hand to the other, and in the palm of that one hand he watched the snake coil about the creature of fur, and saw both disappear in an ever-lessening spiral of bright light, until that hand, too, was empty. He rubbed his eyes in wonder, and then looked back to see the creatures now struggling in the druid’s other hand. But suddenly the man clapped his palms together and the creatures were gone.

“Now do you know who I am?” he asked softly, smiling behind the hair that hid his face.

Medrodus answered in fear, “Yes, I know now. You are Merddin, the lost one, the maker of dreams.”

Then Medrodus put his shaking hands to his ears, for the forum was suddenly filled with the obscene laughter of hyenas, and it seemed that long grey wolf-shapes swept here and there across the open space between the ruins.

“Have you come to take me?” whispered the Roman at last.

The other said, “How can I take you? You are a Christian and beyond my heathen power, are you not?”

The young man lowered his head, afraid to meet the wide lights that burned out towards him from the tumbling hair.

The druid’s mocking voice said, “Is your God stronger than mine, Medrodus?”

Medrodus spoke in shame. “I am powerless, Master,” he said. “I am in your hands. What am I to do?”

Then the hyena laughter came again into the deserted place and the grey shapes ran so close about the fire that Medrodus could smell the sweat of their hides and hear the scraping of their nails upon the stones.

And as from an immense distance beyond the farthest stars, the voice of Merddin floated down across the void, saying, “Whoso shall bear the sword of Ambrosius, to him great power. His the Yea and Nay, the life and the death; the setting up of stone, the throwing down of the cross. He shall remake Britain, be the axle-tree. His the mouth that shall speak the prayer for all.”

Medrodus understood the words as though he had spoken them himself. “What shall be his reward when he throws down the cross and sets up the druid stones in the earth again? How shall the Count of Britain profit if he brings the old gods back and casts away the Christ?”

Even as he gasped with fear at his own boldness, the empty place seemed to heave about him, as though the earth would open and fling him down into a great pit. Astounded, he looked at the rocking figure and saw that Merddin was pointing downwards through the stones, as though commanding the Roman to follow his gaze.

And Medrodus looked down, and it was as though the great flakes of granite melted before his eyes, or became glass, green and oozing, so that he could see through them and beyond them, down and down, into the rich black soil below the place where he lay.

And there he saw a vast treasure house, of gold and silver, and of rare stones and ornaments, drinking cups and salvers, dishes and jewelled urns. Scattered thickly here and there, they lay in heaps, one upon another, waist-deep, it seemed, all bright and lustrous among the twining roots of the earth plants, new as the day they had come from the furnace and the polishing-wheel. An immense treasure that no man could assess, for it seemed to stretch beyond that lonely forum and away along the farthest avenue of that strange city of the night.

“Will that be his?” asked Medrodus. “With such a treasure a man might sail and take Byzantium, might be a Caesar by the Middle Sea again. Such wealth could buy back Rome and set the Eagles moving on the earth once more.”

Then the voice came from beyond the stars again, saying, “Such trinket-stuff could buy back the old glory of the world before Bethlehem. That is the bargain!”

Medrodus knew a great fear when he heard these words. “But what if the Count-to-be should set the Christ before such treasure on earth. What would be his reward, then, Merddin?”

Once more the great thunders rumbled about the deserted city, and the stones divided once more as though they were curtains of silk, torn back by a vicious hand. Medrodus looked down and then covered up his eyes from what he saw. For there, in the place where gold cups had lain and diamonds had glittered, were men, a vast legion of the dead, all tumbled in the ghastly patterns of decay, with the worm at their eyes and the sly rat at their breasts, and the armour rusted on their arms and the dry white bone showing through the rotting hair.

“Such a legion could have conquered Asia,” said Medrodus. “Should so many die because a leader chose the cross?”

But this time there was no answer, only a shuddering of the stones, and the thin night wind sweeping back over the lonely place. Medrodus looked for an answer to where Merddin had been sitting. But there was only the lichened shadow on the pavement where he had been and a dry toad dragging his wrinkled belly away from the last glow of the fire to a place where the darkness had already reached as it stretched its hand across the ruined forum.

Medrodus got to his feet, his brain on fire with confusion and horror. He bent above Ambrosius, then shook him with a sudden resolution. “We must go from here, Master,” he said. “The old gods have come back. Here a man might be tempted away from Christ.”

As he spoke he seemed to hear the sound of hyenas again, but distant now, as though they were beyond the tottering buildings that lay across the square. His teeth chattered with fear. “Hurry, Ambrosius,” he said. “We must go from here.”

The old man rose and followed him, half asleep, still clutching the sword and mumbling as he walked. And when the night was at last waning and the first grey hint of dawn moved like a shudder across the eastern sky behind them, the two staggered into a little gully where the wind was less chill. And there they lay down as best they could, huddled together for warmth, and at last fell asleep.

In the dawn light, the old man’s face was serene in sleep; but the lips of Medrodus moved constantly and his throat worked, as though he were talking, pleading, arguing with one who would not let him go. The look on his face was that of a man who struggles against an opponent, but already senses defeat.

“Merddin, oh, Merddin,” he whispered as he slept. “Must I forsake the Christ?”

A grey bird of morning swept over the little gully and looked down with its bright eye on the two sleepers. One had the peace of a tree about him; but from the other came a wave of suffering and pain. The bird wheeled into the high air and flew back towards the wood.