Gillian Bradshaw - Island of Ghosts

“I have no plain coats,” I replied. “Your friends were the ones who wanted this meeting.”

Eukairios sighed. “Yes, my lord,” he said, very tense and unhappy now the time had come. “Well, we’ll have to go round the back, and then I’ll have to go on ahead, and make sure it’s clear, and get someone to hide the horses somewhere…”

We had to do as he said-out of the market, down a street, through an empty alleyway, into an even narrower back alley that smelled of boiled cabbages. Then I had to wait with the horses by a rubbish heap while Eukairios vanished into one of the houses ahead, and came back a little while later with a frightened girl, who whispered that we could put the horses in the shed with her goats. I looked at her remotely and said nothing. If the Christians decided not to help, after all this ridiculous performance, I was going to be seriously angry. But I tied up my courser in a shed in a back garden beside two nanny goats, and followed Eukairios through the back door of a private house. We emerged in a kitchen, very low and smoky, and were ushered through it into a middle-class dining room. The room was warm and bright, heated by a brazier, and the winter sun shining through the glass windows made watery patterns upon the red and white tiles of the floor. There were three men there, all in their forties. Two wore the gray-brown tunics and trousers and checked cloaks one could find on any man in the marketplace, and the third, who was clean-shaven, wore Roman dress. All three came over to me when I entered and shook hands, with me and with Eukairios.

“Lord Ariantes,” said the one in Roman dress. “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry we can’t give you our own names: it’s probably better that you don’t know them.” He sat on the middle couch of the three dining places, and gestured to the couch on his right. “Please, sit down.”

If an army officer had said that, I would have taken off my sword and made some effort to sit or recline in the usual Roman fashion. But I wasn’t going to make myself uncomfortable for a pack of cultists. I sat down on the floor in front of the couch he’d indicated, with my good leg crossed under me and my bad one pulled up before me, adjusting my sword so that it didn’t pull on the baldric. The two other Christians gave me an odd look, then sat down on the central couch beside their spokesman, watching me with wary curiosity. Eukairios, after a moment’s uncomfortable hesitation, sat down behind me.

“Our brother Eukairios,” said the Romanized Christian, “has explained to us that there may be a plot to make this region, Brigantia, our home, rebel against the provincial government. He’s said that someone is trying to involve Sarmatian troops like the one you command in mutinies, and has actually called in the Selgovae and the other Pictish tribes as invaders to occupy the army so the rebellion can succeed. He says further that the person at the center of this plot is… a lady reputed to be a follower of an extreme druidical sect, who wants to make Brigantia a druidical kingdom, with herself as queen. He says that while you know of this plot, you have no other witnesses or material evidence for it, and that your word alone would not be sufficient to convince the authorities. Is that a fair summary?”

I was relieved to have it all set out so clearly and unemotionally, though the open discussion of the details made me feel even more exposed than riding through the marketplace without armor had. “Yes,” I agreed.

“And he says further that you want our help for two purposes: first, to keep in contact with a friend of yours in Eburacum who is trying to discover the details of the plot; and secondly, to make use of our knowledge of, and contacts with, the druids.”

“That is so.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then one of the other Christians asked bluntly, “Why should we help you?”

“Because,” I answered, “you are British, and Roman, and, I think, Brigantian, and the kingdom that this plot would produce would be unwelcome to you on several counts.”

“The present government does not love us,” the other replied. He was a serious, dark-eyed man. “We are persecuted in every corner of this empire, and treated like sheep to be slaughtered. Our kingdom is not of this world, and we have no business interfering in the counsels of princes and legates.”

“And if the Selgovae and Votadini came up to this city and began to sack it?” I asked. “Would you interfere with them?”

“We would not shed their blood,” said Dark Eyes solemnly. “We would oppose them, and die in the name of Christ our Lord.”

“That wouldn’t do our neighbors any good!” replied the other British Christian, before I could say anything. “Nor our brothers and sisters, nor our wives and children! We are Brigantian, as he said: why shouldn’t we defend our home? And the man is asking us to carry letters, not to shed blood.”

The Romanizer held his hand up. “Not in front of our guest!” he said. “Lord Ariantes, our brother Eukairios has vouched for you in the strongest terms, and said that you are kind, generous, and a peacemaker. He says that by helping you, we might prevent a cruel and bloody rebellion. We know… something… of the people involved in this affair, and we’re inclined to believe him. But your people also have a very evil reputation, and it’s hard for us to… How shall I put it?”

“Make an alliance with a Sarmatian.”

He grinned at me quickly, and suddenly I liked him. “Well, yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t have thought a dragon was the natural ally of a flock of doves.”

I spread my hands before me. “Granted. But I already have as an ally a Roman who before was a bitter enemy. If I can make an alliance with the eagles, I can make one with a flock of doves.”

“Eagles have more in common with dragons than doves do,” said Dark Eyes. “They are both killers.”

“Eukairios said he was a peacemaker,” said the Brigantian champion.

“He doesn’t look it,” said Dark Eyes. “Sitting there on the floor with his sword on his back and his hand on his dagger! And the stories I’ve heard say he’s killed dozens of men with his own hands.”

I took my hand off my dagger and looked at Dark Eyes thoughtfully, rubbing my knee. I wondered who and what he was, and who’d told him about me. “I have killed above thirty men,” I answered. “I have stopped counting. It is true, we are not a peace-loving nation-and we were sent to Britain as soldiers, and could not choose peace now even if we wished to. But I do not want there to be a war.”

“What do you want?” asked the Romanizer softly.

I gave him the honest, shameful truth. “I would like my dragon to rest quietly in Cilurnum, with nothing more to do than patrol the Wall, put down occasional raids, and breed horses. But I confess to you honestly that my own men might ask the gods instead for glory and victory in war.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” said Dark Eyes. “There is nothing, I was told, that gives a Sarmatian more pleasure than killing any man whatsoever.”

I looked away, down at my hands now resting crossed on my torn knee. “In ten years’ time,” I said quietly, admitting another shameful truth that I’d known now for some time, “there will be no real Sarmatians in Britain. I am not what I was, nor is Arshak, nor are any of us. If you live in one place under an alien code of discipline, collect your wages four times a year, and spend your time drilling and patrolling, you are not the same as a nomad who lived by his herds and made war for pleasure. The only question has been, what do we become instead? I have answered it, ‘Roman soldiers.’ Arshak says, ‘British warriors.’ And perhaps there is no great difference in it. We are killers, in your terms, whatever we do-though you would do well to remember that as soldiers, we would defend you, while as warriors, we would become your oppressors. But I do not like the company we would keep as warriors, and I think even if we succeeded, we would succeed only to the destruction of all that is best in us. We used, in the past, to love truth, respecting our friends and keeping our oaths; we used to fight fairly, and spare the helpless. Those are the customs I wish us to keep, whatever else we may lose. I swear it on fire”-I raised my right hand and stretched it toward the brazier- “that I have asked for your help in a good cause which I believe ought by rights to be your cause, and that I will deal with you justly and without treachery.”