Beyond the Mists

Chapter 7: The Lance-Beaks

"Well," Marcus said once they were out of earshot of the village, "that does not sound so bad, finding some eggs to bring back."

Esca shot him a withering look. "Lance-beaks. They sound quite friendly, don't they?"

Marcus looked away, hitching the padded bag webbed about with rope up higher on his shoulder; the Sea Dragon People had given them two, as well as more rope, and they had brought Esca's bow and Marcus's sword, although Esca was not sure a sword would be much use against flying lizards.

They had not seen any flying lizards much bigger than a dog, though, so perhaps it would not be so difficult to fend them off. But if that were so, wouldn't the Sea Dragon people have fetched the eggs themselves?

The lance-beaks nested further up the coast, on a sea-cliff overlooking a shallow sheltered cove, where the nestlings could learn to hunt with less chance of being eaten by the sea dragons, or tearing their wings against sharp rocks in the buffeting wind and surf.

The weather had cleared a little that day, so that every so often the sun broke through the gray, limning the edges of the clouds in glowing fire; and against them little dark shapes of birds and lizards wheeled and swooped, sometimes plummeting down into the waves like divers, only to reappear with silver fish caught in their beaks. But Esca could not see any nests in the grass along the cliff edge.

Marcus had walked up to the very edge of the cliff, where the sea-wind whipped at the grass.

"Esca!" Marcus called, the wind half-carrying his voice away. "Come look!"

It seemed a very long way down to the churning foam and the sharp black knives of the rock below. On a ledge a few man-heights down from where they stood, two small lizards perched on a mound of dry grass snarled at each other over a fish, but Esca saw nothing that looked like eggs.

"There," Marcus said, pointing over at another ledge, piled high with dry grass and wilting plants. "They must cover their eggs to keep them warm, if they do not sit on them all the time like birds."

A sick feeling was beginning to settle in Esca's gut. One of them would have to climb down to the ledge, and he did not think Marcus's leg was fit for climbing, so it would have to be him.

Marcus had evidently realized that as well, for the look he gave Esca was guilty and pleading all at once. "Esca, you know I cannot—"

"And if I say no?" Esca asked, carefully. He did not think Marcus was the kind of man who would take back freedom, once granted; but Esca had heard enough from other slaves to know that a Roman freedman was not free, no more than a spearbearer among the tribes who had sworn an oath to his lord. The difference was that the spearbearer swore willingly; Esca had not chosen to be a slave, and he had not promised to be a good Roman freedman, either.

But he was not sure of what Marcus thought he would be, for all his talk about going on alone if Esca stayed with the Moridoni.

Marcus swallowed, but did not look away. "Then we must go back and tell the Sea Dragon People we could not do it. I know I have no right to ask this of you, when I cannot do it myself, but please believe that I would not ask it of you otherwise. It is for you to decide."

If Marcus had commanded him, Esca would not have done it; but it must have cost Marcus some pride to ask. Perhaps, by doing this freely, because he chose to, Esca could regain a little of his own honor, the honor he had lost in defeat and slavery. "Very well." Esca slipped the coil of sturdy rope he had been carrying off his shoulder, and set his bow and quiver aside. He knotted one end of the rope around his waist and began securing the other around a heavy boulder. He could do this. The rope would catch him if he slipped, and Marcus had the bow, if any of the lizards came too close.

He avoided looking at the waves as he backed down over the cliff edge, clinging to the rocks. They were rough and sometimes jagged, and bit painfully into his cold hands, but at least that meant there were many places to set his feet and catch on. One hand after the other, one foot at a time. The muscles in his arms begin to ache from holding his body against the rock, but he dared not relax, for fear he would lose his hold.

The rock beneath one foot loosened and crumbled away, leaving him with one leg dangling in mid-air, his fingers cramping, until he could feel around for another foothold.

It was almost a shock when his foot finally touched the firmer rock of the ledge, and he crouched there for a moment, pressed against the cliff, his legs trembling. The pile of grass and plants looked larger than it had from the cliff-top, and bore the dry, sweet smell of hay. He knelt by it and began carefully brushing the plants aside, until he uncovered the pale ivory curve of an egg, warm to the touch and drily leathery, nothing like a chicken's egg. He carefully picked up the first one—it was large, a pointed oval shape nearly as long as his forearm, and heavy enough that he was afraid he might drop it as he gently slipped it into the first of the padded bags. He tied the back to the rope Marcus had dropped down and yelled for Marcus to pull it up, then began uncovering the second egg.

"Esca!" The rope had come back down, but Marcus was yelling something Esca could not hear over the wind, more biting down here than it had been above. "Esca—out there—the sea—!"

Esca looked out at the horizon, where the lizards had begun winging their way towards the coast. The dark shapes were growing larger at an alarming rate, large enough that Esca knew the lance-beaks must be far, far larger than any of the winged lizards they had seen before. And even if they did not sit on their eggs, that did not mean they had no care for them.

"Esca, come up!" Marcus yelled. "Leave it!"

But they had promised Deinorix the chief two eggs, Esca thought, and if they only brought back one, then Marcus would not have his Eagle. He had not come this far—had not given this much—to fail. He finished uncovering the other egg as quickly as he could, not daring to look out to sea again, tucked it into the second bag, and tied it to the rope.

He began climbing without looking to see if Marcus had pulled the egg up. This time he climbed as quickly as he dared, ignoring the stab of the rocks and the vicious wind that tried to tear him from the cliff face. If the lance-beaks reached him before he reached the top, he had no hope of fighting them off.

Esca hauled himself panting onto the grass just as he felt the rush of wind from huge wings pass over him, the vibrations of a loud, piercing call setting his bones to aching and his ears ringing. Marcus was shouting; as Esca scrambled to his feet, he saw Marcus draw and lose arrow after arrow.

At first he could scarcely comprehend the size of the lance-beak; it seemed impossible that something so huge, with a beak large enough to swallow a man, could even fly. Its wings blotted out the sky, like a monster out of story.

Stumbling, Esca ran over to Marcus and the eggs, catching the bags up and strapping them to his sides as best he could, praying that they would not be damaged. "We have to run," he gasped, as the lance-beak wheeled away, shrieking at the arrow that had torn through the membrane of its wing. Esca had no doubt it would return. "Run!"

Marcus could not run easily, with his leg, but fear pushed him to run faster than Esca would have thought possible, although he stumbled often. The eggs felt heavier and more awkward as Esca ran, falling into the old hunter's lope as best he could, as the shrieking echoed above them as they dodged and wove. The lance-beaks were built for gliding out over the open water, and did not turn quickly, and this one seemed reluctant to simply pluck them up with that great beak, while they carried the eggs. "Esca—" Marcus shouted between breaths, "Big—need to stay by the coast—run inland!"

Esca turned inward, away from the sea, and hoped Marcus was right and the lance-beak would turn back.

At last, when they were well inland, the lance-beak banked and swept back towards the coast, with one last shriek that felt like a knife thrust in Esca's ear. He stumbled to his knees, cradling the eggs against him—oh, let them not be broken or harmed!—and beside him Marcus also feel, crashing into the heather. "Gods be praised," he gasped, and then began laughing, so hard that Esca was very nearly worried. Had he gone mad?

Marcus reached over and caught Esca's hand in his, tightly. "We did it," he said, smiling. "You did it. Thank you."

Esca found himself smiling back, the blood singing in his veins; he had not felt so alive in years as he did sitting in the dry brown heather on this cold Caledonian moor with Marcus, and it was a good feeling.

They limped the rest of the way back, leaning on each other, each carrying one of the lance-beak's eggs.


When they staggered back into the village, exhausted and battered, but still cradling the lance-beak eggs, Deinorix the chief insisted that they stay another night or two. Esca's hands were scraped raw from his desperate clamber up the cliff, and Marcus had managed to reopen the wound in his arm. But they were alive, and they had succeeded, although Esca had loudly cursed Marcus and his too-quick tongue the entire way back, until Marcus had given him an amused look and said that Esca had clearly thought about his tongue a great deal. Esca had held his own tongue after that.

There was a feast in the chief's house again, with the eggs carefully arranged in a nest of blankets at a particular distance from the fire, watched over by two of the younger warriors with a kind of fierce pride. Marcus was in better humor than Esca had ever seen him, flushed from the sharp liquor the warriors passed around and laughing at every joke, although Esca was certain he barely understood half of them.

On Esca's other side, old Tradui, Natiran's maternal grandfather, had been expounding all evening about the battles of his youth (far greater than these scuffles the youths call battle) and the sea dragons of his youth that were of course toothier and fiercer (which Esca very much doubted was possible) than those of the present. Esca was only half listening, distracted by the Irish harper on the other side of the fire, singing a very long and complicated song about Irish heroes Esca had never heard of; but his playing was a fine and silver thing.

"Esca," Marcus hissed, his lips almost brushing Esca's ear. Esca tried not to shiver. "Tradui's ring." He prodded Esca in the ribs until Esca turned to look. Tradui was explaining how he had once seen two sea dragons locked in combat, and as he shaped the struggle in the air with his hands, eyes bright, the firelight woke to green flame the emerald of a signet ring.

"You have a harper's tongue, Tradui the Warrior," Esca said, when the old man's story had come to a close. "But that ring is a fine thing, and not of the Tribes' making, I think. Is there a story there as well?"

Tradui looked at the ring for a moment, and then said, "That is a story from a dark time, when the Red Crests marched north—not the lizards, but the men from the south. And they might have taken our hunting runs, not just we of the Epidii, but all the tribes of the north. There was a great war-hosting—" He squinted at Esca for a moment, as if trying to remember something. "The Brigantes were there...but you are far too young. But they did not expect the terrible lizards, the Swift Killers and the Red Crests and all the rest. They were afraid, already scattering when we found them. We hunted them down, those last few who did not flee. The last one held the bronze bird you have now, and fought to keep it as fiercely as if it were his own child; strange that he should care so much, when a bird is such a weak little animal, not much of a clan protector. But perhaps that is why they must wear so much armor, for they do not have a powerful god like we of the Sea Dragon People..."

He went silent for a long moment, staring at the ring, turning his hand this way and that so that the glowing ember woke in the green heart of it and then went dark, over and over. Esca glanced at Marcus, who was leaning forward, listening very carefully. Tradui's voice was not always strong, and his way of speech was difficult even for Esca to understand sometimes, but Marcus seemed to understand something of the story.

"He was a brave warrior," Tradui said at last, "an enemy worthy of the Sea Dragon People. The grief is on me that I will not face his like again before I go into the Western Waters." He slipped the ring off his finger with some difficulty, for his knuckles were swollen, and held it out to Esca. "Do you know what the carving is? I have always thought it was a fish-lizard, but my eyes are old...and perhaps the Red Crests do not know of the fish-lizards."

Tradui's hand trembled as he held out the ring, so violently Esca feared he would drop it. He squinted at the ring in the firelight, but the Roman way of carving was strange to him. "Marcos," he said. "Tradui wishes to know what animal is carved in his ring."

There was a flame in Marcus's eyes, a desperate longing, as he reached for the ring; he knew it. It must have been his father's.

"The Red Crests call it delphinus," Marcus said, looking at Tradui. He spoke very slowly, his voice almost sharp when he said Red Crests.

He held out the ring to Tradui, who shook his head and folded Marcus's fingers around the ring, his hands still trembling. "Na, I do not need it anymore," Tradui said. "You have something of his look in you; perhaps his spirit will give you strength."

"I cannot accept such a gift," Marcus said as courtesy demanded, although he looked at the ring as if there was nothing in the world he wanted more, and his tongue tripped over the words.

Tradui looked confused, and Esca had to explain to him what Marcus had said.

"Na, na." Tradui waved his hand dismissively. He coughed a little, dryly. "I am old and sick. A man of the Clan swims with the Sea Dragons twice, Marcos son of Boduoc. It has been long and long since I proved my manhood by swimming in these fishing runs, and the time has come for me to swim with them once more. This time, I think, I will not walk out of the sea again."

Marcus, for all his efforts to be polite, looked horrified at whatever part of Tradui's words he had understood. Tradui looked at him and laughed, which set him to coughing again.

"Your southern friend thinks us savages, does he not?" Tradui said to Esca when he could speak again. "But the great sea dragons watch over us and our fishing runs. They keep away the sea-steeds and the fish-lizards that would eat all the fish; there are few who would dare raid our fishing runs. They let us take what we need and leave us be, so long as we are not greedy and make the proper offerings. Is it not right that we should give back what we have borrowed?"

"Sa, sa, of course." Esca nodded, and contrived to subtly kick Marcus's shin until he, too produced some semblance of respectful agreement. Doubtless Tradui would think Roman ways just as strange and savage. "But would you not rather give it to your grandson?"

"No one listens to an old man anymore," Tradui confided, leaning closer. "My grandson is a hothead. What would a Roman trinket mean to him? The man who wore that ring was brave; if he had a son, I am sure he would have wished the ring to go to him." And he gave Marcus a surprisingly clear-eyed look, before slumping down again, once more the fuddled old man. "But I do not know his son, so I will give it to you..."

Marcus slowly slipped the ring onto the little finger of his left hand; where it had been loose on Tradui's finger, it fit him perfectly, and with a little shake to settle his shoulders back, he inclined his head to Tradui. "I thank you, Tradui the Warrior."

"It is no great thing," said Tradui. "Have I told you yet of the time my sword-brother and I fought a Red Crest alone, a huge old monster, with many spears broken in his hide?"

Marcus blinked and smiled. "Not yet, I think."

The Irish harper was still striking bright notes on the other side of the fire as he sang; the music seemed to fly up into the dark peak of the roof like the sparks from the fire. Looking at Marcus smiling to himself, glancing down every so often at the ring on his signet finger, and pretending he understood Tradui's story, Esca found he could not bear the close heat of the house any longer. With a murmured excuse to Tradui, he slipped out into the crisp chill of the night.


As they came closer to the Wall, the air felt different; faintly less sharp as the forest began to thin out. The nighttime calls had been more and more quiet as winter drew nearer, but now they vanished entirely.

Once Esca woke in the night, heart pounding and hand already reaching for his knife, only to realize that he had heard an owl's soft hooting call, for the first time in more than two months. Across the guttering fire, Marcus met his eyes and grinned sheepishly, taking his own hand away from the hilt of his sword.

Before Esca had felt choked by the Caledonian mists, afraid of whatever he had sensed out there among the trees. But now that he knew-some of it was still frightening, to be sure, but there was wonder here, too, and things Esca was not sure about. He remembered old Tradui, clad in the tattered warrior's finery of his youth, sitting up perfectly straight as the little coracle bobbed in the waves of the harbor-mouth, and the sudden froth of churning water and the glimpses of great scaled backs after Tradui let himself fall. He had not felt the presence of the gods, but the Sea Dragon People standing around him, silent and grave-faced, had seemed to; and after all, their gods were not his.

But there was a kind of freedom here from the presence of Rome. At least the Red Crest lizards would only eat you because they were beasts and it was their nature, not slaughter your family and sell you into slavery; and they would not tell an old man that his chosen death was barbaric and illegal.

They had sold Tracornos back to Guern once they reached the Selgovae, although the rest of the way would be slower on foot; the lizards would not go so close to the Wall, Guern had warned them. So when the Wall came into sight, slicing across the next ridge of brown, snow-flecked hills like a scar, with the fort at Vercovicium the still-open sore, Esca checked in his tracks.

"Esca, are you—" Marcus began, but stopped when he saw Esca's face. His jaw tightened, and he said, very carefully, "Esca, you do not have to come with me. You owe me nothing. I can return alone from here, I think; once I reach the fort, there will be post-horses and a letter from the commander to aid me on my way, I am sure. If you would rather stay—"

This was somehow more true than the manumission on the beach at the loch, Esca thought, because Marcus knew him now, and did not want him to go. He shook his head; there was time enough to take his leave later, perhaps. "No," he said, "it is nothing." He hitched his pack up further on his back and started down the hill, leaving Marcus to follow.

Crossing the Wall going south felt like muffling himself in a veil, so that he could not see or hear clearly, but after a few moments the feeling passed, and he was standing in the courtyard of a Roman fort as Marcus clasped hands and laughed with a man in a centurion's crested helmet. Some army friend of his, Esca thought dully, and did not smile at any of them.