Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) by John James Page A

carried the long spears of the country, and on their shields the eye of love, or of piety, might make out the shape of a cat. They watched us pass, and we looked them over as we went by, but none of us spoke. Two spears would not fight with three, that was common sense.
    That night, and the following night, we set sentries, that is to say we took it in turns to sit by the fire and watch for the Cat King’s men, watch the horses grazing hobbled. We had grown soft and lazy, each night we would build us a hut of branches to sleep in, our spears leaning against the door outside at the sentry’s back. The second night, Occa was on watch, when he shouted to us to come.
    ‘The horses’ he was yelling, ‘the horses’ – and as we got into the open air we saw that someone had unhobbled them and was driving them away. We all three ran down the slope toward the horses. Then I thought we were fools all to go together, and I turned and sure enough there was someone around the hut. I shouted and ran back, and he went off into the wood like a streak.
    All he took was my spear. The other two, being spearmen from boyhood, had grabbed theirs to go after the horses, but I had quite forgotten mine, and gone down drawing my sword.
    ‘Easy come, easy go,’ I said. Donar was more worried at the impiety.
    ‘It will bring the thief no luck,’ he told us, ‘to take something hallowed by the God.’
    ‘More to the point,’ said Occa, ‘there can only be the two of them now, or they’d have attacked. But they must be expecting more, and they’ve gone for the others while we can’t move.’
    For we each of us had, in our bags and in the silver sacks, more than a man will willingly carry for more than a few hundred paces, and there was no going to the north on foot. We argued a bit, and the upshot was that we agreed that Occa should go back on foot to find Marcomen of his own clan, and come in a day or two to rescue us. We two would look after the silver.
    Occa rubbed wood ash into the pig fat on his face and arms till he was black as night. He left his cloak and wore only his tunic and trousers. He looked for a while at his sword. It was a fine piece of work, made somewhere in the Lebanon, beaten with the cedar charcoal that makes the iron so hard. The hilt was of beech wood carved into the shape of a coiled serpent, and for a pommel he had a great ball of crystal. The scabbard was of soft leather, embossed with the figures of Leda and the Swan, and all tooled with gold leaf, and sewn with gold wire. It was a lovely thing, and it took him long to decide to leave it on his bag, and go off with his spear and his shield and his long hunting knife. He moved away into the forest, silently.
    I sat and talked with Donar.
    ‘Why did you come south?’ I asked him. It was no use asking him where he had come south from, or what was his nation, he turned all that aside, though there were some who said he talked like a kingless Vandal.
    ‘I came to learn more about sword making,’ he said. ‘I wanted to know if there was any magic about the swords of the Legions that carried them through Gaul and on to the edge of Germany.’
    ‘And was there?’
    ‘None at all. Rather poor iron, most of it. We make better. Even the way you fight one by one, push and jab, push and jab, all the time, is more comical than anything else. But in a battle, it’s the centurion who fights, and the cohort is his weapon.’
    We lay and watched for the dawn.
    ‘Talking of centurions,’ I said, ‘I wonder what Aristarchos is doing now.’
    ‘Getting out of Julia’s bed, I shouldn’t wonder. You know, henever expected you to get out of the way so smartly when he told you to.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘He hired these two men to watch you and then told you some cock-and-bull story about Scapellus coming back. He thought if you didn’t turn up, he could get straight into bed with Julia, and if you stayed indoors for a couple of days she’d never look at you