The night before the battle, there were many watchfires. As he walked from the Cimbri, out into darkness, Eodan saw the Roman camp across the miles as a tiny ring of guttering red. Now the search has ended, he thought; this earth we shall have tomorrow, or be slain.
He thought, while his blood beat swiftly, I do not await my death.
Only the ghostliest edge of a moon was up, and the stars seemed blurred after the mountain sky. He felt Italy's air as thick. And the ground underfoot was dusty where tens of thousands of folk, their horses and cattle, had tramped over ripening grain. A poplar grove nearby stood unmoving in windless gloom. Suddenly, sharp as a thrown war-dart, Eodan recalled Jutland, Cimberland—great rolling heathery hills and storm-noisy oaks, a hawk wheeling in heaven and the far bright blink of the Limfjord.
But that was fifteen years ago. His folk, angry with their gods, had wandered since then to the world's edge. And now the Cimbrian bull must meet for one last time that she-wolf they said guarded Rome. It was unlucky to call up forsaken places in your head.
Besides, thought Eodan, this was good land here. He could make it a pastureland of horses ... yes, he might well take his share of Italy on the Raudian plain, beneath the high Alps.
The night was hot. He rested his spear in the crook of an arm while he took off his wolfskin cloak. Under it he wore the legginged coarse breeches of any Cimbrian warrior; but his shirt was red silk, made for him by Hwicca from a looted bolt of cloth. The twining leaves and leaping stags of the North looked harsh across its shimmer. He wore a golden torque around his neck, gold rings on his arms and a tooled-leather belt heavy with silver god-masks. The dagger it held bore a new hilt of ivory on the old iron blade. The Cimbri had reaved from many folk, until their wagons were stuffed with wealth. Yet it was only land they sought.
There was not much more air to be found beyond the watchfires than within the camp. And it was hardly less full of noise here: the cattle lowed enormously outside the wagons, one great clotted mass of horned flesh. Eodan remembered Hwicca and turned back again.
A guard hailed him as he passed."Hoy, there, Boierik's son, are you wise to go out alone?I would have scouts in the dark, to slice any such throat that offered itself."
Eodan grinned and said scornfully,"How many miles away would you hear a Roman, puffing and clanking on tiptoe?"
The warrior laughed. A Cimbrian of common mold, the wagons held thousands like him. A big man, with heavy bones and thews, his skin was white where sun and wind and mountain frosts had not burned it red, his eyes were snapping blue under shaggy brows. He wore his hair shoulder length, drawn into a tail at the back of the head; his beard was braided, and his face and arms showed the tattoo marks of tribe, clan, lodge or mere fancy. He bore an iron breastplate, a helmet roughly hammered into the shape of a boar's head and a painted wooden shield. His weapons were a spear and a long single-edged sword.
Eodan himself was taller even than most of the tall Cimbri. His eyes were green, set far apart over high cheekbones in a broad, straight-nosed, square-chinned face. His yellow hair was cut like everyone else's, but li
