Pendragon

by James Wilde

  Lucanus felt his head swimming. He could no more understand her words than the reason why he had been chosen to hear them. But his blood was pumping now, and he could feel the fire in his heart. Soon.

  The young one dipped her hand into the mother’s amphora and scraped out a gobbet of the white paste. She wafted it under Lucanus’ nose. If he could have recoiled from the bitter reek, he would have.

  ‘This is our magic,’ she breathed. ‘This is what makes us fly. This is our secret.’ She flicked her tongue over her crusted lips. ‘Lamb fat. Herbs picked in the light of the moon. The blood of a crow. And one more thing: the flesh of the toad’s-stool, picked in the blood-month, and dried, and boiled. This is the secret we have guarded since the first man walked beneath the stars, the secret of the fruit of the soil. It is how we speak with the gods. Not just here in Britannia, Wolf. The world over. Even the priests of the new Christ use it, in the hot lands to the south, when they would plead with their sun-king.’

  Her other hand prised open his mouth and he felt a wave of revulsion at the touch of her filthy fingers on his lips. Her face swam in his vision. Her pupils were wide and black and her eyes ranged with madness. It was the look of someone who saw things of which he could never dream, who thought thoughts he could never divine. Unreadable, unguessable. For a moment, he was not sure this even was a woman lying atop him.

  ‘Eating the flesh of the toad’s-stool is good. Drinking its sweat is good. But letting it soak into soft flesh, that is the best.’ Thrusting the dollop of paste into his mouth, she smeared it on the inside of his cheek, then pressed her lips on his, a parting kiss. ‘But even this way is too slow. We have a better way by far, Wolf. We will ride, and ride, and though you have gone first, we will catch you up as we fly and see the world as the gods see it.’

  The woman slid down his body and out of his frame of vision. He could feel the life creeping back into him, but his head swam with other sensations. His mouth began to tingle and he tasted iron. All of the sounds in the room boomed louder, echoing. The scrape of a foot on the floor. The smack of lips. His sight blurred around the edges.

  Through the haze, he caught sight of the three women holding broomsticks one of them had fetched from the corner of the chamber. They were smearing the white paste on the gnarled ends of the wood.

  Lucanus’ spirit was rushing up through him, or so he imagined, into his head, and then out of his skull, and up, up through the earthen chamber ceiling, and the tangled roots, out into the forest. And still he was racing ever up, past the highest branches of the trees and into the sky. Though it had been daylight a moment ago, he was now flying under the vast vault of the night. Stars glittered coldly. The full moon lit the forest to the mountains in the distance.

  In the rush of euphoria, one thought flickered: was this all a dream caused by the potion? But even that thought died as he was caught up in the buffeting wind roaring past his ears and the sensation of soaring. He felt he could keep flying higher for ever, up even to the gods themselves.

  He sensed he was no longer alone. On the edge of his vision, the three women swirled around him, their manes of hair lashing in the wind. However hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to look directly at them.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he shouted. He felt no fear. He was drunk, ecstatic.

  ‘We could fly to the great black ocean and walk upon its shores.’ The voice of the crone floated to his ears. ‘And visit those who passed to the Summerlands before us.’

  ‘Not now, not now.’ The mother was speaking. ‘We must show the Wolf the road that lies before him.’

  ‘The prophecy.’ The voice of the youngest rang out as clear as a bell.

  ‘Aye, the prophecy.’

  ‘A king will come who will lead the people and unite this land. A king born of fire. In the time of greatest need, he will fight, and lead. And he will never die.’

  Lucanus felt the blood pump in his temples. He had heard this prophecy before. A story, an old, old story.

  ‘Am I to be this king?’ he shouted above the roaring.

  ‘Of a kind.’ The youngest woman swept by. ‘You will lead, and you will fight, and you will sacrifice greatly. And when the time comes, you will fall. But the king will live on, the one true king.’

  ‘You will kill any who stand in your way,’ the mother continued. ‘Even if they are your friends.’

  ‘War is coming. A war that will make this land run red for a hundred years,’ the youngest cried out. ‘Britannia will burn, Lucanus. Would you turn your back upon her? Or will you embrace this destiny that the gods have presented to you?’

  The mother whisked past him. When she spoke there was a strange sibilance to her voice. ‘To walk thiss road, you musst abandon your masterss … your dutiess. Your duty now will be to what musst come to passs.’

  ‘You are traitors.’

  ‘Aye, we are.’ The hag cackled. ‘Rome does not rule us. We will never bow our heads to the emperor.’

  ‘Then you stand with the barbarians.’

  ‘The tribes fight their fights, but rarely see beyond the day’s end.’

  ‘But you do.’

  ‘Would you be your father’s son, Wolf? Would you save the woman you love?’ the youngest demanded.

  How could they know so much about him? ‘You cannot make me betray my masters, or kill the people I know.’

  The women laughed among themselves, a musical sound that seemed to tinkle on too long. ‘Words change the world,’ the mother said when they were done. ‘Tell a man he will be a king, and a king he may well be.’

  And then he jerked, and convulsed as if he had an ague. Acid burned in his throat. When his vision cleared, he was lying on his back on the floor, where he had been before he flew in the night sky, if it had ever happened. A thin grey light fell through the hole above him. It was darkening. How long he had been caught up in this spell he could not tell.

  The three naked women were squatting around him, blinking with hazy eyes, beatific smiles upon their lips. As one, they turned their heads towards him. He shivered under their otherworldly stare.

  ‘All you said to me is true? The prophecy, the war, the part I should play in it?’

  ‘It is.’ The youngest rocked forward, balancing on her fingertips.

  Lucanus shuddered, and realized that all life had returned to his limbs. He could draw his sword and loosen the tongues of these women with threats. And yet the urge to exert his power in this place had ebbed away. Whatever spell they had cast upon him had changed him. He could feel it, as if someone had planted a seed deep in his head. As the light flooded in it was beginning to grow.

  ‘The boy was stolen to lure me here? How did you know I would be the one searching for him?’

  ‘We know everything, Wolf.’

  ‘Why have I been chosen?’

  ‘Why you?’ They laughed as one, just as they had done when they were flying. ‘There will be blood, and fire, and the end of many things. It is too late to turn back.’

  Lucanus felt sick and confused. ‘The boy,’ he croaked. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Ahead, on the road you must walk,’ the mother replied. ‘It is still within your power to save him.’

  ‘If you did not take him, who did?’

  The mother smiled. The hag smiled. The maiden rocked on her haunches next to him. Her tiny fist was closed. When she opened it, a small pile of powder lay upon it, grey this time.

  ‘Now you must sleep,’ she whispered.

  She threw the powder into Lucanus’ face. He coughed and spluttered, but it flew deep into his throat. He smelled roses, sickly and sweet. A great weight crushed down on him.

  As he drifted into drowsiness, he heard a voice speaking, but he could not tell which woman it was, or perhaps it was all of them speaking as one.

  ‘You have met the company of women,’ the voice said. ‘But now you must find the company of men. Now you must find the kingmakers.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The War-
Band

  LUCANUS WOKE IN the cold dawn. His breath steamed and his body felt like the grave. Surrounded by the birds’ chorus, he peered up through the high branches to the silvering sky and wondered if it had all been a dream.

  But there, turning slowly in the breeze, was something very real: twigs tied into a double cross with a square upon it, festooned with feathers and bones. A sign, one that linked this place with the moment in his hut when Marcus had vanished. But what it meant he could not be certain.

  Sitting up, he looked along a track heading towards the northeast. If the women had left him here, that was the way he was surely expected to go.

  ‘Run.’

  He jolted at the exhortation in the stillness. A male voice, low and rumbling.

  ‘Run. Or die.’

  Jumping to his feet, Lucanus whirled, but whoever was there was hidden in the trees.

  ‘Run! They’re coming!’

  A mournful lowing drifted through the forest. Though Lucanus was half frozen, he felt the chill run deeper into his blood. He knew that sound too well and the danger it heralded: one of the horns the Scoti war-bands used to call to each other across the trackless Wilds.

  His heart thundering, he threw himself along the track. Now he could hear the yapping of the hounds the warriors bred to run down deer. But such curs were just as useful for scenting human prey.

  On he raced until he glimpsed a sea of sedge next to a bog by a stream. Kneeling, he cracked through the frosty crust. A blast of rot and damp flooded his nose. Plunging both hands into the icy mud, he dragged up two gobbets from the sucking depths and smeared the stinking sludge on his face, in his hair. Then he was running once more.

  His pursuers were closing, he could hear from the blasts of the horn. His legs burned and he knew he would not be able to escape them, not after the night he had experienced. Only one hope remained.

  With barely a moment to spare, he crawled behind a fallen tree. In no time he was breathing in the musky scent of sweat, damp furs and meat. If he hadn’t caked himself in that foul mud, the nearing barbarians would have been able to smell him too.

  Figures eased out of the gloom among the trunks. They looked like bears, Lucanus thought, heavy with furs and leather, wild manes of hair, black like ravens’ wings or a fiery red. Grey woollen cloaks flapped around them. The warriors kept their heads down, their eyes pooled in shadow. At first he thought he was watching a procession of the dead, those heads skulls. But as they neared he saw the impression was caused by black tattoos etched on their faces. Black circling the eyes, black along the cheekbones and between nose and lips.

  The sound of slashing and hacking echoed through the stillness and he realized some of them were cutting through the undergrowth.

  Searching.

  He had been too confident, he knew that now. While he was following Marcus’ trail, the barbarians had been following his own.

  Lucanus fingered the hilt of his short sword. It would be next to useless in a face to face battle with these heavily armed foes. Some of them carried wide blades designed for gashing and stabbing, and others held square-headed axes hanging loosely in their right hands.

  Dropping to his belly, he slithered beneath the fallen tree, past tiers of creamy-white fungus, and wormed his way along a natural furrow under a tangle of bramble. The thorns snagged on his wolf pelt and tore the exposed skin on the back of his left hand. He could smell the blood, as his brothers of the wilderness would be able to smell it. But these Scoti’s senses were not as sharp as his, or the wolves’. They moved through the Wilds, but they were not a part of it, as he was. But what about the dogs?

  Once he was ensconced in his briar nest, he stilled his breathing. His cheek was pressed against the cold earth, his body like wood, the grey pelt and crusted mud letting him fade into the background of that brown and dark green world. He listened to the pounding of his heart. He was afraid; that was good. Fear would put fire into his heart if he came to make his last stand. He would die like a fighting man, not a whipped cur.

  Wood crunched nearby. A whistle rang out barely a spear’s length away.

  Screwing his eyes shut, Lucanus thought of Marcus and felt a wave of despair that there would be no one to bring the boy home. And then he thought of Catia and his regret, if anything, bit even deeper.

  A moment passed with no cries of alarm and he stirred and looked out from under his lids. Through the mesh of bramble, he could see the warriors moving past him, steps slow and steady, heads turning as they searched among the trees.

  At least they were not good trackers, these Scoti, not like the arcani. He hadn’t tried to hide his path through the forest. If he escaped this, he wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Yapping rang out, drawing nearer, and he heard the beat of paws upon the hard ground. Two shaggy brown dogs bounded in front of his hiding place. They were scrawny curs, their bellies hollow. Their masters kept them hungry, keen for rewards. The Wolf watched them sniff the air, then press their noses to the earth as they followed winding, invisible paths. They spiralled ever closer.

  Voices barked and two men ran up, their cries and whistles whipping the dogs into a greater frenzy of searching.

  The barbarians began to hack at the undergrowth nearby.

  Lucanus folded his fingers around his sword-hilt. He was ready.

  But then, when he could hear one of the dogs scrabbling only a blade’s length from where he lay, one of the men whistled again and the dogs bounded away. The Scoti warriors followed their hounds, grunting as they cut a path through the thorn.

  The stinking mud had done its work. He sucked a breath of air into his burning lungs.

  The dark shapes drifted slowly by until they were swallowed up by the trees.

  As he began to dare to hope, he heard two heavy warriors tramp up. Lucanus looked out at a pair of boots and woollen leggings. One of the men was slight, the other larger, like a bear. This one had a scabbard inscribed with interlocking spirals of shimmering gold, some of the finest work the Wolf had ever seen. A mark of status. Was this the leader?

  ‘What do you say, Erca?’ the smaller man said in the Scoti tongue. His voice was a little reedy, with a sardonic edge to the words.

  ‘Keep hunting, for now,’ the bigger man rumbled. ‘I wouldn’t think a scout would venture this far north. A beggar, perhaps. Or a thief, on the run. But if it is a scout, we must have his head. He must not be allowed to return to the wall.’

  Lucanus was puzzled by the strength of conviction he was hearing. True, the Scoti hunted scouts the way others hunted deer. But this sounded weighted with some importance.

  When the two men strode off, he pushed himself up to get a better look. Erca was indeed a big man, a head taller even than Bellicus. His wild black hair was wound into small plaits and into them were tied small skulls, of birds, and mice. A faint jangle echoed with each heavy step. The warriors disappeared into the gloom before he could see more.

  Once he was sure they had gone, he slid back out from under the briar wall, sucking the blood from his scratches. The gods had been kind, this time, but he had to be more cautious from now on.

  ‘Beware.’

  Another male voice rustled out from the dark of the woods, gruffer than the one he had heard before. Once again, he searched the trees to no avail, but he caught himself before he called back. Cocking his head, he listened.

  At his back, he heard ragged breathing and the crashing of feet in the undergrowth.

  Around the edge of a hawthorn a young barbarian pounded, his mass of blond ringlets flying. A straggler, hurrying to catch up with the rest of his warrior-brothers. Lucanus watched the man’s jaw go slack as he attempted to understand who this stranger was in front of him. Then his eyes hardened and his mouth began to open. A cry of warning was forming in his throat.

  Slamming his hand across the barbarian’s mouth, the Wolf thundered into him. They crashed into a sea of rust-coloured bracken. Underneath, the warrior bucked and thrashed, the
strangled sounds vibrating against that muffling palm growing more intense. Lucanus could smell the man’s sweat and the reek of raw meat coming off him.

  He locked eyes with his foe, and a silent understanding flashed between them. There was only one ending here. The Wolf could not let this man escape to raise the alarm.

  With his free hand, he pulled out his short knife and slid it under his opponent’s jaw. Hot blood bubbled out over his fingers. He held his gaze on those pale blue eyes until the light in them died.

  Pulling himself up, he wiped the back of his trembling hand across his mouth. How long would it take before the rest of the barbarians missed this straggler? One day? And then another day to come back and find the body.

  Then they would be at his heels, and they wouldn’t rest until they had hunted him down to gain their vengeance.

  ‘My thanks,’ he said to whoever had warned him, but only silence answered.

  On he prowled until the forest began to thin out. Leaning against a pine sticky with sweet-smelling resin, he looked out across a grassy plain. Rolling hills reached up to the lowering sky, three peaks side by side, their tops glittering white in the shafts of thin sunlight that managed to break through the cloud cover.

  Now he had his bearings. The foot of the largest hill was the site of the old fort Trimontium on the banks of a meandering river, long since abandoned when the army retreated. He squinted, picking out the ramparts and the remains of the signal tower, now little more than a stump.

  The barbarians had tried to settle there more than once, he had heard. He remembered his father telling him it was a haunted place. Voices echoed from deep in the earth, blue flames flickered above the bogs near the river, and in the trees on the lower slopes it was said that the dead walked on moonless nights.

  That was where he would rest.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Dwarf

  THE CANDLE FLAME flickered into life. As the shadows swooped away from the shrine, Catia watched the god of the household appear. Guardian of the hearth, walker of boundaries, the Lar was perhaps her last hope.