by James Wilde
‘What do you see?’ Myrrdin asked.
‘A sword,’ he said as if the other man was a fool.
The wood-priest nodded. ‘Good. That’s what a warrior should see.’
Picking up the weapon, the Wolf weighed it in his hand, turning it so the thin sunlight gleamed along the edge. ‘As swords go, it’s not much,’ he said with a shrug. Even as the words left his mouth, he knew he didn’t believe them.
‘Look closer. Many men would hold this weapon and each would see a different thing. It has a name. Caledfwlch.’
‘And that’s not much of a name.’
‘Still, it is what it is – a gift from the gods. With this blade you’ll carve out your days yet to come, Lucanus, and the days yet to come of all men. Here.’ Myrrdin disappeared among the scrubby hawthorns beyond the fire and returned with a leather scabbard. He held it out. It was well crafted, stitched and branded with a design of interlocking spirals.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘We’ve been preparing for this moment for long seasons. Do you think this was just a new day unfolding as all days do? You’ve been shaped, and guided, and what has happened to you has been shaped and guided. We’ve waited a long time, Lucanus, but now the wheel is turning.’
The Wolf felt a shiver run down his spine. He didn’t like the thought that his life was not his own, and that the gods, and the witches, and these wood-priests were moving him like a piece on a tavla board. He glanced around, half expecting to see the three women there among the trees, waving their hands and pulling on the strands of his fate.
‘Now,’ he snapped. ‘I’m ready. The boy.’
Myrrdin nodded. Lucanus stumbled along after him on a meandering path through the dense hawthorn trees. The way led steadily upward on the central hummock of the island until he could see the two yews swaying ahead of him. How old they looked, he thought as he neared, the trunks so wide that two men could scarce encircle them with their arms.
‘You would take me through that door to the otherworld?’ He tried to hide any tremor in his voice. The stories he’d heard around the hearth-fire still haunted him. Men lured by the gods to a land where they whirled in dance for a night, only to find a hundred years had passed at home and all that they knew was long gone.
‘Should the gods wish you to join them there, they will summon you.’ The wood-priest leaned on his staff as he hauled himself up the incline. ‘Though I would think it would not be for your silver tongue.’
Lucanus grunted. He thought he could sense Myrrdin smiling, though the man’s back was to him.
At the summit, the yews swayed in a light breeze. The Wolf looked around. Were those the cries of approaching enemies that he could hear? Or perhaps it was just the shriek of birds.
Eyeing the space between the yews as if Lugh would come dancing out and steal him away, Lucanus trudged behind the wood-priest round to the other side. When he saw the small shape lying under the trees, he forgot all his worries in an instant. Scrambling under the branches, he dropped to Marcus’ side.
At first he thought the boy was dead. Only his face was visible in the folds of a thick cloak, but his skin was like snow, his chest barely rising and falling.
But then Marcus’ eyes flickered open and he smiled. ‘Lucanus. I had the strangest dream.’
‘You’re well?’ He rested his hand on the boy’s forehead. It was cold, not feverish, and Lucanus wondered if the wood-priest had given him some potion that had stolen his wits.
Marcus sat up, almost banging his head on the overhanging branches. ‘Where am I?’
‘A long way from home. But soon we’ll have you back with your mother. If Myrrdin has stopped playing his games.’
‘Who’s Myrrdin?’
Lucanus jerked a thumb over his shoulder. When he saw a blank look on Marcus’ face, he looked round and realized they were alone. Crawling out from beneath the branches, he stood on the summit and scanned the island.
The wood-priest had vanished as if he’d never been there.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Battle Lost and Won
Vercovicium.
IN THE DAWN, there was only silence.
No hails of well met, no laughter, no hammers upon anvil, no whistles of masters to apprentices, no songs of mothers, no curlew-calls of pig-herders.
Amarina shivered and not just from the cold, though she was not sure why. Puzzling over that unnatural quiet, she clip-clopped across whorls of frozen mud towards the vicus. She had decided to spend some of her hard-earned coin on a piece of silver jewellery, perhaps a brooch, one imported from Rome and crafted with a delicacy she would never be able to find in her grim homeland. There were rewards to be found in this life here, if you had a full purse; comforts that warmed the heart on bitter nights.
But as she neared the entrance to an alley that ran between the tavern and the chandler’s, she saw a crescent of bowed heads, about twenty in all. Clouds of breath drifted up, but no one moved, no one spoke.
Pushing through the stiff bodies to the front, she stood for a moment, taking in what she was seeing.
A body lay face down on the hard earth and ridges of ice, the third in as many nights. A large brown stain surrounded it where the hot blood had soaked into the earth and frozen. It had no head and the flesh around the raw wound looked to have been gnawed.
‘What do they want of us?’ someone muttered.
‘How can they come and go as they please?’ another asked.
‘These cannot be men.’ The final voice was little more than an exhalation.
Daemons, Amarina thought.
She understood the desperation she heard in those voices. They were wondering who would be taken next, and where it would end.
A tramp of feet and clatter of metal echoed from the direction of the fort. Amarina turned to see Atellus, Falx and eight other men jogging down the slope. The commandant’s face was like thunder.
The citizens parted to let the soldiers through and Falx dropped down by the body. Amarina watched his bovine expression flickering with confusion as he looked around for the missing head, and then his face falling further when he realized it had been taken.
‘First at one of the villas, then in the fields, now here, in the very heart of the vicus,’ Atellus said, his jaw clenched.
Closer with each step.
The commandant grunted. ‘They are testing our defences, and our resolve.’
‘And they have found their answer,’ Amarina said.
The people around her edged away. Atellus and the others glared, looking away when they saw who had spoken.
‘Make no mistake, we will not rest until we have hunted down these barbarians and shown them what it means to challenge us,’ the commandant said. ‘If they came in numbers, there would be more dead than this. No, we can be satisfied only a few scouts crept in, perhaps only one.’
‘One was enough for this poor soul. How did they get past the wall and all the men upon it?’ Amarina pressed. Perhaps it was time for her to move away to a safer place, one where men were happy to pay for the beast with two backs instead of worrying about keeping their heads on their shoulders.
Atellus had no answer. He flexed his fingers and two of his men grabbed the arms of the corpse and began to drag it away.
As the soldiers made their way back to the fort, Amarina saw them pause to exchange a few words with Mato, who was coming in the opposite direction. His head was down, no doubt weary from another night out scouring the Wilds.
‘I see a man in need of comfort,’ she called.
‘Men always need comfort. If we could choose our time we would have nothing but comfort,’ Mato said, his grin lighting his face.
‘That’s because you grow beards, but never grow up. If not for women, where would you be?’
Glancing around to make sure they were not being overheard, Mato whispered, ‘How is Catia?’
‘As well as can be expected for a captive.’ She shrugged. ‘Though she hurts n
ow, she’ll grow stronger from it.’
‘You speak from the heart.’
Amarina nodded. ‘My mother and father were killed by wild dogs. I survived in the forest, feeding on roots and leaves until a kindly merchant saved me.’
Mato cocked an eyebrow and grinned.
‘You are a wise man, Mato. You should not be living your life in the Wilds.’
‘But where would my brothers be without my wisdom?’
A hubbub broke through the early morning stillness. Amarina turned to see men hammering on door jambs and barking questions at anyone they could find.
‘Varro’s guards,’ Mato muttered.
Behind them, Amatius bowed his head in intense conversation with anyone who crossed his path.
‘The merchant is searching for Catia.’ Amarina watched the men progress methodically among the workshops and the huts.
‘Why so much effort spent for one woman? You have a house full of more willing ones.’
‘This is about more than where he puts his cock for the night. There’s a larger web here than you or I understand, and Varro is a fat spider at the heart of it.’
The guards kicked their way through a brood of clucking hens, frightening a young boy who sat by the door. He began to bawl, but the men pushed on regardless.
‘Leave me be!’ The widow Elsia was cringing away from three guards snarling questions.
‘Heed her,’ Mato called. Amarina watched him march down to the three men, holding his arms wide. ‘It’s a cold day, but a good one, friends. Let’s enjoy this morning, not sour it with harsh words.’
‘This is not your business,’ one of the guards said. He drew his short sword and pointed it at Mato. ‘But if you want a fight, we’re happy to join you. All three of us.’
‘I’m a poor fighting man. My skill with a sword is like that of a one-armed drunk,’ Mato replied, still grinning.
‘Then leave,’ the guard said. ‘Before I teach you a lesson.’
Amarina stepped forward. ‘I’m good with a blade.’
The guard looked her up and down. ‘Ah. The whore. You would be skilled at handling blades.’ The other men laughed.
‘I would rather be a whore than a man without a cock.’
The guard sneered. ‘I have a cock.’
‘Now.’ Amarina held the guard’s gaze.
‘These numbers are not right.’
She glanced back at the booming voice. Bellicus was making a show of cracking his knuckles, his dog, Catulus, bounding at his heels. He winked at the widow Elsia, who beamed at her saviour, and then he loomed over the guard who had spoken, who took a step back now his advantage had gone.
‘No fighting. No blood.’ Seemingly out of nowhere the dwarf danced between the two men. ‘We are guests here. The master’s name dishonoured? Will he reward for that? No, I say, no.’ Bucco turned to Bellicus and took a step back himself, craning his neck up, and up. ‘Head in the clouds. Hello. Hellooo.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth, shouting, ‘Can. You. Hear?’
The tension broken, the guards grunted and moved on.
‘You have some skill there,’ Amarina said.
‘Not much of one, Domina. No. But little men learn. Make big what little things you have.’ The dwarf eyed the disappearing guards, and when he was sure they were too far away to overhear he turned back to the others. ‘Save me, kind people, save me,’ he pleaded. ‘I have a cruel master. He beats me long and hard. Take me with you, brothers and sister. Hide me away, like the fair Catia. Save my hide. And I will show you how to save yours.’
Amarina smiled, tight and hard, and she knew the dwarf would read her eyes. There’d be no saving him.
The north wind whined across the grassland, flecked with snow, and a waning moon silvered the frost. With her hood pulled low over her brow, Amarina strode away from Vercovicium. Far behind her, the torches over the gates of the fort were little more than twinkling stars in the dim reaches of the night.
She felt a slow-burning anger that had to be addressed, not caused by Varro or any of his men. No, it was the sense of the ground shifting under her feet that truly annoyed her. She’d worked hard to earn a little security and she would not see it all torn away from her. But now plots were circling away in the dark, and people far greater than she were playing games that would disrupt her life as if she were nothing.
When she reached the Blood Spring – so-called because the waters trickled with a rusty tint – she turned towards the south and marched up the gently rising incline until she reached the high ground. There, at the flat summit, in the centre of a wide area of blasted grassland, was the Birthing Stone, a jagged tooth of granite, lichen-dappled and flayed by the elements. Away in the dark, six other stones circled it, smaller ones that came midway up her shin, not to her waist like this one. Old stories said they were six warriors and their king, turned to stone for defying the gods.
Amarina traced her fingertips across the rock’s rough surface, remembering other nights like this.
She struck a flint and the torch she’d been carrying flared into life.
How long she stood there she didn’t know, but her body felt as numb as the stone beside her. For a while, she thought her call would not be answered – the wyrd sisters were mercurial and mysterious in their ways. But then she caught sight of movement away in the dark.
Amarina raised the torch higher. The wavering light washed out to where three women waited.
‘Hecate,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ they replied.
They had always been strange, but Amarina expected no more of women who lived their lives in the Wilds, with only wolf and crow and fox for company. They consumed their toadstools and set their thoughts to flying, and bubbled up pots of herbs and roots that twisted their minds. They spoke to the gods and the daemons and both spoke back. Madness for them was an old friend. But they were wise too, with knowledge passed down from mother to daughter from the earliest days. They knew secrets of which she could only dream.
‘What do you want, sister?’
Amarina could tell from the softer voice that it was the youngest of them speaking. ‘The Ouroboros, sister. The dragon that eats its own tail. You know this sign and what it means.’
‘Aye. The season is turning. What once was will be again.’
‘This is happening now?’ Amarina stressed. ‘As it was foretold … as it was hoped for … by you … by the wood-priests. Now, not in days yet to come?’
Wind blasted and the torch roared. Amarina’s cloak lashed around her.
‘The whispers beyond the wall have grown to a shout,’ the youngest of the three women replied. ‘Too much of our blood has been spilled. But now our time has come round again. We have been told the Dragon is rising, and that word has spread, beyond the wall, to Hibernia, Gaul, everywhere. The Dragon is rising, do you hear?’
‘This can’t be true.’ Amarina reached out a hand to the three figures cloaked by the night beyond the torch’s light. ‘I’ve heard those old tales, so many times. They’re stories to soothe children.’
‘We have been told,’ the second of the women repeated, her voice hardening. ‘And now all Rome’s enemies have hope. For if the Dragon is among us we cannot be crushed as we were that night on Ynys Môn.’
Conspiratio. The Roman word leapt into her mind. Amarina’s thoughts flew back to her childhood, branches tearing at her face as she fled through the forest to escape the soldiers. When the shadowy figures among the trees slaughtered the men at her back and gave her a place to hide, she’d soon learned that the old ways had never gone away. They were still there, in the Wilds and the woods, in all the lands that Rome had conquered, a resistance surviving on old promises and prayers to old gods, waiting to rise up again, even though hundreds of years had passed since their defeat.
She shook her head. ‘No. This is madness.’ How many wood-priests and wise women still clung on to their beliefs? A handful here and there? Who would listen to them? ‘This … this king that
you have been promised for so long … you think he can challenge Rome? One man?’ she said.
‘Rome will be long gone by then.’ This time it was the oldest speaking, her voice crackling with phlegm. ‘The Bear-King will find a world burned clean, and he will remake it.’
‘This is the time,’ the youngest one continued. ‘Rome is ailing, its power fading. If not now, then when?’
‘And what power do you have? If you challenge Rome, you’ll be crushed.’
‘The Attacotti have come, sister.’
The words hung in the dark and Amarina shivered.
For long moments, there was only the howling of the wind. Amarina squinted to make sure the three women had not melted away into the night.
‘Go back to your home and prepare yourself,’ the youngest said eventually. ‘All that you know will be burned away. Death is coming, and only the Bear-King will be able to lead you out of the long night.’
PART TWO
The Fall
It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one’s steps to the upper air – there’s the rub, the task.
Virgil, The Aeneid
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Hunt
THE BLAST OF the horn moaned through the forest. Another answered, closer still. Ahead of the wave of echoes, the man and the boy ran, as they’d been running for a day and a half now.
‘How close are they?’ Marcus blinked away tears, of fear or from the exertion, Lucanus wasn’t sure.
‘Close enough. Don’t look back.’
The Wolf clawed his way up a steep slope, over snaking roots, under the grasping fingers of low branches. He’d tried to keep the lad’s spirits up, but Marcus was no fool. He knew exactly what the barbarians at their back were capable of.