by Alex Faure
It was so strangely accented, containing sounds not even present in Latin, that Darius understood only the first two syllables. They were strange and beautiful, like the figure before him.
“Fionn?” Darius said. He wondered if the Robogdi ever shortened their names. His concern was dispelled as a smile broke out across the assassin’s face, so warm and genuine that Darius felt his heart stop.
“Fionn,” the assassin agreed.
Well, then. Fionn removed the fish from the fire, and they ate them with their bare hands. They were small enough to eat uncleaned, and with the tea and the berries Fionn had brought, Darius’s appetite was satisfied.
After, Fionn examined Darius’s ankle and changed the bandage on his thigh. Darius didn’t pay much attention to what he was doing. His eyes were on Fionn’s face—the sharp line of his jaw; the waves of white hair; the long, dark lashes framing those impossibly coloured eyes.
“Darius.”
The sound of his name startled him. The Celt’s accent gave it an exotic aspect, the vowels softened and the r a gentle rumble, the Roman r being a sound that clearly did not exist in the Hibernian tongue. Darius realized that Fionn was offering him his cup, refilled with tea. He accepted it hastily, with murmured thanks.
After disposing of the remains of their meal, Fionn went to the river’s edge to wash his hands, a task he performed slowly and meticulously. He was fastidious, for a Celt—or perhaps all the Robogdi were like this. Fionn cupped the cold water and splashed it over his face, absently trailing wet fingers across the back of his neck. The sun was heating the rock now, and the air had warmed dramatically.
Darius watched the water trickle down Fionn’s pale skin. A pang of desire rose within him, hot and startling in its intensity. He felt, for one dizzying moment, as he had after consuming nightfire.
He forced his gaze away. That he was physically drawn to Fionn didn’t surprise him—the assassin’s beauty, while of a strange aspect that bordered on inhuman, was impossible to ignore, and Darius had never been skilled at resisting beauty, even when it came attached to an enemy. But, in this case, his very natural desire alarmed him.
Fionn was a Celt. It was likely that he couldn’t comprehend the possibility of Darius harbouring this sort of feeling for him, and if he did, he would react with horror and disgust.
Darius saw the Britannian boy’s burned body. He couldn’t understand the hatred that would drive a man to inflict such suffering on his own brother. And yet that propensity existed somewhere, in the hearts of these Celts—irrational and preposterous, but no less real for that. He would have to guard himself carefully in Fionn’s presence.
Fionn came to sit beside him on the rock, droplets still glistening on his skin. In that moment, he seemed wholly a part of that dew-starred world, as unknowable as the dark forest that framed the river. Darius, distracted despite himself by Fionn’s proximity, placed his cup on a rock without watching what he was doing. The cup, poorly balanced, slipped. It tumbled towards the surging river, where it was swallowed up.
Where it should have been swallowed up. Had not Fionn been there, having moved so quickly Darius hadn’t seen it, catching the cup in one hand. He placed it at Darius’s side, saying something in an admonishing voice.
Darius stared. He had seen Fionn move like that before, but his vision had been obscured by river mist, and Darius had been able to half-convince himself he’d imagined it. No Roman could move like that. No Celt could, either, at least none that Darius had encountered.
“How did you do that?” The question slipped thoughtlessly from his lips.
Fionn looked at him, one eyebrow quirked. He glanced at the cup, and gave a shrug that conveyed a certain weariness, as at an eternal mystery.
What are you? Darius felt a little shiver of unease, but it was nowhere near as strong as his curiosity. At some crucial point, he had stopped fearing Fionn. That didn’t mean he trusted him, but it was almost as dangerous.
He saw the assassin’s arrow projecting from the chest of one of his soldiers. He thought of the cool, methodical way Fionn had cut down the Romans on the riverbank. He tried to hold onto those images, but whenever he looked at Fionn, they dispersed like fog in the morning sun. He found himself thinking instead of the assassin’s head bent over Darius’s injury, the fall of his hair, his unexpectedly strong arm guiding him over the rocks.
Darius recalled how Fionn had hidden him from the other Robogdi that bloody day on the riverbank. He hadn’t wanted them to see that he was sparing Darius’s life. And he hadn’t seen any other Robogdi since Fionn had brought him here. By all appearances, the assassin was helping Darius on his own initiative.
But to what end?
It was a riddle without an answer. Darius remembered thinking that before, when Marcus had easily—too easily—rounded up a group of Celts and brought them to Sylvanum. Only that time, there had been an answer. A deadly one.
Fionn was removing items from the satchels he had brought, organizing them in the cave upon the natural shelves formed by the rock. It was food, mostly—rough chunks of salted meat; something that looked like a large biscuit, but was likely the rock-like, inedible bread stomached by some Hibernian tribes; several apples; more leaves of the kind Fionn had brewed that morning; and a fearsome cheese covered in white mold. Darius had often noted that the preferred diet of a particular region mirrored its people—the bracing, hearty stews of the Germanic tribes; the jarring, chaotic spices of the East. Here it seemed the food was designed to pick off the weak while testing the tolerances of the strong.
After arranging things to the satisfaction of his fastidious nature, which took some time, Fionn returned to Darius’s side. He pointed to the sun, then mimed it setting and rising again. Just before it set for the second time, Fionn stopped and pressed his hand to his chest, then to Darius’s shoulder. He pointed to the food and the fire.
Darius understood. He would not see Fionn again until the next evening, when he would return with additional supplies. Seeing the comprehension in Darius’s eyes, Fionn rose, murmuring something. Darius could not be certain it was a farewell, but it had that tone. Then Fionn was darting from rock to rock across the river, alighting noiselessly on the other side. He melted into the towering wall of green forest without even a ripple.
Chapter Six
Darius’s sleep that night was dreamless. He awoke late in the morning as a watery sun fought its way through thin cloud. It won, eventually, and Darius crawled to the edge of the rock, where he could enjoy the warmth while he soaked his ankle in the chill water. It hurt less today, a dull, background ache, and the arrow wound also seemed improved. The moss seemed to have completely drawn out the infection, and he did not bother reapplying the bandage, preferring to let the air and the river spray do its part to heal him.
He was already watching for Fionn as the sun reached its zenith and began its slow progress back into the trees. He ate some of the food, nearly breaking a tooth on the Celtic bread before deciding, wisely, to soak it first in tea. Fionn had brought him more than he could eat in a day. He wondered whether he should begin preparing dinner for the two of them—perhaps he could make a stew out of the salted meat and some of the greens Fionn had left him.
Darius let out a breath of laughter at the idea of preparing a meal for himself and a Robogdi assassin, as he would do for family—or a lover. And yet, Fionn had eaten with him, which was surely unnecessary, if all he sought was to keep Darius alive.
Darius wondered which of the Robogdi villages was Fionn’s. Clearly there was one nearby, given that the assassin appeared to arrive at the cave on foot. The Romans had discovered several Celtic settlements along the River Viris—Robogdi, for the most part, but also one belonging to a mysterious tribe called the Volundi, whose territory stretched to the savage western sea. The Darini, Rome’s allies, kept largely to the northeast coast.
The hours slipped by. As the sun retreated again behind the trees, Darius managed to start a fire from the ki
ndling Fionn had left him, though it burned low and sullen, disliking the eternal damp of the wood. Darius eyed the trees, the river, the rocks jutting like broken bones. Roots swarmed from the forest, lunging out of the soil onto the bank. It was a world almost too vivid to bear, the sun stoking it to green flame.
Darius turned his face to the light, feeling its warmth relax something knotted inside him. He didn’t know what had become of his fort. But he was alive. It was impossible, and for a single moment, it was enough.
Darius tended the fire. He laced his fingers, idly running a thumb over his scars as he scanned the forest for Fionn’s approach. That was when he saw it.
A flicker of movement, a hint of pale hair. It appeared for a moment between the boughs on the opposite bank, and then disappeared almost as quickly. A second later, there came another flicker—farther up the river this time.
Darius froze. He groped for the knife he had been using to hack apart the meat. There was no time to do anything else—to hide, or douse the flames. He had been seen.
The forest was still. Darius wondered if it was possible that he had imagined what he’d seen, and knew in his bones that it was not. Though he saw nothing, he sensed eyes upon him. An owl let out a soft, warning sound somewhere behind him. The smaller birds had fallen silent.
Darius’s heart beat slowly. He tried to imagine what he would look like to the Robogdi, if one were to stumble upon him. He was dressed in their clothes—a pale, woven tunic and close-fitting trousers. Fionn had even provided him with a pair of thin sandals that looked suspiciously like women’s wear, but which spared him the impossible trial of pulling boots over his swollen ankle. Without his uniform, Darius did not appear obviously Roman—a small percentage of the Celts had dark hair and brown eyes, and with the lighter colouring he had inherited from his mother, he could perhaps pass as a tan Robogdi tribesman.
A pale figure appeared suddenly on the opposite bank, and Darius froze. It was an unfamiliar man, probably Robogdi, given the cut of his boots and the assassin’s dagger he carried in his hand. He called to Darius, a question in his voice. Another man appeared, holding a bow. It was not pointed at Darius, but held in readiness.
Darius rose slowly to his feet. He could not, obviously, reply to the man, and so he simply stood, waiting. The man called again, and the archer raised his bow.
The two men seemed to size him up, an enigma in Robogdi clothing, with hair close-cropped in the Roman style. Then the archer seemed to blink, and let out a small sound of surprise. Darius recognized him in the same instant—he was one of the men he had fought during the invasion of Sylvanum, when he was near-delirious with nightfire. Darius had thought he had killed him.
“Roman,” the archer breathed, and the other man gave a shout. Then Darius was knocking an arrow from the air, and then he was turning, and fleeing into the forest at his back.
Stumbling into the forest. He tripped over the first root, jarring his ankle. Blackness exploded across his vision, and Darius fell onto his hands, scraping them bloody on the hostile forest floor. A distant part of him wondered if there was anything in this land, animate or inanimate, that didn’t want him dead.
He lurched back to his feet immediately, but there was no benefit to it—he couldn’t outrun two Robogdi. Darius had hobbled only another few yards before he heard voices at his back—the men had already crossed the river.
Darius’s thoughts swam. The trees were dense, the forest swaddled in its dark finery. Could he use that to his advantage? He pressed himself into the hollow of a decaying tree—not simply because it was the only solution he could devise, but because his trembling ankle could no longer bear his weight. A moment later, they were upon him.
The first man passed by like a ghost, his footfalls a mere whisper against the soft earth. The second made more noise—he was large and red-haired, with that ruddy, peculiarly Celtic skin tone that Darius had always found alarming, as if its owner had been scrubbed raw with a brush. He thundered after the first, disappearing between the trees. Darius let out his breath.
Two more Celts followed. Then two more. They took no more notice of Darius than the first pair, equally convinced that he had charged headlong into the heart of the forest, rather than pausing here in the borderlands, in plain view, if any of the Celts happened to turn their heads.
Six Robogdi warriors. Of which three, Darius knew from the weapons they bore, were trained assassins.
He waited until the last footfall had faded, until the last leaf had ceased rustling. Then he stumbled on, moving deeper into the forest.
He didn’t follow the path of the Robogdi, obviously. He headed north, and then east, following the course of a broad, shallow stream that fed into the river. His feet were soon soaked, but that was the least of his concerns. A stick scavenged from the forest floor formed a crude crutch, allowing him to move at a pace that could best be described as a steady walk. Even that was painful. Darius clenched his jaw as another hasty step jarred his already throbbing ankle.
Every minute that passed in that quiet forest pressed on him like a weight. Sooner or later—probably sooner—the Robogdi would double back, and Darius didn’t like his odds when they did. Robogdi assassins seemingly knew every inch of their labyrinthine territory—they would almost certainly discover his trail, though he tried to use the stream to cloak it. They always seemed a step ahead of any Roman scout, and only through sheer brute numbers had an assassin ever been overcome in his own element.
Darius had no numbers. He had a knife, and a broken ankle. He recalled how effortlessly Fionn had cut down his men on the bank. He cast about for something, anything, that could provide a place to hide, as he could never hope to outrun his pursuers.
He was breathing heavily. He tried to still it, without success. There was a splash in the stream behind him, and then, before he could whirl to defend himself, a voice said, “Darius.”
He turned and met Fionn’s silver gaze. A curious feeling rose within him—a sense of overwhelming relief, followed by disquiet. Once again, he was unarmed and vulnerable, facing a silver-eyed stranger.
Only Fionn didn’t feel like a stranger now. The assassin was out of breath, his pale face flushed. Darius had never seen him dishevelled like this—he had clearly run there, and fast. He held his bow, strung with an arrow, loosely at his side.
He said something, his voice low, an urgent melody of syllables. His gaze flicked to a nearby tree. He seemed to be gesturing for Darius to hide himself, but before Darius could take a step, one of the Robogdi assassins stepped out of the trees behind Fionn.
Darius had barely a second to wonder at it, the twisted symmetry of the two of them—both pale, though Fionn was the paler, his eyes glinting with an icy fire absent from the other Robogdi’s watery blue gaze. Fionn was vivid as the moon in that dim forest, while the other Celt was the faintest of stars.
The Celt made a sound of surprise as Fionn turned to face him. He said something with a question in it, and then, to Darius’s amazement, he bent his head in Fionn’s direction. Fionn said nothing in response, and the man rose.
Fionn buried his arrow in the Celt’s throat.
The forest echoed with breaking branches as the other Celts returned. One lunged out of the trees at Darius, with only the slightest rustle of the leaves to mark his approach. But Fionn was there, knocking the man’s dagger from his hand and driving his own blade up into his rib cage in a perfectly executed kill.
In the same motion, Fionn retrieved the man’s weapon and tossed it to Darius, who hadn’t been expecting it. His instincts, honed by a decade of soldiering, reacted before he did, and he turned to meet the next man. But he was no master of the dirty brutality of a dagger fight, and it took several parries before he was able to land a thrust in the man’s abdomen. It was poorly placed: the man would probably bleed out eventually, but he was still a threat. He pressed his hand against the wound and regarded Darius with murder in his eyes. Fionn, moving like a gust of wind, came behind Dar
ius’s opponent and slit his throat. He had already dispatched his own man, who lay choking on his own blood in the stream. Darius reeled, but the part of his mind that was a soldier before anything else kept count: three down.
The ruddy man stepped into the stream. He surveyed the bodies of his companions, two of which still twitched and gasped in the water, then turned his gaze on Fionn. He barely looked at Darius.
He asked a question, quietly, his voice a rumble of fury. Darius felt chilled by it, as if the icy stream had risen to cover him. Another Celt, his colouring almost as dark as Darius’s, appeared at his side. The branches rustled—did the third man circle behind them, waiting for his chance to strike? Yet Darius felt unable to turn his head, transfixed by the bone-deep hatred in the red-haired man’s gaze as he took Fionn in.
Fionn said nothing. He simply stood there, the stream plashing against his heels, his dagger held lightly in his left hand. He did everything left-handed. Perhaps that was part of what made him so difficult to fight, difficult to predict. He returned the warrior’s fearsome gaze, his own expression unemotional—that of a man calculating a distance.
With a horrible scream, the red-haired Robogdi lunged at Fionn. Darius, who was used to Celtic battle cries, fell back a step in spite of himself. He recovered quickly, and spun to meet the third man, who charged from behind a tree, also screaming like a wounded beast. Darius’s thoughts were still with Fionn, though—the red-haired Robogdi was enormous, easily twice Fionn’s width, and Darius needed to put down this second threat quickly so that he could help Fionn. Fortunately, Darius’s opponent was an ordinary warrior, and unskilled, or perhaps Darius had simply recovered his familiarity with his own training. He quickly ran the man through.
But the Celt, no doubt acting under the influence of the single-minded bloodlust that was the hallmark of his people, charged into Darius even as Darius skewered him with his dagger. Darius stumbled back, shoving the man off him with difficulty. He tripped over a stone and collided hard with a tree, which arrested his fall but knocked the wind from his lungs.