Celtic Fire

by Joy Nash

  ENEMIES

  “You may call me Lucius.”

  Lucius. It fit him. A bold name, but not a rough one. Rhiannon was drawn to the sound of it in spite of a fierce wish to snap the thread of fate that joined her soul to his. She shifted backward on the bed, away from him. No matter what he was called, no matter what connection his kinsman’s blood had forged between them, he was her enemy.

  The heat in his gaze told Rhiannon that he desired her and the knowledge of it filled her with dread. Her captor was above all a man, and like all men, he would take what he wanted. But she would not yield easily.

  She kept her expression neutral. “How is your arse, Lucius, where it was struck by my arrow?”

  Contents

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Copyright

  To my mother, who first showed me the stars.

  And to my husband, who believes I can reach them.

  Prologue

  Northern Britannia, 116 A.D.

  The Roman refused to die.

  His screams spiked through the clearing, but any who might have come to his aid were beyond the echoes of his cries. He spun, staggering, his fingers clenched on the iron blade jutting from his belly. The sword’s hilt protruded from his back.

  He reeled toward Rhiannon, then away, his bare feet slapping the ground. His naked torso jerked and shuddered. Blood trickled down his chin. Gurgled words followed.

  Curse or prayer?

  Rhiannon drew her cloak tightly about her shoulders. She understood the harsh language of the conquerors, but could make no sense of the man’s garbled speech. Whatever his entreaty, it went unanswered. Jupiter, mightiest of the Roman gods, had forgotten his son this day.

  The doomed man tottered forward, one hand extended. Rhiannon wrenched her gaze away and sought peace in the cool mist of the forest. Soft tufts of mistletoe clung to the autumn branches of the sacred oaks, but by the light of the setting sun the crimson foliage reminded her of nothing so much as blood.

  If only the prisoner did not have to die …

  A futile wish. The man was a Roman wolf—his life was forfeit to Kernunnos, the Horned God. She’d come with the whole of her clan to witness her enemy’s death. Yet if the choice had been hers to make, she would have set him free.

  As if sensing her compassion, his soul tangled with hers, desperate, pleading. Her heart cleaved in two. Because Rhiannon had a healer’s skill, her spirit often intertwined with those in pain. This Roman’s touch was something more. Something she couldn’t name.

  Her heart broke as he loosed another keening cry. The wail shriveled to a groan, then a whisper. His body swayed. Shouts rose as Rhiannon’s kin pressed forward, eager to witness death’s victory. Would the enemy die looking at the sky, calling vengeance down upon his tormentors? Or would his mouth fill with dirt, foretelling the triumph of the clan?

  Madog stepped to the fore, his pale cloak washed red in the glow of the sunset. Rhiannon had begged the Druid master to excuse her from the Rite of the Old Ones, but he’d refused. The freedom of the Brigantes hinged on his interpretation of the Roman commander’s death dance. Rhiannon was the tribe’s rightful queen. Her presence lent power to the augury.

  The Roman sank to his knees. Madog circled behind, his gaze intent. The doomed man pitched forward and clutched Rhiannon’s hem. She gasped and yanked at her skirt, but the Roman’s fingers entwined in the wool and would not be dislodged.

  “Tell him,” he whispered on a groan; then his body went limp and he spoke no more.

  Madog grasped the hilt of the killing sword with both hands. With a strength that belied his age, he heaved it overhead. Blood trickled down his bare arms.

  “Kernunnos, the Horned One, is well pleased with his prize.”

  Chapter One

  Assyria, Kalends of Januarius, 117 A.D.

  “A real ghost wouldn’t have to piss.”

  Lucius Ulpius Aquila skimmed a glance over the apparition hovering near his left elbow. The specter dropped the hem of its tunic, an apologetic smile playing about its pallid lips. Executing a graceful turn, it glided to a nearby boulder where an ethereal white mantle lay neatly folded. The transparent linen rippled in the desert air, passing under the figure’s right arm and over its left shoulder. Pale fingers adjusted the garment’s creases with utmost delicacy.

  “And a real ghost certainly would not concern itself with the drape of its toga,” Lucius observed.

  The specter’s shoulders lifted in a familiar, self-deprecating shrug. Lucius’s chest tightened. The hallucination had been a faceless phantom when it first appeared two months before, but with each passing day its features and mannerisms grew more recognizable. Yet even if Lucius believed souls could drift out of Hades, Aulus could hardly come to haunt him.

  Aulus was alive.

  “You are a product of the desert sun,” Lucius said, forcing a conversational tone. “Or perhaps the result of some Assyrian spice. A few more days and you’ll be gone.”

  The apparition shook its head. It waved one hand toward Lucius, then gestured to the northwest. Aulus commanded a small frontier fort countless miles away in that precise direction.

  “You wish me to journey north?”

  The ghost nodded vigorously.

  Lucius steeled himself. “To Britannia?”

  The specter extended its right arm, fist clenched, thumb raised.

  A chill raced up Lucius’s spine. He closed his eyes and willed the apparition to vanish, but when he dared another look, it remained, regarding him with an expectant expression.

  By Pollux. Was he losing his mind?

  He wheeled about and strode toward the camp. Twilight had taken over the Assyrian desert with merciful swiftness, bringing blessed relief from the blistering heat. But far away, winter ice encased the forests of Britannia. When the ghost drifted closer, the chill of the northlands seeped into Lucius’s bones.

  He nodded to the sentry as he entered the encampment. Off-duty soldiers fell silent at his approach, resuming the throw of dice only after he’d passed. One man spiked two fingers in his direction—a sign against evil. Lucius scowled at the ghost. By the gods! Why could he not control the compulsion to converse with his damned hallucination?

  “Move aside,” he told it, and ducked into his tent.

  An oil lamp flickered on the center table. Lucius took a steadying breath and lifted a bronze pitcher from the edge of a map detailing Emperor Trajan’s invasion of the East. The papyrus curled back on itself.

  He poured wine into a goblet and drank, his parched tongue barely tasting the fragrant liquid. He made a short circuit of his empty cell. No doubt his secretary would soon return from the cooking fires bearing a meal that would go uneaten.

  The ghost lounged on a cot, inspecting its fingernails.

  Lucius gripped the cup until his knuckles turned white. “ ‘There is no case in which the soul can act without involving the body,’ ” he quoted, but the words gave scant
comfort. Aristotle, it was to be assumed, had not been prone to delirium.

  The tent flap lifted, admitting Candidus and the aroma of roasted meat. The stone-faced, balding secretary set the tray on the table midway between the curled map and the pitcher. He nodded at a flat wooden box partially hidden by a round loaf.

  “The post courier brought a message, my lord.”

  The ghost rose and drifted toward the table.

  Lucius frowned and set his cup aside. “From Rome?”

  “No, my lord.” Candidus peered at the label on the sealbox. “From Britannia.”

  Every muscle in Lucius’s body tensed.

  Candidus lifted the sealbox lid, revealing a shallow compartment flooded with wax. The ghost bent its head over the impression left by the seal of the sender and went very still.

  “From Tribune Quintus Vetus,” Candidus said.

  Lucius’s breathing ran shallow. He slid his dagger from its sheath, sliced the wax from the edges of the box, and extracted the thin wooden tablet underneath. Tilting it into the lamplight, he read the concise message once, twice, and then a third time.

  “Distressing news, my lord?”

  He looked up, disoriented.

  “My lord?” In an unprecedented display of familiarity, the older man touched Lucius’s arm. Lucius dropped the tablet onto the tray. He gripped the edge of the table, fighting nausea more fiercely than he had ever fought a barbarian sword.

  When at last he spoke, his voice held steady. “A report from the frontier fort Vindolanda. Aulus has been …”

  He broke off, inhaled, and began again.

  “Tribune Vetus sends notice. My brother is dead.”

  Full Moon of Cutios, 117 A.D.

  “Does the pain bother ye still?”

  Rhiannon pressed her palm to her brother’s chest. Owein’s cheeks were no longer flushed. His breath came steady, with no hint of the rasp that had struck terror into her heart the night before. She searched for the pulse at his neck. It was slow, steady, and his skin was cool. That was good.

  He shook off her hand. “The sickness be gone, little mama. Dinna worry so. I drank the potion ye brewed and your magick worked, as it always does.”

  “The magick is nay my own. It belongs to Briga.”

  “The Great Mother smiles on ye then, for when I woke my breath came easily.” He leaned forward and kissed her cheek.

  Rhiannon’s heart melted as it had when she’d first held Owein in her arms fifteen winters past. She’d been a girl of nine and grieving for her mother, but the tiny babe had sparked a flame of joy. Russet curls so like her own clung to her brother’s neck, but his eyes were his own: bluer than the sky and sparkling with mischief.

  She ruffled his hair.

  “Nay, stop,” he protested, but his lips curved in a grin.

  Rhiannon smiled back. Owein might have grown tall and muscular, with a man’s beard sprouting on his chin, but the lad who had hidden his face in her skirts was not yet completely gone. “How is the ache in that thick head of yours?”

  Owein’s expression sobered. His gaze roamed the roundhouse, touching the center hearth and the high peak of the sloping roof timbers before he returned his attention to Rhiannon. “Tolerable enough,” he said with a shrug.

  His seeming lack of concern did nothing to allay Rhiannon’s anxiety. “The night vision returned despite my spell,” she guessed. It was not a question.

  “Aye. The same. Pain, then the dream. A raven in flight. Blood.”

  A chill hand gripped Rhiannon’s heart. “An omen of death.”

  “Perhaps not. It might just as easily be a prophecy of power.”

  “Ye must tell Madog.”

  “I’m afeared to,” Owein said. “He’s not been …”

  “Not been what?”

  “Not … right, somehow. He schools me in the wisdom of the Old Ones as always, but I sense … I dinna know. A wrongness.” He shoved his blanket aside. “Surely ye have felt it.”

  “Aye,” she said. “I have.” For nearly two seasons, since the Roman commander’s death. She shivered, though the fire was warm. “I hoped the chill would fade with time.”

  “It grows stronger.” Owein lowered his voice. “Madog visits the stones day and night. He talks to the skull.”

  An icy finger clawed Rhiannon’s heart. She’d not been to the sacred circle since Samhain, when the Druid master had set the Roman’s dripping skull atop a spike within the ring of stones.

  “ ’Tis not right,” she said, gripping Owein’s arm. “No soul should be imprisoned. Not even a Roman’s.”

  “ ’Twill be worth my own soul if the Rite of the Old Ones brings Kernunnos to aid our warriors,” Owein replied grimly.

  “Nay, do not speak so! Kernunnos is a dangerous ally. We are the Brigantes, the children of Briga. Madog would do better to seek the favor of the Great Mother. Not the dark powers of the Horned God.”

  As if summoned by her words, Madog’s voice, strident but unintelligible, sounded from the yard beyond the hut’s doorway.

  Edmyg’s booming speech answered. “— ’tis nay my fault.”

  Owein scowled. “Nay, it never is. How can ye think to join with that hulking animal, Rhiannon? The entire clan knows Glynis is about to birth his bastard.”

  Rhiannon’s hand stole to her flat stomach. “He seeks a son. I will not give him one.”

  “If Edmyg wants a son, he shouldna take ye as his mate. But he will, because his lust to be king is far greater than his honor.”

  “Madog blessed the match. Edmyg is the Brigantes’ greatest warrior.”

  “Aye, and the tribe’s greatest brute as well.” The flash of a man’s anger showed in Owein’s young eyes. “You are queen, Rhiannon. He is nay fit to carry your cloak.”

  “The clan chieftains have put aside their differences to follow him.”

  “They’ll follow another just as well.”

  “Nay. Niall has been dead less than a twelvemonth, but his memory is far from cold. If I do not accept my husband’s brother as my new consort, the chieftains will be at each other’s throats within a fortnight.” She shook her head. “ ’Twould be the greatest service to Rome I could perform. I canna risk it.”

  Owein opened his mouth to reply, then fell silent as the hut’s wooden door scraped a path over the dirt floor. The spring wind sent a swirl of dust into the air.

  Madog entered with Edmyg dogging his heels. “The clans must gather today, not on the morrow,” the Druid muttered.

  “Kynan’s dun alone answers my call, and reluctantly at that,” Edmyg replied, scowling. “The other chieftains will nay come while the moon of Cutios shines. They await the fires of Beltane.”

  “They be fools, then,” replied Madog. “Cormac’s message was clear. The new Roman commander arrives on the morrow afore the sun sets. Once he disappears behind the high walls of Vindolanda, we’ll not be easily drawing him out again.”

  “He’ll nay reach the fort,” said Edmyg. “We’ll attack on the road with the Horned God at our backs.”

  Madog stroked his white beard. “Kernunnos or no, we’ll have need of every man in Kynan’s dun and our own.”

  “We will have them.” Edmyg’s gaze lit on Owein. “The lad will come as well. ’Tis past time for his weaning.”

  Rhiannon sprang to her feet and drew herself up to her full height, which, to her misfortune, barely reached Edmyg’s shoulder. “Owein cannot join ye. He’s weak still.”

  “He’ll ne’er be strong if ye persist in coddling him,” Edmyg retorted. He took a step toward her.

  Owein jerked to his feet and stepped between them, the sudden movement causing him to sway. Rhiannon put out her hand to steady him, but he brushed it off and looked at Edmyg. “My sister is forgetting I am a man grown. I’ll accompany ye.”

  “Ye serve her well in this, lad,” Madog said. “We’ll be driving the Romans south afore the next snow.” He lowered himself to a stool by the fire and nodded for Edmyg to do the same. Owein took
a third seat.

  “Rhiannon will sit the throne of her grandmother,” the Druid continued. “Ye’ll erase the memory of her shame, lass, once the Romans are gone.”

  “Aye,” Rhiannon said. She’d been weaned on tales of redeeming Cartimandua’s folly. Two generations past, the great queen of the Brigantes had spurned one king in favor of a less popular consort, plunging the clans into civil war. In the end, only the Romans had benefited. Another reason why Rhiannon could not spurn Edmyg, despite his perfidy. She would not repeat her grandmother’s selfish mistake.

  Now a new war approached, one in which the clans would unite against the conquerors. Bloodshed was as certain as the sun’s rising. The thought of the Brigantes’ crossing swords with the formidable Roman army left Rhiannon sick with dread. How many of her kin would perish?

  “Now then, have ye food and cervesia for an old man?”

  Rhiannon nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She took the flask of barley beer from its hook and filled three mugs. She set them on the low table, then moved to the cauldron and ladled the remains of the past evening’s stew into wooden bowls. Taking up her own portion, she joined the men by the fire.

  Edmyg used a barley bannock to retrieve a hunk of meat from his bowl. “We’ll take the Romans where the road crosses the fens,” he said, chewing around a large mouthful. He washed the stew down with a swig of cervesia, straining the liquid through his blond moustache. A portion dribbled onto the braids in his beard. “The forest is dark there even at midday.”

  Rhiannon put her meal aside, her meager appetite now completely gone. The fens were a day’s journey to the south. If Edmyg meant to be in the marshes tomorrow, he would have to travel through the night. Owein’s breathing had eased, but his strength was still fragile. The journey, coupled with a battle, would surely bring on a relapse.

  But Edmyg’s will was set, as was Owein’s, who was determined to prove himself more than a lad. And the Great Mother knew a woman had little hope of shoveling sense into a man’s head when it was filled with thoughts of war.

  As the sun rose into a line of clouds, the clan gathered in the muddy yard to prepare for the raid. The honing wheel turned, scattering sparks from iron blades. Above, the pointed roofs of the roundhouses scratched the gray sky. A wall of logs ringed the huts, capping the crest of a steep hill. The palisade would protect the women while their men fought.