by M. K. Hume
Before Frith made her slow way to Artorex’s villa, Ector stopped her and voiced some serious concerns.
‘The Villa Poppinidii can be readily defended, Frith, but Artorex’s house is isolated. If the Saxon raiders are unfamiliar with the villa, perhaps Gallia and her servants will not be detected, but I’d prefer that they were with us behind our thick walls.’
Frith sensed dark wings hovering over her. Danger threatened, she knew.
‘I agree, Master Ector. I will persuade my lady to seek shelter here.’
‘I am relieved, Frith. Indeed I am.’
As Frith hurried towards Artorex’s snug little home, her barbarian superstition warned her that the air with filled with black wings and the thickets with staring eyes.
The house servants had already bolted the gates and Frith had to pound upon the panels to gain entry. Once inside, Frith hurried to Gallia’s bedchamber where her mistress was lying, wan and tired. Her pregnancy had only reached the fifth month, but her child was unusually large and was sapping Gallia’s strength. Besides, the mistress had been subject to fits of black depression since the birth of little Licia, when Gallia wept for her lost kinfolk and swore that she would be better dead. Artorex and Ector had tried to comfort her when her dark moods came upon her, but she could only bear Frith to be near her. Even little Licia became an irritant, and Gallia would cry inconsolably that her daughter would fare better without her.
‘Gallia!’ Frith murmured. ‘Wake up, Gallia! Lord Ector believes that a Saxon attack is imminent and wants us to go to the villa for protection.’
Gallia opened her sleepy eyes. ‘We’ve never had trouble with Saxons before, Frith, and our house is remote from the villa. I’m so weary, I’d rather remain here where I can rest.’
‘I know you’re tired, my precious, but we must go. Let old Frith help you into warm furs and we’ll leave this house. If you’re too weary to walk, your manservant can carry you.’
‘I dreamed of Artorex as I slept, Frith. He’s riding into danger - and I know he’s going to die.’ A small tear glistened on Gallia’s cheek.
‘No, sweetheart! No! He won’t die, I promise.’
Gallia shook her head like a broken wooden doll. ‘He’s in danger, Frith. I saw him in a dreadful swamp, surrounded by corpse fires.’
Frith tried to shatter Gallia’s fey mood with any means at her disposal. The slave gripped her mistress’s hand and shivered at the icy coldness of her flesh.
‘All the more reason to keep yourself and your babe safe,’ Frith replied, trying to warm Gallia’s hands between her own palms. ‘He’d want to ensure that you were protected.’
‘There’s no point, dear Frith. Licia is safe and I’m certain we’ll not be found here on the edge of the forest. I’m quite prepared to let fate take its course. I don’t want to leave - so I won’t, no matter what you say. Go, dear Frith. Please, I just want to sleep.’ Gallia’s small mouth was set in a mulish pout.
‘Please, Gallia!’ Frith persisted. ‘Don’t be obstinate! This house is difficult to defend, so we must leave. If you don’t want to think of your own safety, then consider your servants and your unborn child!’
‘It’s far too late, Frith. Let the servants go to the villa if they wish. The Saxons will be watching us anyway, if they are here, and they’ll see us if we attempt to reach safety. They’d intercept us on the track. Whatever the gods decide will happen, whether I’m at the villa or here, in my own home. As long as Licia survives, nothing else matters.’
Gallia turned her face to the wall and fell into a light doze. Frith wanted to scream at her and shake her shoulders until her mistress acted sensibly.
But the barbarian slave knew, through her ancient, alien blood, that Gallia had sensed a change in the tenor of her world. When the three travellers came, she felt the patterns move and alter. Something dark was impelling Gallia to act foolishly, but Frith had no idea how to force her mistress to her senses.
‘Heaven help us,’ Frith thought aloud. ‘We will all die!’
Not for a moment did the old slave consider leaving her charge, although her heart fluttered in her withered chest as if it would leap out of her rib cage.
Gallia’s personal servants also refused to return to the villa, or even to venture into the Old Forest for safety.
Gareth was also proving difficult. Frith was forced to spend many minutes persuading him to leave Lady Gallia and return to the villa to protect Licia.
Gareth had grown into a strong youth who was utterly devoted to Artorex and his family. While he wasn’t particularly tall, Gareth’s appearance was imposing because of the strength of his bone structure, the unusual blondness of his hair and his quick intelligence. Like Frith, he had a streak of creative sensitivity that gave him an acute sense of beauty; like Frith, he was stubborn to a fault, and was impossible to move once his mind was set - as it now was.
‘If I were a Saxon, I’d attack this house first,’ he hissed, to avoid alarming the house servants. ‘You need at least one other man here to protect the house.’
‘Someone must protect Licia in the main building,’ Frith pleaded. ‘Who else but you, my grandson? I’ll not fail my oath, and nor should you.’
Only an appeal to Gareth’s sense of duty could have forced the young man to return to the villa proper. Frith kissed his firm, sun-reddened cheek, tousled his lovely hair and blessed the lad, for he was leaving her to protect her beloved Licia. Frith’s heart told her that she’d never see her great-grandson again.
Fortune favours the brave, but it especially protects those who are prepared.
At a little before midnight, the villa was attacked by Botha and his trained warriors.
The total force, less than twenty men, came with stealth, creeping from the orchard through the shallow, newly fallen snow like blots of spilled ink on the white scroll of the earth. Carefully, with muffled weapons, they encircled the main building, while Botha sent three young men to destroy the distant cottage on the far side of the fields that had been found by his scouts in the late afternoon.
Ignorant of Gallia’s peril, Gareth was closeted with the wounded courier who had, by now, lapsed into a coma. The youth half-sensed the approach of Botha’s warriors, although he only heard a mere scrape of metal against stone, but all his faculties were immediately alert. Through the bolted shutters, he saw fur-cloaked men moving stealthily in the moonlight. Two of the men were carrying blazing torches.
‘Awaken!’ Gareth screamed. ‘Awaken! We’re under attack.’
And then, after latching the storeroom door, he raced to the great bronze gong in the colonnade with its large hammer that had been provided to warn the occupants of the house of impending threat. As the metal sent out its deep knell of warning, Ector awoke with an oath.
The alarm had not been struck since starving wolves had attacked the villa some twenty-five years earlier. Ector felt the old fires of battle stir in his thinning blood.
‘Awake!’ Gareth continued to scream from the colonnade as the attackers began to batter at the shutters and the main entry door to the villa. Caius and Ector had slept fully dressed, with weapons beside their beds, and they now ordered the house slaves to danger spots inside the villa while they protected the right colonnade themselves.
Ignoring his instructions, Gareth abandoned his patient to his fate and scurried to Julanna’s apartments. He was determined that he would defend Licia with his life if need be.
He found Julanna clutching the two children to her shivering body as an iron pommel beat against the wooden shutters. The face of the mistress was as pale as parchment, and she cried thinly in fear. Gareth sent all three females into the small, windowless room that linked Julanna’s apartments with her husband’s sleeping chamber.
‘Keep the bars secure on the doors, no matter what you hear,’ Gareth ordered, a long knife made by Bregan in one hand. ‘And you must keep the children silent - for my sake.’
Gareth didn’t know that four of the attack
ers were already dead, killed from behind by the village recruits as they tried to break in through the narrow front doors of the villa.
He didn’t hear the bloody death rattle as his patient’s throat was cut when the villa’s defences were breached through the window of the recently vacated storeroom. Nor did he realize that Ector and Caius, supported by the house servants, were already engaged in desperate combat in the colonnade.
He was certain, however, that every attacker who entered the windows of Julanna’s chamber would die.
Gareth easily killed the first intruder, as the warrior was pressed against the wall, half inside and half outside the slit in the window, in an ungainly attempt to clamber through. With speed on his side, Gareth cut the warrior’s throat with one carefully measured slash, before stepping backward to avoid the jet of arterial blood that arced across the room.
Fortunately for Gareth, the second intruder slipped on the spilt blood as he leapt through the breach, so Gareth was able to blind the intruder with another quick slash of his knife across the man’s eyes. This warrior, bleeding profusely, roared in mingled pain and rage, and struck out with his sword in the confined space, but Gareth dispatched him easily with a wicked knife thrust from behind.
Gingerly, Gareth peered out of the broken shutter. This side of the house was now free of attackers, but he could clearly hear the sound of vicious fighting from across the atrium.
‘Keep the door barred, and remain here until I return,’ Gareth ordered through the door that should keep Julanna and the children relatively secure.
When she disobeyed him, he thrust a discarded sword into her shaking hands. Her eyes widened when she saw that the boy was covered in fresh blood. Then, her hands steadied as she hefted the heavy weapon, and Gareth registered a new hardening in the eyes of his mistress.
‘Don’t let the children into the bedchamber. Latch that door,’ Gareth roared, before he sped away across the atrium on naked feet that left a bloody trail behind him on the mosaic floor.
Four huge warriors were forcing Ector and Caius to retreat inexorably towards the locked entry doors when Gareth ran up behind the attackers. The bodies of four house servants lay on the tiles where they had fallen after being cut down like ripe grain. Caught between the intruders and the metal-bound entrance, father and son had little chance of survival.
From behind, Gareth hamstrung the warrior closest to him with one quick slash. The man screamed and fell to the ground, while the warrior in close combat with Caius dropped his concentration, and his sword arm, for one brief, lethal moment.
It was enough.
Trained by Targo, Caius understood the value of the edge when fighting at close quarters. He slashed at the warrior’s sword arm, now exposed, and the forearm was sliced to the bone.
Mercilessly, Caius stabbed his enemy through the neck without a flicker of compunction.
The other two attackers were now caught between the three defenders. Hemmed in by the narrow colonnade, the two warriors fought until they were cut to pieces.
The surviving warrior was still trying to regain his footing with a useless leg when Gareth knocked him senseless with his sword hilt.
Simultaneously, a villager with a slight head wound stumbled up to the locked wooden gate and began to pound on the timber with a blacksmith’s hammer.
‘Master Artorex’s house!’ He screamed through the timbers. ‘It’s burning!’
Gareth unbolted the gate, and Bregan tumbled into the open entryway. The blacksmith was repaying his debt to the Villa Poppinidii.
‘Are any of these curs outside the villa still alive?’ Ector roared, his bloodstained sword dripping in one hand.
‘No, my lord, we seem to have hunted them all down but Master Artorex’s house is burning from end to end.’
‘Mistress Gallia is still in there!’ Gareth shrieked, and began to run.
‘Wait, boy,’ Caius yelled after him. ‘Wait! The gods alone know how many more of those animals are still alive out there.’
‘Go with him, Caius,’ Ector ordered. ‘Try to save Gallia if you can. Bregan and I can manage here - can’t we, old fellow?’
Caius ran at his best speed, but he was less nimble than the stable boy. By the time he was within sight of his foster-brother’s house, he could see that speed was useless.
Lit by the leaping flames, Gareth stood in the small courtyard with bloody arms upraised, screaming anguish and defiance at the uncaring night sky. He had found old Frith at the side of the house, stabbed through the body many times when she had thrown herself over Gallia to protect the young woman after all escape had proved hopeless.
Gallia’s throat was cut down to the spine.
At the open gateway, Caius found Artorex’s servants, hacked to pieces as they defended their mistress. One of the enemy warriors lay dead some little way off from the bodies of Frith and Gallia. A metal hairpin had been driven through one eye, deep into the man’s brain.
Caius recognized that familiar pin with a pang.
‘See, Gareth? Frith has gone to glory with her enemy,’ he shouted over the roar of the flames. ‘She drove a needle into his brain.’
But I’ve failed in my oath, Gareth thought inconsolably - and Caius feared the boy would cast himself into the flames.
‘Does Licia still live?’ Caius shouted, as he tried to pull the boy back from the crumbling structure of the house.
‘Aye. She lives. She’s with Julanna and her babe,’ Gareth remembered and allowed himself to be drawn away a few steps backward.
‘Then you should be guarding her,’ Caius ordered savagely. ‘That was your duty.’
Unwillingly, as if his eyes refused to leave the staring, empty face of Gallia, Gareth backed away, his feet slipping on the icy surface. He paused, and returned to the small tragic bodies. With his knife, he cut an amulet from Gallia’s ruined throat, and then bowed in one final act of reverence.
After a last glance back at the tragic scene, he ran in the direction of the villa to make good his pledge.
Caius drew his hands over the death mask of the beautiful young woman. Her puzzled expression disappeared as he closed her eyelids.
‘Poor, harmless and joyous Gallia,’ he murmured to the flames.
Caius shivered.
He knew instinctively that many men would perish when Artorex discovered the fate of his wife and unborn child, and many worlds would burn to ashes before the steward could be deflected from his revenge for these senseless acts of murder. Caius’s fertile brain scrambled to invent an excuse for his negligence in leaving Gallia outside the villa proper where she could not be protected. Regardless of their wishes, Frith and Gallia should have been forced to sleep under the protection of the villa’s defenders.
And the same stars that looked down on Gallia’s body, still cradling her unborn child in her belly, were also smiling down on Artorex as he continued with his scum towards Anderida. For such is always the fate of those few people whom Fortuna raises high on her terrible wheel of chance.
Even as night became day, the ravens, crows and rooks were gathering at the Villa Poppinidii. Already, the smell of carrion tainted the winter wind.
Hamstrung by the blade of Gareth, Botha did not deign to scream, even when Caius cut off his fingers, one by one. A maddened Julanna sliced him unspeakably with a kitchen knife with ruthless, female cruelty, but still the old warrior gritted his teeth and uttered only his name, as if that admission were guilt enough.
Nor did he utter a word of explanation or defence for his actions, even at the point when Ector took pity on his tortured body and beheaded the old warrior with his own sword.
Uther’s most loyal servant joined his fellow warriors in an untidy, bloody pile in the snow of the horse paddock.
These animals were Celtic warriors, Ector thought, his thinning hair awry and his eyes blurred with tears, as the field hands bore the bodies of the villa’s dead to be washed and prepared for cremation. How could Celts kill Celts? And slaught
er innocent women? And innocent children?
How will I justify our failure to Artorex? Caius thought, with a flutter in his belly. He will be beyond rage.
He kicked at a fallen warrior’s bloody face with his booted foot and enjoyed the crunch of bone under his heel.
Let the birds feast on their eyes before their burning, Gareth thought viciously, as he spat on Botha’s emptied face. Let them go sightless to the Shadows.
And the crows came.
CHAPTER XIV
OUT OF THE MARSH FIRES
Artorex stared laconically at the expanse of marshland, punctuated by a number of odd stunted trees that reached almost to the edge of the palisades of Anderida. The last flags of light gave him few clues on how to locate a path through the wasteland, so he beckoned Targo to his side.
‘What do you know about swamps?’ Artorex asked curtly. Time was no friend on this night, for the scum must cross the wasteland before midnight. Soon, Luka would bring confirmation that the other troops were in position to commence the attack.
‘It’s less than I’d like but as much as I need,’ Targo answered drily. ‘The only safe way is to move slowly, in single file, testing the ground as we go. It’ll take us most of the night before we are across it.’
‘Damnation!’ Artorex swore. ‘Spending a day exposed at the foot of the palisades is a crazy risk. We have to move faster.’
‘I can try using Odin as the lead scout. He’s supposed to live where swamps are commonplace and his weight will find the sucking mud faster than either you or me,’ Targo suggested guilelessly.
‘I sometimes think you consider him expendable,’ Artorex drawled softly with a grimace that could have been a smile. ‘However, I agree with you. He’s the best possible choice - so Odin leads us out. We start immediately.’ He paused. ‘Tell them to daub themselves with mud. You too. It’ll save our skin from the insects. And ensure that the men protect their weapons at all cost, for they’ll soon need them.’