by Неизвестный
From the corner of my eye, I had marked Bulinas awakening, throwing his hands over his head as arrows shot past it. Now, as I drew my sword and prepared to meet the men charging across the clearing at me, I heard him blowing his horn. He believes, I thought. I supposed that was better, though it wouldn’t make our attackers’ blades any less sharp.
Sometimes, in the seconds when you’re waiting for an enemy to close, everything seems to speed up. He’s on the far side of the field and then you’re raising your shield to block his sword. Other times, the world slows down. He’s running toward you and you note the blue tattoos curled up and around his chest and arms, the bronze necklace like a collar, the notches in the sword he’s carrying like a torch. I watched the man nearing me stumble as his foot found a dip in the ground. Then he regained his stride, his face momentarily swept by embarrassment at his error. All the while, the blast of Bulinas’s horn filled my ears, an ongoing scream that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Just as I was lowering my sword, preparing to duck from the swing I could see coming and draw my sword across the man’s belly, the air around me—around us—broke open. It was as if a wall none of us had known was there had given way in several places at once. Black water spilled out of the bottom of each break, followed by a herd of demons. I don’t know what other name to give them. Each was the size of one of our horses, covered in thick, black, shaggy hair. Great horns rose from their heads. I could call them goats, but that would be like calling a dragon a lizard. Their faces were more like those of men than of beasts, and their mouths were full of teeth the size of spades. The sound that came from their throats was the answer to the scream of Bulinas’s horn, and the smell that poured off of them was of burning pitch. The mere sight of them broke the attackers’ charge, and in less time than it takes me to find the words for it, the things cut through them. They trampled men under hooves like axe blades. They smashed into them with their horns. They caught them in their teeth and bit them in two. A couple of the braver ones tried to make a fight of it, and the things tore them to pieces. Even after the last attacker was dead, the things continued to savage them, stamping what remained of them into ground muddied by black water and blood. Their screaming continued undiminished.
When the eyes of the first one locked onto me, I felt my bowels loosen; I’m not ashamed to say. Legionnaires or not, the rest of the men and I would be no more trouble to these creatures than had been our enemy. Their eyes were not those of goats, though I don’t know as I’d go so far as to call them the eyes of men. They were full of something—a hateful intelligence that shone out like a lamp. I tried to shout for the others to stand fast, there was no point in running, but my tongue had gone dead in my mouth.
The note Bulinas blew on his horn didn’t sound any different from the one that had summoned the things, but it had the opposite effect. Wheeling on their hind legs, they rushed to the openings that had brought them here and plunged into them. Once the last one was gone, the breaks seemed to flatten, as if becoming images of themselves. Bulinas ceased his note, and the openings fell to the ground in a rain of something like sand.
There was no point in asking him what had happened. I’d heard the story he’d told the night before. I’d been at the sites of enough battles to know that the aftermath of one is never a pretty thing. If I’d never seen men savaged like this—their bodies rent asunder, the remains shredded and flattened, floating in a muddy soup, the air heavy with a scorched reek—that was because the only battles I’d been at had been fought by men against other men. There was nothing I could do about any of it except vomit, wipe my mouth, and look to the casualties.
Of the three who’d been struck by the enemy’s arrows, two were in decent enough shape to continue the rest of the ride. The third man had been struck high in the chest, close enough to the heart to nick it. The blood was leaving him fast. All the rest of us could do was attend as he completed his journey out of this life. I hoped those things weren’t waiting for him on the other side.
Our party, small to begin with, was down by four. A couple of the men opined that we should give our fallen comrades what funeral rites we could, which I agreed with. As far as I was concerned, this meant laying their corpses in a row, covering their faces with their blankets, and muttering whatever prayers anyone could remember. It was not the ceremony those fellows had been asking for, but in the time it would take us to do anything more, we might find ourselves under attack by the next group of warriors with an urge to test themselves against some legionnaires. Worse, Bulinas could put that black horn to his lips again and admit the demons to our presence a second time. So I pulled what rank was mine to pull, and in short order we arranged our comrades’ bodies with as much dignity as we could. By the time the sun had cleared the trees, the six of us were mounted and riding north hard.
After the morning’s assault, you may be sure, I saw threats everywhere—figures at the limits of my vision that, I was half convinced, ducked behind the nearest tree when I looked at them straight on. At least on horseback, we would make harder targets to hit. You may be sure too, after the rest of the morning’s events, I could not stop thinking about Bulinas and his horn. Here, it seemed, was the solution to Trajan’s Caledonian problem. We had been dispatched on a mission of inquiry to learn how effective the horn and its attending monsters would be against a Caledonian force. Either someone had intelligence that an attack was being planned on Loucovium, or the men stationed there would be tasked with creating an incident that would draw one down on them. From what I had witnessed already, I did not like the Caledonians’ chances. No soldier disdains the weapon that saved his life—and I had no doubt that without the appearance of the demons, none of us would have left the clearing alive—but I was uneasy at enlisting such allies. We had enough trouble with the loyalty of the Brigantes, and they were human. How much less could we trust creatures that scrambled up from the deepest pits of Tartarus?
The fort at Loucovium had been raised near the eastern shore of a river that flowed out of the southern end of a narrow lake. The surrounding terrain climbed into gradual hills whose crests were too far away to permit the Caledonians to position their archers on them. Tactically speaking, it was as sound a location for a fort as I’d seen. As we drew within view of it, I could see the tents pitched on the ground around it. At a guess, five hundred Caledonians were camped there. I pulled my horse up short, my hand on my sword, while I assessed the scene before me. At the near side of the encampment, a group of men were engaged in a game involving long sticks and a ball. Amidst the tents, other men sat talking. Alongside the road to the fort, a few sentries leaned on their spears. It did not have the look of a force ready to attack. A couple of the Caledonians caught sight of us and pointed us out to their companions, who stared at us then shrugged and returned to whatever they’d been doing.
Perhaps it was a ruse, an elaborate trap. But it didn’t feel like that, nor did we have any option but to finish our ride. We set off at the fastest gallop our horses had left in them. The Caledonian sentries straightened up. A couple of them dipped their spears toward us, but they didn’t follow this move with anything more hostile. The faces of the men who had beset us that morning were in my mind’s eye. I wondered if any of them had been kin or comrades of the warriors to either side of us. I saw a man notch an arrow to his bow and lazily aim it in our direction, only to lower it with a laugh when one of his companions spoke to him.
At first, the officer in charge of the fort was overjoyed to greet us. It had been a while since he and the twenty-four men under his command had had much in the way of visitors. Once he realized that we were not the advance for the reinforcements he’d never stopped requesting, his enthusiasm waned, but he recovered enough to declare his hope that Bulinas’s stay would impress on him the need to strengthen the garrison. Since early spring, the Caledonians had set up camp outside the fort in a brazen display he and his handful of men could do naught to dispute. The Caledonians knew t
his. Should they choose to, they could take the fort in short order. For the time being, it suited their purposes to remain where they were, their mere presence a daily humiliation, but who could say how much longer that would be the case? Bulinas did nothing to correct the man’s impression that he was here to take stock of the situation, nor did I or any of my men. What could we have said that wouldn’t have sounded like madness?
For the next couple of days, little happened. Bulinas made a show of inspecting the fort, checking its supplies, mounting its walls to survey the enemy, listening to the commander’s plans for an attack on them, but he passed much of his time in the tent that was provided for him, seated cross-legged on the ground, his eyes closed, his hands resting palms-up on his knees. Since my men and I were supposed to be his guards, we kept close to him. Whatever troops weren’t on duty drifted by us to catch up on the news of the wider world. All of them asked about our charge, but we said that we didn’t know anything about him. It was true. Or true enough. You can imagine I was full of questions, as were the rest of my men. We passed them back and forth in low voices as we stood outside the tent. Who was this man? Was he a sorcerer? How had he come by the horn? What about the other items in his box? Could any of them work similar feats? It would have been the simplest thing to duck inside and put our questions to him. He had spoken to me, already. Who could predict what else he would disclose? Yet I stayed where I was, my feet anchored by that uncertainty. That Bulinas might answer my queries was not without peril. Thus far, I had been witness to a sight that would plague my memory until my death. Who could say what other, worse things he might show me? That was the riddle that lay underneath all the others: what kind of man has the use of such a thing?
The morning of our third day at the fort was gray, full of fog and a chill rain. Bulinas stuck his head out of his tent, frowned, and returned inside. When he reappeared, he was wearing a black cloak with the hood up. I accompanied him as he climbed the fort’s eastern wall, which overlooked the greater part of the Caledonian camp. They were going about their business much as they had been the day of our arrival. They did not appear to like the rain any more than we did. Bulinas studied them for a long time—enough that I thought he might be searching for something in particular, and I started trying to figure out what it could be. The fog rendered large portions of the camp difficult to distinguish. A pair of Caledonians noticed us watching them but didn’t seem to find it of much worry.
When he threw his cloak over his shoulder, I was surprised to see the black horn in Bulinas’s hand. I had expected more fanfare leading up to its use against the Caledonians. At the very least, I had assumed he’d have the fort’s commander with him. No. He lifted the horn to his lips, inhaled deeply, and blew. For all the force he put into it, the note that emerged was no louder than the one I’d heard in the forest clearing. The horn screamed its shrill, strange sound, and everyone who heard it stopped what he was doing. Inside the fort’s walls, men scrambled for their weapons, sure that the Caledonians had finally commenced their assault. Outside, on the plane, the reaction was mixed. Most of the men stood around gawking at one another, unsure what the signal meant. A few of them went for their swords and spears, fearing, I suppose, a raid by us. By the time those on either side of the rampart had identified Bulinas as the source of the shriek that had scraped their ears, the air was full of cracks from which black water sprayed, as if from a breaking dam. The cracks burst and the demons leapt from them in a hairy mass.
There was an instant, as I was watching the faces of the Caledonians below me, rent by puzzlement and fear, when the grimmest sort of satisfaction suffused me. Here you go, you murderous bastards, I thought. Here’s an enemy’ll grind you and your irritant kingdom to dirt, to nothing. Let’s see what your tattoos and your blue paint do against these things. As the demons smashed into the nearest Caledonians, I grinned. One of the things tore through a Caledonian shield and the arm behind it. The fog kept me from seeing too far into the Caledonian camp, but I had little trouble picturing what was happening there. These things, the black goat’s children, were slaughtering any and all people they found. Because of my closeness to Bulinas’s horn, whose shriek went on, I didn’t hear the screams coming from within the fort, at first, and once I did, it took a moment to place them. I turned and saw one of the fissures in the air hanging in the center of the fort, black water pooling on the ground, a trio of demons killing the men who could not fight them off. Half of the fort’s residents lay dead and dismembered, including all but one of the men who’d survived the journey here with me. While I watched, two of the demons caught a man between them and ripped him apart.
My sword was in my hand, and I would have gone to my death had I not remembered the second blast Bulinas had blown three days ago—the one that had sent the monsters away. Stepping closer, I bellowed at him to stop. He had done enough; the enemy was defeated. It was time for him to return these beasts to hell.
Instead of ceasing his blasting, however, the man prolonged it. Now the earth began to shake, all at once and violently. On either side of the fortress wall, cracks raced across the ground, black water leaping from them in geysers. The rifts opened and more of the goat-demons clambered up out of them, joining their brethren in the mayhem. A crack split the wall behind me, releasing further demons before that section of the rampart collapsed. The cries of the things had drowned out the sound of Bulinas’s horn, though I could see him continuing to blow it. The shaking of the earth grew stronger, almost knocking me from my feet. Except for us, no one was alive inside the fort, nor did I see any men living where the Caledonians had been. There were only the demons, galloping through the muddy remains of both forces, their eyes alight with malicious joy, the smell of their smoldering hair floating on the air. And still Bulinas sounded his horn, as the earth gave way in longer and deeper vents, releasing more black water and more demons.
I didn’t know what the man intended. Was this a demonstration of sufficient devastation to leave no doubt about his weapon’s power? Or something else—something grander, madder? There was no way to ask him. He couldn’t have heard me if I’d been yelling in his ear. I steadied myself, raised my sword, and cut his right arm from him. Still grasping the horn, it dropped between us. His eyes wide, Bulinas turned toward me, unbalanced by the loss of his arm. Blood sprayed from the stump. His mouth was open, his lips working to form some word, curse, or question, but I did not learn what it was. In two bounds, one of the largest demons sprang up the wall, caught Bulinas in its teeth, and leapt off into the fog with him.
It was followed by another, equally big demon, which landed on the spot where Bulinas had been standing. It stared at me, at my sword dripping blood, and I stared at it, at its mouth smeared with gore. There was more of man than goat in its enormous features, and I saw in them great age—age to compete with that of the mountains, of the sea. Its yellow eyes had watched the waters swallow Atlantis, and even then the demon had been old. This thing had seen Jupiter overthrow Saturn. It had witnessed Saturn casting down Uranus. My fingers loosened and my sword slipped from my hand. My knees bent and I fell prostrate before the beast. It snorted.
When I rose, it was with Bulinas’s horn in my grasp. The demon’s face showed what I am sure was surprise. The note I sounded was a poor copy of Bulinas’s, but it served the purpose. The demon resisted it, striving to maintain the freedom it must have thought at hand. It snapped its teeth and pawed the dirt, smoke streaming from its black coat. Whatever spell or compact controlled it was too strong, and it hurled itself from the top of the wall through one of the cracks in the air.
III
The man leaned back in his chair. The shadows around him shifted, as if someone had moved a lamp from one side of the room to the other. “Of all the men,” he said, “who saw the day break in that place, I was the only one left alive. Already, the remnants of the Caledonians and their camp had slid into the crevasses that had split the earth and were drawing closed, leaving a muddy expa
nse. The wreckage inside the fort suffered the same fate. I could not stay where I was, so I picked up my sword, tucked the horn in my belt, and made my way down from the wall. I knew I was headed south, but I was not certain of my destination. Why not Eboracum or one of the closer Roman forts? This thought occurred to me while I was not yet out of sight of Loucovium. It was no great honor to have led a group of men, including an important visitor, to their deaths, but under other circumstances—had that first ambush been more successful—I could have shouldered the responsibility. The horn, though, changed everything. I’m a lousy liar, always have been. Whatever story I attempted about the fates of Bulinas and my men—not to mention, everyone else who’d been at Loucovium—I would not be able to conceal my possession of the horn. In short order, I would be commanded to surrender it, or it would be taken from me, and then it would be used again. Perhaps the one to do so would exert more control over it than had Bulinas—or perhaps not.
“Such a wager was too big for me to take. I could try to lose the thing—bury it somewhere, toss it into the sea—but could I be certain it would not be unearthed, washed up on a beach? I couldn’t. No matter which way I turned the situation, I could see no solution but for me to keep and guard the horn as best I could for as long as I could. I left my armor by the side of the road, though I kept my sword, wrapped in my cloak. My clothes were a mess, and my travel made them worse. I moved south, avoiding the Roman forts along the way, stealing food when I could, buying it with what little coin I had when I couldn’t. Though it pained me to do so, I skirted Eboracum. At Londinium, I bluffed my way onto a merchant ship, which took me across the Oceanus Britannicus to Gesoriacum. From there, I wandered the empire, keeping to its margins. I hoped I might locate someone to relieve me of my responsibility, but that has not come to pass. I’ve learned much. I now know that Bulinas kept the horn in his box to shield himself from its effects. Having it next to me for so long has left me…changed from what I was.”