Swords of Arabia: Warlord
Page 29
Inside the hut, the youth who’d escaped faced his mother. “We’re dead,” he said simply. The woman looked at him, turned away and said calmly to the ten year old who was watching wide-eyed: ‘Caros, my son, you have to run away. Go quickly.” She grasped her small son under the arms. “Off you go, my love, through there.” She lifted Carausius up to the smoke-blackened rafters and pointed at the vent hole in the thatched roof. “Through there, carefully and run to the smith at the forge. Tell him everything. Go, my darling, go quickly.”
A thought struck her, and Clinia looked at her older son, paused, then fumbled in the dirt floor at the base of a support pole. Acting quickly, she scraped free a wool-wrapped scrap of lead, a small sheet of metal with something scratched into it. She whispered urgently: “Hide this, it’s important. Your father inherited it. His father told him it shows where a treasure is hidden, but we don’t know where to look.”
She put the thin lead sheet with its inscrutable markings into the older boy’s hand, then turned in alarm. A raider outside had thrown himself against the door, making the whole frame shudder. Dust and soot drifted down from the thatch. Carausius, frozen on the rafter, reacted to the noise and scuttled for the vent hole. As he popped his head into the outside air, he saw his father in front of the hut, moving forward in a crouch, his dagger extended at Filwen. All eyes were on the fighters, nobody saw the boy squirm through the vent, slide onto the mossy reeds and squelch down onto the dung heap alongside the hut.
A sea raider spotted Carausius as he scooted across the settlement but the man turned away. There was loot to be had, women and slaves to be taken. He wanted his share and legging it after a skinny boy across country while the others got the pick of things wasn’t for him. The boy could be caught later. He turned, grinning, to watch the fight between Filwen and the Briton, knowing his warlord’s skills with sword or spear. “He’ll hurt that peasant. They don’t call him the Bastard for nothing,” he muttered. His eyes flickered sideways, his attention caught by the seal hunter’s sobbing wife. Long, chestnut hair, slender shoulders. He licked his lips. He could take her into that hut, he thought. That would be better than chasing some boy. Let Filwen gut the peasant, he had other things in mind. He’d comfort the new widow, act of kindness, he grinned to himself.
The feeling was coming back into Aulus’ right hand and the bulge of the dagger’s handle again felt solid in his palm, but the chieftain knew his weapon was badly outmatched. He shifted the cloak more firmly around his left forearm, noting that the garment’s fastener, a heavy silver and amber brooch that was the symbol of his rank was on the outside, forming a miniature shield. He had no more time for reflection as Filwen thrust hard at him with the long spear point. Aulus was barely able to hurl himself aside as it scraped his bare upper arm. “Close with him,” the thought blazed through his mind. “Dust in his eyes. Dust.” Aulus dodged another thrust, stumbling sideways. His fingers scrabbled at the ground. The spear thudded into the earth right by his hand, hurled at the instant he began to fall. The Briton’s fingers grasped gravel and dirt, he began to straighten to throw his blinding handful and his world went dark.
Filwen had launched the big ash and iron spear with his right hand and in a motion made skilful by long hours of training, had continued his arm’s swing to grab the haft of his sword. He instantly drew it across his body, snatching the sword free of its hanger chains. The Scoti whipped his sword backhanded, scything the blade across Aulus’ face. The tip took out the Briton’s right eye in a gout of blood, smashed through the bridge of his nose and jellied his left eyeball so cleanly, its fluid ran unbloodied down his cheek like the albumen of an egg. The shock of the impact drove the Briton to his knees, stunned, blinded and helpless. Filwen glanced at the watching teenage boy held by his hair, throat tilted to the serving man’s blade, then crashed the pommel of his sword onto Aulus’ undefended head.
The down thrust shattered the skull, releasing a glob of pulped brain to glisten against the chieftain’s dark hair. Aulus slumped face forward into the dirt, twitching in his death spasms. He never felt the jarring impact of the raider’s blade as it hacked into the nape of his neck. His killer reached down to free the silver brooch and its bodkin from the cloak wrapped around the dead man’s arm, and jabbed it into the wolf fur his servant offered at his gesture. “A memento, a pleasing memento,” he said, eyeing the lump of amber set in a triple spiral of heavy silver that was, though he did not know it, symbol of a high chieftain. “Now, let’s find where these Druids are with their coin.”
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Author’s Note
Extract from Arthur Britannicus by Paul Bannister