Ghost of the Wall

by Jeff Mariotte

  They had barely reached the rocky slope when arrows came their way, as well. The Pictish archers were nestled among big rocks at the top of the slope, or hidden behind their huts, where they couldn’t be seen from the base of the hill. They fired volley after volley, just as the Bossonians had. Their shafts were shorter, their points more crudely struck, but their arrows, tipped with poison made from forest plants, rained death just the same.

  After the first ten arrows, Trey decided to get more selective in his aim. The Picts were too widely spaced for random volleys to do much damage, so he looked for individual targets. There a naked warrior reached for an arrow of his own, from a quiver slung across his back. Trey sighted down his arrow, then raised its point to compensate for height and distance, and released. The Pict had barely raised his own bow when Trey’s arrow plunged into his breast. The Pict dropped his bow and turned, knees buckling beneath him. Trey could see the point of his own arrow jutting from the man’s back and blood pouring out the wound, then the man fell to the ground, snapping the shaft.

  Trey nocked another and looked for his next target.

  CALVERT WAS PART of the first wave up the slope.

  Rocks clattered everywhere around them as the Picts fought first with the most common objects at hand. He raised his shield and batted them away, dodging the bigger ones that rolled toward him. Arrows came next. Calvert saw the man next to him die, a feathered shaft vibrating from his ruined forehead.

  Loose rocks slid under his booted feet as he climbed. He kept his head down, helmet toward the enemy, shield held up to block any oncoming missiles, and tried to maintain his balance. He had no doubt that the Picts knew full well how hard it was to fight on loose scree, and they probably kept the hillside that way intentionally.

  He was determined not to die there, two dozen feet or more from his foes. If he fell this day, it would be in honorable battle. Gritting his teeth, he dug his feet into the dirt and pressed onward.

  A few feet ahead of him, one of his Rangers caught an arrow in the gullet and spun backward. A young soldier dodged the falling corpse with a shout of dismay. Calvert swatted the soldier’s rear with the flat of his sword. “Get on up that hill, you worthless whelp!” he ordered. “Don’t let a few bodies scare you!”

  The soldier gave him a hurried nod and redoubled his efforts. Calvert knew their strategy wasn’t complex or particularly subtle. It depended purely on the Aquilonians’ having sufficient numbers to overwhelm the Picts’ defenses. Which meant many would die in the effort.

  Nothing could be done about that. Calvert drove himself onward, glancing up just long enough to see a Pictish archer at the top of the hill drawing a bead on him. He zigged to his right and at the same time reached down and scooped up a fist-sized rock. Lurching to his left, then back to the right to confuse the archer’s aim, he paused just long enough to hurl the rock toward the man. The archer was still, trying to release his arrow, and he let it fly just as the rock crashed into the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted, and the archer swayed back on his feet, dropping his bow.

  With another few long strides, Calvert reached the first rank of Pictish defenders. Arrayed around him were other Aquilonians, both regular army and Rangers. From the grunts and cries, he knew the real battle had begun.

  Rough-hewn spearpoints jabbed at him from every direction, and the air was filled with the bellowing war cries of the painted Picts. Blocking some with his shield, others with his sword, he tried to push deeper into the line. He twisted out of the way of one. Another’s grazed the outer side of his left thigh, drawing blood. Calvert snarled, bat-ting away another with his shield as he focused his efforts on the Pict who had cut him. The man was short and stocky, bronzed from the sun, his blue-painted skin naked but for a ragged loincloth, some pounded copper rings about his arms, and a necklace of sinew and bone. His lips were drawn back, baring teeth in a savage grimace. Fear blazed like fire in his eyes as Calvert bore down on him.

  Calvert ignored the rest of the fighting going on about him and slashed at the Pictish spearman. His blade cut into the staff of the Pict’s weapon, and Calvert yanked it back, releasing it. The Pict screamed and jabbed his spear forward again. Calvert swung his shield up into the broken shaft, and the weapon snapped. Calvert pressed his advantage, drawing his sword back for another blow, which the Pict tried to block with only the remaining section of his spear. Calvert’s sword bit deep into the man’s neck, cutting off the Pict’s death cry. Calvert had to press his foot against the dying man’s chest and tug his sword to free it from the muscle and bone in which it had lodged, and when it came loose, blood ran its length like a river.

  At last, one of the barbarians had fallen under his sword. Calvert blew out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as a wave of satisfaction swept over him. Looking left and right, he saw that some of his fellows had fallen; but more were advancing, their heavier armor and better weapons carrying them forward through the nearly naked Picts.

  Behind the defenders stood their village, rows of small thatched huts made of branches and mud, with fire pits, animal corrals, and public areas interspersed. More Picts streamed from behind the huts, bearing daggers, short swords, and spears. One of them roared to the heavens, holding aloft by the hair the head of an Aquilonian he had decapitated. Calvert wondered if Lupinius had known how many defenders there would be when he had hatched his plan.

  But his sword had tasted blood, and would do so again. He let loose with a battle cry and waded into the stream of Picts, sword flashing and flailing, the thrill of battle filling his heart.

  INVICTUS’S HEART WASN’T in the battle, but he knew that his allegiance to his fellow Aquilonians demanded that he not turn his back on it. He waited behind the Bossonian archers while the first wave stormed the hilltop village, then joined the second group as they charged up to reinforce the first. He noted that Lupinius held back, seemingly directing the battle even though no one actually fighting could hear any of his commands over the cries and clatter of war.

  The slippery hillside was spattered with blood and littered with the corpses of the fallen when Invictus climbed, his long sword clutched tightly in his fist. By the time he reached the top, the battle had already turned in favor of the attackers. There were plenty of Picts remaining, and they fought furiously, caught up in the battle frenzy that was typical of their kind, but the Aquilonians and their allies were in control of the situation. Invictus spotted a wounded Pict scrambling to his knees with a bow in his hands, hoping to bring down a soldier or two before he died. With a swift kick, Invictus let the Pict know that he was not alone. The man turned, surprise widening his eyes, and Invictus drove the point of his sword through the man’s breast.

  That foe dispatched, he turned his attentions toward the village. Carnage filled his senses—the stinks of sweat, blood, and fire; the roar of flames gutting wooden homes, the clang of weapons, the shouts of the victorious and the cries and whimpers of the vanquished. Everywhere, he saw smoke and bodies and blood, and, through the haze, warriors fighting to the death.

  The sight sickened Invictus, but he knew it was the price of war. Same with the burning of the huts, most likely done with torches drawn from the Picts’ own fire pits. It was not until he had dispatched a few other stragglers and ventured farther into the village that he discovered that it was not an isolated atrocity. The bodies of Pictish women and children were strewn about the landscape along with those of their warriors. Rangers loyal to Lupinius carried torches and moved in methodical fashion, setting each hut aflame in its turn. It dawned on Invictus that these were not random acts, carried out in the heat of battle. The Rangers looked like they were following orders, and they were absolutely merciless in their dedication to duty.

  Invictus looked about him for his brother. He felt the hand of Lupinius behind this outrage. But Lupinius was still far down the hill—climbing, but not hurriedly. Invictus knew they’d have to have a talk about this atrocity, and he suddenly began to look forward to the
exchange.

  Until then, however, he’d have to find some way of containing the damage. Breaking the uneasy truce was one thing—slaughtering every man, woman, and child of the clan and putting the torch to their village was something more. When news spread, it would threaten the peace along the entire Pictish-Aquilonian border. If he could salvage anything from all his efforts, he had to act immediately.

  He saw a Ranger named Rufio raising an axe toward a young woman with black hair and flashing eyes. She had been running from a hut after it was torched, heading for the back side of the hill, and escape, but the Ranger blocked her way, and his blow looked as if it could cleave her in two. “Hold!” Invictus shouted, his voice deep and commanding.

  Rufio barely glanced his way. “Why?” he asked.

  “What is she to you?” Invictus demanded.

  “I might ask you the same.”

  The woman had fallen to her knees. She knelt there, looking furious enough to kill, as the two argued over her fate. “A civilian, not a combatant, for one,” Invictus said.

  “There are no civilians here,” the Ranger replied. “Look, she wears a knife in her girdle.”

  That much was true. Most Picts went about their lives similarly armed. The knife might have been used for cleaning game, cutting meat, or working with skins. Still, Invictus couldn’t deny that it might have been used as a weapon, as well.

  “She looks as if she’d use it on you, given a chance,” Invictus observed.

  “She no doubt would,” Rufio returned. “I don’t intend to give her that chance.”

  “Let her go,” Invictus urged. “If she’ll promise not to fight.”

  The Ranger shrugged. “I have my orders already,” he said, confirming what Invictus already suspected. He turned back to the woman, who spat angrily at him.

  But only once. The Ranger’s arm rose and fell, his axe flashed in the morning sun, then her blood sprayed wetly across the dirt as the life flowed from her.

  Invictus turned away in disgust. He had been to the Bear Clan’s village on several occasions. The village elder was an old man called Cuirn. He was not the clan’s war chief—that was Ondag, a ferocious warrior whose bloodied corpse he had already passed, surrounded by those of several Aquilonian regulars. But Cuirn was respected by all, and his opinions were not taken lightly. His hut was toward the back of the village from here, facing out toward the rising sun on the eastern rim of the hilltop. Lupinius’s Rangers were moving from the west side back. Maybe they hadn’t yet reached him.

  Invictus weaved his way between knots of battling warriors, pausing now and then to add his sword stroke to the effort. Picts were falling by the score. Their blood coated his arms, legs, and armor. But he felt a pressing urgency, so he tried to avoid the clutches of combat and worked on getting his bearings through the smoke and madness of battle. The huts looked so similar to one another that he had to make an extra effort to locate Cuirn’s, but finally he saw it.

  He started toward it when a young Pictish boy, probably not more than thirteen, charged at him from the open door of a nearby hut, its doorway decorated with human skulls hanging from leather thongs. The boy had a short spear in his fists and a look of rage on his face. For a moment, Invictus wondered if it was that boy who had made friends with Alanya. If not him, then one like him—a friend, perhaps, or kin. Then he put those thoughts out of his mind, because the youth obviously intended to kill him.

  He deflected the first thrust with his shield. The boy didn’t give up, though. He slipped the spearpoint under the shield’s edge and tried again. This time the iron tip scraped across Invictus’s mail, and he took an involuntary step back. The spear came toward him once more, but he brought shield and sword together, trapping the shaft between them. Invictus twisted and drew the boy off-balance. Then he shoved forward with the shield, and the boy buckled under his advance. Invictus let the shield hang by its straps and grabbed the spear with his left hand, wrenching it from the youth’s hands. Then he hurled it far from the boy, fixed him with a stern glare, and walked away.

  He knew that the boy would most likely recover the spear and either use it successfully against an Aquilonian or die in the attempt. Either way, another life or two didn’t make much difference in the overall scheme of things. More important by far to get to Cuirn and try to get him to surrender to the Aquilonians.

  No one stood between Invictus and his goal. Cuirn’s hut was, as yet, undamaged. The doorway faced the other direction, and Invictus couldn’t tell from where he was whether there was anyone inside, or if perhaps Cuirn had fallen elsewhere in the battle. Invictus hurried across the unspoiled ground, tendrils of smoke drifting toward him from behind. At the hut’s back wall, he stopped, listened. Heard nothing. Biting back his anxiety, he went around to the opening, blocked by a single animal skin drapery. “Cuirn,” he called in his rough Pictish. “It is Invictus!” He drew back the skin as he spoke, and went inside.

  Cuirn huddled at the back of the large open space, shivering as if from intense cold. He had to have seen sixty years, if not more, and was wrinkled and frail, incredibly old for a Pict, who seldom lived beyond the early forties.

  “Invictus?” he said, his voice quavering. He drew long gray hair away from his face and blinked several times. Eagle feathers were tied to it, drooping behind him. Invictus knew that he stood silhouetted in the doorway, so he entered farther and let the skin fall into place behind him.

  “Yes, it’s me, Cuirn,” he said.

  “They’re . . . they’re killing us all.” Cuirn looked thin and pale, worse than Invictus had ever seen him. Usually, the old man wore his age well, remaining physically active in spite of his advanced years. But even though it had only been a few months since Invictus had seen him, he seemed to have aged decades, as if he had reached his eighties in that short span of time. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Cuirn,” Invictus said. It was the simple truth. “I was away from Koronaka when the plans were laid.”

  “Can’t you stop it?” the old man asked. “The pain . . . I feel it all.”

  Cuirn was a powerful shaman, Invictus knew. Like all of his kind, he indulged often in figurative speaking. But he was not given to hyperbole, so if he claimed that he felt the pain of his clan, it was just possible that he meant it literally. Invictus knew the old man had powers beyond those of mere mortals. That, at least, would explain his appearance, drawn and pale. His lower lip shook like an aspen in a high wind, and his head was nodding manically.

  “I’m sorry, Cuirn,” Invictus said, meaning it. “I can save you, and perhaps a few others. But the rest—it’s out of my hands. If the clan surrenders now, then maybe . . .”

  “I . . . I trusted you, Invictus.” The old man’s feeble muttering sliced to Invictus’s heart, as surely as a dagger.

  “We were betrayed,” Invictus admitted. “Both of us.” He hesitated for a moment, not sure what his next move should be. “Can you walk?” he asked. “We should get out of here, gather any we can, and get down the hill.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Cuirn said. “Too late for any of it.”

  “As long as we draw breath it isn’t too late to try,” Invictus argued.

  Before either man could speak again, the skin over the door rustled and was yanked aside.

  “You’re wrong, brother,” Lupinius said as he entered the hut, his sword in his hand. “It is entirely too late.”

  8

  LUPINIUS HAD GUESSED that his brother would lead him to the old shaman, more efficiently than if he had tried to search from hut to hut. He had hung back, giving Invictus plenty of leeway to find the right man. As soon as he had seen Invictus enter the hut on the rim of the hill, he had been sure. The shaman would know where the treasure hoard was kept, if anyone did.

  Now, in the dim light of the hut’s shadowed interior, looking at the wizened old creature who shivered on the floor and pleaded with Invictus, he knew he had been right again.

  Invictus turned to face Lup
inius, his face a mask of undisguised anger and contempt. Good to know his brother’s true feelings, for once. The man had become such a diplomat that it was often hard to tell where he stood. “Lupinius,” he said. “What is the meaning of this wholesale slaughter?”

  “I already told you, Invictus,” Lupinius replied calmly. “We need to send an unmistakable message to these savages.”

  “That message is more than clear, I believe,” Invictus said. “Now call off your dogs. Spare these people any further outrage.”

  “We can spare this one,” Lupinius said, pointing toward the old shaman with the point of his sword, “if he’ll tell me what I want to know.”

  “If you think I’m going to let you interrogate Cuirn, you—”

  Lupinius silenced his brother with a sudden thrust of his blade into the other’s throat, just above the mailed shirt and below the helmet. Invictus made a gurgling sound and dropped his own sword, both hands leaping to his neck as if he could contain the blood that already gushed forth from the wound. The look in his eyes was one of absolute surprise. He had probably never guessed that his own brother would slit his throat one day. For Lupinius’s part, he had assumed since his eleventh year that he’d have to do it eventually.

  The old man watched in horror as Invictus slowly slumped to the hard-packed dirt floor of his hut, his blood pooling beneath him.

  “He . . . he is your brother?” the shaman asked in broken Aquilonian.

  “He was,” Lupinius corrected. “Apparently I am an only child now.”

  “Why did you . . . ?”

  “He was in my way,” Lupinius explained. “And about to be more so. You have information I need, and he did not want me to have it.”