He’d worn no clothing on the battlefield beyond his boots, and remained naked now—fortunately, the temperatures were balmy in this southern land. And he’d pissed and shit himself, unable to control his bowels any longer after the first day. The smell from below him, and the constant swarming of flies added to his torment—and the buzzing, biting vermin would have surely landed on him to sup, as well, but for the one attendant spirit who’d managed to stay with him, in spite of the confiscation of his binding amulets and charms. The spirit chased away the flies, and did her best to ease the pain in his arms, her voice in his thoughts the only relief he had.
The Romans had, on the second day, come in to work him and his fellow captive over. He’d let himself go as limp as possible to roll with the force of the punches, while keeping his stomach muscles tight. He’d been captured once, when he was young, by the Venicones. Though he was a king’s son, they’d beaten him and tried to break him, too. But he’d managed to outlast them, before being rescued. Brought home to the Caledonian Forest. And then taken by the druids for training. I lasted ten days in the Venicone camp. Unlike my sister. And that was before I knew the songs and the magic and the voices of the gods. There is a chance to learn about our enemy here. No escape attempts . . . unless it looks like I’m about to be executed. Until then? Endure.
You are hurt, the spirit whispered in his mind, her voice concerned. My power to heal you is diminished, so far from my forest.
I know, he thought, unable to speak around his gag. It doesn’t matter. I’ll live.
A rattle at the door, the slide of the bars being unlatched. His head rose; judging from the little light filtering through his hood in this windowless prison, he and his fellow prisoner had already been fed today once. Either they’re here to beat us again, or a decision has been reached on what to do with us. Wanting to groan, he edged himself higher on his toes, reaching out for the power in the earth. If they’re here to kill me, I’m taking as many of them with me as I can.
To his shock, his captors poured water over him, making him gasp and choke around his gag. It’s not cold enough here for that to do much in the way of torture, he thought, confused. Now, the Venicones did that, and left me bound to a tree in the snow for an hour or so.
Rough hands, catching his shoulders. Some sort of wooden implement, scraping over his skin. Matru tensed himself to resist, to fight, but while the hands weren’t gentle on his many bruises or his broken ribs, it mostly felt as if they were scraping the last of his war-colors from his skin. And the crusted shit, too, which made him silently thankful, if apprehensive. Perhaps they’re going to give us to their gods now, he thought. Disrespectful to sacrifice us if we stink.
They unshackled his hands, and he couldn’t stop his arms from dropping limply to his sides. He staggered, trying to brace himself against the pain that he knew he was about to feel. Couldn’t help the sound that he choked to the back of his throat as blood returned to his screaming appendages. Heard their laughter, and wanted to pull the ground open at their feet and seal them inside it. But he couldn’t catch them all at once, not without himself falling in, too. Not without the use of his eyes.
They jerked the bag off his head, and pulled some loose garment over his nakedness instead. Plain wool, unadorned. Matru exchanged glances with Docca, his fellow prisoner. Docca shook his head subtly. So, as far as that Parisi bastard knows, we shouldn’t attack as yet. Wonderful.
“The Imperator wants a word with you,” one of the Romans informed them. “Can’t have you in front of him stinking of your own shit. Come on then. But mind your manners, or we’ll cut your tongues out.”
That would make it difficult for us to speak, Matru thought as they bound his hands behind his back once more, hobbled his feet with rope, and used spear points to shove him forwards.
He got a good look at the camp as they shuffled out of the prison towards a larger wooden building—one inexplicably covered in vines and flowers, while the rest of the camp had a raw, new look to it. Paths between tents and buildings looked torn out of the earth. Heaps of soil, unsmoothed, around the foundations of the buildings. Smell of sap in the air—none of the lumber had been given a chance to cure before being put up into the structures. He could see that many of the men, in spite of the vaunted discipline of the legions, were drinking outside their tents today, as if celebrating their victory. Doesn’t seem that they’re mourning their dead. Perhaps they’ve already finished with that. Or it’s true what the southlanders say—that Romans don’t have any human emotions. That they may look human, but they’re not the same as we are.
Shoved into a room with a neatly-made table and stools. Prodded until he shuffled to stand in front of the table, Docca beside him. And waited, spear points pressing into the soft skin of their throats, as servants entered and poured water and wine for those who’d sit at the table. Set up baskets of fruit and bread. Matru recognized the gesture for what it was—another, subtler way of breaking them. They’d barely eaten in days, and the smell alone was enough to set his mouth to watering. Look at what we have, and what we could give you, if only you’ll talk, he thought. Unlike the gruel into which your guards have spit in front of you. I’m surprised none of them have yet masturbated and put their seed in it, just to degrade us further.
Then the man who’d been fighting with Aucissa near the end of the battle entered, the scars on his cheek fading much more quickly than they should have; by all rights, the wound should be a festering mass of green pus and livid red scabs at the moment. Oddly, he didn’t look Roman. While Romans had their fair share of blond hair and blue eyes, this man was taller than the rest of the legionnaires, and the cast of his nose and cheekbones said Gaul—perhaps even Cantabri.
He stepped to the right of the door, holding a spear, his face impassive, but his blue eyes alert. And then three more people entered, all much younger than this Roman soldier with the Gallic face. Matru recognized the red-eyed god-born immediately, and stiffened. Their Imperator. The son of Caesar. Again, the man didn’t look entirely Roman—his skin had a tawny hint of gold to it, for one.
Behind him, the woman whom Aucissa had thrown onto one of the stone spires—and whom the son of Caesar had returned to life. Her eyes shimmered gold, marking her, too, as god-born. The Imperator helped her to a stool, and the young man behind them entered now, settling tablets made of wood and covered in glossy wax on the table—and waited for the Imperator to sit, before he took his own seat.
Matru’s eyes flicked from face to face. They’re kin. The young man could be a brother, or a close cousin to the Imperator. Same skin and hair, same face. The woman . . . perhaps a cousin, too. But look at how he touches her. So gentle, you’d think she was a gosling plucked from a riverbank nest. Lovers? Possibly. He collected the information, settling it into the back of his mind with the hundreds of songs he knew how to sing, the chants that described the whole history of his people. Kings and queens and gods and wars, betrayals and battles and births and deaths.
“This will be hard going if they don’t speak Latin,” the Imperator said, breaking the silence. “Time for you to shine, Hammer,” he added, looking back at the man by the door. “Translate into Cantabrian for me. They must speak that, else they couldn’t have allied with them.”
The man by the door nodded, taking a step forward, and began to translate as the young Imperator spoke. His Cantabrian Gallic was rough and barely grammatical; he slurred sounds that should have been sharp, and harshened sounds that should have flowed like water. “Know that you stand before Ptolemy Julius Caesarion Philopator Philomator, called both Caesarion and Eagle,” he said, adding the full string of names to what the young Imperator actually said in Latin, and then went on, “Imperator of Rome and Pharaoh of Egypt. He asks which of you, if either, is the leader?”
Matru didn’t reply as the guards now, cautiously, undid his gag. Worked his jaw a little, and licked his lips. Docca didn’t answer, either.
Again, translation out of Latin, wh
ich Matru and Docca both understood perfectly well, into that butchered Cantabrian dialect, “He asks your names, and asks who called you here from Britannia.”
Docca snorted at the Latin word for their native island. The guard’s eyebrows went up. “He says that his men long to tear you to pieces, in vengeance against those who cost them the lives of so many friends, and that he cannot keep you safe for long. Unless you give him information that is worth a man’s life.”
That hadn’t quite been how the younger man had put it. Matru wasn’t sure if the issue was the soldier’s poor grip on Cantabrian, or if he was deliberately making the younger man’s words sharper and harsher. But still, neither he nor Docca replied.
The young man beside the Imperator turned and asked the young woman something in a rapid flow of syllables that didn’t sound like Latin at all. Matru concentrated, trying to identify the dialect, but failed. Whatever it was that he had asked, she shook her head vehemently, her expression torn between discomfort and shock. The Imperator shook his head, too, but gave the captives a contemplative glance as he took a sip from his cup.
Matru’s parched mouth ached at the thought of a little water, but he steeled himself against the thirst.
And in Latin now, the young woman said, “They won’t answer questions.”
“No,” the younger man replied, also in that tongue. “Personally, I say we kill one of them in front of the other, and see if that loosens the survivor’s tongue.” His dark eyes were hard and empty in that young face.
“Or, failing that,” the guard said now, in Latin, “as I said earlier, cut on one of them until he’s nearly dead, and then you heal him back up so we start all over.” His voice held ice.
“Keep it in reserve,” the Imperator replied. “I have a great suspicion of words forced from tortured lips. There comes a point when a man will say anything to make the pain stop.”
The young woman raised her hands. “I’d like to ask them about their magic. Would that be permissible?”
After a nod from the Imperator, the one they’d called Hammer shrugged dubiously. “I don’t know if I can translate much about magic, my lady. My mother never used such words around me.”
“Try,” she urged. “Say it this way. In the lands of Egypt and Hellas, magic revolves around five elements—fire, water, earth, air, and the fifth element, the aether, which may fill the heavens where the stars move.” She waited for that to be translated. “Your magic doesn’t feel like that magic,” she went on, her voice interested. “You used only the earth, not fire. The snow and ice didn’t move on its own—only when the ground shook. Why is that?”
Before the guard could finish translating, Docca, to Matru’s consternation, spat on the table in front of the young woman, and snarled back in his Pairisi dialect, “We’ll never open the secrets of the earth, our mother, to you, you Roman whore—”
At which point, his guard leaped forward and slammed his face into the table, leaning there, keeping him pinned in spite of his struggles. The young man sighed and reached into a small bag he’d brought into the room with him, removing a set of tong-like pliers and a knife. “Hold his mouth open,” the young man said grimly. “He doesn’t need his tongue if that’s the sort of thing he’s going to say to my sister.”
“Not the tongue,” the Imperator said sharply. “Remove his tongue, and we’ll never get a word out of him. His teeth, however, you may pull at will, Alexander.”
Matru watched grimly, admiring Docca’s self-control—the man didn’t scream as two Romans held him down, braced his mouth open with a stick of wood, and the young brother of the Imperator used pliers to remove two of his front teeth. Hoarse breathing, a low, stifled groan of pain and resistance. He let his glance flick around the room. Saw that the young woman could barely watch the process. Saw that the Imperator gave her shoulder a consoling squeeze. Interesting. She has a tender heart. Perhaps these Romans have human emotions after all.
“Well, he didn’t yank spikes up out of the ground to kill me,” the young man said, dropping the bloody teeth on the table as the guards pulled Docca back upright. “Perhaps keeping them exhausted does fuddle their minds for spell-casting.”
Matru shook his head as Docca once more began to hurl invective at the trio in Pairisi. “He wants you to kill him,” Matru said in clear, plain Latin.
Everyone in the room turned to stare at him, Docca included—a look of betrayal and rage written clearly on his brother druid’s face.
“You speak Latin?” the Imperator replied, sounding surprised.
“I speak Caledonian, Venicone, Pairisi, Tegeingl, Iceni, Cantabri, and two or three other mainland dialects.” Matru let his tone stay aloof. “Your tongue was not particularly difficult to master, even though it is ugly and lacks all music.”
“Yes, but how did you learn it?” the younger man asked.
Matru frowned. “You came to our island twenty-eight years ago. Left a garrison, which we drove back into the sea. You came again twice more, and we drove you away twice again. The tribes took prisoners. They, and those traders of yours who come across the sea to peddle your glass and spices, taught your language to some of my people. I was one of them.”
“Matru, you traitor—” Docca hissed in Pairisi. Matru wasn’t sure if his fellow druid meant that, or if it were a ploy to make it look like they’d been successfully divided. The mad hate in Docca’s eyes appeared too convincing to be sure either way.
A gesture from the young Imperator, and two of the guards dragged Docca away, likely back to their prison, where they’d hung from their chains beside Vascone and Cantabri men in pens, and Vascone women and children held separately from their menfolk. When the door closed behind Docca, the Imperator leaned forward, asking urgently, “What happened to those prisoners? We’re told that your people burn prisoners alive inside great wicker cages. As sacrifices to your gods.”
Noises of disgust and contempt from the guards. The spear point at his throat dug a little deeper into his skin, but Matru met his eyes steadily. “We burn murderers, rapists, and thieves,” he replied firmly. “Your men were all three.”
“Barbaric,” muttered one of the guards in a tone of loathing.
The Imperator held up a hand. “Up until twenty years ago, witches and sorcerers could be burned alive,” he said, simply. “The practice has been discontinued, of course.”
Matru turned slightly to regard the guard who’d spoken. “You executed one of your fellow Romans. Tillius. I was there when your Imperator ordered him killed, and this young man stabbed him in the throat.” He nodded towards the young man beside the Imperator
“He was proscribed,” the younger man replied quickly. “He wasn’t a Roman citizen anymore.”
Matru inclined his head very slightly, mindful of the sharp spear at his throat. “And once a man commits any of those three offenses, he’s no longer one of us.”
“And what does that make you, eh?” the half-Gallic guard at the back of the room challenged suddenly. “You helped murder twelve thousand men! Not to mention the women and children still in the Vascone village. They had no ability to fight back against what you did—”
Matru felt the weight of it. He’d hated the necessity of it, but the placement of the village had been too good. “Most of the women and children were evacuated weeks ago,” he replied tersely. “An armed camp was no place for them. Only a handful remained. And no. Your men had no chance against our attack.” He paused. “But how many of my people died in the eastlands when you invaded us twenty-eight years ago? Thousands. And when you returned? Ten thousand more. How many of those deaths were fair ones, I wonder, fought between equals on a battlefield? And how many were farmers trying to defend their fields from brigands? I think you’re still ahead of us by the numbers, no matter what form our vengeance took.” He paused. “And yes. That makes us at least as much murderers as you Romans. But we accepted the price when we came here. We’re dead already, you understand? If we were captured, we knew we’d
be killed.” He shrugged. “So before we left, we attended our own funerals. Sang our own death-songs.”
“Which is why you said that your friend wanted us to kill him?” the young man asked, scoffingly.
Another shrug that let him test the security of his bonds once more. “We’re dead. May as well hurry up with the actual business of dying.” Matru snorted. “Better that than slavery. Better that than serving Roman masters.”
He had their interest now. He could see it in their eyes. With every word he spoke, Matru took more and more of the measure of the people around him. Watched their expressions. Learned who they were, and how he might be able to affect them. Fascination in their eyes. More than just the excitement of someone discovering that a bear can dance and talk. They want to know their enemy. And I need to know them. So . . . we trade words. And we’ll see if a story can save a life—or ten thousand.
The one they called Caesarion asked, mildly, “So why do you talk, when your friend wouldn’t?”
Matru rolled his shoulders again. “Docca is a fine summoner. But he’s forgotten that being a druid is about more than binding spirits or the power of the earth.” He met the young god-born’s eyes. “It’s about telling the tales of our people, so that they can never be forgotten. Singing songs and understanding people. We speak to the gods, yes, but we also speak to and for kings. Go from this court to that, bringing news. Softening disagreements. Arbitrating peace treaties.”
“All this, and you ride to war, too?” the younger man asked, sounding skeptical.
“Only against outsiders,” Matru replied. “Once you become a druid, you no longer belong to your own tribe. You belong to everyone. All the people. I was a king’s son, before I became a druid. If all my brothers and all my cousins die, I might be called back to be a king once more. But I’d never again stand as one of my druidic brothers if I did so. I’d rather belong to the wider world, than belong just to my people once more.” If his hands had been free, he’d have gestured expansively. As they weren’t, he couldn’t.
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