“But I cannot look after her. I am a warrior in the midst of a war.”
Karyl ran her hands through her thick, dark hair; her face in profile was not pretty, but there was a strength that made her a handsome woman.
“You have the sight, have you not, Galead?” she whispered, and a shiver touched him.
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
“As do I. The men here were going to join the Goths, but I bade Asta wait, for the signs were strange. Then you came, a man who wears a face that is not his own but who cares for a Saxon child. I know you are an Uther man, but I have not told Asta. Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Because Asta will also be an Uther man before this is over. He is a good man, my husband, a strong man. And these Goths are seduced by evil. Asta will summon the Fyrrd when he learns that what you said is true. And the Saxon warriors will rise.”
“There are no swords,” said Galead. “Uther forbade any Saxon to bear arms.”
“What is a sword? A cutting tool. We Saxons are an ingenious people, and our warriors now are skilled in the use of the ax. They will rise and aid the Blood King.”
“You think we can win?”
She shrugged. “I do not know. But you, Galead, have a part to play in the drama … and it will not be with a sword.”
“Speak plainly, Karyl. I was never good at riddles.”
“Take the child with you. There is a woman you must meet: a cold, hard woman. She is the gateway.”
“The gateway to what?”
“As to that, I can help you no further. The child’s name is Lectra, though her mother called her Lekky.”
“Where can I take her? You must know a place.”
“Take her to your heart, warrior. She is now your daughter, and that is how she sees you—as her father. Her mother’s husband went to Raetia to serve Wotan while she was still pregnant, and Lekky has waited long years to see him. In her tortured mind you are that man, come home to look after her. Without you I do not think she will survive.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I know because I touched her, and you know I do not lie.”
“What was she saying when she woke?”
“Mudder tod? Mother dead.”
“And Vader? Father?”
Karyl nodded. “Give me your hand.”
“Then you would know all my secrets.”
“Does that frighten you?”
“No,” he said, stretching out his arm, “but it will lessen me in your eyes.”
She took his hand, sat silently for several moments, and then released it.
“Sleep well, Galead,” she said, rising.
“And you, lady.”
“I will sleep better now,” she told him, smiling.
He watched her walk back to the far end of the hall and vanish into the shadows of the rooms beyond. Lekky whimpered in her sleep, and Galead took his blanket and lay down alongside her. She opened her eyes and cuddled into him.
“I am here, Lekky.”
“Vader?”
“Vader,” he agreed.
Goroien was alone in her mirrorless room, her mind floating back to the days of love and glory. Culain had been more than a lover, more than a friend. She remembered her father forbidding her to see the young warrior and how she had trembled when he had told her he had ordered his young men to hunt him down and kill him. Thirty of her father’s finest trackers had set off into the mountains in the autumn. Only eighteen had returned; they said they had cornered him in a deep canyon, and then the snows had blocked the passes—and no man could live in that icy wilderness for long.
Believing her lover dead, Goroien had refused all food. Her father had threatened her and whipped her, but he could not defeat her. Slowly she lost her strength, and death was very close on that midwinter night.
Semidelirious and bedridden, she had not seen the drama that had followed.
During the Feast of Midwinter, the great door had opened and Culain lach Feragh had stridden down the center of the hall to stand before the thane.
“I have come for your daughter,” he had said, ice clinging to his dark beard.
Several men leapt to their feet with swords ready, but the thane waved them back.
“What makes you believe you can leave here alive?” the thane asked.
Culain stared around the long tables at the fighting men; then he laughed, and his contempt stung them all.
“What makes you think I could not?” he countered. An angry roar greeted the challenge, but once more the thane quelled it.
“Follow me,” he said, leading the warrior to where Goroien lay. Culain knelt by the bedside, taking her hand, and she heard his voice.
“Do not leave me, Goroien. I am here; I will always be here.”
And she had recovered, and they had been wed. But that was in the days before the fall of Atlantis, before the Sipstrassi had made them gods. And in the centuries that followed each had taken many lovers, though always returning at the last to the sanctuary of each other’s arms.
What had changed them? she wondered. Was it the power or the immortality? She had borne Culain a son, though he never knew it, and Gilgamesh had inherited almost all of his father’s skill with weapons. Unfortunately, he had also inherited his mother’s arrogance and amorality.
Now Goroien’s thoughts turned to the last years. Of all obscenities, she had brought Gilgamesh back from the dead and taken him for her lover. In doing so she had doomed herself, for Gilgamesh suffered a rare disease of the blood that even Sipstrassi could not cure. And her immortality could no longer be assured by Sipstrassi alone. Blood and death kept her in the world of the flesh. In that period, as she had told Cormac, she had grown to hate Culain and had killed his second wife and his daughter.
But at the very end, when Culain lay dying after his battle with Gilgamesh, she had given her own life to save him, dooming herself to this limitless hell.
Now her choice was simple. Did she aid Cormac or destroy him? All that formed the intellect of the former Witch Queen screamed at her to destroy this boy who was the seed of Uther, who in turn was the seed of Culain through his daughter, Alaida. The seed of her destruction! But her heart went out to the young man who had walked into the Void for the woman he loved. Culain would have done that.
For Goroien …
What had the boy said? A chance to return to the flesh? Did he think that would attract her? How could he know it was the last gift she would consider?
Gilgamesh entered and removed his helm. His face was scaled and reptilian; gone was the beauty he had known in life.
“Let me have the boy,” he said. “I yearn for his life.”
“No. You will not have him, Gilgamesh. We will journey together to the keep, and then we will storm it. You will fight alongside Cormac, and regardless of the danger to yourself, you will keep him alive.”
“No!”
“If you love me—if you ever loved me—you will obey me now.”
“Why, Mother?”
She shrugged and turned away. “There are no answers.” “And when we have taken the keep? If indeed we can.”
“Then we will free Uther also.”
“In return for what?”
“In return for nothing. That is the prize, Gilgamesh: nothing. And I cannot think of anything I would rather have.”
“You make no sense.”
“Did you ever love me?”
He lifted his helm, his head bowing. “I loved nothing else,” he said simply. “Not life, not combat.”
“And will you do this for me?”
“You know I will do whatever you ask.”
“Once I was a queen among the gods,” she said. “I was beautiful, and men thought me wise. I stood with Culain at Babel, and we brought down Molech and believed we had defeated a great evil, and men said they would sing of me throughout the ages. I wonder if they still do.”
Gilgamesh replaced his helm and backed from the room
.
Goroien did not see him go. She was remembering that fine spring day when she and Culain had wed by the great oak, when the world was young and the future unlimited.
15
FOR FIVE DAYS the dwindling force of Geminus Cato’s two legions had withstood the ferocious charges of the Goths, retreating under cover of darkness and taking up fresh positions farther back along the road to Eboracum. The men were weary to the point of exhaustion, and Cato called his commanders to a meeting on the fifth night.
“Now,” he told them, “is the time for courage. Now we attack.”
“Insanity!” said Decius, his disbelief total. “Now is the time to retreat. We have fewer than six thousand men, some of whom are too tired to lift their shields.”
“And to where shall we retreat? Eboracum? It is indefensible. Farther north to Vinovia? There we will meet a second army of Goths. No. Tonight we strike!”
“I will not be a party to this!” said Decius.
“Then go back to Eboracum!” snapped Cato. “Ten villas could not make me keep you here another moment.”
The young man rose and left the group, and Cato switched his attention to the remaining eight officers. “Anyone else?” No one moved. “Good. Now, for five days we have offered the Goths the same strategy: hold and withdraw. They will be camped between the two rivers, and we will come at them from both sides. Agrippa, you will lead the right column. Strike through to the tent that bears Wotan’s banner. His generals will be at the center. I will move from the left with sword and fire.”
Agrippa, a dark-eyed young man with ten years of warfare behind him, nodded. “Decius did have a point,” he said. “It will still be six thousand against twice that number. Once we attack, there can be no retreat. Win or die, General.”
“Realistically, our chances are slim. But the divine Julius once destroyed an army that outnumbered him by a hundred to one.”
“So his commentaries tell us,” said Agrippa.
“Come in on a wide front and re-form inside their camp. Once you have dispatched the generals, try to forge a link with my column.”
“And if we cannot?”
“Then take as many of the bastards with you as you can.”
Cato dismissed the group, and the officers roused their men. Silently the Roman army broke camp, leaving in two columns for the march.
Three miles away the Goths had spread their tents across a wide flat area between two stretches of water. There were scores of fires, but few men were still awake. Sentries had been posted, but most of them were dozing at their posts or asleep behind bushes. No one feared an army that moved backward day by day.
In the tent of the general Leofric the Gothic commanders sat on captured rugs of silk, swilling wine and discussing the fall of Eboracum and the treasure that lay there. Leofric sat beside a naked young British girl captured earlier that day by outriding scouts; her face was bruised from a blow one of the riders had given her before they raped her. But she was still pleasing to Leofric; he had taken her twice that day and planned to return for one more bout before passing her on to the men the next day. His hand cupped her breast, squeezing hard. She winced and cried out, and Leofric grinned. “Tell me how much you love me,” he said, his grip tightening.
“I love you! I love you!” she screamed.
“Of course you do,” he said, releasing her, “and I love you—at least for tonight.” The men around him laughed. “Tomorrow,” he said, “there will be women for all of us—not village peasants like this wench but highborn Roman cows with their pale skin and tinted lips.”
“You think Cato will retreat to the city?” asked Bascii, Leofric’s younger brother.
“No, he cannot hold the walls. I think he will split his force and make for Vinovia, trying to gather men from among the Trinovante, but he will not succeed. We will have a hard job chasing him down, but he will fall. He has nowhere to go.”
“Is it true there are walls covered with gold in Eboracum?” Bascii asked.
“I doubt it, but there is treasure there, and we will have it!”
“What kind of treasure?”
“The kind you find here,” he said, forcing the girl back and opening her legs. She closed her eyes as shouts of encouragement rose from the men around him. Leofric opened his breeches and mounted her.
Her torment continued interminably as first Leofric, then Bascii, and then the others took her by turn. Pain followed pain … followed humiliation. At last she was hurled aside, and the men returned to their tents.
Suddenly a trumpet blast pierced the night. Drunk and staggering, Leofric stumbled to the entrance to see Roman warriors streaming into his camp. Dumbfounded, he fell back, scrabbling for his sword.
All was chaos as in tight, disciplined formations the Romans surged into the camp. Men ran from their tents only to be ruthlessly cut down. Without preparation or organization the Goths, most of them without armor, fought desperately in isolation.
Cato’s men, moving from the left flank, put the torch to the tents. The wind fanned the flames to an inferno that swept across the open ground.
On the right Agrippa’s force sliced through the Gothic ranks, forming a wedge that cut like a spear toward Leofric’s tent. For all his drunkenness, the general was a warrior of great experience; he saw at once the desperate gamble Cato had taken and knew he could turn the tide. His battle-trained eye swept the scene. There! Bascii’s men had formed a shield wall, but what they needed to do was to strike against the Roman wedge, blocking it and the advance. The flames would stop the Romans from linking, and sheer weight of numbers would destroy them. Poor Bascii would never think of such a stratagem. Leofric stepped from the tent … and something struck him a wicked blow in the back. He stumbled and fell to his knees, his head spinning as he rolled to his back.
The British girl knelt over him, a knife in her hand and a wide smile of triumph on her mouth as the blade hovered over Leofric’s eyes.
“I love you,” said the girl.
And the knife plunged down.
* * *
Cato stood over the body of Leofric, the dagger hilt still jutting from the eye. “The last of them are fleeing toward Petvaria,” said Agrippa. “Lucius and three cohorts are harrying them.”
“I wonder what happened here,” Cato said.
“I do not know, sir. But my congratulations on a famous victory!”
“Why congratulate me? You did your part, as did every man who served under me. By the gods, this place is beginning to stink!”
Cato’s dark eyes swept the field. Everywhere lay corpses, some burned black by the inferno that roared over the tents, others lying where they had fallen, cut down by the swords of the legions. The British dead had been carried to a hastily dug ditch; the Goths, stripped of their armor and weapons, were being left for the crows and the foxes.
“Twelve thousand of the enemy were slain,” said Agrippa. “The survivors will never re-form into an army.”
“Do not say never. They will return one day. Now we have to consider whether to march the men south to reinforce Quintas or north to prevent the Goths from marching on Eboracum.”
“You are tired, sir. Rest today and make your decision tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow may be too late.”
“My old commander used to say: ‘Weary men make mistakes.’ Trust his judgment, sir, and rest.”
“Now you quote my own words to me. Is there no respect left?” Cato asked, grinning.
“I have ordered your tent to be set up beyond the hill. The stream narrows in a hollow there, surrounded by oaks.”
Prasamaccus reined in his horse. To the north was the semiruined Wall of Antoninus, and before it a great battle was being fought. Thousands of Brigante warriors had encircled an army of Goths, and the carnage was awesome. Neither side fought with any strategy; it was merely a savage and chaotic frenzy of slashing swords, axes, and knives.
He steered his mount away from the scene; his practiced eye could see t
hat there would be no victors that day and that both sides would withdraw from the field bloodied and exhausted. As a Brigante himself, he knew what would happen then. The next day the tribesmen would renew their assault and continue to attack until the enemy had perished or was victorious.
Moving west, he passed through the turf wall at a place where it had collapsed alongside a ruined fort. He shivered, whispered a prayer to the ghosts that still walked there, and rode on toward the northwest and the mountains of the Caledones.
His journey had been largely without incident, though he had seen many refugees and heard terrifying stories of the atrocities committed by the invading army. Some had been exaggerated; most were stomach-turning. The elderly Brigante had long since ceased to be surprised at the horrors men could inflict on their neighbors, yet he thanked his gods that such stories could still inspire both horror and sorrow in him.
That night he camped by a fast-moving stream and moved out at first light on the steady climb to the cabin where he had first met Culain lach Feragh. It had not changed, and the welcoming sight of smoke from the short chimney lifted his spirits. As he dismounted, a huge man stepped from the cabin, bearing a sword.
Prasamaccus limped toward him, hoping that his advanced years and obvious infirmity would sway the stranger into a more relaxed stance.
“Who are you, old man?” asked the giant, stepping forward and pressing the point of the blade to Prasamaccus’ chest.
The Brigante gazed down at the blade, then up into the pale eyes of the warrior. “I am not an enemy.”
“Enemies come in many guises.” The man looked weary, dark rings circling his eyes.
“I am looking for a young man and a woman. A friend said they were here.”
“Who was that friend?”
“His name is Culain; he brought them here to keep them safe.”
The man laid down the sword, turned, and walked inside the cabin, with Prasamaccus following. Within, he saw a wounded man lying on a narrow bed. The Brigante stood over him and saw that the wounds had sealed well, but there was a deathly pallor to his skin and he seemed to be barely breathing. On his chest lay a black stone with hairline streaks of gold.
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