Prophecy: Death of an Empire: Book Two (Prophecy Trilogy)

by M. K. Hume

  ‘You must trust me to enact some justice on your behalf. I’ll make it plain to Aetius that, for the sake of appearances and the maintenance of discipline, the guilty guardsmen must be publicly flogged. Will that satisfy you?’

  ‘I suppose I must accept.’

  ‘You must. As for reparation, I will handle those details. I will catch up with you on the road and see to the future of your widow. Do not fail me in this matter, Myrddion Emrys, for I have plans for your future.’

  ‘Why are you helping me?’ Myrddion repeated. ‘What have you to gain by saving our lives?’

  Cleoxenes laughed quietly. ‘I’m damned if I know. Something tells me that if I keep you alive, then I am doing the work of both my master and my God. Consider the possibility that my God speaks to me the way yours does to you. But, for the sake of your dependants, you must learn diplomacy, young man. Sadly, many Romans are worse, much worse, than Flavius Aetius. In his way, he is noble, and almost impossibly brave. The empires depend on him.’

  Myrddion looked at the sky, where the stars seemed more distant than ever. His hare-brained scheme to find his father while dragging his faithful servants to this alien land had brought them nothing but trouble. And now Bridie had paid for his reluctance to face up to Aetius man to man.

  ‘I should have presented that letter to the general in person,’ he whispered softly. ‘Bridie is crippled because of my cowardice.’

  Cleoxenes heard a world of regret in that simple sentence, and he responded by slapping Myrddion’s face. But the blow was gentle, almost like the caress of a lover.

  ‘You would be dead if you had delivered that letter in person, so you should learn from Bridie’s pain. The Lord Jesus has some reason to test you, but don’t look to me for answers. I’m too old to be certain of anything.’

  ‘But I have no allegiance to your Jesus. I am sworn to the Mother and Lady Ceridwen, my ancestor.’

  ‘Sometimes the Lord has need of us whether we are pagan or Christian,’ Cleoxenes said. ‘I would be a saint if I fully understood the ways of my God, but, as you know, I’m not a saint. Time will reveal the purpose that heaven has laid out for us all. But walk carefully, boy, for not all great men possess Merovech’s joy in living or Theodoric’s love for his people. Kings are only men, as fallible as you or I.’

  Myrddion walked away, his shoulders slumped in despair, and Cleoxenes sighed with irritation. He would need to speak to Flavius Aetius and warn him that he would suffer great loss if he raised his hand against the healer and his party. Threats might not work, so the envoy was already seeking out the honeyed words of warning that a sophisticated strategist such as Flavius Aetius would recognise. If all else failed, Cleoxenes was prepared to be blunt and give Aetius an unvarnished assessment of the situation. The chicken and peppers he had consumed with such gusto only an hour earlier were churning in his gut with the promise of a hot, salty attack of vomiting. All his life, Cleoxenes had managed to straddle spear-points with a certain natural elan, but his stomach pained him often and fierce stress headaches sometimes confined him to his bed.

  The envoy sighed again as the smell of burning bodies wafted to him on a wind change, and caused his nose to twitch with a sharp, gut-wrenching smell of pork. ‘Oh, to be among civilised company in a place as far away from here as I can travel,’ he whispered in Greek, trusting that no one would understand his words if eavesdroppers were spying on him. Aetius was capable of almost any treason, even the accidental death of an envoy, no matter how nobly born.

  ‘And now to frighten the old fox,’ he muttered. ‘If all else fails, I’ll remind the old devil that I remember how he lived with the Hun for years, ostensibly as a hostage, but ultimately as a friend. Yes, Aetius, I remember the days when you held up the Hun as a people to be admired. Are you playing both sides against the middle, as usual? Or are you simply making a last grab for power before it’s too late? Be damned to you, you turncoat. Even in Greek, your actions sound despicable.’

  Then Cleoxenes swept into Aetius’s disordered tent with the assumed confidence of a king.

  MYRDDION’S CHART OF THE JOURNEY FROM CHLONS TO MASSILIA

  CHAPTER IX

  THE ENDLESS ROAD

  Urgency spurred Myrddion into action.

  True to his agreement with Cleoxenes, he ordered Finn Truthteller, Rhedyn and Brangaine to begin packing up the larger of the tents and prepare for an immediate night departure. As Cadoc had finished stitching Bridie’s leg and covered the wound with radish paste and salve to prevent infection, he enlisted his long-suffering apprentice’s help in moving the last of the patients out of the smaller tent.

  Although the night was well advanced, humidity rendered the air thick and muggy, and Myrddion and his companions sweated in the sullen heat. Somewhere far away, a distant rumble of thunder spoke of approaching storms. The healer watched moths flutter towards the oil lamp, drawn by the flame, until their wings caught alight and they perished in sudden little flashes of golden light.

  ‘We must be gone before dawn or we will all be dead. I wish we’d never left Britain.’

  Cadoc, returning from some errand of his own in time to hear the heartfelt murmur, longed to reply with the trite response of ‘I told you so’, but a hint of unshed tears in Myrddion’s voice stilled his tongue. The boy was exhausted and carried loads far heavier than someone his age should be forced to bear.

  ‘Well, we did leave, master, so let’s shake the dust of this cursed place off our clothes and our feet as quickly as possible.’ He picked up a basket of bandages and clean rags. ‘Where are we going?’

  Myrddion was busy putting bunches of drying herbs into a rush container. In his haste and upset, he jammed the woven lid into place with more force than was necessary, and Cadoc heard several of the dried rush stems snap.

  ‘To Rome. We’ll travel by way of Gaul and much of Italia.’

  ‘But that’ll take months. Or even a year, if the weather’s bad,’ Cadoc protested. ‘Why not head back north where life is safer?’

  ‘Gaul virtually belongs to Aetius and no part of it, especially the north, is free of the weight of his hand. The general would catch us and have us killed long before we reached Parigi. No, Lord Cleoxenes is right. We must head south, and away from Aetius’s influence, at best speed. No doubt he will want to reach Ravenna without delay, but with luck his treasure will slow him down and give us time to escape.’

  A glow of light flashed along the ridgeline, and Myrddion registered that a storm was coming closer, although there was still a short interval between the lightning and the roll of thunder. The smothering heat seemed to increase, as the eerie silence that heralds a storm enfolded the plain in a thick, dry blanket.

  ‘Please, master, promise me we won’t be using a ship to take us to this Italia. I couldn’t stand another long sea voyage.’

  ‘You’re in luck, Cadoc. Lord Cleoxenes has insisted we travel the whole way by wagon. Perhaps we can purloin some extra horses. Heaven knows there are many abandoned beasts running wild at the moment.’

  Cadoc grinned in the darkness. ‘I’ll steal as many horses as we need, as long as we can stay away from the sea. Another team would speed our journey, especially if we men find mounts to ride. Less weight to pull.’

  ‘Then hop to it, Cadoc. But don’t get caught . . . please? I doubt the Romans will even realise that half a dozen beasts are missing. If you want saddles, steal some from Attila’s infernal tower.’

  Cadoc almost cackled with glee. The possibility of stealing from the Romans was a bonus, especially in conjunction with his relief at leaving the plain and removing from the stink and the danger of the field hospital. The gods would forgive any theft in these circumstances. With no hope of any payment for their services and with the general’s pointed enmity, escape from the plain and its environs couldn’t come soon enough for him.

  ‘I’ll fetch Finn so we can get started on our little expedition at once,’ he said, a smile animating his face. ‘Can you finish
here once the tent is packed? I’ve procured some smaller tents used by the soldiers for our patients, few as they are, and there are about a dozen women who have agreed to care for them until Cleoxenes repatriates them to Châlons.’

  ‘I know we must take to our heels and run, but it seems wrong to leave sick men behind,’ Myrddion said.

  ‘Please, master? Cleoxenes has organised it all. Where do you think I obtained the tents?’

  Myrddion shot his apprentice a look of friendly scorn, then sighed with relief as Cadoc set about dismantling the leather tent into a series of folded sections that he unlaced as he went. In a trice, the tent posts were taken to pieces and packed into the supply wagon, quickly followed by the sections of the larger tent, rolled into manageable packs and lashed together with straps constructed for the purpose. Then, with a spring in his step and a wide grin on his scarred face, Cadoc waylaid Finn as he was packing a box of ointments and whispered to the other apprentice with much gesticulation before both men slipped away into the darkness.

  Myrddion, Rhedyn and Brangaine settled the few remaining patients into their new quarters with a smooth economy of movement, assuring them that they would be looked after until they were well again. When their task was almost completed, Myrddion asked the two widows to make Bridie comfortable in the second wagon with little Willa nestled beside her.

  Myrddion had been raised to be scrupulously honest and would normally have rejected the idea of stealing food from his master as an unmanly and dishonest act. But the oaths he had given to King Merovech had been severed by death, and Bridie’s humiliation had changed everything. He owed Flavius Aetius nothing, neither loyalty nor honesty, and would take payment for his medical expertise in food and supplies rather than gold. Not that he expected Aetius to even consider paying for the services the healers had rendered. The Roman might have been a skilled general, but in Myrddion’s opinion he lacked the dignitas and the scruples essential to his class.

  Midnight had come and gone, and no moonlight betrayed Myrddion’s stealthy return to the Roman quarter of the depleted bivouac. Thick cloud obscured the stars and the rising humidity was thick enough to cut with a knife. The thunder peals were closer now, and the air had the charged heaviness of a storm. Myrddion felt the fine, fair hairs on his arms rise and stir. Good, he thought. The rain and the wind will destroy our tracks. All I need do is to find as many supplies as I can carry.

  When he reached the supply tent he realised how over-confident Aetius had become, for it was unguarded. Now that the Hun had retreated, who was there to fear? Tiny, two-man tents encircled the stores but the night was quiet and unnaturally still. Even the fires had died, so that Myrddion left no shadow as he moved swiftly from one deep pool of blackness to another.

  On the highest point of the ridge, Aetius’s tent was in darkness. Guards patrolled the perimeter, but their main purpose was to protect the many wagons that were heavily laden with plunder. Myrddion smiled. Let Aetius have his precious treasure trove. The healer preferred grain and dried meat.

  Soundlessly, he crossed the bare ground between himself and the heavy canvas tent. Rather than risk a frontal entry, he wormed his way under the bottom of the rear wall where a small hole flawed the heavy, oiled cloth. Then he spent the five minutes necessary to rip a large breach at its base where the canvas was already weakened. With luck, if he moved some barrels in front of the tear, the commissar would never notice his stores had been plundered, because Myrddion needed time to put as many miles as possible between himself and the Catalaunian Plain before his absence was discovered.

  In his first foray, he hefted a bag of wheat, wrapped several strings of spiced sausage round his neck, and slung a large section of dried goat meat over his other shoulder. Then, as quietly as he had come, he slid back into the shadows once more. In the lee of a small coppice of scrawny shrubs, he dumped his haul and made two more trips, reasoning that he could move the lot more easily once he had completed his theft.

  By the time he had finished, Myrddion had purloined dried fish, a string of onions, a bag of withered apples and some dried jerky, as well as three bags of grain, from the supply tent. Dried figs, a jar of honey and an amphora of pressed olive oil completed the provisions necessary to help his party to survive the journey to Italia. Pausing only to rearrange the huge pile of supplies that remained in the tent so that his theft was disguised, Myrddion left the Roman camp as silently and as deftly as he had come. Thankful that the ground was dry and rock hard, the healer left no tracks as he began the physically taxing transport of his ill-gotten gains back to the site of the field hospital. Once the supplies were loaded in the first wagon, Myrddion felt confident that his party could survive for weeks without the need to forage for food.

  Brangaine’s eyes widened with pleasure as Myrddion stored his booty in the larger wagon. She exclaimed over the barley and apples, although she was puzzled by his selection of figs. But she entered into the spirit of the theft, and carefully stowed the breakable jars so that nothing could be jarred loose as the wagons jolted along the rough road.

  Then the two of them moved the horses into the traces of the larger wagon with as little noise as possible, despite the fact that there were no guards to see or hear their preparations. The horses were restive as if they could sense the advance of the storm, and Myrddion had to use all his strength to manhandle the beasts into position. Then master and widows used the remainder of the time for one final check on the patients while awaiting the return of Cadoc and Finn Truthteller.

  For Myrddion, the hour that they spent sitting beside the wagons was the hardest and most nerve-stretching part of the whole enterprise. The healer imagined any number of disasters, ranging from the capture of Cadoc and Finn during the theft to accidents through misadventure in the wild darkness. As the fat raindrops began to splatter into the dust, Myrddion began to think that he had sent his two faithful servants to their deaths.

  Then, as the rain began to fall in earnest with a fierce drumming sound on the dry earth and the thunder began to peal in almost continuous dull rumbles, a darker series of shapes began to detach itself from the edge of the ridgeline, having taken a wide route around the Roman bivouac to avoid detection. As Myrddion stared, the figures resolved themselves into a string of ten horses, three of which were fully saddled. The others were strung together on long leads and all ten wore skins tied over their hooves to muffle the betraying sounds of their movement.

  Myrddion ran to the two servants and gripped Cadoc’s hand in thanks before leaping into the saddle of one of the riding horses. ‘Harness a team to the smaller wagon and tie the other three to the rear,’ he shouted over the drumming of the downpour. He turned to the widows. ‘Brangaine, take the reins of the lead wagon; Rhedyn can manage the second. Bridie will nurse Willa for you, Brangaine, and that will keep her occupied during the journey. Let’s make a hasty departure while the rains last, and with luck our tracks will be washed away.’

  And so, for the first time in his life, Myrddion stole another man’s property.

  With two teams of horses, the healers were able to travel fast and hard for the first two days until Châlons was far behind them and Myrddion allowed the group to stop for a true rest. During the thirty-six hours that had elapsed, they had stopped only long enough to feed and water the horses and attend to personal bodily needs, so the women were exhausted by the time Myrddion ordered the wagons to halt beside a slow-moving river late on the second afternoon. At last, they could sleep, cook hot food and treat the small injuries that the group had collected while on the road.

  As he eased the bandages from Bridie’s wound, Myrddion could see that it hadn’t healed properly. Perhaps the jolting of the wagon or the stress of being unable to rest properly had caused the gaping, suppurating hole that had begun to form at one end of the stitched gash. Myrddion sniffed the wound carefully, but as yet the distinctive, sweetish smell of putrefaction wasn’t present. With a sigh of relief, he began the necessary preparation to reo
pen the wound and treat the damage.

  Cadoc sterilised the instruments while Finn prepared the herbs and the poppy needed for the operation. Both apprentices were well trained, for Finn had now absorbed all the herbal knowledge that Annwynn had passed on to Myrddion so long ago, while Cadoc had developed a deft hand with a knife and a needle. Now, as a well-trained team, they prepared an area for Myrddion’s ministrations, avoiding the worried eyes of the widows. Surgery in the open air was never an ideal option, but the day was clear and fine without a hint of rain, although the afternoon light was shrinking with the approach of dusk. If Myrddion was going to treat Bridie’s infection in a safe environment, now was as good a time as any other.

  Finn administered a measured dose of poppy tincture to the patient and Bridie soon fell asleep, ensuring that Myrddion could work with little chance of her waking. However, Myrddion was a superior healer because of his reluctance to take chances. With her face turned to ensure that her breathing was unimpeded, Bridie was gently placed on her stomach and tied down on the surgery table. Once the limb was immobilised, Myrddion took a deep breath and cut the stitches with a swift movement of his sharpest knife. Only three days had elapsed since the original operation, but most of the wound seemed to be holding together.

  Without pausing, Myrddion’s scalpel reopened half of the long gash. A vile oozing of yellow pus began to well at one end of the wound, so Cadoc leaned forward to mop up the mess with clean rags.

  ‘Burn them and wash your hands thoroughly with hot water and sand before you touch her again,’ Myrddion ordered briskly, and used his flask of fruit brandy, now much depleted, to wash out the cavity that he had exposed. Then, as Cadoc and Finn watched closely, he began to remove some of the flesh around the abscess until fresh, clean blood oozed from the pink tissue.

  ‘I’m going to pack the wound with rags soaked in the special salve. You know the one I mean, Finn? Do we have enough of the radish paste? Good. Don’t use your hands, Finn. I know you wouldn’t do anything to deliberately harm Bridie, but I’m worried. I’m not going to close the abscess – just cover it, so it can release any further poisons that might build up again. I don’t know if my surgery will work, so I think we should immobilise the leg with a splint. If Bridie can’t move, perhaps she’ll heal faster.’