by H. Barnard
Arian shifted. “Don’t call us that. It is the Romans who are the barbarians. They invaded the north hundreds of winters ago, and we’ve always fought them off, we’ve always defended our home. But until they leave us be, it’s a never-ending cycle of provocation from the Romans and simmering revenge from us.”
“I shouldn’t have called you that… What happened to Brei and Taran’s mother? Was she killed in the attack?”
“She was taken. We assume she is either dead or has been sold into slavery. I hope, for her sake, the former.”
“Then why is it Anwen who seems to despise me so much?”
Arian grimaced. “Anwen was also taken with Princess Derelei, their mother, that is, but she escaped. The experience seems to have…left a permanent mark on her mind. I make potions to help her sleep, to ensure she doesn’t remember.”
“Why didn’t their mother, Princess Derelei, escape too?”
Arian shook her head. “I don’t know. No one has seen her since.”
“No one looked for her? No one tried to rescue her?”
Arian shrugged. “She could be anywhere, Sorsha. You should know better than me that the Romans control vast lands. Where would you start looking?”
“The slave markets would be a start.” She paused. “But wait, you escaped a burning house, but your parents died? Weren’t you burnt?”
Arian nodded and pulled down the sleeve of her tunic. The skin on her chest and arm was withered and brown.
“I’m so sorry, Arian.”
Arian straightened her tunic and pulled her pelt cape tighter around her shoulders. “Don’t be. I’m one of the lucky ones.”
“What do you mean?”
“Anwen’s the only one that the Romans took who came back, but they took so many women, including Princess Derelei. And just look at Anwen. What horrors and abuse must she have gone through because now she is a wreck, a shell of her former self. She wasn’t like this before, you know.”
Sorsha looked at Arian doubtfully.
“Honestly.” Arian smiled. “Anwen is a few years older than me, of course, but I remember her. She was so beautiful and sweet. I used to see her picking wildflowers and walking with Prince Brei, and the way she would smile at him... she had smiles for everyone back then, but for him they were... it’s hard to explain, but they made me smile too.”
Sorsha sighed. “I wish I could explain to her that she has nothing to fear from me, but Brei has asked that I don’t speak to her.”
“Don’t take it personally. He’s protective of her.”
Sorsha’s mouth twitched. “I get it, he loves her.”
Arian glanced over her shoulder towards the farmstead, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He gave up everything to help her get through the trauma of being taken by the Romans. The Eldar Druwydd wanted him to be King of Caledon after King Uradech was killed in the Roman attack. And when the Eldar Druwydd wants something, he usually gets it. But Prince Brei refused to make a claim, and everyone thinks it’s because Anwen wouldn’t let him.”
“Wouldn’t let him? The men here do not seem bound by their women.”
Arian shook her head. “A lot is said about Prince Brei behind his back. Hardly any of it is good. Many people hate Anwen because she is an upstart peasant, and their relationship had been largely kept under wraps until she managed to escape from the Romans. But when she returned, he bound himself to her immediately and then refused the crown. It was a huge shock. People hate Anwen for taking a king away from them, but others just hate Brei for being weakened by a woman. Personally, I feel sorry for them. He was devastated when she was taken. I remember I had just been apprenticed to Serenn, and I was asked to take him a sleeping draught. It was summer and his fire was out, so his room was dark, and I remember seeing him as a lump on the bed in the gloom, covered in bandages. I heard him crying. Not loudly. It was sort of a soft whimpering, like a lost child that has given up hope of ever being found. I think about that time a lot, and a part of me wishes that someone would feel about me that way, the way Brei loves Anwen.” Arian broke the twig in her hands and threw the sticks on the snow.
“Are you allowed to be bound…to a man…like that?”
“No.” Arian squinted up at the sky. “I’m not allowed to make promises to anyone but Serenn. But it doesn’t matter, no man would tie themselves to a useless cripple, anyway.”
“Is being useful the only thing that matters? What about love? Brei loves Anwen despite her…trauma.”
“They say Brei is weak, an aberration. For everyone else, women have to be useful to men to earn the promise of their protection, or there’s no point.”
Sorsha glanced again at the row of roundhouses that made up the farmsteads. “And what about men? Is their purpose tied to their usefulness to women?”
Arian laughed. “Men are useful to women, obviously, but men don’t need women to have a place in society. They get that as a birthright. The same is not true for women here.”
“But being a Bandruwydd is a position. A position of power?”
Arian shrugged. “Sort of. I think Serenn wants it to be. Really, we are a lesser order of the Druwydds, and we do their bidding. We have particular skills that set us apart, of course, in healing and midwifery. But the Druwydds are political, they are kingmakers. Bandruwydds do not have that power…unless a new king would give it to us.”
“But still, that is a lot more power than a woman otherwise would have? Even a princess seems to have no role other than producing men who can claim the throne. Surely it is competitive to become a Bandruwydd?”
“It is. Normally they are of noble birth, daughters of kings, like Serenn and Eluned.”
“Who is Eluned the daughter of?”
“King Uradech, of course. Where else do you think she gets that arrogance from?”
“Is everyone cousins here?” Sorsha laughed. “But I think I understand now why you fear Serenn. Without her you’d be at the mercy of men?”
“And without your powers, so would you.”
“Maybe. But only if I chose to live here. I rather like the sound of living alone in the wild. In a wooden hut on a windswept cliff. And I’d have a dog, or a cat, maybe.”
Arian laughed. “I don’t think so. You’d get bored within minutes.”
“How do you know?”
Arian leaned forwards and touched Sorsha’s hand with her fingertips. “You have a restless spirit, I can tell. And it’s not because you are a Healer.”
Sorsha glanced at Arian’s ghostly fingers and fought against the urge to pull back. “Tell me, how did an orphan peasant become a Bandruwydd?”
Arian slid her hand away. “Serenn caught me in her chambers making a draught for pain relief, for my burns after the Roman attack, and she apprenticed me instantly. I have a gift, for herbal curatives, potions and poisons, which not even Serenn can rival,” she said, her gentle voice hardly rising above a whisper. “I could save or kill someone without them tasting a difference in their wine.”
“Could you kill me?”
“If I had help, I think I could. Maybe I’d poison you, while someone else stabbed you in the heart.” Arian grinned. “But I wasn’t talking about you. You’re here to help us.”
“Do you know why I’m here?”
“Yes. But it’s worth more than my life to tell you. I’m sorry, Sorsha.” She shifted and stared beyond Sorsha’s shoulder and groaned. “Serenn is coming.”
Sorsha turned towards Caercaled and saw Serenn and Eluned emerging from the forest on the fringe of the snowy pasture.
“We have sick to see,” Serenn called out. “Urgently!”
Sorsha glanced at Arian, her ethereal face hardened like ice thickening across a pond.
They followed Serenn at an exhausting pace along the river to the city, and Sorsha wondered if Serenn was as callous as Arian implied. She glanced over her shoulder as Arian trailed through the snow, limping behind them. Her stomach tensed, and she slowed her pace, but Arian smiled and w
aved her on. Winter forest lay to her right, and the wild, curling river on her left soon gave way to the city’s stone wall.
Sorsha followed Serenn and Eluned through the Western Gate to the centre circle, where a few stalls were open. A small gathering of customers were purchasing from the weavers and bakers. The smell of fresh bread made her salivate, but they soon turned up a side lane off the centre circle.
Eluned stopped and pointed to an unremarkable roundhouse in the lane. Icicles hung around the eaves like daggers. “Here.” Eluned knocked at the wooden door and waited.
It opened, and a harried woman with clumpy red hair appeared. Sorsha could not tell if the woman looked terrified or relieved to see them as she bowed and admitted them inside. The house was windowless and lit only by a fire in the middle of the single room. Thick smoke clung to the roof, and Sorsha ducked to avoid it. There were seven cots of various lengths and widths, and Sorsha counted six young children sprawled around. Lying between two cots was a gigantic pregnant pig, snoring, and a young child lay next to it, stroking its hairy pink skin.
The woman led them to the back of the room, where a man lay, pallid and sweating. His unfocused eyes stared into the smoky gloom, and his mouth jerked as though in a ferocious conversation with himself. Sorsha studied his face, and an uncontrollable pull lured her towards him. It was as though she were tied to a ship’s anchor that had just been thrown into the ocean.
Arian and Eluned retrieved sticks from their leather satchels and lit them off the fire. They had been treated with liquid and herbs, causing them to burn slowly and emit a grey fragrant cloud. Kneeling next to the cot, they held the incense sticks close to the man and chanted in low voices. Serenn stood by his head and threw her arms out wide, her face looking up to the roof. She chanted to Nodens, the God of Healing, and Cerunnos, the Horned God, and Lord of Nature. From Nodens she asked for the man to be healed, and from Cerunnos she asked for the stamina of the wolf to course through his veins.
Sorsha, shielded by the commotion, bent down and considered the man. Grey had yet to fleck his dark hair, and his broad, muscled chest rose and fell in jerks. She examined his face and body, searching for signs of a festering wound. But she could find no physical cause for his fever.
The compulsion ensnared her in a transitive state of empathy, and she was certain she could share his feelings. He felt cold, yet he was sweating, his body ached all over and his throat and nose were dry and scraping. She lowered herself closer to him and placed her head against his chest and listened. It wheezed under her ear. She sat up straight and pressed both hands onto his chest. The deep heat surged from her heart, down her arms and into her hands. His breathing became steady, before she moved her hands to his neck, chest, and abdomen. When his eyes refocused and found her face, Serenn pushed Sorsha away and consumed his attention with her chanting.
Sorsha paused by the fire and stared at the man, who was bewildered by the Bandruwydds, smoke screens, and chanting. The compulsive pull subsided, and she returned to dull ambivalence. Sorsha glanced at the pig and the child as she pushed open the wooden door and stepped into the startling brightness of the overcast day.
She waited in the side lane for a few minutes until the Bandruwydds rejoined her. “Are there more like him?”
Serenn shook her head. “You may go.”
Sorsha’s eyes flicked to Arian, hoping for a smile, but her grey eyes were like a stranger’s, and the Bandruwydds departed up the hill for the tower. Ambling behind at a safe distance, Sorsha veered away and resolved to visit the blacksmith, Gwyddion, again. He never seemed to mind that she watched him, sometimes for hours. The process of melting iron ore down, pouring it into a mould, and later hammering it to perfection, was oddly satisfying. She felt that through the magic of metallurgy, he could control his surrounds, to shape the raw untamed world into an image of his own making, in a way that she could not. I am at the mercy of my fate, unable to control it, or anything else.
Sorsha sat inside the workshop on a chair in the corner and watched Aaron, Gwyddion’s blond and tubby apprentice, raise the wooden handles attached to the forge up and down. Air filled the leather bellows and blew into the fire. Sparks flew in the air, swirling to the ground, but Gwyddion remained steady. Clutching his rough metal tongs, he pulled a flask out of the fire and carried it to a long clay mould that was standing upright in a bucket of sand. The muscles in his arms quivered under his sweat-stained tunic. He poured the red liquid into the mould and straightened with a smile. His teeth dazzled white against the darkness of his soot-baked skin.
“You should have a go,” Gwyddion said, as he placed the flask and tongs onto the stone by the forge. “You’ve seen enough now to be my new apprentice.” He winked at Aaron and tucked a lock of black hair behind his ear.
She smiled. “You seem so busy lately, maybe you will need my help.”
He pulled a soiled length of linen from his leather apron and wiped his hands. “Funny you should mention it, Prince Taran actually came down here a few days ago, and I’ve been put on notice that I’m to expand my capacity. A second forge is going to be built.”
“What for?”
“What else? War.”
“Are you under attack?”
Gwyddion smiled. “No, it is our turn now for vengeance against the Romans.”
She gazed into the flames of the forge. “Are you too busy to make me one?”
Gwyddion glanced at Aaron. “A sword?”
Aaron smirked. He could not have been over thirteen, and she scowled at him until his cheeks were tinged with pink. “Yes, a sword. Would you do it?”
Gwyddion studied her for a moment before the edges of the right side of his mouth curled upwards. “As you wish.”
Sixteen
Winter, 367 C.E., Vortriu
Brei, Taran, and Naoise continued along the ancient road founded by their ancestors. For four days the road led them through crags and bogs, and around mountains, passing through the Kingdoms of Ce and of Vortriu, allies from whom the princes needed no permission to travel. The muddy road was well trodden, especially in winter when it was too dangerous to travel by sea, and a crisp scent of damp earth lingered in the air.
When they approached the coastal fort of Caertarwos on the fifth day, Taran and Naoise seemed to have cracked. Starting as a whisper and progressively growing louder, they called out the ancestral words of Caledon.
“The Snake of Caledon never forgets!”
Brei gripped his reigns and focused straight ahead. His head had been pounding for a few hours already.
Taran glanced at Brei over his shoulder and yelled louder. “The Snake of Caledon never forgets!”
By the time they sighted the fortifications of Caertarwos, Taran and Naoise were screaming to each other, on either side of Brei, as he tried to ignore them. But a smile teased at the corners of his lips.
“What’s wrong, Brei-Brei?” Taran said with a childish affectation as he sidled Ri up as close to Rhuad as he could manage.
“I have a headache.”
Taran pouted and turned to Naoise. “Poor Brei-Brei. We should probably stop annoying him, shouldn’t we?”
Naoise nodded, his face deadpan. “Should keep our voices down.”
Brei braced himself.
In one impossible move, Taran placed his right knee on the saddle and sprang across to Brei, dragging him off Rhuad and onto the ground. Taran, who had somehow landed standing, grinned down at him. Rhuad and Ri trotted off a few paces in front of them while Brei picked himself up and brushed off the mud. Brei waited until Taran was almost doubled over in laughter before he ran at him, tackled him to the ground, and scrambled to pin his arms.
Naoise cackled as he watched them. “You look like my grandpa trying to wrestle his new woman into bed!”
Brei and Taran broke into laughter and released each other. Brei pushed himself up and crumpled Taran’s hair. Still wheezing, Taran punched him in the shoulder.
Brei held his side and wondered
if he had pulled something in the fall. As he puffed, he looked across to the fortified walls of Caertarwos. A small party of heavily armed riders galloped across the open grassland towards them. Brei glanced at Taran, whose grin had vanished.
As the lead rider slowed to a walk, Brei recognised his red-haired cousin, Talorc, King of Vortriu, glaring down his long straight nose, with no sign of recognition. The riders formed a circle around them. Talorc raised his fist into the air, and his men lowered their spears towards them. “Kill them.”
Brei stared at him, too shocked to even unsheathe his sword.
The warriors drew their spears back and lunged forwards to plunge the steel tips into their chests. Brei shut his eyes. The blade pierced his chest and seemed to hover in place. Have I already passed out? He opened his eyes and saw the warriors frozen in the stabbing motion, smiling.
Talorc roared with laughter, and the warriors removed the spears. “You look like you’ve all shit yourselves! Please tell me you actually shat yourself?” Talorc leapt off his horse. He was so tall it seemed there was hardly any distance to make. “Heard you children, screaming like cats at each other.” Talorc beamed. “So I thought I’d send out a welcome party.”
Taran embraced him. “Talorc!”
“It’s been too long!” Talorc motioned to Brei. “Brei, come here!” He opened his arms wide and enveloped Brei in a crushing hug.
“It’s good to see you, cousin,” Brei wheezed.
Talorc released him but kept his hands on Brei’s shoulders and stared into his face. “You are well, Brei?”
“As well as ever.”
“Good man!” Talorc slapped him on the back and turned to Taran and Naoise. “Didn’t I just kick you out, Neesh?”
Naoise grinned. “I thought you might miss me?”
Talorc raised a red eyebrow. “I think I’ll have Branwen examine your head, boy. Come into the city, let us feast! Tonight, we drink to my cousins and to our mothers!”
Caertarwos was a promontory fort that clung, wild and windswept, to the cliffs of the sea. They entered the walled city through a corridor of stone. Carved into the walls were pictures of bulls, from where Caertarwos, “Fortress of the bulls”, got its name.