A Painted Winter

by H. Barnard

  The slave market was indistinct from the cattle auctions, with its auctioneer platform and holding pens. As they approached, a chain of men was led off the platform, a rope tied to each of their necks. Leaving Nyfain with the horse, Sorsha walked across the dirt yard to the plump and sweaty auctioneer and his tall assistant who were talking to the customer who had purchased the lot. Sorsha glanced at the chained men with their dark hair, tanned skin, and mournful eyes. They are broken. One man struggled more than the others to walk upright, and he had a bandage around his torso, soaked in blood. The compulsive wave to heal swept over her, and she stepped closer.

  “Stay back. These slaves are fresh and dangerous,” the man who had purchased them yelled.

  “But this man is dying.”

  The purchaser marched over and inspected the man and then rounded on the auctioneer, his face red. “You’ve tried to mislead me! This one only has a day to live!”

  The auctioneer scurried across the yard, his pudgy belly jiggling as he ran. “I swear the blood was not coming through like this before. You know I value you as my greatest customer and I would never sell you damaged goods knowingly.”

  “Take it out of the lot. This one is worthless, maybe practice for the gladiators, but even then he can barely stand. A pig would put up a better fight.” He chuckled as he kicked the man, who stumbled and fell, causing the rope to drag the other men down with him.

  Sorsha ran and caught him. “I will help you,” she whispered to him in the Ancient Tongue, though she did not know if he could understand.

  The auctioneer snapped his fingers to his pale assistant. “Cut this one loose and kill him. He’s not worth the grain to feed even for a night.”

  “I will take him!”

  The original purchaser, the auctioneer, and his assistant all turned to Sorsha.

  “I need a farmhand, and I will try to nurse him back to health.” She looked over to Nyfain, who nodded.

  The assistant cut the dying man loose, and Nyfain came over and helped him to stand up. While the purchaser and auctioneer haggled over a new price, Sorsha and Nyfain huddled with the slave. His face was drained, and the skin pulled tight against his sharp nose.

  “Do you understand me?” Sorsha asked in the Ancient Tongue.

  “Do you understand me?” Nyfain whispered in her different dialect.

  Something flashed in his vacant eyes, and he nodded. Sorsha slid her hand under the sodden bandage and pressed into the wound. Heat pulsed from her heart and flowed down her veins into her palms. His breathing returned to normal within moments, and his dark eyes refocused.

  “Listen to me,” Sorsha pressed her lips to his ear. “You must pretend you are still injured, or they will take you back.”

  He nodded and doubled over, groaning.

  “Take him to lie over there,” she said to Nyfain in Latin. Sorsha walked across the yard to the auctioneer, her blood-soaked hands trembling.

  “Thank you for spotting that dead weight, I am much obliged,” the original purchaser said to her, pressing a silver coin into her hand.

  She shivered as the remaining men were led away from the market, an uncomfortable urge rising inside her to free them all.

  The auctioneer wiped sweat from his bald head. “And what are you still doing here?”

  “My sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused, but better you were able to sort out a new deal here than have lost a valuable customer forever.”

  He glared. “What do you want?”

  “I would like your help to find a slave that might have come through here, six years ago, from the Painted People. I come on the recommendation of the Provost of the Storehouses of London. Are you Flavius?”

  “Marcus sent you? Hmm. Yes, I am Flavius, but that will be difficult.”

  “I will pay you for your trouble.”

  “Yes, handsomely. But it will take a few days. Do you know the slave’s name? Description? Tattoos?”

  “Yes, Derelei is her name. Female, blonde, tall. I’m not sure if she has any tattoos, she might have an armband with the Snake of Caledon…that is, a snake curled across a broken arrow.”

  Flavius stepped over to a small writing desk beside the platform the slaves had stood on and scratched on vellum with a quill and ink. “Your name?” he drawled without looking up at her.

  “Lucia of Corinium Dobunnorum.”

  “Hmm. And why do you want to find this slave?”

  “She is the mother of my handmaiden,” Sorsha gestured to Nyfain. “I wish for them to take care of my household.”

  He frowned, and his eyes travelled from her face to the sword that hung at her waist.

  She reached into the coin pouch on her belt. “Here, ten denarii should more than cover your time in searching the records.”

  He reached out to take the coins, but she snatched her hand back. “Paid upon delivery of the information I seek.”

  “Of course.” He licked his lips. “And if I do not find her?”

  “I’ll still pay you. Most slaves come in first through this market, do they not?”

  Flavius nodded.

  “So, if she was not taken here, then either she is dead, or she was taken directly to a fort at the wall?”

  “Most likely. Now, if that is all you want, I have other business to attend to. Come back in three days.”

  Sorsha walked back to Nyfain. The slave put his arms over Nyfain and Sorsha, and they heaved him back to their horse and helped him to mount. It’s almost harder to pretend that he is injured than it would have been to get a real injured man on a horse.

  Once he was mounted, Sorsha led the horse west along the wall. The buildings nearest to the river seemed to be large manors, with gardens, white walls, and sloping roofs covered in red tiles. They soon reached a gate that opened onto the bridge spanning the river. She remembered when she had seen it from the river on her first visit to Londinium and how it had seemed like the world was full of possibilities. A cart laden with sacks of grain trundled from the bridge, through the gate, and along a road that led north back into the city. Sorsha pulled at the bridle and they followed the cobbled road to the north, where the density of people and buildings increased. Women wore long tunics to their ankles with bright-coloured pallas wrapped around their shoulders and tucked under their arms. A few men wore togas over their tunics that came to the knee, but most disregarded such formality. They bustled along the street that narrowed to squeezed wooden buildings with a mixture of shop frontages on the ground floor and squalid-looking houses on top.

  Fresh baked bread wafted down the street as people purchased goods from the alcoves at the buildings’ base. At the end of the street, a high, vaulted, triangular roof towered above the other buildings. It was the remains of the old forum and basilica. Next to the baker was a triple-storied tavern, and they rented a sparse grey room in the upper storey. On a wooden floor was a cot barely big enough for Sorsha and Nyfain to have shared. Sorsha led the man to the cot, and he sat down.

  “Ask the innkeeper for some water, bread, and cheese,” she said to Nyfain. “And a cloth!” she yelled as Nyfain disappeared out the door. Sorsha bent down in front of the man and removed the bloodied bandage.

  He fingered the scar that now lay where his mortal wound had been an hour before. “Thank you… How…?” was all she managed to understand. He spoke a similar language to the Ancient Tongue, but it had diverged enough that it was barely comprehensible.

  “I am a Healer… Gallar. I heal from the Gods,” she said, trying to speak as simply as possible, while she scanned his body for any other signs of injury. The rope had burnt his neck, and his feet were bloody from marching barefoot.

  By the time Nyfain returned, Sorsha had tended to the rest of his wounds. As Nyfain bent down to wash him with a bowl and a cloth, he wrenched the water bowl from her and gulped. Nyfain returned with more water, and when he was clean, they sat on the floor together and ate.

  “Where do you come from?” Nyfain asked when he
finished eating and had lain back on the cot bed against the wall.

  “Overwater… Gaul.”

  “From Gaul? But Gaul has been part of the empire for hundreds of years.” She paused and switched to Latin. “You speak Latin?”

  “Yes, I speak Latin, but I don’t like to. My village refused to pay taxes to the Romans. The Saxons raid our villages, but the Romans don’t protect us anymore. Yet they still demand taxes.”

  “What happened to your village?” Nyfain asked in the Ancient Tongue.

  He shrugged. “All burnt…gone.”

  “What is your name?” Nyfain asked.

  “Dioras.”

  “I am Nyfain.”

  He smiled and repeated, “Nee–fan.”

  Nyfain looked at the ground.

  He watched her, a smile still playing on his lips, and then turned to Sorsha. “Name?”

  “I am Sorsha.”

  “Saw–sha.”

  His eyes followed Nyfain, who had risen to tidy away their meal.

  “You don’t need to do that.” Sorsha stood and took the water bowl from her hand. “Sit, and rest.”

  Nyfain looked troubled.

  “Please, I don’t want you to serve me. You are free.” She looked at Dioras. “You are both free, and you may leave whenever you want.”

  Neither said anything.

  “Of course, you may stay with me. But you are free, and I am not your master.”

  “I have nowhere else to go,” Nyfain said. “I will stay.”

  “Dioras, I can help you get back to your family?”

  He shook his head. “My village burn… I stay.”

  They spent the next three days exploring Londinium. It was difficult to understand Dioras in the Ancient Tongue, but he seemed happy to listen to Sorsha and Nyfain, who made an effort to converse with him. Dioras was old enough to have been a father but had not been bound when he was captured, a fact that Nyfain had been most delicate about extracting. Dioras, though mostly silent, smiled and shone from his eyes, seemingly pleased by all he encountered, and Sorsha shuddered at the horrors that had led him to such a disposition.

  On the third day they paid their bill with the tavern and returned to the slavers’ market. Flavius seemed astounded to find Dioras alive. Flavius informed them he had searched their records for the last seven years and could not find a Derelei that matched the description. “Likely as not she is dead,” he continued. “But if you are desperate to find her, the forts along the wall are crawling with slaves for the soldiers, and they need not come through the Londinium markets. The soldiers just take them straight there.”

  “What will we do now?” Nyfain asked after Sorsha had paid Flavius.

  “We head north. To the Great Wall.”

  Thirty-Two

  Summer, 367 C.E., Caledon

  Brei, Taran, and Dylan stood on the hill at the ruins of Caerdwabonna and scanned the River Tae. With them was a guard of warriors they had taken from Caercaled that morning. An osprey circled overhead and dived into the water, returning to a pine tree on the bank with a fish thrashing in its beak. Brei gripped the reins in his hand, and the leather tightened and creaked under his grasp.

  “There,” Taran murmured.

  In the distance, coming in from the ocean, three ships paddled against the river current. The boats drew closer. Fifteen to a side of men rowed the boats in sync. Men sitting at the aft of the boats yelled out “Pull!” to the rowers, and the oars creaked against the rusted metal handles as they plunged into the river and hauled the boat forwards. “Pull!”

  Taran clicked to Ri, and they cantered down the grassy slope towards the sandy riverbank. As the first boat came closer, Brei recognised his cousins Talorc and Eithne. Next to them, standing on a platform, were three men with tied-back hair and cropped beards. In the second boat was King Alpin of Ce and his son, Cal, surrounded by an entourage of Ce warriors. Naoise and Drest were in the third boat with King Cailtram of Cait and a black-haired man who Brei could only assume was Prince Fergus of Ulster.

  They waited on the bank until the ships approached, heaving against the current. When the first ship swung into the landing bay, the warriors rushed into the river to drag the boat in.

  “Cousins!” King Talorc called out as they pulled the ship across the sand.

  Naoise leapt from his boat before it had been pulled ashore, and he waded to Talorc’s boat and reached up for Eithne. She smiled, her golden hair flowing over her shoulder as she took Naoise’s hand. He picked her up and carried her across the shallow water and up high onto the riverbank where the ground was firm.

  “Naoise! I hope you will show the same courtesy to your king!” Talorc yelled.

  Brei laughed and turned for Naoise’s reaction, but Naoise was otherwise engaged with Eithne’s mouth. Talorc jumped over the boat’s edge into the river and waded across to the shore, followed by the three strange men. Brei had assumed the three men were standing on a platform on the boat, but he realised as they stopped before him that they were a foot taller than Talorc.

  “Cousins, this is Prince Ælfric, son of the King of Saxons.”

  Brei grasped the prince’s hand and smiled. “We are sorry King Garnait is not here to greet you himself.”

  “And these are his cousins.” Talorc pointed to the tallest of the Saxons. “This is Wulfraed.” The man nodded. “And this is Edmund. Only he speaks the Ancient Tongue.” Talorc introduced Brei and Taran to the men, and Edmund spoke to Prince Ælfric in a strange language that sounded as though it had been conceived in the depths of war.

  Prince Ælfric smiled. His teeth were milky against his swarthy skin, and while his overlong hair was tied back from his face, stray strands of black fell over his forehead. “Prince Brei, Taran,” he said in a deep, thickly accented voice.

  Taran’s jaw tensed momentarily before he smiled and offered his hand. “Prince Ælfric.”

  Prince Ælfric murmured something to Edmund, who translated, “Prince Taran, your cousin Talorc has told me much of you.”

  Taran nodded, and a strained silence fell between them. The two remaining boats were hauled into the bay, and they were soon spared when Drest, King Alpin of Ce, and King Cailtram of Cait and their men joined them.

  “Who are they?” Cailtram asked, nodding towards Prince Ælfric and his cousins. King Cailtram was in his prime, and his strawberry- blond hair hung at the nape of his tunic, resting above a silver penannular brooch with two bear heads carved into the ends.

  “Saxons,” Brei replied.

  King Cailtram seemed surprised. “Were you expecting them?”

  “Talorc has cast his net wide.”

  “Did you succeed with convincing King Nechtan and King Alwyn?” Cailtram asked.

  “King Coel now,” Taran said. “King Alwyn was taken by the plague, but his son was successful in his claim to the throne.”

  “And did you speak with Coel? What are his views? The Damnnones would be a crucial ally, being so close to the Great Wall.”

  “They will, indeed,” Taran nodded. “But Coel wouldn’t let us into Altclud because of the plague. But he agreed to attend this meeting. He is our first cousin on our father’s side, you may recall, and I am sure he will be keen to hear what we have to say.”

  “Is he young?”

  Brei shrugged. “He has seen as many winters as I.”

  “Good,” Cailtram said. “We don’t want to deal with a boy king.”

  “Don’t worry,” Taran said. “The Eldar Druwydd would not have suffered a boy king.”

  “When will the southern kings arrive?” King Alpin asked.

  “King Nechtan arrived from Caermhead not long before you did. King Coel and King Derine of Attacot have been in Caercaled a few days.”

  King Alpin lowered his voice. “The Attacot are a strange race. I wonder how Talorc stands it, spending so much time with King Derine.”

  “I expect Talorc doesn’t mind it when his children, with Queen Maeve, will inherit the throne,” Cailtra
m replied.

  The sound of men splashing into the water, calling to one another to coordinate the unloading of cargo, stifled the conversation and soon almost one hundred men, kings, princes, and their warriors stood on the riverbank.

  Brei cleared his throat. “Shall we go up to the tower?” he yelled, but no one seemed to hear.

  “Cousins! Friends! Your attention, please!” Taran’s voice, booming across the crowd, grated against Brei’s ears.

  The men turned to Taran in unison.

  “We have a few hours’ ride from here to Caercaled. Horses are waiting for you and your men can follow on foot. Your ships will be guarded. We have watchtowers all along the river.” Taran gestured to the hills. “If we make a good pace, we’ll be there in time for the feast.” He patted Talorc on the back and led his horse between the men. Brei did not move. He watched Taran’s broad back disappear through the crowd of warriors, his mind flipping from respect to jealousy with every step Taran took.

  “What’s in it for us?” Prince Fergus of Ulster asked. “And don’t tell me it’s plunder and women. Ulster wants land.” He pointed to King Derine. “Your land.”

  King Derine stood up. “Piss off back to Ulster, you’re not getting any more Attacot territory. Talorc should be the one to gift land, it is not my venture.”

  Brei leant against the wall in the tower’s hall in Caercaled. The kings and princes assembled around the long wooden table, but there was not space for all. The rest of the men stood behind, drinking ale, and some men spilled outside. Brei closed his eyes. After two days of feasting, his head ached, and his Torc dug into the back of his neck. He rubbed it as he studied Prince Fergus, who was older than Talorc, old enough to be king.

  “We shouldn’t be fighting amongst ourselves,” Taran said. “The Romans are an enemy to all. We should seize the opportunity.”