Dark Age
Page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Map
Part One: The Blasted Land
Chapter One: The World is Ending
Chapter Two: Running With Wolves
Chapter Three: The Burning
Chapter Four: At the Bridge
Chapter Five: Open, Locks, Whoever Knocks
Chapter Six: Black River
Chapter Seven: When the Trees Speak
Chapter Eight: The Messenger
Chapter Nine: The Candle Gutters
Chapter Ten: Age of Orphans
Chapter Eleven: The Workshop of the Gods
Chapter Twelve: The Second Dragon
Chapter Thirteen: Trapped
Chapter Fourteen: The Raid
Chapter Fifteen: The River
Chapter Sixteen: The Forest
Chapter Seventeen: Queen of Fury
Chapter Eighteen: Londinium
Part Two: City of the Dead
Chapter Nineteen: Summer’s End
Chapter Twenty: The Circle
Chapter Twenty-One: Cheapside
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Shadow
Chapter Twenty-Three: I Am in Blood
Chapter Twenty-Four: Stars, Hide Your Fires
Chapter Twenty-Five: Night Comes Down
Chapter Twenty-Six: The New House of Wishes
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Chaos is Come Again
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Cold Season
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Demand
Chapter Thirty: Midwinter
Chapter Thirty-One: At Still Midnight
Chapter Thirty-Two: The End
Chapter Thirty-Three: The Beginning
Part Three: Avalon
Chapter Thirty-Four: Into the West
Chapter Thirty-Five: What Was Old is New Again
Chapter Thirty-Six: Blood Will Have Blood
Chapter Thirty-Seven: After the Battle, Silence
Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Attacotti
Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Conversation
Chapter Forty: Whispers
Chapter Forty-One: The Call of the Greenwood
Chapter Forty-Two: The Isle of Apples
Chapter Forty-Three: The Gorge
Chapter Forty-Four: The Two Dragons
Chapter Forty-Five: The Only Way
Chapter Forty-Six: The Council
Chapter Forty-Seven: The Haunted Land
Chapter Forty-Eight: Tintagel
Chapter Forty-Nine: Camelot
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by James Wilde
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
AD 367, and Roman Britain is falling to the barbarians. Towns burn, the land is ravaged and the few survivors flee. The army of Rome – once the most effective fighting force in the world – has been broken, its spirit lost.
Yet for all the darkness, there is hope. It rests upon the shoulders of one man: Lucanus – the one they call the Wolf. He is a warrior. He wears the ancient crown of a great war leader, Pendragon, and he wields a sword bestowed upon him by the druids. And he, toget her with a band of trusted followers, is heading south, to Londinium, where he means to bring together an army and make a stand against the hated invader.
But within the walls of that city, hidden enemies lie in wait. They crave the secret that has been entrusted to him. To own it would give them power beyond imagining. To protect it will require bravery and sacrifice beyond measure. To lose it would mean the end of everything worth fighting for …
The acclaimed author of Pendragon continues his epic telling of the story of the hidden origins of what would become the most enduring of all legends – of Arthur, King of the Britons …
For Elizabeth, Betsy, Joe and Eve
Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase
To Mountain boars, and all the savage race!
Wide o’er the ethereal walks extends thy sway,
And o’er the infernal mansions void of day!
Look upon us on earth! Unfold our fate,
And say what region is our destined seat?
Where shall we next thy lasting temples raise?
And choirs of virgins celebrate thy praise?
Geoffrey of Monmouth
The gods too are fond of a joke.
Aristotle
PART ONE
The Blasted Land
‘What man is the gatekeeper?’
The Black Book of Carmarthen
CHAPTER ONE
The World is Ending
AD 367, South of Lactodurum, southern Britannia, 26 July
‘WHO IS THE King Who Will Not Die?’
The desperate words floated in the warm night air. Apullius looked down at his young brother and tried to force a reassuring smile. Morirex had seen only eleven summers, and was small for his age: the Mouse, the other children called him. He was allowed to be frightened. Five years older, Apullius was tall and gangly, awkward but strong, with an unruly mess of brown hair. They had other names for him, and he cared about none of them.
‘You remember the stories we heard in the village?’
‘Yes.’
‘The King Who Will Not Die will come when we need him most to lead us out of these dark times.’
‘Don’t we need him now?’
Apullius didn’t answer.
‘But who is he?’
This time Apullius felt a pang of frustration. He wanted to say it was nothing but a story, one told to the weak and the frightened so they didn’t feel bad about their failure to be strong enough to save themselves. But that would be cruel.
Raising his eyes to the slab of sky, sprinkled with stars between the black high branches, he breathed in the calming honeyed scent of the golden resin bubbling from the trunks. They should have been tossing and turning in summer sweat under a familiar roof, not out there in the woods. But the safety of home was gone now.
The world was ending.
In wave after wave, the enemy crashed across the fields they once knew. Burning and raping and slaughtering. He’d seen their numbers, that cold, pink dawn. The charcoal smudge had shadowed the horizon, growing larger by the moment, and wide, as far as he could see in each direction. That vast line swept down, silhouetted against wavering angry red under the black pall of smoke.
The world was ending.
Around him he could hear the snuffling of the others, like pigs waking in their sty at first light. A baby mewled and the mother desperately tried to silence it. An old man hawked up phlegm and someone hushed him in a harsh tone. Other children whispered questions like the one his brother had uttered.
Where is the one who will save us?
If they could not save themselves they did not deserve to survive this night.
‘They call him the Bear-King,’ he told Morirex. ‘No one knows his name, but we will know him when we see him.’
‘And he’ll come tonight?’
‘Or in a hundred years’ time.’
Morirex choked down a sob and Apullius realized his mistake. ‘Come, you little mud-crawler! Why would we need a king to save us? Father is out there with his cudgel, and all the men of the village.’
‘And Mother? Why has Mother gone, and all the other women?’
Because they need every hand they can get.
‘Because the women have better eyes and they can see in the dark. You know that. Now, hush. Sleep. It will be dawn soon enough and we’ll be on our way.’
‘But not home.’ The voice grew thin and Apullius could hear the tears lacing it.
‘A better home. A grand home with mosaics and warm floors in winter and ovens to bake
bread. Go to sleep, mud-crawler. Sleep!’
Apullius fumbled in the dark and pressed his hand on his brother’s eyes to close them. After a moment, he felt Morirex’s lashes flutter shut and a moment after that his breathing soughed in a regular rhythm.
Pulling away, Apullius crept past the prone bodies. Few of them were sleeping. He could smell the vinegary fear-sweat. No, they would not be returning home, because their home had burned to the ground along with the rest of the village. They’d all barely had time to flee into the woods after the watchers posted half a day’s walk away had raced back to tell of the barbarians’ relentless advance.
Among the trees, he could just make out the hazy outline of a figure hugging its knees under a twisted hawthorn. The soldier who had stumbled into the village, begging for food. Now barely a soldier, barely a man.
When he’d staggered up, he’d been streaked with filth and grass stains, his cloak tattered, a beard like a lark’s nest tumbling down his chest. His eyes had ranged, never at peace. He’d abandoned his post, as had all the army, when the barbarians had thundered across the land. Saxons, and Scoti and Picts, and names he didn’t recognize. Surging across the great wall in the north from Caledonia. Sweeping in on ships from the west and the east. All those far-flung tribes, who had thrown aside their petty disputes and joined into one unstoppable force to take Britannia from the empire.
Unheard of, his father had muttered. The tribes hated each other. ‘They hate Rome more,’ his mother had whispered, ‘and all who shelter under its banner.’
If the army – the finest fighting men in the world, his father had always called them – if they could not resist, what hope for the rest of them?
‘Britannia has fallen,’ the soldier had raved. ‘Only blasted land remains in the barbarians’ wake. Burned villages. Men and women and children slaughtered, or taken slave. All riches looted.’
Apullius remembered how his father’s face, usually so strong and filled with mirth, had drained of blood, and grown drawn, so that he looked like an old man. That was worse than any words.
After that soldier’s message of terror, they’d had some thin hope for a while. The refugees streaming through their village carried on their backs what meagre belongings they’d been able to rescue. They said that the barbarians had come to a halt on a line from Ratae.
‘Perhaps they’ve seized all the loot they can carry,’ his father had said. ‘They’ll return to their homes and spin tales of their great victory in the years to come.’
But midsummer passed and the invaders had set off again, advancing more slowly this time, breaking into small groups so they could roam across the countryside to pillage, and retreat at speed if they were resisted. But they never were. The army was shattered.
Apullius crouched on the boundary line they had decided on in the last of the light. The other sentries stood silently away in the dark, the five younger men like himself who had been chosen to lead the old and the sick and the mothers with young away should things take a turn for the worse.
Before he had left, his father had hugged him tight as if he would never let him go. But he did not look back as he marched into the gloom. His mother kept her face turned away too.
As he looked out into that ocean of night, a light gleamed away in the grassland beyond the wood’s edge.
He felt a cold blade in his heart. It was a torch appearing over a ridge of higher ground. Another one flared suddenly, like a star fallen to earth. Then another, until an entire constellation glimmered in that gulf.
Not the folk from his village. They were all in hiding, in the ditches and the long grass, waiting to mount one last desperate attack if the barbarians chose to follow their trail from the ashes of their village.
Apullius’ throat felt as narrow as a piece of straw. Those torches danced inexorably forward. Perhaps they would pass the hiding places. Perhaps there would be no battle.
And then the first scream rang out.
It was not the cry of a man stabbed through the heart. This one tore the throat as if the victim had stared into the horrors of hell.
The torchlight swirled, and Apullius swooned at a vision of summer fireflies in the fields near his home.
Another scream echoed.
Another.
Another. Those awful cries merged into one long howl.
For a moment, Apullius clutched his ears to smother the sickening sound. But then his fury seared like a furnace and he threw himself towards the fray.
A hand clamped on his shoulder and dragged him back.
Apullius whirled. A giant wolf loomed over him. Fangs bared. Maw wide.
He yowled, then stifled it when he realized his mistake. No wolf. Only a man. The beast’s grey pelt hung across the stranger’s back, the head set on his own, the snout pulled down so his features were thrown into shadow. In his right hand he clutched a bronze sword. Moonlight plucked black tracings of runes from the blade. A barbarian.
‘Stay,’ the man-wolf growled.
Apullius kicked out for the intruder’s shins.
The warrior clenched his iron fingers and held his captive at bay. He cuffed Apullius once round the ears to bring him to his senses.
‘I’m not your enemy.’
Apullius realized he could understand the words – this was not some guttural barbarian tongue – but the accent was heavy and unfamiliar. Letting his limbs grow slack, he peered under that wolf’s head. The face was strong and as yet unlined, serious but not cruel. Eyes of fierce intelligence glowed from the black pools of the sockets.
‘Who are you?’ he croaked.
‘My name is Lucanus Pendragon. Some call me the Wolf.’
‘Pendragon?’ He knew that name from somewhere. A title. Was this the war-leader he’d heard his father discussing?
More screams jerked him from his reflection and he twisted round. ‘My father … my mother … we must help them.’
‘Your father and mother are not coming back.’ The voice was low, but not unkind.
‘Please—’
‘It’s too late for them. But not for you.’
Apullius sagged, almost falling against the warrior. He’d known it the moment the first scream echoed, but grief surged when he heard it stated so baldly.
Lucanus loosened his grip and squeezed Apullius’ arm. It was a silent communication that said this strange man understood the torment that lay within him, the lad knew. But the warrior was already searching the night for the enemy.
‘What’s to become of us?’
‘You’re with us now.’ The Pendragon’s voice had grown as cold and hard as stone, the voice of a man who did not readily give in to adversity. ‘Come,’ he said, tugging the boy towards where the other villagers cowered.
Apullius squinted. Dark shapes shifted among the trees, stooping every now and then to whisper reassuring words to the refugees and to help them to their feet. The lad felt a glimmer of comfort, but then his sorrow surged again and the tears came.
‘Time enough for that later,’ the warrior said. ‘Now you must be a man.’
‘Let me tell my brother—’
‘We cannot wait,’ Lucanus interrupted. ‘The Attacotti are coming, and that will be an ending worse than any you can imagine.’
CHAPTER TWO
Running With Wolves
‘MAKE HASTE!’
Lucanus whipped his arm forward to encourage the refugees. The final scream had ebbed away. Now there was only the silence of the grave.
The Attacotti filled him with dread and he was not afraid to admit it. They could track across the wildest landscape, never slowing, never tiring. Fierce warriors. Silent, relentless. Not men at all, some said, but daemons. Few knew where their home lay, or understood their tongue, or could divine what gods they worshipped, or what they truly believed, or why such monstrous beings had agreed to join the barbarians in this war.
The Scoti … the Picts … they were fearsome on the battlefield. But they did not eat human flesh.
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‘Make haste,’ he urged again.
He counted only a few more than twenty refugees. Many were old, and the rest were mothers carrying babes or towing bawling children who had only just learned how to walk. A few older boys and girls, trying to seem grown.
One hunched figure refused to move. Lucanus shook the man’s shoulder. ‘You have to come now. Your life depends on it.’
As his filthy cloak fell away, the Wolf realized he was looking down at a soldier still dressed in the rags of his military tunic. His eyes flashed open, and for a moment Lucanus thought he was looking at a wild beast about to attack. But then hot tears brimmed and the soldier shuddered with deep sobs.
‘I can run no more.’
‘You must.’
‘No. No.’ The soldier collapsed on his side, wrapping his arms around himself. ‘I’m done with it all. I want it to be over.’
Lucanus looked through the trees to where those lights burned, brighter and closer. He had no time to argue; there were others who needed him more.
As he turned to leave, the broken man croaked, ‘There’s still hope for you. I haven’t got it in me any more. But if you keep going … to Londinium …’
The Wolf crouched beside him. ‘Why do you say Londinium?’
‘Sanctuary … safety …’ The soldier began to mumble and Lucanus shook him, a little too hard. ‘Any of us left … soldiers … fighting men … those who can still walk are making their way to Londinium. To wait for fresh men to arrive from Rome … to make a last stand if need be.’
Lucanus had never before ventured this far south of his home in Vercovicium. Yet he had heard tell of Londinium from those who had travelled to the cold north. It stood on a river, easy to supply, walled and defensible.
‘Ho! We must be away!’
Mato dashed from the throng and beckoned him. Taller than any man there, and slender, he had the soul of a poet and his eyes normally twinkled with humour, but now his expression was grim. Their friendship had been forged when they roamed the wild lands beyond the wall in the brotherhood of the arcani, the scouts of the Roman army who watched for any threat from the tribes in Caledonia. Five of them were in their band, the Grim Wolves, each wearing the pelt of one of those majestic beasts that he had killed himself. Of those five, only Lucanus and Mato were here. And every night Lucanus offered a prayer to the gods that the other three would be brought back to them from that dangerous territory beyond the barbarian lines where, he hoped, they still lived, still fought.