by James Wilde
‘We have no hope of outpacing the Attacotti with these in tow,’ Mato whispered.
‘We can’t leave them behind.’
‘No. But the men aren’t fools. They’ll see creaking legs and women laden with children, and they’ll know it’ll be like tying a rock to the ankle of a drowning man.’
Lucanus looked around his war-band. They weren’t fighting men: far from it. He saw the pale faces of money-counters and the paunches of merchants, the leathery cheeks and mop hair of farmers, the broad shoulders of blacksmiths and butchers. They were levied from the towns and villages that were yet to face the advancing barbarian horde. The people of Britannia had not had to fight to defend themselves for centuries, not since Rome had sent its invincible army, and they’d grown soft.
But Rome was falling into twilight now, and Britannia would need to learn to fight again if its folk were to survive.
Lucanus looked up to the heavens. Not too long ago his life had been simple. He remembered laughter and the warm company of his friends in the fort at Vercovicium on the great wall that divided the empire from the barbarian lands to the north. Scouting in that wilderness, with clear skies overhead and the other Grim Wolves loping at his side. And Catia, the woman he had secretly loved since they were children. She had been married then, with a husband and a son, but tragedy had taken both of them away. A tragedy born the night the vast horde of barbarians had crashed over the wall, smashing Vercovicium to dust.
From then, it had been endless fleeing for their lives, always towards the south, with the other Grim Wolves, and Catia and her father and brother, and Amarina who had run the house of women in the settlement. That would have been bad enough. But no, he had been caught up in a plot of wood-priests and witches, entranced by a prophecy that this time of blood and fire was the beginning of an age when a great saviour would return, the King Who Will Not Die.
His fingers closed around the gold crown he kept tucked away in his cloak. It had been given to him by the wood-priest Myrrdin, who had insisted he had a part to play in their unfolding plans. He was to be the Pendragon, which was the ancient title of the great war-leader, the Head of the Dragon, who would lead the resistance against the barbarian horde and guard the bloodline of this mysterious king. And he’d been given the sword Caledfwlch, which the druid had promised was a gift of the gods. He’d accepted the role, reluctantly.
That was when his entire life had turned sour.
Myrrdin had sworn that Catia was the Chalice, the source of that royal blood, and her son Marcus would carry the line forward until the saviour was born. And then it seemed everyone wanted to lay claim to both of them, to grasp that power and control it. And in that conflict Marcus was murdered – a death for which Lucanus had to accept some responsibility – and Catia was wrenched away from him and taken captive by the barbarians. His friends, Bellicus, Solinus and Comitinus, those missing Grim Wolves, were hunting for her, but what hope was there of ever bringing her home?
Now there was nothing but running and fighting while the light died around him.
Apullius tugged at his arm. ‘They’re coming.’ Grief had made the lad white as chalk, and his dark eyes seemed to have stopped blinking. But he wasn’t crying, now, and that was good.
Sparks leapt from flints. Strands of blue smoke twisted and specks of orange glowed like tiny suns. Soon blades of flame stabbed up along the wood’s edge. That summer had been hot. The countryside was tinder-dry, and the blaze rushed through the yellowing grass and dried bramble, the fallen branches and twigs, embracing oak and ash and holly along the way.
Raising one arm high, Lucanus snapped it forward. The old folk and the mothers trudged away from the trees and down the slope into the grasslands beyond. Behind them, the wall of fire roared along the high ground, growing broader and deeper with each moment.
Lucanus watched Mato stare up as the billowing black smoke engulfed the stars. His face seemed to be full of regret. ‘I’m sick of choking on smoke from the villages they’ve burned, and turning away from streams pink with blood and poisoned by bodies. I’ve had my fill of this land they are creating.’ He shook his head, and raced to join the men cutting a V through the sea of grass, while Lucanus watched the ragged band of refugees struggling to keep up. How many had they rescued now? Not enough. Never enough.
Now, though … could Londinium be the answer to their prayers?
‘Lucanus!’
Mato’s cry cracked back across the bowed heads of the stumbling refugees. The Wolf saw his friend pointing and whirled.
Stars were glowing in that thick bank of black cloud billowing across the high ridge. Growing larger, brighter.
Flaming arrows arced towards them. A score, perhaps more. His cry of alarm had barely formed in his throat before the shafts whined down.
In a sizzle of sparks, an arrow thumped into the back of an old man. Flames leapt across his greasy cloak to his long grey hair, and then he was howling as the fire consumed him from head to toe.
Another shaft slammed into one of his men. And another.
Screaming, the refugees threw themselves down the slope. Some fell, trampled underfoot by those behind them. A crackle became a deafening roar. Fiery waves washed the scene, cresting higher than a man’s head.
‘Stand your ground!’ the Wolf roared at his men. At the sound of his voice, they turned. ‘Take the villagers with you!’
Fear-stricken, some still ran, but others scrambled back, hauling children on to their shoulders, grasping the wrists of the elderly, heaving the infirm into their arms before once again plunging down the slope on a narrowing path through the conflagration.
As he stumbled blindly in the choking smoke, Lucanus felt a hand grasp his arm.
‘Apullius ran back to find his brother,’ Mato shouted above the roar, eyes watering.
Lucanus looked over his shoulder at the swirling bank of smoke lit orange underneath by the raging fires. Soon enough the barbarians would be in pursuit.
‘It’s too late,’ Mato cried, his grip tightening.
But it was not Apullius’ face Lucanus was seeing in his mind’s eye. It was Marcus, the boy who had been like a son to him, whose life he had failed to save.
He threw Mato off. Levelling his arm in front of his face, the Wolf ran into the inferno.
CHAPTER THREE
The Burning
LUCANUS STUMBLED ON, blinded by waves of skin-searing heat and choking clouds of acrid smoke. With each step, he felt his chest tighten. If he didn’t find the brothers soon he would be burned to ashes, lost and forgotten, and all those who relied upon him would be lost too.
‘Apullius!’ he bellowed, but his voice was swallowed by that deafening roar, which he thought sounded like a woken dragon ready to consume all in its path. When he lurched away from the worst of the fire, however, the din receded a little and he realized he could hear the sound of coughing floating in the air.
Apullius was crouching down, forcing his brother to the ground where the air was clearer. ‘Hush, Mouse, hush,’ he was saying. ‘Any sound will draw the barbarians to us.’
The Wolf dropped beside the two brothers and saw Apullius’ face glow with hope. ‘If the gods are with us, the smoke will be our friend,’ he reassured them.
Urging his charges down the slope, he muttered a prayer that the barbarians would still be looking for a way past the wall of fire that his men had lit, but he had barely taken five paces when he realized the futility of that hope. In the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a grey shape half forming in the smoke before the folds stole it away again.
The Attacotti were already here.
Lucanus slowed his step, afraid to make the slightest sound. No point in running. Once the Attacotti sensed him there, they would be on him in an instant. He needed to be sly like the wolf now.
The brothers must have read his tension for Morirex whimpered, clinging tighter. Apullius tried to shush him, but that only made more noise. Lucanus pulled his cloak around them, praying
that would be enough.
A half-seen ghost flitted by, fading just as quickly.
Another.
This side, that side.
Footsteps thumped, drawing so close he stiffened, and were then swallowed by the deadening smoke. How many of the Attacotti were out there – the whole advance guard, or only a few who had slipped by the fire?
Easing his hand inside his cloak, he drew Caledfwlch. That was a mistake. The younger boy began to whimper again, the sound growing louder despite the protestations of his brother.
It was enough.
Feet pounded at his back. Lucanus thrust the boys ahead of him and yelled, ‘Run!’ Whirling, he levelled his blade. A figure took on shape and solidity as it emerged through the folds of drifting smoke.
The Attacotti warrior’s skin was the white of dead flesh, the eyes circled black, the cheekbones dark-lined. Though Lucanus knew it was only crusted mud and ashes, and charcoal for emphasis, a disguise to frighten enemies, he still shuddered.
Without slowing his step, the warrior swung his short sword in a horizontal arc. Lucanus flung up his own blade and felt his arm throb as the vibrations jolted to his shoulder. Sparks flew.
The man was fast on his feet, ducking this way then that, faster by far than the plodding barbarians his tribe fought beside. Though he was little more than skin stretched over bone, Lucanus could see he would make up in agility what he lacked in brawn.
The swords clashed high, then low. The Attacotti warrior bounded, thrust, leapt back before Lucanus could land a strike upon him. Cursing, the Wolf pushed forward, slashing back and forth. He blinked away tears from the stinging smoke, but could see his enemy was untroubled. Cold, black voids, the staring eyes were twin wells that seemed to go on for ever.
Seeing an opening, Lucanus lunged. His blade ripped open his enemy’s shoulder, red streaking the crusted white. Yet the warrior didn’t cry out, and it was only as that ghastly face loomed close that Lucanus realized he had been lured in.
The Eater of the Dead rolled away, bringing up his sword to clatter Caledfwlch aside. In one fluid movement, he threw all his weight forward. The Wolf breathed in a queasy mix of raw meat and loam, and then his enemy ploughed into him. He felt his blade fly from his hand.
Lucanus slammed back against the hard earth, his breath whistling through clenched teeth. A weight like a sack of grain crashed against his chest. A forearm crushed his throat. He was pinned down, his fingers clawing at burned grass, unable to close on the hilt of his sword.
The features of the white devil swam above him, filling his vision. The crust of pale ash across the skin was cracked, the charcoal around the eyes and along the cheekbones smeared. The jagged teeth were red. But it was those black eyes, like the deepest, darkest wells, that chilled his blood. He could see nothing in them that he recognized.
The face pressed closer. The coal eyes became all, and then Lucanus felt the cold caress of steel at his throat. The warrior’s knife, ready to unleash his lifeblood.
The Wolf bucked, but the Attacotti killer held him fast.
Images flooded Lucanus’ head, and his thoughts flew back to that night in the far north, bound beside a campfire at the gathering of the tribes when others of this warrior’s kind had sawed off his ear and swallowed it. The horror that engulfed him as he watched a part of himself being consumed.
The blade dug deeper, while around him the sounds of battle ebbed until he was floating in an eerie silence. Those black eyes were his whole world.
And with that realization it was as if a torrent rushed through him. Visions of his childhood, his father’s face looming large, eyes as hard and cold as the frozen lakes of winter in the Wilds, but his grin as warm and welcoming as the hearth-fire. His father, lost to him for so long, disappeared in the vast wilderness north of the wall, with not even a body to bury.
And the old wolf he had killed, one-on-one in the moonlit glade of the deep forest during the ritual when he had been accepted into the arcani, the majestic beast’s spirit rushing into him, transforming him into a wolf himself, a Grim Wolf, who could survive in the Wilds, and smell and see and race with all the powers of his namesake.
And there was Catia, and he thought his heart would break that he would never see her again.
All these thoughts rushed through his head in an instant and then he was back, feeling the pressure on his neck, swimming through the foul stench of meaty breath.
‘I’m ready,’ he croaked. ‘I don’t fear death.’
Yet in that moment he felt the pain in his throat ease as the knife pulled back a notch. Lucanus saw something odd in those eyes: questions, perhaps.
The Eater of the Dead pushed his head down, almost into an embrace. The Wolf felt the bloom of hot breath on his neck. The barbarian nuzzled him, and he heard the deep intake of breath. Once, twice, three times.
His spine prickled. His enemy was drawing in his scent, as a beast would do with the other animals it encountered.
The warrior’s head pulled back, reared up. In his eyes Lucanus saw another look that he couldn’t quite define. Recognition, perhaps? Or something deeper and more troubling?
The barbarian leapt off him and paused for an instant, those eyes locked on Lucanus’ one final time. Then he bounded away into the night.
The Wolf sucked in a gasp of calming air. Why had that Eater of the Dead spared his life?
A cacophony of jubilant cries rang out nearby, and he realized that the barbarian horde had broken through the wall of fire.
As he staggered to his feet, a Scoti warrior crashed out of the smoke. His braided red hair flew, and he wore leather armour and furs crusted with lamb fat from the last cold winter. A round shield hung on one arm; a short sword was gripped in the other hand. In an instant, the Scot drank everything in – the dazed man, the weapon lying on the ground nearby – and grinned. Bellowing a battle-cry, he hurled himself forward. His blade swung high.
Lucanus stared, rooted, defenceless.
From nowhere, he glimpsed the flash of a blade. A gout of crimson arced, and the Scoti warrior spun back, clutching at his opened belly.
Mato lurched in front of him, his sword dripping.
‘You should be with the others,’ Lucanus hissed.
‘That’s the thanks I get?’ Mato grabbed his arm and dragged him away.
Nearby, the boys crouched in the swirling smoke, clutching each other. As he loped past, Lucanus hooked a hand under one boy’s armpit; Mato caught the other. And then they were careering down the charred slope a few steps ahead of the call and response whistles ringing out behind them.
Beyond the fires, night cloaked a countryside of thick woods running along the banks of the river Tamesis. Ahead lay the old Britannia, of peace and freedom.
Pausing in the brittle grass, where their fire-shadows danced and sparks twirled up on the air currents into the dark like the fireflies in the fields of his youth, Lucanus looked back. The bank of smoke with its orange furnace burning deep within was a wall, as daunting as the one the Romans had built across the north, and one that would be just as easily breached. There was no safety any more in this new world.
CHAPTER FOUR
At the Bridge
AFIERY RED SHADED to purple and pink across the eastern horizon. Lucanus mopped the sweat from his brow as he scanned the cool emerald woods and shining lakes dotting the grassland, the last undefiled expanse between the invaders’ lines and the sea. Even at that hour, he could tell another furnace awaited them.
At their backs, the jubilant cries of the barbarians rang out like the revels of drunk young men heading home from the tavern.
‘Still following.’ Mato cocked his head, listening to the distant calls.
Apullius hugged his brother close. ‘Do we run and run until we die?’
‘Don’t lose hope,’ Lucanus said, remembering what the soldier had told him. ‘We have to get to Londinium. The army, or what remains of it, is heading there. We’ll be able to shelter behind the walls
. Better that than being run like deer in open country.’
Mato nodded. ‘It will give us a slim chance to hold the barbarians off until the cold months. By then Rome might have remembered they have part of their empire here.’
‘I want to fight,’ Apullius said.
‘Then you will.’ Mato unhooked his belt and handed it over, with the sheath and scabbard attached.
‘You’ll need that,’ the Wolf said. ‘Let him find another weapon.’
‘I’m not a fighting man, you know that. Solinus always said I should have been a priest instead.’ Mato’s smile tightened. ‘I have no stomach for death. I’m not walking away, don’t fear it. I could never abandon you, or my brothers, but I’ll serve in a different way: as a scout. That’s what I’m good at. Or a cook, if necessary, or a smith. But I’ve killed my last man.’
Lucanus nodded. He understood, if he didn’t agree.
Apullius strapped the belt around his waist. It fitted him well enough.
‘Don’t draw the blade until you’ve had some lessons,’ Lucanus cautioned. ‘A novice with a weapon is as likely to kill himself as any enemy.’
‘You’ll teach me,’ Apullius replied, looking down at his new prize with awe.
After a while they pushed through swaying willows to the banks of the river. A dragonfly darted, gleaming like a jewel in the first light.
‘One thing I don’t understand,’ the lad went on. ‘When that … that thing … that white-skinned warrior … attacked, he had you pinned down. He could have killed you. But he didn’t. He ran away. Why?’
Lucanus looked back and saw Mato frowning. There was a flicker across his features that Lucanus couldn’t quite read, almost as if this news was both troubling and no surprise.