Dark Age

by James Wilde

  Everything changes.

  The Fates measured the threads and cut them, and only they knew the span of a man’s life. If he died here, so be it, the Wolf thought. He’d had a good life. But those who now relied on him? That was a burden with which he still struggled.

  Falx pointed to a large structure to the north, little more than a mass of shadows with the edges limned in red. ‘See that?’

  Lucanus nodded.

  ‘The amphitheatre. Seen better days. Don’t go up there at night, or you’ll get your throat slit. But there are bath-houses still working, so at least you can get the filth of the day off you. Down here’s the governor’s palace,’ he continued, jabbing a finger towards a complex of red-roofed buildings next to the river wall. ‘And up there—’

  ‘The forum.’ Lucanus studied the silhouette of the massive structure due north, with the basilica beyond it.

  ‘If you want to find out what’s happening, who’s plotting against whom, whom the gods have spoken to, who’s had a vision of salvation, or damnation, that’s where you go. And that, my friend, is Londinium, for better or worse.’

  ‘What do you do for food and supplies?’

  ‘We still have traders coming up the river from the east. Mithras alone knows how much longer that will last. We’ve tried to store as much as we can, for the cold months.’

  ‘The folk outside the walls?’

  ‘We can’t do anything for them. We can barely feed ourselves.’

  ‘So you’ll let them die?’

  Falx didn’t reply.

  ‘When they begin to starve, you know they’ll storm the gates as eagerly as any barbarian. What then? Burning pitch? Arrows?’

  The centurion held out his arms. ‘I’m a fighting man. How can I answer that?’

  Lucanus glimpsed a red glow suddenly flare into life beyond the northern walls.

  Falx must have seen his puzzled expression for he said, ‘They’re burning the bodies. Same thing, night after night. Best not get downwind. The cemeteries outside the walls are filled to the brim.’

  The Wolf looked out over the town and felt a chill grow inside him. They’d come so far, fought so hard, for this? There was nowhere else to run. Only the sea lay at his back.

  In the distance, in the woods clustering on the high hills, he thought he heard a low, rolling yowl. Cernunnos was standing among the trees, howling. He sucked in a steadying gulp of the warm night air and for the first time felt a cool breath in his throat.

  Summer was ending.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said finally. ‘We do this ourselves. The way we knew is long gone. If there’s no good leadership, then we must provide it. If we don’t, all we have is to wait here for death to claim us all.’

  ‘Life was simpler when witches and druids took no interest in our lives. Now they say the gods are watching us too. Who wants that?’

  Comitinus skidded down the bank to where Catia and the other Grim Wolves waited. At the bottom, he seemed to sense what Bellicus was thinking for he took a step behind the pregnant woman. Catia was oblivious as she scanned the horizon, her bow strung across her back.

  ‘Stop talking like a frit child,’ Solinus snarled.

  ‘I’m not frit,’ Comitinus countered. ‘It’s a wise man who looks to the threats on the road ahead and makes plans to avoid getting his head lopped off his shoulders.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a superstitious fool.’

  ‘Silence, the two of you, or I’ll knock your heads together.’ Bellicus glanced behind him and felt his neck prickle. The forest folk and their witches and whatever other daemons walked with those haunts of the greenwood had shadowed them every step of the way since they’d escaped Erca’s camp. He’d seen nothing of them. They’d speak only to Catia. Every night at dusk, he watched her traipse among the trees, to take counsel, perhaps. Who knew? She kept their secrets too. Part of the deal they had between them. But she had told them that Myrrdin had sent the forest folk to aid them, so the bastard wood-priest couldn’t be all bad.

  ‘And one day the witches who wove their spells around Lucanus will come for us.’ This time Comitinus’ words were little more than a croak.

  ‘Don’t talk like you’re ale-soaked,’ Solinus spat. ‘Those wayward sisters stalked the land beyond the wall. Or do you think they turned to crows and flew here?’

  ‘Aye. Perhaps.’

  Bellicus weighed this notion. All the certainties that he had learned in his long life as a Grim Wolf had been swept aside the moment the barbarian horde had invaded. He had prided himself on knowing the way the hawk flew and the routes the floods would take in the spring melt. Now he felt he couldn’t trust anything he had come to rely on. He’d discovered there was another world squatting beside the one the Romans had built with their straight roads and walls and camps, one as old as time, cheek by jowl but unseen, unknowable. The forest folk lived lives in the deep woods that barely crossed those of the men of the empire, and though he had spent all his days in the Wilds he’d never known they were there. They worshipped ancient gods, and weaved their own stories of times past, had customs and rules that were alien to him. And they still listened to the whispers of the wood-priests and the witches, as his own people had done in the days of his father’s father’s father.

  In that world, who was to say that witches could not turn to crows and fly the length of the land?

  He sensed Solinus and Comitinus watching him and he turned and whistled for Catulus. His faithful hound had sought him out the moment he’d escaped the barbarian camp.

  ‘Move on,’ he said without meeting their eyes. ‘Before the barbarians catch up with us and the Attacotti eat you alive.’

  ‘We can defeat these barbarians.’ Catia’s voice floated back to them, almost dreamlike.

  ‘Why stop there? Let’s take the empire,’ Solinus said. Looking up, he traced the path of a crow across the sky. ‘We’d run it a damn sight better than Valentinian and Valens. The whole midden heap is falling apart, like one of the shacks Clomus put up in the vicus at Vercovicium when he’d spent the day drowning himself in ale.’

  Catia pointed to a distant gleam beyond a black line of trees at the edge of the rolling grassland. A river, catching the morning sun. ‘There. We follow the Tamesis and it will take us to where we need to be.’

  ‘Is this what your forest friends tell you?’ Solinus grunted. ‘How do we know they’re not leading us into a trap? These days, everyone seems to be playing their own game, and we’re just the pieces they shove around.’

  Catia didn’t look back. ‘Follow me, or stay here. Your choice.’

  Bellicus watched her begin to run with slow, steady strides, balancing the weight in her belly.

  ‘You ask me, the daemons have taken hold of her. Or the witches have given her some potion to drive her mad,’ Solinus snorted. ‘She’s with child. She shouldn’t be racing across the land and fighting like a warrior.’

  ‘Shut up and follow her,’ Bellicus said.

  Lucanus strode through the vicus outside the walls of Londinium. Everywhere he went, curious folk stumbled out of their huts and tents and watched him as if he were a god come down to earth. He felt uncomfortable. Part of it, he knew, was that he wore the gold dragon circlet, as Amarina had insisted. ‘Be who they want you to be. Give them hope.’

  He knew, too, that Myrrdin had been among them during the night, moving from home to home, whispering words, stories, fantastic tales of magic swords and kings who would not die. Of the work of the gods, and bringing the magic back to the land. This was how he wove his true spells. Lucanus had seen how words changed people, transformed them from whipped cur to hero, from mud-crawling scout to great war-leader.

  Aelius and Apullius had insisted on coming with him that morning in case he was attacked and robbed. Coin meant nothing in that world, but a gold crown, that was still a great prize. They needn’t have worried. These beaten, now hopeful folk barely dared approach him.

  On the boundary where the original v
icus met the ramshackle refugee city, he breathed in the familiar aroma of roasting venison. Following his nose, he strode up to the campfire where the deer sizzled, surrounded by a knot of squatting men. Hungry eyes watched from all around.

  The men jumped to their feet when they saw him approach, and he could see from the blades they carried that these must be some of those who had answered Myrrdin’s call for an army of the Pendragon.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he said to a man with hair like straw who was a head taller than the others.

  ‘Butu.’

  ‘Where did you get the meat?’

  ‘We went hunting before dawn, across the bridge and in the woods to the south. It’s yours if you want it, Pendragon.’

  ‘There’s more where that came from?’

  ‘The woods are rich in game, if you know where to look for it,’ Butu replied. ‘I come from the land down there, near the coast, near Rutupiae. The trade routes from the southern ports are still open. The villages down that way have stores filled to the brim. They don’t want for anything.’

  ‘When you’ve filled your bellies, I need you to feed the refugees too.’

  ‘We came here to fight,’ another of the men grunted.

  ‘There’ll be time enough for that. Don’t wish away the days until you’re looking down a barbarian blade.’ Lucanus walked around the men, sizing up each one. ‘A few days past, I was told there’s a bigger battle that will need fighting. Should we defeat the barbarians, gods willing, we’ll need to rebuild Britannia so we can reclaim the lives we once knew. If not, what reason victory?’

  Butu nodded. ‘That makes sense.’

  ‘We start here. We fight for the folk who followed our army. They’re starving and sick, and soon they’ll be cold. Take all the good men you can find and divide the camp into groups. Set the folk to helping themselves. Find men who can hunt, and if need be show them how to do it. Find women who can lead their groups. These are the ones we must save first. This is our battle now. And we can make everyone here a soldier for their own good.’

  Butu looked around the others and grinned. ‘We’ll do what you say. Today.’

  Lucanus rested a hand on Aelius’ shoulder. The younger man narrowed his eyes at him. ‘This is Aelius. He’s a general in my army.’

  Lucanus felt Catia’s younger brother stiffen, and from the corner of his eye saw his face brighten with surprise. ‘He’ll oversee this work. He’ll give my orders. And if you have any complaints, he’ll bring them back to me.’

  Butu nodded, and looked to Aelius with new-found respect.

  Aelius eyed Lucanus slyly, shucking his cloak off his withered arm. ‘It seems a half-formed man has some use after all,’ he whispered so the others couldn’t hear above the sizzling and spitting of the venison. Cocking an eyebrow, he added, ‘A general, eh? Do I get a crown like yours? Not as grand, of course …’

  Lucanus clapped him on the back and walked away.

  As he strode back to the town, Apullius raced to keep up. ‘And do you have work for me too?’ he asked breathlessly. He held up the skin he’d brought in case Lucanus got thirsty in the heat of the day.

  The Wolf hesitated, then took it and swilled the cool contents down his dry throat. When he’d wiped his mouth, he said, ‘I spoke too harshly when we were on the boat. I’ll teach you how to fight with a sword, and live for days in the Wilds.’

  ‘You’ll teach me to become a Grim Wolf?’ Apullius’ voice vibrated with excitement.

  ‘This is no land for a merchant or a farmer, not any more.’ He remembered the day his father had said the same words to him, and the excitement and the terror he too had felt. One day those skills might save this lad’s life. That was the best way he could honour his father. And if his worst fears were confirmed, Britannia would need fighting men for many years to come.

  Spikes of light glinted off helmets. A crimson banner fluttered in the breeze. Horses snorted and stamped their hooves, but the soldiers stood as rigid as sentinels in the centre of the fort.

  ‘It’s not much, but it is a new beginning,’ Falx said.

  Lucanus looked along the ranks that the centurion had managed to pull together from those who had made their way to Londinium and the force already garrisoned here. Some looked ragged, it was true, with filthy tunics and dented armour. But still, here was the army he knew.

  ‘With the men I have at my command, we may at least be able to hold back the tide for a while,’ Lucanus said.

  ‘And that’s all we need to do.’ Falx turned and beckoned.

  A soldier with bulging eyes and thinning sandy hair strode over. He was different from the others, Lucanus decided. His chin was pushed up and he carried himself with the bearing of a man who presumed great things lay ahead.

  ‘This is Theodosius the Younger,’ Falx said by way of introduction. ‘Hear what he has to say before plans are made. Theodosius, this is Lucanus the Wolf, the one they are calling the Head of the Dragon these days. In days long gone now, he was one of the arcani and served us well scouting beyond the wall in Britannia’s northland.’

  Theodosius looked him up and down, weighing. He seemed to find what he saw acceptable, for he nodded. ‘Your soldiers are not well trained, I hear; not fighting men at all. But they will be welcomed.’

  ‘They’re prepared to fight and die. That’s all we can ask of them.’

  ‘I sailed from Gaul with a few good men to see the lie of the land and prepare for the campaign to come in the spring.’

  Lucanus felt a wave of relief. ‘Then Britannia hasn’t been abandoned.’

  ‘Rome would never let a barbarian rabble keep a part of the empire, you must know that. My own father will lead.’

  ‘Theodosius the Elder,’ the Wolf said. ‘His fame reached even Vercovicium. A skilled tactician and fierce warrior.’

  ‘A great man,’ Theodosius replied. ‘I hope to honour him. By gaining vital information at first hand, I can more ably advise him when he arrives, rather than having to rely on scraps tossed out by frightened and unskilled scouts.’

  Lucanus stiffened at the unintended slur, but he said nothing. Theodosius could never hope to see with the eyes of a Grim Wolf.

  ‘Good news, eh, Lucanus?’ Falx said, rubbing his hands. ‘Some hope at last.’

  ‘Even now he is on his way to Bononia with the troops he already has,’ Theodosius continued. ‘The Batavi, the Heruli, the Iovii, and the Victores from the comitatenses. More will join him there, under the orders of the emperor. They’ll carve through this barbarian horde in no time.’

  ‘Then all we have to do is survive until spring,’ Lucanus said.

  ‘I’ve seen at first hand how these barbarians fight.’ Theodosius’ face darkened. ‘On our march from Rutupiae we were attacked in the night. By more beasts than men, caked in white mud with black eyes and tattoos. They … they ate the flesh of our men …’ His voice trailed off, and Lucanus thought how hollow his eyes looked.

  ‘The Attacotti.’

  ‘We lost half of our number to them. The rest of us barely escaped with our lives. It would be God’s will to wipe those things from the face of the world, and I will take it as my personal mission to do so.’

  ‘We must meet, plan our strategy—’ Falx began.

  ‘Tonight,’ Theodosius insisted. ‘There’s no time to waste.’

  As Lucanus nodded his agreement, Theodosius pulled Falx aside and whispered in his ear.

  ‘He asks if you follow the Christ,’ the centurion said with a tight smile.

  What talk was this when they were in the middle of a desperate defensive campaign, Lucanus thought? The men there had other things to concern them, and many had other beliefs. Yet he replied only, ‘The word of your god had not reached into the north, which was my home.’

  Theodosius’ thin lips tightened. ‘It will, soon enough. There are many heathens here, I’ve learned, and I must make my peace with that. But we will work to bring you into light, and then those who follow you in shadow
will find the Christ too.’

  Lucanus said nothing, trying to avoid Falx’s rolling eyes. As he turned to return to Mato and Myrrdin, he caught sight of another soldier striding up. More handsome than Theodosius, he had black hair and a pleasant, open face.

  ‘Lucanus Pendragon,’ the newcomer hailed him. ‘It’s good to make your acquaintance after hearing so many tales of your bravery. So brave, in fact, that they tell me they have given you a golden crown in the shape of a dragon. What wonders!’ He flashed a disarming grin. ‘My name is Lucius Aurelius Corvus, and I feel we have much in common, you and I.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Circle

  ‘WAKE! WAKE NOW, Lucanus!’

  The Wolf stirred in his bed. Someone was shaking him roughly. He jerked up. A thin grey light was leaking into the chamber where Mato, Myrrdin, Aelius and Menius were still snoring.

  Apullius was looming over him. ‘Come,’ the lad said, tugging on his arm. ‘Come.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lucanus grumbled. His head still swam with the discussion of tactics that had ranged back and forth deep into the night in that cramped room in the fort.

  ‘A scout has just returned, and … but you must see this for yourself.’ Apullius snatched up the grey wolf pelt and helped pull it on to his master’s shoulder.

  ‘I’m regretting giving you this work,’ Lucanus muttered, his voice heavy with sleep.

  ‘Now. But you’ll thank me for it later.’ Lucanus caught the teasing allusion, and smiled as he stumbled out into the silvery dawn light. Excitedly, Apullius hurried along the street ahead of him until they came to the western wall and climbed the stone steps to the rampart. At the top, Lucanus leaned against the parapet and let the cool breeze flush the last of the sleep from his head.