by James Wilde
This would be the end of that illusion.
He dug his heels into the loam and gripped Caledfwlch with both hands. Looking up, he watched his men do the same in a ring around the sides of the valley.
As the Picts scrambled to escape the coldly efficient brutality of the army, swords rose and fell. Bodies tumbled down the banks, littering the valley floor. Red streams flowed, turning the ground into a marsh. Caught in that trap, it was only a matter of time. Soon the clash of steel ebbed until only the moans of the dying rolled out.
Lucanus sheathed his blade. As he strode down the slope, he called, ‘Leave only three men alive to return to the others and tell them how this great army smote their war-band. Only complete destruction will convince them that we can’t be defeated.’
When he reached the valley floor, he squelched through the crimson puddles to the neck of the valley. In the glaring sun, three figures raced back across the grassland. He prayed that their tale would cause the horde to hesitate, perhaps to hold the line while they made their plans, long enough for winter to come. They couldn’t know that this was all the men they had.
‘A good plan. I can see why the wood-priest chose you to be the Pendragon.’
Lucanus looked round to see Corvus striding up. His face was streaked pink, his tunic soaked.
‘One chance to hold the barbarian advance and we took it,’ he continued. ‘They’ll think twice now.’
‘Let us hope.’ The Wolf glanced back and winced. ‘We’ve lost good men today.’
‘You’re a scout. You had peace, more or less, along the wall. But in war, there’s always sacrifice.’ Corvus wiped the blood from his face. ‘That’s the hardest lesson any fighting man has to learn. Friends cut down. There one moment, gone the next. The most you can hope is that they’ve bought an advantage with their lives, and here they have. Whatever comes of this, the barbarians will know there’s steel facing them now.’
Lucanus nodded. Corvus’ words made sense. But he still felt a well of sadness in him for every life they’d lost. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to it.
Corvus seemed to read his thoughts. The soldier clapped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Come. Tonight we’ll drink what foul wine still survives in the taverns. We’re brothers in blood now, bonded in war. Let’s raise our goblets to a long friendship.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Stars, Hide Your Fires
FOR ONCE THERE was life in the City of the Dead.
Across the vicus, fires blazed in the night. The refugees feasted on roast venison in celebration, brought in by the hunting bands Lucanus had sent out that morning in the hope of victory. Full-throated singing soared up to the clouds lowering over the city.
Lucanus closed his eyes and let the jubilant sound engulf him. He was lying on his bed, the room around him dark. He could feel Catia pressed against him, the curve of her belly, the warmth of her skin. He breathed in her musk, mingling with the rosewater she’d splashed on her hair after she washed it. All these things he had thought he would never experience again.
‘You’re pleased to be a father?’ she murmured.
‘I’ve never been so afraid in all my days.’
Catia chuckled. But he meant what he said. Afraid to bring a child into a world turning towards night. Afraid that protecting his new family in these times would prove beyond his abilities. He’d always thought himself fearless. What was it about the flourishing of his seed that stirred such things in a man?
In the dark, he fumbled for her hand. Now he’d found her again, he couldn’t bear to lose her. But Corvus’ words squirmed in the back of his head. Eyes for another man. He couldn’t believe it. But still they squirmed.
He felt her fingers flutter across his bare chest. ‘You’ve bought us hope,’ she said, as if she could read his thoughts, ‘and that is a great and valuable thing, after all we’ve been through. We’re safe here, within the walls. And safe we’ll stay until the snows melt, and the army comes. And then we can go west, to Avalon, where we’ll be safe for all time.’
She was right. All the barns were filled, and the storehouses topped to the roofs. Winter would be hard, but they should be able to grind through until the snows melted. Those out in the vicus and the sprawling camp beyond might find it harder, but they had their own reserves and at least now they had been taught how to hunt.
And yet still he could hear the beating wings of the ravens wherever he went, and feel the Morrigan’s eyes upon his back.
The low sun painted gold along the ridges of the orange-tiled roofs. Down in the choked streets, long shadows reached their fingers over the crowds. Though the breeze had teeth for the first time in months, Catia sensed good spirits among the people she pushed through. Their bellies might be growling, but they had hope now. Sanctuary.
An end to the season of running and fear.
And there was hope for her own kin too. She glanced behind at Solinus and Comitinus, her two guard dogs, following at a distance, then back to her father leaning on Aelius. Though his steps were slow and shaky, he seemed more stable than at any time since they had fled Vercovicium. As she watched, he craned his neck up so he could study the sprawling governor’s palace, a complex of buildings that was almost as large as the forum. ‘Now I have an appetite to see Rome itself,’ he said. ‘The stories I’ve heard.’
‘One step at a time, Father.’ Aelius winked at Catia. He had grown in stature too. He pushed his shoulders back, standing tall, and he no longer tried to hide his withered arm.
‘We’ve endured so much, our family,’ the old man continued, lurching around a boy begging for bread. ‘We clawed our way back from ruin once, though the price we paid was too high.’ When he eyed Catia, she could see the dismay in his face. He held himself responsible for all the suffering she’d endured at the hands of her brutal husband Amatius.
‘I made my own choice,’ she said. And she had, once she’d learned that Amatius’ money could save them all. It was her responsibility, and hers alone.
‘I thought I didn’t have the strength to step back towards the light,’ Menius went on. ‘But now, seeing you with child, and happy with Lucanus, there seems hope, even among this misery.’ He forced a wan smile.
‘This is the most you’ve walked since we arrived in Londinium,’ Aelius said. ‘Don’t tire yourself. More important, don’t tire me.’
‘Yes. You have new responsibilities now. The right hand of the Pendragon.’ The old man’s eyes gleamed with pride, and Catia felt warmed by the reflected light in her brother’s face. Nevertheless, Aelius snorted.
‘As a right hand, I’m overrated—’
Before he could finish the thought, Menius stiffened, his gaze riveted to a point deep in the crowd.
‘What is it, Father?’ Catia asked.
‘I saw … no …’ His creaking voice faded away. And then he was thrusting himself into the throng. The mass of bodies swallowed him up.
Aelius cursed under his breath. He had been rooted by the old man’s sudden activity. ‘A moment ago he was shuffling like a man in leg-irons. Now he’s bounding away like a deer?’
He barged into the flow, pushing his way into the old man’s wake. Catia stepped into the lee of a metalworker’s shop. The hammers thrummed through the walls. After a while Aelius came back.
He shook his head, baffled. ‘Gone.’
Shadows swelled in the room. Only two eyes of dying embers glowed in the gloom. Corvus rocked on a stool until his shoulders rested against the wall. He allowed himself a smile. And why not? Clever men bent the world to their will.
The door crashed open and light flooded in. He blinked in the sudden glare, his eyes clearing enough to see Bucco the dwarf bound in and tumble across the floor. He leapt to his feet beside the hearth and bowed deeply.
Corvus nodded at the genuflection. ‘You may be half a man, but you’ve matched the height of those fulsome promises you made.’
‘And more!’
The rectangle of thin l
ight darkened and Corvus saw an old man standing there, looking bewildered.
‘Frail,’ Pavo said from the dark in the corner. ‘The years are crushing him to his knees.’
‘Come in,’ Corvus boomed in a cheery voice. ‘Menius, isn’t it?’
The old man lurched in, but he was ignoring Corvus and pointing a wavering finger at the dwarf. ‘You,’ he croaked. ‘You are the one who tormented us … who tried to steal my daughter … who nearly killed Amarina.’
Bucco bowed again, sweeping one arm out. ‘I am not forgotten. My heart leaps.’
‘You died, in the marsh—’
‘The mud sucked at my legs, ’tis true. That foul place wanted to swallow me whole. But I am short of stature, as you can see, and weigh little more than a leaf. One handful of reeds was all it took to keep my head in the air until I could claw my way free.’
Corvus jumped to his feet and skirted that confrontation. With a flick of his wrist, he swung the door shut and leaned against it.
‘Hello, Menius.’ The light voice floated out of the gloom.
A candle flickered to life. The halo of light glimmered around Gaia. How beautiful she looked, Corvus thought. Her hair gleamed and her cheeks had the rosy tint of a mother-to-be. How strong she looked, too, her lips curving into the faintest of smiles, her chin slightly raised, her gaze unflinching. She’d been anticipating this meeting for a long time, he realized; the time when she would have the upper hand. A woman like Gaia would not have taken it well to being forced to flee her homeland, to run in fear for her life, and to see all her hopes seemingly dashed. Now she was a queen returning to claim what was hers.
He looked to Menius and read all he needed to know in that crumpled face. Was the old man remembering how Gaia had cuckolded him with his own brother? How she’d stolen everything he had and left him to die in poverty? Had he thought about her in the intervening years? Yearned for her? Despaired? Surely he would never have thought to see her again.
And yet here they both were.
‘Gaia,’ Menius croaked.
‘My dear Menius. The years have not treated you kindly. Why, you look like an old grandfather. Misery does that to a man, so I am told.’
Corvus admired her cruelty. She wielded it as well as any soldier did a sword. A warrior-queen! He felt his chest swell. But she was not done. She cupped her hands around her swollen belly to emphasize the gulf between them.
Menius gaped.
‘Do you know what lives inside me?’ she said in the sing-song voice of a little girl. ‘Why, the seed that will become the King Who Will Not Die. Have you heard that story, Menius? Of course you have. The candle of hope in the darkest of nights. Me, Menius. I bring hope to the world. I beget kings. I was not wrong. My destiny was always greatness.’
‘Gaia,’ he repeated, as if his thoughts were trapped in a millpond eddy.
Corvus sighed. If the old man had nothing to say, there would be no entertainment here.
He stepped forward and rammed his sword into the man who had shared his mother’s bed. As the blade burst through the convulsing chest, he found he couldn’t tear his gaze away from Gaia’s face. Her eyes had widened and her lips parted in almost post-coital bliss.
The dwarf gambolled around the body, clapping his hands with glee.
‘One down,’ Pavo said.
Corvus cleaned his blade on Menius’ cloak. ‘A message sent. It will kick the legs out from under them. Worry will start to claw its way into their thoughts. They’ll make mistakes.’
‘And then we might get close enough to your sister to introduce ourselves.’
‘Keep Catia away from here,’ Lucanus commanded.
Bellicus barked the words to Apullius and the lad wriggled through the gathering crowd and away to warn Solinus and Comitinus.
Mato rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder and whispered, ‘This is a bad business.’ His voice was strained, wreathed with grief. Lucanus felt as if a blade had stabbed into his heart.
The sky was on fire and that scarlet glow sank deep into the faces of the silent watchers. Menius’ body sprawled across a midden heap at the back of a row of houses.
‘Who could have done this?’ Mato asked.
Lucanus didn’t answer, but his thoughts were already racing through the streets of that teeming town. ‘Help me.’
He scooped his arms under Menius’ torso and Mato grasped his legs. The body felt no heavier than a sack of tinder.
As they carried the old man back through the streets, the memories rushed back with such force that Lucanus almost reeled. Menius, younger then, broken by his own misfortune, but waving Lucanus into his home to share bread and olives after Lucanus the Elder had disappeared into the Wilds. The old man had tried to fill the void left by his missing father, offering whatever kindnesses he could. Lucanus could never forget that.
At the house they all shared, he and Mato laid Menius on the cold floor and Lucanus threw an old blanket over him so that Catia wouldn’t see the sword wound. Only then did he call for Solinus and Comitinus.
Catia rushed in, and when she looked down at her father’s grey face Lucanus thought his heart would break. The woman she had become cracked away and there was only the girl he had first met, lost and yearning. She fell on the body and smothered the cheeks and forehead with kisses.
Lucanus allowed her this parting for a moment, and then he took her arm and eased her away. She seemed to have no words inside her.
Aelius hurried in with Apullius behind him. Unlike his sister, he only stood and stared. In the growing gloom, the Wolf couldn’t read his features. But then Catia scrubbed away her tears with the back of her hand and Lucanus felt uneasy when he saw the expression that settled on her face. It was like a frozen lake.
‘Murdered?’ she said.
The Wolf nodded.
‘He had nothing worth stealing. He was no threat to any man.’
Lucanus could hear her finding her way to the truth. He crossed to the door and leaned against the jamb, looking out into the crowded street but seeing none of the passers-by.
‘We have enemies, here, in Londinium,’ he said, ‘and we are trapped with them.’
Bellicus crouched to scrub Catulus’ head. ‘I curse the day we first heard of the King Who Will Not Die,’ he muttered.
‘If this is about the royal bloodline …’ Comitinus began.
‘How can it not be, you jolt-head?’ Solinus snapped. ‘What other reason would there be to murder a harmless old man than to frighten us?’
‘Sixty thousand people seethe within these walls.’ Lucanus could hear the strain in his voice as he looked out into the town. ‘More than I could ever imagine existed in all Britannia when I roamed through the Wilds. Sixty thousand strangers, and any one of them could have a blade waiting to slit our throats.’
‘How will we ever know where the threat lies?’ Aelius muttered from the dark of the room. Lucanus pictured him weighed down by his grief in a corner, his chin resting on his chest.
The Wolf glanced back into the dusk. ‘We won’t.’
‘We leave here,’ Catia said. ‘Now.’
‘And go where? West, like the wood-priest said? To this fabled Avalon?’ Bellicus strode up behind him. ‘What if it turns out as safe as Londinium?’
‘We’ll never get past the horde anyway,’ Solinus grunted. ‘Like it or not, we’re stuck here.’
‘If we get a chance to flee, we seize it,’ the Wolf said. ‘Until then, Londinium is as dangerous as the Wilds now, and we have to watch our backs at every turn. Survive through the winter, until Theodosius brings the army to retake Britannia.’
‘And if they don’t come?’ Comitinus asked.
Lucanus looked up to the stars glinting in the great vault of the heavens. He let the question hang in the cool air, because he had no answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Night Comes Down
DARK FLOODED THE streets of Londinium. It seemed to Catia that even the lights that still burn
ed were somehow dimmer.
‘Be strong, brother.’ Standing at the river gate, she stared at the turgid black waters of the Tamesis. The small raft of firewood bearing her father’s meagre possessions, some bread, and a posy of flowers, drifted towards the east, towards the sunrise; towards the past.
She sensed Aelius beside her, a pillar of cold stone. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, afraid she might see another death, of the brother she once knew, but she fumbled for his good hand. He gave hers a squeeze. For now, it was enough.
‘I am heartsick.’ His voice was little more than a choke from a throat that must have been as narrow as her finger. ‘The unfairness of it, when he’d survived so much and seemed to be regaining some of the life he once had. I miss him almost too much to bear.’
Catia watched the sum total of her father’s existence disappear into the night.
‘It would be easy to give in to despair,’ Aelius continued. ‘Remember how we used to talk about how our family was cursed—’
‘You did.’
A laugh rolled out, though without any humour. ‘You stolen as a babe and left for dead. My withered arm. Mother abandoning Father for his brother and stealing all we had. You forced to marry to save us—’
‘I chose—’
‘I know. And then the invasion, and the burning of our home, and the death of Marcus, and a torrent of misery leading to this night.’ As he spoke, his voice grew stronger, harder. ‘But then you told me that you could have died as a babe, but you were saved by wolves, a miracle by any other name. And Father recovered from his torment, and found new hope, and our family thrived.’ He squeezed her hand again. ‘And you found love with Lucanus, a love that few find in this world. When we get knocked down—’
‘We get up again.’
‘Someone once told me, life is good as long as you don’t weaken. We must not weaken. We have to put aside all hope of returning to the peaceful life we once had. Everything has changed. This is the time to let the fire burn in our hearts, to forge us into steel. To fight.’