Dark Age

by James Wilde

  When he next looked up, shadows were lengthening and the dazzling sunlight had faded from the high branches. A hand grabbed his shoulder and he looked round into Catia’s face.

  ‘Why are they retreating?’ Her voice was like steel. Her bow was in her hand, her quiver empty. Where Weylyn was, he didn’t know.

  He shook his head, as baffled as she was.

  The dusk was coming down hard. Bellicus watched shadowy figures crawl closer, familiar faces appearing out of the gloom. Eyes darted up the sides of the gorge to where whoops and howls and laughter rang out.

  Catia shook him. ‘When the dark falls, they’ll come for us.’

  Amarina was there, looming over him. ‘They know every move we’re about to make.’

  How had it come to this, when they seemed to have escaped all threats?

  ‘This is the only way out.’ Catia snatched a knife from the folds of her dress. She looked around the other faces, and Bellicus could almost taste the desperation. Here they were, allies, friends, staring into the face of certain death. How they would go would define them all. He levered himself up and fumbled for his sword.

  ‘We are together,’ he said.

  Catia looked round and her brow furrowed. ‘Wait. Where’s Lucanus?’

  For a moment, silence descended on them all. Then Bellicus heard footsteps racing towards them, and Apullius emerged from the twilight. His eyes were rimmed with tears.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he gasped, breathless. ‘They took him. They took the Pendragon.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The Two Dragons

  THE BIRDSONG EBBED. The sun died. A chill wind stirred the grass and moaned through the branches of a solitary tree, twisted like a broken-backed old man. Lucanus blinked away the haze in his head to look out over a vast moor turned silver by the light of the moon.

  He was not alone.

  Picts stood here and there, statues in the ghostly illumination. Only a few, but too many to fight. A tall man whose head hung at a strange angle. A young woman. Nearby a child bawled.

  A figure strode into his field of vision and he found himself looking into the smiling face of Corvus. ‘And here we are again, two dragons twirled around each other, fighting for supremacy.’

  Lucanus lunged for his sword, but his scabbard was gone from his side.

  Corvus paced around him so that the moon hung over his head. ‘But as Pavo points out to me time and again, the central image of two dragons involved in this struggle for the ages, for power, for Britannia, for ownership of all days yet to come … it doesn’t create a true picture. It suggests that they are equals. Perhaps that this battle is finely matched. But as you can see, you’ve already lost … everything.’

  ‘I have an army—’

  ‘A paltry war-band, who will all be dead by dawn. Along with your friends, your woman, and your child.’

  Lucanus felt his stomach knot, but he showed only a cold face.

  ‘Osiris needs Set. The Christ needs Judas – and God bless my good friend Theodosius the Younger for educating me into the ways of his religion. I miss his witterings. And Mithras needs …’ He fluttered a hand, searching for the notion. ‘Ahriman. Every great tale needs a hero, Wolf, and an adversary to test him. Me. You.’

  ‘You think yourself a hero?’ He heard the acid in his voice.

  ‘The hero is the one who wins. His followers write the tale and pass it from mouth to mouth. Only victory is remembered, we all know that. The loser is condemned, spat upon, forgotten. This is history. And legend. And religion.’

  Lucanus looked out across the wind-blasted moor, praying that his friends had escaped. But they were alone. ‘I’m no black-hearted cur.’

  ‘You will be, once the stories have been told.’

  ‘Is this why you haven’t killed me already? To weave your fantasies?’

  ‘Live or die, it’s not something that unduly concerns me,’ Corvus said. ‘There are only two things I need. But if nothing else I have an inventive mind. And it struck me, perhaps, that I could indeed weave a fantasy, one that bolstered my claim. I still have men of power to convince. But good friends will advocate on my behalf.’ He bowed to the young woman. Her eyelids fluttered down.

  ‘You need two things?’

  ‘One thing I have learned is that symbols are important. The Ouroboros … the dragon eating its own tail …’ He held out both hands. ‘A king must look like a king, yes? Or else all will think him a common man.’

  Corvus reached down and Lucanus saw him pick up a sword in a scabbard. His sword. As Corvus strapped it around his waist, he nodded. ‘The sword of the gods. I heard tell of this in Londinium. Some are easily impressed. Still …’ He half pulled the blade from its sheath, turning it so the moonlight illuminated the black inscriptions. ‘Some name that only a barbarian could get his tongue around. I think I will call it … Caliburnus. No … Excalibur.’

  ‘You think that will make you look like a king?’

  ‘No, I think this will.’ This time Corvus plucked up Lucanus’ cloak, and from the pocket inside he pulled the golden dragon crown. Raising it high, he turned it so the moonlight played on it, and then he lowered the circlet on to his head. ‘Now do I look like a king? Why, with this crown and the sword, anyone would think me the Pendragon. Anyone at all.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The Only Way

  THE NIGHT ECHOED with howls. Apullius choked back his terror as he dug his fingers into soft loam and clawed his way through the dark up the side of the gorge. In his mind’s eye he saw the frenzied Picts dancing and ululating and waving their swords and axes in the air, readying for the final assault. He imagined them seeing him cowering there, dragging him out with rough hands, bending him over, swinging an axe up high over his neck.

  He saw his death.

  Yet still he clutched for near-unbreakable bracken stalks, caught at branches to lever himself up, moving ever onwards to those patches of starry sky that hung tantalizingly among the trees.

  Would the others have missed him by now? No, of course not. He was less than nothing, and they had bigger issues to discuss: how to defend themselves when their enemy had every advantage. They were afraid, all of them, he knew; even the Grim Wolves, who had seen horrors he could only imagine. And yet not one of them showed it.

  That calmed him a little. If they could be brave, so could he. He was one of them.

  Even in the dark, he could feel the narrow track the deer had made. They always found the easiest and safest path, one often hidden to untutored eyes. Comitinus had taught him that. He lifted his head and sniffed the cool breeze. Only the heavy scent of vegetation. No vinegary stink of sweat. That was good. The enemy was not too close to his current position. Solinus taught him that, before cuffing him around the ear for good measure so he would remember it. He had cursed under his breath at the time, but remember it he did.

  Finally he was hauling himself up on to level ground. Pressing his back against a trunk, he tried to suck in a breath of air without sounding like a gale rushing through the trees.

  Once his breath had subsided, he listened again. A snort. A cough. A fart. The Picts’ watchmen were placed at intervals along the top of the gorge, as he’d anticipated. But they were looking out for an attack, not one man.

  Who would be crazed enough to make a solitary journey into their midst?

  Forward he crept until he could see the silhouette of the nearest guard, squatting on a fallen tree. The Pict wasn’t paying attention. That was good. He had one chance.

  With trembling hand, he drew the sword Mato had given him and levelled the blade, finding his balance on the balls of his feet as Mato had shown him. And then he bounded forward as soundlessly as he could manage, and swung his weapon back in the particular arc that Mato had explained, time and time again.

  One chance.

  The watchman fell back, dead, before he knew an enemy was upon him. Apullius ground his teeth together to stop himself crying out. The blood was pound
ing in his head so loudly, he wouldn’t have known if the whole of the Pictish war-band was upon him.

  But he couldn’t rest. He found the next watchman and took his life too.

  Then he was creeping back down the path he had found, unable to feel relief that he had survived. As he jumped down to the broad riverbank, he heard whispers: the others, hunched together, making their plans for their last stand.

  Thrusting his way through the gathered bodies, he hovered in front of the Grim Wolves, Catia and Amarina. They looked at him, their faces drawn with worry.

  ‘Apullius, this is not the time,’ Bellicus began.

  ‘I’ve found a way out,’ he blurted. He’d hoped his voice would ring with all the confidence of one of the wolf-brothers, but there it was, a small thing, croaking and shaking with fear.

  ‘Apullius …’

  ‘Let him speak,’ Catia commanded.

  ‘There’s a path, to the top of the gorge. The watchmen there are … are dead, so there’s a gap in their lines.’ He breathed in, trying to steady himself. ‘If we’re cautious, we could creep through, and surprise them. We would have the advantage then.’

  He felt Bellicus’ gaze heavy upon him. Comitinus stared. Solinus punched him in the stomach and he doubled over, wheezing. ‘I knew the little bastard would finally earn his keep.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The Council

  THE STANDING STONES rose up from the wind-torn moorland, two circles alongside each other. Under a star-sprinkled sky framing a full moon, those jagged teeth cast long shadows across the silvered grass.

  The travellers trudged towards the menhirs, heads bowed as if from the weight of desolation in that place. Lucanus strained against the rope binding his wrists behind his back. The attempt was as futile as every other he’d tried since they’d departed the gorge.

  All they had hoped for was lost.

  When he raised his eyes, all he could see were the faces of Catia, and Weylyn, and Bellicus and the other Grim Wolves. Dead, all of them, at the hands of the Pictish war-band somewhere at his back, deep in the night. He choked down on despair, choked down on grief. Now he must feel nothing but the wintry grip of a lust for vengeance.

  ‘Who is Ahriman?’ he growled.

  Corvus had been muttering to himself, nodding and chuckling in what sounded like one side of a conversation. He looked round.

  ‘You spoke of Mithras and Ahriman.’

  Corvus frowned, seemingly trying to dredge up details that he half remembered, or cared little about. ‘Ahriman is the destroyer.’ He shrugged. ‘There are gods and gods. Why do you care?’

  ‘My life has been twisted out of shape. By the gods … or by men hungry for power.’ He could almost taste the bitterness in his voice. ‘Everything that is good has been stolen from me. I’ve been too trusting, I can see that now. I should have put all of you to the sword.’

  Corvus smiled. ‘That’s not you, Lucanus. You don’t have the fire that consumes men of achievement. You’re too soft. That’s why you were always fated to lose.’ He looked ahead to the empty landscape. ‘Now … how long are we supposed to wait?’

  Lucanus bowed his head again, simmering. Five Picts strode around him, enough to cut him down if he tried anything. The man with the broken neck walked beside the horse that towed the bier on which the older woman and the baby lay. The younger woman, Corvus’ wife it seemed, walked at the rear of the column, but she would never meet his eyes when he glanced at her. And then there was the dwarf. Bucco wisely kept his distance. How or why that treacherous toad had found his way to Corvus’ orbit, the Wolf had no idea. But it was fitting those back-stabbing curs were now companions.

  The grass drifted by beneath his tramping feet. If a moment came for vengeance, he would seize it, even if it cost him his life.

  As they closed on the twin circles, he looked up and glimpsed figures appearing as if from nowhere. Perhaps they’d been standing behind the stones, out of sight. Now, though, around thirty men gathered in the centre of one of the rings. Druids, by the look of them, dressed in robes, faces blackened by tattoos.

  Torches flared into life at regular intervals within the occupied circle.

  ‘They have a sense of occasion, I’ll give them that.’ Corvus pulled out the gold circlet and set it on his head. ‘And so do I.’

  Lucanus lifted his head. His hands might be bound, but he would not present himself as a beaten captive. As they crossed into the circle, he stared defiantly into the faces of the waiting men. The madness of the Wilds burned in their eyes. Too long away from human comforts, too much whispering to trees and rocks, too many toad’s-stools on the tongue. Their features were as hard as the stones that surrounded them.

  ‘Greetings,’ Corvus said, flourishing an arm. ‘We have travelled miles to be with you.’

  ‘You are the Pendragon?’ one of the wood-priests asked. He had long hair the colour of snow, and a bald pate.

  Corvus bowed his head slightly so the torchlight shimmered off the crown. Unsheathing Caledfwlch, he balanced it on the palms of his hands and laid it on the grass in front of the chief druid.

  ‘I am the Pendragon,’ Lucanus said.

  ‘Hush now,’ Corvus chided gently. ‘You don’t have a crown, or a sword of the gods.’ He cocked an eyebrow at the leader of the wood-priests and tapped the side of his forehead. ‘Nor does he have a child that carries the royal blood. I do, as you can see.’ He waved a finger towards the bier and the older woman holding the baby. ‘Mother?’

  The woman threw off her cloak and slipped down the shoulder of her dress. As she turned, Lucanus glimpsed the Ouroboros branded into her skin.

  ‘I have one of those myself,’ Corvus said with a smile. ‘So … all present and correct.’ He flashed a look at Lucanus and nodded. ‘As you might have expected, there were many enemies on the road who attempted to prevent me from reaching this place. Power-hungry all of them, like this fellow here. But I’m a merciful man. I couldn’t bring myself to kill him. Of course, if that were your decision …’

  ‘Where is Myrrdin?’ the wood-priest demanded.

  ‘Dead, sadly,’ Corvus replied. ‘Brave to the last, though. He sacrificed himself so the royal blood could survive. So the King Who Will Not Die could be brought into this world.’

  ‘He’s lying.’ Lucanus stepped forward. ‘My name is Lucanus, the Wolf. Your kind have watched me since I was a boy. You must know my name.’

  The white-haired wood-priest nodded. ‘Aye. We know of you. Myrrdin argued your claim to the crown.’

  ‘And now this man has had Myrrdin killed. One of your own. Do you condone that?’

  ‘Our work here is to ensure there is a suitable candidate.’

  ‘I have no wood-priest to argue my claim,’ Corvus said, ‘but then neither does he. I do, however, have a strong voice who will proclaim my worth.’ He beckoned without looking round and his wife walked forward and stood beside him. ‘One of the Hecatae,’ he said. The witch bowed her head to the druids.

  ‘Come with us,’ the chief druid said to Corvus.

  Leaving Hecate standing there, the soldier stepped over Caledfwlch and was swallowed by the wood-priests who gathered around him. Lucanus could hear the throb of their voices, the rise and fall of debate, and Corvus pleading his case. He felt sickened by his impotence, and by the injustice. By rights, these wood-priests should have struck Corvus down for his crimes, but they seemed not to care. Their own plots and plans were more important than the lives of any of those caught up in their games.

  Once the discussion was complete, Corvus walked back to stand next to his wife, with Caledfwlch at his feet.

  ‘It has been all but decided,’ the snowy-haired wood-priest announced. ‘Let Hecate speak in your favour, and then we will have our say.’

  Lucanus felt cold anger sluice through him. ‘And what of all my sacrifices?’

  ‘Only one can be chosen. We cannot allow any rival.’

  The Wolf gritted his teeth. He knew wha
t was meant by those words. ‘So this is how it ends. The Bear-King will be born, come what may. No one cares how many lives have been destroyed in the process. I’ve long known that my own life matters not a whit. But the woman I love? My child? My friends?’

  ‘The King Who Will Not Die must be born. If not, the night will go on for ever.’

  ‘So your tale says. A tale dreamed up by you. But there is always another fable. Let me walk away from here and I’ll dream up my own.’

  The wood-priest’s eyes flickered away from him. Not even worthy of a reply.

  ‘You won’t regret your decision,’ Corvus intoned. ‘The Dragon will rise, and all that you have worked for for so long will now come to pass.’ He reached out, his fingers flexing as if he were grasping the prize he no doubt saw in his mind’s eye. ‘Now, Hecate. Speak your piece and we will be done here.’

  The blade swept down, carving off Corvus’ right hand.

  Lucanus reeled, his shock as great as that he could see hewed into Corvus’ face as he gaped at his stump. The agony must have hit the pretender a moment later, for he crashed on to his back. His wail rang up to the heavens.

  His thoughts whirling, the Wolf’s attention flew from his fallen rival to the severed hand, and then to the blood that slicked Caledfwlch.

  Hecate stared at the spattered blade, drinking in the sight of it. Her face twisted in disgust, and then she tossed the weapon aside. As she turned to her husband, a cloud of righteous fury settled on her.

  ‘I am Hecate, as were my sisters, the ones you murdered.’ Her voice was trembling. ‘And now justice is done.’

  Corvus began to shake as if he had an ague. ‘You … you knew …’

  ‘I’ve always known. Did you truly think I would abandon my home, my people, to go with a Roman, the great enemy? Your head was always so swollen with your sense of your own worth, you never saw what was under your nose.’ She spat on him. ‘How I choked back my hatred for you, I will never know. But I forced down my bile, and waited, and waited, for the moment when I could cause the greatest harm, when you thought you had achieved all you had plotted for so long. And it is done, this long, miserable road. I care not if my own life is ended, for I will walk in the Summerlands in full knowledge that you and everything you ever fought for has been turned to ashes.’