Dark Age

by James Wilde

  ‘The old bastards have to go so the new bastards can come on,’ Solinus said. ‘What’s it like to be a new bastard?’

  ‘I learned from the best,’ Apullius replied.

  They all laughed at that, and Mato thought how good it was to hear that joyous sound. A whoop rang out and he turned to see Morirex racing up from the camp. The lad hurled himself at his brother, almost knocking him off his feet. When he broke the hug, he spun back to the rest of them. His eyes were gleaming. ‘I want to be a Grim Wolf too.’

  ‘You’ll be next, young one, and soon,’ Bellicus said. ‘You’re one of us now.’ He caught Lucanus’ eye, and was pleased to see the other man smile. The strange sadness that had seemed to weigh down his friend since their journey through the gorge appeared to have lifted. Perhaps there really was hope ahead, for all of them.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Tintagel

  GULLS WHEELED ACROSS a clear blue sky and white-flecked waves crashed. Under the late spring sun, the two men stood at the top of the valley looking down to the ocean.

  ‘Is this it?’ Lucanus asked.

  Myrrdin nodded. ‘Here you will be safe.’

  On the headland, a fortress perched above dizzying cliffs. Lucanus could see why the location had been chosen. Only a narrow strip of rock connected the mainland to what otherwise would be an island. No enemies could attack with ease.

  Down in the lush valley, four men emerged from the trees and shielded their eyes against the sun to study the new arrivals.

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘They guard the fortress,’ the wood-priest replied. ‘It has many names, but in the local tongue this place is called Tintagel. Once a home to kings, it has been abandoned for many a year. Only ghosts live here now, so folk say.’

  ‘Then it is a home for us.’

  Lucanus raised an arm and looked back. Catia and Amarina were frowning at the front of the war-band. All his men were still fearful of attack – and who could blame them – though their journey into the west had been uneventful. He snapped down his arm, and his followers moved off as one, down the track into the valley.

  ‘I’m surprised that you came with us,’ he said.

  ‘You are still the Pendragon.’ Myrrdin’s voice was low and hard, his expression icy.

  ‘I no longer have a crown.’

  ‘The honour cannot be taken away, crown or not. And you still have Caledfwlch.’

  Lucanus shook his head, still not understanding. ‘I put your leaders to the sword. You have every right to hate me—’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And yet still you persevere. Your plot is dead, wood-priest, along with all those men who thought nothing of destroying the lives of others. We have seized control now. We choose our own path.’

  Myrrdin leaned on his staff as he negotiated the steep incline. ‘It’s too late, Wolf. This plot, as you call it, now has a life of its own. Much has been set in motion that cannot be turned around. Your heir still carries the royal blood, and the Bear-King will be born, come what may. And it is still my duty, and my own heirs’ duty, to keep you and the royal blood safe until that time comes.’ He paused before adding, ‘Even if I am filled with loathing.’

  ‘You have your faith, wood-priest, but I have a family to protect and I’ll do so at any cost.’ He strode on ahead, down past the guardians who gathered around Myrrdin, down to a wide stony beach beside a towering cave, and then up a dizzying path carved into the side of the cliff.

  At the top, he could see the fortress was divided into two parts, one perched high on a headland ridge, the other across the narrow land-bridge on the almost-island. He nodded. Both seemed impregnable.

  The Wolf led his war-band across the bridge and under a crumbling arch on to a road lined by stone buildings. Most of the roofs had fallen in.

  ‘We can rebuild this place easily enough,’ Bellicus said, mopping the sweat from his brow as he looked around. ‘It can be made more secure than ever before.’

  Lucanus watched his men collapse on to the sides of the road, laughing as they threw their heads back to take the sun on their faces. It was the first sign of hope he’d seen since they’d left Londinium.

  Bellicus clapped a hand on his shoulder. ‘Your father would be proud of you.’

  The words sounded heavy with emotion, though Lucanus didn’t know why, and when he glanced at his friend he thought he saw tears rimming his eyes. But Bellicus spun away to chastise Solinus before he could ask what concerned him.

  Amarina and Hecate sat together in deep conversation, heads bowed close, so engrossed they didn’t look up when Catia passed them with Weylyn in a sling across her breast. She came up and took Lucanus’ hand. ‘It’s been a long road, but we would never have reached here without you.’

  He forced a smile, but Myrrdin’s words were lying heavily on him. ‘What if we can never rest?’

  Catia searched his face. He watched a shadow cross hers, one almost of pity, as if she’d had this thought long ago and come to terms with it. ‘There’s nothing to gain by running or hiding. Only by seizing the destiny that was promised us – by making it our destiny – is there any hope.’

  ‘Wise words. You should heed them.’

  Lucanus turned to see Myrrdin standing behind him, looking out over the white-flecked waves to the misty horizon.

  ‘Here is where your power will grow,’ the wood-priest continued. ‘Your circle of five will multiply; your army too. Good men and women will hear the tales of the great Pendragon in the west and will join you in the crusade to bring about better days. Here is where the royal bloodline will be preserved. The King Who Will Not Die will rise from this land.’

  ‘This fortress will need a name,’ Catia said thoughtfully.

  The fire roared in the forest clearing. The sparks swirled up to the starry sky, taking with them the essence of the body blackening on the pyre.

  Amarina pushed her way out of the trees lining the headland and felt the heat sear her face. Hecate stepped beside her. The patina of Rome was falling off her rapidly. Her hair was untamed, streaks of charcoal blackened her eye sockets, and she had taken to massaging bitter unguents into her skin in her rituals at moonrise.

  ‘I have seen this before,’ Hecate said.

  On the far side of the pyre, two shadows edged around opposite sides of the clearing until the glaring yellow light revealed two women.

  ‘You answered our call, sisters,’ the youngest one said. Her wild eyes flickered and her smile was wide and mad. Though her naked body was caked with mud, Amarina could see that her breasts were engorged. Only then did she notice the babe nestled against her. It stared at her, calm despite the roaring of the fire, and when she looked in its eyes she felt troubled by what she saw there. Something much older, something as old as time.

  ‘A daughter,’ the young witch said when she saw Amarina looking.

  ‘A daughter filled with the blood of dragons, the royal blood,’ the matronly woman on the other side of the clearing said. She dragged her broken nails across her cheeks.

  ‘Lucanus?’ Amarina stuttered. Could it be true that he had sired this child?

  The two witches only smiled.

  Amarina stared at the burning body. ‘Your sister?’

  ‘The seasons wax and wane. The old moon dies, a new one is born,’ the older woman said.

  ‘The seasons always turn. It is the great wheel of life,’ the younger one continued. ‘I am mother now, and mother is crone.’

  ‘We are two, but we must be three.’

  Amarina shivered under the weight of those unblinking eyes. She knew what they were urging, had always known what they wanted of her, even from that first encounter in the cold north. But she had had her way out presented to her when she encountered Hecate on the streets of Londinium. She slipped her hand into the small of Hecate’s back, easing her forward.

  ‘Here is a sister with no sisters. Let her make you complete.’

  For a moment she wondered if she
’d angered these women. The witches were mercurial, half mad, as unknowable as the storm, and, as enemies, just as destructive. No one survived their fierce attention.

  Then the younger witch flexed her fingers and Hecate darted forward. She turned to Amarina, her face glowing with euphoria. ‘My thanks, sister,’ she began. ‘My—’ Emotion choked the rest of her words away.

  ‘We have aided you, sister, in your long flight to this place of safety.’ The mother crouched, feral, still clutching her child. ‘We have pulled the strands of the Fates, guiding, shepherding, protecting you from the many threats that hide away here in the land beyond the Tamar.’

  ‘And now you must pay the price you promised, sister,’ the older witch said.

  Amarina felt a deep chill. This was the moment she had dreaded.

  The mother crawled forward like a wolf about to leap. ‘Stay at the side of the Pendragon. Stay with his child until your dying day. Listen to the whispers of the wood-priest. Heed what plans are made.’

  The bier collapsed and the body of the old crone disappeared in a crack like thunder and a shower of sparks.

  ‘Be our eyes and our ears,’ the new crone said.

  ‘We have aided you, sister. Now you must aid us.’ The mother jumped to her feet and pushed the babe above her head. ‘This one belongs to the Morrigan, as does her father. The crows will guide her. She will be well schooled in the dark magic, her spells and her potions. She will dance the spiral path.’

  ‘Three children there are now,’ the older woman said, giving a gap-toothed grin. ‘All with a claim to the royal blood. In time we will see who is strongest.’

  ‘Who knows?’ the mother said, her smile fixed. ‘Who knows?’

  Amarina backed away into the trees. The waves of heat rolled off the pyre, but she felt as cold as she ever had in the hardest winter by the wall.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Camelot

  AD 373, Tintagel, 4 June

  FIVE YEARS HAD passed since Britannia had been torn asunder. Five years of peace, and joy, and struggle, and grief, five years like all the other years before the great invasion.

  The chamber glowed with a golden light. Through the window, the sun was setting and the warm breeze licked with the scent of brine. Lucanus perched on the stool he liked to call his throne and leaned back against the creamy stone wall the Dumnonii masons had laboured to build.

  Mato absently plucked at a cithara which some visiting merchant had donated to try to win the approval of the King in the West. ‘Rome has no desire to venture beyond the Tamar, so the messenger said. It seemed to me that Rome has little enthusiasm for Britannia any more.’

  ‘More trouble than it’s worth, I would wager.’

  ‘He was dismayed that he didn’t have the opportunity to meet the great Pendragon.’ Mato flashed a wry smile.

  ‘I saved him from disappointment. You’re better at this business of politics than me, by far. What news from the empire?’

  Mato shrugged. ‘Theodosius the Elder continues to revel in his great success in returning Britannia to the rule of Rome. Not content with being the magister equitum praesentalis at the court of Emperor Valentinian, or with being victorious in his campaign against the Alamanni, he now travels to Mauretania to suppress the uprising of the usurper Firmus. His son, meanwhile, has been appointed governor of Upper Moesia, and charged with overseeing the war with the Sarmatians. He will go on to great things, mark my words. If you wish for royal blood, look there.’

  ‘Lucanus?’

  The Wolf turned to the door where Apullius hovered, frowning. He’d grown to be a man that any of the Grim Wolves would have been proud to call one of their own. The ragged scar along his temple flexed as he frowned, the result of his final battle with the old wolf, when he had claimed his destiny.

  ‘Myrrdin would have words.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Lucanus read the young man’s face.

  ‘It’s always trouble when Myrrdin would have words. He’s never happier than when he’s distressing folk.’ Mato hummed along with the song he was strumming, something Lucanus half remembered from a tavern in Vercovicium. He felt a wave of nostalgia for simpler times.

  ‘Tell him I’ll come. But not because he asked me.’

  Apullius nodded and hurried away.

  Lucanus followed, his footsteps echoing through the great fortress that now rose on the headland. The wood-priest had been right. His army had grown as word spread of the power of the Pendragon and his magical sword that had been gifted by the gods, and his Circle of Five who placed honour above all things. They could not be challenged now. Catia and Weylyn were safe, the one thing he had wished for since he had set off along this hard road. Whatever travails he had encountered, it was worth the suffering for that alone.

  He listened to the beat of his footsteps in the long hall and wondered what the Lucanus who crawled through mud in the Wilds would have thought of his older self. At the far end, Amarina waited. She pulled back her hood, unleashing her tumble of silver-streaked red hair. As he studied her, he thought how much sadder she seemed than the woman he had got to know in the north, yet how much less angry.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To see Myrrdin.’

  ‘How do you know I’m going to see him?’

  ‘I know everything.’

  ‘That is true.’

  She caught his arm, and he thought how that might well be the first time she had ever touched him. Amarina was not one for the comforts of most folk, but an island alone in a storm-tossed sea. He felt more troubled by that brief contact than by anything he had experienced for many a year.

  She stared into his face for a long moment, then said, ‘The seasons are turning again.’

  ‘Who would attack us here?’

  Amarina smiled and he winced at the note of pity he saw there. ‘Britannia is falling into the dark. You know that. Rome will be gone soon enough. All that was predicted is coming to pass. And as the old ways fade, new things must arise.’

  ‘You’ve always spoken plainly, Amarina. No riddles.’

  ‘You’re part of the old ways now, Lucanus. You shepherded in the world that is to come, but …’

  ‘Now my time is done?’ He smiled. ‘All things must pass.’ Before she could press further, he said, ‘My thanks for the warning. I’ll tread carefully.’

  As he walked away, he could feel her eyes heavy on his back.

  For a while, he stood on the road from the main gate, closed his eyes and enjoyed the last of the sun’s warmth on his face. Then he made his way into his quarters. Weylyn was already asleep. Catia sat on a stool next to the bed, enjoying a moment of peace after telling their son his night-time tale. As he stood in the doorway, he felt struck by how beautiful she was, a beauty that came from the great strength he had always seen inside her, that seemed to grow more potent with each passing year. She’d faced her hardships since they’d arrived in their new home, but nothing seemed to break her. Not losing their second child at birth, nor the disappearance of her brother Aelius who walked out into the forest on the headland one twilight and was never seen again. Eaten by wolves, some said. Lucanus suspected Myrrdin knew more than he ever told.

  Catia pressed a finger to her lips and hurried over, ushering him out. ‘You came too late to see him to sleep,’ she whispered.

  ‘I was delayed. Dull business. News from the empire.’ He shrugged. ‘I gave up the open night skies and the peace of the Wilds for this.’

  ‘As if you had a choice.’

  That was true.

  Glancing back into the room, he watched the steady rise and fall of his son’s chest. ‘He’s growing fast. He’ll be able to start learning to use a sword soon.’

  Catia grinned. ‘Apullius has already given him his first lesson. Bellicus, Solinus and Comitinus are teaching him how to scout. Just in the daylight for now. And Mato … Mato tells him stories.’

  ‘He’ll make a fine King in the West wi
th such good people watching over him. And you. More than anyone, you.’

  When he looked back at her, she must have heard something in his voice, for she asked with a frown, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m tired, that’s all.’

  Catia was too clever to fall for that – she could always see more in him than any other – so he pulled her in for a deep kiss to silence her. For a brief, shining moment, he was miles and years away, running with his love outside Vercovicium, unbounded.

  He felt almost too much pain to let go of her hand. But then he said, ‘Myrrdin wants words, as Myrrdin always does.’ He pulled away, but allowed himself one last backward glance at the end of the corridor. She was still standing in the doorway, lit by the dying light, watching him. She seemed to know.

  She always knew.

  The chamber glowed a ruddy hue from the last rays of the setting sun. Bellicus was hunched at the window, peering out into the growing dusk. He turned when Lucanus came in.

  ‘See this.’

  The Wolf eased in beside his friend and looked out over the shadows pooling in the valley leading up from the promontory. Unmoving figures stood everywhere, heads turned towards the fortress, watching.

  ‘The Attacotti have come,’ Bellicus said.

  ‘Here? What do they hope to gain by attacking us?’ Lucanus stared at the pale figures, like alabaster statues in the last of the rays. More than the war-band that had tracked them from the east. More than he had ever seen gathered in one place.

  ‘Leave us.’

  Myrrdin stood in the doorway, one arm curled around his staff. Bellicus hesitated for a moment, then nodded and went out. That must have stuck in his gut; he hated doing what the wood-priest told him.

  ‘You’ve seen them?’ Lucanus asked.

  Ignoring the question, Myrrdin walked to the corner of the room and poured two goblets of wine. He handed one to the Wolf.

  ‘This is no time for wine. Our men must be summoned from the barracks—’