Dark Age

by James Wilde

  ‘Drink.’ The wood-priest pushed the goblet towards his lips.

  Lucanus looked from the crimson depths to those eerie, silent figures in the growing gloom. ‘What is happening here?’

  ‘Do you remember the moment we first came face to face?’

  ‘In the ruins of Trimontium, beyond the wall.’

  ‘I was watching you long before that.’ Myrrdin leaned against the window frame, looking out into the twilight. His voice no longer crackled. Now it was reflective, almost sad. ‘I made you, Lucanus, out of the very clay. Shaped you into the Pendragon, the one who holds days yet to come in his hands. Your life has never been your own. But look, I have been kind. In the north, you were nothing more than a scout, sleeping in ditches and hiding in the deep forests. Now you have a woman you love, and a child. You have known joy that would have been far beyond you without me. And you have had glory, Lucanus. Men looking to you with pride in their hearts. A leader who will be revered down the years. All that has come from my hands, Wolf. And without me you would have had nothing.’

  ‘I should be grateful?’

  ‘I merely ask you to understand. Your life was taken from you, that is true. You were nothing but a key shaped to unlock a greater door. That is hard for a man to accept – that he is not the hero of his tale. That he is only there to help the journey of others. But for all that, I’ve tried to leaven it with kindness. What matters to you most?’

  ‘Catia, and Weylyn,’ he replied without hesitation.

  The wood-priest nodded. ‘Your journey has set them free. You have saved them. That is a greater victory than any battle you have encountered. True?’

  Lucanus nodded.

  ‘Good. There was a time when I thought you might not learn a thing.’ Myrrdin glanced back and Lucanus was surprised to see some warmth in his eyes. ‘You can’t have what you want—’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You know.’

  Lucanus held his gaze, feeling a terrible sadness well up in him.

  ‘But you can buy safety and freedom for the ones you love. Sacrifice is at the heart of everything. It is writ large in every story we see fit to pass down the generations. Your father knew it well, and knew it was a lesson that should be handed on. Who we are is nothing. What we do can echo down the years.’

  Lucanus listened silently.

  ‘The Attacotti will not leave empty-handed. Spurned, they will attack and attack and attack until this place is wiped away, and everyone is dead. Your friends. Catia. Weylyn.’

  ‘We can fight—’

  ‘They will win, because they do not care about winning. Their concerns are larger than that.’ Myrrdin drained his goblet and set it back on the table. ‘Drink up,’ he said, ‘and celebrate what you have done.’

  ‘What have I done?’

  ‘You have built a beacon that will shine through the dark days to come. This fortress, built on the very edge of the world, is more than stone and clay. It is more, even, than the place where the King Who Will Not Die will be born. It is an idea. A story. And they are more important than stone and steel, for they worm their way into people’s minds, and live there, and change hearts. And by doing so they change the world around us.’

  ‘A tale for children.’

  ‘A tale for all men and women. They will never forget that a beacon was built, raised up on a foundation of honour and hope, and it will shine on, even when this place has been reduced to rubble by the ages.’

  Lucanus stared into his wine, then swilled it back and returned to the window. Those spectres glowed in the gloom. In their silent, unmoving scrutiny, they reminded him of the supplicants in a temple, waiting to be blessed.

  ‘You made a deal with the Attacotti, when we needed their help in our raid upon the barbarian camp. Before Marcus’ life was taken.’

  ‘Aye. But this is greater even than that. It is something that is as old as time.’

  Lucanus thought of the ancient ritual that every man underwent when they became a Grim Wolf. The passing of power.

  ‘When you slaughtered the wood-priests, you seized control of the story. And Catia has too,’ Myrrdin continued. ‘It does not belong to me any more. But you still have work to do.’

  The Wolf nodded. He understood his responsibilities now.

  ‘You’re a good man, Lucanus. You may have been nothing but a player in someone else’s story, but now you have a chance to be the saviour, the secret saviour of this tale.’

  ‘Catia … my friends …’ He felt a sudden surge of panic, and a desire to see them all.

  Myrrdin shook his head. ‘Here is the truth buried in all our teachings: a story that never ends is one that goes on for ever. Play your part here one final time, and when all that you know is dust, they will still tell of you, as the king who never died, the King Who Will Not Die. And when a king does return, in some long distant day yet to come, it will be him … and you. The Dragon rises. The circle never ends. The story goes on for ever and the power remains within it.’

  Lucanus held Myrrdin’s gaze, and after a long moment he nodded his assent.

  Catia looked around the chamber. She could hear the crashing of the waves on the shore below the fortress, but it seemed that that thunderous sound was coming from deep within her, from her heart, and filling up every part of her until she could think of nothing else.

  The chamber was empty.

  She stood there for a moment, breathing in the fading scent of Lucanus on the air. Then she crossed to the window and looked out into the moonless night. Beyond the line of torches that marked the boundary between their sanctuary and the wild world beyond, she thought she saw flitting shadows, moving away, but they were gone too quickly for her to be sure.

  And there, in the courtyard in front of the main gate, in the wavering light, she could just make out a familiar sword with a dragon hilt rammed into a crack in the stones. Her husband’s sword. Her son’s sword.

  Her heart felt as if it was breaking and she choked back a sob.

  ‘I am here.’ Myrrdin’s voice echoed at her back. ‘I will always be here. To guide. To support.’

  Catia pushed up her chin and showed a cold face. She was strong, and she would continue to be so, for the sake of their son, and for the sake of all the people who would need to be led out of the dark in times to come.

  ‘I am the queen now.’

  Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

  Marcus Annaeus Seneca

  Author’s Note

  The full moon hangs over Glastonbury Tor. High up there, wrapped in the balmy summer warmth and the almost sanctified stillness, you can feel the breath of the past raising the hairs on the back of your neck. Darkness still pools across the Somerset Levels beyond the town’s lights, and there’s a clear view of the sweep of the stars in the vault of the heavens. I breathe in the scent of cooling vegetation, and when an owl swoops by, I let my thoughts fly with it.

  There’s a magic to the old places.

  Every book is a quest, for the author and for the reader. This one, like Pendragon, the novel that preceded it, was also a very real quest for me. As a writer, it’s always been my belief that you should walk in the footsteps of your characters. That sense of place is a potent force that throws up levels of detail that can never be found in books or online. Not just the sensory experience, the smells, the sounds, but the feel of it. Such an intangible thing, yet deeply affecting.

  I travelled through a great many of Britain’s old places while researching this story, and that magic is still powerful. It’s in the landscape and in the history, which lives on, in standing stones, and crumbling ruins, and odd patterns in the landscape. From the edge of Loch Lomond, across the shattered bones of Hadrian’s Wall, south through the Lake District, to Salisbury Plain. London. Stonehenge. Avebury. Dartmoor and west to the ends of the earth (otherwise known as Cornwall).

  In these kinds of road trips, you learn as much about yourself as the places you’re investigating.
There’s something to be said for pushing out of that comfort zone, hiking, climbing, sweating, sleeping under the stars, crunching along a deserted beach, being lashed by the wind and rain on wild land where there isn’t another soul for mile upon mile. And also something to be said for placing yourself in the context of the great sweep of history. The problems of a modern person seem tiny compared to the things our ancestors endured.

  As I explored each location, I was endlessly fascinated by the stories that still clung to them, most of them age-old. Religions, legends and myths, and the stories we tell ourselves, all occupy much the same place. Through them we can learn as much about ourselves as from artefacts dug out of the ground, and as such they have an important role in history. Folklore is not fantasy. There are truths embedded in those tales.

  At Wayland’s Smithy, the neolithic long barrow in Oxfordshire, which plays a part in this story, records from 1738 show that people believed an invisible smith lived there who would reshoe the horses of any travellers who left a coin. Visitors still leave coins today, near three centuries later (and the National Trust has to collect them all up and give them to charity). The folklorist Ceri Houlbrook says these actions ‘contribute to the ritual narrative of a site’. Yet we now know that the prehistoric site was once associated with a smith-god. The story kept the belief alive in a constantly mutating form.

  Stories, old and new.

  There are a few things I want to mention before I wander away.

  These books have the overarching title of Dark Age. A few readers have mused that it’s not actually set in what we used to call the Dark Ages (although modern historians have pulled away from that term for a variety of reasons, not least because it’s a very UK-centric descriptor and doesn’t take into account what was happening in, say, Constantinople). But the aim was always to show how a dark age, any dark age, can arise from a time that had, perhaps, long been perceived as a golden age. Historical fiction always has lessons for today, and as we look around us, now, it’s possible to see that difficult times could arise again. It’s only a relatively short time since Francis Fukuyama wrote about the ‘end of history’ and predicted an unceasing era of Western democratic values. When the collapse starts, it’s often in areas where few are paying attention.

  What Myrrdin told Lucanus about the Eleusinian Mysteries is true. And it’s still of relevance today. If you don’t believe me, take a look at a very good book, Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler and Jamie Wheal.

  There’s been a lot of talk about numbers in these two books, particularly three and five. Many ancient civilizations had beliefs about the spiritual significance of sacred numbers, and that there were secret relationships between numbers and the divine, or fate. The first Council of Nicaea in ad 325, which regulated aspects of Christianity, consigned numerology to the same fate as other unapproved beliefs like divination and magic.

  In the section set in Londinium, I mention the River Fleet a few times. These days it’s hidden in a culvert beneath London streets, but it was a key part of the Roman town’s expansion. Yet I haven’t been able to unearth the Roman name for the river, and when I spoke to Professor Mary Beard of the University of Cambridge, she couldn’t find it either. So I decided to stick with the Fleet name, for clarity, even though that derives from the Anglo-Saxon fleota. These are the compromises we have to make from time to time, sadly, and you will undoubtedly find a few more within these pages.

  The legend of King Arthur lives on, mutating to fit the age in which it’s told. There’s a power in it that survives any telling, and a deeper symbolism. These things matter, these symbols, crowns and swords, and dragons eating their own tails.

  Long may he reign.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With thanks to Professor Mary Beard for advice on Roman river names.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Wilde is a Man of Mercia. Raised in a world of books, he studied economic history at university before travelling the world in search of adventure. It was while visiting the haunted fenlands of Eastern England, the ancestral home of Hereward the Wake, that he decided that this legendary English rebel should be the subject of his debut novel. The first in what would become an acclaimed six-book sequence, Hereward was a bestseller. His most recent novel, Pendragon, explores the origins of what would become the myth of King Arthur. Dark Age continues this remarkable adventure.

  James Wilde divides his time between London and the family home in Derbyshire.

  To find out more visit, www.manofmercia.co.uk

  Also by James Wilde

  HEREWARD

  HEREWARD: THE DEVIL’S ARMY

  HEREWARD: END OF DAYS

  HEREWARD: WOLVES OF NEW ROME

  HEREWARD: THE IMMORTALS

  HEREWARD: THE BLOODY CROWN

  PENDRAGON: A NOVEL OF THE DARK AGE

  For more information on James Wilde and his books,

  see his website at www.manofmercia.co.uk

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

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  Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Bantam Press

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Emerald Eye Limited 2018

  Cover Photography © Stephen Mulcahey

  Cover Design by Stephen Mulcahey

  James Wilde has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473526785

  ISBN 9780593076071

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

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