The Bear King, page 18
part #3 of Dark Age Series
The woman was on her feet by the narrow entrance to the roundhouse. As she shouted for help, three men lurched out from where they’d been hiding. She clutched at the arm of one of them, no doubt her husband, and pointed at the interlopers.
Lucanus watched the husband snatch up a sickle and move towards him. The silver blade glinted in the sunlight. The farmer was little more than a skeleton clothed in filthy rags, but his eyes burned with a passion far brighter than any Lucanus had seen in even the fiercest enemy.
The Wolf pulled Caledfwlch from its sheath and looked along the length of the blade into the face of the farmer and the two men who lurched behind him; one grasped an axe, the other a cudgel. Behind him he heard Solinus’ sword sing as it too was levelled.
The woman’s husband looked around the crescent of scouts, and then a strange thing happened. Fat tears rolled down his hollow cheeks, and his thin lips trembled. He began to shake as if he had a terrible fever. The sickle slipped from his fingers and he dropped to his knees in the mud of the track. The two men behind him looked at each other, then at the Grim Wolves’ blades, and tossed their own weapons away. The farmer’s wife ran forward and grasped him, trying to drag him to her feet, but she was too weak to do so and fell to her knees beside him.
They had nothing, Lucanus thought. Not even the merest hint of courage or strength.
Solinus stepped forward, jabbing his sword towards the pathetic quartet. Lucanus reached out his arm to hold him back.
‘Speak,’ he told them, ‘or I’ll let Solinus do what he will with you.’
‘Please,’ the woman begged, pressing her palms together. ‘We have nothing left.’
‘Raiders came and stole all our food and belongings,’ her husband whimpered. ‘There’s no trade here now, not since the army abandoned their forts in the east and stopped protecting the routes.’
‘So you thought you’d fill your bellies with my friend,’ Solinus barked. ‘What kind of devils are you that you’d eat human flesh?’
‘What choice did we have?’ the woman wailed. ‘Hungry … so hungry …’
‘You always have a choice.’ Solinus pushed forward, but Lucanus pressed him back.
‘You could hunt,’ the Wolf said.
‘We’re farmers, not hunters,’ the husband cried. ‘We tried, but we couldn’t catch enough before we grew too weak. We couldn’t even fish. The raiders burned our boat. They wanted to see us suffer. We didn’t want to hurt your friend, but we were driven near mad by hunger.’
Solinus spat at them.
‘They slaughtered their beasts, and the dogs too,’ Comitinus called as he appeared from behind the roundhouses. ‘There’s a pile of bones back there.’
‘What now?’ Lucanus eyed the pitiable farmers, then sheathed Caledfwlch.
‘Leave them to their fate,’ Solinus growled. ‘These aren’t barbarians, like the Attacotti. These are civilized folk. But they were still ready to eat a man.’ He spat again, disgusted. ‘They’d have choked on that tough meat. Like chewing leather, I’d wager. That would teach them.’
‘Starvation is not a good way to die,’ Mato said.
‘As if there’s any,’ Comitinus added.
The Wolf eyed Bellicus, giving him the chance to judge. He only rubbed the blood back into his wrists and shook his head.
Lucanus looked down at the woman and the three men grovelling in the dirt and could see why his friend hadn’t demanded vengeance. Their faces were twisted with despair, and they clawed at their hair and their hollow cheeks and wailed – with shame, he thought. They knew the path they’d chosen and they loathed themselves for it.
‘Hunger destroys a man,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Who’s to say we wouldn’t be like those poor wretches if we were starving?’
‘Never,’ Solinus said.
Lucanus stepped in front of the farmers and their howling rose in a frenzy. They expected the worst. ‘Silence,’ he commanded. His voice seemed to strike them, and the yowling stopped and they hung their heads.
‘What you were about to do was a crime against all that we hold dear. You know that. But you’re victims of the madness that has gripped Britannia in this dark age. We’ll hunt some game for you, enough to fill your bellies for a few days. Then you’ll be strong enough to hunt yourselves, or at least to set a few traps. We’ll show you how.’
The starving men and woman flung themselves at his feet as if they were supplicants at a temple, crying with joy, but Bellicus caught his arm. ‘Have you forgotten Catia?’ he whispered. ‘We can’t afford to waste a day here hunting.’
Lucanus’ heart ached. Every moment of delay was one which might cost Catia her life, he knew. But how could he abandon these wretches? And he also knew that Catia herself would never forgive him if he put her needs above such suffering.
‘Let’s bring them some venison,’ he said, ‘and the time lost will only put more fire in my heart to find Catia more quickly.’
Or, he thought, to exact bloody vengeance if a hair on her head has been harmed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Lost
LUCANUS JERKED FROM A DREAM OF CROWS. HANGING OVER HIS face was a death mask, the eyes the blackest he’d ever seen. Crying out in shock, he fumbled for Caledfwlch, but by the time his fingers closed on the hilt the ghastly face had retreated into the night.
The vision burned into his mind. One of the Attacotti had been sitting by him, watching him sleep.
Bellicus, Mato and Solinus scrambled up, ruddy in the embers’ glow from the dying fire. Comitinus hurried from the dark beyond the circle of light.
‘The Attacotti have found us again,’ Lucanus said. His heart was pounding, and he sucked in a deep breath to steady himself.
‘You thick-headed oaf,’ Solinus snapped, rounding on Comitinus. ‘You were supposed to be keeping watch.’
‘I was! I didn’t sleep. My eyes were wide open. I was listening for any sound.’
‘Then you’re as useless as a holed barrel.’
‘Don’t blame him,’ Lucanus said. ‘The Attacotti are like ghosts, you know that. Any of us could have done the same.’
‘What did they want?’ Bellicus asked. His sword was in his hand, and his eyes darted as he tried to search the deep dark.
Lucanus shook his head. What did they want? None of them could know the minds of those devils. His stomach knotted at the haunting image of the warrior watching him sleep: somehow a fanatical worshipper devoted to a prone god-king, and at the same time a gaoler who would never let his prisoner slip through his fingers.
Though it was still the deep of the night, Lucanus felt certain sleep would not return. He hunched over the ashes, prodding the embers with a stick while listening to the moan of the wind. Voices lay within it, he was sure, but whether it was the Attacotti calling to each other in their alien tongue or the gods themselves, he had no way of knowing.
For two days, they’d crept east, keeping close to the coast and away from the tracks. When they delivered the venison to the starving farmers, they let them gorge themselves before questioning them. The three men and the woman had heard something of a treasure, though they couldn’t remember exactly what they’d been told. Mostly, Lucanus thought, it sounded like rumours and half-truths whispered by passing merchants in days long gone. A blighted land, five paths to the fortress at its heart, but only one that didn’t end in death. It lay somewhere in the east, they said, the way marked by the face of Cernunnos carved in stone.
The farmers had pointed them in the direction they thought correct, and after a while the Grim Wolves chanced upon others who hadn’t fallen on such hard times. These knew more, Lucanus had seen it in their eyes, but their lips remained sealed … until Solinus jabbed his sword under their jaws and threatened to drain them of their life-blood. This time Lucanus hadn’t restrained him. They were desperate now, and he more than any of them.
He couldn’t bring himself to think of Catia. No one they encountered had seen hair or hide of her, or her mysterious companion. Sometimes a vision of her dead in a ditch flashed across his mind, and he pushed the ball of his hand into his eye socket to drive it away. His heart ached for all those lost years when he’d been a captive on the island home of the Attacotti. He prayed he could at least grab one sunlit day with Catia before the bargain with the Attacotti ended and he was dragged away to his inevitable fate.
One day. That was all he asked. One day to light him to his end, to remind him of the joy they once had, and what might have been. That thin hope drove him on.
Black smoke billowed up. At its heart, scarlet glowed like the eye of a great beast waking. Screams from the burning settlement could be heard, but the roars of the jubilant barbarians soon drowned them out.
The ground throbbed with the pounding of hooves and a farmer darted out of the thick cloud of smoke, eyes wide with terror. A moment later, a laughing Pict on horseback crashed out of the fug behind him and eased his mount to one side then the other, forcing the farmer to flee this way and that before ending up back where he’d been a moment before. Toying with him like a mill-dog with a rat until, tiring of the game, he pulled his sword from its scabbard and held it aloft.
As the weaving peasant stumbled, the Pict leaned to one side and swept his blade down in a smooth, easy stroke. The farmer howled and fell. The barbarian urged his horse back into the smoke for more sport, not even caring to look back to see if his unarmed prey lived or died.
Lucanus ground his teeth. These days of slaughter should have been long behind them. They thought they’d won this battle, and now it seemed they’d have to fight it all over again.
He pressed a hand against his mouth as the wind lashed the smoke up to the standing stone behind which he was hiding. When it cleared, he looked again for any sign of the track that a merchant had promised them would lead to the blighted land.
Instead, he saw a barbarian war-band tracking towards him. They were laughing, singing, drunk on victory. Some dragged screaming women by their hair. Others lumbered awkwardly, arms filled with booty. Most wore leather armour and furs despite the heat, their round wooden shields splintered, the paint faded. Their horsemen flanked the column, the riders’ eyes darting as they searched for any opposition. There would be none, they knew. These were country folk. They owned no swords, had never lifted a weapon in their lives.
Above the lead rider, on a pole rising from a leather pouch, fluttered the banner of the false king, the red dragon. It stood for cruelty, that was all. Lucanus scowled. What a mockery it made of his own gold dragon banner.
The Wolf flinched as he looked back to the war-band. One of the warriors was pointing in his direction. Fearing they had seen some sign of him, he slid backwards on his belly into a hollow. Barely had he pushed himself to his feet before he heard hoofbeats pounding.
Dashing into a copse, he glanced back and saw the barbarian riders hurtling over the high ground. Briefly, they reined in their mounts to look down on where he had been hiding. Whatever they saw seemed to satisfy them and they threw their stallions down into the hollow with renewed urgency.
Lucanus raced through the birch trees. The land beyond was flat, wide and open, with nowhere to hide.
One slim hope was all he could see: a network of ditches to drain the surrounding farmland, all of them swollen with run-off from the recent rains. Racing to the nearest he threw himself into the filthy water. Brown rats scurried away from him along the banks.
Tracking the sound of the hoofbeats, he bent double and waded along the ditch away from them. He dropped down until his chin rested on the water’s surface, half swimming, half kicking himself along the bottom.
At first, he heard the riders thunder away until the hoofbeats were almost gone. But the barbarians would never give up, he knew. And soon enough the pounding began to grow louder again, until it rumbled all around him. If the Picts thought to follow the line of the ditch, they’d see him easily.
Gulping in a mouthful of air, Lucanus rolled on to his back and ducked beneath the surface. The water was too dirty to see clearly. There were no reeds through which to breathe. All he could do was raise his lips to the surface intermittently, suck in air and pray.
His lungs seared. Darkness closed in around his vision. Choking, his instincts swamped him and he thrust his head up and gasped air. To his relief, no tattooed Pict was peering down at him. Instead, he could hear shouting back along the ditch in the direction he’d travelled.
Easing himself up, the Wolf peered over the open ground. The riders were riding hard towards a lone figure, which was waving and shouting to draw their attention. Lucanus squinted; it was Comitinus.
‘Come with me.’
He looked up at an outstretched hand, and then into Mato’s face.
Once his friend had hauled him out of the ditch and they were racing away from the horsemen, Lucanus gasped, ‘You shouldn’t have come for me. We had an agreement.’
‘As if any of us would care about that.’
‘You lied to me.’
‘It’s the only way to keep you in line, my friend.’
At the woods, Lucanus glanced back. The riders thundered back and forth, but there was no sign of Comitinus. He would have had his route of escape well planned. The Wolf turned back to Mato.
‘Things are worse than we feared,’ he said.
‘They’re worse than you fear.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mato beckoned and Lucanus weaved through the elms behind him. For a long while they hurried on until the trees ended suddenly at the lip of a ridge. Ahead, the wide land swept out under blue skies, blasted by the ocean winds. Before the Wolf had a moment to drink in the view, Mato grasped a low branch and swung himself up, clawing his way into the treetops. Lucanus shook off a spray of ditch-water and followed, awkward though it was with only one arm.
The tree swayed and bent under their weight, but Mato slithered out along a branch as far as he could go. Somehow Lucanus crawled out on a neighbouring branch, and when Mato pointed, moving his finger in a wide arc, Lucanus saw instantly what had gripped him.
The barbarian war-bands roamed everywhere, some on foot like packs of prowling beasts in their furs and leather, many on horseback. Clouds of dust rolled across the sunlit landscape behind them.
This was as bad as it had ever been in the days before Theodosius the Elder’s forces drove the tribes out of Britannia.
Lucanus tracked the bands. Some were descending on individual houses, others were congregating on the east–west road, the main trade route. He felt his heart sink. There seemed to be no path through them. And if Catia had come this way, what chance could she have had of escaping them?
‘It looks bad, brother, I can’t deny it,’ Mato said. ‘And if we were a hundred strong, we would have no hope of slipping by them without war. But we are arcani. We’ve picked our way through greater mazes than this without disturbing a blade of grass.’
As always, Mato was trying to offer hope. But it was thin, Lucanus could see that. ‘Gaia should have known better than to bring the barbarians in,’ he said. ‘They can’t be controlled. After the invasion they had the taste for Britannia, and for power, and they were still smarting after the legions drove them out. They’ll do as they please now. Plunder, rape, destroy.’
‘It doesn’t bode well for the Dumnonii who befriended them, and allowed them to venture so deeply into their land.’ Mato sighed. ‘Now that the Picts and the Scoti have given up any pretence of alliance it makes our own task easier. But that’s little comfort for the folk here in the west, who are now facing untold miseries.’
‘When I was the King in the West, the Dumnonii looked to me for protection.’ Lucanus could feel Mato’s eyes on him, and he could almost smell the other man’s concern. After all he had endured, after Apullius, and Catia, his brothers were fearing he would crumble. A leader made of nothing but dust. Was that true?
Watching the plumes of smoke sweep up across the landscape, he went on, ‘At this rate, there may well be no one left to protect – or to join our army – should we even gain that treasure of the gods.’
‘Then we shouldn’t wait here any longer. We must pick up the pace.’
The case was desperate, and they both knew it. The barbarian horde was creeping closer to Tintagel with each passing day, and no one remained to lead Lucanus’ army in a defence.
‘I thought we could hide away in the west and all would be well,’ he said, watching those rolling clouds of dust. ‘But it’s clear now that there’ll be no peace until this is ended once and for all.’
Bellicus, Solinus and Comitinus crouched beside the ford where Mato had arranged to meet them. Sunlight shafted through the tall elms and glimmered off the stream that tinkled over the stones. All seemed peaceful, apart from the flickering urgency in the Grim Wolves’ eyes.
They jumped to their feet when they saw Lucanus and Mato running up.
‘You’re alive,’ Comitinus gasped. ‘Thank the gods.’
‘No time for idle talk,’ Bellicus grunted. ‘Those barbarians won’t give up looking for us.’
Solinus grinned. ‘It’s not all bad news. Look what we found.’
He crunched away through the undergrowth. Lucanus found him kneeling beside a fan of yellowing grass. Solinus peeled the stalks apart to reveal a way-stone carved with the face of Cernunnos, eyes and mouth emerging from a tangle of leaf and ivy.
‘The wood-priests make it hard for anyone to find the trail, but it’s always there,’ he said. ‘You just need a good nose to sniff it out.’
Lucanus crouched beside his brother and looked ahead. He could just about make out a path through the woods, which, to any other eye, would have seemed little more than a route used by foxes.
‘They’ve built their labyrinth well,’ he agreed. ‘Only the worthy will find a way through.’
The Grim Wolves pushed their heads down, running at a steady pace through the fern into deep, shaded valleys thick with vegetation, where barely a foot ever fell.
