The Bear King, page 27
part #3 of Dark Age Series
The march north from Isca Augusta had taken them through lush valleys rich with game and along the edge of shadowed forests where rooks shrieked around their high nests. Folk crept out from the scattered farmsteads to puzzle over the army tramping past their doors. They gleaned news from the south, but scrambled back into their homes whenever any questions were asked about the queen of Dinas Ffaraon Dandde. Fear rustled among the dead leaves.
A hand clamped across Catia’s mouth.
She thrashed, but another hand on her belly jerked her in tightly and hot breath warmed her ear. ‘Silence, or you will summon them. And then I won’t be able to protect you.’
She stiffened, then sagged. She knew that voice. She had thought she’d never hear it again. Then the strong hands turned her round, and she allowed it, and was instantly gripped by what she saw in the black eyes staring back at her. How much she had shared with this bear of a man, with his wild hair and beard. First he’d taken her captive and threatened her life. Then he’d shown compassion and saved her life. He was her enemy, but she couldn’t hate him.
Erca’s hands fell away and his gaze flickered around the trees. Pressing a finger to his lips, he led her away from the campsite to a cleft between two towering rocks where they wouldn’t be seen.
‘Why are you here? To attack us?’ she hissed.
‘Aye.’
Catia gaped at the bluntness of his response. ‘Then why—’
‘Gaia has ordered me to kill the leaders of your straggling army, and that includes you.’ Erca folded his arms. ‘I choose not to kill you, but the men I brought with me would not understand.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Catia held his gaze for a long moment, a silent communication. She did understand. Of course she did, though it was a matter she could not address. ‘Why do you serve her?’
‘She pays well.’
‘We could pay you more.’
‘You’d want me at your side?’ Erca shrugged, saving her the difficulty of having to find an answer. ‘It would not be honourable to change sides, not now I have pledged to her.’
Catia pushed her arrow back in its quiver and threw her bow over her shoulder, averting her gaze from his searching look. ‘In the battle that’s coming, I’ll be there, at the front.’
Erca reached out a hand to her, letting it hang for a moment as he fought to speak. ‘I offered you the chance before to come with me. I’ll protect you, and your son.’
‘I have a husband.’ She winced inwardly. For now. ‘I love him more than life itself. I’ll never go with you. If you can’t accept that, you should kill me now. Make your queen happy. Collect your gold and buy whatever it is that fills you with joy.’
Erca nodded. ‘But you don’t hate me. I’m no fool. I can read a heart, be it man’s or woman’s.’
‘Step back!’
Catia jerked round. Lucanus was standing on the path to the cleft in the rocks, Caledfwlch levelled. He must have followed her trail when he found her gone from the tent they shared. Yet when she stared at her husband’s stony expression, she felt a sudden pang of panic. How would it look, Erca and she standing there, two supposed enemies, talking quietly, staring at each other, almost close enough to embrace? And how much had Lucanus heard of the conversation? Enough to leap to assumptions?
‘Wait,’ she began.
But Erca whipped out his own blade and stepped on to the path. ‘Perhaps here is a solution,’ he said.
Catia reached out to pull the Scoti chief back, and then felt another pang, this time of regret, when she saw the fleeting look of hurt cross her husband’s face. But she was scared. However good a warrior Lucanus might once have been, he had lost an arm, and Erca was bigger and stronger.
‘You killed my brother Apullius.’ Lucanus’ voice cracked with grief-driven anger. Catia swallowed, waiting for her husband to look to her, accusing her of betraying Apullius, of betraying him, but he only glowered at his hated enemy.
‘This is not personal, Pendragon,’ Erca said. ‘It’s war, and any man who stands up to fight must be prepared to die. Your brother will have known that.’
The Scoti chief lunged, hacking and slashing, trying to crush Lucanus by sheer force of his greater strength. Lucanus leapt back, darting to one side. He thrust Caledfwlch, raking the bigger man’s arm. First blood.
Catia’s hand flew to her mouth. She knew her husband had been practising hard with Solinus and Comitinus since they’d been reunited, trying to make up for what he’d lost on the Island of the Dead. But she’d never expected this. How fast he was, how athletic, with all the grace and power of the beast whose pelt he wore. Erca’s eyes had widened. He too was surprised.
Lucanus ducked, parried, danced this way and that. His blade blurred. Erca gritted his teeth, putting his head down and renewing his attack. He lashed his sword back and forth. The Wolf clashed Caledfwlch against that attack and a shower of sparks flew. Before the Scoti chief could rebalance, Lucanus darted to one side and hammered a foot on the back of his enemy’s knee. Down crashed the barbarian with a roar. And then Lucanus was above him, his weapon poised to stab his fallen enemy through the chest.
‘Wait!’ Catia cried, reaching out one hand. ‘Don’t kill him.’
Lucanus blade hovered above Erca’s chest as he looked to her. Erca looked too. Catia felt a rush of cold. Two pairs of eyes, each of them asking a different question, one despairing, one hopeful.
‘Erca saved my life,’ she said, ‘and risked everything to kill the Pictish king who was trying to slay me.’ She swallowed, trying to find words that would convince her husband. ‘For that, I owe him. We owe him.’
Lucanus’ sword wavered. Catia held his eyes, hoping he could see in hers the love she felt, be reassured of her intentions. Perhaps he was, for he pushed himself back and sheathed Caledfwlch.
‘Go,’ he said to the man at his feet. ‘Next time you’ll not be so fortunate.’
Erca stood, brushing himself down. He licked his fingertips and wiped them across the scratch on his forearm as if he had all the time in the world. ‘We’re fighting men, you and I,’ he said. ‘We stand on different sides, but we understand each other, as any man who has been in war does. The only difference is what you want, and what I want.’ The Scoti warrior looked up to the sky, reflecting, and added, ‘Who knows? One day we may want the same thing.’
He looked to Catia and nodded his thanks. She thought she saw a hint of regret there too, but then he turned and stalked off into the trees. ‘I’ll lead my men away from you,’ his voice floated back, ‘but none of you stray from your army from now on. And make sure you mount a watch every night.’
Once he’d gone, Catia threw her arms round her husband, feeling the thump of his heart against her own. When she pulled back, she said, ‘Whatever you might think, he’s an honourable man.’
Lucanus raised a hand. ‘I don’t doubt you. Know that. I have never, ever doubted you.’
Catia felt a wave of emotion well up in her and she fought to hold back tears.
‘I can never forgive him for the death of Apullius, in battle or not. But if you see value in him, then that’s good enough for me.’
As they made their way back along the trail she had followed from the camp, she said, ‘We’re near the end now. Time is running away from us.’ When he looked away, she could tell he knew what she meant.
‘You don’t know the Attacotti as I do,’ he said. ‘Kill one, two, twenty, they’ll keep coming. The agreement Myrrdin made with them is sacred. They were offered power, as they see it. The flesh of a king. Royal blood. They believe that by consuming it, that power seeps into all of them.’
Catia shuddered. She felt overwhelmed by the horror of the fate that awaited her husband. A vision flooded her mind of the Attacotti at feast, images too monstrous for anyone to bear, but try as she might she couldn’t force them away.
When she stumbled into him, he wrapped his arm around her and held her so tight it was as if he would never let her go. There, with his heart thumping against her, she could almost feel the emotion coursing through him, his agony at being torn away from them, his fear. But most of all she felt his love. She was swallowed by the warmth of it, the bitter cold pushed out, her despair crushed down.
‘You know that I, the Grim Wolves, all of us would sacrifice ourselves if we could save you,’ she said.
‘That’s the last thing I want. If any of you suffer harm because of this, then all that I’ve done has been for nothing.’
Catia brushed away a tear before he could see it. ‘They’re monsters.’
‘They are … who they are. As are we.’
‘What does that mean?’
Bowing his head, he strode in silence for a moment. ‘When I’m gone, you shouldn’t be alone. A man, a good man, someone who can care for you, and guide Weylyn—’
‘Silence!’ Catia grabbed his shoulder and spun him round so she could stare into his eyes. ‘I will not let you go, do you hear me?’ Her nails dug into his flesh. If she could hold him there for ever, she would. ‘If you die, then I die.’
His eyes widened. ‘No!’
‘Then find a way to save us.’
Lucanus stared into her eyes for a long moment, and then he nodded.
Away from the camp, Lucanus squatted with his back against rough bark and unfurled his hand. On his palm were the last of the sacred mushrooms taken from Myrrdin’s chamber before they’d left. He’d half thought about consuming them before the battle, to feel that rush of blood and fire that signalled the berserker rage. But this quieter time felt more apt. He popped them in his mouth.
After a while, he cocked his head to the first whispers of the gods.
The snow among the trees glowed brighter than he had ever seen it, suffusing the lower branches with soft light. Lines of blue fire seemed to be shimmering just beneath the surface.
When he heard – or thought he did – the crunch of feet, he stared deeply into that black-and-white world. The dark swelled and he felt sure he could see figures arriving to observe him: a king and queen, their skin shining golden, and an otherworldly court of strange beings, some short and twisted, more beast than man, others tall and seemingly made from leaf and fur.
Or perhaps it was all in his imagination.
The Seelie Court faded in and out of that white glow, but then he felt himself drawn to another, larger silhouette crashing back and forth through the trees, antlers protruding from its brow. The creature put its head back and roared.
The great god Cernunnos.
A thundering of wings throbbed in his ears. In the shadows, crows were thrashing in a tight group, red eyes glowing at their core.
The Morrigan, the Phantom Queen of war and death.
They’d come to witness his final hours, these strange companions that had attached themselves to his life since he’d been dragged into the wood-priests’ plot.
Gone, all gone. Nothing but empty woods.
Blood thundered through his head. Lucanus closed his eyes.
‘A prayer,’ he murmured, ‘to the gods who watch over me. I am nothing. I will sacrifice all I have … my very life … to keep Catia and Weylyn safe. Watch over them for me. And if there is any action I can take … anything … which may benefit them, show me the way. I beg of you.’
His whispers rolled out through the chill air, and Lucanus felt his heart swell with a terrible sadness that by this time on the following night he might have been torn away from the ones he loved, never to see them again.
The labyrinth.
The words rustled, and he couldn’t tell if the gods were speaking to him, or if they came from the depths of his own mind.
Remember the labyrinth.
And his thoughts took wing, to the vision that he had had on the Island of the Dead, and then across the great sea to the western lands, to the quest for the cauldron of the Dagda. And he remembered what he had said then, and what had been done.
A spark flickered in the depths of his head, the first glimmer of a beacon that might lead him out of the darkness of what lay ahead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Song of the Attacotti
SNOWFLAKES DRIFTED DOWN FROM THE GREY SKY. MATO looked up, brushing one from his eyelash. Those clouds were full. This did not bode well.
The trees stood stark against the colourless landscape, rocks thrusting up from the earth here and there, the wind howling among them. Bleak. This was no place for men.
Mato pushed on.
The road had started rising a day earlier. On the horizon, snow-topped mountains loomed. The worst part of the journey lay just ahead. The plan was to skirt those soaring peaks, following the road to the north-west and the fortress of the false king.
But first he had to die.
Mato rested one hand on the trunk of an elm and sniffed the air. He nodded. This was the way.
Tugging his wolf-pelt around him for warmth, he bowed his head into the gusts and walked on. They would know he was coming. There was no point in hiding it.
The Attacotti squatted around a wide clearing, running whetstones across their blades, cutting wood for the fire, carving meat. Mato didn’t look too closely at that. They were bare-chested and bare-legged, as if they couldn’t feel the knives of the mountain wind. Snow drifted down on their white-crusted skin. They didn’t brush it away. Mato imagined them still sitting there, lost to white drifts, frozen to death, not caring. Death was their friend.
He stepped to the edge of the clearing and waited, half expecting them to fall on him like wolves. Three of them looked up, then turned back to their chores. He was no threat.
Steeling himself, he strode into the centre of the circle. ‘I would have words with you.’
The wind moaned through the silence that followed. No one there paid him any heed.
Mato sucked on his lip. This wasn’t how he’d imagined it. Searching the faces, he tried to see which one was the leader. But the clay and the charcoal made them all look the same. With a sigh, he wagged a finger towards the nearest warrior and squatted to face him.
The man dragged the whetstone along the edge of his blade with slow, deliberate strokes. The steel sang.
‘My name is Mato,’ the Grim Wolf began.
The Eater of the Dead didn’t look up; didn’t acknowledge his presence at all.
‘We are not so different, you and I,’ Mato continued, knowing his words were lost on his companion, but hoping the tone would soothe. ‘We are born, and we love, and we dream. We have our gods, and our hopes for a life beyond this one.’ He swallowed, lulling himself with the rhythm of his speech. He looked down at the settling snow and found he was talking to himself too. ‘I saw your kind on your island. There are some who feel you are little more than beasts. You feast on the flesh of our own, something that fills us with disgust. And yet there’s more to you, I’m sure. You care for your children and love your women. You pray to your gods … you believe. You make music. Those are not the actions of beasts.’
The whine of the whetstone had ended. Mato raised his head and stared into the eyes of the warrior opposite. Had his calm tone reached the man? As if in answer to his question, the Attacotti warrior began to sing. The notes rose up from the depths of him, at first seemingly random, but then forming an odd melody that rose and fell repeatedly. Mato was reminded of the wind above the trees.
He furrowed his brow. Profound emotions rose unbidden from the deepest part of him, as if the song was a spell which could conjure up memories and hopes and fears that he’d long hidden away. And as he juddered with that rising tide, the other Attacotti picked up the melody, their voices pushing it higher, harmonizing, until the music rolled around him in waves and he felt transported to another place, where the sun shone on a cool glade, and all was right with the world.
Mato closed his eyes and saw his sister standing there, welcoming him with open arms. She was as he remembered her before the day she was snatched away: locked in time, for ever young, eternally innocent.
Entwined in the melody, he somehow knew that death was no threat to the Attacotti, and the miseries of this world were as nothing. Joy lay at the heart of everything.
As the song ebbed away, his eyes fluttered open. Most of the Attacotti were still hunched over their tasks, but the warrior opposite him was staring. Mato followed that gaze to see blood seeping from a cut on his arm. He’d torn his flesh pushing through a gap between two holly bushes on his way to the camp.
Mato stiffened, unease running through his head. His companion eyed the cut, then raised his hand and called out in his strange tongue. Two other Attacotti rose from their positions and came over to eye the dripping blood. Finally, one of them dipped into a leather pouch at his hip and dropped to his haunches.
Cool fingers folded round Mato’s wrist, gentler than he could have expected. Then the new arrival was smearing a thick paste on the cut. The wound stung, but only for a moment, and Mato felt a not unpleasant tingling in that region. He was surprised. The healing paste was a kindness he had never expected.
The time had come.
Plucking up the stick he’d broken off a branch on the way over, he scratched out a drawing in the hard earth: a one-armed man wearing a crown.
‘Lucanus. Pendragon,’ he said.
The warrior stared at the image, then looked at Mato. He seemed to understand.
Mato dragged out an outline of a second man. He tapped his fingers against his chest. ‘Mato.’
The Attacotti seemed to understand this too.
How many times had he imagined this moment, turned over his decision, since he had overheard Lucanus and Catia talking about the fate that awaited the Wolf when the battle was done? He had been hunting in the woods, had heard their voices; had been on the point of hailing them when he had seen Catia fall into Lucanus’ embrace. The anguish etched in their faces at that moment, and heavy in their words, had almost been unbearable.
