The Bear King, page 9
part #3 of Dark Age Series
This was to be his last. Now he wanted to drink in every sight and sound.
But that reek! The charnel house was next to their prison hut. He’d seen the piles of bones as the Grim Wolves had been herded past, heard the whick-whick-whick of small knives cleaning off the last of the flesh.
The Eaters of the Dead lived every day with one foot in the grave.
‘Are you awake?’ Niall’s lilting voice rolled out through the shadows at his back.
‘I am now, you bastard,’ Solinus grumbled.
‘Aye,’ Bellicus replied. ‘I slept as soundly as if I was in my bed at home.’
‘You’ll be sleeping soundly for the rest of eternity soon enough,’ Solinus said.
Bellicus rolled over and heaved himself into a sitting position. The truth was, his night had been filled with terrors. He could feel the sweat trickling down his back and the clamminess of his tunic. But he would never tell the others that. He looked round at the other five shapes, slowly taking on form and detail as the ruddy light of their last dawn leaked through the doorway. At least he would die with his brothers. He couldn’t ask for more.
It was warm enough already. The rest of the day would be a furnace – what part of it he would see.
‘We knew it would come sooner or later,’ he said.
‘But this way!’ Comitinus’ voice cracked. ‘All the battles we’ve fought. All the enemies we’ve had at our heels, to go this way! There’s no justice.’
‘Or the gods have seen fit to punish us.’ Apullius sat up and leaned back against the wattle wall.
‘We were mad to come here,’ Comitinus went on. Solinus kicked out at him.
‘Mad, aye, but honourable,’ Niall of the Nine Hostages said. ‘Lesser men would have found some excuse not to travel to this foul place. But you did it for the love of your friend Lucanus, and the love of your queen. Men like you, you had no choice.’
They fell silent for a long moment. Too much honesty stung.
‘Though I can’t say I’ll ever forgive you for bringing me with you,’ Niall added after a while. ‘When we get to the Land of Endless Summer, I’ll kick your arse every morning and twice at night.’
‘Will they bleed us?’ Comitinus asked. ‘Will they roast us alive? Will they feed on us as we lie in their hall?’
Mysteries. That’s all there was in this place. Bellicus watched the sky grow rosy, trying to force from his mind the image of the mewling idiot-king gambolling around his hall. What did it mean, to be led by someone like that? Was he the twisted product of some poisoned bloodline? Did they choose him? He was not fit to guide anyone, that was certain.
What gods did they worship? Why did they consume the dead, when there was food aplenty? Those strange, soaring songs that sounded like birds at feast. The silence that hung over them like a shroud when they fought. No oaths, no battle-cries. And yet they loved their families and honoured their dead. There was no sense in the world.
Apullius shuffled beside him. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Catulus.’
‘Your dog?’
‘Do dogs run through fields in the Summerlands?’
‘All that you want you’ll find there, so Myrrdin says, and he knows these things. You’ll see Catulus again.’
For a moment, Bellicus felt a pang of regret for all the mistakes he’d made, and a desperate yearning for peace. He pushed it aside. Life was good as long as you didn’t weaken.
Voices echoed through the stillness of the dawn. Whatever peace there was in the world outside was already gone. Bellicus cocked his head, picking out the cries of children, the greetings of women emerging into the first light. The grunts of men came next, the whole merging into a hubbub of excitement.
It began to draw their way.
‘This is it,’ Mato said. He’d been sitting to one side, his head bowed as if in prayer.
‘Keep the fire in your hearts, brothers,’ Bellicus said, his voice rising to thunder, ‘and we will meet again in the Summerlands and we will drink wine and ale until we drown in our cups.’
The clamour crashed around their hut, and then a band of white-crusted Attacotti warriors surged in, grabbing them and hauling them out into the light. Bellicus thrashed with his shoulders and kicked out, roaring a curse on all their hides. A hilt cracked against his temple and he crashed to his knees. As he fought to hold on to his wits, those rough hands grabbed him again and he was flying away.
Buffeted by the surging crowd, he glimpsed the lines of shacks blur by, and then they were in the woods once more. Oak and ash and holly flashed by, branches criss-crossing a sky turning blue. On to a narrow track plunging away from the settlement, into the dense, dark heart of the woods. Over a glinting stream, past a rock hunched like a sleeping bear, the din never subsiding even for a moment. It seemed as though everyone in that settlement had come to witness his final moment.
And then the pace slowed. Bellicus glimpsed two towering yew trees ahead, knotted with age. The narrow track passed between them. His whirling thoughts half remembered something Myrrdin had said about a gate formed by twin yews, but it was whisked away before he could catch it.
All the excited tumult vanished in an instant as the branches of the yews swept by overhead, and then there was only birdsong. Bellicus felt his skin prickle at the eeriness of the quiet after the deafening clamour of the excited crowd.
They came to a halt. The hands pulled away from him and he pushed himself up. Mato stepped to his right elbow and Apullius to his left. He sensed the others breathing heavily at his back.
‘What is that place?’ Apullius breathed.
Ahead of them, in the deep shade of the greenwood, was a building that looked as if it had been thrust from the earth itself, as ancient as those mighty yews. Rocks had been piled up around the base, green with lichen and sprouting fern. Branches and turf formed the roof. The entrance was a jagged slash like the mouth of a cave.
Bellicus’ gaze flickered towards what lay all around. Skulls, a mountain of them, piled up by the walls, tumbling away into the undergrowth, some brown and shattered with age, others gleaming as white as if they had been picked clean only the previous day. Two spikes guarded the path to the entrance, and on the top of them were heads, the eyes mere black holes that still seemed to peer into his soul, the cheekbones protruding through the fraying remnants of leathery skin.
No one spoke.
For a moment, the crowd waited soundlessly. One of the Attacotti stepped forward. He was festooned with necklaces of bones – perhaps a priest, Bellicus thought. He stared into the dark maw of the building and uttered five words in that strange, rolling tongue. A spell, it sounded like, or a prayer.
The echoes died away. Bellicus stared, feeling his chest tighten, unsure what was to happen next. And then he glimpsed movement in the darkness of the entrance, and a figure lurched out into the light.
Bellicus squinted into a dazzling ray of light that carved through the canopy of the woods over the figure’s head, almost as if the gods had blinded him so he would not lay eyes upon this Attacotti recluse. But then he shifted to one side, and as his vision came into focus he felt his heart begin to pound.
‘Could it be?’ he heard Mato breathe beside him.
The man was tall and slender, his hair and beard as wild as those of the forest folk, though the cheeks beneath were gaunt and the eyes hollow. His tunic and leggings were little more than filthy rags, and a cloak hung from his thin shoulders that seemed to have been patched together from the remnants of many other cloaks. Yet even through the grimy trappings, Bellicus could see the man he had known since he was a boy.
‘Lucanus?’ he whispered, a question becoming realization that ended with a jubilant ‘Lucanus!’
As his long-lost brother turned that gaze upon him, he felt his joy wash away in an icy deluge. The eyes were like deep pits in a frozen land, and in them Bellicus could glimpse no recognition. Indeed, he thought, they looked like the eyes of that idiot-king in the great hall, devoid of wits, tinged with the madness of the Wilds.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Apullius cried, the words filled with a terrible chill. His joy at seeing the man who had been like a father to him was cracking by the moment.
The Attacotti priest swept one hand out towards the captives. His display ended with a strange cacophony of shrieking sounds.
Lucanus stepped between the two severed heads and peered down at the men he once knew better than any other. Bellicus watched that cold gaze sweep across them, focusing on each in turn, and then Lucanus seemed to reach some conclusion. He turned to the warrior-priest and flicked back the patchwork cloak.
Comitinus gasped. Bellicus reeled.
Lucanus’ left arm was missing. The stump at the shoulder was tied in a filthy rag.
In that moment, Bellicus understood the source of the madness, perhaps the reason for those lost wits. Was this how Lucanus had survived among the Eaters of the Dead for so long? He was not consumed in one great feast, an old king giving up his powers to these hellish people in a ritual that was as old as time. No, they would draw on those powers for as long as they could, take small sips from the cup.
Bellicus felt sickened. What magic did they use to keep his friend alive? What agonies must he have suffered? And then he looked into his brother’s eyes, and all thought fled.
Lucanus levelled that terrifying stare at them one more time and said, ‘They are worthless. The secrets of this place must be kept close. Kill them all.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Labyrinth
BELLICUS FLUNG HIMSELF FORWARD AND STARED DEEP INTO his friend’s eyes. ‘Wake yourself from this madness,’ he commanded. ‘Remember Catia, your wife. She’s waiting for you. Remember your son, Weylyn.’
A tumult exploded at his back. When Bellicus heard the cries of the other Grim Wolves, he realized they were trying to block their captors from reaching him. He had only a moment.
‘This pouch, at my hip,’ he urged. ‘Take it.’
Lucanus’ eyes flickered down.
‘In there … a token from your wife. A token that shows all Catia’s love for you. Don’t abandon her, brother. She needs you more than ever.’
Hands gripped his arms and wrenched him back. He spun to the ground, blows raining down. Those ashen faces blocked out the sky, black-ringed eyes staring down, unblinking, until darkness swallowed him.
When he awoke, he breathed in the familiar reek of rot. He was in the hut again, the whick-whick-whick of tiny blades echoing from the charnel house.
Solinus’ voice rolled out. ‘Thought you were dead.’
Bellicus eased himself up, blinking away the lances of pain in his skull. The others sat around, heads hung low.
‘Nothing can kill him,’ Apullius said after a while.
‘Not even the Attacotti,’ Comitinus added. ‘Lucanus is the King Who Will Not Die.’
‘He fucking killed us, though, didn’t he?’ Solinus grumbled. ‘Could have said no, no, set them free. I remember having a drink with them in the tavern in Vercovicium, but no. Die, you bastards. That’s all the thanks we get for being loyal.’
‘What happened to him?’ Apullius asked.
Mato heaved himself to his feet. ‘What man could survive among the Attacotti and keep both hands on their sanity?’
Niall of the Nine Hostages grunted. ‘Well, I was right. You have to give me that.’
‘Little good it does us,’ Solinus said. ‘We were lured here on a promise, only for all that hope to turn to shit. As usual.’
‘Lucanus is pretending,’ Apullius said, forcing desperate hope into his voice. ‘The only way he could live among the Attacotti was to act as if he was an ally. A great leader from a different tribe who could counsel them. That was the bargain he made. When he saw us, he couldn’t do anything to save us then and there. He’ll be cunning – that’s the Lucanus we all know. He’ll find a way to save us.’
Bellicus stared at the young Grim Wolf. ‘I looked into his eyes. The Lucanus we once knew is long gone.’ He turned away as he saw the despair rise in Apullius’ face; it was too painful to watch. ‘False hope won’t help us.’
A grim silence fell across the hut, broken only by the endless whick-whick-whick from the charnel house that whispered of their coming doom.
And yet for all his words, he still felt a spark of hope deep inside him. A wish. A prayer. At this point, nothing more. But it was all he had.
The pouch that he had carried at his hip was missing.
There is a labyrinth, and at the end, in the dark, awaits a monster.
Lucanus closed his eyes and stepped into the maze. He’d been venturing into the winding tunnels ever since he was a boy and his father had first told him the tale. He’d never dared reach the end. The terror had always gripped him when he’d heard the low rumble of breath and the snorts in the gloom, and he’d fled back into waking.
Lucanus. That was his name. It felt odd when he turned it over. The name of a stranger. The name of a man who once had a life, and a love, and friends, and had walked a hard road but found peace. There was no monster waiting for that man.
Lucanus, the Wolf.
His stomach knotted when he remembered it.
A step into the dark. Then another. Acid rose in his throat as the dread wrapped its arms around him.
His fingertips crumpled the soft blue ribbon, and he raised it to his nose, breathing in the faintest scent of perfume. A rush of sensations followed, of a kiss in the dark, and a hand in his, warm breath upon his ear and words that gave him the strength to keep going when his legs wanted to fall away beneath him. The delirium of a soaring heart.
Too much.
He yanked the ribbon away. The dark was better. On he went, blindly, a turn here, another there. Lost in the labyrinth.
A soft padding whispered ahead. He flinched, but this was not the monster. Out of the dark prowled an old wolf, silver-backed with age. It came to a halt, staring at him with luminous eyes, and he recognized it instantly. This was the majestic beast he had killed in the bitter cold of the Wilds beyond the wall near Vercovicium, that night of ritual when he had moved from being a boy to becoming one of the Grim Wolves. It had sacrificed itself for him, and he had drawn its spirit inside, so he could gain its powers. Just as the Attacotti did.
The old king must die so the new king can rise. That was always the way. And a good king always offered himself willingly to the great, never-ending cycle of existence.
‘Your time is not yet done, Lucanus,’ the wolf said. ‘The Pendragon, the great war-leader of the Britons, is needed.’
‘Lucanus is dead,’ Lucanus said.
He turned away, down another path, to avoid the judgement he saw in those eyes.
As he walked, memories surfaced, and he realized he had been here not long ago, that night in Goibniu’s Smithy, when Myrrdin had fed him the ritual mushrooms and invited him to meet the gods. And he had. Cernunnos, and the Morrigan, her beauty and ferocity driving him to the edge of madness. The Morrigan had warned him how his end would come. But there was honour in it, and sacrifice for his loved ones, and he was not to be afraid.
More footsteps, tiny ones, running. Braided blonde hair flying, a laughing girl raced out of the dark from a side tunnel, pausing briefly to stare at him before continuing on her way. It was Catia, he remembered now. From that time when they first ran together in the fields of the north, when they were truly happy and he realized he loved her and would love her for all time. The simple views of a child. And yet there was truth in it.
In the dark ahead, the monster rumbled and paced, snorting hot breath. He felt dread knot his chest and he wanted to flee back.
Around the next corner, Myrrdin waited, leaning on his staff. On his open hand, a mushroom. Such a small thing, but it allowed a man to speak to the gods. Used by the followers of the Christ, and Mithras, and Jupiter, and Cernunnos, by all priests since the earliest days, so the wood-priest had said. This was one of the secrets the druids kept.
Myrrdin snapped his fingers shut, and when he opened them again, the mushroom was gone. Of course. He must have eaten it, as he had eaten one of the ritual fungi every day since he had walked out of Tintagel and into the long night with the Attacotti. They had fed it to him as part of their ritual, as they fed.
Without the mushroom, he would have gone mad, he was sure of it.
His nostrils flared at the sense-memory of the bitter unguents they had smeared on his vanishing arm, that had somehow kept the rot at bay, and the foul potions they had forced across his cracked lips to keep him alive when other men would have long since given up the spark.
He could not remember this. He could not.
Other figures came and went in the dark, some he barely recognized. Old friends, old enemies, many who had long since sailed across the western sea to the Summerlands.
Lucanus sensed the next visitor long before he saw him. Perhaps it was a familiar musk, though how he could remember it after so many years he didn’t know. But when he rounded a corner his father was waiting for him, as he had known he would be.
‘Are you really here?’ Lucanus asked.
‘Aye,’ Lucanus the Elder lied. He had died long, long ago when he had vanished into the Wilds, Lucanus knew that. And yet he felt troubled by one thing. His father’s tunic and leggings were smeared green from a life in the forest, and he rested one hand on the hilt of a broadsword, the tip touching the stone of the floor. Under his arm was tucked a familiar helmet, twin eyelets and a slit down to the chin with sides that reached to the jawline. The last time he had seen it, it was being worn by the Lord of the Greenwood, the servant of Cernunnos, who moved among the forest folk, far from the eyes of civilized men.
‘I’ve missed you, Father.’
‘We’ll be together soon enough, as we once were. For now, I have a message for you. Your work is not yet done.’
Lucanus’ shoulders sagged and he felt a bone-weariness flood him.
‘You’ve walked the edge of the great black ocean, and you’ve stood at the gates of the Land of Endless Summer,’ his father continued in the rough tones of the north, ‘but a light has been lit in your home, calling you back. The work is not yet done, my son. The dragon has not yet risen. And all that you’ve fought for stands to be lost if you don’t return.’
