Hag of the Hills, page 32
I stood in contrast to him. I had my green cloak, yellow tunic, green-yellow check trousers, felt rusty-yellow hat, and Vidav strapped to my side in the scabbard Verc made for me. My hair and beard were still short, though fuzzy now, and it would have been difficult for anyone to recognize me that knew me before Dun Ashaig fell. Now I hardly knew, yet knew deeply so, the one who stood before me.
‘Why are you here?’ He asked.
‘To bury Bodvoc,’ I said.
‘Isn’t he already buried?’
‘Not his skull, last I was here.’
We came closer, and then he put a hand on my face.
‘Good to see you.’
‘Good to see you too, Fennigus.’
‘I’ll help you deal with his skull.’
I had nothing else to say. I just walked over to the midden where Bodvoc’s body had been tossed. My men waited at the road, and then more shining ones came on the hill and watched us. Bodvoc’s skull hung propped on a post in the centre of the midden. We took it down and placed it on a small wicker mat, picked up shovels, and then got to work. Hoofbeats sounded the Eponian riders. They sat horsed and watched us from the road, and their leader dismounted and approached us.
Fennigus and I got to work on the midden. I turned my head to the Eponian approaching, and found him to be Talorc. Talorc was not an Eponian. Being the prince, he was above them. He rode with them, though, and now he approached us looking confused.
‘What are you doing, Vidav?’ he asked me.
‘Vidav?’ Fennigus asked me.
‘I’m no longer Brennus,’ I said. I handed the shovel to Talorc and grabbed the grip of my sword. I unsheathed Vidav and the shining ones on the hill alerted, but relaxed when I flipped it over and handed it to Fennigus. Fennigus took it, balanced the blade on his finger, then turned away from me and waved it around.
‘A bronze sword,’ he said.
‘Vidav is the name of the sword, and my name now,’ I said.
Fennigus handed me back the sword. ‘I liked Brenn better.’
‘Cammios named me,’ I said. I sheathed Vidav.
‘What? Cammios?’ Fennigus asked.
‘Yes, Cammios.’
‘Did he tell you what he did?’ Fennigus asked, his face reddening.
‘No.’
‘Back at the battle, he made a deal with the Hillmen to hand his warriors over to them. They let him go in return – they usually execute druids, you know. My boys and I all became oathbound to the queen of the Hillmen thanks to him,’ he said, as he turned to the midden and dug into it hard.
Cammios, you wretched bastard. I hope it hurt.
‘He’s dead now.’
‘We’re under her oath until Samhain.’
‘And I under Fenn Beg Corm,’ I said.
We dug into the midden, and soon it shrunk, and the spoil pile on the other side of the trackway rose. Talorc sat down and watched us, undoubtfully to tattle to his father what I had been up to.
The midden had been dug down completely. There was pottery in there, shells, old animal bones, peat and who knows what else, and plenty of human bones, and what I thought were dog bones. They were all strewn, and we piled them all up. There were three skulls, probably the slaves, and half the skull of Lappie.
‘So, we should build a mound, right near the road, so all that pass know a brave man died there,’ I said.
‘No,’ Fennigus said, ‘his skull should be mounted on my horse, so that my enemies know that a brave man’s shade protects me.’
‘Why should it be your horse? I found him.’
‘Your horse is dead.’
‘I will get another.’
‘Then you could have him for half the year, and I the other half.’
‘But what about the mound?’ Talorc asked.
‘Yeah, what about the mound? He should be buried like dad is, with Lappie and the slaves in his grave,’ I said.
‘No, it is not our custom to build burial mounds,’ Fennigus said.
‘Said the Hillman,’ Talorc said.
‘Take that back!’ Fennigus said in a low voice, lip raised. ‘We are not Hillmen! Hillmen don’t use iron weapons. We are different!’
Fennigus looked gruffly at me. ‘Who is this annoying little midge that sits here and bites my ear?’
‘The son of Fenn Beg Corm,’ I said.
‘And why is he here? To watch you, like a child? Leave us,’ he said.
‘I am the prince of Dun Torrin – Vidav, is this the queen’s puppy?’
Fennigus dropped the shovel. ‘Off with you, you runty little princeling.’
‘Answer, Vidav,’ Talorc said. ‘Is he the queen’s puppy?’
‘Just who is this queen – why does she have the same name as the Slighan Hill?’ I asked.
‘She was born on Slighan peak, to a giantess,’ Fennigus said, and then Talorc spoke.
‘Vidav – is he the queen’s puppy?’
‘Looks like it,’ I said, and before I could say and I am Fenn Beg Corm’s puppy, Fennigus drew his sword. Talorc rose to his feet, and showed his palms.
‘I’m unarmed,’ he said, ‘and it was Vidav who called you the queen’s puppy, not me.’
Fennigus looked at me, he did not sheath his sword, but he lowered it.
‘Should the Hillmen have your brother’s skull, Vidav?’ Talorc asked.
‘Stay out of this!’ Fennigus yelled at him.
And now, Luceo, I erred. I erred badly, but I do not regret it, because the skull of Bodvoc does not belong to the Hillmen.
‘You’re a Hillman,’ I said, and I snatched the skull from the ground. ‘And I’m taking it, Fennigus.’
He sneered. ‘No, you’re not.’
‘I am.’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
I turned to walk away, and Fennigus dropped his sword and grabbed the skull. He tried to yank it out of my hand, and I dug my fingers into poor old Bodvoc’s eye sockets. I dug my feet into the ground and pulled against Fennigus with all I could, and Fennigus pulled back, hard, and harder, and then he grinned and let go. I plummeted backward, the skull flying out of my hands. I thudded to the ground and the skull crashed upon a boulder, and shattered the nose bones. Both Fennigus and I said nothing.
‘He broke your brother’s skull!’ Talorc said.
‘You!’ Fennigus snatched the sword from the ground and rushed Talorc. Talorc raised his palms to Fennigus, but Fennigus raised his sword. Talorc fled. He fled down the trackway, vaulted over the fence, all the while shouting for his men who had gone to idle somewhere. They came back now, at-arms, and now Fennigus whistled for his boys.
My eyes drew back to the skull of Bodvoc, cracked, face broken, and now Fennigus and the boys and Talorc and his men posed for battle. They clashed there on the pasture.
I escaped. I crossed the trackway and into the moorlands, and met my men there as the clamour of battle erupted behind me. I spun around, hand on my hilt, and there nine shining ones sword-danced against nine Eponians. The gold of the shining ones sparkled in the grey day as they manoeuvred against the long shields and long bright swords of the Eponians.
There, the now black-haired Fennigus dodged, and parried, and thrust, and pivoted against an Eponian with wild black hair. My brother and his foe snapped into combat, went blow for blow, and snapped back unscathed, then again. Fennigus’ sweat glistened in the sun under his glowing gold, his iron sword singing through the air. I found myself short of breath as I gazed upon his duel.
‘They can fight this themselves,’ Marthelm said. ‘They didn’t help us against the shining ones.’
‘It’s too bad,’ I said. ‘It’s been too long since I’ve fought.’
What a lie, Luceo. I sighed and smiled, and we all walked down the trackway, away from the fight.
My home melded into the redness of the moors as we headed down the trackway, Dun Torrin bound. The last I saw of my home was the smoke from the hearthfire billowing into the sky. An Eponian rider raced past us. I left Fennigus there, fighting at my home. I did not worry for him, because I knew he’d win that fight. He was Biturix’s son, after all.
In the high afternoon, we arrived at Dun Torrin. Much commotion had budded, with warriors gathered in clusters, and Fenn Beg Corm standing on a dais flanked by his druids. We learned that peace with the Hillmen had ended. The war began again.
At nightfall, I waited for the last embers of the fire to flicker out outside our tents. Everyone had gone to sleep except the sentries that now guarded Dun Torrin by torchlight, Marthelm and I. Chaser slept under my feet.
‘It’s late,’ Marthelm said, ‘go to bed. The Hillmen may attack at daybreak.’
‘I can’t sleep.’
‘You must sleep.’
‘But I can’t.’
‘You were hoping that peace would last until Samhain, when your brother would have been relieved of his oath, yes?’
‘That damn Talorc,’ I said. ‘Just who does he think he is, starting up a fight like that? I should have shooed him away as soon as I realized what he was doing.’
‘Do not dwell on the backward, just forward, like our march down the strand.’
I sighed and it grew darker around, I reached into my pouch and fingered the ivory lion-man, a visage of my ancestor.
‘I don’t want to fight him,’ I said.
‘It does not matter what you want, it matters what the spinsters have spun for us.’
‘The spinsters spin me wrong. He’d beat me, anyway. He is a much better fighter.’
‘Then you will train, so you would give him a good fight.’
The last ember died. It was all dark now, save for the torchlights gliding outside the walls of the fort, and in the distant hills.
‘If I have to fight him, then I want to make him proud.’
Marthelm stood up, and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘Fight proud, for one of you will die first, and when you meet the other in the afterlife, you can then look each other in the eyes.’
He left.
I sat in in the dark silence for a spell. I knew now that I would have to fight Fennigus.
For a price…
Come back to the Slighan Hill!
EPILOGUE
My voice wanes now, my dearest Luceo! Now the fire blazes bright, the smoke is so dense that it clogs our throats, and the food so savoury that our mouths water when we think of it. We have a good life, my man. I am hoarse like a frog.
We’ve gone for a long ride. I don’t have much more to say tonight, I feel myself right to settle down into my bed and sleep like the frog I sound like.
‘It was a long tale, my lord. Get some rest. Tomorrow Osimus will light the fire again, and you will tell me of the war before Samhain, and the events that led me to you.’
‘Yes, indeed! It is so cold outside, we have little to do but to speak, unless we are assaulted tomorrow. We have full bellies, warm feet, and women in our beds. How can we possibly convince the men to go lift some cattle in the snow?
‘But tell me, Luceo. I’ve poured everything to you, overflowed, like a drunken wine-pourer. What shall you leave out?’
‘A lot, my lord. Some things are best left out, and some things are best put in. It’s the will of the gods what the bards record, and not the work of man. Besides, it all ought to rhyme.’
‘You bards weave strange tales.’
‘Lord, your posterity will thank me for it!’
The duology concludes in The Lion of Skye, released August 2022.
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THE LION OF SKYE
There can only be one Lion of Skye!
Vidav must defeat his brother in order to fulfil his oath to kill the Queen of the Hillmen.
If he does not fulfil his oath, his clan will be unavenged, and the Isle of Skye will remain under enemy rule.
If he does fulfil his oath, his brother may die.
Even worse, a dragon has been flying over Skye…
The Lion of Skye is the epic conclusion to the Bronze Sword Cycles duology, a historical fiction adventure set in 200 B.C. on the Isle of Skye, steeped in Celtic mythology and culture.
AVAILABLE NOW: EBOOK AND PRINT!
TOMB OF THE BLUE DEMONS
The Druid Ambicatos embarks on a journey of intrigue that quickly turns into war, when he arrives in war-torn Italia, under siege by the Carthaginians.
While the war rages, Ambicatos falls for a mysterious woman some call the Sorceress, who claims she has discovered the sight, the power of the Underworld.
Ambicatos must fight friend and foe alike in this epic novella, a prequel to Hag of the Hills, the Bronze Sword Cycles duology.
This novella is part of Celtic historical fiction series The Bronze Sword Cycles, set in 200 BC.
AVAILABLE NOW: EBOOK
THE VIKING GAEL SAGA
In a time when marauders stoke fear in the hearts of Kings and commoners, a Viking named Ulf the Old comes to collect a debt owed to him by demanding that brothers Asgeir and Odd join his crew.
Not eager to leave their life behind, the brothers challenge Ulf and his son to a duel, but are defeated when Ulf slays Odd.
With his wounded pride and shattered heart, Asgeir joins Ulf’s Vikings, and swears to avenge his brother. But as the days unfold, they face a barrage of attacks from every direction.
Will Asgeir win back his family’s honor? Or will he find himself slowly developing camaraderie with Ulf?.
AVAILABLE NOW: EBOOK AND PRINT!
AFTERWORD
This work is what I term heroic prehistoric fantasy fiction. Prehistoric does not mean cavemen, stone tools, and primitiveness, but simply that people did not write their history down themselves. They instead had oral traditions, and we know much about them from archaeological research. Moreover, others – namely the Romans and Greeks – wrote about them.
As an archaeologist, it is imperative that I stress that this is a work of fiction. I have taken great artistic liberty with many aspects of the Iron Age of Britain, as well as contemporary Europe and its myriad cultures and peoples. The book deals specifically with cultures most people would term Celts. It must be said that the people we could call Celts were not a monolithic culture, but a plethora of different cultures, with differing mores, beliefs, two separate languages (P and Q Celtic), and so forth. Nevertheless, some common threads do unite what we could call the Celts from linguistic to material culture. Someone attuned to various scholarly debates about the Celts will undoubtfully have picked up that the characters themselves often recognize these nuances.
That being said, I do appreciate and yearn for historical accuracy in period fiction. I find it a shame that so few depictions of the past, particularly peoples such as Celts or Vikings in media hardly understand the people or periods they are portraying. It ought to change, because it is better to strive for historical accuracy while taking artistic liberties. Stories about the past will become richer when they are enriched by historical sources, from archaeological, textual, folkloric, linguistic, anthropological, and so forth. The incredible amount of research put forth by academics, past and present, should not be neglected by fiction writers. Nonfiction is often conducted with love, and most researchers love the people and the past they dedicate their lives to studying, and fiction writers can only better their stories with that love.
In retrospect, I believe that I have done an adequate job in depicting many aspects of the world of 200 B.C. as accurately as possible while still employing artistic liberties. Most of all, I was unafraid to attempt to portray the past as how I interpreted someone living in 200 B.C. would have experienced it, that is, often alien and uncomfortable to a reader in the 21st century. It however must be reiterated that much of what we know about the past, especially the distant past, is open to interpretation, and neither I nor anyone else can ever claim complete and utter historical accuracy, no matter how ideal the interpretation.
This book focuses on Celtic mythology. As Professor J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: “[Celtic myths] have bright colour, but are like a broken stained-glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact mad.”
Those familiar with Celtic mythology will understand that I mixed deities and the spellings of deities from different Celtic languages, figures, and concepts from a blend of Irish mythology, Welsh mythology, Gallo-Roman, and Romano-British attestations, and later folklore from England, Wales, Man, Ireland, and especially Scotland. This was intentional, and I refer to the great professor to sum up the reasons for this.
APPENDIX
This book contains some references to words that may not be apparent or known to the average reader. I have composed a short guide here:
Amazons – legendary warrior women from Greek myth, often depicted on classical Greek art, such as the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon. Said to inhabit the northern part of the Black Sea. Referred to in Celtic myths.
Bards – first attested by Roman sources, a bard is a common word in the modern English language. In the context of this book, these are historians and record keepers. They are also poetry-crafters and are able to praise or besmirch others with their rhymes.
Druids – first attested to in Roman sources, and continuing to be attested in Irish (medieval) myth, this is a complicated term for an even more complicated aspect of Iron Age Britain, often hotly debated by scholars. In short, druids were likely a priestly ruling class, that may have been engaged in more than just religious rituals, but lawyers, judges, generals, rulers, physicians, and other professions all rolled into one. A druidess is a woman druid, attested to in Irish myth.
