Dark Eagle VIII: Shadow Walker, page 12
‘Too many men,’ he said finally, crouching beside a muddy stream bank where dozens of footprints overlapped. ‘Far too many for a normal patrol or hunting party.’
‘How many?’
‘Hundreds. Perhaps thousands.’ Cadoc stood, brushing mud from his hands. ‘And they’re not all Silures.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look at the boot prints.’ Cadoc pointed to impressions in the soft earth. ‘Silures wear leather shoes, soft-soled for moving quietly through the forest. But see these? Iron hobnails, Roman-style but badly made.’
‘Refugees?’
‘Or something worse.’ Cadoc’s expression was grim. ‘We need to know what we’re dealing with.’
He led them off the main track, following a goat path that climbed steeply through stands of pine and juniper. The going was hard on the horses, and they had to dismount frequently to lead them over rocky sections, but gradually they ascended toward a ridge that would give them a view of the valley beyond. What they saw from the crest took their breath away.
Spread across the valley floor and up and beyond the next hill was a camp that defied comprehension, not the ordered lines of a Roman military encampment, but a sprawling maze of tents, lean-tos, and temporary shelters that stretched for miles in every direction. Cookfires sent columns of smoke into the still air, and the movement of people resembled an anthill that had been disturbed.
‘Gods preserve us,’ Falco whispered.
But it was the banners that made everything clear. Not the familiar standards of Silurian clans, but a mixture of tribal emblems from across the unconquered territories, the bear of the Ordovices, the raven of the Brigantes, the boar of the Caledonii. And rising above them all, on a hill at the camp’s centre, flew a standard Falco recognised from intelligence reports: the red dragon of the British war leader who had been declared dead more than once but somehow continued to elude Roman justice.
‘Caratacus,’ Cadoc breathed, his voice mixing awe and dread in equal measure. ‘The last time I saw him he was wounded and at death’s door. It seems Mordred’s medicine must have saved him. I thought he was finished.’
‘So did we all,’ said Falco. ‘But look at them. Where have they all come from?’
‘I suspect they are mainly survivors from a dozen defeated tribes,’ said Cadoc, ‘as well as refugees from burned villages, young men seeking glory and old warriors seeking vengeance. He’s gathering them all.’
‘How many do you reckon,’ asked Falco.
‘There must be five thousand, perhaps more. And growing.’ He pointed to distant figures on the camp’s perimeter, where new arrivals still arrived from multiple directions. ‘Word is spreading. The tribes are uniting under his banner.’
Falco watched in fascinated horror as the scale of the gathering became clear. This wasn’t just an army, it was a migration, entire peoples abandoning their ancestral lands to join something that promised either glorious victory or honourable death. Children played between the tents whilst their mothers prepared meals, elders sat in council circles debating strategy, and warriors drilled with weapons that ranged from captured Roman steel to bronze axes that had been old when Caesar first crossed the channel.
‘Vespasian needs to know about this,’ said Falco finally. ‘We should turn back and warn the legions. Let them deal with Mordred.’
‘Should we?’ Cadoc’s voice was carefully neutral. ‘How many times has the druid slipped through Roman fingers? How many opportunities lost because other priorities intervened?’
It was the moral dilemma Falco had been dreading. Military intelligence demanded that he return immediately with news of Caratacus’s resurrection. But Mordred remained the primary threat, a man whose influence could corrupt entire regions, who had nearly assassinated an emperor, who represented a danger that transcended mere military considerations.
‘If we pursue Mordred and this army moves against the legions...’ Falco began.
‘Then good men die,’ Cadoc finished. ‘Roman soldiers, yes, but also British warriors who might have lived peaceful lives if not for the call of a hopeless war.’
They retreated from the ridge as darkness began to fall, finding shelter in a grove of pine trees where they could speak freely without fear of discovery. Neither man was comfortable with the choice before them and they talked quietly, debating which problem to deal with first.
Finally, Cadoc nodded slowly.
‘My people have a saying: "The wolf in the forest is more dangerous than the bear in the meadow." Caratacus is the bear, visible, direct, and manageable with sufficient force. But Mordred...’
‘Mordred is the wolf.’ Falco stared into their small, carefully shielded fire. ‘Hidden, patient, and infinitely more deadly.’
‘Then we hunt the wolf,’ said Cadoc. ‘And pray the bear doesn’t devour the countryside whilst we’re gone.’
As they settled into their blankets for another night in hostile territory, both men carried the weight of a decision that might doom thousands. But in a world where every choice led to blood, sometimes the only honour lay in choosing which deaths to accept responsibility for.
Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Mordred waited in his stronghold of mist and madness. And behind them, an army gathered that could reshape the future of Britannia.
----
Chapter Sixteen
Rome
The drainage grate near the old bridge yielded to Veteranus’s blade with a grinding shriek of rusted iron. Below, darkness yawned like an open mouth, exhaling the accumulated stench of centuries. Sica covered his nose with his cloak, but the smell penetrated everything, decay, human waste, and something else, something sweet and cloying that spoke of death left too long undisturbed.
‘Ready?’ Veteranus whispered, though the word seemed absurd. No man could be ready for what lay beneath.
The first thing that struck Sica was the water, not the steady flow of an active sewer, but stagnant pools that reflected their torchlight like black mirrors. The liquid came up to their knees, thick with sediment and worse things. Something soft and yielding squelched beneath his foot, and when he looked down, a human hand broke the surface, fingers splayed as if reaching for salvation that had never come.
‘Don’t look,’ said Veteranus quietly. ‘It’s only going to get worse.’
He was right. As they waded deeper into the tunnel system, the evidence of the Necropolis’s true nature became impossible to ignore. Bodies floated in the stagnant water, some recent enough to retain human shape, others reduced to scattered bones that clicked against their leg, as if trying to get their attention. The walls themselves were embedded with corpses, generations of the dead pressed into the ancient mud and foundations of some long-forgotten building.
The tunnel stretched ahead, narrow but surprisingly high, its walls honeycombed with niches cut into the soft rock. Each hollow held its own horror, wooden coffins in various stages of decay, many of their contents long since spilled into the passages below; bodies wrapped in rotting shrouds that had split to reveal mummified flesh; and worst of all, the simply naked dead, stacked like cordwood in spaces too small to hold them properly.
Candles flickered in iron sconces driven into the walls, their feeble light creating dancing shadows that made the corpses seem to move. The wax had melted and reformed countless times, creating stalactites of hardened tallow that dripped steadily into the water below.
‘Look at the height,’ said Veteranus, raising his torch toward the ceiling. The niches extended upward into darkness, row upon row reaching far beyond what ladder or human hand could access. ‘Ten levels, maybe more.’
Sica followed his gaze and understanding dawned like a cold sunrise.
‘The oldest are at the top and the tunnel floor has been dug deeper over the centuries to accommodate new burials. This place is ancient. Older than the Republic, possibly older than the city itself.’
They pressed forward, the tunnel branching and diverging like the arteries of some vast, dead organism. Each passage told the same story, centuries of burial, layer upon layer of the dead pressed into service as the foundation for those who came after and the very walls seemed to breathe with accumulated decay.
In the larger chambers, they found evidence of the Necropolis’s true purpose. Massive stone sarcophagi dominated the centres of these spaces, their lids carved with the effigies of the wealthy dead. But these were not simple tombs, they were family sepulchres, designed to hold generation after generation. The carved lids showed signs of being repeatedly opened and resealed, and the stench from within suggested that new bodies were still being added to ancient piles of bones.
Around each sarcophagus, the detritus of regular visitation remained, three-legged stools, small wooden tables, the scattered remains of clay vessels that had once held wine and food. Families still came here, still broke bread with their ancestors, still poured libations for the dead who refused to rest quietly.
‘They feast with corpses,’ Sica whispered, kicking aside a broken cup that had once held wine offered to the rotting dead.
‘They believe the dead still hunger,’ Veteranus replied. ‘Still thirst. Still participate in family affairs.
The realisation that hit them both was perhaps worse than the physical horrors surrounding them, this wasn’t madness or aberration. This was tradition, carried out with the calm dedication of generations who saw nothing wrong with dining alongside decomposing relatives.
A sound echoed through the tunnels, footsteps splashing through stagnant water, coming from somewhere ahead. They pressed themselves against the tunnel wall, trying to blend with the niches full of corpses, hoping that darkness and death would provide sufficient camouflage.
Lights approached, multiple torches carried by robed figures who moved through the tunnels with practised ease. The Custodes Mortis were making their rounds, checking on their charges, ensuring that the dead remained properly tended.
As the patrol passed, Sica caught glimpses of their faces in the torchlight. These were not the healthy features of normal Romans, but the hollow-eyed visages of people who had spent too long in the company of death. Their skin was pale as parchment, their eyes rheumy and unfocused, their movements possessed of the jerky quality of marionettes controlled by an unseen hand.
One of them paused directly in front of their hiding place, his head tilted as if listening to whispers only he could hear. For a terrifying moment, Sica thought they had been discovered, then the man nodded to empty air and continued on, murmuring responses to a conversation that existed only in his troubled mind.
‘Mad,’ whispered Veteranus when the patrol had disappeared into a different corridor, ‘completely mad.’
They continued deeper into the labyrinth, following passages that seemed to lead toward the heart of the complex. The air grew thicker, more oppressive, and the walls began to show signs of deliberate modification, iron rings driven into stone, and channels cut into the floor to drain away liquids that were probably not water. But as they stood in the maze of tunnels, the enormity of their task became clear. Hundreds of passages branched off in every direction, countless chambers and niches, levels upon levels of burial spaces that could hide prisoners anywhere within the complex. It would take months to search systematically, and they had hours at most before their presence was discovered.
‘We need a guide,’ said Veteranus, voicing what they both knew.
A sound echoed from somewhere ahead, a wet, hacking cough caused by a lifetime of breathing foul air. They followed the noise, moving carefully through passages lined with the dead, until they found its source.
In a burial chamber dominated by a massive stone sarcophagus, a figure lay curled atop the carved lid like a cat seeking warmth. One of the Custodes, wrapped in his filthy white robes, using the tomb as a bed. His breathing was laboured, punctuated by periodic coughing fits, but he seemed utterly untroubled by his macabre surroundings.
Veteranus moved with lethal silence, crossing the chamber floor without disturbing so much as a pebble. His hand clamped over the man’s mouth whilst his knife found the soft hollow beneath his jaw.
The Custodes jerked awake, eyes wide with sudden terror. In the torchlight, his face was gaunt and pale, with sunken cheeks, blackened teeth, and skin with the waxy texture of a corpse.
‘Don’t move,’ Veteranus whispered. ‘If you cry out, you die. Nod if you understand.’
The man nodded slowly.
Veteranus moved his face nearer to the terrified man.
‘We’re looking for prisoners. Living men, brought here recently. Where are they?’
The Custodes blinked owlishly, his mind clearly struggling to process the question. When he spoke, his voice was a dry rasp.
‘No prisoners here. Only the blessed dead, waiting for resurrection.’
‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘Not lying.’ The man’s eyes held the fevered gleam of true belief. ‘Only the dead. The beautiful, peaceful dead who speak such wonderful secrets.’
Veteranus pressed the blade deeper, drawing a thin line of blood.
‘Living men. Romans. Where are they?’
But the Custodes showed no fear of death, if anything, his expression grew peaceful at the sight of his own blood.
‘Cut my throat if you wish,’ he whispered. ‘Send me to join them in their eternal feast. I’ve served faithfully. I’m ready.’
The man was utterly mad, his mind broken by years of communing with corpses. Threatening his life was useless, he genuinely welcomed death as a release from the burdens of the living world.
Sica stepped forward, studying the cultist’s ravaged features.
‘Hold him still,’ he said quietly. ‘Cover his mouth.’
Veteranus obeyed, as Sica drew his dagger and placed the point against the man’s left eye socket.
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ Sica said quietly. ‘Death would be a mercy. But I am going to blind you, one eye at a time, and leave you stumbling through these tunnels forever. Unable to see the beautiful dead you love so much. Unable to find your way to food or water. A living corpse, but one that can never join the feast.’
The Custodes’s eyes widened with the first real fear they had seen from him. The prospect of continued existence without the ability to serve his purpose, to commune with his beloved dead, was apparently worse than any mere death.
‘Choose,’ Sica continued. ‘Guide us to the prisoners, or spend eternity as a blind beggar in your own charnel house.’
Tears streamed down the man’s face as he nodded desperately and Veteranus removed his hand.
‘I’ll show you,’ the Custodes whispered. ‘Please. Don’t take my eyes. I need to see them, to serve them properly.’
‘Then lead on.’
The broken cultist slid down from the sarcophagus on unsteady legs, and they followed him from the chamber into the labyrinthine passages beyond. He moved with surprising confidence despite his apparent frailty, navigating turns and intersections that all looked identical to their untrained eyes.
----
They passed dozens of burial chambers, each more horrifying than the last, until finally their guide stopped before what appeared to be a dead end. A massive circular stone, easily eight feet in diameter, blocked the passage completely.
‘Behind there,’ the Custodes whispered. ‘The special ones. The ones who must be kept apart from the blessed dead.’
Veteranus examined the barrier more closely. The massive circular stone sat in a carved channel, held in place by heavy iron chains secured to rings driven deep into the rock on either side. Simple but effective, the stone’s own weight would make it impossible to move without first releasing the restraints.
Working together, they unhooked the chains, the iron links clanking softly as they fell away until the stone, freed from its moorings, rolled aside with surprising ease, revealing the entrance to whatever lay beyond.
Veteranus took one of the candles from its wall sconce and held it before the opening, casting weak light into the chamber beyond, and what they saw made both men catch their breath in horror.
----
The first thing that hit them was the smell, human waste, rotting flesh, and the sour stench of wasting bodies left too long in confinement. The air was thick with it, making both men gag as they peered into the chamber.
Bodies lay scattered across the stone floor, some curled in corners, others sprawled where exhaustion had finally claimed them and in the flickering candlelight, it was impossible to tell the living from the dead, all were motionless, reduced to shapeless bundles of rags and bone.
‘Seneca,’ Sica called softly, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘Marcus.’
Nothing. No movement, no response. The silence stretched unbearably.
‘Seneca!’ he tried again, slightly louder. ‘Are you in here?’
A shape stirred in the far corner and a face lifted from the shadows, gaunt, bearded, but unmistakably familiar, staring with the hollow gaze of a man pushed beyond endurance.
‘Sica, is that you?’ Seneca’s voice was a dry rasp, barely recognisable.
They rushed forward, splashing through puddles of things they didn’t want to identify, to where Seneca lay propped against the wall, his once-powerful frame reduced to skin stretched over jutting bones. Beside him, Marcus tried to sit up, his movements slow and painful.
‘Do you have water,’ Seneca whispered.
Sica pressed his water skin to his commander’s cracked lips, watching as the man drank with desperate gulps. Some of the liquid ran down his beard, but Seneca didn’t care, he drank as if he hadn’t tasted clean water in weeks.
‘Where are the others?’ Veteranus asked, scanning the chamber for more familiar faces.
Marcus struggled to speak, his centurion’s discipline fighting against physical weakness.
‘Next tunnel,’ he managed. ‘Talorcan. Decimus. They’re... being prepared.’
‘Prepared for what?’
‘Some sort of ritual.’ Marcus’s voice grew stronger as consciousness returned. ‘They take one or two every few days.’
