by James Wilde
The guards swung open the gates and instantly he was swallowing the stink of rotting food and fish sauce and shit and smoke and a hundred other odours. Hecate cried out. She’d never left the forest before, and this sprawling city was strange and terrifying. A hundred thousand sheltered there behind the walls, or so he’d been told, and more were coming by the day now that Valentinian and the court were in residence. It was the home of the Remi, once, and they’d long since proved their loyalty to Rome, and been richly rewarded for it.
‘What is this place?’ she whimpered.
‘All will be well,’ he murmured as he helped her down from his horse outside the tavern. He felt pleased that his voice seemed to soothe her a little, though her eyes still darted.
‘I do not like it,’ she breathed. ‘I cannot hear the wind in the branches and the smell makes me sick.’ She rubbed her belly.
‘My brother keeps a room here where you’ll be safe.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I can look after myself.’ That hand in the folds of her cloak again.
‘I have no doubt. But I’d be a poor host if I didn’t provide you with some small comforts.’
She shrugged, pretending not to care. He had decided he liked her insouciance; liked her, too, for all her wild ways.
‘The owner will keep watch over you to make sure you’re not troubled,’ he continued. ‘Don’t answer the door, though. And keep away from the women – they’re more dangerous than the men here.’ He bowed, which seemed to surprise her. ‘Rest. We have a long journey ahead of us.’
Once she was safely in her room, he came out into the cold night to find Pavo waiting for him. His friend was stamping his feet and clapping his hands to keep warm. ‘Any more punishments to inflict on me, or can I call for wine?’
‘Soon. First I have to see my brother.’
‘Don’t expect any praise.’
‘I don’t need to have my head swelled. A job well done is reward enough.’
‘Liar.’
Corvus and Pavo splashed through the grey slush past the jumble of houses and workshops to the centre of Reims, where the large stone administrative building loomed up above the surrounding roofs. Oil-lamps still glowed in many of the windows. Valentinian and his senior advisers had taken over much of the building since he’d moved the court to the city while he plotted the destruction of the Alamanni.
‘Good luck,’ Pavo said at the door. ‘Best if I’m not around while you talk to your exalted brother. It will only make things worse. Ask him about all those mysterious plots he and your mother seem to hatch together.’ He laughed. ‘Or perhaps you’d rather waste your breath another way.’
‘You’re a funny man, Pavo. If only your abilities as a soldier matched your wit and your mouth.’
‘Hurry, I beg you. If we’re not quick, the wine may all be drunk.’ Pavo grinned, but added a nod of silent support.
Corvus clattered up the steps. On the next floor, he heard a rumble of voices, and through an open door he saw a group of men poring over maps. The emperor was there, pacing around the room. Valentinian was a tall man in the second half of his fifth decade, hollow-cheeked and prematurely wrinkled. Corvus thought how ill he looked. Balancing the demands of the western empire with his need to support his younger brother Valens during the tribulations in the east was taking its toll.
A man with a severe expression was stabbing the tip of his index finger on a map to make his point. The emperor valued the guidance given by Flavius Julius Theodosius the Elder, and had made him Master of the Horse. He was a good strategist, Corvus had heard many say. He would rise even higher.
‘I thought you dead.’
Corvus turned to see Theodosius the Younger gaping at him. In that light, he thought how much his friend looked like his father, with his long face and bulging eyes and close-cropped sandy hair. At least he hadn’t yet developed the Elder’s constant severe expression. It would come; that was religion for you, or at least this clan’s particular kind.
‘Hard to kill. You should know that by now.’ Corvus didn’t have to look to know the other man was clutching the crucifix he carried almost everywhere.
Theodosius beckoned him away from the door so they wouldn’t be seen. ‘I thought only your brother would be travelling to Rome with me.’
‘Do you think I’d miss a chance of a civilized life? I’ve had Gaul under my fingernails for too long now.’ Corvus was thinking of good wine, good food, and women who didn’t keep pigs by day.
The other man nodded with enthusiasm. ‘There’s a new teacher at the church, so my father said. He’s arranged for us to sit with him and hear his wise words on our Lord’s guidance.’
‘Exciting,’ Corvus replied. ‘I can barely contain myself.’
‘There’s bloodshed on the streets, I hear. Though Damasus was elected pope, his rival Ursinus will still not give up his claim. Their followers battle on a daily basis.’
Corvus had drifted out of the conversation momentarily, but he jerked himself back and said what he hoped was the right thing. ‘I can see how that must be hard.’
‘It is. It is. My prayers are with both sides. We must not allow any schism. Christians have to stand strong, together. Otherwise where will we be?’
‘Exactly. Divided, I would think.’
‘And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. The gospel of Mark. Of course, you know that.’
‘Of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to spend some time in prayer, and then find my brother to make arrangements for tomorrow.’
Theodosius bowed deeply, an odd form of expression between soldiers, Corvus thought, and then hurried away with more enthusiasm than any man could surely feel at that time of night.
Corvus ambled along the corridor to the room where he knew his brother would be working and worrying and plotting, despite the lateness of the hour.
The chamber was filled with scrolls and he breathed in their earthy smell in the dry, dusty atmosphere. At a podium, Servius Aurelius Ruga hunched over a scroll by the light of an oil-lamp. Though he was only a year older, silver strands gleamed in his black hair and lines webbed his eyes. The price he paid for the weight of his responsibilities, as he never tired of telling people when they commented on Corvus’ youthful appearance.
He looked up, and made a grunt deep in his throat that could only have been some form of greeting.
‘You’ll go blind, reading by this light,’ Corvus said.
‘There’s work to be done. There’s always work to be done. Of course, you wouldn’t understand. Why would I expect you to?’
‘Valentinian’s work, or the family’s?’ Corvus prowled by the podium, looking around the chamber to see if an amphora of wine had accidentally been left there.
‘The family’s. That is of paramount importance at this time.’
Corvus shrugged. ‘It would help if you let me in on all those little secrets you share with Mother.’
‘You?’ Ruga sniffed. ‘These are serious matters, and the less you know the better. We can’t have you blurting them out in some tavern somewhere.’
As expected. Ruga was the serious one, feted from birth and steered towards the heights. Corvus was always and only the second son in all that that phrase meant. Not quite worthy enough. Good for the dirty jobs, but that was all. He’d never let it trouble him greatly. His life was too good for that.
‘I rescued a woman from the grip of the enemy,’ he mused, flicking papyrus with his fingertips dismissively.
‘A woman?’
‘A very special woman. One of three sisters.’
Ruga jerked his head up. ‘Why didn’t you say?’
‘I just did.’
His brother made another strange noise in his throat, a hissing, like a snake. Condemnation? Weariness? Corvus wasn’t quite sure. ‘One of three sisters,’ Ruga repeated, his voice quiet.
‘There was nothing to keep her there.’
Ruga stared into the flame of the oil-lamp
, lost to his thoughts.
‘She’s good-hearted,’ Corvus continued. ‘I wouldn’t go so far as to say kind, but she’s pleasant enough to be around.’
‘Then she’ll make a good wife for me.’
Corvus stiffened. ‘This is not how you find a companion of the heart, brother.’
‘Heart? A wife would serve me well … a wife like that. Who cares about heart?’
‘Ah. She may not be aware of this part of the agreement.’
‘She has no say in the matter.’
‘I think she will have some say.’
‘No say.’ Ruga rolled the scroll back up and set it on one side. ‘You will give her up to me. I’ll marry her, honourably, and she will get all she wishes from life. Status, even.’ He pursed his lips. ‘And a wife like that will serve me well if I am to rise high within the order of Mithras. There is more to it than simple ritual. Of course, you would never understand that.’
Corvus frowned, not quite sure what he was hearing. ‘I made a promise to her that if she wasn’t happy with our terms I’d return her to her home.’
‘That was a foolish thing to do.’ Ruga picked up the lamp and walked towards the door. Without looking back, he added, ‘Whatever the future holds, she won’t be leaving Rome. Her days as a free woman are over.’
CHAPTER TEN
Foul is Fair
North of Hadrian’s Wall
THE WILDS WERE as empty of men as Lucanus had ever seen them.
No hunters or traders moving between settlements. No smoke caught on the breeze. No distant echoes of harsh voices. It was as if he were all alone in the world and the barbarians had been swept away, destroyed, driven into the snow-bound northern lands by the judgement of angry gods.
Five days he’d been tramping, and the grassland had long since been swallowed by the endless forest. In that other world, still and dark and mysterious, he heard only the crunch of his feet on the hoar frost beyond the shrieking of crows.
The more he had trespassed into this place, the more he sensed the nearness of the gods, or daemons, or both. He blamed Amarina for putting the thought in his head. But now he felt sure they were speaking to him through signs, if only he could understand their tongue.
Five birds had watched his passage from the branches, the first four crows, the last a magpie. Five bones had been scattered across his path, four the skulls of birds, the final one the skull of a fox. And more, so many instances that he’d lost count. Always four the same, one different. Five faces hidden in the gnarled bark of trunks, five rocks protruding from the frozen earth. Five streams that he had to cross. His neck prickled, but he could not yet understand what he was being told.
This part of the forest was a dense tangle of ancient trees. Trunks too thick for three men to reach around. Gnarled fingers of roots creeping across the hard ground. Walls of thorn and holly. He could only stumble along narrow tracks made by deer or wolf to find a way through.
But he could see the trail left by his prey as clearly as ever, since he’d found it within moments of passing beyond the wall. Grass flattened, twigs broken, leaf mould turned over. Whoever had taken Marcus had made no attempt to cover their tracks. Perhaps Falx had been right and this was a trap to lure the army away from its defences. Yet how could he turn back and look Catia in the face?
As he pushed through a bank of brown bracken, his neck prickled. He whirled, searching among the trees. Nothing moved. Was he now becoming scared of his own shadow? He’d never scouted so deep into this part of the forest, and he couldn’t shake the dark mood that seemed to stifle him, as if it were seeping out of the very ground itself.
Beyond the bracken, he came to an area where outcroppings of rock reared up among the trees, casting odd shapes on the edge of his vision. Lucanus slowed his step.
Sniffing the wind, he thought he smelled the boy’s sweat, and a sourer reek, like vinegar. Something was here, he was sure of it. His eyes darting all around, the Wolf prowled forward.
Five steps on, the ground fell away from him. A cover of interwoven branches and turf tore past him and he slammed into the bottom of a pit.
For a moment he swallowed his anger that he had been caught like a novice and stared up at the square of grey sky above, his chest burning where the breath had been knocked out of him. At least it was not much of a trap. He could claw his way out, cutting handholds into the hard earth.
Yet as his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw a tunnel running into the deep dark ahead of him. He smelled scents caught on the air currents: herbs and spices, a hint of woodsmoke, and that vinegary reek of human musk.
Lucanus edged along the burrow, ducking under the thick roots of the trees above, which plucked at his hair like the hands of hidden enemies.
The gloom turned to grey and then he was squinting into clear daylight ahead, though not much of it, and a series of chambers carved out of the earth, each one screened by a curtain of ivy. In the one he could see, daylight was shining down from a small opening above a hearth of grey ashes. Dry grass and rushes were scattered here and there across the floor, and the walls visible between the hanging ivy were a mass of twisted roots and packed earth.
Lucanus padded in. He levelled his blade, swinging it from left to right, ready for any attacker who might emerge from one of the other chambers. He smelled rosemary, thyme, and other scents he didn’t recognize, drifting off bunches of dried herbs hanging from hooks driven into the low roof. Amphorae clustered along the walls. He plucked up the lid of one and recoiled from the foul stench.
Who would choose to live here, in the most forbidding part of the forest, far from any human comfort?
Rattled, he started to scan the walls of roots more closely, unsure what had caught his attention. He searched the patchwork of shadows and light until his gaze settled on two small almond-shaped mounds in the brown earth among the mesh of tuberous growths. He leaned in to the gloom, trying to see more.
The eyes snapped open.
A shrieking apparition thrust out of the tangle of roots, a young woman, her hair a wild mane of filthy curls. Naked, her skin was caked with the brown earth that had disguised her. Bands of charcoal swirled across her body, helping to hide her in the gloom, and where the mud cracked he could see spiral tattoos on her pale skin.
Shocked, Lucanus barely had time to raise his sword.
The woman unfurled her right hand level with his face, a pile of white dust on her open palm. She blasted it at him with one breath and he winced at the bitter taste as the cloud filled his mouth and nose.
A moment later he crashed on to the mud floor, his arms and legs like stone. Cold dread gnawed at his heart. He was dead yet still alive, unable to lift a finger though he could see and hear all.
The woman’s face floated above his own. She was smiling now, her eyes the colour of a forest canopy.
‘Sisters,’ she called.
Lucanus heard the sound of curtains of ivy being dragged back and feet padding nearer. His attacker eased to one side, revealing two other women, both of them naked. Their skin was cloaked in that same mixture of mud, charcoal and tattoos, their hair clotted with earth and dry leaves. One was dumpy with age, hair beginning to grey. The other was the withered old hag he had encountered at the wall.
His heart thundered. A trap, of course it was. But how could she have reached this place ahead of him?
‘Lucanus, the Wolf,’ the youngest of the three women breathed. He saw a dark humour in her flashing eyes.
Questions flooded his brain, but his mouth wouldn’t move. The woman pressed one earthy finger on his lips to stop his struggle.
‘My name is Hecate.’ She pointed to the crone. ‘And hers.’ And to the third woman. ‘And hers too. And our daughters will be called Hecate, and their daughters too. And in that way the weft and the warp will be woven together.’
The Wolf felt a chill reach deep into his bones. Was he dying?
She leaned in close, her hot breath washing over his ear. ‘Would
you be king, Lucanus?’ she whispered. ‘You could if you wished, of a kind. Would you be the warrior who guards the blood of the king? That too. That too.’
The other women were stalking around his frame of vision. The hag had fetched what seemed to be a coil of thread, and the mother was helping her measure it out. For some reason he could not explain, Lucanus felt troubled by the sight. It fell out of view when the youngest one straddled him, grinding her groin into his. She bent towards his face, her breasts scraping his chest.
‘We are going to fly this day, Lucanus, and while we sweep through the heavens we will sing you our song. You will hear the prophecy, and you will see the road ahead, if you choose to walk it.’ Leaning forward, her pink tongue curled out and she licked his face slowly from chin to forehead. ‘Fear not, brother. This day we are not here to bring harm to you, or to anyone. The boy yet lives. But you still have a way to go to find him.’
The crone knelt next to him. From the corner of his eye, Lucanus could see the length of thread she had stretched out between her two hands. ‘There is a weft and a warp to everything, Wolf. A pattern, hidden to all but those who fly. We tug on a thread here, and another there, and then …’ She glanced from one sister to the other and gave a gap-toothed grin.
Lucanus felt a tingling in his legs. Whatever spell these women had cast upon him was already starting to fade. Soon he’d be able to show them a length of steel. Then they would tell him what they had done with Marcus.
The mother grasped a small amphora. Removing the lid, she waved it in front of Lucanus’ eyes so he could see the contents: a creamy white paste.
The youngest woman lay flat upon his body, pressing herself into him. The tip of her nose almost brushed his own. ‘We are wise. And our wisdom is of days long gone. Much of it has been forgotten now, Wolf. But we keep our secrets well, and renew them with each turn of the season. We keep the old names, that men like you no longer know. Beltane. Samhain. We hear the whispers of the old gods. Cernunnos. He stands deep in the forest and howls at man. You will hear his name again.’
