by James Wilde
‘Where would she go?’ Mato said, but all Lucanus could manage was an impotent shake of his head.
‘Over here,’ Comitinus shouted from the dark, and as Lucanus ran towards him he heard taunts and laughter somewhere ahead.
Racing around the bath-house to where the temples stood, he could see a group of four fur-swathed warriors advancing on four women. He couldn’t make out their faces in the gloom, but when one of them spat an epithet he was sure it was Amarina’s voice.
Putting his head down, the Wolf bounded on, knowing his brothers would be at his back. He rammed his sword into the side of the first warrior he came to, a Saxon by the look of him, and the Grim Wolves fell upon the rest, as did, he noted with surprise, two of the women. Amarina and Catia swung their blades awkwardly, but their ferocity made up for their lack of expertise.
Lucanus felt a rush of relief when he saw Catia standing over the bodies. How many times had he dreamt about her on the long journey into the north, never really believing he would live to see her again? He couldn’t stop himself beaming, but somehow he found it in him to step back and wait.
‘Mother.’ Marcus rushed into Catia’s arms, and she sank to her knees, her whole body heaving with silent sobs.
After a moment, Marcus prised himself free as if he’d only been away playing with his friends, and looked back. ‘Lucanus saved me,’ he said simply.
Catia looked up at her wolf-brother with tear-rimmed eyes and he saw such gratitude in her face – perhaps even love – that he felt shaken. She tried to find some words to thank him, but she could only swallow and nod.
Amarina hooked a hand under her arm and dragged her to her feet. ‘All good friends, well met, yes. Now – shall we let our heels fly or wait here until we feel the prick of swords?’
‘I must … I must save my family,’ Catia said, almost apologetically, Lucanus thought.
‘Good. You have horses – we’ll need those if we’re to have any chance of escaping,’ he said.
Clutching Marcus by the hand, Catia set off along the track to the villa with Solinus, Comitinus and the other women close behind. Before the Wolf could follow, he felt Mato grab his arm. ‘I can’t leave without Bellicus.’
Lucanus held the other man’s gaze. They both knew it was unlikely the Bear could escape the slaughter heaving in the vicus below them. ‘The barbarians will soon turn their attention to the villas. If you wait here—’
Mato nodded, cutting off the words he didn’t want to hear. ‘Bellicus,’ he said again, as if that were explanation enough. ‘I can’t leave him.’
Lucanus nodded. ‘We’ll wait as long as we can.’ He turned and ran along the track after the others. When he looked back, he saw a lonely figure watching the destruction of all that he had known.
The villa was still and dark.
‘Fetch the horses,’ Lucanus commanded his wolf-brothers. While the women hung back, searching the night in case any of the barbarians had already ventured this far, he himself swept through the gates.
The merchants had built their villas far enough away from the vicus to escape the earthy aroma of a bustling township, but he could smell smoke and ashes on the breeze. The sound of the carnage was like the low rumble of a great beast, heavy with slumber after a bloody feast.
‘Come out,’ he yelled. ‘Out now or die hiding under your beds.’
Catia caught up with him. ‘They will be scared. Let me.’
When she finally stepped out of the villa, beckoning, Amatius was behind her, looking like a whipped cur, and then Aelius, his good arm supporting Menius. The old man was a grey shadow seemingly on the edge of death, Lucanus thought.
At the clopping of hooves, he turned and shouted to Comitinus, ‘Keep watch.’ His chest tightened as the others hitched a horse to a low, open wagon and he swallowed the urge to order them to move faster.
When a whistle rang out from the vicinity of the gate, he hurried over to Comitinus. The other man pointed to a line of torches bobbing along the track to the villa. Lucanus could hear voices, insistent, harsh, the guttural tongues of barbarians.
‘Make haste,’ he called. ‘They’re coming.’
He whirled back at the sound of running feet just beyond the villa wall. Comitinus drew his sword, but a moment later Mato and Bellicus scrambled through the gates with Catulus behind them. The two men hunched over, hands on their knees as they caught their breath.
‘Thirty of them,’ Mato croaked, waving a hand at his back. ‘Perhaps more.’
As Lucanus raced back into the yard, Amarina plucked up her skirt and ran ahead to where Solinus and the family were finishing hitching the wagon. ‘We must go. Now,’ she insisted. ‘There’s an army outside the gates. Leave behind anyone who will slow us.’
‘Does that include you?’ Aelius spat.
‘I’ll be first out of here, little boy.’
Lucanus and Aelius heaved Menius into the back of the wagon. Catia, Marcus, Decima and Galantha clambered in beside him. Lucanus beckoned to Amarina to join them.
‘I can ride,’ she said, pulling herself on to the back of a horse with ease.
On the board of the wagon, Amatius, the mulio, lashed a whip and Lucanus gripped the sides of the rheda as it thundered out of the courtyard. Aelius and the Grim Wolves bounded on to the remaining horses and rode out of the gate.
What now was left for any of them?
Once he was sure they’d put enough distance between them and the invaders, Lucanus raised his hand to bring the group to a halt.
The villa was already ablaze. Everywhere he looked, more fires lit up the gulf of darkness. In the distance, to the west and the east, the sky glowed a dim orange.
‘Vercovicium was only a part of it,’ Bellicus said at his side. ‘They’ve come through along the length of the wall, I’d wager.’ Nestled in his lap, Catulus rumbled deep in his throat as if he understood every word.
Against those fires near the fort, Lucanus watched the silhouettes swarming like a disturbed anthill. More flowed through the gates from the northlands.
‘Scoti. Picts. Attacotti. Alamanni. Saxons. Some I did not even know.’ Mato’s voice was strained. ‘All of them, together? This is unheard of.’
‘How long have they been planning it?’ Bellicus asked.
‘We’ve never met this before, you’re right,’ Lucanus said. ‘This army … the size of it … barbarians who have hated each other since time began … this is not the end, I’m certain.’
How much of this had the wood-priests been involved in, he wondered? Was this part of their Great Plan? Drive out the empire so that this new messiah, this king who would not die, could lay claim to the land? Their king, their voice in his ear, their hand upon his shoulder. If that were true, the blood of all the innocents who’d died this night would be on their hands.
He looked to Catia in the back of the wagon, hugging her son to her breast, singing to him. The world might be ending around them, but she was lost to the joy of that reunion.
Now Marcus, and Catia, and all of them, were inextricably bound into this unfolding slaughter. The wood-priests, Erca and his men, all of them would be searching for this child.
There could be no rest.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Escape
BELLICUS CARVED THE end of the branch into a spear-point and looked up. He was perched on a fallen log, surrounded by curling shavings. ‘I’ll take Solinus. If we can find a deer or a boar, all the better. If not, a bird, or fish if there’s some water near here. And if not that, we’ll have to make do with worms and bugs until we can find something to give us strength.’
‘Don’t stray too far,’ Lucanus cautioned. ‘We don’t know how fast the barbarians are pushing south, and there may well be cut-throats around these parts. Not that they would find much to steal.’
He looked around the camp, a small clearing in the greenwood, a little way off the track where they had left the rheda. Comitinus was blowing on sparks in a nest of dry grass and twig
s and Catia and her family lay around it, trying to get some sleep. They’d ridden through the night, always heading due south. As first light painted the drawn faces and the shuddering bodies, Lucanus decided they could afford to rest, at least for a while, to build up their spirits.
Amarina, Decima and Galantha slumped at the foot of a gnarled oak, wrapped in thick cloaks, faces lost in deep hoods. Heads bent together, they were whispering, about what he couldn’t tell.
Once Bellicus and Solinus had stalked off among the ash and the elm, he squatted on the edge of the clearing, breathing in the scents of a world about to burst with new life. When he looked up, he saw Catia watching him. She smiled and came over.
Sitting, she took his hand, something she would never have dared do back in Vercovicium. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you a thousand times.’
‘Marcus has been like a son to me. And you …’ He let the words trail away, afraid he would say something he regretted. As he looked past her to the fire, he saw Amatius, his cheek pressed against the cold earth as he tried to sleep, but his eyes wide and staring. Gently, Lucanus eased his hand from hers.
‘Your husband,’ he breathed without moving his lips.
He watched Catia frown. ‘Yes, he is my husband. But everything has changed. All of us here, we have nothing now. We’re beggars on the land. I don’t have to bow my head to him to ensure my father gets what he deserves.’ She looked up, her eyes like pebbles. ‘If he dares lay a hand on me again, he’ll pay, and pay dearly, for all the times he’s done it in the past. No more. No. More.’
Lucanus felt relieved to hear the defiance in her voice. ‘You know how much it pained me to see you suffer so.’
She nodded, smiling again. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such simple joy in her face. How strange it was that it should appear now, when they were fleeing for their lives with all that they had known burning around them.
After a moment, he saw her expression grow grave and she said, ‘There’s much we must talk about.’
‘I have much to tell you too. About Marcus. About why he was taken … his days yet to come … You won’t believe it, I swear, this destiny the gods have planned for him, but—’
Catia pressed her finger against his lips to silence him, her eyes widening. ‘You know?’
‘You know?’
‘A merchant came to Vercovicium … Varro was his name. He’d travelled all the way from Rome to find me, and he told me a story, from long ago – a prophecy, I suppose – that one day there’d be a woman marked with the sign of the Ouroboros, the dragon eating its own tail. You know of that.’
He did. They’d talked many times since childhood about what kind of person would brand a baby with that mark, and why.
‘Somehow Varro was aware that this woman was alive in these times … and living somewhere along the wall. She … I … have a special destiny, he said.’
Lucanus let her words settle on him for a moment before answering. ‘Witches and wood-priests, they can’t be trusted. Men and women who’ve spent too much time in the Wilds in their own company. It drives you mad after a while; the madness of the woods, we call it in the arcani.’ He shrugged. ‘They would say it’s the wisdom of the gods, who speak through the trees and the winds and the deep lakes. But they too spoke about this prophecy. I don’t know if there’s any truth in it, but they believe it, and it seems that everything they do is directed towards one end: making this prophecy come about.’ He furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of what he’d heard. ‘I’m a simple man. I can’t read or write. And when they spoke of these things … of signs and portents … they seemed to be talking of one thing but meaning another.’
‘Everything has two faces. What it seems on the surface, and what it truly is beneath. That’s what Varro said.’ He saw her wince. This memory was a hard one, for some reason.
‘And nothing happens by chance.’
‘The dragon on my back is not a dragon. It is a sign of … rebirth … of what, I can’t be sure.’
‘Of the old gods. The old ways. Of a time that the Romans swept away when they invaded Britannia. The wood-priests have been plotting since that time … preparing for the moment when the prophecy said all would be made right again. By one man. The king who will not die.’
Catia glanced back at the fire where her son was sleeping. Amatius’ eyes were shut now too. ‘Marcus?’
‘His son. Or his son’s son. He carries the royal blood.’ He heard his voice soften, and he resisted the urge to stroke her hair. ‘As do you. You were chosen, wolf-sister. The gods saw greatness in you. You’re the chalice that holds the hopes of us all.’
Her eyes sparkled. That pleased him. ‘It’s a good destiny. A great one. To save everyone … to lead them out of darkness,’ she breathed.
‘A good destiny.’
‘And you have a part to play in this?’
‘The gods have given me a task too.’ He slid Caledfwlch a little way out of its scabbard to show her the marks upon the blade, and he told her how he came to own it. ‘I’m the guardian of the royal blood, so Myrrdin told me. No harm must come to Marcus, so the seed will sprout and the prophecy will flourish.’
‘Then you must stay with us.’
‘For as long as I’m needed.’
For a while there was only the crackling of the fire and the birdsong. Lucanus liked the sounds of them. He could tell Catia was considering them too, but he couldn’t see any sign of her thoughts.
‘There are dangers now,’ he continued. ‘Before, you and Marcus went about your lives unnoticed. Now men who wield power have heard of you and they covet you both, for whoever has the king’s ear—’
‘Rules the land.’ Catia bit her lip, starting to worry.
‘I don’t wish to frighten you, but it’s right that you know these things so that you can prepare. The barbarians know of Marcus and his worth, and they won’t relent in their search for him.’
‘If Varro escaped Vercovicium, he will be looking for Marcus too.’ She chewed on a nail, reflecting.
‘Who knows how many more will want to lay claim to you and your son?’
‘Wherever we are going, no one will know us.’
‘For now. But this is a story that sets hearts and mind afire. Word will spread. Soon everyone will have heard of the woman marked with the dragon, and the son who will bring forth the gods-given king.’
Catia tugged at the new swards of grass poking out among the tree’s roots. ‘So many choices. So many dangers.’ When she looked up, her eyes were bright. ‘I’m glad you stand with me. I would not want this burden on my own.’
When everyone had woken, they took it in turns to go to a stream that Mato had found, to slake their thirst and wash the dust of the road from their faces. The water was a cold knife cutting through worry.
Back at the fire, Menius lay on his back, staring up into the branches, his face the colour of the ashes. Catia leaned over him, mopping the sweat from his brow with a strip she’d torn from the hem of her dress.
She looked round and her eyes summoned Lucanus.
He crouched beside her. ‘How is he?’
‘His brow is so hot. His lips are dry.’ She leaned away so the old man would not hear and whispered, ‘Is he dying? Please let it not be so.’
‘Let me help.’ Amarina was standing behind the Wolf.
‘What can you do?’ Catia snapped.
‘I can stand here talking while your father weakens, if you wish.’
Catia hesitated, then moved aside so Amarina could kneel beside the old man. She rested one hand on his forehead, then peeled back his eyelids to reveal the yellowy whites. For a few moments, her hands fluttered across his face and neck and Lucanus watched the concentration in her frown.
When she was done, she pulled a leather pouch from the folds of her dress and delved inside for a handful of dried leaves. ‘By rights, these should be left to steep in ditchwater for a night. But we can’t wait. His light is dim.’
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As she began to push the leaves between Menius’ lips, Catia gripped her wrist.
‘I am not going to poison him.’
Lucanus watched Catia trying to read the other woman’s face before she relented. ‘It will make him well?’
‘It will help bring down his fever. For now, that’s the best we can hope.’ He noticed Amarina eye Catia and soften a little when she saw the other woman’s worry. ‘When we are on the road, I’ll search for more herbs that might ease his sickness.’ It was a kindness, though Lucanus knew she would never admit it.
Catia knelt back down to tend to her father and Amarina stepped away.
Lucanus walked beside her. ‘Where did you learn these things?’
‘A little here, a little there.’
‘You have many secrets, Amarina.’
‘Everyone has secrets, Wolf.’
‘Still, the only women I know versed in these arts are the wise ones who live in the woods.’
‘All women are wise, Lucanus. You would do well to remember that.’ She flashed a smile, one that hid more than it revealed, and walked to the shady spot where Mato was making Decima laugh.
Amatius was waiting for him as he turned back. ‘Beware of that woman. She can’t be trusted.’
‘Amarina plays games with words and foolish men. But I’ve known her since she arrived in Vercovicium, and I’m a good judge. I’d trust her with my life.’
‘Then you are a fool.’ Amatius bunched his fists. He had always been good at hiding his feelings – the mark of a man successful in business – but now he seemed a ball of rage. ‘One more thing, Lucanus.’ He tried to force a smile, but it flickered on his lips, making its insincerity even more apparent. ‘I love my wife. I love her more than life itself. And if anyone came between the two of us, I would kill him.’
‘Everyone knows you are husband and wife, Amatius. You have no need to worry.’
The Wolf walked away before any more could be said.
