The Owl Prince

by Alex Faure

  Marcus loomed above him. “By the gods, that was pathetic.”

  “I didn’t—” Darius was out of breath. “I didn’t want to hurt her.”

  “That was what I meant.” Marcus helped him to his feet. “You’re going to have to abandon your squeamishness on that front, and fast. Look.”

  Darius followed his gaze. There against the open door of the building that had held the women lay the motionless form of a Roman soldier. Blood pooled beneath him, and his sightless eyes were wide. Against the building lay another unmoving body—a woman. She too was dressed in soldiers’ garb. A sword lay beside her, and another was impaled in her chest.

  “That was the one who attacked you first,” Marcus said. “The soldier stopped her before she could try again. He cut her down, yet even in her dying throes she still managed to deal him a death-blow. Do you still feel chivalrous?”

  Darius recoiled. And yet he knew some of the Hibernian tribes trained their women for war, and allowed them to fight alongside the men. He had seen it, after all, yet still it shocked him.

  “You were right, it seems,” Marcus said. He began to run, hauling Darius behind him. “Damn you, but you were right. They opened the gate. We managed to get it shut again, but not before they let in two dozen warriors.”

  “Have they been dealt with?” Darius demanded. Marcus only fixed him with a grim look. Darius soon saw the reason for it. As they crossed the principia, Darius heard the sound of fighting.

  Behind the officers’ quarters, their backs to the northern gate, ten Celtic men fought like madmen, their golden hair gleaming, their daggers slashing. Darius drew in his breath.

  Robogdi assassins.

  Bodies lay scattered across the ground, most of them Roman soldiers. The Robogdi were making a fearsome racket, their characteristic ululating battle cry echoing off the walls of the fort. The Roman response was disorganized—the Celts had clearly taken them by surprise—but it was nevertheless obvious that the Robogdi were losing. As Darius watched, archers came racing along the wall and opened fire, downing two Celts.

  Marcus moved to join the attack, but Darius gripped his arm.

  “What?” Marcus demanded. There was a wild look in his eyes. The slaves’ treachery had rattled him, and Darius knew he wasn’t thinking clearly. If he had been, he would surely have seen what Darius could.

  “Listen to them,” Darius said. “This is a distraction. But what are they distracting us from?”

  Marcus stared at him stupidly for a moment, then his expression cleared, and Darius could see him begin to think.

  “I don’t know if we killed all the women,” he said. “I didn’t have time to count.”

  Darius’s hand tightened on his arm as he became aware of something else. “Do you smell smoke?”

  Marcus whirled and shouted for two of the soldiers standing at the edge of the fray to follow. They raced to the eastern gate—the gate that was only used to allow the sentries to pass in and out during their surveys of the rugged coastline below. The gate that would only be threatened if the Celts managed to climb up the partly sheer cliff face…

  One of the storehouses was on fire. Darius paused to give orders to the soldiers who had leapt into disarrayed action to save it, emptying buckets of water against the building that did little to quench the inferno. Darius got them focused instead on creating a firebreak between the storehouse and the neighbouring buildings—the storehouse was already lost. Marcus watched him doing it—there was a glazed look on his sunburnt face, and Darius could see he was giving in to shock. Darius didn’t blame him. That the Hibernians would plan out an attack this sophisticated—placing their women warriors in Roman custody slowly and benignly enough not to draw suspicion…The Darius who had sailed into that Hibernian harbour all those months ago would not have believed it possible.

  And yet it had all happened before—at Sylvanum. Another group of Celtic prisoners, another Trojan Horse. Darius sensed the same hand guiding this attack, the same savage intellect.

  If he ever met the man responsible, Darius would kill him on sight.

  Darius grabbed hold of one of the tribunes as he raced by, failing to recognize Marcus and Darius in the chaos.

  “Find the women,” Darius ordered. “Comb the entire fort until every one is accounted for, and put to death.”

  “But sir, the fire—”

  “Will be the first of many if we don’t put those women down,” Darius said gravely. “Gods know what other mischief they will get up to. You have my permission to assign as many men to the task as need be. Do it quickly, soldier.”

  “Sir.” The man saluted him, and raced off.

  Marcus and Darius ran to the eastern gate. But as they neared it, a red-haired Celt charged them, screaming.

  Darius barely had time to put his sword up. Fortunately, Marcus knocked him out of the way and took the brunt of the Celt’s attack, dispatching of him with neat brutality.

  “By the gods,” Darius said as Marcus helped him to his feet. The gate had somehow been shattered, and through it poured wave after wave of Celts. Most of the Roman guards lay dead, their bodies scattered over the threshold, though several archers still fired valiantly from the walls.

  Darius seized the arm of a Roman soldier in retreat, his face glazed with panic. He looked barely twenty. “How did this happen?” he demanded.

  The man stared at him unblinkingly, as if he’d forgotten who Darius was. Then he seemed to start back to himself. “Sir—when we heard the Robogdi break through the other gate, and the fire, half the guards went to provide assistance. That was when they fired the explosives—”

  “Explosives?” Darius repeated. “Another onager, you mean?”

  The man shook his head. The tide of Celts had been temporarily stemmed by a half-dozen soldiers, but Darius could see they couldn’t hold it long. “They had something else. I don’t know what, but it went off like blaststone against the gate.”

  “Blaststone,” Darius said. “But that’s impossible. How could they get their hands on—” He stopped, a sick feeling rising in his stomach.

  “The Minerva,” Marcus said grimly. “She carried a quantity of blaststone in her hold.”

  Darius swayed. The Robogdi or Volundi—he supposed it made little difference which—had managed to board the Minerva and offload at least some of its weaponry before it sank.

  Or, rather, before they sunk it. There could be no other explanation.

  “Will our reinforcements arrive soon, Commander?” the man said, unthinkingly directing his question at Darius.

  Darius looked at Marcus. He saw the same thought reflected in the other man’s eyes. The reinforcements from Undanum were not unduly late, but it was ominous that they were late at all. Had they too fallen victim to the Celtic mastermind’s preternatural ingenuity?

  Darius had no more time to ponder it. The Celtic warriors broke through the line of Roman guards, slicing them open in a spray of red. More soldiers ran forward, joining the fray, but it made little difference. Dozens of warriors poured through, and Darius could see no prospect of stopping them. Their yellow hair was like a river of gold, their daggers flashing like moonlight on waves.

  It made no sense, in that moment, for Darius to think of Fionn. His eyes had been like the flash of those daggers, gleaming at Darius out of the night. These warriors were his race, his allies, and they were here to destroy Attervalis. Somehow, Darius’s memories of Fionn, his hair and laugh and alien eyes, melted together with the river of invaders, a grand kaleidoscope that resolved into one hard reality: it could all end here, tonight.

  Darius met Marcus’s gaze. Then, together, they drew their swords and stepped forward to greet the conquerors of Attervalis.

  Thanks for reading!

  Darius and Fionn’s story continues in:

  The Forest King (Green Labyrinth, Book Two)—Available now!

  The Soldier Mage (Green Labyrinth, Book Three)—Coming Spring 2020

   

  Alex Faure, The Owl Prince