Vespasian felt his unease grow at the marked lack of panic amongst the druids, faced with the imminent arrival of more than two hundred more troops; although smoke rose from the half a dozen huts around the wicker man the only life that he could see was a few sheep grazing on the rough grass at the giant’s feet. He turned to the two marine centurions waiting behind him for orders. ‘Glaubus, take your men across to the peninsula and try to find a way up along the south side. Cogidubnus will go with you; kill anyone you find over there. Balbus, you and your men will come with me and we’ll try the north side.’
The centurions snapped brisk salutes but the mutual look of disquiet that they shared as they turned to go gave Vespasian cause for concern. ‘I think you were right, Magnus: if the centurions are nervous about going over there how can I hope that their men will follow them?’
‘Then let’s just get back to the ships instead. Let’s face it, sir, Caratacus ain’t coming because Alienus didn’t tell him that we were here. You’ve succeeded in bringing the Cornovii over to us, which was the only other thing you had to achieve down here, so why don’t we just sail away and leave the druids to their own devices?’
‘There’s nothing that I’d like to do more; having faced the druids twice now I’ll not willingly do so again. But within a day or two of us leaving they’ll have turned Judoc against us or had him killed and replaced with someone more amenable to their cause.’
Cogidubnus nodded in agreement. ‘They’ve all got to die, otherwise there’ll never be any peace on this island. We’ve got the chance of killing Myrddin perhaps even before his successor has been found and that’s something that we mustn’t pass up.’
Magnus scowled and looked again at the wicker man. ‘It seems to me that the druids believe that if there is any killing to be done, they’re going to be the ones doing it.’
Spray flew on the strengthening wind, soaking their hair and making the bare rocks of the isthmus slippery and treacherous as Vespasian led Balbus and his men across. Just ten paces to his left Cogidubnus with Glaubus’ century kept level as they too slowly negotiated the passage in ones and twos. Above them the mound of Tagell soared to the sky, a dark, looming place filling their hearts with foreboding.
The roar of crashing waves intensified as they reached the lowest point of the isthmus; great rollers thundered in, pummelling a narrow beach below, to Vespasian’s right, and pulling on a currach turned upside down amongst the rocks at its head.
With no obvious pathway to follow, Vespasian picked his way through boulders and driftwood, using his hands to balance; the marines followed behind him in a random, dispersed order, struggling with their shields and pila. As they started to ascend the broken-up slopes of the peninsula itself, working their way around it away from the cliff-face, the wind speed picked up, whistling through the crags, tugging at their garments and increasing the sea’s rage. Magnus struggled at Vespasian’s side, muttering prayers and obscenities in equal measure as they slowly gained height and the head of the wicker man came back into view, gradually followed by its shoulders and chest. Vespasian scrambled on up, dislodging loose scree onto the marines below, as the noise of the wind’s fury grew, mixed with the crash of waves rising up from below, and now augmented by a new sound, a chilling sound: a high-pitched, bestial howling. He looked in alarm at Magnus. ‘Wolves?’
‘I actually hope so; I don’t know of any other animal that makes that sound, and if there is one then I wouldn’t like to meet it.’
‘Me neither; I’d rather face a wolf than the unknown.’ Vespasian looked back at the men following; their expressions were less than keen and Balbus and his optio were doing their best to urge them on, although with each new baying cry they too looked fearfully up the hill. The howling got louder as they climbed off the rocks and onto the steep, grassed hillside; the wicker man, visible down to its thighs, swayed in the gale but was kept upright by four ropes extending at right-angles from its neck. The ground was firmer and the going became easier, but Vespasian felt his reluctance to move forward grow with every step he took up the hill towards the source of the howling, yet he drew his sword and pressed on, conquering his powerful urge to turn back. Behind him the shouts of Balbus and his optio forming their men into a column were almost lost on the wind. Cutting back and forth diagonally to reduce the incline, his breath short and his heart pounding, he came to the final steep escarpment before the summit. The huts were still obscured from view but the wicker man towered above, totally visible apart from its lower legs: a brooding, malevolent colossus.
Pausing, he looked back to Balbus. ‘Have your men form line, centurion!’
Within a few moments the column had fanned out into four lines of twenty; many of the marines looked uneasily around at the steep drop behind them and then at the unknown over the brow of the hill. Not wanting to give the men too much time to fret over their situation, Vespasian moved forward and began to scramble up the escarpment, his hobnailed sandals struggling for purchase in the looser, grassless earth. As his hands reached the summit the howling ceased and was abruptly replaced by a series of rumbling growls; he thrust his legs down and propelled his body up so that his head crested the ridge. A light shape flew at his face; he managed to duck in time and it passed over him as similar forms flicked by to both sides. Behind Vespasian the screaming started instantaneously and was mixed with the throaty snarls of wild beasts ravaging flesh. He kicked a leg over the rim and hauled himself up; Magnus made it up next to him with Balbus and a few others who had been fortunate enough to slip under the pounce of the wolves – white wolves. But, below, carnage ensued as man fought beast in a savage battle of iron, teeth, fist and claw. Many of the marines had bolted, tumbling headlong down the incline, a few rolling uncontrollably towards a shattered-bone death on the rocks below. Others engaged in combat that would have delighted the crowd in any arena for its savagery as at least twenty beasts tore their way through the remaining terrified marines, clamping blood-stained teeth on sword arms, throats and thighs, ripping flesh and muscle as the wind blew ripples along their sleek, off-white coats in a strange juxtaposition of beauty and horror. Wrenching his eyes away from the slaughter, Vespasian looked around for the beasts’ handlers or the druids who had set this fearsome attack in motion; but on the summit of Tagell there was no one and nothing to be seen apart from the sheep, that had somehow escaped the attentions of the wolves. They grazed peacefully beneath the monstrosity whose magnitude could only now be appreciated. Vespasian led the dozen survivors towards the huts, knowing that they could not help their comrades against the fury of the wolves, which, although they had been reduced in number, were mauling their way through the very few marines still prepared to stand against them; a few men had been hauled to safety by their mates but the remainder were now scattered and beyond rallying.
A search of each of the half a dozen thatched shelters turned up nothing apart from burning fires in their central hearths; animal skins, boar tusks and antlers lined their walls and pots and bowls full of strange ingredients were formed up in neat lines on their floors. Each had four beds but not all seemed to have been slept in.
‘Where in Hades are they?’ Vespasian shouted against the wind, coming out of the last hut having checked the floor for trapdoors.
Magnus glanced nervously over his shoulder in the direction of the wolves. ‘They evidently ain’t here so I suggest we should find a way off this rock that doesn’t involve feeding ourselves to wild beasts.’
‘Yes, sir, we should go,’ Balbus affirmed, his eyes still registering the shock of losing so many men.
Vespasian looked up at the wicker man. Thirty feet above him its stag-like head and huge wooden antlers rocked back and forth against its restraining ropes in the howling wind, as if it were a beast on a leash straining to lurch forward; he wanted nothing more than to be away from it and everything else that was strange and unnatural on this windswept lump of bleak rock. ‘Yes, we’ll go.’ He turned to make his way back down in
the opposite direction from the wolves and stopped suddenly in his tracks. Cogidubnus, Glaubus and a few marines were running in ragged formation towards him as if the Furies themselves were after them.
Magnus spat. ‘There seem to be a lot of wolves on this rock.’
‘Where are the rest of your men, Glaubus?’ Vespasian asked as the centurion came to a chest-heaving halt.
Glaubus took in the very few marines left from Balbus’ century. ‘Gone, the same as yours; although how I don’t know. It was like they were just plucked off the rock by invisible hands.’
‘Myrddin,’ Cogidubnus wheezed. ‘I’ve heard it said, although I’ve never believed it, that he has the power to call upon the spirits of the Lost Dead.’
Vespasian glanced nervously over the King’s shoulder. ‘The Lost Dead? Who in Hades are they?’
‘That’s just the point: they’re not in Hades or any other afterlife; the druids believe them to be the dead that have missed the chance to be reborn into another body and so are condemned to wander the land. They hate everything that lives. They congregate in barren places such as the plain to the east with the Great Henge of stone and, evidently, here. If Myrddin really does have the power to control them then we must leave. We are in great danger.’
‘I don’t think that Plautius understood just what he was asking us to do by coming here.’
Cogidubnus looked around with darting, nervous eyes. ‘How could he have? I didn’t even know.’
Magnus clenched his thumb and spat to ward off the evil-eye. ‘I’ve heard enough. Let’s get back to the ships, sir.’
‘I agree,’ Vespasian said, ‘but which way? Through the wolves to the north or the Lost Dead to the south or over the precipice to the east?’
Cogidubnus’ eyes widened with fear as he looked past Vespasian, towards the wolves. ‘The north is closed to us.’
Vespasian turned and froze. It was not wolves that he saw coming back towards him, but druids; druids with robes, hair and beards covered in blood as if they had just been in battle.
‘Hold, Romans!’ a druid called out in Greek. ‘You are surrounded.’
Curtailed screams pierced the wind and, turning to their source, Vespasian saw that it was true: they were surrounded. Eight marines buckled to the ground with their throats gushing blood to reveal a similar number of druids with vicious curved blades staring at him with no emotion in their dark eyes. ‘Where the fuck did they come from?’
‘And where did the sheep go?’ Magnus asked in a slow thick voice, looking with drooping eyelids at the deserted grazing beneath the wicker man’s legs.
Vespasian tried to recall how many sheep there had been but his mind was becoming sluggish; he felt a hand on his shoulder but saw nothing there, and then a cold pressure pushed into his back and icy fingers squeezed his heart. He managed to focus on the eight druids as his knees sank to the ground and then the image of the same number of sheep grazing beneath the wicker man came to his fading consciousness. ‘That’s impossible,’ he murmured as the wind-flattened grass came rushing towards him.
*
The mist cleared from Vespasian’s eyes to reveal spots of blue sky through a myriad of cracks in a tightly woven lattice of branches encompassing him. His hands were tied behind his back; he pressed his fingers down and found a gap in the weave of wood; probing it he felt grass. He raised his head and saw that Magnus and Cogidubnus were imprisoned with him in a confined area just long enough for them to lie in full length; a thick pole ran through the centre of the cage, above him, from wall to wall.
‘The legate wakes,’ a voice said in Greek from outside the cage. ‘We can soon begin.’
Squinting, Vespasian could make out a figure looking down at him through the weave; his face was indistinct but one dark eye peered through a crack, cold as a midwinter’s night and just as deep. ‘Myrddin?’
‘So you know our name. If you knew that why did you come here on your own volition?’
‘To kill you.’
‘To kill us? But don’t you know that we can’t die? Myrddin will always live on this island. We will still be here when you Romans are gone and the new invaders come from across the cold northern sea in their fat boats and then we shall laugh as they too lose our Lost Lands to an army less than the size of one of your legions.
‘We will still be here even if your death fails to prevent a power greater than those legions, which now spawns in the heart of your Empire, from coming to fruition. Even if another takes the place that you were destined to occupy and he allows this canker to be nurtured so that eventually it sweeps everything old and true before it – in a way that Rome could now only imagine doing with her armies – we will still be here. If the time comes when knowledge is forbidden, forcing us to hide in the forests to practise the true religion, we will still be here. Can you really believe that you can kill us when we know all this?’
Vespasian struggled to his knees. ‘You’re still just a man.’
‘Are we? If we were “just a man” do you think that we could have disguised what you saw? You heard wolves, you expected wolves, in fact, you even wanted wolves for fear of something worse, so when our druids came at you it was easy for us to make your simple minds see wolves, white wolves, the same colour as our robes, with a simple hex. And the same with the sheep: you had seen real sheep from afar so expected real sheep to still be there. But think: if there had been sheep and wolves together, wouldn’t nature have taken its course?’
‘So those sheep didn’t change into druids, we just couldn’t see them for what they really were.’
‘Exactly.’ Myrddin’s throat rasped in what sounded like sneering amusement. ‘Not even we have the power to change form, but we can make you see white sheep rather than white-robed druids. Our power is not about what we can do to ourselves, it’s about what we can make other people think we’ve done. Your men thought that they went to their deaths ripped apart by tooth and claw but if you were to look at their bodies you would only see slashes and punctures of blades. But you won’t get that opportunity, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, because once this King lying next to you is conscious we will have our sacrifice that you’ve tried to deny us. And what is more, you will die in the flames of our gods despite what has been prophesied for you because you have come here willingly.’
Vespasian felt suddenly alert. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Few men’s destinies are preordained and those that are can be changed if that man voluntarily accepts an early death. We can see the fate that your guardian god, Mars, had waiting for you, but that will not come to pass because Judoc played his part well.’
‘Judoc was false?’
‘Of course. When the man you know as Alienus came and told us that you were on your way here we had to work out how best to have you deliver yourself up to us. Alienus we couldn’t trust because we’re sure that he was the one who betrayed us before.’
‘It was; in return for his life.’
‘Then we shall take that from him. He was never going to be given to you, that was just a pretence by Judoc to make you trust him. Judoc respects the gods and will give his life and those of his people to preserve their ways. He set the fire in his settlement and allowed you to escape; it was fortunate, but not unforeseen, that your men turned up so that you wouldn’t realise how easy your escape was. You see, if you had been delivered to us in chains then you would not have willingly come to your death. In that case the prophecy from your birth would have been stronger than our will and you would have survived – somehow. So Judoc pretended friendship but refused to help you against us; he told you that we were expecting you; he told you that this wicker man was built for you and he warned you of our power and yet you still came of your own accord.’
Cogidubnus let out a groan.
‘Ah, the King stirs; we can begin. You’re a dead man, legate, and a worthy sacrifice to our gods.’
‘You’re wrong, Myrddin.’
‘We’re never wrong.’ Myrddin tur
ned and walked away, shouting at his followers.
Vespasian yelled after him, ‘You are this time, Myrddin; I didn’t come here of my own accord. I came because it was my duty to Rome to do so; but I had to force myself to take every step towards you, do you understand? Every step was unwillingly taken; every part of my being rebelled against coming here except my sense of duty. I, Myrddin, am not here of my own free will!’
A sudden jerk unbalanced him and he sprawled onto Magnus.
‘That was some weird conversation you were having.’
‘You heard it?’
‘Most of it; and I reckon that you made a fairly decent point at the end.’ Another jerk and they felt themselves rise slightly off the ground; cries of terror came from close by accompanied by the bleating of sheep. ‘Although I don’t see how that’s going to help us now.’
Vespasian suddenly took in his surroundings. ‘Shit! We’re in the wicker man!’
‘Well, where else did you think we were?’
‘I thought that we were just in some sort of cage.’
‘And why would they put us in a cage when they’ve got a perfectly good wicker man waiting for us?’
They felt the wicker man rise again; the cries intensified and wind whistled through the gaps in the weave. ‘Of course! That settles it, I was put here without my knowledge and there’s no way that can be construed as willing. Let’s pray that Myrddin is as right about the prophecy meaning that I will survive as he is wrong about me being here of my own accord.’
‘I’d prefer it if you said “us”, “we” and “our” rather than “I”, “me” and “my”. Now get behind me and let’s try and loosen these knots.’
Vespasian crawled into place and Magnus began to work his binding with his fingers. Another jolt raised their prison further; white-robed figures placed themselves underneath and began heaving at the wicker framework with their hands and backs, helping their colleagues hauling on the four ropes. The ascent became smoother and steadier.
Masters of Rome: VESPASIAN V (Vespasian 5) Page 20
