The Celtic Mirror

by Louis Phillippi

  “Why did you do that? He was the enemy. If I hadn’t killed him, he would have given the alarm and we might all be dead instead of him.” Morgan did not like the way the brief conversation was headed. He was having his own demons for breakfast and did not need to struggle with someone else’s.

  “This is a war. That man’s death is not on your hands. The gods understand these matters. Sometimes I think they like us to kill one another.” He colored under Morgan’s incredulous look. “The Mercian was a man like us, foreign Lord, but I did not know how to pray to his gods for him. So I prayed to mine.”

  Morgan warmed to the young man who was trying to discover morality in war. He wished him well, although he knew from experience that failure lay along that path. “What are you called, Priest?” he asked the humanist disguised as a Druid.

  A blush colored the youth’s cheeks again and he appeared to be genuinely embarrassed. “My pparents saw a fireball cross the heavens on my Name Day and felt that I was destined to do great things for my people.” He looked away from Morgan, red-faced.

  “Well then?” Morgan persisted, amused.

  “They n-named me, Nero, lord,” the boy mumbled.

  Morgan managed to suppress most of the laugh that tried to escape, but allowed one ragged snort to rebound down the tunnel. Only Coel Chulainn turned his way. Connach was lightly snoring and had not heard.

  “Not Nero Germanicus, surely?” Tears streamed down Morgan’s cheeks. The effort to contain his mirth was nearly beyond his power.

  “Aye, foreign Lord,” whispered the chagrined boy, his ears a bright red.

  “My God,” Morgan said. “I don’t believe this. Imagine a Nero serving the House of Connach.” I wonder how Connach will react when he finds out? He nearly collapsed with a third bout of painfully suppressed laughter.

  “A word of advice, Nero Germanicus,” he whispered, keeping a deadpan face. “If Lord Connach ever asks you what name you carry, at least for the present, just tell him ‘Germanicus’ if you favor living. And my own name is Kerry Morgan, not ‘foreign Lord’.”

  “Aye, Lord Morgan, I will do as you suggest.” The priest lifted his reddened hands once more, and Morgan was left to his own thoughts again.

  He did not know how much time had passed, for time is an artificial thing underground, but when three widely separated raps boomed on the door, he was galvanized out of his musing state into a combat-ready posture. Anything behind the panel wearing red or gray-green was asking for death. He jumped when Connach placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s OK, Kerry. Relax.”

  “You relax.” I’ll wait and see who opens up.”

  “As you wish.” Connach answered the knock with two rapid blows from a clenched fist. He touched the light plate set next to the door and plunged the tunnel into a thick darkness.

  The door pivoted slowly open on silent hinges, stabbing at the dark with a knifepoint of bright light. Morgan tightened his grip on the rifle stock and motioned Connach aside to insure a clear field of fire. Calm, he told himself. Calm. If a trap were being sprung, the Mercians would pay heavily.

  There was no trap. As the door swung fully open, only one man stood in its narrow frame, a tall, strikingly handsome aristocrat whose thick black hair was curled about his face in the ancient, Imperial Roman fashion.

  “Kerry Morgan,” Connach said, pushing the doubter toward the door, “meet Martin Cunneda.”

  Dreamlike, he slung the rifle and obediently touched his right palm against the open hand of Brigid’s intended husband. The patrician face smiled an easy, white-toothed politician’s smile.

  “I am pleased to receive my brother in our fight against the pagan,” the perfect face delivered in a melodious voice.

  Morgan disliked him instantly and treasured his little seed of hatred as Caerwent’s chief politician repeated his insincere speech without variation to the other leaders.

  When Cunneda’s duty to his plebeian subordinates was done, he turned to Connach and embraced him without apparent artifice. “Ian, it has been many years since we two have used this tunnel for our games, eh? Did you need to wait long after you signaled?”

  “Not that long, Martin. Perhaps ten segmenti, no more.”

  “That is good. I only glanced at the signal plate by accident while closing the door to the office, and ….”

  “What signal plate,” interrupted Morgan, feeling that he should learn any secrets the tunnel held, feeling perverse?

  Cunneda merely raked Morgan with a disdainful look and continued to reminisce with Connach.

  Perhaps it was Cunneda’s imperious manner; perhaps it was his hold on Brigid. Most likely it was both. Morgan stepped closer.

  “God damn it, I asked you what signal panel, and I do expect an answer.” He held his hands at his sides. They asked to be formed into fists. He regarded Cunneda through slitted eyes, daring another superior look.

  Connach stared at him, but Morgan scarcely noticed through the red haze that filtered his vision. Cunneda was being viewed through Morgan’s infrared sights.

  “Martin,” Connach said, a little too cheerfully, putting an arm around Morgan’s shoulders, effectively blocking any threatening move on the Californian’s part. “Kerry is my second in command on this mission.” That was the first Morgan had heard of his promotion. “He is an officer, a virs nobilis, although he has come to us from a country that has no hereditary aristocrats, only free men.”

  “I can’t imagine such a society working at all,” the clan chief declared with a slight sneer.

  Morgan pushed his face close to Cunneda’s. “Let me break a few of his teeth, Ian,” he said in English. “Rearrange his nose so he’d have to look cross-eyed to look down at me.” He lovingly extended his fingers into an ax-configuration.

  “Leave it!” Connach commanded, blocking him, pushing him across the room. Even in his unpleasant state, Morgan could discern the anxiety on Connach’s face. The Lothian hill men watched, grinning and Morgan knew that they were enjoying the prospect of a fight, especially between leaders.

  “Sit!” Connach said, indicating a couch.

  Morgan obeyed, unappreciative of the furnishings; anger still a red film before him.

  “Martin,” Connach said, turning from Morgan, “take that self-satisfied look off your face and listen well to what I have to say.” In five minutes it had all been told . . . the Mirror…California…Brigid…all. When Connach paused for breath, Cunneda faced the seated Morgan. A slow smile that held all of the warmth of a python watching its prey, slithered over his mouth.

  “So this mercenary has captured sweet Brigid’s heart? Well, that part he can have. The rest of her will belong to me when all this is over.”

  A low sound issued involuntarily from Morgan’s throat, surprising even himself with the depth of his hatred for Connach’s boyhood friend. He jumped to his feet, eyes focused only on Cunneda.

  Again, Connach stepped between Morgan and his target.

  “Stop! Both of you! Martin, you’d better be finished with your little games unless you intend to blow the whole thing apart . . . or end up suddenly dead. Morgan’s capable of deciding your fate, or have you been too wrapped up in your own self-importance to notice? I’m beginning to think that you and our old friend have taken the same path. You always did admire him. Have you followed his example? Have you?” He gripped Cunneda’s arm so that reddened flesh stood in parallel welts between encircling fingers.

  Cunneda shook his head emphatically. “I could never become like him. I would find my own way to the Horned One first.”

  “You do not have me convinced, Martin. You’d better keep in mind that whatever victory we may achieve against the Viks will be due, in large measure, to Morgan and his Shadow World companions.” He loosened his grip but continued to command Cunneda’s attention. “These men could have chosen to return to comfortable lives in their own world. Instead, they chose to stand by us in our last effort to survive as an independent people.�
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  Cunneda broke eye Contact with Connach and looked directly at Morgan. The look was not friendly, but the haughtiness and insulting sneer had been replaced by a neutral expression.

  Morgan sat back down, his tension lessening, and looked at the other ten commandos. They were plainly interested in the contest. The Celts, Morgan knew, would follow the strongest leader, but a unified leadership was required to forge a unified front out of the fragmented and independent Celts. The near disaster, one that his own hotheaded behavior had helped create, had to be amicably resolved, to all outward appearances at least. There could be no visible rift between Verulamium and Caerwent. He sighed. It seemed to be up to him to make the peace gesture.

  On stiff legs, he rose from the couch and shook off Connach’s warning look. Cunneda shrank from his approach as if Morgan carried some virulent disease. He did. It was called democracy, and it killed aristocrats. Morgan halted a respectful—and safe distance from Caerwent’s hereditary leader and extended his raised palm in greetings and salute. His swallowed pride went down with sharp corners.

  “Hail, Dumnonia’s High Chief, from the Shadow World I represent. I ask you to accept these warriors from my world who have volunteered to assist Reged in her fight against Mercian oppression. I will pledge them to fight to free Dumnonia as well from the Vik yoke.” Morgan was well aware that he was not acknowledged leader of the volunteers. They had no actual leader unless it was Connach himself. Morgan knew that, the volunteers knew that, Connach knew that, and, he suspected Cunneda knew that. The important thing was not the truth but the words. Most of Morgan’s world operated on that principle, a principle only recently discovered by the western world’s newer nations. “Face” was of far more importance than factuality.

  Cunneda apparently agreed. He remanufactured his perfect smile and returned Morgan’s salute. He half-turned so that his voice would carry to the ten spectators more clearly.

  “I accept you Shadow World warriors as brothers in our struggle, and Reged’s leadership in this attempt to free ourselves.” His next move surprised Morgan most of all. “And you, Morgan, virs nobilis, I welcome to my house as a man of rank and authority.” He touched palms with the Californian. His smile was as plastic as ever. “Let us kill Mercians together.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Dead! What do you mean, they’re all dead?” Thorkell roared, shaken.

  Wulfe knew very well that the Governor-General was a firm believer in killing the bearers of bad tidings. He didn’t think he was in immediate danger of execution but he leaned away from the blasts that Thorkell sent his way. Wulfe had learned to lean quite well.

  “Your Excellency, we don’t actually know if they’re all dead. Some we just can’t locate. In some cases, local records show that individuals we’ve used for months have never existed at all.”

  “You can’t locate your agents in the field?” Thorkell brought his flywhisk painfully down across the intelligence officer’s face, raising an angry welt from the cheekbone to the jutting chin. “What kind of network are you running, Wulfe?”

  Terrified but trying to hide his vulnerability from his master, the handsome and much decorated spymaster clicked his heels together. “The best, Excellency. But this wholesale compromise and elimination of native agents has me really worried. Not only will they be nearly impossible to replace, but their elimination indicates very clearly that our organization has been breached.”

  “Breached? Only by flies. One of your precious agents got drunk and talked to the wrong people. You have my permission to recruit intensively. Offer more money if you have to.” He turned away and snapped his fingers for his retainer.

  Wulfe knew that he had been dismissed, but remained at attention. He winced when the Governor-General turned and stared at him.

  “Why are you still here?”

  Wulfe swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. “It will not be easy to recruit, sir. These people are very difficult to approach, and the ones we enlist have to be contacted in the most circumspect manner. They are much more afraid of being revealed as collaborators and traitors to their neighbors than they are of us.”

  “Hmm. Tell me, Wulfe. How did the agents you could locate meet their deserved fates?”

  “Suicide. Hanging or poisoning in most cases. There was the odd drowning or leap to death as well.”

  Thorkell raised his eyebrows. “Suicide? These people don’t commit suicide. It’s against their beliefs. Suicide is a soldier’s death. Those bastardized Keltaner have forgotten how to be soldiers.”

  He laughed derisively and shook the whisk in the Wolfe’s face once again.

  Wulfe held his ground without flinching. “If they do not commit suicide, then they do not kill others for the same reason. Where then should we begin looking for the killers? Among our own people?”

  “Something has changed them, Wulfe. What or who could it be?”

  Wulfe watched the color drain from Thorkell’s face. “Connach! That bastard is here! Damn him.

  “Wulfe, you may have discovered the beginnings of a real problem for us. A problem we must nullify at once. Continue the search for your missing agents until you are certain that they are all, indeed, dead. In the meantime send Lieutenant Schlaager to me at once.”

  “Schlaager? But he. . . .” The Kriegenfahrer got no farther with his protest.

  “Get me Schlaager, Wulfe. Or would you dare to defy me?”

  Wulfe saluted smartly and gratefully fled his master’s audience chamber.

  Drakonfahrer Ernst Schlaager adjusted his black wig and appreciatively studied his reflection in the polished steel mirror. The face of a smug Keltik peasant looked back at him, amused at what he saw, as he always was. As head of Major Wulfe’s Civil Opinion Team, that was the face he wore most often as he slipped, unnoticed, into hostile crowds, saying little while observing and listening well. He had known for days that something dangerous to Mercian supremacy had been building beneath the placid surface of the subject population’s characteristic docility. It had begun on the day that Thorkell’s bedmate, Hammer, had vanished; he had said so in his reports. He was certain that Wulfe had shelved those observations.

  Wulfe is a fool. He does not know how to use the power he wields to his advantage. Schlaager would have no such trouble. He knew what he wanted and how to get it. Thorkell would give it to him. When he solved the mystery of the bizarre prophets who had descended upon the city from nowhere, the prophets who harangued the crowds in kutanei instead of Pan-Keltik, then the Master of Dumnonia would honor Ernst Schlaager. He had sent a request to investigate the enigmatic orators directly to Thorkell by paid messenger and he had been summoned to the Presence that very morning. The Governor-General apparently read his own dispatches.

  Thorkell’s orders to Schlaager were simple and direct: seek out signs of urban underground, anti-occupation activity and infiltrate as quickly as possible. Preparations for the final blow against holdout Reged were already underway, and Thorkell wanted no interference from mainland rebels.

  He grinned at his image in the mirror again. “Well, friend,” his image said in unaccented Pan-Keltik,” Today we go fishing for glory.”

  Later that same morning, Schlaager sat at an upper window of the vacant building, far back in the room so that he could not be observed from the street. He had been watching the Cunneda mansion since the noon hour and was positive that some clandestine meeting was taking place there. During his vigil he had seen men entering and leaving the house, showing a more than normal caution in their movements. It was not the behavior of honest men, although Schlaager scarcely understood the concept of honesty as it applied to him. What excited the Mercian most was the number involved. More than twenty had slipped into the mansion by various entrances. Only four had exited.

  He was convinced that the House Cunneda had become a center of Keltik resistance, and he intended to win Thorkell’s notice by insinuating himself into the movement. As he hurried down the stairs, he knew he should con
tact Wulfe by messenger, but he had no intention of having a squad of ox-footed Suevian peasants take any credit for his brilliant work. A coup like the one dangling before him promised promotion and a pass out of Kaerwendt’s racial cesspool. The late morning sun exhaled a furnace heat and the heavy wig hugged that heat to his head. Perspiration ran down the back of his neck and pasted the light native tunic to his shoulder blades and spine like a second, sodden skin.

  When he reached the street gate he found it unlocked. Unworried about his reception he lifted the latch and stepped boldly through. He knew that the Keltaner were unused to deception. He would not be doubted. It was really rather unfair. He had been challenged more as an agent in the Troop Morals division, locating kief users. As he mounted the steps that led to the main doors he had intoxicating visions of himself, resplendent in the scarlet tunic he had to forgo in his present line of duty. In his waking fantasy he had medals gleaming on his chest, placed there by the great man himself. Schlaager drew a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them he had completely erased his true identity and had become another.

  It helped, in his business, being a consummate actor.

  The newly-created native raised a massive bronze knocker and let it fall resoundingly on its worn backing plate. Scarcely had the echoes died when the right-hand door eased open a finger’s width, no more. A bright, unblinking eye regarded him. He had the feeling that he was being studied like an insect under an Arabian lens. A tense silence reigned for the space of a few heartbeats, unnerving him a little.

  Then the rehearsed words tumbled from his mouth, “Please sir! You’ve got to help me! The Viks. . . they came to our farm last night and rounded up all of our livestock. . . requisitioned was the term their Bogentrager used. When my father asked for payment, the soldiers just laughed.”

  Schlaager felt he had recovered well from a poor beginning. The scene was, after all, one from his rich store of experiences on occupation duty. He had often led such foraging teams. It was a simple matter for him to assume the part of one of his own victims. It was not difficult to be convincing to a Kelt.