"Boys," she spoke softly, and was amused to see them jump, surprised by her quiet approach. "Can you help me with something?"
They turned and stared at her. "Where did you come from?" asked one, a little agitated.
The other seemed more at ease. "Help? Of course, babe, I can help, what do you need?"
"Sex," she answered, simply. Her pheromones wafted towards them, and she tugged down her low-cut top to expose her breasts. "Come and get some."
One of them sniggered, the other made a noise half way between a growl and a purr, and both of them followed her into the trees. Out of sight of the road, she stopped and pulled the boys closer into herself, inviting them to kiss and squeeze her breasts, and run their hands over her inviting curves. She projected images into their heads, of her lips on their cocks, her nipples hardening under their fingers. Her hands found first one zip, then the other, and she drew out their swollen members. As soon as she leant down and her hot breath wafted over the shiny exposed head of the first one, it spasmed and spat white fluid into her face. She giggled as the boy mumbled an apology, and turned to the other cock, sliding her hand along its length and engulfing the head with her soft lips. She could feel the energy radiating off the boy as he groaned in pleasure. She gently toyed with the first boy, but his member stayed obstinately flaccid, prompting him to whisper another apology.
"It's the thought that counts," she murmured. "Believe me."
She pulled the sexual energy out of the air and absorbed it. It was rich and satisfying, vibrant with the vigour of youth. Even the one who had erupted prematurely was radiant with desire - the thought did, indeed, count. She let the two of them run their hands around her, exploring beneath her clothing, prospecting for the wet gold mine of her sex. There was a long drawn out moan that climaxed in a geyser of semen and a dramatic flare of energy, which she absorbed into herself with an audible gasp of pleasure.
She gave a little push, both mentally and physically, and the premature ejaculator landed, limp, on the ground. Tori concentrated on the other boy. She stood up and held his head in both hands, clamping her lips to his. He made winsome little mewling noises as her tongue penetrated his mouth, and his tongue reciprocated. She bit down on his tongue with her sharp teeth, so sharp that he felt nothing, and she began swallowing blood. Suddenly his eyes opened wide, as he realised something was wrong. His tongue was caught between her teeth. She increased the suction, and he began to struggle, and moaned - this time in pain - as her teeth bit down harder. He was unable to move. She shifted her hands down to his chest, and he felt pressure build as her claws extended and her fingers punctured his skin. Through her mouth and her fingers, she tapped directly into the essence of life within him, using his blood as a conductor to direct the flow into herself. It was still saturated with delicious lust, but after a few minutes she began to taste the metallic bitterness of his death. She dropped the body to the ground.
The other boy was awake, wide eyed, his head shaking from side to side in disbelief. He managed to say, "No, please..." Then her claws tore his throat open and he could say nothing more. She clamped her mouth to the gaping wound and drove the claws of both hands into his groin. Tapping into his essence was less pleasurable - she could taste his fear and mortality - and she finished him off quickly.
She lay on her back for a few minutes, gazing up at the stars, simply enjoying the feeling of satiation. With a sigh, she stood up, tidied herself, picked up the two corpses and headed into the woods to hide them.
Their bodies were not found for months.
Chapter 10
Camp site near Arwensford, North Wales, 25 May Last Year
Amanda had arrived at the Roman camp early in the evening, to the annoyance of Maxwell and Tori. Maxwell had sent Owain and Gilda off to dig into the ditch where the latrines had drained, so the day was not a complete bust, but he and Tori had waited for Amanda rather than continue work digging out the iron fort's middens. She was later than expected - Maxwell was sure she was doing her best to irritate him - but arrive she did, and insisted on foregoing the inevitable cup of tea in favour of watching the hastily edited video. Her expectations had not been particularly high, but she had to admit to being quite impressed. Maxwell had not lost his knack. He had a gift for conveying information that was vivid and clear, with infectious enthusiasm and charm. Most of his "talking head" pieces to camera would be usable in the finished product. Nor, she mused, had he lost his knack of picking up a sexy woman. She had to admit that Tori Bandra had the blonde hair and generous curves that would tick most men's boxes. So to speak.
"So, darling, what do you think of our little featurette so far?" he asked, with a flash of his trademark lop-sided grin.
"To be honest, Max, ..."
"Maxwell," he interjected.
"...it exceeds my expectations."
"Thank you!"
"Just one thing missing, that I might have expected, Max."
This time it was Tori who interjected, "Maxwell."
"You haven't recorded the basic folkloric research. You did do some, didn't you?" Amanda asked. "And I should warn you, it's a trick question because I believe I already know the answer. You're so focused on getting to the end of the trail that you're cutting corners again. You can't do that, because if you missed someone who holds part of the jigsaw, they'll call you on it."
"Of course we researched!" said Tori, defensively. "But this a completely new find, so we could hardly be expected..."
"Tori, dear," said Amanda, "I think you should listen before..."
"You condescending old cow! How dare you! Maxwell is the country's foremost expert when it comes to the Roman occupation, and the Roman military. Who are you to question him? You're only the TV company's Miss Moneybags! You wouldn't know history if it smacked you round the face!"
Maxwell cut in, smoothly, saying, "Tori, darling, your defence of me is completely endearing, but not really necessary. Maybe I was a little remiss with my introductions. This is Doctor Amanda Booker-Smart, a very old friend from Oxford. Amanda has an MA in archaeology, another one in prehistory, a postgraduate diploma in Mesolithic studies and a Doctorate in ancient history. She is well worth listening to."
"Oh. I … I didn't ..." Tori abruptly stood and pouted her way out of the camper van. Once outside, she smiled to herself. That should have reinforced the role she was playing, as Maxwell's empty-headed thrall.
"As I was saying," said Amanda. "You're inclined to get tunnel vision. Where did you find Miss Bandra? Because a really good research assistant would have known what bases need covering, and would have gone out to cover them."
"All right, all right. Yes, I get tunnel vision when it comes to my work. And yes, all right, maybe I figured that Tori's warm personality, let's call it, compensated for limited experience. But you wouldn't fund anything up front, remember, and Tori would work for a mere promise, so she's a godsend. So come on, you clearly found something you're dying to tell me about."
"Oh, it's my fault?"
"Let's leave it there. What have you got for me?"
Before Amanda could say any more, the sound of Owain and Gilda laughing over their exploration of ancient Roman latrines signalled their return. They entered in a wave of noisy good humour, and Tori slouched in after them, stony-faced.
"Well met!" cried Maxwell, theatrically. "Well met, young Gilda, young Owain! And pray tell, what wonders have you unearthed in yonder drainage ditch?"
"Wooden anal scrapers," said Owain. "Or at least what I assume are the remnants of them."
"Not a xylospongium to be seen," added Gilda. "Does that mean there were no real Romans in this camp, do you think? Just barbarians?"
"Fragments of pottery?" asked Maxwell.
"Hardly any," said Owain. "But then this camp wasn't occupied for long, so maybe rubbish just didn't have time to accumulate down there."
"But that's not the most interesting find," said Gilda. "The soil is heavily stained - rust coloured. We followed the lin
e of the wall for a little way, and dug test holes. The staining follows the walls."
"You know what that means, don't you!" said Owain.
"Iron Fort!" the two students shouted together, high-fived, and roared with laughter.
"So the iron fort really did have iron walls?" Maxwell sounded surprised. "That's just so impractical, I wasn't really expecting that."
"Well now, Max, I think this is a judicious moment to get back to my contribution," said Amanda. She opened her shoulder bag and pulled some folded sheets of paper. She handed them to Maxwell. "Read."
Maxwell scanned the first page, and his eyebrows went up. He scanned the second page and his mouth opened. "Well bugger me," he breathed. He looked up and gazed into Amanda's eyes. "I am soooo glad you found this."
"What is it?" asked Gilda.
"Yeah, let's have a look," said Owain.
"I feel quite melodramatic," replied Maxwell. "I feel a piece to camera coming on." He snapped his fingers excitedly. "Owain, get the camera set up. Amanda, how did you find this?"
"I checked with the National Museum of Wales and Saint Fagan's History Museum. They have extensive curated folklore collections, but nothing in their indices sounded relevant." Amanda looked round at Tori. "It would be worth a personal visit to their collections, pick a few brains, all that stuff." Tori glared back at her.
"Anyway," Amanda continued, "a helpful lady at Saint Fagan's mentioned a privately held folklore collection that she's visited several times. She said the owner was a bit indiscriminate in what he collected, but he has some good, unusual stuff, that she'd love to acquire for Fagan's some time. It's the Broadleaf Collection, and it's on the way here, just off the A55. I called ahead and stopped off.
"You should see the place! If it wasn't for the Mr Broadleaf's memory, you would never find anything. I described the sort of subjects I was interested in, and it was only when I mentioned 'Iron Castle' or 'Iron Fort' that he suddenly perked up. He said, 'Now that rings a bell,' and vanished for a couple of minutes then came back with that. He photocopied it for me, and here we are."
Tori had moved behind Maxwell and was looking over his shoulder at the papers in his hand. "Pendragon?" she said incredulously. "Knights? This got you interested?"
"Yes, Tori, darling," said Maxwell. "Many folk tales have their origins in oral accounts of real events. They were embellished by bards in the re-telling, to make them more memorable and more relevant to the audience. So a reference to King Arthur Pendragon would give the tale some legitimacy as being very old, and by association with Arthur, very heroic. Any kind of ancient warrior would end up being a knight. And names would change - a lot of people find the sounds of 'R' and 'L' quite hard to distinguish, so it's common for them to be interchanged. It's the same with vowel sounds. 'A', 'E' and 'I' are commonly interchanged. So our Big Beardy - 'Barba' - could plausibly end up being recorded as 'Belba'." He made a wry face. "If we'd missed this, then at best we'd have looked academically sloppy, or at worst, dishonest. You could bet your life that Mr Broadleaf would come forward with this sooner or later."
Tori glowered. Amanda said nothing, which only seemed to make Tori angrier.
"Ready to go, Prof," said Owain. "Just say when."
Maxwell shifted slightly so that his best profile was on show, and put on his lop-sided smile and boyish enthusiasm as if they were a costume. "When I get to that tale itself, we can run a collage of men at arms and burning villages and the like behind the voice-over. Ready, Owain." He looked down at the table as Owain said, "Recording."
"Today," he said to the camera, conspiratorially, "One of our researchers came across something quite - astonishing - that throws a fascinating light on the story that our other finds have been uncovering.
"A Victorian vicar in the twilight of his career was given a task to fill his last days - to decommission a church whose congregation had been whittled away by the blade of time. He had to separate wheat from chaff - documentary records of the parish that the church was duty-bound to preserve, from the flotsam and jetsam cast adrift on the tides of the centuries, and dispose of the latter.
"Among the latter, among the old sermons, diary notes and minutiae of humdrum parish life, he found an old manuscript, bearing a dramatic and ancient story, with fascinating parallels to our hunt for the elusive Barba Magna and his secret military campaign."
He smiled into the camera, pushed his floppy brown hair behind one ear, and held up some papers.
"Miraculously, the story told by the manuscript has been preserved to this day, in the Broadleaf Folkloric Collection. Let me read it for you now. This is: 'The Tale of Belbo and the Dragon'."
"Many years ago, long even before the reigns of the Pendragons, the Kingdom of Gwynedd was plagued by a dragon. None knew from whence came this dragon, and none could survive its onslaught. It ravaged the country from the Afon to the sea, and eastwards as far as the Castra Romana, killing all manner of game, animals, birds, and people as it found them.
"The good people of Gwynedd were sorely beset and despaired for their lives and their lands, until the holy Bishop Coddenna proclaimed a period of fasting and prayer to beseech the intervention of the Almighty. And so the people prayed for seven days and seven nights, and upon the eighth day there appeared some knights, following the banner of one named Belbo, at the border of Gwynedd.
"The noble warrior Belbo listened to the people and their sorry tales of the persecution of the dragon, and he swore to rid the land of this monster or die in the attempt. And so, accompanied by his faithful friend Bictus and a band of knights, he rode into the land of the dragon determined to hunt it down. To Bishop Coddenna, he declared his intention of discovering its lair, establishing what kind of beast it might be - for none who encountered it lived to tell aught of it - and forming a plan to bring about its end.
"Belbo rode into the great forest in search of the beast, with more than a score of followers. He was lost to human knowledge for twice seven days and nights, and then by the grace of the Almighty emerged in company with only the faithful Bictus. The remainder of his party had fallen to the monster, and of the horrors they encountered, nor Belbo nor Bictus would tell any save the good Bishop.
"The information gleaned by Belbo on this first expedition proved to be of great value, and Coddenna advised that Belbo should travel to consult a wise and holy hermit known to live at the border with the Kingdom of Powys. This advice Belbo followed gladly. The wise hermit of Powys indeed recognised the nature of the monster and with his advice Belbo was able to devise a plan for its destruction.
"It seemed that the monster could not cross over bodies of swift flowing water. Thus Belbo directed the digging of channels so that diverse rivers were brought into one, and flowed along the valley of the Afon, and so placed a restriction on the monster's southward range.
"It seemed also that the beast, like the peoples of the Fae, was weak in the face of cold iron. Thus Belbo directed that a castle be constructed, surrounded by swift-flowing water, and faceted with iron. He also set aside his weapons of finest Damascus steel and directed the construction of weapons of purest wrought iron.
"In this way, the dragon's attempts to hunt southward were baulked by the swift-flowing water, and its attempts to range eastward brought it to the iron castle, which it could not penetrate, and where wrought iron weapons were brought to bear that drove it to the west.
"Belbo assembled an army that pursued the beast westward, and his followers stripped the iron from the castle and followed after, each night setting out the iron plates in the form of a wall to prevent the dragon from turning once more to the east.
"In this way, as the running river drew closer to the sea, the range of the dragon was steadily reduced, until it was brought to battle at a place thereafter named Mynydd Draig, close to the sea.
"But while the iron weapons of Belbo and his followers hurt the beast, they found that it could not be killed. After seven days and nights of hard-fought combat, there remained onl
y Belbo and six companions; even faithful Bictus had fallen to the dragon. But the monster was hurt and weak, and Belbo managed to hurl it from a cliff into the sea.
"At this hour, the tide was slack and the sea was not swift-flowing, and the beast hauled itself to a tiny island, which became known as Ynys Anghenfil. There Belbo saw the chance to trap it for all time. He sent swift messengers to bring labourers from among the men of Gwynedd, and they dug new channels so that the swift river was diverted and met the sea opposite the island of Ynys Anghenfil, thereby making a swift flowing barrier to trap the beast upon the island.
"Crossing swiftly to the island, Belbo pursued the beast into a cave. There, he ordered the men to place the iron plates - those that had been brought all the way from the iron castle - inside the cave so as to line a chamber with cold iron from which the beast could never escape. Atop this prison, there was set and consecrated a church, thus trapping the beast with iron, with the Word of the Lord, and with water.
"In this way was the dragon of Gwynedd defeated by the knight Belbo, and trapped forever in the bowels of the earth beneath Ynys Anghenfil."
Maxwell paused, looking into the camera, and gave a small shrug. "What does this tale mean? Well, let's strip away the elements of the tale that are obviously later additions, and see what's left."
He glanced around, and then leaned forward conspiratorially into the camera. "The first thing we must shed are the Christian Bishop and the Christian God. This story pre-dates their dominance of Britain. It pre-dates King Arthur Pendragon. It says so, perfectly clearly. Now, current historical authorities believe the tales of Arthur are a conflation of the exploits of Celtic war-leaders who briefly held the Saxons at bay after the collapse of Roman Britain in the 5th century, romanticised into the Middle Ages. The tale was already old by the time Roman Britain collapsed. So, no Christianity, and so, no Bishop or holy hermits. No, in the 1st century, if I were to look for a wise old man hiding in a cave in Wales, I would expect to find a Druid."
Island of Fog and Death: A sci-fi horror adventure Page 5
