Prophecy: Web of Deceit (Prophecy 3)

by M. K. Hume

  Myrddion sought out the captain of the century when they paused to rest during the first evening. The healer took heart from the fact that the soldier in charge was a hard-bitten, laconic Romano-Celt who had been raised in the Roman way and treated warfare as a matter of good logistics and ruthless maintenance of discipline. Then, with a jolt, he realised that Ambrosius must need the siege machines very badly to deprive himself of his most able troops to ensure their safe delivery.

  ‘And who might you be?’ the captain snapped as he strode from where he was checking the supplies and kit of the ten squads of soldiers who made up his command. He was short and very dark, squat in the body, and endowed with a heavily muscled set of powerful shoulders that were abnormally broad. A beak-like nose dominated his face above lips so thin as to be almost invisible.

  ‘I am Myrddion Merlinus, healer to Ambrosius,’ Myrddion replied crisply, wondering with a wry, internal grin if he should salute this professional warrior.

  ‘The Demon Seed! I’ve heard of you. So what do you want? I’m busy.’

  ‘May I ask your name, captain? We’ll be together for some time on this journey and, as I’m a civilian, I wouldn’t want to offend you by using the wrong military term of address.’

  ‘Septimus will do. Captain Septimus. Now, I repeat, what do you want?’

  ‘Will we go all the way to Londinium before we begin to head north? If so, we will be entering enemy territory and may be forced to fight every inch of the way to protect the baggage train. I know the siege machines have been broken down so they are more manoeuvrable, but we’d be crazy to march blithely into the dragon’s lair.’

  ‘Really? The High King didn’t leave any instructions that I was to consult you, or anyone else, so leave these considerations to your betters.’

  Fuming inwardly, Myrddion produced his map case containing the charts he had drawn when they passed through the outskirts of Londinium a year earlier. He unrolled the precious hides on the soft grass near a covered fire and hunkered down on his haunches to point out a broken line west of the city.

  ‘This is little more than a goat track, but it bypasses Londinium and brings us out just south of our destination. There are no rivers to cross and it would be possible to widen the path to allow us to pass. The Saxons would not expect us to take this route, and I’m reasonably certain they don’t even know of its existence. If we were to travel by night as well as by day, we would reach Verulamium shortly after the main force, a feat that would surely impress Ambrosius with your efficiency.’

  Septimus looked at Myrddion’s crude map with scepticism. He moved it with one work-calloused finger so he could examine it from a different angle. From his expression, it was obvious that he had little reading skill.

  ‘What if the path becomes impassable?’ he grunted.

  ‘Call yourself a Roman?’ Myrddion joked, hoping the dour little man would take no offence. ‘Caesar built a road through the deepest forests of Gaul, plus bridges, as he chased the barbarians back across the Rhenus. Your engineers are more than equal to the task. The High King needs siege machines and his best troops if he is to survive this campaign, and I promise you that if we don’t follow this road, our small force will be annihilated.’

  Septimus bridled, but his eyes narrowed in thought. ‘You know the way?’

  ‘I know where the path starts, and where it finishes,’ Myrddion replied. ‘I’ll happily take the chance if it ensures the safety of the women who are travelling with me.’

  ‘I’ll make up my mind when we get to the place where the path starts,’ Septimus retorted, before rising and stalking away from the fire.

  ‘Lord of Light, give me strength!’ Myrddion muttered sardonically at the Roman’s equivocation as he picked up the scroll of maps.

  The soldiers round the fire-pit had been rolled up in their thin blankets attempting to sleep like all sensible men of war when the conversation had started. Now they opened their eyes and watched narrowly as Myrddion’s tall figure strode off.

  ‘I smell lots of tree felling and digging,’ one of the older soldiers snapped. ‘Sod that black crow, boys, for he’s too clever by half. Still, I suppose digging’s better than dying defending these sodding siege machines.’

  ‘You’re such a ray of sodding sunshine, Targo. Why didn’t you stay in Hispania with the legion instead of signing on to fight with Ambrosius? God knows you’re old enough to seek a quieter life.’ The younger man, who came from Eburacum and had escaped with his parents when the Saxons first arrived in the north, had a more sanguine view of army life.

  ‘If you’d been to Hispania, you wouldn’t ask such a stupid question. The place is overrun with Goths, Visigoths, Vandals and Mithras alone knows what else. Old Gaul is divided up like your old patched tunic, Tullo, and they’re all trying to kill each other. As for Italia – shite, it’s done for, and all sensible men are trying to find a nice quiet part of the world where they can retire in peace.’

  ‘So why are you here, Targo? It seems to me that we’ve got our own problems.’

  ‘I didn’t fancy going to the east. It’s all too strange and mad out there in the wilds – the people are all god-crazy.’ The scarred veteran made the age-old circular action with one finger near his temple. ‘I figured if I came as far into the west as I could I might have an easier life, but here we are off to war again. At least I understand this time which side I’m fighting on, which is nice for a change.’

  ‘And the High King is away from that Pict whore. Ambrosius has gone moon-mad over that woman,’ one of the other warriors muttered. His dress was like the armour of his fellows, largely Roman in style, but the plaits in his hair marked him as a tribesman born and bred.

  ‘Aye, Blaise,’ Targo grunted dourly. ‘The brothers are odd. Too much mixed blood, I reckon.’ The old soldier seemed oblivious of the implied insult to all the Celts in his vicinity. Accustomed to the Roman’s pungent and pointed observations, his fellows swallowed their bile, because the ageing warrior usually spoke sense. ‘Neither of them appears normal in the way they approach their dealings with women. Their types seem to go clean mad when they fall in love, and their balls turn their brains into mush.’

  ‘Go to sleep, you sons of whores.’ Septimus appeared and poured a helmetful of water onto the fire, which hissed like a dying snake. ‘You’ll get to exercise something other than your tongues when the dawn comes tomorrow.’

  ‘When this little exercise is over, I’m going north,’ Targo sniped to the empty air where Septimus had stood only a moment before. ‘It might be cold, but I’m right sick of marching.’

  ‘How long have you been a soldier, Targo?’ Blaise murmured sleepily from his cocoon of blankets.

  ‘Shite, boy, I’ve no idea. My old father sent me off to the legions when I was eleven. Must be thirty years or more since then. Too long by far!’

  The night became still and quiet as the mounds of soldiers slept by turns and the sentries stood in the shadows of the trees, invisible in the darkness. The camp was full of small sounds of violence as the night hunters went about their bloody business of survival, but the larger predators knew to avoid the place, for the things that rested there reeked of blood-letting, old death and the promise of new killing.

  Myrddion halted at a point where a faint trail led off on the left of the Roman road. Septimus approached at a trot and the healer pointed into the waist-high grass and saplings through which a goat track led into the north.

  ‘The wagons can pass through this mess, as long as we’re careful,’ he explained. ‘But it would be best if some scouts and engineers moved ahead of our convoy to warn us if the track becomes difficult to traverse.’

  Septimus looked at the main Roman road, flattened by the passage of many feet and beasts, and then stared with profound doubt down the overgrown path. Only a fool would cheerfully exchange one for the other.

  So that makes me a fool, he thought sourly. ‘Very well, healer, we’ll give it a try. I’ve been thinking abo
ut being ambushed along the way and my back is beginning to prickle already. We’ll trust to your pathway.’

  With the practical efficiency that was the stamp of his leadership, Septimus sent a contubernium of ten men ahead as forward scouts along the route his force would be taking. He then divided sixty of his troops on both sides of the convoy to warn of any Saxon ambush. Another contubernium of ten men was assigned to protect the rear, prudently placed to prevent unfortunate surprises. Once his men were dispersed, Septimus ordered Cadoc to turn his wagon onto the track.

  ‘Thank all the gods in the Otherworld that we ditched those sodding oxen,’ Cadoc called to Myrddion, who had urged his horse alongside the team. ‘Those useless slabs of brainless meat would be hopeless in this terrain.’

  After the spring thaw and the warming of the earth, the path was overgrown with new growth. There had been plentiful rain, so the close air under the trees was alive with gnats, disturbed wasps and other winged insects that Myrddion couldn’t name. Their stings and bites made a misery of the journey for soldiers, beasts and drivers alike, so Myrddion cautioned the men to smear any exposed flesh with mud to ward off the worst of the swarms.

  No marshes impeded their progress, but on several occasions the party was forced to push the wagons through deep, clinging mud beside ponds of standing water. To unfamiliar eyes, the scene was pretty, with wild flowers, sedge and water weed in those places where the sunlight broke through the forest cover. Dragonflies caught the sun’s rays in little prisms of blue, gold or green, while the noontime air was hushed, except for the sound of insects and the low hum of wings. Myrddion wondered at the peace and tranquillity of this quiet world, which was only rarely disturbed by the odd cowman or shepherd as he drove his beasts to market. The purveyors of war’s ugly trade did not belong in this beautiful glen where the shadows were deep and the dark blue and green hues of the trees and leaves burgeoned soft and new after winter’s long and frozen silences.

  After the second day’s hard slog, the soldiers were almost too exhausted to eat their cold rations before they rolled themselves into their thin blankets and curled up under the wagons. Myrddion was covered in mud from head to toe because on several occasions the wagons had become bogged down, and only saplings under the heavy wooden wheels could provide the traction that allowed the heaving, sweating men and horses to move the dead weight. Too tired to wash, Myrddion walked up the narrow track that had almost succeeded in doing what few armies ever could – break the resolve of Roman military might.

  Frustrated, he kicked at a rock on the roadway and swore crudely when the obstacle didn’t move. Not only did his foot hurt, but the rock was one more problem that might have to be dug up before they could continue their journey. As he massaged his foot, Myrddion considered the problems of battle and the difficulties of protecting baggage trains.

  ‘They are always the object of the enemy,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Money, machines, food, weapons, healers – the rear is where the most valuable components of a war are kept. And it moves so damned slowly. Ambrosius and Uther go charging off to Verulamium without spare rations or any other supplies needed to fight a protracted battle. They take only the basic materials of war – the men who fight and die, and the arms they need to protect themselves. There has to be a better way of managing logistics.’

  Unfortunately, the night had no answer.

  Suddenly a gravelly voice whispered in his ear. ‘Careful how you go, healer, or you’re a dead man.’

  ‘Shite!’ Myrddion spun and reached for the small scalpel he always kept in his boot. ‘Who in Hades are you?’

  ‘I don’t matter, healer. I was watching out, enjoying the night, like, and I wondered if I could sneak up on a Demon Seed. It seems I can!’ The short, heavily muscled man smiled darkly, while Myrddion peered through the moonlight gloom and recognised the unmistakable outlines of a Roman foot soldier.

  ‘I’m embarrassed,’ Myrddion murmured. ‘No man likes to be caught talking to himself.’

  ‘It’s only a problem if you’re expecting an answer,’ the old soldier replied laconically. ‘But you’re right in what you said. What sort of general goes galloping off and leaves the rear to make its own way to the war? These brothers seem to have more hair than wit.’

  He smiled again in the darkness with a flash of eyes and bared teeth. ‘I know you’re a friend of the High King, so don’t bother to answer that. According to old Septimus – and he’s been in Britain for years – Ambrosius usually thinks his actions out before he makes a move.’

  ‘What would you do, friend, if you were in charge?’ Myrddion asked the shadowy figure somewhat testily. Like all men, he felt free to criticise his friends, but he resented anyone else who voiced the same opinions aloud.

  ‘Marius, the soldier’s general, sorted this nonsense out years ago. He decided that his men would carry almost everything they required, in pieces if necessary, and still move at the speed of a forced march – even over god-awful terrain. I’m not saying it would work here, mind, not in Britain where the ground’s like quicksand and the rain keeps pissing down.’

  The two men had been strolling up a slight rise as they talked, and now paused at the summit. ‘Well, what do you know?’ the warrior said. ‘There’s the sodding North Road. Well done, healer! We’ll arrive in Verulamium long before anyone expects us to get there.’

  The soldier pointed one gnarled finger and Myrddion peered in the direction he indicated. ‘I don’t see anything except a few white stones,’ he said.

  ‘Look! Can’t you see, healer? Only the legions ever made anything as straight as that. Those white stones are distance markers.’

  The soldier’s arm and hand tracked the line of a break in the treetops through the faint moonlight. Yes! The steadiness of that moving finger pointed out the inescapable, sword-straight delineation of a purpose-built road.

  ‘That’s the end of my sleep for tonight,’ the solder growled. ‘If Septimus has half a brain, and he does, we’ll be back to footslogging as soon as I tell him. Now is the perfect time to get onto the sodding road. We don’t want to break out there exhausted, and in the full light of day. I can almost smell the Saxons to the north and they’re big buggers. A little man like me has to aim at their balls.’

  Laughing quietly, the soldier turned to return to the wagons, but Myrddion gripped his left arm in passing. ‘Your name, friend? You never told me your name.’

  ‘Only the men I fight and bleed with have a need to know that. But you’re well met by moonlight, healer.’ Then the soldier disappeared into the long grass without a sound.

  Septimus roused the soldiers immediately, and ordered the baggage train to resume its slow movement. Clearing a path through the underbrush by the light of makeshift torches was a tiring and a slow process, and each foot of ground covered was achieved with scraped knees and sundry small injuries. By the time the moon had set and faint light rimmed the eastern sky, the baggage train was achingly close to the Roman road. Then, when only a matter of a hundred feet separated them from the wide thoroughfare, Septimus ordered the soldiers to hew down the obstructing tree branches and saplings, disguise the wagons, and rest during the hours of daylight.

  Myrddion argued. Four days had passed since Ambrosius had left with the main column and the healer worried at the number of wounded men who would inevitably perish while they slept.

  ‘And how many will die if we’re ambushed on this fine wide road over yonder? Perhaps yourself? How will you save anyone if you’re dead or wounded?’ Septimus growled, and Myrddion was forced to admit that he had allowed his emotions to overrun his normal rational self.

  I seem to be out of balance lately, he thought ruefully, as he joined Cadoc under the wagon.

  As soon as dusk fell, the soldiers stripped away the concealing branches and the wagons juddered and swayed into movement. The horses strained, the soldiers pushed from behind, and as if regretfully relinquishing its hold on the baggage train, the path vomited the convoy
onto the road that would take them to Verulamium.

  All through the night, freed of mud, thick grass and the brutally uneven ground, the wagons made a good pace towards their destination while the soldiers trotted beside them. The miles were steadily devoured by that bone-numbing action that Caesar had used so brilliantly to defeat the savages of Gaul. Without complaint, at a speed between a walk and a trot, the soldiers held formation while maintaining an intent watch on the nearby copses for any sign of Saxons.

  With the approach of dawn, Myrddion knew that one last push would bring them to their destination. As they climbed the final hill, he was aware that only a stretch of flattish ground, a few miles in width, separated them from Verulamium.

  ‘You! Yes, healer, I’m talking to you. Let’s check the terrain. The sun will be up shortly, and then we’ll see what we’ll see. Blaise, come along too, and keep your eyes peeled.’

  Septimus was in his usual foul mood, but Myrddion was eager to be at Verulamium, so he hoped to persuade the dour Roman to continue if the road ahead should prove to be clear. The two men stood on the brow of the hill, with Blaise a little in the rear, as the light slanted upward on their right, gilding the crowns of a deep forest to the east. Gradually, that feeble glow brightened, revealing the details of the long valley and the river that ran through it, serene and still with the increasing light of the dawn.