2.27 a.m. said the clock on his dashboard as he cruised down the Royal Mile hoping for a final customer on this miserable night. He had just bitten into a ham and coleslaw sandwich when there was a whump on his rear bumper.
‘What the…!’ He dropped the sandwich onto his lap, hit the brakes and peered into his mirror. A shadow flitted across his line of sight. Little more than a darker piece of the night, followed by a shout.
‘Bloody drunks.’ They’d get a piece of his mind. He applied the handbrake and was about to heave himself out, when he caught movement again in his sidemirror and froze, door ajar, cold air oozing into the stale interior. Only a glimpse. A flicker of bronze glistening rust-red in his rear lights. The whisper of a cloak and then gone.
He dropped back into his seat and closed the door. Not drunks. Titans. He stared again into his mirror and could now see them more clearly. Figures cutting across the Mile at a sprint, swords drawn, shields hauled onto shoulders. Others angled in front of the car and ran hard, uncaring if they were caught in his headlights.
‘Okay, just keep it together. Nothing to worry about. Let them do their thing.’
There was something about the disarray of the figures. The abandon with which they hurled themselves across the street and disappeared into the shadows surrounding the High Kirk of St Giles’. These troops weren’t attacking. They were fleeing. In moments they had vanished and he peered to his left, towards the tight opening of Advocate’s Close from whence they had come. Rain arrived again, rattling on his roof, and it brought with it more figures from the Close. But these were different. Their helmets bore no plumes, their mail was iron, their blades much longer and they howled with glee, like hyenas with the scent of blood in their nostrils.
And that was the moment she appeared.
A thud on the bonnet spun his attention back to the front and her arms were spread-eagled on the hood as though she had run blindly into his vehicle. Her shoulders heaved, ebony hair hung from her helmet and she gripped a shortsword, but if she had carried a shield that night, she had already dropped it in her haste. She glared at him through the windscreen, then pushed back and became emblazoned in his lights. He gawked at her, his jaw slack. He had never seen someone so magnificently desolate. So feral and untamed. She might wear the bronze of a Titan officer, but there was horror in her eyes. Tears mixed with blood. Rage broke from her lips.
For a moment, her eyes pierced into him, then her attention was torn to her pursuers. She hurled a challenge back at them, turned and fled. The Vikings gave chase, but they were slower and he watched her charge across the court in front of St Giles’ and disappear under an arch beside the Signet Library. Some of the Vikings followed, but minutes later they returned and it was obvious from their frustration that she had given them the slip.
Good, he thought, though he knew not why.
The Horde loitered around the street. They yelled and hooted, swore at each other and swung their blades, but their noise was that of victors and they soon began to laugh and slap hands. He waited unmoving, numbed by the sheer incongruity of it all. The warm, air-conditioned interior. The mash of mayonnaise and bread between his legs. And the wild warriors of the night celebrating their battle honours.
When the last of them had gone, he eased the handbrake and slipped off the Mile onto South Bridge, but his mind was on the girl. Who was she? The last of the Titans to flee and a look in her eyes that would stay with him forever. He glanced at the seat next to him and swore when he saw his phone.
What a picture she would have made. What the papers would have paid for such a shot. A single image that summed up everything about The Pantheon. Its blood and its beauty.
Olena, Captain of Companion Bodyguard, ran. Her final look back had told her everything she needed to know. Timanthes, her Colonel and one of the Pantheon’s most illustrious servants, would not be setting foot again on the pavements of Edinburgh and nor would so many of the Titan Palatinate’s best troops. That hot, stinking cellar was their burial chamber.
She wept for them as she sprinted through the archway beside the Courts and on towards the parking areas at the rear of the buildings. A rope was hanging in a corner – one of many readied as an escape route for the Titan Sky-Gods – but she ignored it. Her Companions would already be on the rooftops and watching for the final escapees, but she did not intend to join them. As she passed, she glimpsed the rope being hauled up to prevent any Valhalla lout – high on victory – thinking they too could take to the skies.
She could hear her pursuers on her tail and she kept running. Across a yard, through a gate and then threading between vans parked at the back of the Court complex. A building blocked her way and she knew if the final rope had already gone, then she was lost. The Horde would trap her there, edge her into a corner and cut her down. One more of the Titan elite taken out of the game that night.
She charged to the wall and peered each way. There it hung beyond the last window, straight and still. She sheathed her bloodied sword and lunged across, grabbing the length and hoisting her legs up the wall in practised movements just as the first Viking pursuers came hurtling around the vehicles. They howled at the sight of her, but she was already out of reach. A young face appeared over the parapet, unmasked.
‘Go!’ Olena commanded as she dragged herself onto the roof. ‘I can do this.’
The Rope-Runt nodded in awe and dashed away into the night while Olena began hauling in the length. The lead Viking arrived below and made a grab for the end, but he was too late. Then a slender female warrior danced across the parking area, allowed her momentum to take her up the man’s back and leapt for the rope as it disappeared into the night. Olena felt the impact of the woman’s hand on the other end, but the twine was wet and her grip failed. With a cry of exasperation, she fell back to earth and Olena yanked up the last few metres. Only when it was all safely coiled on the roof beside her did she peer over. Her adversary returned the look, pointed her blade, then stalked back between the vans and disappeared.
A hush descended and Olena raised her eyes to the sodden rooftops around her. Nothing stirred. A diffused glow from the streetlights created an eerie orange dome over the buildings, as though shielding them from the impenetrable blackness above. A breeze jostled across the roofs and searched for her exposed skin. Her arms were shaking – although whether from the climb, the cold or sheer exhaustion, she could not tell. Her troops would already be well on their way to Ephesus and Thebes, and when they reached the safety of the Titan strongholds, the Armouries would fill with cries of treason, for any fool could see the Companions had been led into a trap.
Carefully, she raised herself and found her legs trembling too. She searched the shadows for the slightest movement, then began to navigate along the roof. But not towards the Titan strongholds. Instead she went north, back across the Court of Session and the Signet Library, the steeple of St Giles’ dead ahead. Then she cut west to the terrace over Lawnmarket where Timanthes had gathered his troops less than an hour before. She dropped to her knees and crawled to the edge. The Mile below was empty and resentful of her prying eyes. The Horde had gone and the entrance to Advocate’s Close squatted sullen and black. Timanthes, forgive me.
She pulled her gaze away and slithered across to a chimney, where the southern side provided shelter from the breeze. She seated herself on the wet tiles and leaned back against the bricks. She was shaking badly now as she attempted to wrap her cloak around her, but the cloth was already sodden and her fingers were stiff and clumsy. She unbuckled her sword belt and gazed at the leather and ivory scabbard. The blade would already be sticky with drying blood. It needed to be drawn, cleaned and oiled, but instead she simply dropped it and removed her helmet. She shook her lank hair and rubbed her face, then propped her head back against the chimney, took a deep ragged breath and gazed up at the starless heavens.
A cynic might say her plan had worked. Sow a belief among her Titan commanders that they had an asset in the Viking Hord
e. Lead the cream of the Titan companies to a door which this traitor said led to the heart of the Horde’s Valhalla stronghold. Walk them into an ambush. Watch them butchered. Then in the forthcoming Grand Battle the weakened Titan lines would not be capable of holding the Viking onslaught and Alexander himself might fall. A chance to combine the Palatinates. To be, at last, together with her lover Halvar.
She dropped her gaze. A stupid plan. A plan only love could make sense of.
It is the nature of things that you reap what you sow. The Vikings were supposed to feign surprise, but they had marched into that cellar in full battle regalia. It was obvious they had been expecting the foe and now every Titan still breathing knew they had been betrayed. At that very moment messengers would be flying between Thebes, Pella, Ephesus and Persepolis, tallying up the living, accounting for the dead and soon all inquiries would lead back to Olena. Then the hunt would begin. She knew she should run. Discard her armour and flee into the arms of the city. Find a haven and disappear.
But her limbs refused to move. Halvar himself had not been present in the cellar and she wondered if he already hung in Valhalla’s vaults, helpless against Radspakr’s instruments. Everything had failed. Their clandestine love had led inexorably to a bloodbath which had felled even the great Timanthes. And there would be no mercy.
She squeezed the cloak tight and hunched lower, but the rain would not ease and the cold was groping for her, burrowing into her core and dissolving her thoughts.
Acknowledgements
I first set pen to paper – or rather fingers to laptop – back in 2016. For some time I had wanted to find a way to bring the wonder and violence of the ancient world into a modern setting and during a series of dog walks in the Lake District the whole concept of the Pantheon came to me. I whisked off a first-draft of The Wolf Mile and, naturally, I was convinced there would soon follow a publishing bidding war over the rights, then a major film deal, and I would be boarding trains and finding half the carriage reading my work.
Reality bit sharply as I sent off letter after letter to agents and rarely even heard back. Months dragged and late summer found me sitting in a small rental cottage on the Mull of Kintyre. The place had appalling internet coverage, so it’s a miracle I even discovered the email from Laura MacDougall at United Agents. She had read my first three chapters and wanted the rest. Uploading the script pretty much destroyed the Mull’s entire internet – but just a day later Laura had completed the whole thing and wanted to sign me! I was over the moon. Since then, Laura has been my rock and the best agent any writer could wish for. She is so passionate about books and from the very start she totally ‘got’ the quirky story which is The Wolf Mile.
So I had a great agent. Now I needed a great publisher. Once again, it was my destiny to face many disappointments, but then – riding to the rescue from a distant horizon – came Hannah Smith and Holly Domney at Aries Fiction, part of Head of Zeus Books. The Wolf Mile, they said, was perfect for the adventure portfolio they were building at Aries. Since then, Hannah and Holly have been awesome at fine-tuning the story and guiding me through the various stages to publication. I am so thankful to have their wisdom and leadership.
Thank you too to some of the other team members: Olivia Davies at United Agents, who has so ably covered while Laura has been on maternity leave; and Dushi Horti and Annabel Walker, to whom I am indebted for such great copy editing and proofreading (I never knew you only put an e on the end of blond when describing a female – thank you Annabel)!
Through this whole turbulent process of giving life to the Pantheon and The Wolf Mile, I have been lucky enough to have the support of some amazing friends. Thank you to Mark Clay (markrclay.com) for the brilliant map of Edinburgh’s Old Town and all the laughs and hill climbs along the way. A huge thank you to Mike Dougan, who always fizzes with such energy and believed in The Wolf Mile before he had read a single word. The evening he marched me around Edinburgh’s backstreets is etched on my mind, crawling onto roofs, nipping over walls, lying in the middle of roads, to get the best photos for my website. My huge gratitude, as well, to Dave Follett, a friend since childhood, who has been my most stalwart reader throughout the development of Books 1, 2 & 3 in The Pantheon series and has provided such prescient advice and encouragement.
Much love and thanks to my family – especially my brother, Steve, who has been ready to read whatever I produce and give me the sort of honest feedback only kin can. Finally, thank you to Jackie, who has put up with me disappearing into a world of Vikings for what feels like half a lifetime and has always believed in me, even when the rejection letters were flooding in.
The Wolf Mile is only what it has become because I’ve been lucky enough to have you all on the journey with me.
About the Author
C. F. BARRINGTON spent twenty years intending to write a novel, but found life kept getting in the way. Instead, his career has been in major gift fundraising, leading teams in organisations as varied as the RSPB, Oxford University and the National Trust. In 2016, when his role as Head of Communications at Edinburgh Zoo meant a third year of fielding endless media enquiries about the possible birth of a baby panda, he finally retreated to a quiet desk and got down to writing.
Raised in Hertfordshire and educated at Oxford, he now divides his time between Fife and the Lake District.
@barrington_cf
www.cfbarrington.com
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