Dark Age

by James Wilde

  ‘The Attacotti are unfathomable,’ he replied. ‘Let’s not waste time trying to plumb the depths of their minds. By rights we should all be dead by now, so let’s celebrate our good fortune as a gift from the gods. We live to fight another day.’

  ‘The Attacotti were our allies once,’ Mato said, slipping an arm round each lad’s shoulders.

  ‘For one night only,’ Lucanus said. ‘Whatever Myrrdin promised them, it was not enough to turn them to our side for good.’

  Mato flashed him a grin, but the expression seemed forced, and Lucanus was puzzled. He pushed on along the riverbank, his thoughts turning cold.

  The bones of the bridge jabbed from the shimmering water like the remains of a great beast whose flesh had long since rotted away. Lucanus stood under a fluttering willow, shielding his eyes against the barbs of sunlight as he tried to divine a way ahead.

  ‘At least we know your men can obey orders,’ Mato said. His tone was wry despite the whooping calls of their pursuers.

  ‘What’s happened to the bridge?’ Apullius gaped at the wreckage. The central section still stood, but both ends had collapsed into the water in a mass of jumbled timber.

  ‘I commanded my men to destroy it once they’d got the people of your village to the other side,’ Lucanus said. ‘The horde will turn back rather than travel along the river to find a ford.’

  ‘But shouldn’t they have waited for us?’

  ‘Protect the helpless first,’ Mato said. ‘That is our law. We can look after ourselves.’

  Lucanus peered along the verdant banks towards the hazy distance. ‘If we go now we’ll lead them straight to the ford,’ he mused, before turning back to the others. Crouching, he rested his hands on the younger boy’s shoulders. ‘You’re a brave lad, Morirex, and I need you to be braver still. Whatever happens, you must remain silent. Do you understand?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Good. Quickly, then: follow me.’

  To their credit, the boys hesitated for only a moment before splashing after him into the shallows. His skin throbbed at the coldness of the water. As he pushed out into the flow, he could hear the barbarians thundering through the brush behind them.

  Morirex flailed, spluttering, and Mato, bringing up the rear, hooked a hand into the back of the boy’s tunic. Holding his head above the water, he settled in to the strong current and let it pull them both towards the ruined bridge.

  Once all four were hidden in the deep shadows among the ribs of shattered wood, Lucanus clung to a beam jabbing up through the surface and watched the trees along the bank. Morirex wrapped his arms around another timber, trying to stifle his spluttering, and Mato and Apullius held on tight, with only their heads poking above the lapping water.

  One by one the barbarians emerged into the hot sun, looking all around. They were quiet now, certain that their enemies were nearby.

  A Pict with a shaven head adorned with swirls of black tattoos crouched to examine the grass along the bank. After a moment, he looked up at another red-headed Scot swathed in furs and leather despite the heat of the day. Lucanus had learned the tongues of the tribes during his forays in disguise in the Wilds beyond the wall with the arcani, but whatever the Pict said was lost to the river’s gurgling.

  The two warriors peered across the Tamesis to the far bank and muttered some more: weighing, debating. Around them, more barbarians stepped out of the shade of the trees, blinking. Their weapons hung loosely at their sides, all of them seemingly comfortable in the undisputed assumption that they were the masters now.

  Beside him, Lucanus heard Morirex moan in fear at the sight of the wild men, and he silenced him with a glance.

  A huge figure loomed out of the woods, a man who was a good head taller than any other warrior there. Lucanus had seen this one before, when he was a prisoner at the barbarian moot-camp in the far north. His head was bound with filthy strips of cloth to cover a face that had been all but burned away, so the stories said. Arrist, the Pictish king of the Caledonian south.

  Arrist turned his head slowly, his cold gaze drinking in the surroundings.

  The tattooed Pict trudged behind his leader along the bank until he was close enough for Lucanus to hear. ‘Where next?’

  ‘Back,’ Arrist growled. ‘We have our booty. These Romans can fight all they want, but their numbers are few. They’ll fall before us soon enough.’

  Raised voices rumbled through the trees, and a moment later two Picts emerged dragging a bloodied man between them. Lucanus stiffened when he recognized Kobold. They had thought him dead, cut down when they had retreated from the advancing barbarians the previous day.

  Kobold’s face was crimson from a deep gash across his forehead and his tunic was soaked with blood. ‘Help me,’ he croaked.

  The two Picts threw him to the ground, then one of them leaned in and said something to Arrist.

  ‘Tell me what you told them,’ the king said.

  ‘I never meant to speak out. I’m loyal—’

  ‘Tell me and we will stop the blood flowing from those wounds. Keep your lips sealed and you’ll be drained dry before noon.’

  Kobold’s chin dropped to his chest. Lucanus could see him fighting with his conscience. After a moment, he replied, ‘One of your war-bands has taken the Pendragon’s woman captive.’

  Lucanus felt his blood run as cold as the waters around him.

  ‘Who has her?’ Arrist demanded.

  ‘I don’t know, just that she was taken—’

  Arrist took the man’s head in his huge hands and snapped the neck. ‘There. Your blood will now stop flowing.’

  As Kobold crumpled to the ground, the tattooed Pict stepped over him. ‘With the woman, we could bargain. The Roman war-leader would give up his resistance—’

  ‘We do not bargain. The stories about this Pendragon are nothing more than that … stories designed to frighten children. He’s no threat to us.’ The king raised his head to the blue sky and seemed to think for a moment. ‘Still … if he fell, all this land could be ours before summer is out. We will not bargain. But her head would send a message. He might realize how hopeless his fight is.’

  Lucanus felt a rage born of desperation surge up in him.

  ‘Send out messengers,’ Arrist said with a thoughtful nod. ‘Find who has this woman. We should have words, she and I.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Open, Locks, Whoever Knocks

  ‘IT IS THE witching hour.’

  Decima’s whisper was almost lost to the warm breeze rustling through the high branches. She was craning her neck up, and to Amarina she seemed one with the shadows. Only the whites of her eyes glowed in her dark skin.

  Amarina followed her companion’s gaze.

  The charm was constructed from twigs bound together by leather thongs to form a star shape. Hanging from it, the skulls of four small birds clack-clacked.

  Amarina pursed her lips. She’d seen them before, across the years, of course she had. Hanging from the trees in the Wilds. To most folk, their meaning was hidden, as was the witches’ way. A marking of territory. A warning. A charm for good luck, hung and then forgotten.

  But she knew the truth.

  She tugged her cloak around her. It was the colour of moss, embroidered with golden spirals, perhaps the only fine thing she still owned since they’d all been forced to flee their homes in the north when the barbarians attacked. She felt acid in the mouth at the thought of those long weeks of running and hiding and crawling in the mud like beasts.

  All those years struggling to build a life of comfort for herself, leading men by the nose to the girls she kept for their pleasure and then relieving them of the gold in their purse. Counting coin and hiding it away for a day when she would truly be free. All of it, washed away in one night. If she was to see these invaders drown in their own blood, it would be for that alone. She was not a woman who forgave.

  But there was little hope of that. The end was coming fast. Back at the camp, the men stil
l waited in silence around the fires. Lucanus hadn’t returned. And if the Wolf had been lost, everything else had died with him.

  ‘I told you – there’s no reason to be afraid. The sisters are our friends.’ She pulled a strand of auburn hair from her face and tucked it into her hood.

  Decima eyed her, but said nothing. She’d brought her own superstitions with her when she had travelled from the hot lands in the south, and Amarina could see that at that moment they were haunting her.

  ‘Bellicus told me Lucanus found one of these charms in his hut when the boy, Marcus, was stolen,’ the third woman breathed. The silver streaking Galantha’s black curls glinted in the moonlight. Amarina could hear the note of longing in her voice for Bellicus, the Grim Wolf who had faded away into the heart of the barbarian lands, possibly to his death.

  How had it all come to this?

  She glanced back down the slope to where the lights of the campfires flickered. A lone voice was now singing a mournful song that yearned for times past and loves lost.

  The camp by the ford sprawled along the banks of the Tamesis. Each day more men straggled in to join the army. Myrrdin continued to send out word to all the free lands that the Pendragon was reforging bonds from an age ago. He called on the names of the old tribes that only a few grey-hairs still remembered, insisting they send their strongest to repel the invaders.

  Little good would it do in the face of that advancing horde. They never slowed, never stopped slaughtering.

  She was not about to make one last stand and die. There was always another way.

  ‘Enough talk,’ she said. ‘We will never find the wyrd sisters. But they will find us when they’re certain we’re not a threat.’

  Amarina pushed on across the soft loam beneath the clustering trees. Here and there shafts of silvery moonlight punched through the canopy, illuminating their way. Pulling her hood back, she listened. A brook tinkled as it tumbled over stones. That was good. Water and wood were the signs of the wyrd sisters’ favoured habitat.

  In a clearing she breathed in the aroma of sticky resin and warm vegetation and struck a flint. Her torch flared into life.

  For long moments the three women watched the shadows swoop among the trees. The wyrd sisters did not always answer the call – they were mercurial. Mad, some would say, their thoughts dashed away by days and nights in the loneliness of the forest, feasting on toad’s-stools and dreaming vivid dreams.

  Amarina felt the hairs on her neck prickle. Away in the dark, she sensed movement. Though no sound reached her ears, her nostrils wrinkled at the scent of bitter herbs.

  The gloom seemed to unfurl like a curtain. Grey, hazy shapes took form, solidifying at the edge of the wavering circle of torchlight. Three women: one young, one matronly, one a withered old crone. Moon-eyes glared, wild and white and roaming. Fingers flexed, claws ready to strike. Mud-caked naked bodies streaked with charcoal so that they could become as one with the forest. Each one’s untamed hair was a halo clotted with leaves.

  Clutching her hands to her chest, Decima muttered something in a guttural tongue that Amarina didn’t recognize. Galantha stood rigid. One hand slipped into the folds of her dress where she kept her knife.

  ‘Sister,’ the youngest witch said.

  Amarina kept her eyes fixed ahead. She had heard the note of recognition in that greeting and she could feel Decima and Galantha looking at her.

  ‘Hecate,’ she replied. And Hecate, and Hecate. The same name, as if three were one, as if all the sisterhood across all the world were one.

  ‘We have been watching you. All of you.’

  ‘Following you,’ the mother added.

  The crone cackled and spat a gobbet of phlegm on to the ground.

  ‘What do you want, sister?’ the youngest asked.

  ‘Aid,’ Amarina said. ‘Escape. Safe passage away from this dark place.’

  ‘It will grow darker still.’

  ‘Of that I have no doubt. That night outside Vercovicium, you warned me of this age of blood and fire. You said your time was coming round again … that the Dragon was rising. Rome’s power would fade—’

  ‘It has. It will.’

  ‘You see this plan unfolding.’ Amarina moistened her lips, trying to ignore the dread that had been gnawing at her for too long now. ‘You will be safe. But I see no way out for any of us. The barbarian horde will drive us into the sea. And if this Bear-King comes to lead us out of the dark, as you say, it will be too late for us three. Take us with you.’

  ‘You’d abandon your friends?’

  Amarina started at the masculine voice. She glanced back to see Aelius step up to the torchlight, his sword hanging loosely in his good hand, his withered arm hidden as always beneath his cloak. Catia’s younger brother was handsome, with his sleek black hair and square jaw, and he had a wit that always entertained her. But these days he was too much Myrrdin’s dog.

  ‘This is no place for you. Leave us,’ she said.

  ‘But then I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Don’t you trust us?’ Galantha snapped.

  ‘Were you not trying to run away and leave us to face this battle alone?’

  ‘Still. We would never betray you,’ Decima said.

  Aelius only smiled, but Amarina saw his eyes flicker towards her. No one trusted her. And rightly so. Memories were still raw of that night when she had taken the boy Marcus from their band to barter for all their lives. Not a day passed without her regretting it. And though it was not her fault that Marcus had died – that stain lay on the soul of his father in whatever afterlife he now inhabited – the loss only added more poison to her betrayal.

  He looked past her, to the witches, and said, ‘Are you servants of the Fates, or are you the Fates themselves?’

  ‘Aye. We are.’

  ‘Are you agents or witnesses? Do you read the runes for what is to come, or do the gods act through you to make men dance to their will?’

  ‘Aye. We do.’

  Aelius grunted. ‘We’ll get no joy here.’

  ‘If you choose your words, and open your ears, they’ll tell you truth,’ Amarina snapped.

  ‘The only truth here is hidden in the web they weave. I’ve heard tell of their kind—’

  ‘From the wood-priest, I suppose.’ Amarina gritted her teeth.

  ‘The wyrd sisters will lure you on by feeding your hope of uncovering that truth, but you will only find yourself trapped by your own wriggling until something decides to feast on you.’

  ‘Would you anger us?’ The younger Hecate’s voice was honeyed, which, to Amarina’s ears, only made it more menacing.

  ‘We do not follow your rules,’ the mother said.

  Aelius raised his brows. ‘The rules of Rome, or of men?’

  For a moment, there was only the music of the night-breeze soughing through the branches. Then the youngest witch crouched like a beast. ‘When the Romans first set foot on this land, when they slaughtered the wood-priests and drove the wyrd sisters deep into the forests, the gods stepped away from us. They saw straight lines drawn across the land, not paths where we walked serpentine as we had since the first days. They saw the groves cut down. The Wilds carved and ordered. And they sighed and went underhill and beneath the lakes. But they left the doors to the Otherworld open, against the day we grow wise once more and call them back. The forests and the moors and the high land are the home of daemons, and if you listen with the wind in your ears you can hear their voices. But beware, for they can drive you mad.’

  Aelius nodded. ‘And so you sow seeds of confusion. For in the chaos that has engulfed this land what you wish for will take root and thrive. The madness that is your aim, and death, and blood, and the falling apart of all that was.’

  ‘Aye. For only then will something new grow. Or something old.’ The youngest witch stood up and cupped her belly. She looked at Amarina with a sly smile.

  ‘You’re with child?’

  ‘My days are waning,�
� the crone said throatily. ‘And soon a new maiden will join us.’

  ‘The season is turning, sister,’ the youngest one said. ‘Things that have been a long time coming are almost here. Be ready. When you hear the howl, deep in the woods, be ready. Let Cernunnos back into this world.’

  Amarina saw Aelius shiver. She could see he had noticed that none of the witches was blinking, their pupils so dilated that their eyes were almost black. She knew well what that look felt like, as if they were peering through skin and bone and into the very essence.

  ‘Will you aid us, sisters?’ Amarina blurted. She took a step forward as Aelius lunged for her arm.

  ‘Hecate hears your plea, sister. When you need us most, we will be there. But we will make demand of you in return. Are you in agreement?’

  ‘I am.’

  Amarina heard Aelius curse under his breath, but it was too late. The deal was done.

  Before another word could be uttered, the Hecatae melted away into the night. Aelius sheathed his sword and snatched up his torch, waving it from side to side as he stalked into the trees. He was fearless, Amarina had to give him that.

  After a moment’s irritated searching, he marched back to the three women.

  ‘I am a captive now?’ Amarina demanded. ‘A word of warning. A quiet one for ears wise enough to hear. No one should try to shackle me. Of all the things that could be heaped upon my shoulders, that is the one that will most likely see your balls removed.’

  ‘You’re no captive, you know that. But Myrrdin’s wary. Every side in this war has their own plan, and they will all use us to win. Twisted words, lies, stories that have the ring of truth but are designed only to lead us down their path. In the end, the only ones we can trust are ourselves.’

  ‘But you do not trust me.’

  ‘I would like to.’ He waved the torch to light the three women’s path back to the camp. ‘But you’ve just agreed to do the bidding of the wyrd sisters. Can anyone trust you now?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Black River

  THE DAWN CAME up like fire. As the long, low whistle rolled out across the grey waters of the Tamesis, Amarina stood on the edge of the camp, looking towards the west. She felt a wave of relief. They were not done for yet.