Dragon's Child (38 page)

It was enough.

Trained by Targo, Caius understood the value of the edge when fighting at close quarters. He slashed at the warrior’s sword arm, now exposed, and the forearm was sliced to the bone.

Mercilessly, Caius stabbed his enemy through the neck without a flicker of compunction.

The other two attackers were now caught between the three defenders. Hemmed in by the narrow colonnade, the two warriors fought until they were cut to pieces.

The surviving warrior was still trying to regain his footing with a useless leg when Gareth knocked him senseless with his sword hilt.

Simultaneously, a villager with a slight head wound stumbled up to the locked wooden gate and began to pound on the timber with a blacksmith’s hammer.

‘Master Artorex’s house!’ He screamed through the timbers. ‘It’s burning!’

Gareth unbolted the gate, and Bregan tumbled into the open entryway. The blacksmith was repaying his debt to the Villa Poppinidii.

‘Are any of these curs outside the villa still alive?’ Ector roared, his bloodstained sword dripping in one hand.

‘No, my lord, we seem to have hunted them all down but Master Artorex’s house is burning from end to end.’

‘Mistress Gallia is still in there!’ Gareth shrieked, and began to run.

‘Wait, boy,’ Caius yelled after him. ‘Wait! The gods alone know how many more of those animals are still alive out there.’

‘Go with him, Caius,’ Ector ordered. ‘Try to save Gallia if you can. Bregan and I can manage here - can’t we, old fellow?’

Caius ran at his best speed, but he was less nimble than the stable boy. By the time he was within sight of his foster-brother’s house, he could see that speed was useless.

Lit by the leaping flames, Gareth stood in the small courtyard with bloody arms upraised, screaming anguish and defiance at the uncaring night sky. He had found old Frith at the side of the house, stabbed through the body many times when she had thrown herself over Gallia to protect the young woman after all escape had proved hopeless.

Gallia’s throat was cut down to the spine.

At the open gateway, Caius found Artorex’s servants, hacked to pieces as they defended their mistress. One of the enemy warriors lay dead some little way off from the bodies of Frith and Gallia. A metal hairpin had been driven through one eye, deep into the man’s brain.

Caius recognized that familiar pin with a pang.

‘See, Gareth? Frith has gone to glory with her enemy,’ he shouted over the roar of the flames. ‘She drove a needle into his brain.’

But I’ve failed in my oath, Gareth thought inconsolably - and Caius feared the boy would cast himself into the flames.

‘Does Licia still live?’ Caius shouted, as he tried to pull the boy back from the crumbling structure of the house.

‘Aye. She lives. She’s with Julanna and her babe,’ Gareth remembered and allowed himself to be drawn away a few steps backward.

‘Then you should be guarding her,’ Caius ordered savagely. ‘That was your duty.’

Unwillingly, as if his eyes refused to leave the staring, empty face of Gallia, Gareth backed away, his feet slipping on the icy surface. He paused, and returned to the small tragic bodies. With his knife, he cut an amulet from Gallia’s ruined throat, and then bowed in one final act of reverence.

After a last glance back at the tragic scene, he ran in the direction of the villa to make good his pledge.

Caius drew his hands over the death mask of the beautiful young woman. Her puzzled expression disappeared as he closed her eyelids.

‘Poor, harmless and joyous Gallia,’ he murmured to the flames.

Caius shivered.

He knew instinctively that many men would perish when Artorex discovered the fate of his wife and unborn child, and many worlds would burn to ashes before the steward could be deflected from his revenge for these senseless acts of murder. Caius’s fertile brain scrambled to invent an excuse for his negligence in leaving Gallia outside the villa proper where she could not be protected. Regardless of their wishes, Frith and Gallia should have been forced to sleep under the protection of the villa’s defenders.

And the same stars that looked down on Gallia’s body, still cradling her unborn child in her belly, were also smiling down on Artorex as he continued with his scum towards Anderida. For such is always the fate of those few people whom Fortuna raises high on her terrible wheel of chance.

Even as night became day, the ravens, crows and rooks were gathering at the Villa Poppinidii. Already, the smell of carrion tainted the winter wind.

Hamstrung by the blade of Gareth, Botha did not deign to scream, even when Caius cut off his fingers, one by one. A maddened Julanna sliced him unspeakably with a kitchen knife with ruthless, female cruelty, but still the old warrior gritted his teeth and uttered only his name, as if that admission were guilt enough.

Nor did he utter a word of explanation or defence for his actions, even at the point when Ector took pity on his tortured body and beheaded the old warrior with his own sword.

Uther’s most loyal servant joined his fellow warriors in an untidy, bloody pile in the snow of the horse paddock.

These animals were Celtic warriors, Ector thought, his thinning hair awry and his eyes blurred with tears, as the field hands bore the bodies of the villa’s dead to be washed and prepared for cremation. How could Celts kill Celts? And slaughter innocent women? And innocent children?

How will I justify our failure to Artorex? Caius thought, with a flutter in his belly. He will be beyond rage.

He kicked at a fallen warrior’s bloody face with his booted foot and enjoyed the crunch of bone under his heel.

Let the birds feast on their eyes before their burning, Gareth thought viciously, as he spat on Botha’s emptied face. Let them go sightless to the Shadows.

And the crows came.

CHAPTER XIV

 

Artorex stared laconically at the expanse of marshland, punctuated by a number of odd stunted trees that reached almost to the edge of the palisades of Anderida. The last flags of light gave him few clues on how to locate a path through the wasteland, so he beckoned Targo to his side.

‘What do you know about swamps?’ Artorex asked curtly. Time was no friend on this night, for the scum must cross the wasteland before midnight. Soon, Luka would bring confirmation that the other troops were in position to commence the attack.

‘It’s less than I’d like but as much as I need,’ Targo answered drily. ‘The only safe way is to move slowly, in single file, testing the ground as we go. It’ll take us most of the night before we are across it.’

‘Damnation!’ Artorex swore. ‘Spending a day exposed at the foot of the palisades is a crazy risk. We have to move faster.’

‘I can try using Odin as the lead scout. He’s supposed to live where swamps are commonplace and his weight will find the sucking mud faster than either you or me,’ Targo suggested guilelessly.

‘I sometimes think you consider him expendable,’ Artorex drawled softly with a grimace that could have been a smile. ‘However, I agree with you. He’s the best possible choice - so Odin leads us out. We start immediately.’ He paused. ‘Tell them to daub themselves with mud. You too. It’ll save our skin from the insects. And ensure that the men protect their weapons at all cost, for they’ll soon need them.’

‘Aye, lord.’

Targo melted away like a grey ghost.

When the darkness seemed absolute, tiny fires flared up in the distance, multicoloured and hideous. Artorex remembered the legends of lost souls that called to the living to follow them into the maze of water and mud until they were doomed.

‘Marsh gas,’ Targo explained softly, but Artorex saw him clutch his amulet tightly for luck. ‘Fire without heat.’

On elbows and bellies, or bent double, the scum crawled through tussocks of sharp-bladed grass and pools of icy water, following Odin as he made his way through the swamp. The Jute seemed perfectly at home in the sodden landscape. When he signalled a route that bypassed a patch of deceptively firm ground, Pinhead threw a rock at it and watched nervously as the earth sucked the light object in before returning immediately to a semblance of innocence and solidity.

Pinhead shuddered and scuttled around the margins of the sucking earth, cursing under his breath.

Artorex need not have ordered his men to coat themselves in mud.

Within minutes, the whole troop looked like unholy creatures of folklore that had risen from the swamps to kill off unwary villagers.

‘Let’s hope the Saxons are superstitious,’ Artorex spat as he crawled on sore elbows and knees as quickly as he could, while ignoring the eerie beacons of flame that came and went like wraiths.

The scum had been moving quietly through the swamp for several hours, listening to the distant sounds of carousing men within the fortress, when silence gradually began to settle over the blackness of the night. Sleet and rain still threatened and patches of dense cloud often obscured the moonlight. A light drizzle was falling as they moved like heaving tussocks of mud and grass through the rank, wet landscape.

Then Odin rose to his feet, bent low to examine the earth and began to move with greater confidence in a zigzag pattern through the morass. Signalling with a thin whistle resembling that of a night bird, Targo ordered his men to follow in the tracks of their guide.

Now, as the pace picked up, the palisade loomed in front of the troop. The Saxons had cut down tall trees, stripped them of branches and sharpened the trunks into great points. Lashed together and sunk deeply into the muddy earth, this wall was an effective barrier to all but the most determined enemy.

‘Pass the word to your men that no one must speak, for any reason, even if a marsh snake bites them on the arse,’ Artorex ordered Targo in a whisper.

A further hour of bent backs, careful steps and the start of cold rain saw the whole troop huddled at the base of the palisade.

‘Are Ban and Llanwith in position?’ Targo whispered in Artorex’s ear.

His master shrugged.

Artorex had lost all sense of time, but the moon was lowering in the sky when Luka slithered out of the swamp like a dark serpent.

‘Well met, Artorex,’ he grinned, his white teeth the only visible feature in his muddy, grease-blackened face. ‘Ban and Llanwith await your pleasure.’

‘Then we must hope the Saxons sleep deeply,’ Artorex hissed back. ‘For they will hear us at work if the palisade up there is guarded.’

Targo rose up from behind a tussock. ‘You’re late, Lord Luka. The moon is going down.’

‘And so are you. Your scum are none too fleet in the mud.’

‘Shut up, both of you. Don’t speak unless it’s necessary,’ Artorex ordered in a whisper.

He looked up towards the palisade towering above them. ‘How many grappling hooks do we have?’ he hissed to his sergeant. Mentally, he blessed Myrddion’s foresight and knowledge of Anderida.

‘Four, sir,’ Targo responded.

Five men apiece, Artorex thought.

‘Right. We go over the wall now, Targo. You and Odin go up first with one group. I’ll lead the second, and Luka will lead the third. You can select someone else to lead the fourth group. With luck, we’ll all be on the ramparts before the Saxons know we’re abroad.’

‘There’ll be guards for certain. The Saxons aren’t stupid,’ Targo whispered back.

‘Perhaps. But Uther hasn’t made any offensive probes against Anderida for years, so there’s a fair chance they’ve become overconfident. In any event, if there are sentries, we’ll have to remove them - by any means possible.’ Artorex glanced back towards his men. ‘Send Pinhead to me.’

Pinhead crawled to Artorex’s side. He looked infinitely muddier, nastier and more dangerous than usual.

‘Do you have your bow, Pinhead?’

‘Aye, for what it’s been worth so far,’ the warrior replied with a grin. ‘I’ve also lugged a good supply of arrows along, and some burning fat in case we need flame arrows.’

‘Excellent, friend. When the scum are on the ramparts, set fire to one of your flame arrows and send it high into the air. This signal over the swamps will tell our friends to the north and the south that they can commence their attack on the gates.’

Pinhead nodded. ‘I thought you’d want to use fire so I’ve already prepared the arrows.’

‘I’ll tell you when to loose the first barb. If Llanwith and Ban can’t join with us in a coordinated attack, we just have to improvise.’

As they spoke, men clutched tightly to their amulets, and Artorex could see their lips moving in soundless prayers or promises. The scum knew that many men would die and so, in their own separate ways, they made their peace with their gods. Only Odin held aloof, a grappling hook attached to a length of rope dangling in one ham-like hand.

When Artorex, Rufus and Luka had chosen their own grappling hooks and checked that their ropes were secure, Artorex gave a brief signal, and Odin’s hook flew through the air high above the palisade. He pulled on the rope with the full weight of his body, and the grappling hook held.

Immediately, and with astonishing grace for such a giant, Odin began to climb.

Artorex, Rufus and Luka cast their hooks as one. Rufus swore as his hook fell free but, fortunately, it snagged on some unseen obstruction on the ramparts.

Silently, the troop began their climb.

Odin and Targo were already dim shapes in the shadows, and were creeping silently towards a brazier near the north gate as Artorex swung his aching body over the wall. The sight of a giant and a stunted old warrior hunting together should have been ludicrous, but Artorex smiled with satisfaction as the quickly moving shapes were blocked out from the light of the braziers.

The short figure of Targo padded silently back towards Artorex, while Odin disappeared into the darkness.