Berserker (Omnibus) (57 page)

‘And you have come to fetch it?’

But strangely, Bedivyg shook his head. His face grew dark, and he frowned. He reached out and grasped Swiftaxe by the shoulder. ‘The men who rode with me, ostensibly to bring this information ahead of the main troop … well, an unfortunate accident occurred in the lands of the Cornovii. I came alone, weary and bloody, from the skirmish. I brought only the news of the death of Prasitagus. Caylen, flee while you may. Your life is forfeit now. Flee north, or south to Briton-held lands, or find a curragh to take you across that ocean. There is a land there where all the honour and pride of our peoples exists unblemished and unchallenged. Go there …’

Swiftaxe, darkly, said, ‘My brother, I have been. I cannot go again …’

And I left that land, he thought, to come to the land of the Silures and it was a strangely empty land, a land of Romanised men and women once again discovering their origins, only to lose them in battle after battle against the flaxen-haired tribes from the east. There would, it seemed, be no end to the bitter conquest of these lands by those who owed their homelands no allegiance and sought only fresh pastures to lay waste with their heathen cultures.

Bedivyg said, ‘My patience grows thin. I am weary of you, Caylen. Take my gift of freedom, use it. If you stay here, among the Legions, I must kill you, for you are a threat, now, to everything I hold dear …
go
!’

Without waiting for Swiftaxe to move, or respond, Bedivyg turned on his heel and strode into the darkness.

He would go all right! But not south, and not north in the sense that his
brother had meant it. He would cross the waters into Mona, now, tonight, before the Legions crossed the straits in force and laid waste the sanctuary forever.

The talk in the camp was that the invasion would wait until the day following that day which was about to break, but Swiftaxe had heard too that the hundreds of rafts were now ready, and that the complex behaviour of the tides and currents in the straits had at last been understood.

He was not convinced that the invasion would wait as long as thirty hours. He sensed it was impending.

As he slid and slipped down the slopes of the hill towards the water, Swiftaxe imagined that the druids on the opposite banks knew also that the invasion was coming. A hundred lights moved there, torches held by running, screaming women, who wore black robes that concealed all but their faces in the night; and in the pale glow of their faces their eyes blazed bright and angry in the flickering light of their beacons.

Running along the beach, a shingle beach, slick with weed and mud, he came at length to the first of the rafts being prepared for the crossing. Two men worked on it, by the signs of their activity doing no more than fixing metal grips to the planking for the men to hold on to. This was a small raft, and could carry probably twenty men, propelled by oars at the edge and defended by archers and spearmen who would line up along a short barricade at the fore.

Swiftaxe, fighting back his sudden impulse to kill the men, knocked them senseless and dragged the heavy craft into the water. It made loud noises as it rattled, on branch rollers, across the shingle, and caused a wide, white-flecked wake as it plunged into the water itself. Swiftaxe leapt upon it and reached for an oar, used all his strength to send the raft out into the channel.

The current took him and span him once, and then he had learned the knack of controlling the awkward vessel and kept its fore pointing towards the island. Though he drifted to the left, he made strong headway through the waters, and passed midstream without trouble.

A hundred yards from the shore he became lodged on a mud bank and stuck, and that was that, for he had not the strength to lift the raft.

Crouched behind the raised fore-plankings he watched the torch-lit slopes of Mona. Now he could see the dark-trousered warriors who moved there, digging pits, erecting spikes of wood and bone and iron. They were probably refugees from the tribes of the Deceangli, or were natural inhabitants of the island whose existence had not been known to the Romans. The Legions imagined they were facing only druids and witches, in abundance and armed certainly, but nothing, surely, to worry the trained armies of Nero!

Swiftaxe grinned to think that the invader would get more than he had bargained for.

All along the top of the slopes he could see the solitary figures of druids, their hands upstretched, their figures faintly silhouetted against the starry skies. Their voices drifted on the winds, a hundred voices merging into a single, keening cry for Cernunnos, the Horned God, to manifest himself and ravage the oppressor. It chilled Swiftaxe to hear these men of wisdom calling upon such a fearsome and unpredictable god as Cernunnos. His own people had scorned the god, and had fled behind the protection of the triple goddess to avoid his wrath. Cernunnos was a violent spirit for violent men, and his appetite and demand for heads was overwhelmingly steep, especially to a tribe like Swiftaxe’s, which was more content to fight among its own ranks, and to pay most attention to the fertile earth.

Wrapping his long cloak around his axe-head, Swiftaxe slipped into the water and floated away from the raft. He could feel the mud below him, but after a while this dropped away to deeper water, and the current took him again. Using one arm he struck through the icy straits, and although carried even further to the west, he soon felt the river bed rise to meet him. He stood, shivering and soaked, before walking carefully on to the beach.

He ran quickly into the cover afforded by a gnarled wood copse, and unslung his cloak, wringing out the water with all his strength. His trousers were saturated and these, too, he wrang out before tugging them back on. He mopped the water from his leather vest, then fastened the cold cloak about his shoulders, hoping for a wind to dry him more fully. His hair was not wet, but the sweat was proud and cold on his brow. He took a moment to relax and recover, then placed his horned helmet firmly on his skull and began the climb up the slope.

A strange thing occurred as he reached the top of the land, fighting to control his heavy breathing for fear of being heard. He stopped for a moment and stared into the night, across the rocky, rolling lands of Mona. He was aware that, not far away, a druid was incanting some complex spell to the stars, exhorting a particular god to appear, calling down the elemental forces upon the Roman legions who suffered – by all the signs – from nothing more than a stiff breeze, and an uncomfortably hard ground beneath their bedrolls.

Nevertheless, Swiftaxe knew the power of the druids, and the whim of the gods. The gods and the elements were listening, and they might at any moment choose to pleasure themselves by agreeing to the spell that wreathed around them, not touching them until they so wished, but drawing their attention none the less …

Swiftaxe, as the thundering in his head faded and his blood calmed, heard the weird words of the druid, the dialect difficult to understand, but words that the Coritanian recognised.

Something like lightning fled through Swiftaxe’s being as the words were spoken. His head span, his stomach churned, and he heard – loud, like thunder – the furious riding of a horse, or the sound of a stag leaping a rock as it strove to escape the hunter.

He found himself slumped to his knees as the momentary dizziness passed, and again the druid was crying spells, and calling for the gods. But the moment of disorientation did not return.

Swiftaxe stood again, and stared around him into the torch-lit darkness. Had Cernunnos come for that moment, ridden past quicker, more sleek, than the human eye could discern?

Nearby someone shrieked, a woman … her voice, crying out to the night, was an expression of anger and fury, and it silenced the druid who stood so close to Swiftaxe.

The Berserker looked into the distance and saw a woman standing near the poles of severed heads, waving a fire brand in wide circles; her hair, long and grey, streamed in a wind which blew from the straits; her thin, ragged robe billowed about her frail body, and strands of fire licked into the night and were lost, as souls rising from the field of battle.

Swiftaxe looked upwards at the shrivelling heads on their trophy poles, and remembered what he had to do.

With his cloak wrapped about him, making no sudden or aggressive moves, he walked along the ridge, away from the woman who still screamed her fury near the dead Romans. All around him people ran and cried, their voices always incanting spells or prayers, or crying to the gods to come down to the land. Firebrands whirled and spun in the darkness, often the only sign
that someone ran hysterically across the hill. He smelt smoke, and charred food, and sometimes the acrid smell of blood which brought a moment’s anxiety to the human, Caylen Swiftaxe, when he felt the bear stir restlessly in his mind.

Heads had fallen, and not just those of the unfortunate Roman assault group. There had been sacrifices, and ritual disembowellings, so that the signs and omens could be read.

Wherever he looked Swiftaxe could see the tall, lean effigies of Llug and Cernunnos, carved in wood, each wrapped round with the hair from a woman’s head. The trophies, eyes closed, were calm and at peace in their death, for their sacrifice had been for the good of the people.

He left the hysteria and chanting behind, and came, as dawn approached, into the shallow valley that led down to the meagre roundhouse settlement. A mist rose from the ground, a shallow fog, not dense, not obscuring, only enough to coat the ground and rock pinnacles with a shroud of white as they greeted the new day.

As he approached the group of houses a cock crowed, suddenly, loudly, startling Swiftaxe.

He darted quickly into hiding behind a damp stack of hay that was covered with sheets of beaten hide. After a while he decided that no one was stirring and he came out from concealment, walked swiftly towards the nearest house.

The thick curtain across the low doorway was drawn back, suddenly and unexpectedly, and a tall girl stepped out into the dawn, shaking the tangles and curls from her long, yellow hair. She saw the Berserker and stopped, staring at him, but made no sound.

He appraised the girl quickly; she looked sensible, and was obviously more curious of him than frightened by him. After all, he was not in the uniform of the Legions, and only his strangely horned helmet marked him out apart from other Celts.

‘I seek the druid Gryddan. I seek help from him.’

‘We all need help,’ said the girl bitterly. She wiped her hands on the folds of her long dress, then smoothed her hair over one shoulder while she watched the stranger. Swiftaxe, reading this overt sign of interest in him with ease, felt a tightening in his stomach. Finally she called, ‘Gryddan. A man for you.’

The curtain parted again and an old druid stepped out into the dawn. His robe was white and short, coming to just below the knee; it was also filthy dirty. His feet were covered with skin sandals, and he wore a copper torque about his neck. His hair was cropped short, and stiffened in the warrior fashion. His grey eyes watched Swiftaxe curiously, intensely.

‘Who are you?’

‘A man who seeks the key to a gateway through stones.’

The druid laughed. ‘In a few hours, when those barbarians ford the river, there will be no more key, no more gate. All will be lost.’

‘I need the key,’ said Swiftaxe again. ‘I have scoured lands and times for it, and now I have come so close to obtaining it I do not intend to give up. You must grant me this.’

‘Such secrets,’ said the old man, ‘are not for the common mind. It has taken me a lifetime to memorise all the spells that have been handed down to us, all the keys, all the calling words, all the rune-codes. The secrets will die with me, unless Cernunnos comes to our help and blows the wind against the Romans.’

Despairing, Swiftaxe stepped forward, and his voice was angry and anxious both. ‘But I need those words, some of them … I beg you, Gryddan, confide them in me. I swear the secret shall also die with me, for when I have used it, when I have passed through the gate, I suspect I shall
have
to die to complete my mission.’

The druid shook his head, his eyes drifting beyond Swiftaxe to the distant slopes of the mainland, where through the veil of mist the dark smoke from the scattered camps could be seen, an omen of destruction rising slowly into the sky.

Swiftaxe said, ‘I have this ring – I was told how to use it; I was also told to show it to you, and that you would then help me …’ he held out the jade ring to the druid. To his surprise Gryddan backed away, eyes widening. He suddenly screamed, ‘Hide it! Hide it!’ His gaze lifted to Swiftaxe and the Berserker had never seen such horror in the man’s face.

Then the druid ran back into his small house and drew the curtain across the door again.

Swiftaxe flung back his cloak and unslung his axe; he kept his Roman sword concealed. He shook his head as he walked forward, feeling cold inside, feeling cruel determination taking control of his body. ‘I am sorry for the old man,’ he said grimly, glancing at the girl, ‘but I must have that secret, and I shall spill his blood to get it.’

But the girl reached out and touched his arm, stopped him. Her eyes, pale green in her pale oval face, implored him to have compassion.