The Triumphant, page 30
“Olun!” I cried, rushing forward from our hiding place.
It was my father’s chief druid. And he was hurt.
His beard had been black threaded with silver when I’d climbed over the walls of Durovernum for the very last time. Now the silver threads were streaks, and the lines around his eyes were carved deep with worry or weariness. Made deeper in that moment with pain. He’d exchanged his usual robes of undyed wool for a shorter tunic and trousers, and his left arm hung swaying from his shoulder, the sleeve dyed crimson with blood from a wound just beneath his collarbone.
He stumbled forward and sank to his knees on the path.
“Olun—it’s me!” I put my hands on his chest to keep him from falling on his face. “It’s Fallon . . . I’ve come home . . .”
He looked into my eyes, and the haze of pain vanished like a mist. I saw in him the sharp intelligence he’d always had. The shrewdness and arrogance and—surprisingly—a hint of something like gratitude. Directed at me or at the gods, I wasn’t sure. But then he smiled and nodded. As if things suddenly made sense to his druiddyn mind.
“Fallon,” he said, panting for breath. “I didn’t expect it to be you. But . . . now I understand. The path . . . You will save your father from the Roman. Just like your sister, Sorcha, before you did . . .”
When I was little, Olun had prophesied that I would follow in my sister’s footsteps. I’d thought that path had ended when Sorcha had died. But Olun seemed to think it still stretched out ahead of me. Sorcha had gone into battle and rescued Virico from Caesar. Could I do the same and save him from Pontius Aquila?
“Olun,” I said. “Father—is he all right? Does he still live?”
“Aye.” The old druid nodded, sinking back onto one elbow in the dirt. “The bastards hit us at dawn . . . but Virico has never let his war band leave their swords behind for a Litha feast. They carry their blades into the field in secret.”
“What?” I gaped at him, shocked to my core that my father would order his warriors to commit such a blatant trespass against the sacred laws. Shocked as I was, I was also secretly proud.
Olun grinned at me, clearly not disapproving of my father’s decision in any way, even if it offended the gods themselves. “The old fox won’t go anywhere disadvantaged ever again. Not since seeing the inside of Caesar’s camp.”
So much for those chiefs who thought my father weak, I thought.
“We fought long enough to get most of our folk back inside the walls. But they outnumber us. Filthy Romans.”
He spat on the ground, and Cai winced.
“Filthy Coritani.”
He spat again. His spittle was webbed with blood.
“Get Neferet,” I said to Cai. “She wanted to meet a druid? Here’s her chance to make an excellent first impression.”
“You didn’t, by chance, bring a war band with you, did you?” Olun asked.
I grinned at him, watching his face as, one by one, my friends caught up with us on the path. Once Neferet got a good look at Olun’s wounds, she determined that they weren’t enough to kill him—but he also wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
“I’ll have to treat him where he lies,” she said. “Moving him risks a collapse of his lung into his chest cavity.”
Teeth clenched in pain, Olun raised an eyebrow at her as she swiftly and efficiently went about treating him . . . and then began to offer her suggestions for medicinal herbs—some of them within arm’s reach—that could be of help with stanching the flow of blood. Neferet was clearly delighted to have him as her patient. In between bouts of their professional chatter, I gleaned what insights I could from him.
When Quint circled back from scouting ahead, he jogged to a halt beside me and stood blinking down at the wounded druid. “Huh,” he grunted. “Missed that one . . .”
Cai shook his head at his friend. “Any more on the trail?” he asked.
Quint glanced at me. “Uh. Just . . . bodies,” he said. “Not many, but . . .”
I felt my jaw tighten. Pontius Aquila would pay dearly for every soul of my tribe he’d taken. I looked down at Neferet.
“Go,” she said. “Leave Antonia to keep watch for us, and I’ll take care of your druid.”
I nodded. “Come when you can. We’ll likely have need of you before the sun sets.”
I didn’t like the thought of leaving anyone behind. But I did relish the thought of any of Aquila’s people stumbling on Antonia and her crescent blade unawares. She saluted me with the weapon and took up a position where she could see both ends of the path, coming and going.
The rest of us moved on. Cai checked any bodies we passed for signs of life so that I wouldn’t have to. It wasn’t long before the trees directly ahead of us thinned and I caught my first glimpse of the Forgotten Vale. I ignored the fist squeezing my heart at the thought of revisiting the long green meadow where Mael and I had raced our chariot day after day and I’d first accomplished the Morrigan’s Flight. There would be time for reminiscences later. I hoped. Instead, I told Cai to keep going and gather the girls to wait in the vale. I’d meet him there after I’d scouted the place where I planned to go over the wall.
So I could tell my father that I was home. That I’d brought help. That I would lend him my war band—my Legio Achillea—and together we would triumph over our enemies.
XXV
“HOPELESS!” I SNARLED. “By the gods . . . useless! There’s nothing—no way in this world for me to get over the damned walls! Not unless I grow wings and—”
“Fallon—stop. Stop pacing and talk to me!” Cai reached out a hand and pulled me to a halt. “What’s the matter? What did you see?”
“It’s all different. Everything. Cai, it’s hopeless!”
“Different how? What do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t get in. I can’t go home. There’s no way.”
There had never been a time in my life when I hadn’t been able to scramble over the earthworks at a little hidden place near where the forest encroached on the western edge of Durovernum. You had to know it was there, and you had to know how to navigate the stones and branches, but I’d done it since I was a girl, and that was where I’d gone first to scout out my way into the town. But when I got there, everything was different. From my hiding place in a thicket two hundred paces from the wall, I could see that the overhanging trees had been cleared and the ramparts built up. Topped with jagged stone and sharpened stakes, surrounded by a bank and ditch. Durovernum was less a fort now than a fortress. The walls around Durovernum had never been so high. They’d never had to be. But now they were, and because of it, we were in danger of being defeated by the very people we were trying to help.
No sending a message through.
No getting close.
With Aquila and his Coritani camped in full view of the gates of the town, I didn’t stand a chance at getting inside that way, either. My father would not even know it was me before his sentries shot me dead on the ground if I approached. And that was only if Aquila’s people didn’t get to me first. And if my war band and I attacked Aquila’s gang of thugs without the help of my father’s warriors, we’d be torn to pieces by their superior numbers before the Cantii even realized we were on their side and opened the gates.
“What has happened to my home?” I wondered aloud.
“War,” Quint said with a helpless shrug. “What you’re telling us means that over the last two years, your people have probably been attacked. More than once. And your father decided to do something about it. Your town hasn’t fallen, which means it isn’t weak. But someone seems to think it might be weak enough. If they just keep at it.”
Virico Lugotorix had always been a just and brave man. A thoughtful king instead of a raider or a warmonger. Some had called him a weak king because he’d been taken prisoner by Caesar’s legions and returned home afterward rather than taking his own life in shame. I’d even wondered at his valor when he refused to give me my rightful status in his royal war band and had, instead, tried to marry me off. My betrothal to Aeddan—Mael’s brother, the son of the king of the Trinovante tribe—had been meant to seal a bond between our people and form an unbreakable alliance. My stomach dropped as I realized what my running away—what my disappearance—had done to him politically. I’d learned a lot about that sort of thing during my time in Rome. And now I knew it meant that my father had been denied that vital alliance. He’d been isolated.
He likely still was. No one would be coming to his aid against Aquila.
No one except us.
And I had no way of letting him know that.
Cai and Quint put their heads together to try to figure out a strategy that would get us around the impasse as the girls hunkered down to eat and check weapons and wait for their marching orders—if we could even get that far. In a fog of frustration I left them all to it. I picked up my traveling pack and walked to the far end of the vale, toward the old, forgotten grave barrow, with its lone standing stone at the end of the clearing. When I got close enough, I saw there was another mound there, beside the ancient one. Smaller. Covered in new growth that had yet to cloak its contours completely in soft green.
“Maelgwyn . . .” His name caught on the sob stuck in my throat.
So they had buried him here. I somehow knew they would.
I walked up to stand before the mound, then dropped to my knees and shrugged the straps of my traveling pack off my shoulders. Yanking open the drawstring, I dug around inside and found the small, smooth ebony box that held a handful of earth from a graveyard in Italia, near the Ludus Achillea.
Earth from Aeddan’s grave.
The memory of holding Aeddan’s hand as he sighed out his last breath—the arrow that had pierced his chest one that had been meant for me—crashed over me like a wave left over from the storm on the sea. I’d told him, as the light had left his eyes, to greet his brother, Maelgwyn, in the Otherworld for me. Mael, whom Aeddan had killed. Because of me. One more soul gone over to the Blessed Isles because of me.
One more meal of blood for the Morrigan to feast upon . . .
I pulled the raven-marked sword from its scabbard on my hip and jammed it into the loamy turf of Maelgwyn Ironhand’s grave barrow, using it as a spade to dig a hole. When it was deeper than it needed to be, I emptied the dirt from the little box into the hole and shoveled the earth back in.
“Is it enough?” I called out, thrusting the empty box up toward the empty sky, the empty, ravenless trees. The place where my goddess should have been but wasn’t. “Will it ever be enough? Was Sorcha not even enough for you? Or will you take my friends and my father too? Everyone who’s ever fought with me and everyone who’s ever fought for you because they fought with me . . . All while I listened to your voice whispering in my ear . . . I don’t hear you now, Carrion Eater.”
The grass under my knees was still wet with rain left behind by the storm, but the earth of the grave barrow beneath felt warm.
“Durovernum will fall without help,” I said, my own voice a harsh mockery of a raven’s cry. “Help that I cannot give them if you do not show me the way!”
Silence spun out in the wake of my plea.
Emptiness.
I stood and turned my back on the barrow and stalked back to Cai and Quint. They both bore looks of hopeless frustration on their faces. There was no remedy that they had found. No way around the wall my father had built. With a cry of rage, I threw the empty ebony box into the trees. There was a mad flapping of black wings, and a whole flock of ravens burst into the sky. I watched them disappear . . .
And then I heard Quint say, “Hang on . . .”
His arm lifted, and I looked in the direction he was pointing. At the copse of yew trees where the ravens had been hidden. At first I didn’t see it. And then I did . . . machines. Wooden machines, tucked in behind a screen of bushes. And the smile on Quint’s face was that of a man who’d just seen a marvel. He jogged over to the edge of the trees, Cai following in his wake, and was almost bouncing with excitement by the time I reached them. Elka and Ajani joined us at the same time, curious.
“Catapults,” Quint said, rubbing his hands together with unbridled glee. “Those are catapults . . . and I have an idea . . .”
“Wait,” Elka said, taking a step toward the trees, peering cautiously as if there weren’t manmade contraptions but rather dragons lurking there. “What are they doing here?”
I wondered the same thing myself. But Cai and Quint were already pushing through the trees to investigate, and they had a theory. This was the reason my father had built up the walls.
“These siege engines,” Cai mused, “were doubtless left behind by Caesar’s legions.”
“Right. After they ‘conquered’ our lands.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my tone.
Cai pretended not to hear it. “Exactly,” he said.
“I’m guessing one of the other tribes decided to try their hand at putting our war machines to work for their own ends,” Quint said.
I thought about that. “Most likely the Catuvellauni,” I said. “They’re a brawling, marauding lot with a long-honored favorite pastime of attacking the Cantii. But they’re also lazy. They don’t really like to put too much effort into warring. Cuts into their beer drinking.”
“Do they still work?” Ajani asked. “The catapults, I mean?”
“Oh, aye!” Quint nodded, circling the mechanisms, kicking at the wooden wheels and cogs and tugging on the heavy ropes. “A bit creaky, but yeah. They’d work. Just . . . it looks as though they likely abandoned them when they realized it’s far more fun flinging the stones than it is finding them.”
Elka frowned at him, and Cai took up the explanation while Quint continued to poke and prod at the fittings on the machines.
“A catapult without something to hurl is useless,” Cai said. “The Catuvellauni were likely far more interested in actually fighting your people and stealing their cattle than they were in having to quarry boulders or peck around the surrounding fields, looking for decent-sized rocks to load the machines with. If they’re as easily distracted as you say, they probably got frustrated after heaving over the first few shots and then gave up.”
“Right!” Quint jogged back over to us, a man with a look of focused purpose. “They’re not legion. We are. We don’t give up.” He turned to me. “And neither do you.”
“I don’t want to heave great stones at my own father’s house, Quint,” I said. “That’s not the way to get his attention.”
He shook his head. “Not what I had in mind,” he said, and his gaze drifted over to where Elka stood. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Elka . . . ?”
“What?” she asked, suddenly wary.
I couldn’t blame her.
“You’re not bound to your old ludus oath anymore, are you?” he said.
She glanced back and forth from him to me to Cai and back to Quint and said, even more warily, “No . . .”
“Good!” His smile grew larger. “Then you can just make up another one that does include flying.”
* * *
—
This is madness, I thought, as I scrambled up onto the platform of the wood-and-rope contraption meant for rocks, not girls. If human beings were meant to fly, surely the gods would have given us wings . . .
And then, suddenly—shockingly—I remembered what Sorcha had said to me in her room in Cleopatra’s palace just before she died. She’d told me that she’d dreamed of a raven flying through the sky . . . on the wings of an eagle. I’d thought, at the time, that perhaps she was talking about my swords. But now I understood. I was the Morrigan’s raven. And the wings she’d sent me—the catapults left behind in the Forgotten Vale—had been built by Romans.
I was Sorcha’s dream.
I’d even said it myself back in Gesoriacum: “I’ll get us into my father’s great hall, even if I have to grow the Morrigan’s own wings to fly there.”
Of course, I hadn’t meant it quite so literally. But it seemed that all of the prophecies—intended or not—were converging upon me. I thought about Olun on the path. And about the path he’d seen for me. I thought about Sorcha. I wished with all my heart she were with me in that moment. Then I realized . . . she was. She would never leave me. She was my sister.
And I was her Morrigan’s Flight.
But this time, I would not soar alone in the sky.
I’d volunteered to take flight all on my own, but my other sisters—my sister gladiatrices—would hear nothing of it. There were, they said, five siege engines. So there were going to be five girls going over the wall. Quint had checked and double-checked the machines. He’d test-fired them all, without loading them, and declared them ideal for his intended purpose: launching me and four other girls over the walls of Durovernum. Kore and Thalassa had volunteered almost immediately, citing, of course, their experience with bull-leaping on Crete. And Ajani and Elka weren’t about to let me go without them. The catapults were small. Portable, but still relatively powerful. And Quint assured us they would easily propel us over the wall without actually killing or wounding us in the process. He hoped.
“Just . . . uh, go limp,” he’d said. “Tuck your head in. That sort of thing . . .”
We dragged the things, like lumbering behemoths, to a section of the wall that had no sentries to startle or, more importantly, shoot at us. And it was in sight of our target. We’d decided that we would take aim as best we could—as best Quint, with his engineering experience, could—at the great broad expanse that was the roof of my father’s great hall, rising up above the walls of the town. It was a perfect target: a gentle slope of thick thatch, it would cushion our landing. Hopefully. As I settled myself onto the wooden platform in a loose, ready crouch, Kronos stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest, shaking his head. But there was also the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, which made me feel the tiniest bit better about our impending act of lunacy. He actually thought it would work. And Kronos wasn’t what I would call an optimist on the best of days.
