Traitor Page 5

  He looked at me. I saw a wolf.

  He said nothing.

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever see an end to it?’ I asked him. War.

  ‘Not in our lifetime, friend. But our children’s? I would like to think so.’

  ‘I don’t have children.’

  His true smile was back. ‘Not yet.’ The prince tested a bird with his blade. ‘Almost done. Listen, Corvus, I have made friends here in Pannonia and Dalmatia. Good friends, who could use you.’

  I ignored what he was saying. ‘What happens to the prisoners that the rebels take?’ I asked instead.

  The man with good friends didn’t pretend that he was ignorant of the answer. ‘A comrade of yours?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Surrender your hope for him, Corvus. There is none. Sometimes in war your friends die out of sight, and that is the end of it. There is no goodbye. There is not even a burial, or pyre. They simply vanish from your life.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘They’ll come for you, you know? In Iadar.’

  ‘They’ll come for me wherever I am.’

  ‘This is true,’ the prince admitted. ‘You know that there are no equal sides in this war?’ he tried instead. ‘You have chosen to walk away from both, Corvus, and for that I admire you, but the time may come when you will have a choice no longer, and must pick a side.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘The birds are cooked,’ he said. ‘I will call my men.’

  But he did not. Instead he held my eyes.

  ‘Will you fight?’ he asked me again.

  I said nothing.

  ‘Food!’ he shouted over his shoulder, then placed his hand on mine. ‘Very well, brother. But you must do something else for me instead.’

  I held his stare.

  ‘You must keep the promise that you made to me, and tell me about her.’

  * * *

  So that night, by a fire and with wine, I told the German prince about the woman that I loved.

  ‘We had planned to go to Rome, and start a life there.’

  Arminius couldn’t help an ironic smile. ‘You? Rome?’

  ‘I loved the Empire, once,’ I said honestly. ‘The dream of it.’

  The prince considered this. ‘You lost two loves when Beatha died…’

  I didn’t deny it. Nor did I remark that she had not died – she had been killed. There was a great difference – a painful difference – and we both knew it. Arminius was simply trying to save my distress, and keep me in happier waters.

  ‘I would have liked to have met that younger man,’ the German chuckled. ‘It must have been hard for you to walk around with your head so far up your own arse.’

  That earned a laugh from me. Dry, but it was laughter nonetheless. ‘I knew nothing of the world. I knew nothing of the people in it.’

  ‘And now that you do, let me ask you this.’ Arminius leaned in closer. ‘Is it better to go through life blind to its realities, or suffer for the truth?’

  I thought on it for a long moment. ‘I suppose that depends on who you’re spending it with,’ I answered eventually. ‘If it meant being with her, and happy, I would go back to that blissful ignorance in an instant.’

  ‘You gained something from your pain, though…’

  I nodded. Thoughts of my dream came back to me. Of what Marcus had said. ‘I never would have known my brothers without losing her.’

  Arminius took a swig of wine, then handed me the skin. ‘And would you rather have not had their friendships, if it meant not suffering their loss?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The words snapped out of me. And that was the truth – though the pain of the loss of my comrades was a burden to bear, the thought of never knowing those great men was far worse.

  ‘It is a complicated thing, isn’t it?’ The nobleman grinned. ‘Life.’

  ‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘Thank the gods for wine.’

  ‘And for friends.’

  I met his look, and nodded. After a moment, I saw nostalgia in his eyes.

  ‘I have a love,’ he told me. ‘Her name is Thusnelda. I hope to see her again soon. I hope to give her a better life than the one I deserve.’

  The words caught me. For the first time since I had known him, I saw a chink in the proud armour of the prince.

  ‘Wine.’ He shrugged.

  We talked long into the night, then slept in the meadow beneath a blanket of stars. My head throbbed when I woke. I returned myself to the river to clear it.

  ‘Practising your swimming?’ Arminius joked. It was a poor one, but he was doing his best to honour the soldier’s tradition – that of parting ways with good humour.

  ‘I have a horse for you,’ he told me. ‘And a sword.’

  I thanked him. ‘But I don’t want to fight, brother.’

  The nobleman accepted my familiarity with a smile. ‘Since when do the gods care for what we want, Corvus?’ He patted my horse. ‘But if any man deserves to be heard, it is you.’

  I said nothing for a moment and stroked the animal’s nose, allowing him to get used to my scent. ‘What’s he called?’ I asked.

  ‘Ahren.’

  ‘Ahren.’ I tried out the unfamiliar name. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It’s German,’ Arminius smirked, ‘for eagle.’

  I laughed and he embraced me. Our road was at an end.

  ‘Until we meet again, my friend,’ he said.

  I had come to admire and love this man. I could not bring myself to tell him that this was it. There would be no reunions. No adventures. No great deeds together.

  ‘Until we meet again,’ I said instead.

  I mounted, and took one last look at my friend, the prince.

  It was time to go home.

  Chapter 11

  I rode through the valley. Ahren was a fast horse. Fast enough to get away from trouble, should I meet it.

  Others already had. I came across their bodies later that morning. First one beside the road, then more. They had run, I realised. They had all run. There were dozens of them, dead for perhaps a day. Their blood was black. Their eye-sockets were empty. The crows had fed. The insects too.

  I wasn’t surprised when I saw a familiar pair amongst the dead. Even the fastest of these refugees had been cut down. What hope had there been for Jolka, and Jaro’s legs of stone? They had died in each other’s arms, their backs torn apart with savage wounds. I looked down into their faces to say goodbye, but their eyes were gone, their lips too. The crows had fed well.

  I knew that I should bury them – knew that I should bury them all – but this was a killing field, and I had not come this far to die amongst strangers.

  I could apologise to them in the afterlife, but now I would ride on, for Iadar.

  * * *

  When the road emptied from the narrow valley I took my horse into the foothills. This was land that I knew. Land that I had ranged with Marcus when we were young men, and trusted to explore. We’d ride for days, snatch fish from rivers, and make the woods our home. They had been the happiest days of my life, until I had discovered love.

  I rode to her now. The sun was falling by the time that I reached the hill where I had buried her. I dismounted, but did not tether Ahren. He was free to make his own choices now, as I had made mine.

  I followed the narrow trail upwards, ignoring the sharp bushes that scratched at my arms and shins. I heard a whinny behind me – the horse was following.

  ‘You’re as bad as Arminius,’ I said. But it was good to have company.

  As I crested the hill the view snatched my breath away, as it had always done. The waters of the sea were wide, shot through with wooded islands that clung to the coast. Somewhere across that water was Rome, and above it now was a setting sun, red as blood, a perfect orb as it fell from the sky and cast golden light over all that it touched.

  This was my home.

  I took a knee beside the graves of my beloved, and my brother. Beatha, and Octavius.

  �
�I’ve come back,’ I said.

  The sun spoke for them. Tears filled my eyes. Love filled my heart. Love of my woman. Love of my comrades. Love of my home.

  ‘I’ve come back.’

  * * *

  I slept, but I woke with hunger long before the dawn. The night was warm and starlit. The moon was high and danced on the calm sea. I could feel a presence.

  I stood. Ahren took a pace forwards. The night was bright enough for me to see his eyes. I hoped that he saw a friend.

  ‘Ahren,’ I told him, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  And that was the truth. I was here on sacred ground, but what next? Did I lie down and die? Did I fall on the sword that Arminius had given me? My love was gone, my brothers were gone, and I could not fight against Rome, or for her, and so what was left but death?

  I realised that I had never truly expected to make it alive to this hillside outside of Iadar. I had expected to die on the roads, or in the mountains.

  I didn’t want to live in a world without my love, without my brothers, that much was certain, but…

  But the moon on the waters. The stars.

  They were distant things that had guided me so often, but now they told me to stay where I was, and to be patient. Death would come. For now I must wait, and enjoy nature’s beauty. Why?

  Because Beatha would have loved it, but she could see the stars, or watch the moon play on the waves. And so I would watch it for her. In the morning I would join her. I would grant myself a dawn – one last story to take to Beatha – and then I would draw the sword that Arminius had given me, and take one final life.

  Ahren had felt my agitation. I apologised, and stroked his nose. We saw in the dawn that way. Two masterless beasts. ‘You can leave if you want,’ I tried to tell him, but I was glad that he stayed.

  The sun climbed. I could make out the lapping waves on the sea now. There was a little wind today, raising crests of white from the wave peaks. Enough to fill sails.

  It had been my intention to leave Iadar with Beatha on a ship bound for Italia, then Rome. Like so many others we dreamed that we would make our life in that great city. Like so many others, the city took our lives instead.

  Never in my life had I seen Rome, but I had imagined it as hope, and promise: the light of the world. But like all flame it required fuel, and kindling. For Rome that fuel was war, the kindling, lives. The Empire lived in a constant state of conflict – advance, consolidate, advance – but they had marched on from Pannonia too quickly, and Dalmatia had followed her neighbour in revolt against those who would claim their fealty, treasure, and sons.

  All for the glory of Rome.

  I was struck by it then. Arminius had pulled the thread, and now it unravelled. The knowledge that when I’d lost my belief in Rome, I’d lost my belief in everything. If I could have been wrong about the Empire, then what else might I have misjudged? Who else might I have misjudged?

  And what did it matter?

  The sun had risen.

  I’d had my dawn. The final story to take to Beatha.

  I looked at Arminius’s sword in its scabbard. The pommel was bright and inviting in the golden light.

  It was time.

  My road was at an end. I gripped the metal, and prepared to draw the blade.

  It was then that Ahren turned his great head, snuffling at something on the air, and I caught the sound of footsteps.

  We were not alone.

  * * *

  Someone was coming up the narrow game trail. I could hear the thorny bushes moving. And then I heard them snag.

  ‘Bastard!’

  My heart stopped. I dropped the sword. It couldn’t be…

  ‘Cynbel?’

  ‘Corvus!’ The ageing Briton suddenly burst into the clearing, stopping short as he saw the frightened horse.

  ‘I’m a friend!’ he promised Ahren.

  ‘He’s a friend,’ I told my horse, stroking his nose and looking into his eyes. These animals could read a man as well as Cynbel had read to me as a child, and slowly, I felt Ahren calm.

  I looked at Cynbel. He had once been vital, with flame-red hair, but now he was old, though his strength of will, at least, had not left him. He had once been a slave, but now he was free. He would always be Beatha’s father, and so was chained to her death.

  Mere weeks ago I had come to Iadar to kill my father; I had wrongly believed that he was the one who had killed my love. But instead of getting revenge I was given truth: sick at the idea of his son running away with a slave girl, my father had sold Beatha to my best friend, Marcus.

  She had been alive and well when my father last saw her.

  Beatha had not stayed that way. When I found her on this hillside her throat was slit and her body violated. She had not only been killed, but desecrated. The world had been robbed of its brightest child.

  Her death had claimed the spirit of both men who now stood by her grave. I wanted to run and embrace the old man. He wanted to run and embrace me. Instead we had to stand and wait patiently for Ahren to calm. Cynbel’s smile grew for every second that the horse made us wait, and then he laughed.

  I laughed.

  The last time I’d seen Cynbel he was broken and weathered. For years he had known nothing of his daughter save that she had vanished – had she run with me? Had I killed her? Had Marcus? The man had nothing but questions and grief. Then, weeks ago, I had returned home to confront my father. I had blamed him for her death, but from his cracked lips I had learned the hideous truth that Marcus was her killer. The one solace of that day was that I had been able to give Cynbel knowledge of Beatha’s resting place, and her father’s loss had been tempered with some peace, and the knowledge that she had been cared for and buried by one who loved her above all else.

  I walked Ahren to a sturdy shrub, and tied him off against the thick stump. Before I could turn, Cynbel’s arms were around me, and his tears of joy were in my hair.

  ‘You came back!’

  * * *

  We sat beside our dearest.

  ‘I come here every morning,’ Cynbel said, ‘since you told me where she lies.’ He looked out over the sea. It shimmered, a carpet of blue gemstones. ‘You chose well for my daughter.’

  ‘It was our place.’ I told him – a place that only I, Beatha, and Marcus had known. ‘That was how he found her here.’

  I could not speak his name, but Cynbel saw the pain on my face.

  His mouth dropped open in horror. ‘Gods…’

  He had known me since I was a child. He had known my greatest friend.

  I said nothing.

  It was my fault.

  ‘Can you tell me…’ A father wanted to know how his daughter’s life had ended. It was not an end I wished to speak of, but he would not have asked me if his own pain was not great. He deserved to know.

  ‘We were going to run away,’ I said, ‘to Rome.’

  Cynbel nodded. He knew this. He and my father had learned of my plans from the friend that I trusted most. ‘He told your father that his family would buy Beatha.’

  The thought of it made my hands tremble. ‘She was not an animal to be bought and sold.’

  ‘She was a slave, Corvus,’ Cynbel said gently. ‘As was her father, before yours freed me.’

  I felt something of my old anger spark into flame. ‘You’re grateful to the man who bought you, and gave you back what was rightfully yours?’

  ‘I am.’ The old Briton nodded, his strong eyes telling me to listen. ‘Without slavery I never would have learned of the world, Corvus. I never would have met Beatha’s mother, and been given the daughter that I loved so much. Without slavery, I never would have known you.’

  I said nothing. What words could answer such madness?

  ‘Listen to me, Corvus. I have suffered in life, but I have loved, too. I have been given more gifts than curses.’

  ‘He killed Beatha.’ I could not say his name. ‘Because my father sold her, like an animal.’

  ‘It w
as for your good, and hers,’ Cynbel tried. ‘To save you from yourselves. Masters cannot run away with their slaves, Corvus, the world would fall apart. Your father was doing all that he could to see that everyone was made happy.’

  ‘Happy?’ I laughed. There was no humour in it.

  ‘Happy!’ Cynbel said sternly. He shook his head then, and looked at me as though he wanted to grip me by the shoulder, as though I were still a child.

  The Briton let out a deep breath. ‘He planned to free me, Corvus, just as soon as the two of you had seen sense. Your father couldn’t let you both run away to Rome. I couldn’t let you both run away to Rome. She was my daughter!’

  I saw a fire in his eyes that was unknown to me. Cynbel stood. The ageing Briton loomed large against the sky.

  ‘You think only of yourself in this, Corvus! Only of yourself! What about me? What about your father? If you took Beatha to Rome you would have taken her from me just as surely as Marcus did!’

  The pain of his words drove the air from my lungs.

  ‘I would have begged your father to stop you, but I had no need,’ Cynbel went on, ‘because your father loved you, and he loved me, and he loved Beatha! He did what he did to keep you both here with your families! He did what he did so that when I was free Beatha could be too, and then there would be no master running away with a slave, Corvus! There would be no shame cast upon the head of the family! No, boy, there would only be grown men, and grown decisions!’

  His eyes were wild now. Here was the teacher of my childhood unlike I had ever seen him before.

  I opened my mouth to speak. To deny it.

  Cynbel’s pointed hand trembled as his words raged. ‘Do not dare speak ill of your father, boy! Do not dare! He is my friend, my brother, and you would do well to grow into a tenth of the man that he is, do you hear me?’

  I was looking at a stranger. I was looking at a parent. I was looking at a man I had always admired, and now, I realised, one that I once would have feared.

  He had a warrior’s look.

  ‘I hear you…’