Scorpion Rising

Six

My dear, we are so very pleased to welcome you,' Beth said, taking both of Claudia's hands in hers, and to be fair, her delight did not appear to be feigned. In fact, now Claudia looked closely, it seemed to be mingled with a certain amount of relief.

Which was mutual.

'Not as pleased as I am to hear you speak a language I understand,' she replied.

Accustomed to precincts adorned with glistening marble, gleaming bronzes and braziers twice the height of a man belching out thick clouds of incense, the simplicity of the College would take some getting used to, she supposed, but the effect was neither rustic nor dull. There were no temples, of course, and no shrines. But in place of soaring columns and gaily painted stone, half-timbered longhouses with thatched roofs cast welcome shade. And where statues and altars would normally be surrounded by officials scurrying back and forth as they petitioned the gods on behalf of the pious, made sacrifices here, read omens there and generally oversaw the swearing of oaths, trees rustled in the breeze, grass softened the crunch of leather soles and birdsong replaced the flutes that piped away evil spirits. There was no need to purify their enclosure, of course. That had been done three centuries before, when the Hundred-Handed founded this College. Since then, nothing unwelcome could get past their portals.

'Swarbric implied yours was a silent order,' she added. 'Oh, if only!' Beth's laugh was as warm as her chestnut brown hair and as light as her soft, silver robe. 'But he's right up to a point. We often let our fingers do the talking.' She flicked her finger joints in a series of rapid movements.

'It's this ciphering that gave rise to the name "HundredHanded".'

Fifty priestesses pointing and jabbing with both hands simultaneously? Claudia could see how that would fire the imagination, and she had to admit the system was faultless when it came to conveying information from one side of the precinct to the other, for example. No running back and forth, no wasting of time, no fear of messages getting muddled through a third party. Whisk-whisk-whisk, message sent.

'With sign language, there can be no mistaking the intention,' Beth said. 'Though that is not the reason we use it. Once words are written down, they become frozen, and as you know, my dear, once something freezes it dies.'

'So this way your language never dies?'

'The meaning never dies,' she corrected, leading her guest to the tip of the arrowhead, where a stone bench offered uninterrupted views over the valley. Spellbound by the rolling hills and the meadows ablaze with wild flowers, Claudia could have been staring into infinity. Far below in the distance, sheep bleated.

'Thoughts, stories, experiences, ideas, they never lose their dynamism, don't you see?' Beth's enthusiasm was contagious. 'They remain fresh. Never withering. Never wavering. As constant as nature herself.'

'But never changing, either.' The theory was sound, but in real life ideas needed to evolve, or stagnation stifled them. 'Without innovation,' Claudia said slowly, 'the world they live in dies instead.'

'Nature gives us stability through its perpetuity, my dear, but I never suggested it doesn't change. No one year is ever like the next.'

Each priestess monitored her own aspect of nature, she explained, and thus it was together, as a body, that the Hundred-Handed assessed what impact any changes they observed might have for the future.

'Fearn, for example, sits at the Growth point on the pentagram and she is the Alder Priestess. As the month under my protection begins at the winter solstice, so hers begins at the spring equinox, but nothing in nature is isolated. Alders grow close to water and if there's a drought, they suffer. So in turn do the crops, the fruits of the forest and those creatures who are sustained by the life in the forests. By working in concord and correlating the information, we effectively become weather forecasters, farmers, prophets and healers rolled into one.'

Claudia stood corrected. 'Are all the Hundred-Handed named after trees?'

Beth laughed. 'Heavens, no! Our duty is to every living being on the earth. It's only the twelve months of the year that have priestesses named after the trees that protect them. Mavor, for instance, watches over birds. Others are responsible for the heaths, the meadows, the wetlands, wild beasts and fishes, even the wind and the moon.'

Across the bowl of the valley, lizards basked on stones, chicks huddled in their nests, dappled fawns hid motionless in the bracken. But while June might be a time for calm and leisure for them, for others it was a month of frantic activity. Watching bumblebees buzz, grasshoppers rasp and swallowtail butterflies take to the wing, Claudia wondered what effect Drusilla's tax on the rodent population would have on the College's painstakingly correlated data.

'Talking of the spring equinox,' she said mildly, 'I gather you suffered a tragedy?'

'Ah, little Clytie.' Beth shook her head sadly. 'On the day when dark and light become equals and the world can rejoice in balance and harmony, something wicked like that happens. Poor Pod.' She sighed. 'Imagine the shock of finding her body laid out like that.'

Claudia didn't imagine Clytie got a lot out of being butchered, either.

'Her killer's still at large, though?'

'Unsatisfactory though the situation is, I'm afraid that is true, but two years ago a monster stalked the town of Santonum, strangling women then ritually arranging their bodies and painting them. This crime bears too many of those hallmarks to be a coincidence, and I have every confidence that between Rome and the Tribal Chieftains this copycat will be unmasked.'

But at what cost? Claudia wondered. At what cost?

'Assuming it is a copycat,' a voice behind them boomed.

Of the three priestesses walking towards the tip of the arrowhead rock, the eldest wore a robe the colour of ripe acorns. Her stout arm was linked with a woman clothed in linen the colour of gorse that contrasted prettily with her raven-black hair. The third, dressed top to toe in black, tagged behind taking small tight steps.

'Dora,' the woman in brown boomed by way of introduction. 'The Maturity point on the pentagram and bloody pleased to see you, I must say!'

Another one who was openly relieved, Claudia noticed. Although the light in Dora's eyes seemed to encompass satisfaction as well.

'This is Fearn,' she said, introducing the Alder Priestess Beth had mentioned just now, the Growth point on the star. Interestingly, there was no mention of the third member of the group. 'I'm sorry, Beth,' Dora swept on, 'and as much as I hate to disagree with you once again, darling, your argument about the copycat doesn't add up.'

Even though it was as if the third priestess didn't exist, there was no doubting which point of the pentagram Ailm represented, or which was her sacred tree. And if it was true that dog owners grew to resemble their pets, then the same must be said of the Hundred-Handed. As dark and inscrutable as the transition the Death Priestess watched over, the berries of the yew tree were as beautiful as they were deadly. Dora, on the other hand, stood for the tree that dominated the impending summer solstice, a symbol everywhere of courage, endurance and strength. As Beth had grown as stately as the birch she represented, so Dora had become the sturdy, dependable oak, and looking at her matronly stance and welcoming bosom it was easy to picture the other women flocking to her with their problems, just as she could see Dora dropping whatever it was she was doing to listen. Conversely, though. Claudia pursed her lips. The heartwood of oak can also grow so hard that it becomes impossible to drive a nail into it…

'My theory makes much sounder sense,' Dora was saying.

'She believes Clytie was the victim of someone who wondered what it would feel like to take a human life,' Fearn explained in a voice as rich as the hue of her gown. 'A would-be warrior perhaps.'

Claudia goggled. 'Who chose a twelve-year-old child as a soft target?'

'The whole thing was clumsily done,' Dora said bluntly. 'As was plain from the lividity marks on her body, not to mention the lack of blood in the spot where Pod found her, Clytie died in one place and was moved post mortem.'

Ailm said nothing, but her hands remained folded in front of her waist, while her dark narrow eyes kept darting from Beth to Dora and back. In the uncompromising light of the afternoon sun, Claudia noticed that the rich peat tones of her hair had been artificially aided and the first hint of age spots on her cheeks discreetly touched up with white lime.

'I just pray that whoever killed Clytie has been cured of his damned curiosity,' Dora said.

Claudia blinked. How old would the Oak Priestess be? Fifty-five? Sixty? It was hard to tell, since plumpness had rounded out most of her wrinkles, but she was old enough to have learned compassion! And what of Fearn? A child had died on the spring equinox, the very day that her sacred gorse took office for the month, and whether farmer or priest, blacksmith or beggar, this was an important moment in everyone's calendar. How could she not be touched by the sacrilege? And why did Death not have a word to say on the matter? Most of all, though, how could Beth, of all people, discuss this butchery without passion? Yet looking at her handsome face and straight carriage, there was nothing hard about the head of this order. She was simply resolute. Living proof that, unlike the Druids, the power of the HundredHanded was enforced through respect rather than fear.

'Also,' Fearn said, 'the painting was amateurish in the extreme.'

'That's because men tend not to know a lot about the application of cosmetics,' Beth replied, smoothing her gown over hips that a woman half her age would be proud of.

'Precisely my point.' Dora nodded forcefully, but then Claudia didn't imagine that woman was half-hearted in anything. 'And since there was no sign of sexual interference, which is the usual motive for such killings, until someone proves otherwise, I remain convinced that the arrangement of Clytie's body was a clumsy attempt to make it look like a replication of previous murders.'

Claudia thanked Jupiter that Gabali hadn't been privy to this conversation. Who knew what the assassin's reaction might be? Because he was wrong, she realized. The Spaniard was wrong. When a child was born into this society, it wasn't simply a matter of being placed into communal care. The worst part was that it was raised with a communal psyche.

'How do you choose who fathers your children?' she asked, changing the subject before her gorge rose at their insensitivity.

'Looks are an important consideration,' Beth said, stating the obvious, because from the moment she'd clapped eyes on Mavor, Claudia realized that all the women in this College were stunning.

'Other factors play a part, too,' Fearn said, with a toss of her raven-black hair.

'Strength. Intelligence.' Beth added to the list. 'Health, of course.'

'As it happens, there's a slave auction in Santonum tomorrow,' Fearn said. 'You're welcome to come along, if you like.'

Dora cast a sharp glance over her shoulder, where coils of smoke rose out of the trees on the hill, testifying to the presence of men who lived their lives behind a high palisade.

'About bloody time we augmented the workforce. Half the roofs are an absolute disgrace, the willows are long overdue cutting and the husbandry's on the verge of neglect.'

Beth leaned towards Claudia. 'Now you understand why I wish Swarbric was right and this Order was silent,' she whispered.

Claudia smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes, and as she stared out over the bowl of the valley, something knotted deep inside and began to twist and tighten.

It was much later that she identified the knot as fear.

In the centre of the world, between earth, sky and sea, at the point where the realms of the universe meet, Rumour welcomed her old friend warmly.

Settling herself in a comfy chair, Falsehood poured herself a glass of poison and whispered all her lies into the ears of the children of Truth.

Sipping contentedly as her tales twisted in the telling, warped in their imparting and distorted in their repetition, she stared into the Mirror of Complacency.

And watched the Druids drink them in.

From his vantage point high on the cliff, the young man who had whispered those falsehoods followed the flight of a hunting bird and his heart soared with it. Thanks to him, rumours were spreading on wings every bit as sturdy, multiplying tenfold as his tales of witchcraft and sorcery filtered through the Druid priesthood.

To his right, the sun began to slide towards the horizon, but it was not on the sinking disc that the Whisperer's gaze was fixed. Watching the bird glide above the plateau where the Hundred-Handed had their College, he smiled to himself. The Chieftains talked about Rome putting an end to intertribal warfare, to isolation, to raids on livestock, raids on women, to going cold and hungry in the depths of winter, starving when the rains swamped the grain — ach, but these were old men. Greybeards, who'd grown as soft as the food their rotting teeth sucked on. As soft as the living they'd carved out for themselves under their corrupt regime. What did these old men know?

Tightening the strings on his leather wrist grips, the Whisperer straightened the bandana around his neck and wondered how they dared label him a traitor when they were the real traitors to Gaul. He only had to look back to his childhood. Running through meadows full of hay where the Records Office now stood. Climbing trees that had been felled long since to make way for a public bathhouse. Roly-polying down a hill that been turned, of all things, into a theatre. From a simple cluster of artisans making a living to the beat of their own drum, Santonum had become the jewel in the Occupation's provincial crown — and the Chieftains praised it. They actually praised those concrete eyesores that fouled a once-picturesque skyline. Applauded the wide cobbled roads that disfigured the landscape and, worse, roads which were now defaced with an ever-growing line of marble sarcophagi that housed the corpses of foreign intruders.

Watching the hunter soar above the twisting contours of the hills, the Whisperer snorted. Chieftains prattled on about wealth bringing prosperity to the tribes, but how? They claimed that before Rome the potters and metalsmiths had had to scratch hard to make ends meet, but at least their graft had been honest because how, in all conscience, could life under the shadow of the eagle ever be better than freedom? How did the creaking of winches down on the quay improve anyone's quality of life? How could the crack of a charioteer's whip be an asset to the Aquitani Nation? And what about when night fell. When silence descended over their precious new wharf, where did those hypocritical old farts think the sailors went then? Into town, that's where they fucking well went. Polluting the air with their dirty foreign tongues, making whores of the local girls, and who knew what villainy the bastards were plotting? What blasphemy they could be spreading?

With the setting sun beating on his neck, the Whisperer attuned his ears to the high-pitched whistles that told him the hunting bird was keeping in close contact with its nestlings, and he spat. Traitor, patriot, what difference did it make, it was only a word. A name. And how many times had he changed that since the tribe cast him out? He buffed his ring down the side of his pantaloons. It was a man's identity that mattered. What he held true to his heart.

Those greybeards had sold their own people out, and if the tribes were too weak and too stupid to see what was happening — and sentenced those who spoke up to be shunned — then someone had to stand up for what was right. Someone had to give the tribes their spirit back before it was broken completely. They needed to be shown that the Romans were not overlords to be feared, but flesh and blood, who screamed when their bodies were sluiced with tar and set alight in the night. Who gushed blood when a broadsword hacked off their heads as they slept. Who fell when the slingshot caught them square on the temple.

It had reached the point now, though, where ambushing patrols wasn't enough. Defacing milestones wasn't enough.

Even sabotaging the likes of granaries, wells and bridges wasn't enough. The rot needed to be stopped before it infected the Nation and tranquillity could be restored to the landscape. It wasn't too late to have the water margins ring with the bleating of sheep again, instead of the clatter of hobnail boots.

'You can't reverse progress,' the Chieftains insisted, 'any more than you can make the sun rise in the north.'

Who couldn't? Measureless eyes followed the bird as it glided on unflapping wings. Was it progress that the legions, with their fancy uniforms and sophisticated ways, had turned the women against their own tribes? Fuck, no. Progress didn't produce mongrels through intermarriage that diluted the purity of the Aquitani, and the Chiefs could bleat about the benefits of fresh blood all they liked, the truth was, those half-breeds were vermin. Pests to be exterminated before they bred further, and killing the little bastards was doing the Nation a favour.

Luckily for the Aquitani, enough brave hearts still beat among the tribes to see the truth for what it was, and he nodded in satisfaction, recalling the heat that had fired in the veins of the warriors as they vowed on their oaths to smear their faces with the blood of their enemies and drive the eagle out of this land, ripping up the stones from their roads, tearing down their buildings and giving the riverbanks back to the cattle.

But it wasn't purely the physical aspects that troubled the Whisperer. Under Rome, the thinking had gone soft as well, and one only had to look up there, to the smoke spiralling upwards through the trees, to see the evidence of that degeneration. It was said that the power of the Druids was waning under Rome, now that people no longer turned to them for guidance. Fuck that. It was the power of men that was being eroded — and those bitches on the plateau were living proof.

The lies and the falsehoods he'd fed to the Druids were no more than they deserved. Bloody bitches. The HundredHanded had it coming and that was a fact. High time someone redressed the balance and put women back in their place.

Against a backdrop of the setting sun, the bird whistled and wheeled. Confident, skilful, sure of itself, it surveyed its territory with unblinking eye and soared without one feather fluttering on its chestnut-brown wings.

'We'll show them!' one of the warriors shouted, rattling the medallions of dead soldiers that hung from his belt. 'We will show these pretenders what the Aquitani are made of!'

'Aye!' cried the others. 'We have weapons, war chariots, horses, siege engines! What are we waiting for, lads?'

But just as Rumour needs an anchor to attach itself to lest it withers away into nothingness and dies, so War needs a commander.

'Patience, my friends,' the Whisperer had counselled. 'Our stocks and supplies are limited reserves. We must use them wisely.'

Food, clothing, bandages, even armour don't last for ever, he'd told them, and a direct assault on Rome would deplete precious reserves in no time.

'But we've set traps-'

'- dug pits-'

'- sharpened spikes-'

'Which we will use carefully and to our advantage,' he'd assured them. 'But to charge down on Rome would only invite disaster. We must fight the enemy on our terms, my friends, and in a way we can win.'

Think of Rome as a beehive, he'd said. United, they work in harmony and the swarm is invincible. But make them angry…

'How do we do that, though?' the young hotheads demanded. 'How do we make Rome angry enough to make them lose their discipline?'

'Women and children,' he said simply. 'We slaughter their babies, we slaughter their wives, their daughters, we slaughter everyone who's placed themselves under Roman protection, and by the axe of the Thunder God, we cut them down without mercy.'

Grief and fury, outrage and anguish were enough to make anyone's self-control crumble. Especially when those strikes were aimed at the innocent and came totally out of the blue.

Not a traitor. The Whisperer notched a three-feathered arrow into his bow. A patriot.

Without a sound, the eagle plunged to the earth.