The Eagles' Brood

XXII

"Did you know you had this, Commander?"

I looked tiredly at the arrow one of the men was holding out to me. "No, where was it?"

"Lodged in your armour, sir, at the shoulder."

"In the back?"

"Yes, Commander, between the joints."

I shook my head. "Didn't feel it. Careful, it might be poisoned."

The trooper held it up to the light and then his face registered amazement. "By the gods, Commander, I think it is! There's a coating of some kind on the iron."

I felt the goose-flesh of horror stirring on my neck again. "Let me see that. Give it here." I held it up to the light as he had done and saw what looked like a residue of silvery- green crystals on the iron tip. They resembled nothing I had ever seen before. I shuddered in loathing and threw the thing from me. "It might well be. The very thought of it sickens me. Be careful of it!"

The trooper who had handed it to me had moved to retrieve it. He picked it up, holding it very carefully, and peered again at the discoloured tip. "Well," he said, almost to himself, "we'll soon find out."

"And how will you do that, Trooper? Do you intend to try it out?" My voice sounded slurred to my own ears, so tired was I.

"Yes, Commander. On one of those whoresons over there." He nodded to a huddle of prisoners I had not noticed.

"You will do no such thing!"

"Why not, Commander?" His look was one of hurt innocence. "I will simply scratch one of them. If it's not poisoned, then there's no harm done. If it is, then we will know who used them last time."

I blinked at him, remembering the harmless arrow that had nicked my wrist, and remembering that this arrow, the one he held so cautiously, had lodged within a fraction of a finger's breadth from my neck. I nodded. "Go ahead, then."

He crossed directly to the group of prisoners, seized one of them by the arm, pulled him out of the group and scratched him deeply with the arrowhead. The prisoner gazed at the wound, dull-eyed, for several moments and then raised his eyes to me, his injured arm held stiffly, so that the small, bleeding wound inside his elbow joint was plain to see. His face was empty of any expression.

I turned away to the centurion beside me. "Water. I need to wash some of this mess off."

"I have already ordered it, Commander."

I saw two soldiers approaching, bearing jugs of water, and then I heard a strangled moan from behind me and whipped my head around to look. The prisoner's face was no longer vacuous; it was a rictus of pain and terror as he held his injured arm out stiffly in front of him. Even as my mind accepted what we had done to him, his moan changed to a high, gurgling scream and he threw himself to the ground, writhing in agony, tearing at his arm and jerking it as though trying to wrench it from his body. I opened my mouth to shout, but nothing emerged, and we stood there, horrified beyond expression, watching the fellow go into paroxysms, arching his back clear of the ground so that he was supported only by his head and his heels until he toppled sideways, scissoring and writhing. It was the most awful spectacle any of us had ever seen. My mind was screaming. That should have been me! That should have been me! until one of the centurions suddenly regained his senses and put the suffering man out of his misery with a swift, merciful, chopping arc of his short-sword. Yet even after the man's head was severed, the body continued kicking and convulsing, spraying great gouts of blood around the yard.

I swallowed the bile in my throat with a great effort and looked for the man who had scratched the prisoner. He stood transfixed, his face as white as death, the arrow lying at his feet where it had fallen from his nerveless fingers.

"You were correct," I heard myself say. "Pick up the arrow and keep it safe for me. Treat it with care to protect its coating. I will have need of it later." I turned then to the ashen-faced soldiers who had brought my water. "Bring that into the tent there. I will wash now."

I washed myself in a haze of cold detachment, dousing my whole head in the water that remained, and then I dressed again in my armour and the tattered remnants of my great, black cloak. My body felt refreshed, I remember, but my mind seemed numb, and I was conscious only of what I had to do next. When I emerged from the tent I found Popilius himself awaiting me, and the camp filling up with dusty, bloodied and weary soldiers.

"Commander Merlyn." Popilius's voice was full of concern. "Are you unhurt? We had thought you dead."

I reassured him mechanically and asked him what had happened in the fort above. His face immediately became troubled but he could tell me nothing other than that whatever had occurred had taken place after nightfall. Since then he had had neither the time nor the opportunity to learn of conditions there.

"So be it," I said, "I shall discover for myself. I am going up there now. What about Lot? Where is his army?"

"Scattered, Commander, what is left of it. Destroyed."

"And Lot?"

Popilius shrugged his big shoulders. "No one seems to know, Commander. He may be among the dead."

"No." I heard the disgust in my voice. "Not that serpent. His kind seldom die that way, with honour. He must have run."

Popilius sounded dubious. "If he did, then he did it quickly, Commander. Uther's men were in his camp within minutes of their first charge."

"Oh, Popilius, he did it quickly, rest assured of that. But he cannot run far enough. Britain is no longer big enough to hide that man from me." I glanced towards the hilltop. "Form up your men, Popilius, and let's go see what waits for us in Camulod."

He cleared his throat, as though apologizing for his next words. "It cannot be too bad, Commander. The cavalry came out They would not have done that had they been hard pressed."

'True enough, but did my father lead them?"

"I don't know, Commander."

"Well, let's go up and find out how bad the damage is. It worries me that no one has come out yet."

He was determined to be sanguine. "They'll all be fighting the fires."

"Aye, and glad of our help,"

Popilius was right. Every able-bodied person in the fort was fighting die fires, most of which appeared to be under control by the time we arrived. It was only as I entered the gate into the smoke-filled yard and saw the extent of the damage that I thought of the Armoury and the treasure that lay hidden beneath its wooden floor, and my heart leaped into my mouth. The courtyard was chaotic, criss-crossed with lines of firefighters swinging leather and wooden buckets from hand to hand from the great reservoir tanks by the west wall. The yard was awash in filthy, soot-scummed water. I left Popilius deploying his men to the bucket lines and made my way as quickly as I could to the west wall, against which Uncle Varrus had built his house and Armoury. Miraculously, I found the building intact, but surrounded by a phalanx of Uther's Celtic bowmen. The thatch had been fired in places, but the flames had not had time to take proper hold before being doused with water from the nearby tanks. As I approached the bowmen I heard my name being called and Donuil came towards me, accompanied by his guardian, Centurion Rufio. Both men were black with soot from head to foot, but they were the first faces I had recognized since my arrival.

"Donuil," I snapped, one eye on the bowmen, "What has been happening here? What is going on?"

He drew a great, gulping breath, trying to suck fresh air into his lungs when there was none. "It was the wizards, Merlyn, Caspar and Memnon. They escaped from their cells in the middle of the night and opened the gate in the rear wall. There were men waiting outside. They had come up the cliffs at the back."

I was stunned. "They escaped? How? That should not have been possible. They were heavily guarded, were they not?" Both men nodded in assent. "Then how could they escape?" I saw the troubled look in both men's eyes and pounced on it. "You know. Tell me. How could they escape?"

Donuil's low voice contained a hint of truculence. "I told you, Merlyn Britannicus, before you left, when first they came. These men are necromancers—wizards, magicians, servants of death. They have powers that ordinary men lack."

"Rubbish! This was treachery. They must have suborned a guard."

"No, Merlyn!" The big Scot's tone was categorical. "That is not the way of it. They killed all the guards. It was magic of some kind. I woke in the night and went to check on them, for I fear them, as you know. Rufio came with me. When we arrived, the cells were open and the guards all dead. Not violently dead, mark you. We thought at first they were asleep."

"Damnation, Donuil, what you tell me is impossible! How could chained men kill their guards from inside a locked cell?"

"It is not impossible! The men were dead and the prisoners gone. I know not how they did it, but they did it! We raised the alarm immediately, but were not in time to stop them from opening the gate at the back. We managed to close it again, but a large number of men got in."

"How many?" There was something wrong here, but for the moment it eluded me.

The two men looked at each other and guessed, "Fifty? Perhaps sixty."

"And fifty men did all this?" I waved my arm at the desolation around us.

"They had fire arrows. They fired the thatch."

"How many are left? I presume they are in there?" I indicated my uncle's house.

"We don't know, Commander. Perhaps ten or twelve. They.. .they have hostages."

I felt my skin crawl again, as it had over the poisoned arrow. "Who?" But I already knew.

It was Rufio who answered me. "Your aunt, Commander, the Lady Luceiia. Her women. Some others."

"My father," I said, unable not to say it. "Where is my father?" Silence. "Where is he?"

"Dead, Commander."

The silence stretched on for an eternity, and finally I heard Rufio speak again, his voice sounding distant. "They killed him in his bed before they opened the gate." His voice rang in my ears like a brazen bell. My knees gave Way and I felt Donuil grasp me and hold me up. I hung there, letting him support my whole weight until my head cleared.

Finally I whispered, "Where is he now?"

"Still in his bed, where we found him."

"Wait here." I left them and made my way to my father's sleeping quarters, oblivious to my surroundings, uncaring where I stepped.

It was as they had said. My father, General Picus Britannicus, had died in his bed. But not asleep. The bedclothes tangled around his bare legs told me of a struggle and an image flashed into my mind of an earlier struggle from which he had emerged alive. His body hung backwards, his head and shoulders between the edge of his cot and the floor, so that I could not see his face. There was blood everywhere. I looked op at the light streaming in through the tiny, sooty window above his bed and my soul felt empty. I walked around the bottom of his cot and tried to lift him onto it, to arrange him with more dignity than his killers had left him, but he was rigid and cold. The gaping wound in his throat had completed the work begun by a Pictish arrow so many years before.

I abandoned my futile attempts to move him and sat on the edge of his cot for a long time, careless of the blood that lay congealed beneath me, remembering the roughness of his voice that I would hear no more, and staring at the massive hand that stretched stiff and clawlike at the end of his rigid arm as though still clutching at life. And as I stared, my resolution hardened.

By the time I emerged once more into the courtyard, I was fully in control of myself again. Somewhere close by a baby was wailing and the sound prompted the thought in me that I might never weep again. Donuil and Rufio were still where I had left them, facing towards me, waiting for me to come back. The ring of bowmen still faced inward, towards the Armoury. The fragrance of cooking food caught at my nostrils. Either the kitchens were undamaged or Ludo was improvising. The noise in the courtyard was appalling. There was smoke everywhere, swirling and eddying among the buildings. I was conscious of all of these things, affected by none of them.

My mind was focused totally on the problem of getting the magicians and their hostages out of the Armoury. I knew in the coldness of my soul that had they not held my Aunt Luceiia there, I would have stormed the place and sacrificed the other hostages. But Luceiia was there, and I could take no risks with her safety—the more so since she was now the last survivor of the original Colonists of Camulod. One clear thought kept returning to my mind, to be suppressed time and again, until I could no longer deny the lightness of it and was forced to admit that it represented the only route open to me, even though the risk that it entailed was petrifying.

I spoke to Donuil and Rufio. "Wait for me here, I have some arrangements to make. Let no one make a move against those people in there until I return, is that clear?" They both saluted me and I left to make my preparations.

I returned within the half hour and went straight to Donuil. "Have these magicians seen you?"

"What do you mean, Commander?"

"I mean have they seen you here? Do they know you are here willingly?"

He frowned, thinking, "No, Commander. I have been careful to avoid them."

"Did they see you in your father's hall?" He nodded, frowning. "And do they know of your father's high regard for you?"

He nodded again. "Aye, they do. I heard them speak of me as my father's favourite son, even though I was not firstborn."

"Good." I reached out and grasped his forearm. "How would you like to earn your freedom today?" The measure of my need of his assistance was implicit in my offer and he was astute enough to realize that immediately. His eyes narrowed.

"My freedom?"

"Yes, today. Immediate release from your bond."

He seemed about to scowl at me. "How would I do that?"

"By performing a service for me."

"A service." His expression was difficult to read. "What kind of service?"

"A pretence of being what you are, a prisoner, but an unwilling one."

"Pretence?" Now he frowned. "I do not understand."

"It's not difficult," I told him. "These people—these magicians, as you call them—hold my aunt hostage. She is one of the two people in the world I hold most dear. The only way I can think to save her life is to put it at risk in an exchange of hostages."

He was silent for the space of a few heartbeats, then, "You mean me, in exchange for her?"

"Yes."

He frowned again and shook his head. "It won't work, Commander. These men care nothing for me."

"No, but Lot does, or he will, as soon as he comes to realize that he can increase his influence over your father and impress your sister by producing you safely from captivity. He would see you as a political tool of great power— a means of fortifying his alliance with your father and his people."

The young Scot was far from stupid. He saw the flaw immediately. "But Lot is gone, Commander. As soon as he reaches his home he will see the truth of things, that our army was broken. Our forces would be useless to him now."

"I disagree, but that is not important here. The point is that these people don't know the truth of it. They will seek to make the exchange for the advantage of handing you over to Lot. They will see a golden advantage to themselves in that. Which of them is the stronger?"

He shrugged. "Neither is stronger than—"

I cut him off impatiently. "Nonsense. In any and every partnership there is a dominant and a subservient partner. That is human nature. Think! Which of them makes the decisions?"

He paused, but only for a heartbeat. "Caspar. Memnon is the follower."

"That's what I thought. I will release you to Memnon, who will also have my aunt with him. I will keep Caspar. We will all go from here to an open place where there can be no chance of trickery on my part. Once we are there, Memnon will release my aunt to walk back to me. When she has reached me, I will release Caspar."

Donuil's face clouded. "That's a simple exchange. It would work without me, Commander Merlyn."

"Aye," I nodded. "It is true, it might, but I doubt it. They have more advantage now than such an arrangement would give them. There's too much risk for themselves involved as things stand. The advantage of gaining you might make the difference in their thinking." I paused, thinking, then shrugged. "At any rate, I can think of nothing better. But even so, I would trust neither of these creatures. If Memnon should think to rule his magic kingdom alone, he might destroy my aunt and leave Caspar to me. That will be your service to me—to kill the animal if you so much as think he dreams of harming her. I will provide you with a knife, hidden in your clothes."

"I see." His brow had cleared, but the frown returned immediately. "But what then? What if your exchange should work, without treachery? I have no wish to share Lot's hospitality."

"Why not? He would send you home."

He looked at me in silence for a moment and then nodded. "So be it. I will help you."

"Good. But you will have to be produced in chains. It would not look convincing otherwise." He shrugged and I addressed his guardian. "Centurion Rufio, take Donuil to the cells and shackle him securely—and don't be too gentle, he has to look the part he will play. Give him back his own clothes, too."

When they had gone, I approached the doors to the Armoury, waving the bowmen away, and hammered on the panel with the hilt of my sword. There was silence for a few moments and then a voice shouted from behind the door, asking me what I wanted. I demanded to speak to either Caspar or Memnon and told them who I was. More time passed, and then the doors opened slightly and the deep voice of Caspar, the swarthy, short-legged swine, asked me what I wanted. I spoke to the crack between the doors.

"First, hear what I do not want. I have no wish to waste time haggling with you. You have the mistress of this house there among your hostages. She is very old. If she is already dead, then so are you and everyone else within those walls, hostages or no. If she is still alive, show her to me and I may let you buy your worthless lives in return for hers."

I heard a hurried, whispered conversation, then, "This woman. What is she to you?"

I gritted my teeth. "She is my father's aunt."

Silence, then, "Your father's aunt? But your father is dead, Caius Merlyn." My heart thudded in my chest and I thought, I know that, and so are you, you stinking lump of Egyptian dung. "But you are still alive," the voice continued, "And so is your aunt."

I swallowed hard. "Prove that. Show her to me."

Again, a whispered conversation, then, "Wait. You shall see her. But any tricks and we all die, the old woman first."

I waited.

Eventually the doors swung slowly open and there, in the middle of the hallway, held firmly by a man who stood behind her with a knife at her throat, stood Luceiia. She had blood on her face from a cut on her forehead, her hair hung down in rat tails and her clothing was in tatters, but her eyes were open and- she stood erect and defiant. I called to her, asking if she was unhurt, and she answered in a remarkably strong voice, "Kill them all, Cay! Don't-" Her captor's hand clamped over her mouth and the doors slammed shut.

Moments later they opened again, very slightly.

"Well," the voice said, "As you see, she is alive. Now what was that about selling us our lives?"

"Come outside, damn you," I barked. "I will not converse through a closed door! No one will harm you as long as that lady is in your power. Her life and safety are worth more than all of yours combined." I turned deliberately and walked away to stand in plain view in the courtyard with my back to die door.

About five minutes passed before the doors swung open again and Caspar and Memnon emerged together and stood blinking in the smoky afternoon light. I stood unmoving, forcing them to approach me. Caspar stepped out boldly, a sneering smile on his face. Memnon, the more timid of the pair, looked around him nervously as they approached.

They stopped about two paces short of me and I faced them with loathing seething inside me. Caspar, naturally, was the first one to speak.

"Our lives. What are they worth to you?"

"Not a pile of pig droppings."

"Then let me rephrase my question. Your aunt's life— what is that worth to you?"

"Your lives."

"That's better. There are fourteen of us, in all."

"No, there are two of you. The others are already dead."

"You must be mad, Caius Merlyn. Why should we surrender our bodyguard, when we have the old woman? She is obviously worth more to you than all of this." Caspar gestured disdainfully at the smoking ruins that surrounded us.

"Be careful, animal," I hissed at him. "My father's blood is still wet on your stinking hands, so do not push me too far. My aunt has had a long and useful life and would be the last to blame me for sacrificing the short time she has left for the privilege of crucifying you!"

That penetrated his reptilian armour. He blinked like a lizard and cleared his throat, accepting my resolve. "You cannot really expect me to sacrifice my men to you with no advantage?"

"No advantage? You call life no advantage?"

"You quibble, Merlyn. Our lives we have, as long as we hold the woman and you hold your rage in check. But that latter part concerns me. Your rage, I mean. I would be a fool to trust a man who burns so visibly with hatred of me. Therefore, I will keep my men for the safety they offer me against your blood lust."

"No!" I was practically spitting at him, yet fighting hard to keep my hatred under control. "I have said I will not bicker with you. Give me the woman and you two go free and there's an end of it. You have my word." -

"Your word?" There was no trace of a smile or sneer on his face now. "I trust in no man's word. You will have to do better than that."

"Then what do you want? I want my aunt alive and safe, and free to live until she dies naturally. She has earned that. In return, I am prepared to forgo the pleasure of killing you two with my own hands, or even of having you die by someone else's. So, if you will not accept my word, what will you accept? Name your terms. If they are within reason I will grant them. I can say no more."

Caspar paused before answering. Then, "What we require is some way to ensure that there could be no treachery." He cut me short before I could vent my outrage. "You know what I am saying. Neither of us will ever trust the other. Memnon and I would like to leave this place alive, with our companions—"

"No! They die."

"No, they do hot!" His voice was low. "We have need of them—a need to bring them home safe to Lot of Cornwall."

I made my voice as flat as possible. "Lot is dead. He was killed on the plain below."

Caspar laughed in my face. "Lot? Fool! Lot never left Cornwall. He sits in his stronghold there, awaiting news of his campaign. He sent another in his place, to wear his armour and inspire his army. No, Merlyn. Lot is too clever to be killed by the likes of you."

I heard the truth in his voice and my heart hardened even more against this "king" in Cornwall. When I responded, my own voice was pitched as low as his.

"There is nothing more loathsome than a cowardly commander who skulks in safety while others do his fighting for him. And this is your lord? The master you must appease by bringing your sneaking killers safely home?"

"Aye, Caius Merlyn." He was smiling that hateful smile again. "Such is the way of the servants of kings and princes."

My heart leaped in my chest, but I spat on the ground and made to turn away in disgust, before pausing as though a thought had just occurred to me. I turned back slowly, squinting at him speculatively and seeing a flicker in his eyes that told me his mind was racing, trying to anticipate what I had in mind. "What do you know of Hibernia?"

"Hibernia?" His face remained expressionless, but he was powerless to control the jerk of Memnon's head. "Nothing. What do you mean?" He turned his head slightly and directed a glance of such cold venom at his partner that I would not have been surprised to see Memnon fall on the spot. Then his cold, lizard's eye swung back to me. "What of Hibernia?"

"A prince of Hibernia," I said. "You spoke of kings and princes. I have one in my cells."

"A prince of Hibernia? Why should that interest me?"

I let him analyse my expression as I pretended to think my next words through. "We took him captive more than two weeks ago. He had landed with an army in the north, just as we were attacked from the south-west.. .The incident that led to your presence here. It occurs to me now that your noble master may have had a hand in both events, since treachery and duplicity seem to be his stock in trade." I had his entire attention. I gave him time to think.

"How do you know this captive is a prince?"

"He is a prince. He wears the golden tore. We hold him hostage against the good behaviour of his people."

"What is his name, this prince?"

"Donuil, son of Athol."

"Where do you hold him?"

I raised an eyebrow as though amused. "In chains, in my cells, in the building beside the one where I held you and should have killed you."

"Has he been tortured?"

Now I allowed myself a small frown of bemusement. "Why should that interest you, who claim to know nothing of Hibernia?"

"I lied." His eyes bored directly into mine. "Has he been tortured?"

It was my turn to sneer. "No, he has not been tortured. He is my prisoner, not yours. We hold him, that is enough.

%

We have no need to torture or maltreat him. He is a free- born Celt and his chains are torture enough."

Caspar licked his lips, his expression, for all his discipline, that of a merchant who sniffs a bargain. "What is he worth to you?"

"Less than he might be to you, I think." I made no effort to hide my contempt. "Now that your king's army is smashed and running home with its tail between its legs, he is worth nothing. We destroyed his father's army first and then yours. Any value that he might have had to me is ended. But I thought he might be of value to you, to take home to Lot. Give us my aunt and you can have him."

"Ha!" The scorn in his voice was grand. "You think me mad? No, Caius Merlyn, not for your aunt, for then you would be free—and glad—to kill us all. "But you can have all the other hostages in return for him."

I looked at him in disgust, shaking my head slowly. "You have not seen the truth yet, have you?" I said. "Does it not sink into that reptilian skull of yours that the old woman is all I care about? The others, all of them, mean nothing to me. If you had taken only them you would be dead by now and they with you. Weighed against the life of my father, they have no significance."

He believed me implicitly because I was voicing thoughts with which he could identify completely. I watched him biting the inside of his cheek, making evaluations, reaching a decision.

"Very well," he said, his accents short and clipped. "You can have my twelve men. In return for this Scot."

"Did I say he was a Scot? I said only that he was Hibernian. You are correct, of course; he is a Scot. But why, I wonder, would you want him so badly? Would he be worth that much to your pus-filled king? I would hate to think he is, but I don't really care." I hesitated for half a breath. "Your killers, and the other hostages, and you can have the Hibernian. That will leave you two, him, and my aunt. We can arrange her release under any terms you wish.

I'm sure your twisted mind will come up with something serpentine enough to gull your men and ensure your own safety. Go away and think about it. When you are ready to talk again, just open the door and come out. One of my men will come for me."

I turned on my heel and walked away from them, holding my head high until I passed from their sight. Then I leaned against the nearest wall and vomited up my hatred and disgust.