Celtic Fire (36 page)

Blood pulsed red like the dawn sky, splashing to the dirt, staining it black. Rhiannon gained her feet at last. Her face had gone white. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her body as if she was trying to hold herself erect. She lost the battle, gagging as she fell to her knees.

The Druid’s body went slack. His gnarled fingers loosened on his staff. The twisted wood fell, sending Aulus’s skull skidding across the ground. Lucius withdrew his blade from the Druid’s body.

He stared at his brother’s severed head, stomach heaving. He took one step then another, toward the ghastly skull. The tip of his sword sliced a line in the mud as he went.

Blackened, oiled skin—cracked in some places, curled in others—clung to white bone. Matted hair covered the scalp. Loose teeth grinned through eroded lips. Lucius stretched one shaking hand out to touch the only remnant of his brother left to him.

Footsteps thudded through the forest. “Owein! Nay!”

Lucius spun about. Rhiannon’s brother was bearing down on him from across the circle, sword raised. The same crazed fury Lucius had seen in Madog’s eyes illuminated the youth’s face. Lucius scrambled behind one of the stones, using it as a shield while he swiftly put together a plan of attack. The youth was half-mad with fury—he wouldn’t stop until one of them lay dead, of that Lucius was certain. Lucius also knew he hadn’t the strength for another prolonged battle.

As he readied for a swift, deadly rush, his gaze touched on Rhiannon. Her eyes were huge and vivid with fear. They begged him not to strike a killing blow as clearly as if she’d spoken, and Lucius knew, even before he raised his sword, that he had lost the fight.

Owein and Lucius circled each other within the stones, swords raised. A mere lad against a seasoned warrior, but anger and grief fed Owein’s strength, whereas Rhiannon knew that Lucius had to be near the end of his endurance. Owein struck first, swinging Madog’s Druid sword in a wide, deadly arc. Lucius met the attack with the clang of steel on iron. Owein thrust again, too quickly, opening his body for a riposte.

Rhiannon’s heart leaped into her throat, but Lucius kept his sword close to his body and did not pursue his opponent. Was his wounded arm failing, or did he hold back by design? Rhiannon couldn’t tell.

“Owein, drop your sword!” she shouted.

“And let this dog take ye away? I’m thinking I’d rather eat dung.” He gave a savage thrust that succeeded in nicking Lucius’s mail shirt.

“Killing him will serve naught!”

“It will serve to rid the world of a Roman wolf. It will avenge your shame.” He thrust again.

The force of Lucius’s parry drove Owein back. The lad stumbled. His knee hit the ground and his sword faltered in his grasp. Lucius rose above him, both hands on the hilt of his sword, poised for a killing blow.

Rhiannon’s scream lodged in her throat. In the brief span before the weapon fell, Lucius met her gaze, his expression hard, his dark eyes unreadable.

“Nay,” Rhiannon whispered.

Lucius loosed the strike. At the last instant, his arms flexed, twisting his blade so the flat of it struck Owein’s back as the lad gained his feet. Owein staggered under the blow, but managed to keep his balance and his grip on his sword.

The close call brought her brother new fury. He turned on Lucius, snarling, his blade flashing with the speed of a serpent. Lucius grunted as the blow struck his sword arm. His grip loosened. His weapon thudded into the dirt. He fell back against one of the stones.

Owein pointed his blade at Lucius’s throat.

Rhiannon launched herself at him. “Owein, stop!” She pummeled his back, but he moved not an inch.

“Now, Roman, ye will die. I have Seen it.” Owein drew his sword back, muscles tensing.

“Nay!” Rhiannon’s fingers found the hilt of Brennus’s dagger. She slashed at Owein, desperate to stop his killing thrust.

Her blade bit into his flesh. Owein let out a cry. Madog’s Druid sword twisted and fell wide of its mark.

Blood pulsed from a gash on Owein’s shoulder, soaking his tunic. It flowed over Rhiannon’s hands. She dropped the dagger. A sob tore from her throat as she tried frantically to staunch the crimson flow.

Owein gazed down at her, his fury gone, his expression bewildered. The tears of a small lad sprung into his eyes as he dropped to his knees. “Ye would kill me for him, little mama?”

Rhiannon’s own tears flowed furiously as she tore a strip of linen from her hem and wound it about Owein’s shoulder. “Ye idiot! Why could ye not stop!”

Owein’s gaze clung to hers. “I wanted to give ye your revenge.”

“Revenge? For what? For his respect? For his gentleness? For his love?”

Owein shook his head. “He enslaved ye. Used ye as a whore.”

“Nay,” Rhiannon said. “He set me free. I love him, Owein.”

Lucius had gained his feet. She felt his presence at her back, but she didn’t dare turn to meet his gaze. She’d spoken her declaration in the Celt tongue, but some instinct told her that he’d understood her words. Her fingers fumbled on the bandage’s final knot.

“Can you walk?” Lucius asked Owein.

Owein scowled up at him. “Yes,” he replied in Latin. He rose, shaking off Rhiannon’s assistance.

“Is your village near?”

Owein nodded.

“Go home, then,” said Lucius. He looked at Rhiannon, his gaze softening. “We cannot tarry here. We must be on our way south before the rest of your kin scent our trail.”

Rhiannon’s gaze darted first to Lucius’s weary expression, then to Owein’s anguished one. Her heart tore in two as a battle raged in her soul. Dear Briga. How could she choose between them?

The morning sun broke through the trees. “You mean to leave with—” Owein began, then choked on a sob.

She drew him into her arms, and he clung like a babe. She stroked his red curls as her own tears threatened. “Hush, darling, I’m here. I’ll not leave you.”

“Rhiannon—” Lucius began.

A rustling and heavy footfalls interrupted his words. A band of four Celt warriors burst into the circle, Rhiannon’s cousin Bryan in the lead. Owein pulled himself from Rhiannon’s arms and dashed the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

Bryan looked first at Madog’s crumpled body, then at Lucius. “You will die for this, Roman.” He drew his sword.

Lucius raised his weapon in response.

“Nay,” said Rhiannon, placing her hand on his arm. “There will be no more fighting.” She turned to face Bryan. “Ye will not harm him. I give him safe passage south.”

Bryan’s sword wavered. He looked at Owein, eyes questioning. “But Madog …”

“The hand of Kernunnos was on this contest, Bryan,” said Owein. “Madog delved too deeply into the dark powers beyond death and they came to claim him.” Owein met Rhiannon’s gaze, eyes inscrutable. “We dare not draw the Horned God’s wrath on our heads by killing the Roman.”

He paced to the center of the circle and raised his uninjured hand. A single Word left his lips, a syllable of power bequeathed by the Old Ones. Bryan and the other warriors drew back as if scorched.

Owein turned his piercing blue gaze on Lucius. “Take the skull and go,” he said.

Lucius had but one task to complete before returning to Marcus’s hiding place. He stabbed at the forest loam with a sharpened stick, gritting his teeth against the pain in his arm and ribs. The pit deepened, and still he dug.

Aulus lounged against a nearby pine, inspecting his fingernails. His bruises were gone and his chin had been shaved clean. He wore a white tunic and toga, but his face had not regained its pallor. It glowed with life and health, and if not for the rotted skull lying in the mud, Lucius might have believed his brother had risen from the grave.

The sun hung on the horizon by the time Lucius judged his labor complete. He stood silent for a long moment as the magick of the wilderness breathed its quiet spells about him. For the first time, the northern forest whispered to his heart, and he listened.

He would not leave Britannia without leaving a piece of his soul with this mysterious land and the woman he left behind.

“Perhaps the memory of her will fade,” he told his brother.

Aulus looked up and raised his brows.

“We weren’t fated to be together. She won’t leave her brother, and I can hardly join her tribe.”

Aulus pushed himself away from the tree and paced closer. He laid his hand on Lucius’s shoulder, his fingers as warm and solid as a living man’s. Though he didn’t speak, his opinion was clear.

Lucius sighed. “You always understood more of love than I, but in this you are wrong. I cannot go after her.” He covered Aulus’s hand with his own. They stood unmoving while the shadows deepened and the sky darkened.

“Come,” Lucius said at last. “It is time.”

When he lifted his brother’s skull, his vision blurred. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to defend you on that dark day.”

A sad smile played about Aulus’s lips, but he shook his head as if to say Lucius was a fool to question fate. He glided to the edge of the pit and looked down.

Lucius nestled Aulus’s skull in the pit, weighting it with stones against the ravages of wild animals. Aulus lifted one hand in a gesture of farewell. When the first handful of dirt spattered the pit, he vanished.

Lucius stood for a long time, staring at nothing.

A tear tracked down his cheek. “Good-bye, brother,” he whispered.

Rhiannon slipped out of the dun before sunset and followed the well-worn path to the sheltered glen where Briga’s waters sprang from the earth. It was a place so unlike the pool in Lucius’s house, but Rhiannon had felt Briga’s spirit in the Roman fort as keenly as she knew it now in the forest. The Great Mother’s arms embraced the entire world. Rhiannon suspected her peace flowed as easily through the streets of Rome as through the wilderness.

She imagined Lucius, garbed in a white toga, taking his father’s seat in the Roman Senate. Would he think of her once he returned to his homeland? If he did, what would he remember—her love or her deceit?

The brush stirred behind her. “Rhiannon?”

Owein stood in the shadow of an elm a few paces away. Though the wound she’d inflicted had not been deep, she still shuddered when she thought of what might have happened if her blade had sliced his neck rather than his shoulder. She’d washed and rebandaged the gash upon returning to the dun this morn. In time, he would bear only a thin scar.

She waved him to her side. He came, hesitating only the briefest of instants before he bent and kissed her cheek. Rhiannon smiled up at him and lifted her hand to ruffle his red curls.

“The Roman and his son have set out on the southern trail,” he said.

Rhiannon’s heart cracked a little. “Ye’ve seen them?”

“Aye, though they did not know I watched.” A solemn expression lit his blue eyes. “Go with them, little mama.”

“What?”

“Go. Your spirit will travel with them in any case.”

“But the clan—the tribe—needs a queen. Someone to draw them together.”

Owein shook his head. “If the chieftains cannot come together in their own right, what good is a queen to draw them? Thanks to the Romans, the days when a Celt woman ruled alone are past. When the chieftains are through bickering, the strongest among them will claim ye as a prize to brace his position. Are ye willing to accept such a man?”

“Nay.”

“Just so. But I am thinking with Edmyg and Kynan dead, no other will be able to hold the clans’ allegiance. The Romans will come from the south. I See naught but blood and death. In the end, the conquerors will prevail and the Brigantes will be no more. There is nothing ye can do to stop it. Take what happiness ye can, Rhiannon. If ’tis with a Roman, so be it.”

“But what of ye, Owein? I canna leave ye.”

He lifted his head and looked through the trees with the eyes of an old man set in his young face. “I’ll not be here, little mama.”

“Not here? Where will ye go?”

“North to the islands beyond the mountains, where the hand of Rome will never rule. Madog once told me the stones there hold wisdom beyond a man’s imagining. He abandoned that knowing in the end, but I would seek it.” He sighed, his shoulders slumping. “I have the Sight, but ’tis not enough. I need the knowledge that will show me how best to use the gift Kernunnos has cursed me with.”

Rhiannon took his hand. It was the hand of a man, not a lad. “ ’Twill be a difficult passage,” she said.

“I know it, little mama. But I am thinking ’twill be no harder than the journey ye will make.”

They were being followed. Lucius knew it with a certainty, but when he cocked his head to listen, he heard nothing. The twilight forest was still.

Too still.

“Draw your mount off the trail,” he told Marcus.

Marcus complied, seeking shelter in a thick copse. Lucius reined in beside him and waited, sword drawn. Long seconds passed, then the underbrush rustled and a dark form streaked toward them.

“Hercules!” Marcus flung himself from his pony’s back. The dog launched itself at him and the pair crashed to the ground in a tangle of human and canine limbs.

Lucius resheathed his sword. “It would seem we’re to be saddled with that creature for eternity,” he said with a rueful smile.

Marcus beamed up at him. “See? He is a clever dog, just as Rhiannon said.”

“Yes,” a voice behind him agreed. “I had the right of it. He led me to you.”

“Rhiannon!” Marcus darted toward her, stumbling against her snow-white pony’s flank and causing the beast to shy.

Rhiannon slid from the animal’s back, keeping her reins firmly in hand, laughing as she scolded him. “Marcus! Has your brain slipped out of your head?” Hercules pranced about her legs.

Marcus grinned back at her, unrepentant. “No.”

Rhiannon gave her head an amused shake and opened her arms in the universal gesture of motherly love. Marcus went to her, wrapping his arms about her waist fiercely. Lucius dismounted and advanced more slowly, his gut churning like a river after a storm.

Rhiannon met his gaze over Marcus’s head. “Lucius?”

“Why are you here?” He had to force the words from his dry throat.