The slaves were already heavily laden. Agrippa ordered them into line with one guard in the van, with Veleda, and another bringing up the rear. ‘We’ll leave a couple of people to keep digging up what’s in the pits. It shouldn’t take us long to get back to the village.’ Rufus nodded and picked up as many sacks as he could carry before following the Roman back into the trees. He felt a spot of cold liquid splash on to the bare flesh of his forearm, quickly followed by another, then a dozen more. In a moment, big droplets studded the earth of the clearing, lancing diagonally from the heavens and creating little brown pools in any indent or hollow. The noise of the rain hitting the leaves was so loud that Agrippa had to shout to make himself heard.
‘This cursed country. Quickly, now. We need to get this into the carts and covered or we’ll lose half of it.’ He sheathed his sword and picked up a sack under each arm before trotting off after the column of slaves and captives, leaving Rufus to make his own pace.
By now the deluge was so fierce the young slave had difficulty following the track. He concentrated on Agrippa’s retreating back and tried to keep his feet moving through the increasingly heavy tangle of wet grass. In the twilight world of the storm-darkened undergrowth, the trees and bushes seemed closer than before, the thorns longer and more persistent. The grasping stem of a dog rose obstructed him and he looked up to discover that Agrippa had disappeared. For a moment he feared he’d be trapped for ever in this frightening green jungle that threatened to bury him alive. Then, as suddenly as it began, the rain stopped, and it was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. He was no longer in a threatening, claustrophobic tunnel, just a pleasant green pathway. The thorn bushes were scattered with delicate pink flowers which the raindrops filled like tiny diamonds. He could hear a bird singing a sweet trilling melody, and the rhythmic tap-tap of individual drops falling from the canopy on to larger leaves below. And the sound of clashing metal. Metal? With a lurch his world turned upside down. Now the grass he’d been walking on was in front of his eyes, each individual blade etched sharp on his brain. For a second he was surprised. He must have tripped? Then the grass blurred, and faded, and his vision turned black as night, but not before his mind registered the leather-clad foot which planted itself an inch from his nose.
XI
There are different kinds of waking.
There is the restful waking in a soft bed, or even a hard one, when the brain is refreshed and instantly at the ready for whatever the day brings. There is the sluggish, glue-mouthed waking that is the aftermath of a half-remembered night of revelry that involved one cup of rough wine too many. Then there is the joyful waking, as one’s hand unthinkingly finds firm, rounded flesh, and the mind strays to the wonders of the night before and the body anticipates the pleasures yet to come.
Rufus’s waking was none of these.
He knew something was horribly wrong even before he opened his eyes. What was this unyielding, gnarled vegetable thing cutting into his face from eyebrow to chin? And another, trapping his arm beneath him and eating deep into his flesh. He was half upside down, with his neck forced at an angle by something crushing him from above. The thing was moving, enormously heavy, and at once hard and soft. He could barely breathe because of the weight bearing down on him. Warm, viscous liquid ran over his bare flesh — he was naked? — and into his hair and his eyes and his mouth. He tasted it, bitter and sharp and yeasty, as at the same time he recognized its smell. He choked and spat and his eyes snapped open with the shock. Human piss!
Still his brain took time to acknowledge the enormity of what was happening to him.
One eye was angled so it could see nothing but the pile of wood and logs at the base of whatever it was he was now part of. Because he was part of it, as much so as if he were jointed or nailed to it. The thing eating into his face was a twisted wicker strand, perhaps an inch across. His mouth was partially covered by the wicker and forced half open by the pressure crushing him. His other eye looked directly at a ring of grim, moustached faces. Two men were set apart by their bearing and the fact that they were clean-shaven. The one in the long cloak, with the shaven head; and a warrior…
There was an awful moment when realization took over from calculation and concussed bemusement was replaced by sheer horror. His body began to tremble, at least what little of it was capable of movement. He heard a high, whining sound come unbidden from his throat; a helpless, terror-stricken wail he now knew was being echoed by the nameless, faceless mound of living human bodies piled above him in this wicker trap. He closed his eyes again, hoping against hope that he was in some terrible dream; that he would wake once more and it would be gone. But there was no escape. Instead, his mind painted a picture of what was, and what was to be. He could see the giant structure, grotesque, yet vaguely human in shape. A great basket made up of wicker and tree branches, and filling its belly and breasts the human fodder that would soon fuel its fiery appetite. Sacrifices. He was to be a human sacrifice. He shook with helpless terror and felt urine shoot from him in short involuntary bursts. Now he understood. And there was worse occurring above him as his fellow captives began to realize the true horror of their fate. The stink of voided bowels filled the air. He could hear someone pleading from within the human tangle close by and thought he recognized the voice of Paullus, though it was difficult to tell since it sounded like the high-pitched bleating of a small boy. He felt the tree-man shudder as prisoners fought in vain to be free; to throw themselves on the merciful swords of their captors.
He had heard the tales of the Wicker Man, of captives put to death in the belly of Taranis, the thunder god, and trembled at the thought of it. He had never expected to see it. Now he was enduring its terrible reality. Why was he not going mad? Surely it would be better to be lost in babbling insanity than to lie here coldly considering his fate?
Soon they would begin to push the straw and branches into the basket between the living fuel. And then the songs would begin. Julius Caesar had written of the songs, or was it Strabo? What did it matter? He was going to die. When the Wicker Man was filled with enough flammable material, the Druid would come forward with his flaming torch, and then… ‘No! Gaius! Bersheba! Please!’ His wail rang across the glade where the British war chiefs had gathered to see Taranis receive the gift they prayed would turn the campaign in their favour. With one eye, he saw the warrior without the moustache frown. Was there something familiar about him?
The man had the place of honour beside the Druid. He was dressed in the finespun cloth of a Celtic lord, with a torc of twisted gold at his neck and a thick cloak about his shoulders, clasped by a bright, bejewelled brooch. On his left hip hung a long sword in an ornate bronze scabbard, its hilt decorated with rubies and glittering studs of precious metal. His left hand rested on a big oval shield with a swirling pattern etched into the copper and the figure of a charging boar at its centre. Some faint memory blew back the curtain of panic that surrounded Rufus. A charging boar. What was it?
The flicker of a torch in the Druid’s hand drew a collective howl from the trapped men. In a high, clear voice Nuada began the gift song of Taranis, quickly joined by the deeper tones of a dozen warrior kings, including Caratacus, who stood tall and straight at his side. The Catuvellauni leader watched the men trapped inside the thirty-foot construction squirming in terror, and steeled himself against pity. What must be, must be. These Romans had invaded his land. Now they would pay the price. His whole upper body vibrating, he let the song boom from his chest, felt the mesmerizing power of it in his mind. The loss of a fine moustache was a small price to pay for the information he had gleaned about the ‘monster’. He had resented it when his father insisted he should learn the language of the enemy, but now he acknowledged Cunobelin’s wisdom. The old man had known the Romans would return, and that his sons were destined to oppose them. He was determined they should have every possible weapon at their disposal. Caratacus remembered his father’s words as the trio sat by the fire in that fierce winter a dozen years before.