Bran drained the hot, spiced wine in a long draught. “That’s welcome,” he sighed, returning the silver goblet. Wearily he slid from his mount and gave the reins to Grom.
Morgain stared at him intently, not liking the sweat that beaded his forehead in the dank mist, nor the leaden quality of his movements as Bran dismounted. Word of the uncanny slaughter at the Roman camp had reached Baal-dor the night before. Since then all those within the fortress had awaited the army’s return-exaggerated reports and wild rumors evoking all manner of sinister speculation. Through it all, Morgain had waited in a mood of bleak apprehension, recognizing the crippling blow this might be to her brother’s dreams of glory-unless a logical and natural solution to the hellish enigma was quickly discovered.
“You’ve a fever,” Morgain spoke accusingly.
Bran laughed and evaded the small hand that sought his brow, instead gathering her slight shoulders into a brotherly hug. “Nothing that sleep and more of the wine won’t settle.”
She scowled. “Gonar, give him something. His face is pale as a powdered Roman whore’s, and his flesh steams like a winded nag’s.”
“Enough!” Bran protested. “I’ll drink my wine mulled with your spices, but not with any wizard’s powders or elixirs.”
Leaving old Grom to see to the horses, Bran walked on with his sister sheltered under his cloak-Gonar following them toward the king’s great hall.
The companionship of his sister did much to lighten Bran’s sombre mood. Their father, Malis Mak Morn, son of Berul Crookback, had fallen in the bloody destruction of Hadrian’s Wall twelve years previous; their mother, Gydda, had not long survived the grief of his passing. No other siblings had lived past infancy, and, Bran having taken no wife, his sister was the sum of his household. On his lonely path to kingship, there was none so close to Bran Mak Morn’s brooding soul as Morgain.
This would be Morgain’s eighteenth summer. Bran reflected. She was no longer the child who shrank in fright from the apparition of Gonar when the tattooed priest first came to them-who begged for the life of a legionary captive, a Goth the wizard had marked for the bloodstained altar.
From a shy sprite Morgain had grown into a girl of slender beauty-her lithe, lean limbs displaying the same quick, pantherish grace of movement that characterized her brother. A thundercloud of bright black hair framed a round face and firm chin. Thick, straight brows almost met in a single dark line above the high-bridged nose. Her eyes were great, flashing pools of darkness that seemed to mirror all the brooding mysticism of the Pictish soul. Her skin was of that same dark complexion of the North, and her clean, graceful form proved the pureness of her aristocratic bloodline.
It was a bloodline that must continue, Bran mused. The budding fullness of the slender figure beneath Morgain’s short woolen gown reminded him that he must be thinking of a suitable match for his sister. The thought caused a pang of sudden loneliness.
Grimly Bran recalled the wealthy merchant of Corinium who, hearing of the Pictish maid’s beauty, offered a thousand pieces of gold to whoever might steal her for his lusts. One man had crept North to seek this bounty. Not many nights after, that merchant sought his couch and discovered his spy’s head leering back from the pillows.
The great hall of Baal-dor rose from the center of the knoll-a sprawling, solidly built structure of stone and timber. Modelled in part after the principia of the legionary fortress and partly after the fortified manor of the barbarian gentry, it served both as a headquarters and assembly hall, as well as living quarters for the king and his immediate circle. The hall itself occupied most of the edifice-a high-raftered chamber with massive hewn beams, great sooty fireplaces, long wooden tables flanked by log benches. To the rear was a section for kitchens, storage and servants. Another wing was set aside for the king and his household; beyond that quarters for his inner circle. A low tower rose from the front wall, a final redoubt in the event an enemy overran the outer walls.
As Bran Mak Morn was the first acknowledged king of Pictdom in half a millennium, so was Baal-dor the first central fortress the Picts had raised since days of lost legend. Baal-dor was the marvel of Caledon, a symbol of the rising Pictish nation. In some measure Bran felt a renewal of his former confidence as he and his party strode into the familiar warmth of his great hall.
The crisp smoke of roasting meat filled the hall. At the massive fireplace at the opposite wall a crew of greasy kitchen servants labored over the huge spit on which a whole steer slowly turned. Underlying wafted the sweeter scent of baking bread from the ovens to the rear. On a smaller hearth, a vast cauldron of spiced wine hung over a slow fire, its heady vapor piercing the other smells.
“I thought to have ready a feast to celebrate your victory,” Morgain explained.
Bran scowled and flung off his sodden cloak. “There’ll be no feast. There’s been no victory. There’s nothing to celebrate. Have them clear away this mockery!”
“No!” Gonar contradicted. “Continue with the feast.” Bran glared at him. Shedding his cloak, the wizard calmly stepped to the steaming kettle of wine and thrust his bony fingers within to pluck forth one of the apples that bobbed upon its surface. With an old man’s disregard to scalding heat, he began to munch the spiced fruit-steam rising from his damp garments as he stood almost in the embers.
“The Roman camp is no more,” Gonar said between bites. “Celebrate Rome’s defeat-and another’s victory.”
Bran swore, struggling out of his shirt of mail with Morgain’s aid. “But whose victory, wizard?”
“Does it matter?” Gonar filched another apple. “As Rome is their enemy, you can consider them potential allies.”
“That wasn’t a battle!” Bran protested. “It was hellish slaughter.”
The ancient priest snorted. “I tell you, it was nothing-and so you would agree had you seen the sack of the Roman towns when Queen Boudicca’s horde passed over. Women were raped amidst the ashes of their homes and the gore of their butchered babes; children crucified and dangling from the trees; and in the sacred groves altars streamed with heart-blood, and the air was choked with the reek of burning wicker cages and the shrieks of the captives within.”
“You know what I mean,” Bran growled, joining the wizard at the fire. “You saw that severed arm I sank into the tarn by night.”
As the Pictish king bent to fill his cup with wine, Gonar leaned his mouth close to his ear. “And you know what I mean, Wolf of the Heather,” he said in a low voice. “You need a victory feast this day.”
Bran straightened testily. The wizard insouciantly snagged a third apple. The appearance of the tattooed priest popping spiced fruits into his age-creased face with all the careful gusto of a boy was incongruous, but not comical.
“You are king, Bran Mak Morn,” Gonar told him. “They look to you for leadership. When you are strong, Pictdom is strong. When the king has courage, his people will follow his sword with a brave shout though he leads them on the road to hell. But when the king shows indecision-stumbles in confusion and falters in the shadow of fear… Soon he is king of no man.”
“I fear nothing!” Bran snarled, his face dangerous. “Of course.” Gonar swallowed a mouthful of apple. “But let your people see that. I don’t have to tell you what their mood is after what we found at the Roman camp. You’ve got to break that mood. Go on with the feast. Fill their bellies with warm meat and ale, fill their hearts with bold talk about an unknown ally who hates the Roman as much as do we. Don’t let them slink to their beds with their spirit unmanned by fear and wild conjecture.”