“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentis,” sardonically quoted the Pict, to whose warlike spirit the Aeneid of Vergilius Maro had been solace during the trying weeks in Eboracum. His wit evoked no response.
“Explain to me quickly then,” he said after a pause, “why a witch and a renegade Roman steal into my capital by night to bestow upon me this gory spoil of the battle of which my army was cheated.”
“You were not cheated of a battle,” Ada argued. “Rather, you were presented with a bloodless victory as a gesture of good will by those who see in Rome a common enemy. Surely you would not have been so discomforted had Cormac na Connacht and his Gaelic reavers awarded you this spoil?”
Bran’s scowl only deepened. “Enough fencing, Ada.
I saw what I saw there at the Roman camp. Speak plainly now and to the point, or I call my dogs from their dreaming.”
“So you saw things at the ruins of the camp, milord?” The man called Claudius Nero laughed jeeringly. “Thank your savage gods that you saw not the visions of hell that these eyeless faces beheld before death stilled their terror!”
“Theirs was a doom that shall befell Rome and all her works!” hissed Atla. “A doom which Bran Mak Morn shall help bring to pass!”
Again the sibilant whisper of nightmare shrilled from the shadows of the Pict’s soul. “Bran Mak Morn shall act for the weal of Pictdom, witch!” he challenged. “What master does your Roman friend serve?”
“Your dull barbarian wit is slow to grasp,” spoke Claudius Nero. “I am legate of the Ninth-but we are no longer Legio IX Hispana, nor do we obey the emperor in Rome.”
“Then what master do you serve?”
Quintus Claudius Nero chuckled as at a private jest. “The Ninth is now Legio IX Infernalis, King of Pictdom. And we serve the Black Stone.”
Bran caught his breath. With studied calm he retorted, “Then you’ve forsaken the Roman eagle for the standard of hell, legate. Atla, whatever hellish plot that’s afoot, I’ll have no part of it! I’ve vowed never again to stain my cause with the taint of foul sorceries!”
“King of Pictdom, you have no choice.”
Bran snarled his answer. “No choice, witch! Is the king of Pictdom a vassal of the serpent! Try to kill me-if you dare! For while Bran Mak Morn yet lives, he shall curse and defy you and your hell-spawn kinsmen who lair in the bowels of the earth!
“Whore of worms! Do you threaten Bran Mak Morn! I’ll flay your mottled skin from your cringing flesh! And your screams will affright your limbless kinsmen in their sunless burrows-where they fear the clean light of day no whit less than the swords and arrows of the Picts!”
Atla recoiled from his rage-but it was not that the witch-woman of Dagon-moor shrank back in abasement, rather that she reared back as an angry viper coils to strike.
“King of fools! You threaten me! Atla, whom you courted with hot kisses for the secrets you would now abjure! Fool! Fool and slave of fools! Did I not warn you that in their own time the Worms of the Earth would come to you\”
“And let them come if they dare! With cold steel and a thousand Pictish warriors at my back, HI give them a welcome! Or be it lone and with naked fists, I’ll give them the same reply! And though they kill me, the survivors will scurry back to their burrows to tell a tale that will daunt the black souls of any others of their hell-spawn race who dare to think the Worms of the Earth can command a king of men!”
Bran Mak Morn raised his fists on high. “Go back and tell your masters, whore! Hide in their burrows or die! Let them come to me with answer if they dare!”
“Bran, they are already here. And there is another whose life I think you will not so quickly throw away…”
The Pict’s iron control shattered at Atla’s insinuations. With the blurring speed of a panthers strike, Bran sidestepped the blade that menaced him. Ignoring the soldier, he lunged for the witch-woman who taunted him.
The darkness heaved about him, and Bran’s murderous rush never reached its object. Cold hands clawed at his legs, tackling his struggling body to the blood-slick earth, as Nero’s slash clove the space he had quitted.
“Don’t kill him!” Atla yelled. “He’s useless to us dead!”
Clammy hands sought to pin the heaving Pict. Bran wrested free his right arm-drove a fist at one of the shadowy figures. With fierce delight he felt an unseen face pulp beneath his blow. The assailant fell away into the convulsing shadows.
Slewing on the slick ground, Bran’s clawing fingers sought and found a face on his left. Sharp teeth tore at his fingers. Bran shifted his grip on the face, found the eyes, and drove his fingers into the sockets. The grip on his left arm subsided. Bran heaved upright, and for an instant the Pict almost tore free of the arms that clutched at him in the darkness.
A sudden blow snapped Bran’s head back. Blindly he sought to rise again. A second blow-dimly Bran felt the cestus-clad fist-filled his face with blood and stretched the Pict senseless on the slimy earth.
Pain burst over him in a wave of star-shot blackness. Bran was vaguely aware of the legate standing over him.
“Don’t kill him!” Atla’s voice came from a thousand miles away. “He’ll bargain with us yet!”
“Doesn’t look like much worth troubling with to me,” sneered Nero from a similar distance. “I’ll give him something for his pride.”
The kick that slammed Bran’s head into the slime came from inches away. It brought complete oblivion.
Unless it was delirium, the voice that seemed to sob: “Oh Bran, did I not warn you!”
Through the smothering pall of blackness rough hands were shaking him. Each jolt evoked a star-burst of agony across the blackness in his skull. Eventually it got bad enough that Bran sought to brush aside the annoying touch. He opened his eyes.
The darkness about him was less intense than the darkness he had been summoned from. Perhaps it was the approach of dawn. He recognized the gnarled form of Grom crouched beside him.
Dizzily Bran sat up. His head was a blaze of pain. Dried blood caked his face.
“Thank the gods, milord Bran!” Grom cried out. “I’d feared they’d broken your skull!”
“A fool’s skull is hard,” Bran muttered through split and swollen lips. “What has happend, Grom?”
“Devil’s work, by the sight of this cairn of heads that black sorcery must have heaped up in our midst!” The old Pict thrust the haft of his dagger into Bran’s fist, then raised his bearded chin to bare his throat. “Strike, milord! I slept like a suckled babe across your threshold, while you were lured out here to deadly peril!”
Bran blinked his eyes, striving to clear his blurred vision. “Keep your blade for sheathing in enemies’ throats, old war dog. It was sorcery that beguiled us both, and I’ll bear the blame for its coming upon us in the night.”
“Aye, sorcery-black sorcery!” swore Grom. “I awoke from strange nightmares-frightened to wakefulness like a child who cries out in the night. The fear did not leave me when I saw your door open, your chamber empty. I arose, and a gust of night air showed me the postern standing ajar with a corpse standing watch. In a rush of panic, I ran out into the darkness in search of you. The stench of carrion drew me to this place, where I feared I had found you as a dead man.”
Bran clutched Grom’s thick shoulders in a grip of iron. “The postern left open! The watch dead! You fool! Did you call out the guard!”
Grom cringed. “My wits were slow and thick as though I’d quaffed ten times the wine I’d drunk last night! I thought only to find you! Kill me now if I’ve betrayed you!”