9
KING NO MORE
Unconsciousness lasted only a short interval. Stunned by his fall, Bran quickly recovered into a darkness where the stars stopped spinning and the crescent moon watched silently from between drifting clouds.
Cold hands touched his brow. Bran opened his eyes to return the gaze of the white face that looked down at him intently. The earth no longer moved. His head was raised up by a cold pillow of linked mail. He rolled his head, saw that the pillow was mail-clad knees.
Bran grunted, tried to sit up. The face and the moon swam again in his vision. Red lights of pain stabbed through his skull. Blackness returned.
Then he heard Grom’s hoarse voice shouting his name, and when he struggled upright he was alone. Wings of blackness flapped across his brain, but Bran Mak Morn reeled to his feet.
“Milord Bran! Are you all right!” Old Grom all but bowled his master over as he flung himself to Bran’s side. In the dim moonlight Bran could see the man’s face was clotted with dirt and blood.
“Well enough,” commented Bran unsteadily, glancing to where his horse lay dead, its head twisted to a grotesque angle. “Lucky to have escaped a crushed skull and a shattered back.”
Still groggy, Bran gazed about him without comprehension. A tremendous wound gaped from the clearing, and vaguely Bran could see a vast tangle of smashed and uprooted trees disrupting the circle of rowans. Great clods of soil and rock had erupted from the crater in the earth, and now Bran became aware of a foetid stench-a stench he remembered from the Roman camp.
“By the gods! What happened!” Bran blurted, chaotic memories returning in a jumble.
“May the Moon-Woman curse their souls, the others all fled when the hell-worm struck from below!” Grom snarled, not wholly suppressing a shudder. “I was stretched senseless by a flying clod, and when I recovered my wits all was still.”
“The hell-worm?”
“Did you not see? It was such a vision that I thank the gods the moon shone no brighter! It was the very grandfather and grandmother of all serpents-no, it was the god of all serpents! Even the great serpents the Romans at Eboracum boast to bring from distant jungles for their arenas are as maggots to this one! Its maw could engulf a man as easily as a salmon snaps up a minnow!
“It burst forth from the earth even as we ran to you. I saw a man die horribly in that instant-then I was dashed to the ground, and for a space knew nothing of what followed.”
Bran grunted. “Who was it beside me a moment ago?”
“Milord, I saw no one as I came up.”
“No one?” Bran’s frown was puzzled. “I had thought… But no matter. My brain was all adaze.”
Grimly Bran took stock. Of Atla and Claudius Nero there was, of course, no sign. He had expected the two to come to this rendezvous prepared for a desperate move on his part, but there was no way Bran could have planned for such as this. With a curse, Bran realized he had gambled all and lost-how dread that loss might be he dared not imagine. The memory of Titus Sulla called to mind possibilities he refused to consider.
“They might have killed you,” Grom reassured him, noting the despair that twisted his masters face.
Bran shrugged. “Likely they thought the effort not worth the bother. By the gods, they’ve made a fool of me at every turn of their black conspiracy!”
Grom did not contradict him. “What now, milord?” he wondered bleakly. “How can men fight things of shadow and nightmare?”
“With steel!” Bran declared hotly. In silence he stared into the pit that had been torn through the earth. Small clods and pebbles still trickled into the reeking darkness far below. A vague trail of slime glistened tepidly in the wan starlight.
“Even this,” he breathed to himself.
Stay and let me show you real fruits of the pits! So had promised Ada that night in the Ring of Dagon, when Bran Mak Morn had fled with loathing from the corpse of the mewling wretch who had been Titus Sulla. And they had Morgain…
Bran’s jaws achea from tension. Grom stared at him in astonishment. Dimly Bran realized the low grinding rasp that he heard had come from his own throat.
“Come, old war dog!” Bran spoke loudly. “There’s no more we can do here. It’s back to Baal-dor to await further contact from these serpent-folk. We have no other choice.”
Bran reeled suddenly. In an instant Grom had leapt forward to bear him up.
The king of Pictdom leaned his weight heavily on his servant’s massive shoulders. “It is nothing,” Bran protested. “Rest is all I need…”
“Milord!” Concern edged Grom’s voice. Clumsily supporting the taller man, the dwarfish warrior assisted his king across the clearing and past the wreckage of the thicket.
Sprawled among the smashed rowans was grim evidence that not all Bran’s Picts had fled.
***
They had covered the better part of a mile when sounded the cautious clink of hooves from the darkness ahead. Instandy they halted in the deeper shadow of a massive beech.
The rider slowly approached, his long white beard flowing silver in the starlight. The tall, bony silhouette was unmistakable.
“Gonar!” hissed Bran, stepping away from the shadow of the bole.
The wizard pulled rein. “So you yet live?” he observed with irony. “I met frightened men on the road who swore that a demon-serpent had broken loose from hell and swallowed Bran Mak Morn whole.”
Tersely Bran gave account of the disaster at Kestrel Scaur.
“They let you live,” Gonar observed as Bran finished. “Then they still hope to bargain with you.”
“There can be no bargain.”
“Once the altars of the Serpent were served by both Pictdom and the People of the Dark.”
Bran glanced sharply at the ancient priest. In the darkness he could not read his face. “No/ Those days shall not return!”
“They have Morgain,” Gonar reminded relentlessly.
“Not for long,” Bran vowed softly.
“What do you intend?”
“Come deeper into the shadow,” Bran told him. “I know not what ears may listen, what eyes watch. I was certain someone followed us from the barrow, though I think by now we are alone. I half-sprained old Groms back making him lug me this far, but it should have convinced any watchers that Bran Mak Morn will lay a cripple for some while.”
“Bran! What madness do you plan!” Grom exclaimed in sudden realization.
“To all the world the king of Pictdom must lie half-dead in his chambers-I charge you to keep this deception! If Atla seeks contact, it must be understood that Bran Mak Morn is too grievously stricken to leave his couch for some days. Gonar’s mount can carry me back to Baal-dor, and after I’ll steal away on my own. The ruse should stay their vengeance from Morgain…”
Bran refused to contemplate otherwise. He must at all costs preserve Morgain’s value as a hostage. “Bran…” Gonar began in protest.
“I stole their Black Stone. I can damn well steal back Morgain.”
“You can’t! You’re mad to attempt…”
“I know the odds!” Bran snapped.
“Then you know you go to your doom.”
“I know there will be no alliance with Pictdom and the Children of the Night so long as Bran Mak Morn draws breath. And I know what Morgain will suffer once they understand not even her life can shake that resolve. I go to bring Morgain back-or Bran Mak Morn shall not return either.”
“True-you won’t return,” Gonar assured him bleakly. “And Pictdom shall perish without its king. A king cannot throw his life away thus. His duty is to his people…”