Preface

PREFACE

Blood across the stone slab, blood flying in the air, August saw nothing righteous in this place of worship.

Dismemberment didn’t evoke nightmares in August Arminius, Decurion of the Ninth Roman Legion. As a youth, he’d seen tribal leaders in his Germanic homeland chopped to pieces, either in clan warfare or by the encroaching Roman forces from afar. Once, in Iberia, he witnessed an attempt to pull a man apart using four horses, but that operation came off hitched when one animal failed to run at an equal speed to his kindred. Never, though, had August watched an arm being ripped loose from a living man. Sliced off with a sword at the mid-bicep or chopped crudely free with an axe, yes. The sight of one of his auxiliaries shoved against a standing slab in the stone circle, pinned at the waist by the huge foot of a monstrous shape and then having his sword arm torn out of the socket would stick in August’s mind for all time.

August found that he couldn’t blink, couldn’t move, nor even shout and alert the others in the scouting party near the border of Caledonia. Though the soldier being mutilated raised his shield in defense, a swiping blow by the figure in the murky time before twilight downed this action. August’s mind struggled to reconcile what his eyes told him: That a shape taller than any man, even a warrior from his native lands, bearing a halo-like outline of white haze, dominated the scout before him. Froiz was that scout’s name—or Flores as they called him back in his Spanish homeland that the Romans absorbed him from.

Just a kid, August thought as the young fighter struggled on and bled badly. Barely twenty years old. How does a twenty-year-old bleed well?

The shape towering over young Froiz—a being from a nightmare, surely not a man—gave the auxiliary soldier a roundhouse shot to the face with the dismembered arm. That blow sent Froiz’s helmet flying and it bounced off a nearby stone pillar. August saw a host of birds, blacker than night, fly from this stone as the helm flew. As the cloud of birds separated, they revealed two human forms behind them in the woods. The dying cries of Froiz didn’t make these grim folk of the woods smile. August named them as Picts, having the skin and reddish black hair of a breed of savages that lurked by the thousands in Caledonia. One was a tall man, his hairline far receded, and a flowing white robe about his shoulders that seemed to mate up with his long ivory beard. Beside him stood a boy of just a shade over ten years of age, clad in a robe similar to the old man, but brown in color. They watched the further dying throes of Froiz as he staggered and fell over a vertically laid stone slab. The blood of the Iberian pooled for a moment just before Froiz fell off it. August thought he slipped, but soon noted the bearded man’s hand ran red in the moonlight, and that his touch had guided him to the earth. These two figures showed no fear at the sight of the hairy monster in the deep night.

Again, August couldn’t warn the two soldiers that rode up to the stone circle on horses. He wanted to scream that a monster skulked amongst the stones and that the robed boy from the woods had retrieved Froiz’s cover and flung it almost playfully their way. The two soldiers halted as the helm came to rest before them. August could only watch as the creature, certainly a hellish beast belonging in a fireside tale to scare children, charged howling at the two men from August’s cavalry group. Arms out like a bird ready for flight, the massive thing went after the horses and slammed its forearms into their necks, up under their heads. August heard the sickening pops as bones broke, but his eyes beheld in amazement as the horses reared back, toppled by the strength of the beast, and sent the two men out of their secured positions.

He wanted to fight, wanted to draw his gladius, wanted to call on the spearmen and archers to move in and aid their brothers in arms, but he couldn’t.

As the creature attacked the two prone men, August saw the foul form clearer in the diffuse morning light. The miasma that surrounded the thing wasn’t anything supernatural nor endowed by the gods with spirit. The white haze was fur.

One soldier’s helm had rolled off him. He’d probably undone his chin strap and been lazy as he rode in the night. It cost him dearly as a falling white furred paw sent him to see if there were any gods out there or not. The helm of the other soldier didn’t help him, though, as the beast used both hands to slap either side of his head and render the Legion short one more man. Once the clubbing blows of the ivory beast pulped each soldier’s head, the fright on two legs turned to look in August’s direction. August came to understand why he couldn’t act. When the blue eyes of the creature focused on him, pupils growing smaller, August tore his look from that scene back to where the two men from the forest stood by the stone slabs.

His heart ached as the two savages froze in place like the world ceased to let time go by. Their features flattened like they took on the attributes of a two dimensional sketch . . . and they dissipated like a thousand leaves shaking loose from a tree. In moments, the two figures were no more, but in their stead, further back in the woods, like true lingering shadows of these men stood two more shapes. However, these two were female in profile, but akin to the others of the woods in that they wore robes and one was an aged woman with a girl in tow who looked over ten years old.

The beast howled and August sat up at last.

“Dreams, damn them.”

He reclined on his bedmat in the morning trying to make sense of it all. Within his tent amongst the encamped Ninth Roman Legion, August sucked his breath in fast. Head throbbing, sweat soaking his face, the big man clutched the sides of his head as the images swam fast within. He breathed deep once, then several times shallow.

“Just a dream,” the words fell out, but louder than he planned when his mouth opened. Though a warm summer morning, chills tremored across his body. “But Froiz rode out with the scouts, didn’t he? Damn.” He thought of the men that went north the previous day to scout, and wondered why he’d dreamed such a wild thing. To fear those priests of the oaks—yes, that came naturally after what they’d all seen of the Celts in the south and heard yarns about for ages. Often, he and others spotted the ones they named Druids in the forests, watching and holding branches, staring . . . and seeming to disappear back into the green. August didn’t think it magick, just good placement, but he’d not have wanted to ride in after one of those wizards, either.

“Decurion?” a voice called out from outside his tent flaps. “Sir?”

“It’s all right, Rufus,” August croaked, measuring his breaths again, his body calming from the nightmare that felt so real he could smell the beast inside it. That dank odor curled inside his nose for some time afterwards, like a rude fecal scent mingled with heavy sweat.

Still, the head of the slave not yet fifteen years old poked through the flap. “Sir? You were trying to cry out in your rest. What ails you?”

August faced the young man, his servant, a boy enslaved by the Romans from southern Britain since he could toddle, and said, “Was I loud?”

“Just once,” Rufus grinned, and shook his head of curly red locks that were cut tight to his head. “Do the gods confound you in your sleep?”

“Perhaps,” August coughed and rubbed his eyes again.

“I was taught as a child such things happen when you sleep on a land full of gods not used to your presence.”

“Conceivably,” August answered, eyes scanning the interior of his tent as if the answer would be written there. Damn Celts, he mused about Rufus. They had a god in everything.

Rufus took a knee, but stayed out of the tent for the most part. “There are bad, old gods the closer we get to the Pictland border, sir. They are different from the gods of my Celtic peoples and certainly of yours from Rome.”

“I’m not from Rome,” August muttered and winked, getting to his knees, head still shaky from the nightmare.

Rufus smiled back. “I know. It isn’t uncommon for the gods of a foreign land to haunt the dreams of a stranger.”

“Oh?” August stepped out of his tent and stood, naked as the day he was born in far off Germania, and took in the new day. “How rude of them to visit.”

“Then again, we have entered their free land of tribes with swords and shields, not flowers and compost, sir.”

“I knew we forgot the daisies and manure.” August stretched and yawned. “Rufus, fetch me some water.”

The youth held up a basin and a pitcher from behind the tent, then set them on a tiny table he’d erected by the dwelling.

August nodded, glad for Rufus’ efficiency. “Very good.” He looked to the forest, far off from where their portion of the group bivouacked, and saw dozens of servants emerge from the forest at once. Though startled, August saw them all carrying sacks or animals foraged from the woods. Two fair haired youths, twins, not slaves but soldiers, waved to August. “I see the brothers Crispinus and Decimus have bagged their share of rabbits.”

Rufus only glanced over at the twins, who carried sets of arrows with four rabbits apiece strung through them. “The archers are excellent at their trade, though their morning desire to slum with us servants is curious.”

August frowned at him. “Don’t be that way.”

Rufus shrugged. “There is game aplenty in our forests.”

Our. The Celt boy chaffed a bit at his servitude even if August treated him well.

“Have the scouts returned from yesterday?”

Rufus turned abruptly. “Amusing that you ask, sir. There is great distress among the ranks that they have not.”

Amusing? Water cupped in his hands and sloshed over his face, August trembled. “And you listen well to the ranks?”

“Of course. While the higher ranks stay silent, the centurions gossip like women at a party or Senators at a bathhouse.”

“Yeah?”

Rufus’ eyes rolled to the sky. “Or so I hear.”

Again, he splashed his face and then gripped the sides of the tiny table and allowed the drops to fall into the basin. “But the scouts are not back, no word from up that way?”

“No. sir.”

He wanted to write it all off as a silly dream, and wanted to pray for answers, but all he could do was say the name of the one he secretly prayed to. “Jesus Christ.”