“Come, I willrushyou back to Caer Sidi. It will soon be night here which means the sun is rising on the outer lands.”
I gripped his arm and for a final time felt the sickening whoosh of the land moving around us. Arawn stopped at thefoot of the castle steps, the grey light of the evening hiding the expression on his face.
“Farewell, Mallt Y Nos,” he said, “until we meet again.”
He bowed to Belis. “Lady Beliscena.” Then he turned and strode back down the road. Alone again, I looked over at Belis. I took her hand and squeezed it.
“Come,” I said, “we’re finished with the dead.”
She glanced down and smiled at me. “The living world is waiting.”
The sea was choppy, the whitecaps bright against the bottle-green sea. I stood on the edge of the cliffs and laughed with delight to feel the cold wind on my skin. Belis stepped up next to me and we screamed into the breeze, whooping and jumping up and down with our success.
By some miracle the boat was still there, bobbing in the swell, the rope glittering with salt crystals. Belis climbed down to it and then came back to help me. We bailed out seawater with our hands then cast off, Belis rowing with the oars while I punted us away from the rocks with her spear.
We decided not to head back to the beach we had left from, reasoning there was no one to return the boat to. Instead, we took the direct route and rowed due east. The winds were with us and the current carried us all the way back to the coast. We landed the boat on a stony shore, pulling it up away from the pebbles to hide our passage.
The woods went right down to the edge of the beach so once we had hidden the boat beneath a pile of leaves we began heading east. The trees were bright with birdsong and the brush was alive with rabbits. We made good time and decided to camp early for the night, Belis pulling me to the ground in a small clearing, to make love in a cloud of wildflowers.
She left me there to hunt, returning an hour or so later, a brace of rabbits swinging from her belt. I rose to kiss her but she insisted on dressing her kill and spitting it over a quicklybuilt fire before she would let me distract her. We paused to eat, tearing off strips of roasted meat, drizzling fat down our chins.
I finished my portion and took a swig of fresh water. Beside me Belis was still chomping her way through a rabbit leg. She met my eyes and I felt desire coil in my stomach. She put down the bone and was leaning towards me when a faint but definite pressure at my throat announced the presence of a knife and suddenly the wood was bright with blades.
Chapter 18
The knife at my throat pressed against my skin, cutting a thin line of burning heat into my flesh. I shrank back, reversing into a mountain of armoured flesh. A hand grabbed at my hair, jerking my chin up to expose my throat. The blade gleamed in the corner of my vision and I felt my mouth go dry.
I flicked my eyes over to where Belis was sitting. A man towered over her, pressing a notched sword into the base of her thigh. Plated armour gleamed on his chest and the coat that swung from his shoulders was tattered and stained but unmistakeably red. Romans. The Romans had found us.
“Steady now,” Belis said in Latin, raising her arms slowly. “We’re just travellers. We want no trouble.”
“You’re out of luck today, then,” spat a voice behind me, causing the knife at my throat to dig back into the skin. A figure stepped into the centre of the clearing, kicking out the ashes of the fire. He spat in the dirt then lifted his hands to his helmet, undoing the leather strap and taking off the shining steel. I recognised the dark hair, the hawkish nose, the dead eyes. Centurion Croser had found us.
“I know your face. I’ve dreamed of it every night since word came to the legion of what you’d done to Camulodunum,” he said, the harsh Latin syllables of the words digging into my ears like thorns. “You’ve grown careless, little princess. Did youthink we would give up our quarry so easily? The men of the Fourteenth are better than that. We would have tracked you to the ends of the earth.”
Belis froze, then flung herself backwards, bowling over the soldier behind her. She scrambled for the knife in her boot but a tall man with a smashed nose got it off her. The knife went spinning into the darkness and Belis lunged after it. Another Roman caught her hand and twisted her arm behind her back ’til she screamed. She managed to get her feet under her and swung out a kick at the man’s knee. It crunched horribly and Belis broke free, reaching for the spear that she had left driven into the ground at the edge of the clearing. She snatched it from the earth, twirling it around so fast that the wood was a blur, driving the blunt end into the nearest Roman’s stomach with a dull thud.
I lunged forward to go to her but the blade at my neck pressed deeper, and I felt it bite at my skin. Blood trickled down to pool at the base of my collarbones and I slumped back before I could cut my own throat. Belis spun around until she was facing me and I saw her catch sight of the blood. Her face jerked in reflected pain and she yelled out.
“Drop your spear,” hissed the centurion. “Drop it now or I’ll bleed your friend like a pig.”
“Don’t listen to him, Belis, run!” I croaked, in Brittonic, unable to force much breath out. Belis froze, her eyes darting back and forth as she counted the paces between us. I knew she wouldn’t make it.
She crouched, moving the spear in a steady arc. I felt the knife dig further into my throat.
Belis screamed in frustration then threw down the spear. The pressure receded and I gasped for breath.
“It’s been a long time, Beliscena,” the centurion said, a ripple of pleasure passing over his expression at Belis’s cries. “I should have killed you years ago, should have told the governor to lay waste to your entire family. How bitterly I regret that now.”
He leaned close to her, sliding a knife from his belt and tracing it over the skin of her face. “I could cut your throat now, butRomans are not savages, we are not slaves to our base urges. I am ordered to bring you back alive and I do my duty. Shackle and blindfold her.”
The rest of the squad emerged from the woods, over a dozen men. Two of them threw a rough hessian bag over Belis’s head and yanked her arms up, binding them tightly with rope. She wriggled back, biting and kicking. One of them punched her head and she flopped forward limply.
“Belis,” I yelled, driving myself back onto the knife. The man holding me dragged me back by my hair.
One of the Romans picked up Belis’s spear, weighing it in both hands. He raised one knee as if to break the shaft over it.
“Stop that,” Croser said, cuffing the man on the ear. “Look at the engraving, the ivory grip. Damn thing’s worth more than you are. The legate will be wanting that to send back to Rome. I have to do all the bloody thinking around here. You can carry that back to camp.”
