Lludd had returned to Prydein a fortnight ago, leaving his
travelling companion the Brif-Druid of Prydein to stay-on at this fortress, as HênDdu had a rebellion to spiritually support and oversee. Once Lludd had delivered a full and detailed
report of his findings to the other Brythonic rulers and had taken care of one
or two personal matters at home, he had returned in the same way he had left, as
there was still much to do here and new trade deals to finalise. HênDdu was due to travel west down the coast to Ynys Trebes in
Aremorica tomorrow, where at the great Temple Mount the priesthood were
preparing the huge and upcoming ‘royal’ sacrificial festival. This had been
ordained to spiritually interfere with Caesar’s impending invasion and the
Brif-Druid of Prydein would be playing a major part in the rituals.
Lludd had some more vital intelligence to get here in Gallia before
he could go home again, and he was looking forward to returning to Cymbri
permanently, finally putting his feet up at the window of his lodges with a log
of good local beer. He ached for that
comfortable chair by the hearth in that high northern tower at CaerAulidar,
where he would look down at his favourite fishing bend in the glittering snake
of the Afon Elái below, but plans had changed as all things did and he
now struggled to suppress his hiraeth.
His awesome Tad had taught him to never fear change, knowing
that everything changes as it always has. The distant, primeval predecessors to
his father’s glorious ancestors had come to dominate that vast island country across
the channel he called home, largely due to their unmatched ability to adapt and
survive in a quickly changing environment. Managing the changes that happen
around you is the very distillation of successful human living in Lludd’s
considered opinion and was the very core of his great father’s teachings.
Lludd had long pondered unexpected change and its myriad
repercussions, coming to understand that it wasn’t all the work of the
perfidious Gods, largely it was happenstance, but he had also discovered that people are the world’s experts at
dealing with it. He and along with all other successful survivors of this harsh
and cruel life, have learned to anticipate and recognise sudden change, adapt their
habits to conform to it. Ultimately the people of this modern, quickly changing
and shrinking world have come to bend it to their wills and benefit from it and
Lludd strived to do the same, as had his glorious Tad. Change is good Lludd had
thought at the time, change is life itself, but change had stopped him heading
west from Casufelawny following the council of war. A last-minute shift in
something intangible had prevented him going home to Cymbri and that
comfortable armchair. As duty was all, he had begged passage back to this
frozen Galliad port and the mean tavern back-room he now sheltered in, and from
where very recently he had so narrowly escaped. That particular sudden change to his itinerary was a change he could have done
without however and the beautiful hills of southern Cymbri and the fat brown
trout in the Elái, all seemed just a little further away
this lonely, sobering morning.
Hiraeth, that almost indescribable and
painful amalgam of home-sickness and longing which assails all the Cymbri, bit
deep once again now. Lludd scowled as he looked around this ramshackle chamber
with the poor fire, which was no more than a storeroom really, but beggars
can’t be choosers and Lludd had been forced to endure far harsher conditions
than these on many occasions in his past. Back at these dour but secret
lodgings in cold Duru Anfers, Lludd was recuperating from the complex and
exhausting mission and the unexpected return voyage in this strange and often
noisy dwelling of an old and trusted friend. The all-pervading smell of fresh and
stale beer had faded into normality long ago, as he shared this back room of
the tavern with many stores and tall pyramids of barrels both full and empty,
all of which did nothing for his home-sickness.
Grabbing his big leather satchel and the tall hazel staff, with
another scowl he threw the cloak around his shoulders with an expert,
one-handed flick and left the tavern by the rear door. Turning right, he headed
for the main street to walk some of this homesickness off on these frozen and
dung-encrusted, pot-holed lanes of this foreign market town and to get some
fresh air. Throwing up his hood, he side-stepped a big pile of horse dung at
the head of the street and Lludd carefully surveyed the people around him in
this now familiar market square. Remaining passive in both attitude and
posture, Lludd was alert and wide-awake, assessing all the eyes of those standing
and the people flowing around him from the shadows of the hood, always the
eyes. Passing through the countless traders and vendors, Lludd was thinking of
his very recent trip west and the information which had so concerned his elite
combrogi back in Prydein.
Eight Legions and eight thousand cavalry were encamped in and
around Western Belgica currently but a little less than half of these were to
remain under the command of the fortunate Labienus, as Roman spies had been
busy and Rome it seemed was aware of the possible Galliad rebellion. Caesar had
assembled over seven hundred great ships to transport his second invasion force
across the channel and that fleet was bolstered by dozens of unpatriotic local
traders, who were all going along for a share in the loot. Five of the eight
completely equipped Legions and two thousand cavalry were thought to be
committed to the cross-channel endeavour, totalling over twenty-seven thousand
men. It would include the entire incidental staff, the spare horses, the vast
baggage train required and perhaps the final preparations from what he and his
old friend had witnessed, were well in hand. The two old comrades had
discovered sound foundations to the rumours and noted the numbers and the types
of troops and auxiliaries and all the huge artillery pieces being loaded. In
fact there was very little Lludd and his old countryman had missed in their
time drifting unseen around Bononia and the conquered Roman harbour of Portius
Itius. He had found that old friend there in Bononia, a northern combrogi who
had settled in that part of Gallia for a fairly short period of time initially
and by the orders of his Galedonian superiors, but the ghost-warrior had been
there almost a year now and spoke the dialect like a native. That elite but now
semi-permanent undercover soldier with the permanent neck-scarf, had spent all his
time in Bononia as a local goat herder and had driven his scrawny flock between
the lush and stream-fed grazing fields around the great Roman fortress on the
hill. That elusive, mostly underestimated individual had brought Lludd up to
date with all the Roman’s preparations in that busy territory, which had been
swarming with soldiers like maggots on a week-old carcass.
Equally and visibly bowed by the great weight of their shared
age, the two bedraggled and frail-looking men of very senior years; the ancient
goat herder and the disabled old priest, had shuffled around the countryside of
that beleaguered coast, surreptitiously taking-in the local sights from the
trees, including the huge Port and seething harbour. They had spent a pleasant
afternoon paddling and getting some fresh sea air, just a short distance from the
frantic beachside Fabrum of Traîth Gwîn, a lovely little white sandy beach known
now as Caesar’s Portius Ulterior. They had both noted its industry from the
dunes, whilst enjoying a picnic and surreptitiously taking a little sun.
He and Gwaedan Arswydus
the deeply undercover ghost-warrior, shared a unique insight into the butchery
of all-out war and that vast fleet of enormous ships in the port had terrified
them both and they had not been afraid to express this fear between themselves.
They could imagine with a dreadful clarity, those thousands of professional and
expert troops pouring from those ships and scorching across Caint, with two
thousand elite cavalry supporting them and their hearts had been chilled, as
they surveyed all that potential death and destruction to their own people
being built in front of their anxious and deeply shrouded eyes. Through the
faded green and spindly fringe atop the largest dune, they had noted too that
the great ships still on their wedges on the white sands were broader and had
shallower draughts than the vessels which had arrived in Prydein the previous
year. The Roman engineers had made some other changes to the size and breadth
of the loading ramps, to enable far swifter boarding and disembarking and in
view of this, they had to assume that Caesar intended to make his landing and
beachhead on the same stretch of southern coast in Caint.
Lludd had also been tasked with discovering if the rumours of
huge war machines and great mythical beasts from Africa were true and although
he and Gwaedan the ‘terrible’ had seen a few large catapults being constructed
and many familiar artillery pieces being tested, they had seen no evidence of
outlandish beasts yet, but there were men and equipment arriving in this part
of Belgica every hour of every day and Lludd’s time here at least, had been
limited. Lludd had seen enough however to make a terrifying report for the
other rulers at home and had bade farewell to Gwaedan, before returning to that
same north-eastern harbour town of Anfers and shipping home with the news, but
that had been more than a week ago. Now he was back on this more westerly coast
of Belgica and the centre-point of all Roman activity in Gallia currently; Porth Bonon. Lludd was looking for a
decent horse and had been making clandestine enquiries among the nervous
combrogi all day across this big port and town of Portius Itius, as the all-conquering
Roman’s had renamed it.
As it was absolutely crammed with Roman invasion troops he
was even more alert, his blue eyes flicking everywhere. However despite his
determined, day-long efforts, it proved to be like searching for an excellent
meal with the finest wine and in the most sumptuous and safe surroundings. Unless
you had olive skin, black hair and three names it was like searching for
physical answers to a spiritual problem; virtually impossible. If by some
miracle it was made possible for you, it was going to cost a King’s ransom and
the vendor would undoubtedly be Roman and he would want to know why a complete
stranger, dressed as a dissenting priest would need a horse here and now, mere
days from the launch of Caesar’s invasion and so in reality, it was impossible.
Lludd had parted with enough money for poor horses on his
last trip here and to get a really decent horse, with enough energy from proper
feeding, he knew you needed real gold.
Having the coin, that gold would still have to be offered as a bribe to a Roman
military Squire at the vast garrison stables outside town, which was a direct
ticket to a Roman gaol in Lludd’s opinion. Crucifixion would surely follow
shortly thereafter for his stupidity, but as it was so vitally necessary to his
journey, a little lateral thinking was required to avoid such an embarrassing
departure from this world. If he couldn’t ask the all-possessing Romans to sell him one of the only horses in the
whole territory worth having, then he was just going to have-to steal one.
It was snowing again, but he was glad of the cover as he
watched the spread of the impressive Roman garrison from the treeline, doubting
whether he would recognise any of Gallia if he came in the summer, as he had
only seen it in recent years blanketed in snow and this trip was no different.
He was glad too of the outfit Olwydd had given him last year and the overboots
which came with it, as they were about to prove invaluable. This two-piece
camouflage suit and the curly overboots of a ghost-warrior, were made of purest
white unshorn sheepskin and he climbed into the bracs quickly, belting them
tightly with the coarse hemp string. The sleeves were long and sewn up at the
ends and once he had this hooded pullover on, tied down in place and laced-up
properly with more twine, he pulled the large floppy and shaggy boots over his
own and tied them up too. Then Lludd dropped to the floor, pulled the hood over
his head and began to crawl forwards toward the stable block across the paddock
ahead, invisible in the falling snow and that which he was crawling in.
The saddle had been more difficult to steal than the horse,
as she was a darling and had come to him willingly with those adorable eyes.
The saddle he had to secret away from under the noses of the two guards, once
he had identified the exact one he wanted, and which would more comfortably fit
the mare. He had lifted it carefully off the rail and carried it soundlessly to
the small door at the back of the stables with no problem. Putting the saddle
down in the snow outside, Lludd went back through the door to fetch the horse
and almost walked right into a young stable boy, whose eyes and mouth flew open
in alarm at the sight of the towering sheepskin-man, but the boy didn’t utter a
sound as Lludd was smiling at him, and perhaps he thought him the God of sheep.
Lludd’s radiant smile stunned this boy who he hadn’t spotted
until now, and he reached out then with his hand to gently cup the boy’s face,
pouring his shocking power into the young groom’s huge brown eyes. The boy’s
smile was equally bright in sudden response, and the look of shock dissolved
from his features as they relaxed into sublime expressions of joy and love,
which seemed to emanate powerfully from this strangely attired warrior. There
was no need for any words, in any language and Lludd left the boy where he
stood, smiling blissfully happy at him with glassy eyes, as the towering and
mysterious Sheep-God vanished, leading the horse quietly out of the back door.
Lludd slipped away carrying the saddle on his shoulder and
vanished into the snowfall like a curly ghost, leading the amiable horse across
the paddock and into the woods, where he took his time fitting the unfamiliar
Roman saddle properly with his one hand. The movement of the two Roman guards
crossing each other in front of the porch of the timber stable-block caught his
eye, and Lludd grinned as he mounted his new friend, turning her away from the
treeline. His broad and smudged footprints were now filling with fresh snow
behind him and the two guards would be none the wiser until morning. His grin
broadened as he imagined the stable boy still standing there alone, smiling.
Now as he steered through the forest toward the western
stars, he had a long night’s journey ahead of him before he reached Gurgallo’s
war camp in Ambiani territory, well north of the Roman garrison which had been
built over the ruins of their old market town, and which was now called
Samarobriva. There was an all-out attack on the huge harbour nearby and on Caesar
himself to help plan and execute, and Lludd looked forward to the distraction
from his homesickness, losing himself in the minutiae of detailed
battle-planning. A new and reportedly devastating weapon had been developed by
the rebellion, created apparently to immolate Caesar’s invasion fleet right in
the bay itself and at the most disruptive and costly time, when they were
crammed full of freshly embarked invasion soldiers.
Lludd nudged Helen
as he had started calling the mare and she gamely broke into a creditable run,
making him grin again as they cleared the forest and plunged for the coast,
with his and Helen’s breath pluming white into the cold air. The black sky
above them was awash with glittering stars and they lit the way for him,
confirming the time and his direction. Lludd was looking forward to inspecting
this new and deadly weapon of Gurgallo’s but also spared a thought for his
recent young friend Prince Cadwy of Albion and a much older friend; King Ederus of Galedon, as he
charged toward Aremorica on Helen.
On his recent return to Prydein, he had been regaled with all
the details of the exiled Epidian champion’s heinous actions in the north and
he considered his victims; those two upright men as friends and they had lost a
daughter and a wife to the clutches of a duplicitous rogue. From what he had
learned in the short time he had been back in Prydein, the outcome looked
bleak. He was comforted by the knowledge however, that the impressive young
Tywysog Cadwy whom he had come to admire so much, had the very best men around
him, including the venerated Olwydd Hîr and the incomparable Gŵyr Brith Fawr, but if what he heard was true, it was numbers
that were needed to mute the red glare of that virtually suicidal endeavour, not
rare quality. Lludd worried for their chances and their safety in that wild
northern province of Iweriu, which had descended into a frenzy of black rites
and superstition since the defeated Galedon invasion. He knew the place to be a
nest of treacherous vipers and patting Helen’s neck his forehead creased, as he
wondered how they were getting on.
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