Anthony Riches
The Wolf's Gold
Prologue
Dacia, March, AD 183
A dog barked from the other end of the village, and in a heartbeat another half-dozen canine voices were raised in protest against whatever it was that had alerted the first animal. Snug in his straw nest beneath the house, warm and dry among livestock that had long since become accustomed to the boy’s nocturnal presence, Mus smiled sleepily at the chorus of barking. Whatever it was that had set off the dogs would also have resulted in a storm of invective from the men of the surrounding houses, if his father’s usual reaction was any indication. He wormed his way a little deeper into the straw, closing his eyes in anticipation of the dogs’ protests at whatever nocturnal creature it was that had awoken them dying away into renewed silence.
With a sudden, piercing shriek that had the boy wide awake and sitting up startled in the straw, one of the dogs was silenced. It was a sound that Mus had heard once before, when their neighbour’s animal had mauled his master’s son and been rewarded with four feet of legion-issue gladius through its back. The dying animal had given out howls of agony in its death throes, struggling against the cold blade’s implacable intrusion, until its owner had been forced to rip the sword loose and behead the writhing dog to silence its heart-rending cries. In the brief moment of shocked silence that followed, Mus knew that he had just heard something horribly similar. But who would take a blade to a guard dog for doing its job?
A renewed chorus of barking broke the silence, joined by a swelling sound of gruff voices as the men of the village spilled out from their homes armed with the swords that they had all retained on their retirement from the legion, despite the relative peace of the times. Mus heard his father’s voice through the wooden boards above his head, reassuring the family that there was nothing to worry about even as the big man’s footsteps thudded towards the door. And then the screaming started. Some of the raised voices were those of men fighting for their lives and losing that fight, the clash of iron overlaid with agonised groans and cries of pain and terror as they were killed and wounded, while others were the higher pitched screams of outrage from their women, howls of imprecation and hatred at whatever was happening down at the other end of the village.
‘Mus!’
His oldest brother put his head through the hatch to the house’s upper floor, and Mus called back to him.
‘I’m here! What’s-’
‘Father says you’re to stay there, and not to move!’
The head withdrew, and the boy heard the sound of heavy footsteps as his father and three older brothers hurried down the steps and ran towards the swelling sound of battle, the retired watch officer’s voice raised to bellow encouragement to his former brothers in arms. Above him he heard the sound of lighter feet as his mother and sisters gathered in his parents’ bed, the girls seeking comfort from the night’s sudden terror. While he was tempted to run up the ladder and join them, he knew that his father would punish him when he returned to find his order had been disobeyed, and so stayed where he was, raising his head to stare through the narrow opening in the house’s wall which served to admit daylight during the day. The view through the slit gave him little more understanding of the events that were unfolding in the village’s lower portion than the evidence of his ears, but as he stared out into the dark village he realised what was behind the bobbing flames of torches advancing up the hill towards him.
Driving the remaining men of the village before them, a line of heavily armoured warriors was forcing the retired soldiers’ last desperate defence back towards the settlement’s higher end. The outnumbered defenders were bellowing their defiance even as they fought and died on the attackers’ swords, their distantly remembered sword drills no match for younger men protected by armour and shields. Behind the line of shields, fires were taking hold of the houses already captured, and the howls of female hatred and anguish had become helpless screams of outrage.
As Mus watched in horror, he saw a powerfully built warrior stride out of the attack’s line and single-handedly take a long sword to his brothers as the men behind him watched, expertly parrying a cut at his head before swinging the weapon to open the youngest boy’s throat with the weapon’s point. Sidestepping another furious hack from the oldest of the three, he smashed his shield into the boy’s face, then lunged on one muscular thigh to stab his sword through his reeling defences and deep into his chest. As the last of Mus’s brothers screamed and charged at him from one side, his spear stabbing out in a desperate attack, the big man simply sprang back from the lunge and allowed the weapon’s point to flash uselessly past him, grabbing the shaft and jerking the child off balance. Laughing in the boy’s face, he leaned in to deliver a crunching headbutt with his iron helmet, then turned away, leaving the men behind him to finish the semi-conscious child.The boys’ father stormed out of the fray with his sword painted black, screaming bloody murder for revenge on his sons’ killer.
Tossing aside his shield, the warrior faced the charging farmer with a swaggering confidence that chilled Mus. As his father leapt furiously into his attack, the warrior met the farmer blade to blade and parried the attacking blow wide before twitching his head to the left to avoid a punch that would have put him on his back. Again the helmeted head snapped forward, sending the older man staggering backwards with his nose broken and streaming blood, but the child’s heart soared as his father shook his head and strode determinedly forward again. What happened next was almost too fast for him to understand, but the outcome was obvious enough. Parrying the second attack with equal ease to the first, the warrior snapped out a hand to catch the older man’s punch and twisted the fist with what seemed effortless power, forcing him to the ground and stamping the sword’s hilt from his hand. Putting his sword’s blade to the fallen man’s throat he stared about him until he found what he was looking for, his prisoner’s terrified woman and daughters staring from the house’s single window. As Mus watched in disbelief, the victorious warrior pulled the helpless veteran to his feet and dragged him towards the house, pushing him back down into the grass a dozen paces from his son’s hiding place and pulling his head back with a hand knotted in his hair, shouting in his ear with a voice made harsh by anger.
‘This is your house, old man?! You have women inside, cowering in their beds while you defend them?! My men will pull them out, and fuck them all here in front of you as the price for your resistance! And you will watch. .’
He gestured to the men around him, waving them forwards, and they poured into the house in a thunder of boots on the boards above the boy’s head, dragging his mother and sisters screaming in terror down the steps. Their leader gloated over the fallen farmer, holding his head up with the sword still at his throat and forcing him to watch, as the night clothes were torn from his women’s bodies and they were dragged to the ground. Each of their victims was held down by a pair of men while their comrades swiftly mounted them, thrusting vigorously into their helpless bodies with triumphant grins and shouts of pleasure. Staring through the narrow window at his father’s anguished face, as the destruction and defilement of his family played out before him, Mus realised that he was looking straight back into his son’s eyes. Snapping a hand up from the ground the veteran soldier took hold of his captor’s sword hand, forcing the blade away from his throat for long enough to shout one last order to the only member of his family not in the hands of their enemy.
‘Run, boy! Run, and keep running!’
His captor released the grip on his hair and punched his head again, then ripped the sword’s blade across his throat, pushing the dying man away from him and staring at the petrified child’s face for a long moment. He screamed an order to his men while the farmer writhed in his death throes at his feet, pointing at the house. A pair of them ran for the steps, and with a shiver of fear Mus realised he had little time before his hiding place was revealed and he faced the same fate as his brothers. Around the house other dwellings were going up in flames, and the few remaining farmers were being slaughtered out of hand while their women were brutally violated by the rapacious groups who had dragged them from their homes. Coming to his senses as footsteps thundered on the steps above his head, he dived out of the straw’s cocoon, rushing across the hard earth floor and squirming into a hole in the wooden rear wall which he had long used to escape the attentions of his older brothers. It was a tight fit, now that he was less the child than in those happier days, and he had to push one shoulder into the hole before contorting to ease the other through the gap, scratching his flesh badly in the process. He dragged himself out of the house, getting one foot through the hole and gathering himself to spring to his feet, but a voice shouted behind him and a hand gripped at his shoe, and Mus knew that his unseen pursuer only needed to grab his leg to pull him back through the hole. Struggling desperately, he pulled his foot from the rough boot he’d inherited from the youngest of his brothers a week before, still too big to fit his foot snugly. He scrabbled away on his hands and knees and then staggered onto his feet, running hard for the trees fifty paces distant across his mother’s vegetable garden, and kicking off the other boot as he fled for the forest’s sanctuary. The old tree that held up one side of the house was in flames, and in the lurid light of its incineration Mus looked back and saw the tall warrior pointing at him, bellowing an order at the men around him.