PART I - THE NORTHLANDS AUTUMN FIVE YEARS BEFORE THE FOUNDING OF THE HOLY CITY

PART I

THE NORTHLANDS AUTUMN FIVE YEARS BEFORE THE FOUNDING OF THE HOLY CITY

The Greggyn astrologers tell us that the end of a thing lies curled in its beginning like a tree inside an acorn.

—The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid

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“YOU SHOULD LEAVE ME,”Gerontos said.“Just leave me here and save yourselves.”

“Never!” Rhodorix laid a bloodstained hand on his brother’s shoulder, then glanced at the druid standing nearby. “Think your god will intervene and save us?”

Galerinos merely shook his head, too exhausted to speak, and leaned, as bent as an old man, on his heavy staff. Rhodorix considered his cousin’s wounds, slight if Galerinos had been a warrior but grave enough for a softer man. The young priest’s arms, bare in his linen tunic, bled from a hundred scratches, the work of the thorny bushes and low-growing trees of this stretch of countryside. Blood stained the hem of his tunic as well from the cuts and scratches on his bare thighs.

All that hot autumn day the three of them had been scrambling through the underbrush in the rocky hills, trying to find a hiding place, taking turns supporting Gerontos, whose broken leg could bear no weight.

“No use in you dying with me, Rhoddo,” Gerontos said. “Either of you.”

Rhodorix helped his brother sit down among the boulders. Gerontos’ leg, snapped below the knee by a savage ax, had turned purplish-black; blood oozed from under the bandages Rhodorix had improvised from strips of their tunics. He helped Gerontos settle himself, then got up and looked down the long slope of the hill to the valley below. Somewhere among the tall grass and the patches of forest waited their clan and safety, somewhere too far to see. Unfortunately, he could all too clearly see a small mob of their enemies, still some distance below them, but coming inexorably up the hill.

Just after dawn that morning, Rhodorix, eldest son of the Dragon clan, and his warband had been guarding Galerinos as he dowsed for water. Instead of a spring they’d discovered a trap set by the white savages. All fourteen of his men lay dead down in the valley; only he himself, his brother Gerontos, and the druid had survived the attack. Unhorsed, desperate, they had taken too many wrong paths during their attempt to escape.

I made too many bad decisions, not anyone else but me, Rhodorix thought. “The shame’s mine,” he said aloud. “Better I just die with you here. Even if we got back, what am I going to tell the vergobretes?”

Neither Galerinos nor his brother could look him in the face. Neither said a word.

“But, Gallo, you can hide or suchlike,” Rhoddo went on. “Get away after they kill us.”