If Genvissa looked certain of herself, and of Brutus, the rest of the Llangarlians present, mainly Mothers, looked wan and desperately worried. The Mothers had met very early that morning to discuss Coel’s death. Both the manner of his death and the reason behind it—Brutus’ jealousy—were abhorrent to them. Cornelia had freely chosen to lie with Coel. How could Brutus wreak any kind of revenge at all when no wrong had been committed? Despite their allegiance to Genvissa, the Mothers might well have chosen to act against Brutus save that Loth had already acted for them. Fate would decide today who was right and who was wrong.
While all the Mothers looked pallid and anxious, Erith looked the most ashen and distressed. Her worry for Loth and the outcome of this challenge was exceeded only by grief for her son. Very late the previous night she had been woken from her slumber by a neighbour, who had begged her to hurry to Cornelia’s house.
There she’d found her son dead, and a distraught and barely coherent Cornelia smeared with his blood.
Erith had no time for Cornelia; not then, not when her beloved Coel lay slaughtered on the floor. She and her two other sons, Hoel and Cador, had carried Coel’s corpse back to his house where Erith and her daughters washed and tended it. He would be cremated and his ashes cast into the Llan later today, after this farce was over, when there might well be another corpse to weep and mourn over.
Erith may have ignored Cornelia last night, but she was sorry for the fact now. Cornelia had not been responsible for Coel’s death, not in any significant manner. She had only accepted what Coel had been offering for months, and if her husband had then descended on the coupling pair with his vengeful sword, then Erith thought that had more to do with Genvissa than anyone else.
Coel himself had to bear some responsibility for what had happened. He had known of the marriage contracts and beliefs of the Trojans, had known that if he lay with Cornelia he would call Brutus’ wrath down upon his head, and yet he had still allowed his lust to get the better of him.
Erith sighed, and looked to where Cornelia was standing by herself, isolated in her own patch of misery in a spot apart from both the Trojans and the Llangarlians. She had washed herself of what remained of Coel, but had taken little more care. Her robe was haphazardly pulled about her body, and Erith could see that its normally creamy wool was grey with dirt and sweat. Her hair hung lank and uncombed; her face was almost as grey as her robe, and almost as lifeless as poor Coel lying wrapped in his shroud in Erith’s house.
Glancing at Loth and Brutus, Erith walked over to Cornelia, stood by her side, then took her hand, giving it a slight squeeze. Cornelia shuddered, and momentarily leaned close to Erith, making the older woman even sorrier about her seeming rejection of the girl last night.
“Get it over and done with,” Genvissa said in a cold, harsh voice, making most of the spectators jump. “Get this farce done before the rain arrives.”
Brutus looked at Loth, raised his sword, and pointed into the labyrinth.
Loth nodded, once, and stepped inside.
Brutus waited until Loth had walked ten or twelve paces into the labyrinth then he, too, entered.
And everyone standing about gasped, because at the moment Brutus had stepped fully into the labyrinth, both he and Loth vanished.
As he knew he would, Brutus found himself in a close, oppressive forest. Everything about him—Og’s Hill, the witnesses, the bleak wintry landscape spreading out beyond—had vanished.
There had never been a forest such as this. The trees were huge—oaks and elms, kings of the forest—but denuded of any leaves, their trunks and branches black and harsh.
Yet they were still draped in greenery, for over every tree hung great swathes of holly and ivy, so loading the branches that Brutus could hear them creak under the weight.
The dead trees pressed in close, the sky was obliterated by the holly and ivy, and the way to either side of the path on which Brutus stood was choked with their tangles.
There was only one way, and that was the path forward.
Brutus, his chest tight with vigilance, stepped forward.
A noise sounded to his left, and Brutus jumped into a defensive stance, his sword raised.
Silence.
He relaxed, and after a moment continued on his way. He knew what was happening.
The noise came again, much louder this time, and to his right.
Brutus crouched low again, his sword up, his eyes narrowed and watchful.
Silence.
Then a flash of colour on the path ahead of him, and yet another movement.
A man, a Trojan, dressed in hunting attire.
Silvius.
Brutus moved forward, carefully, one hand spread to balance himself, one clutching the sword before him, ready to strike the instant the opportunity presented itself.
The path wound through the tortuous forest. Swags of holly and ivy reached out and grazed his flesh, cool to the touch, yet vibrantly alive. Their touch was assessing, draining, and Brutus found himself slashing at the tendrils, hating their abhorrent caresses.
“Silvius,” said Brutus, “stand and fight me, if you dare.”
“I am your conscience, Brutus,” the impassive-faced Silvius said. “I am your conscience, I am this land, and I am the Game. Turn back now. The Game can be ended. You know that.”
And he stepped back and vanished into the shadows of the trees.
Brutus walked forwards, angry at Silvius’ words. The path twisted and turned in an exact replica of the twists and turns of the labyrinth. Silvius was leading him into the heart of the labyrinth—into a final confrontation.
Brutus hurried now, determined to finish what had begun fifteen years previously. He stepped into the heart of the labyrinth and there, facing him, was his father Silvius and, to one side, Loth.
“You are unfit to wear those armbands,” Loth said. “Unfit to be Kingman of this land or of this Game. You murdered your own father before his time in your own lust for power. You are walking corruption. If I allow you to complete the Game, you will marry this land to corruption for ever more.”
Brutus laughed. “And so you have called back my father’s shade to kill me, Loth? Are you too afraid to do so yourself? Are you so powerless yourself?”
“If you are not challenged,” Loth said, unperturbed by Brutus’ sarcasm, “you will make this the heart of this land.”
And he threw the arrow into the space between Brutus and his father.
Silvius attacked the instant the arrow hit the ground. Here, in the labyrinth, he was all flesh and blood and bone, taller even than Brutus, as strong, with no fear of death, and with absolutely nothing to lose. Wielding the sword in both hands, sweeping it down in an arc from over his left shoulder, Silvius leapt with all the full power of his revenge, determined to cut down his son.
Brutus stepped forward to meet him, sword clashing against sword, face set and grim, muscles straining.
They were matched, this father and son, and for long minutes they traded blows, their sweat spattering over their opponent, their eyes hard and cold and flat, never leaving those of the man they sought to best. Loth watched from the side, his hands clenched, eyes wide and staring, willing Silvius on with all his might.
Silvius feinted to his left, fooling Brutus, then cut his son deep across his right hip.
Brutus hardly noticed the wound. He bore down on his father with a flurry of strokes and, as Silvius stumbled for the first time, struck his father a glancing blow across his right biceps.
Silvius’ flesh opened, but no blood flowed.
“I am enjoying this,” said Silvius, and Brutus laughed.
“I will kill you again,” he said. “What was once done cannot be undone.”
And again they fell to with monstrous, hurting blows, blade shrieking off blade, muscles bunched and glowing with hate and heat.
“Where,” gasped Brutus, after a particularly heavy exchange of blows, “is an arrow when you need it?”
Where
nothing else had touched Silvius, this particular piece of cruelty undid him.
His sword arm fell still, and he gaped at his son.
And Brutus lifted his sword, and sent it hurtling towards his father’s head.
At the very last moment he turned the weapon so that the flat of the blade slammed into Silvius’ skull, sending him senseless to the ground.
Brutus leaned down, panting with the effort of the fight, and seized his father’s hair in his hand, hauling him half upright, and putting his sword to his throat.
“Your choice, monster,” he hissed to Loth. “Either I will kill him all over again, or I kill you!”
“Kill him,” said Loth, desperate with disappointment, “for then you will merely confirm your corruption.”
Brutus grinned, and his grip in Silvius’ hair changed slightly.
Outside the labyrinth, staring deep into its apparently empty circuits, Genvissa muttered a spell-weaving, moving her left hand slightly as she did so.
Then Erith cried out, for suddenly Cornelia was gone from her grasp.
“Your choice, monster,” Brutus hissed to a now staring and stunned Loth. “Her life or yours.”
In his hands he held a terrified Cornelia, his sword to her throat.
Let no one harm Cornelia, Coel had said.
Let no harm come to Cornelia.
Brutus laughed, delighted at the horror on Loth’s face. “Do not think I won’t do it,” Brutus said. “She is a whore, a traitress, a threat to the Game, and a complication I will be more than glad to get rid of.”
“She carries your child.”
“Oh, nay, I think not. Your child, or Coel’s, or one of a dozen men, perhaps, but not mine.”
The sword moved, and the blade cut, and blood flowed from Cornelia’s neck.
“At least you haven’t pissed yourself, like your boy-lover,” said Brutus conversationally.
Loth screamed, and leapt forward. “Take me! Take me!”
Brutus dropped Cornelia, who instantly grabbed at her throat, and he stepped the one pace distance between himself and Loth, raised his sword, and struck at the man’s neck.
And then something moved, something from the forest, something skeletal and barely alive, its white pelt thick with its own blood, and it knocked both Loth and Brutus, so that one fell and one stumbled, and so that when the sword flashed down…
It cut deep into the fallen Loth’s spine, just above his buttocks, and Loth screamed, and writhed, and Brutus leaned down with all his weight and strength on that sword.
Everyone standing about the labyrinth suddenly jumped or cried out, or both.
Loth and Brutus had reappeared in the heart of the labyrinth: Loth sprawled on the ground, his face pressed against the stone flooring, blood pouring from a great wound in the small of his back.
Brutus standing over him, a triumphant smile on his face as he raised his head and sought out Genvissa’s eyes.
Cornelia, small and tragic, curled into a ball in the heart of the labyrinth, her hands to her throat, blood seeping out from between her fingers.
Erith moved instantly. As she ran into the labyrinth she tore from her waist her wide cloth belt, and as soon as she reached Cornelia she wrapped it about the girl’s throat, thanking all the gods that ever were that Brutus had cut open a vein and not an artery.
Then she knelt by Loth, and looked, and lowered her head into her hands and wept.
Brutus tossed aside the bloodied sword, staring at Genvissa. “I have won,” he said, then pumped his fists on high. “I have won my right as Kingman.”
None disputed him.
Save the whispers in the heart of the Game.
There sat the shade of Silvius, grey and weary and heartsick at his continual failure.
He should have put a stop to Brutus as an unborn baby.
He should have put a stop to Brutus here in the heart of the Game.
He sighed, and his entire form trembled.
Beside him, the all-but-dead white stag sighed also, and Silvius lay down so his cheek rested on the shoulder of the stag, and together they slept.
Waiting.
Behind them, yet another shade, barely visible, but also caught through murder into the twisting of the Game.
Coel.
Silent.
Watching.
Waiting.
CHAPTER FOUR
CORNELIA SPEAKS
Cador and Hoel, Erith’s surviving sons, carried Loth from that bloodied hilltop, while Erith and her daughter Tuenna aided me. We stumbled our way to the ferry and then back to my lonely, deserted house in Llanbank.
I was out of immediate danger, Erith’s cloth belt having staunched the flow of blood, but Loth…Loth was alive, but only just, and existing in such a state of agony that I thought I would have to scream myself, if only to vent some of my own horror.
Was this my fault, too?
Erith took charge as soon as we’d reached the house. She set Tuenna to stitching my neck back together, while she directed her sons to lay Loth on what had once been Aethylla and Hicetaon’s bed.
Once Tuenna was done, I looked at Loth. Erith and her sons had been busy while her daughter had attended me. Loth was quieter now, and I saw that Erith had given him some frenzy wine that she’d caused to have brought from her house.
I stumbled forward, desperate to see.
Loth lay on his side, facing into the centre of the house. A dribble of wine ran down his chin and his eyes lacked focus. Nevertheless, he saw enough to know I was there, and he held out a hand for me.
“Cornelia,” he croaked.
His hand trembled.
I walked forward some more, close to the bed, feeling Erith’s and her children’s eyes on me, and slowly lifted my hand to take his.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be,” he said, and laughed a little.
It was a horrible, guttural sound, and I must have flinched, because he cut it off mid-chortle as he regarded me.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “There’s still you.”
“No.”
“There is still you,” he said again, and that thought apparently gave him some comfort, for he smiled very slightly, then lapsed into unconsciousness, so that Erith and her kin could work whatever aid they could on his body.
In the end it was not much. They saved Loth’s life, but they could do little else.
What Brutus had done to Loth’s back would never heal. Not completely.
The sword had cut deep, severing Loth’s spine just above the swell of his buttocks. Bone, muscle and tendon had been shattered, and no matter how carefully Erith and Tuenna picked and probed, they could not remove all the fragments of bone from Loth’s flesh.
Neither could they restore his spine. Loth lost all movement from his waist down, as well as control over his muscles. He became as a baby, save with the bitterness and hatred of a man, soiling and wetting his bedclothes several times each day, needing either myself or Erith or one of her children to roll him over and clean and dry him and change his bedding.
Erith’s two sons, Cador and Hoel, became his constant companions. Loth was a dead weight, and it needed men to help shift him. And, as the weeks passed and his wound closed over—his physical wound, at least—then Hoel and Cador would lift him from the bed, wrap him well in blankets and furs, and carry him outside, and sometimes down as far as the river.
I think I existed in a state of constant misery as an accompaniment to Loth’s constant pain. My throat hardly troubled me, for Tuenna had done an excellent job, and I was left with barely a scar, but I was now completely isolated from the Trojan community, and most particularly from Brutus, and my son Achates. Brutus lived in the rapidly expanding palace in Troia Nova now, rarely leaving the just as rapidly growing city walls. Aethylla and Hicetaon lived with him, and Achates, my son.
And Genvissa.
I had lost my husband. I had lost my son. I had lost all to that witch-woman who was even now
carrying Brutus’ child.
As was I, although Brutus refused to acknowledge her. My growing pregnancy was the only thing that kept me from throwing myself into the Llan. At night, listening to Loth muttering and twisting in his sleep, or to Hoel’s or Cador’s ever-present snores, I would wrap my hands about my small, hard round belly and feel my daughter inside.
I longed for the day when she would be born, when I could hold her in my arms, and feed her—no one would take this child from me!—and we could laugh at and love each other. Then perhaps the hurt at losing Brutus would dull.
Then I would cry, as silently as I could, and still always Loth would hear me, and he would sigh, and call my name softly.
Sometimes, not always, but sometimes I would rise from my bed and lie down beside him, careful of his injury.
He would put an arm about me, and hold me as I cried some more, and always he would say, “Genvissa. Genvissa has done this to you, as she has ruined this land. What will you do about it, Cornelia? What will you do?”
Over and over, his voice a bitter repetition, until his words were as close to me as the child growing in my womb.
Will you aid us now, Cornelia? Will you?
CHAPTER FIVE
Winter lengthened and turned to an equally hard spring, the frost growing thick and bright on the ground each morning at dawn. It was cold, but not overly wet, and work on the walls progressed apace. By the turn of the year they had grown to the height of a man. The wall itself was composed almost of three walls. On the outer and inner faces heavy, pale, dressed stone blocks rose smooth and unclimbable. Into the internal spaces of the wall, supporting the outer and inner faces of stone, men poured rubble and clay and flint, pressing it down as hard as they could. At three-score pace intervals semi-circular bastions protruded from the wall like the swelling bellies of pregnant women. Eventually these would be topped with guardhouses and filled with watchful eyes and hands filled with lances and bows, human defenders standing atop stone where once only the goodwill and care of Mag and Og had shielded the land and its people.