404AD


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PROLOGUE

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Ten-year-old Artorius Castus was woken by a violent jolt. His Celtic mother, with distress and panic in her eyes had roused him. "Arthur, my love, do not scream, do not ask questions—just grab your cloak and wake up your sister. We must leave."

Like his mother, Artorius was a Briton, but his Roman father had raised him up a Roman and instilled in him honour, duty…and instruction. He did as his mother instructed, grabbing his cloak in the darkness. The lamps were not lit and neither the torches but even from his room he could see the faint glow outside, the fortress of Vercovicium was under attack.

With haste, Artorius ran to his sister's bed on the other side of the room and as Igraine had done, little Morganis was shaken awake, though she resisted mightily. In the end, Artorius had to lift the four-year-old child up and carry her out in his slender arms.

Igraine, having woken the servants began helping them callously pack provisions into leather satchels, even grabbing a standard Roman gladius off of one of the racks and met her children in the servant's entrance. She started to speak to the servants in her native language and though he wasn't fluent, he could make out the gist of it.

"Mother, what about Pelagius?" the young child pulled on his mother's sleeve, eyes widened with concern for his mentor who was not seen since dinner.

Then, as though he had summoned him by some divine will, his elderly theologian mentor appeared beside them, still garbed in his simple woolen habit, puffing with exhaustion. "The barbarians have taken the building. I hope you know of another way out, My lady."

"Maybe you can pray to your god, Christian…" Mistress Igraine had to check herself, and began apologising profusely to the priest. Celts and Christians had not had a very amicable relationship, almost as worse as they have had with Romans, the chaos outside was testimony to that.

Pelagius shook his head but ultimately decided to practice those Christian preachings of his and turn the other cheek, giving Artorius a knowing look before following behind them. The mistress never liked him much anyway.

"We escape through the servant's passages and stick to back alleyways and then head home, south to Eboracum," the mistress explained. "We won't go by horse for it would take too long to ready; but on foot, keeping away from the main roads as much as possible, stick to the forest tracks."

She had dealt with this before— growing up so close to the frontier was dangerous and she needed to adapt. Igraine was not so naïve to believe that when she married Aurelius Castus, a Roman Commander of the Legio VI Victrix, that her days would be easy. Aurelius was a good man and a good match. Even her tribe and kinsmen, the Brigantes loved him. Her father had called him Ouxselos, in an attempt to say his name in Brythonic, or Uthyr, as some Britons liked to call him.

Aurelius, Uthyr, her husband had taught her how brutal men operated, and to always expect the worse of the enemy.

As soon as they left the boundaries of their two-storey insulae they were immediately set upon by the crude steel of Woad swords and axes that killed one of her Celtic servants. In retaliation, Igraine lunged at the larger man, a monstrous man with a blue hand print painted on the left side of his face. He shouted slurs at her in the Celtic dialect used north of the Vallum. The Painted tribes of the Old North were a brutish, unforgiving people who have found a new vigour to fill their savage bones in the form of young Drest.

Aurelius taught his wife to fight like one of his men, which was probably why she was not yet dead, but even she recognised that her Pictish opponent was a far better fighter. After a few parries, the barbarian managed to swipe the gladius out of her grasp and still he advanced upon them all like a creature, a demon possessed. Igraine readied herself to receive the final blow, to stand between the barbarian and her children—the blow did not come. A Roman officer had charged in and slashed the brute's throat.

"Virilus, what's going on, how'd they get in?" she asked the Roman officer who, dumfounded could not answer with much clarity.

"They did not come through the gate, mistress. They came from the general direction of Aesica along the wall itself. How they managed this I do not know." The officer tried to explain, shaking his head of the headache of the last few hours. They were not battle-hardened veterans, the Roman legionnaires stationed at Vercovicium—a large stone fortress built into Hadrian's Wall, one of seventeen of its kind with around eighty small milecastles in between.

A humble little homestead had sprouted around Vercovicium and provided the garrison with supplies, it also made it vulnerable.

In the past, Aurelius would sometimes help command the garrison there—organise scouting parties, train new recruits or oversaw trade agreements with the various wilderness tribes north of the Vallum, but the fortress city of Eboracum was where his Sarmatian knights were based at, and it was there that he had sprouted his own roots. It was thus so that Igraine and her family had come that day only on the anniversary of her husband's death, to lay flowers upon his grave along with a flask of his favourite wine. Fortuna has a morbid, yet funny disposition.

What was left of the Roman contingency was diverted to evacuating as much of the population as they could while others, Roman auxiliary infantry as well as Sarmatian knights charged in on horseback to stem the tide of the Northern barbarians, giving enough space for the non-combatant citizens to leave. Artorius counted only twelve among them. It was not enough against thousands, but the boy knew them, he had heard of their legends and the horselords fought with unrelenting force. Like Trojan heroes who contended with the likes of Achilles and Ajax, cloaks of dark blue and bearing with them the draco standard, his father's standard, air flowing through its open draconic snout, causing its cloth tail to dance around in the wind. It seemed almost mythological, as if he were witnessing those epic battles that he had read about play out before him.

Artorius wanted to get a better look at them but in a panic, the servants urged him on, clutching his sister tighter, they went forth into the chaos. The woad-covered barbarians swept over the fort like blue demons, cackling as they cut down Roman infantry and not even normal Roman citizens were safe from their crude iron. There were also the Britons among them, who had "Dirty Traitor," spewed at them as they too met their ends. Aurelius' peace was all but discarded that night, put to the flames.

They did not manage a single step out of the gate when several carts that had been set ablaze came crashing in, dividing their party. Upon reflex and a mother's instincts, Igraine grabbed hold of her children and threw them out of the portal just as the carts hit the entrance. She was ostensibly blocked off from freedom but the thought her children were out proved more comforting to her.

At this point Morganis was crying intensively and Artorius had to hand her over to one of the servants. "Mother!" she cried.

"Mother!" Artorius followed, looking around the flames.

"Arthur!" the boy dropped to his knees, looking below the cart to see his mother on the other side, just beyond the flames. "Artorius you must go. Take your sister and head south to Eboracum."

"I can't leave you, Ma."

He was always such a stubborn boy, and Igraine had only herself and her husband to thank for that. She implored him with deep, watery, and serious eyes, "Artorius, please!"

The boy stretched out his hand in a desperate attempt to reach for her, and when Igraine did the same it was clear the gap was far too small. I can't do it!

"You have to go… Arthur, you have to go now!"

For a moment, the longest moment of his life, time felt like it had ceased. Then, that dangerous mixture of Roman and British blood began to burn. He told his mother to wait while he went to get help.

Upon a nearby hill was a cemetery that lay before the dark forests, where housed the burial mounds of fallen soldiers. There were those upon that hill whose mounds also held stuck in them swords, these marked the graves of Sarmatian knights whose god of war was marked with the insignia of a naked sword stuck fast upon a stone. Yet among even those was a grave marked with the only Roman spatha in a complex of Sarmatian styled swords with crescent or ringed pommels. Unlike any other Roman sword however, this one was adorned by strange Celtic symbols on the hilt and pommel, and etched on the blade were writings in old Brythonic. On one side it read 'Take me up', and on the other, 'Cast me away', or so his mother had taught.

Artorius ran to it, heart heaving, eyes bloodshot, the young lad held the spatha and tried as hard as he could to yank it out. It did not budge.

With the chaos rising behind him, he tried again, desperate to free the only hope that could save his mother. "Father!" he cried. "Please, let loose your sword!"

His father would not concede.

—o—

A hooded man stood atop a hill overlooking the carnage at Hadrian's Wall. For so long it was the symbol of oppression for his people and now it was burning. He should be livid, he should be excited and jumping for joy, to have given the Romans that clear manifesto of the vengeful Celts, justice for the druids that they had pushed to annihilation centuries ago.

The boon that he had bought for his victory? The screams of men, women and children. Soldier or citizen, there was no distinction. The man tightened his grip on the wooden staff he grasped, feeling his hands slip from the sweat. With his free hand he was stroking his ragged beard— his face, dirtied, and with woad paint adorning the pocket around his left eye like talons. Those dark, sullen eyes of his, gifted and cursed to see more than he'd wished.

Rome was burning…his enemy was burning, yet all he could see was the horror and waste of it all…and something else.

There was a boy, a Roman boy by the look of his garbs. Merlin, the Great Sage, the last of the Druids of Britain had watched the boy scream out for his mother— a Celtic mother, barred by some fiery obstruction in her hold. He had watched the Roman boy run to a grave where upon it, a sword stook out from its stony mound. He watched the boy struggle to free it, screaming out in pain and it looked as though he would fail and he would simply give up. The boy did not.

With one mighty heave, a guttural cry escaping his mouth like dragon-fire almost triumphantly, the Roman boy released the sword, its freedom seemed to disturb the air around him. Merlin recognised the blade's sparkle, its song. Gifted to Aurelius Castus upon his defeat of an Irish invasion that earned him the name 'Pendragon', the sword itself had many names: originally it was Kaledvoulc'h, as named by those who forged it, then it was Caladbolg, by the Irish who had stolen it away, and by the Roman who liberated it, Excalibur.

The druid continued to spectate with troubled fascination as the boy, without missing a second ran back to the fortress with this Excalibur and started hacking away at the obstruction urgently.

"ARTHUR!" from his hill so far away, the old man could still hear the woman's cry. Then, the unthinkable happened.

Horror stoically played upon his bearded face as the top of the gate started to give way, becoming too heavy and damaged to hold up the hundred of people fighting above. It fell down and it was only with the quick pull of Roman officer Virilus was the boy spared from being crushed by fiery rubble and stone.

Kicking and screaming out for the woman who grew silent in the wreckage as he was dragged away. Merlin had to close his eyes as breath was taken from his lungs. He felt the winds change that night, then it started to rain down on them and even the rain was pouring differently. This was all wrong.

"What is it, my love?" a woman appeared beside him, dressed similarly to him with similar woad markings on her face. His beloved wife spoke in the native Brythonic dialect of the West as well. "Everything is going as planned. Not since the days of Boudika have we tasted such victory." The Celtic woman held his shoulder in wait for his answer, he knew she'd feel it if he'd lie now.

Merlin sighed as he spotted the Romans leave, among them was the boy, still making a fuss to free himself, calling out for his doomed mother. Arthur, the name flew out of his lips like a spectre, no, a banshee. "I feel like we have made a powerful enemy this night."

—o—

Artorius sat by the bank of the River Ouse, just outside of Eboracum Propper. His eyes were trained primarily on his sister, playing with Annwynn, one of their Celtic servants. He was allowed some respite, though the heavy bags under his eyes were evidence to the contrary. Sleep had long evaded him, even four days after that night, there would be no respite for him here.

It was different for Morganis. Perhaps it was because she was still too young, or that even at four she was masterful in the art of compartmentalising, which the very thought had filled him with some envy. She continued to play without a care in the world.

He looked out onto the river and sighed. He had wanted, or hoped to feel the warmth of the morning sun, but he was numbed from such comforts. He held his father's sword rest upon his lap, his other hand slowly caressing the pattern-weld steel blade.

The slow clopping of hooves broke his brooding haze. The over-troubled youth turned to find his mentor approaching, towing a horse by the bridle, a rucksack over his shoulder. "Pelagius," Artorius greeted with a slight bow, more than he could accomplish at the moment. "You're preparing to go?"

The priest nodded—a look of regret formed on his face as he stood beside him. "I leave for Rome before sundown."

Artorius offered him a smile though it looked as though the effort was straining. He then produced a circular clay tablet from a bag draped over his shoulders and presented it to the Christian priest. It was a bas relief of Pelagius himself in the middle, and with the phrase in the Latin script, 'It is not believing in Christ that matters; but becoming like him'

It brought a genuine smile to the older man upon seeing it. "Well done, Artorius," he commended, then with a lopsided smirk, he presented it back. "You keep it. You can deliver it to me when you come to Rome."

Suddenly, Roman tubas sounded from the east. The sounds heralded the arrival of soldiers, and of recruits. Artorius saw a train of around sixty children, no older than himself, marked on both ends of the caravan by regular grown-up Roman equites in full armour and uniform.

"Ah, behold, Artorius," Pelagius clapped as he helped the lad to his feet and pointed him to the direction of the new arrivals, a couple of a hundred paces away. "Young knights, Sarmatian knights. Should you choose, they may be yours to lead someday, just as your father did before you."

Arthur regarded them from afar, though he could not see them clearly, their distant silhouette provided an image of strength, if not a little diminished. They were all wrapped in pelts and thick coats of fur. Artorius thought that they looked like little bears. "I'm to be their commander?" he asked.

"Yes," replied the priest. "But this title comes with it a sacred responsibility that Aurelius grew to master: to protect, to serve the land and its people, to value their lives above your own. Should they perish in battle, to live your life gloriously, in honour of their memory."

"And what of their free will?"

Though he lamented the cheerful boy he had raised, Pelagius was happy all the same to have him engage with his lessons all the same. He patted the boy's skinny shoulders. "That is a fair point, Artorius—but it has always fallen to the few to sacrifice for the good of the many. For the world is not a perfect place, but perhaps people like you, my child, and me, and them, can make it so. We owe it to the Good Lord to try."

Ten-year-old boy continued to gaze out at the line of riders. Children no older than he, and they would soon be his charge. 'It would seem, I must become a knight, father.'


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