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sedate dignity. He

retained a crowded memory of wild feasts where wine flowed in

fountains; of white-bosomed Roman women, who, sated with civilized

lovers, looked with something more than favor on a virile barbarian;

of gladiatorial games; and of other games where dice clicked and spun

and tall stacks of gold changed hands. He had drunk deeply and gambled

recklessly, after the manner of barbarians, and he had had a

remarkable run of luck, due possibly to the indifference with which he

won or lost. Gold to the Pict was so much dust, flowing through his

fingers. In his land there was no need of it. But he had learned its

power in the boundaries of civilization.

 

Almost under the shadow of the northwestern wall he saw ahead of

him loom the great watchtower which was connected with and reared

above the outer wall. One corner of the castle-like fortress, farthest

from the wall, served as a dungeon. Bran left his horse standing in a

dark alley, with the reins hanging on the ground, and stole like a

prowling wolf into the shadows of the fortress.

 

The young officer Valerius was awakened from a light, unquiet

sleep by a stealthy sound at the barred window. He sat up, cursing

softly under his breath as the faint starlight which etched the

window-bars fell across the bare stone floor and reminded him of his

disgrace. Well, in a few days, he ruminated, he’d be well out of it;

Sulla would not be too harsh on a man with such high connections; then

let any man or woman gibe at him! Damn that insolent Pict! But wait,

he thought suddenly, remembering: what of the sound which had roused

him?

 

“Hsssst!” it was a voice from the window.

 

Why so much secrecy? It could hardly be a foe—yet, why should it

be a friend? Valerius rose and crossed his cell, coming close to the

window. Outside all was dim in the starlight and he made out but a

shadowy form close to the window.

 

“Who are you?” he leaned close against the bars, straining his

eyes into the gloom.

 

His answer was a snarl of wolfish laughter, a long flicker of

steel in the starlight. Valerius reeled away from the window and

crashed to the floor, clutching his throat, gurgling horribly as he

tried to scream. Blood gushed through his fingers, forming about his

twitching body a pool that reflected the dim starlight dully and

redly.

 

Outside Bran glided away like a shadow, without pausing to peer

into the cell. In another minute the guards would round the corner on

their regular routine. Even now he heard the measured tramp of their

iron-clad feet. Before they came in sight he had vanished and they

clumped stolidly by the cell-window with no intimation of the corpse

that lay on the floor within.

 

Bran rode to the small gate in the western wall, unchallenged by

the sleepy watch. What fear of foreign invasion in Eboracum?—and

certain well organized thieves and women-stealers made it profitable

for the watchmen not to be too vigilant. But the single guardsman at

the western gate—his fellows lay drunk in a nearby brothel—lifted

his spear and bawled for Bran to halt and give an account of himself.

Silently the Pict reined closer. Masked in the dark cloak, he seemed

dim and indistinct to the Roman, who was only aware of the glitter of

his cold eyes in the gloom. But Bran held up his hand against the

starlight and the soldier caught the gleam of gold; in the other hand

he saw a long sheen of steel. The soldier understood, and he did not

hesitate between the choice of a golden bribe or a battle to the death

with this unknown rider who was apparently a barbarian of some sort.

With a grunt he lowered his spear and swung the gate open. Bran rode

through, casting a handful of coins to the Roman. They fell about his

feet in a golden shower, clinking against the flags. He bent in greedy

haste to retrieve them and Bran Mak Morn rode westward like a flying

ghost in the night.

Chapter Three

Into the dim fens of the west came Bran Mak Morn. A cold wind

breathed across the gloomy waste and against the gray sky a few herons

flapped heavily. The long reeds and marsh-grass waved in broken

undulations and out across the desolation of the wastes a few still

meres reflected the dull light. Here and there rose curiously regular

hillocks above the general levels, and gaunt against the somber sky

Bran saw a marching line of upright monoliths—menhirs, reared by what

nameless hands?

 

As a faint blue line to the west lay the foothills that beyond the

horizon grew to the wild mountains of Wales where dwelt still wild

Celtic tribes—fierce blue-eyed men that knew not the yoke of Rome. A

row of well-garrisoned watchtowers held them in check. Even now, far

away across the moors, Bran glimpsed the unassailable keep men called

the Tower of Trajan.

 

These barren wastes seemed the dreary accomplishment of

desolation, yet human life was not utterly lacking. Bran met the

silent men of the fen, reticent, dark of eye and hair, speaking a

strange mixed tongue whose long-blended elements had forgotten their

pristine separate sources. Bran recognized a certain kinship in these

people to himself, but he looked on them with the scorn of a pure-blooded patrician for men of mixed strains.

 

Not that the common people of Caledonia were altogether pure-blooded; they got their stocky bodies and massive limbs from a

primitive Teutonic race which had found its way into the northern tip

of the isle even before the Celtic conquest of Britain was completed,

and had been absorbed by the Picts. But the chiefs of Bran’s folk had

kept their blood from foreign taint since the beginnings of time, and

he himself was a pure-bred Pict of the Old Race. But these fenmen,

overrun repeatedly by British, Gaelic and Roman conquerors, had

assimilated blood of each, and in the process almost forgotten their

original language and lineage.

 

For Bran came of a race that was very old, which had spread over

western Europe in one vast Dark Empire, before the coming of the

Aryans, when the ancestors of the Celts, the Hellenes and the Germans

were one primal people, before the days of tribal splitting-off and

westward drift.

 

Only in Caledonia, Bran brooded, had his people resisted the flood

of Aryan conquest. He had heard of a Pictish people called Basques,

who in the crags of the Pyrenees called themselves an unconquered

race; but he knew that they had paid tribute for centuries to the

ancestors of the Gaels, before these Celtic conquerors abandoned their

mountain-realm and set sail for Ireland. Only the Picts of Caledonia

had remained free, and they had been scattered into small feuding

tribes—he was the first acknowledged king in five hundred years—the

beginning of a new dynasty—no, a revival of an ancient dynasty under

a new name. In the very teeth of Rome he dreamed his dreams of empire.

 

He wandered through the fens, seeking a Door. Of his quest he said

nothing to the dark-eyed fenmen. They told him news that drifted from

mouth to mouth—a tale of war in the north, the skirl of war-pipes

along the winding Wall, of gathering-fires in the heather, of flame

and smoke and rapine and the glutting of Gaelic swords in the crimson

sea of slaughter. The eagles of the legions were moving northward and

the ancient road resounded to the measured tramp of the iron-clad

feet. And Bran, in the fens of the west, laughed, well pleased.

 

In Eboracum, Titus Sulla gave secret word to seek out the Pictish

emissary with the Gaelic name who had been under suspicion, and who

had vanished the night young Valerius was found dead in his cell with

his throat ripped out. Sulla felt that this sudden bursting flame of

war on the Wall was connected closely with his execution of a

condemned Pictish criminal, and he set his spy system to work, though

he felt sure that Partha Mac Othna was by this time far beyond his

reach. He prepared to march from Eboracum, but he did not accompany

the considerable force of legionaries which he sent north. Sulla was a

brave man, but each man has his own dread, and Sulla’s was Cormac na

Connacht, the black-haired prince of the Gaels, who had sworn to cut

out the governor’s heart and eat it raw. So Sulla rode with his ever-present bodyguard, westward, where lay the Tower of Trajan with its

warlike commander, Caius Camillus, who enjoyed nothing more than

taking his superior’s place when the red waves of war washed at the

foot of the Wall. Devious politics, but the legate of Rome seldom

visited this far isle, and what of his wealth and intrigues, Titus

Sulla was the highest power in Britain.

 

And Bran, knowing all this, patiently waited his coming, in the

deserted hut in which he had taken up his abode.

 

One gray evening he strode on foot across the moors, a stark

figure, blackly etched against the dim crimson fire of the sunset. He

felt the incredible antiquity of the slumbering land, as he walked

like the last man on the day after the end of the world. Yet at last

he saw a token of human life—a drab hut of wattle and mud, set in the

reedy breast of the fen.

 

A woman greeted him from the open door and Bran’s somber eyes

narrowed with a dark suspicion. The woman was not old, yet the evil

wisdom of ages was in her eyes; her garments were ragged and scanty,

her black locks tangled and unkempt, lending her an aspect of wildness

well in keeping with her grim surroundings. Her red lips laughed but

there was no mirth in her laughter, only a hint of mockery, and under

the lips her teeth showed sharp and pointed like fangs.

 

“Enter, master,” said she, “if you do not fear to share the roof

of the witch-woman of Dagon-moor!”

 

Bran entered silently and sat him down on a broken bench while the

woman busied herself with the scanty meal cooking over an open fire on

the squalid hearth. He studied her lithe, almost serpentine motions,

the ears which were almost pointed, the yellow eyes which slanted

curiously.

 

“What do you seek in the fens, my lord?” she asked, turning toward

him with a supple twist of her whole body.

 

“I seek a Door,” he answered, chin resting on his fist. “I have a

song to sing to the worms of the earth!”

 

She started upright, a jar falling from her hands to shatter on

the hearth.

 

“This is an ill saying, even spoken in chance,” she stammered.

 

“I speak not by chance but by intent,” he answered.

 

She shook her head. “I know not what you mean.”

 

“Well you know,” he returned. “Aye, you know well! My race is very

old—they reigned in Britain before the nations of the Celts and the

Hellenes were born out of the womb of peoples. But my people were not

first in Britain. By the mottles on your skin, by the slanting of your

eyes, by the taint in your veins, I speak with full knowledge and

meaning.”

 

Awhile she stood silent, her lips smiling but her face

inscrutable.

 

“Man, are you mad,” she asked, “that in your madness you come

seeking that from which strong men fled screaming in old times?”

 

“I seek a vengeance,” he answered, “that can be accomplished only

by Them I seek.”

 

She shook her head.

 

“You have listened to a bird singing; you have

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