Shadow of the Eagle: An epic adventure of Ancient Rome (The Borderlands Book 1) by Hunter Damion

Shadow of the Eagle: An epic adventure of Ancient Rome (The Borderlands Book 1) by Hunter Damion

Author:Hunter, Damion [Hunter, Damion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2022-05-26T00:00:00+00:00


* * *

There was no one among the Caledone clans who did not now take notice. Calgacos spoke furiously to Emrys when he prodded him out of his camp at Lughnasa Fair, and Emrys laid his ears back and shouted at Calgacos until the Druids intervened.

“This is your doing, Emrys!” Calgacos kept his voice barely level. “You must needs raid the Damnonii and stick your spear in a wasps’ nest.”

“The Damnonii were taught a lesson,” Emrys said icily, while the clan lords on both sides put their hands on their sword hilts. “A lesson which you were unwilling, or too lazy, to teach them. It is a lesson that Ossuticos of the Venicones will heed despite having been bought for a gold cauldron.”

“Ossuticos is a craven fool,” Calgacos said. “But no doubt he will thank you who gave the Romans reason to come north again!”

“When have the Romans needed a reason for anything? You are the one who first said that they would come, and bade me listen.”

“Nor did you!” Calgacos snapped. “And when they turned toward Hibernia, and sent scouts across the water thinking to put that princeling of the Epidii into the king’s hall there, and we saw we had breathing space to prepare for when they turned our way again, you must needs provoke them into it now!”

“It may be, Calgacos, that some among your holders feel differently about it. How sure are you of your position?”

“If you mean the dog from my hold that has been slinking about your table, you should have a care that you are not bitten, Emrys. For the little he is worth, you may keep him.”

Celyn and Dai swung their heads around to look at Idris, who edged back.

Vellaunos looked toward Nemausos, the Druid from Emrys’s hall, and some agreement passed between them. Druids were not bound to a clan or a holding but to their craft. They stepped between Calgacos and Emrys.

Vellaunos spoke. “By the Spear of Lugh I put peace upon you, Calgacos, and on you, Emrys. Let be now, lest you bring the darkness on yourselves.”

On the far side of the rainy meadow the traders had laid out their goods and the horse fair was going on. The women of all the gathered clans, less inclined to enmity than their men, sat on rugs in the rain shades of their wagons and gossiped while a thin drizzle fell. Vellaunos thumped his staff on the grass and the drizzle lessened and stopped as if the weather heeded his word. His white beard was beaded with the wet mist and caught the pale sun as it crept through the cloud cover. The women and the horse sellers turned toward him as his voice rolled across the meadow. He was no longer an old man half-asleep at the council table. He seemed to shimmer in front of them, grow larger, white gown blazing like the sunrise.

Calgacos and Emrys listened in angry silence. Vellaunos’s threat of darkness was literal and the darkness that a Druid could conjure was terrible.



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