Legion from the Shadows

Steel on steel. Muscle against muscle. Bran exulted in the familiar grip of a Pictish sword and oval buckler-dealing death like a blood-mad panther. Blades hacked at his buckler; a javelin slipped under his sword to skitter against his mail. Bran slashed, severed the wooden haft-then caved in the ribs of its wielder. More feces spitting hatred over scutum rim. More Roman blades thirsting for his blood. Bran’s Pictish blade dealt final answers to each challenge.

Roman weapons and discipline, but no one could mistake these soldiers for Romans. As face after face swam past him, Bran understood another reason for Nero’s pride. Bran thought of Nero’s legionaries as half-human, but clearly in most of these warriors the human blood was rather less than half. Even in Roman harness, some of these legionaries looked no more human than did the serpent-folk-some of them less so. The legate’s pride was that his own ophidian blood was not such a taint that he could not pretend to be human. Bran’s blade made a ruin of a flat-skulled, wattled face that was no more human than a toad’s.

Grimly the struggle dragged on. Bran’s buckler was notched and splintered; blood seeped from shallow cuts, and his side ached from where his mail had turned the edge but not the force of a sudden sword-thrust. His own blade was dulled from pounding on Roman armor and inhuman flesh. His shoulders were numb with fatigue, and each breath was a luxury. How Grom had fared, he had no means of knowing-as he was forced by the press beyond the breach, but off for the moment from those within. Bran was not certain how he himself fared. The breach was barricaded with dead Picts and legionaries, and still Nero’s soldiers seemed to rush upon them in an unchecked tide.

Wearily Bran put his back to a portion of the shattered wall, laying about him as the endless file of enemies continued to press him. The legionaries, with their armor and rectangular shields, had the advantage in close fighting over the Picts, few of whom wore mail and who needed more space to wield their longer swords effectively.

“Ha! King Bran wears his crown a last time!” came a cry from above the tumult.

Bran disemboweled his latest assailant, and glanced past the crumpling body. Claudius Nero had obtained a horse in some manner, evidently deeming it indecorous for a legate to command his troops on foot.

“How is it that a crawling thing has learned to ride!” Bran sneered, raising his blade.

With a hiss of rage, Nero spurred his anxious bay through the ranks of his men-pilum poised to hurl at the Pict. As his mount bolted past, Nero feinted, then cast the javelin.

Bran had waited the move, caught the pilum on his buckler. The tempered iron point drove through the frame, narrowly missing his arm. Wedged in the shield, the untempered forte bent under the weight of the haft. Bran threw aside his useless buckler, as Nero galloped back, sword in hand.

Their blades met in a shiver of steel, as the legate swung with the full impetus of his charge. The Roman blade shattered against the heavier Pictish sword, almost knocking the legate from his saddle. The jarring impact delayed Bran’s recovery just long enough for Nero to wheel past. Bran’s sword slashed the trailing red cloak, as Nero cursed and flung the useless hilt at his enemy.

A scatter of arrows streaked past the legate now, as the archers on the wall directed their fire toward him. There should be more arrows, Bran thought. The desultory archery meant either there were no more arrows, or that the archers had been driven from the wall.

Claudius Nero laughed derisively and galloped beyond effective bowshot. Bran guessed the legate had only ridden in to judge for himself how the siege progressed. What Nero saw must have pleased him.

The legate committed his reserve as soon as he reached their ranks. In close order, the rest of Legio IX Infernalis advanced upon Baal-dor to administer the killing blow to its faltering defense.

Cutting his way back within the breached wall, Bran gained the rampart and assessed his position. No new word from Grom. While those who had invaded Baal-dor from the hidden passage had thus far not fallen upon the wall’s beleaguered defenders from the rear, Bran saw that a number of buildings were ablaze within the enceinte. Here at the wall, the defenders barely held their own against the legionaries who pushed through the cleft in ever increasing numbers. And now advancing from where they had waited in the mist, perhaps a thousand or more of Nero’s reserve.

The outcome was not hard to predict. With an unbreached wall, or with sufficient men to hold the breach against assault, Nero would have stood little chance against Baal-dor. But the legate had plotted too well.

Bran shook his bloody fist at the advancing legionaries. And there was still another reserve wing coming up from the mist behind this one. Finish.

The nearer wing abruptly halted. In some disorder they turned to confront the troops that followed. Troops who now drove a wedge directly into the milling legionaries.

Even before the distant echoes of combat reached his hearing, Bran was shouting like a madman. This last army to rise from the mists of the strath was an army of Picts. It was Claudius Nero who was caught in the pincers now.

Yelling, Bran plunged back into the melee below. What clans these were who had answered his summons was impossible to tell in the darkness and distance, but their coming was a gift of the gods. The sudden appearance of Pictish reinforcements completely swung the momentum of battle. The weary defenders fought with new strength, and the besiegers started to think about ways to escape with their fives.

When presently Grom returned to the wall with his victorious force, the melee became a rout. Throwing down their weapons and shields, the legionaries at the embattled wall broke and ran. The Picts fell upon them like wolves on fleeing sheep-cutting them down as they fled across the open ground, slaughtering those who struggled to clear the earthworks.

At the sight of their comrades in headlong flight from the walls of Baal-dor, those of Nero’s reserve abandoned their efforts to regroup in the face of the newly arrived Pictish force. Panic and massacre became wholesale. Nor did it save matters for the legionaries, that among the first to flee the battle on the slopes of Baal-dor was a lone rider whose flapping red cloak made a banner behind him in the night.

Bran did not tarry to witness the second death of the Ninth Legion. Once the outcome of the battle was evident, the king of Pictdom pounded across the slopes below Baal-dor astride his own mount.

He was not surprised to find Liuba there, calmly wiping the blood from her blade as the rout carried away from her to the moors beyond. Windrows of slain legionaries attested to her coming. Bran, haggard and gory, marvelled at the girl’s cool poise.

“Is it over at the walls, then?” she asked.

“Naught but the dead,” Bran told her. “It would have been Pictish dead, had you not come when you did.”

“I raised those who would heed my call,” Liuba shrugged. “And returned as swiftly as I might.”

“What clans are they?” Bran asked. “My men had little luck in rallying the countryside about Baal-dor.”

“Perhaps my arguments were more compelling,” Liuba smiled. “I raised such warriors as were known to me.”

Bran studied the corpse-strewn field. “You must have taken few casualties.”

“Very few,” Liuba agreed. “These vermin had no heart to stand and fight.”

“And Claudius Nero?”

“Fled,” Liuba advised him. “Hell be halfway to the Wall by dawn.”

“I’ll overtake him before then,” Bran vowed. “Can you show me where he fled?”

Liuba sheathed her blade. “My horse is tethered just beyond.” She gestured toward the heath beyond, where the vengeful Picts hunted down the last fugitives. “I’ve no further interest in watching this tedious butchery. You and I have done what we came to do here.”

26

CIRCLES

Claudius Nero fled southward, driving his mount at a killing pace. Panic claimed the proud heart of the legate, for he had seen his greatest victory crumble into black defeat, and the invincible might of his legion was a hollow and shattered thing below the haunted walls of Baal-dor.

The caverns of the People of the Dark were no shelter for him. Such of his former masters as had escaped the massacre would take certain vengeance upon him if he returned alone.

And well Nero knew that Bran Mak Morn would not rest until he had run the legate to earth for his own vengeance. Nowhere in the Highlands of Caledon could Claudius Nero hide from the wrath of the king of Pictdom.

Thus Claudius Nero fled southward to the Wall beneath the grey skies. In the madness of his flight, Nero remembered that he was a Roman. In the South he would find a welcome among others of his blood.

A germ of a plan took root. There was much Claudius Nero might tell Rome of Bran Mak Morn-of his sundered fortress, of his tattered army. In his mind’s eye, Claudius Nero saw himself leading the legions of Rome into the Highlands of Caledon, saw Pictdom smashed beneath his new legions, saw Rome turn out its multitudes to hail the mysterious conqueror who had come from the shadows…

At dawn his horse fell dead beneath him.

Nero picked himself up unsteadily, wondering how much farther to the Wall. The sky was ablaze with the approaching sun. Nero knew he would have to seek cover somewhere. He had acclimated himself to withstand the light of dawn, dreaming of the day when he might walk the earth of his sacred forebears. But until he fully accustomed himself to daylight, he must find shelter, or the full rays of the sun would peel away his skin in cracked and blistered strips.

The sun was rising, but Nero decided he should put some distance between himself and his dead mount. Moving through the shadows of the trees, he trudged perhaps a mile before the horsemen came out from the woods along the trail.

They were Goths, yellow-haired wolves attached to their newly landed legion as mounted auxiliaries. Their Latin was as unintelligible to Nero as his was to them, but they made it plain that he was advised to come with them.

It was a small marching camp, and Nero guessed it held no more than one century and a like number of mounted auxiliaries. Its centurion had spent some twenty years on the Danube and cared little for the caprice of fortune that had sent him to this fog-ridden isle.

“We found him slinking around beneath the trees,” one of the Goths explained.

The centurion grunted, studying Nero intently.

“I am Quintus Claudius Nero, a citizen of Rome,” the legate announced. “I have information regarding Bran Mak Morn that your superior officers will be interested to learn.”

“Is that so?” wondered the centurion. “And what did you say your rank and outfit was?”

“That is something else that will interest your superiors, Nero temporized.

The centurion stared at him impassively. He had been in Britain only about a month, but he had heard a great many tales of the Picts and of their cunning king. The massacre he had just returned from verifying convinced him the tales of Pictish deviltry had been understated.

“Your Latin is worse than these flax-heads,” he grunted, noting the man’s peculiar features, the dark hair, the strangely stunted physique. Twenty years on the Danube had taught him certain lessons in dealing with barbarians.

“And you chose the wrong old soldier to try to pull something on, Quintus Claudius Pictus.”

He stabbed a calloused finger at the legate’s red cloak. “Marcus Sertorius Facilis was the best officer I ever served under,” he growled. “I didn’t like what I found left of him and his command, and I don’t like finding a Pictish spy wearing the cloak and gold pin Sertorius had when we shipped over!”

The centurion ignored Nero’s futile protests. “Crucify him,” he ordered. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this is Bran Mak Morn himself.”

They set up a cross and left him hanging there as a warning to the other Picts. The day was dawning when they drove in the nails, and it is said that a snake cannot die before sundown.

***

“Are you certain Nero rode this way?” Bran Mak Morn questioned. “I see no evidence of horse or rider.”

“Soon you’ll see,” Liuba promised, riding beside him.

Bran scowled impatiently. The stars were dimming, and he feared his enemy would escape into some burrow with the coming of dawn. So intent was the Pict over overtaking Claudius Nero, that already his victory seemed a distant memory. Bran studied the broken rocks of the streambed they followed, as if his vision could pierce the predawn darkness as keenly as did Liuba’s.

“Let’s cross over here,” Bran suggested. “He might have forded the stream, doubled back.”

“I’d rather not cross the stream,” Liuba complained. “I’m certain we follow the right path.”

Bran frowned at the faint greyness in the east. “We’re not riding south. I though you said Nero would try to seek asylum south of the Wall?”

“Who can say what sanctuary Claudius Nero will find,” Liuba shrugged.

Bran swore in exasperation. The woman had a maddening way of evading anything that resembled a straight answer.

“That’s Kestrel Scaur over there,” he said suddenly. “Thunder of all the gods! Nero’s played us for a fine pair of fools! We’ve ridden half the night, and all he’s done was decoy us south, then double back to the Door beneath Kestrel Scaur. If we’d only guessed his ploy, we could have ridden straight across the heather and waited for him here instead of following alongside this stream bed you’ve been so shy about crossing. Come, on, we’ll ride straight for the barrow.”

Liuba said nothing as they rounded Kestrel Scaur and gazed down at the silent barrow below them. The dying light of the stars played upon the spectral mists that eddied past the broken circle of rowans. Bran mused that it looked like the loneliest place on earth-a forgotten tomb with its guardian circle of rowans. From this height the swaying ring of white blossoms in the swirling mist seemed too regular for nature’s work. If the rowans reseeded themselves from dropped fruit, these trees-or their distant ancestors-might have been planted here when the barrow was raised.

“Look!” Bran pointed. “Yesterday we rolled the stone back across the barrow tunnel. It’s still in place. Either Nero has another den close by, or we’ve beaten him here by minutes.”

“Bran,” Liuba began, “have I not earned a bounty for my aid to you?”

“Of course,” Bran laughed shortly, watching the barrow below them. “You’ve save my life and all that I hold sacred.”

“I said there must be a price.”

“I’ll pay it gladly.”

Liuba’s foce was troubled. “It isn’t right. Our battles were the same. Your enemies were as my own.”

“I’m going down there,” Bran decided. “Another minute first, to be certain Nero doesn’t lurk within the rowans.”

“You won’t find Nero there,” Liuba whispered. “But it’s too much of a coincidence that he would take such pains to hide his trail, then double back to this…”

“In truth, I led you here to pay a price.”

Bran dismounted, intending to slip into the clearing on foot. He scarcely listened to what the girl was saying.

Liuba’s eyes were strange when she dismounted to stand before him. “You must go with me, Bran Mak Morn.”

Bran frowned at her in vexation. “But I’m already here, Liuba.” The girl was a mystery.

She took his shoulders in a grip of cold steel. Bran marvelled at the flame of moonlight on her pale face.

“We are both of us bound to the circle of our fates,” Liuba told him, drawing close.

Bran thought it was scarcely the moment for their first kiss, but the woman seemed possessed of a strange mood. Her lips were cold. So were her teeth.

Their horses, untethered, shrilled in sudden fright, bolted away for the clearing below.

Bran started to push her away, but the effort was too much. The grass was cold on his back.

A moment of strange ecstasy, and of sudden fear…

***

“Hold! Nightwalker! Lamia! Away to your abode!” Gonar’s voice thundered from a dream. The wizards eyes burned, and he brandished his ashen staff like a menacing wand. “I command you go by the all-potent names of…”

What manner of gods or devils were these? Bran mused in dream. Names he had never heard-or had he, long ago?

“Fools!” spat Liuba. “We’ll settle the debt another day, Bran Mak Morn!”

Blackness…

***

Gonar was shaking him. Bran pushed him away, sat up unsteadily. Another nightmare…? No, Morgain was hugging him and crying like a lost child.

The three of them crouched alone on the grass below Kestrel Scaur. Bran’s neck pained him, and when he touched it, he saw that he must have taken a small cut there during the battle.

Morgain carried on like an idiot, and the tattooed priest was chattering disjointedly about something. Bran found he could follow with difficulty.

“I thought it was a trap of some sort. Atla crawling to me, saying she didn’t care if I took her life, that you had ridden into the night with the woman whose pristine body she had seen lying on the barrow slab when they broke into the sealed tomb, that an army of ghosts had marched behind her to rout Nero’s legion.

“I thought the witch lied, for she said she risked her life out of love for you. But Morgain believed her, and strange things were told by those who pursued the last of the legionaries onto the moors. After Atla fled into the night, I remembered the dim legend of the warrior-sorceress, Liuba, who was a queen of the Pictish clans of lost Atlantis. She was driven forth in the great wars of the clans, so the tale runs-hunted down and entombed at last in an ensorcelled barrow that was doubly guarded by a ring of sacred rowans to keep her from walking by night.” Bran stared at the wizard, wondering which of them was mad. “And how was it this Liuba of Atlantean legend met her death?”

“She never died,” said Gonar.

AFTERWORD

For those who keep track of such things, the three tales of Bran Mak Morn chronicled in the collection, Worms of the Earth (Zebra Books: 1975), can be considered as having taken place at the beginning of the third century, roughly as follows: “Men of the Shadows” in 205; “Worms of the Earth” in 206; “Kings of the Night” in 207. During this period Hadrian’s Wall had been reconstructed, Rome had regained control of the South, and the new provincial governor, L. Alfenus Senecio, had petitioned the emperor, Septimius Severus, to send an expedition to subdue the untamed Caledonians. This novel, Legion from the Shadows, takes place in spring of 208, on the eve of Severus’ arrival in Eboracum to assume personal command of the conquest of the North.

The disappearance of the Ninth Legion, one of the great mysteries of history, has been subject to much conjecture and controversy. Without dwelling on this discussion, best evidence would indicate that Legio IX Hispana was annihilated in some military disaster in northern Britain approximately 118-130 A.D. For purposes of this novel, I have accepted the latter date.

As much as possible I have attempted to remain true to the historical framework, seeking at the same time to preserve Howard’s own fictional concepts. The informed reader will be aware that the Picts of Howard’s imagination bear little resemblance to the Picts as revealed by modern archeology. For purposes of fantasy, let us assume that Howard’s Picts are indeed a lost race as he portrayed them-vanished now from history, and confused by archeologists with some vastly different people. The serious reader is referred to any of the numerous historical works pertaining to Roman Britain and to the legions. I found the following recent books of great value: Brittannia-A History of Roman Britain by Sheppard Frere; Roman Britain by I. A. Richmond; The Roman Imperial Army by Graham Webster; The Army of the Caesars by Michael Grant.

I am particularly indebted to Scott Connors, whose brilliant study, “The Riddle of the Black Seal” (Nyctalops: January/February 1975), explored Arthur Mach-en’s influence on Howard in the latter author’s adoption of the concepts of the Black Stone and of a hidden cave-dwelling race of subhuman dwarves. These tales of Arthur Machen which so strongly influenced Howard in this theme include “The Novel of the Black Seal,” “The Shining Pyramid,” and to a lesser extent “The Red Hand.” They are available in recent paperback collections of Machen’s stories, and I recommend them along with Connors’ article to the serious Howard fan.

Finally, I have tried to weld a synthesis of Howard’s numerous allusions-often fragmentary and contradictory-both to the Picts and to the Worms of the Earth. Both are a favorite and recurrent theme of Howard’s fantasy work. For those interested in Howard’s various treatments of the Picts, the Black Stone, and the serpent-folk (beyond the stories available in Worms of the Earth), I suggest the following of his stories:

“The Little People” (Probably Howard’s earliest treatment of the theme-a modern tale in which the Picts are the dread survival of an underground race).

“The Children of the Night” (A modern tale of racial memories in which the Picts have driven the Mongoloid serpent-race into hiding-mentions the existence of the cult of Bran Mak Morn).

“People of the Dark” (A modern tale of racial memories in which reincarnated lovers and rivals confront the last degenerate survival of the serpent-folk).

“The Valley of the Lost” (A tale of the American West in which a Texas gunfighter discovers survivals of the serpent-race dwelling in a lost cavern).

“The Black Stone” (A modern tale of age-old demon-worship connected to a prehuman black monolith in Hungary-mentions the Picts and the older Mongoloid race they overcame).

“The Shadow Kingdom” (Kull and his Pictish ally, Brule, battle the secret serpent-race in lost Atlantis).

“Beyond the Black Biver” (The best portrayal of the Picts in the age of Conan).

“The Valley of the Worm” (A tale of racial memory of an indefinite past, in which Picts battle the Aryan migration into a land haunted by a gigantic worm).

“The Hyborian Age” (Howard’s own “history” of his mythical prehistoric age-contradicts much of the history of the Picts as related in “Men of the Shadows”).

Most of these can be found reprinted in Skullface & Others or The Dark Man & Others, although for some you’ll need to seek out other reprint volumes or the obscure magazines of original publication. This may be difficult, but then you wouldn’t have read this far if you weren’t a hard-core Robert E. Howard fan. It is worth the effort both as a study of Howard’s development-and because the majority of these are among Howard’s best tales. Maybe Baen Books will oblige us by collecting these in a single volume.

Karl Edward Wagner

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

March 1976