Song of the Centurion Read online

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  “What do we do now then?”

  It was midday and not a lot had been accomplished since the previous night’s momentous events. First, Narina had taken control of the king’s house again, throwing out his concubine, the serving girl Enica, and banishing her from Alt Clota. Then the queen had simply gone to bed with Catia by her side and they had slept as best they could while the men cleared up the mess left behind by the fight. When she woke up, word reached her that Senecio had also left Dun Breatann.

  Now, Narina sat on a stool beside Gavo and Duro in Bellicus’s small roundhouse between the peaks, looking for advice from a man who had almost died just hours before, and still wasn’t out of danger given the severity of his injuries. Look what happened to Loarn mac Eirc, the druid had thought to himself as he lay on his bed during the night after the guards had carried him there and bound his wounds.

  Duro had also listened with amazement as Gavo informed them of the news that had only preceded their appearance in Dun Breatann by a couple of days: the king of Dalriada was dead, the result of an infection from a wound in his hand that spread rapidly throughout his body and resisted all the healing prayers of Bishop Dotha.

  A wound that had been delivered by Melltgwyn during the fight in the Dalriadan woods.

  “Coroticus should have known better than to stand against you,” Gavo said, shaking his head ruefully. “A druid, who somehow got the better of the Saxon Bretwalda, and then walked into Dalriada and killed their king before making good his escape.”

  “I had some help,” Bellicus said weakly, just managing a smile in Duro’s direction. “On both those adventures.”

  Gavo nodded and petted Cai, who was lying on the floor by his master’s bedside, a post he’d never moved from all night. “Aye, the dog is a fine warrior alright.” He grinned at Duro who made an obscene gesture in return.

  Their pleasant mood evaporated though, as Narina broke in. “I’m happy everything has turned out well, but I hardly think what’s gone on in the past few hours warrants such cheeriness.”

  “Apologies, my queen,” Gavo muttered sheepishly, and Duro made similar sorrowful noises.

  Bellicus didn’t even attempt to hide his smile. Almost dying on the end of a sword gave a man a new outlook on life, even if only for a short time.

  “I ask again,” the queen said. “What do we do now?”

  All eyes turned again to Bellicus and a small part of him felt irritation, that these people, two veteran soldiers of high rank, and a woman who had been queen for years, looked to him for leadership even as he lay in his sick-bed. Yet this was a druid’s lot and, despite his mere twenty-seven years he had trained for situations just like this one.

  He marshalled his thoughts and then reached down to stroke Cai’s ears, wincing as pain lanced through his arm.

  “When we were fighting Loarn mac Eirc, he implied the Saxons were coming to help him take Dun Breatann.” Gavo and Narina exclaimed loudly at this bad news and he waved them irritably to silence. “I have no idea if he spoke the truth – he was stalling for time so his soldiers could reach us. Whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter,” he observed. “We have to make peace with the other kings north of Hadrian’s Wall anyway, before they lay siege to Dun Breatann again.”

  Gavo looked out through the un-shuttered window, at the bluebell shoots that had begun to appear on the grass of the fortress in the past day or so. “Drest will be on his way here soon,” he noted. “If he hasn’t already started out.”

  Bellicus would have shrugged if he hadn’t known it would be agony. “We will, of course, have to offer him something in return for peace, and as reparation for the men Coroticus killed in the recent skirmishes. But the Picts are not our enemies – the Saxons are the biggest threat to our way of life, and we must make Drest see that.”

  “And Cunneda?”

  “Cunneda too,” the druid replied to Narina’s question. “We need peace with the Votadini just as much as with the Picts, if we are to defend our lands properly against the Saxons.”

  “What about the Dalriadans?” the queen asked. “They are without a king thanks to you and Duro.”

  Bellicus didn’t reply immediately for he wasn’t sure how to deal with the people on the western shores of the island. It was true they were leaderless, and he knew himself how many of the people in the small fishing villages felt little loyalty to the men wielding power in Dunadd. Would it be worthwhile invading Dalriada while the populace was in disarray, their nobles undoubtedly jockeying for position and possibly the kingship?

  He felt too weak, too fuzzy headed, to make such a decision at that moment.

  “If Loarn mac Eirc is truly dead,” he said at last. “We have nothing to fear from Dalriada, for a while at least. Even if a new man takes the throne tomorrow, he will need to consolidate his position, rather than marching here to join up with Drest and Cunneda.”

  “So, we make peace with the Picts and Votadini our priority,” Gavo said, and the others nodded, sensing the wisdom in Bellicus’s words. “If they will listen. I can see such a peace costing us very dearly though, druid. They will want sheep, cattle, slaves, gold…Anything they can get!”

  “Better that, than losing dozens – hundreds – of men, fighting meaningless battles brought on by Coroticus in a drunken madness, surely?”

  Narina was fidgeting, poking at the dry skin on her fingertips, but she spoke now, lending her weight to the druid’s words. “Enough of our people have died senselessly, Gavo. You know this yourself. If we can unite the kingdoms the Saxons will find us a more difficult enemy to defeat when they make their inevitable way north to these lands.”

  “You think they are coming?”

  Bellicus grunted. “Aye. If not now, they will come eventually.”

  “I do not think Drest will accept peace with us,” Narina sighed, standing and walking over to look out on her fortress, which looked beautiful to her in the bright morning sunshine. “He’s been preparing for war all winter, and Alt Clota is a prize he covets greatly.” She turned back to Bellicus. “I saw it in his eyes when they had us under siege the last time.”

  The druid met her gaze and pursed his lips. “Then we must prepare for the worst.”

  They sat in the little roundhouse in silence then, pondering the future, and the past, and finding more questions than answers on the banks of time’s ever-flowing river.

  What would the coming year bring? Only the gods could say, Bellicus thought, but, as he looked around the room – at Gavo, and Cai, and Duro, and Narina – he knew Dun Breatann was, for the first time in months, in good hands once again.

  Their enemies would not find them wanting when spring came.

  If you enjoyed Song of the Centurion please leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

  Every single one really helps me out, and they are all HUGELY appreciated.

  Also, if you’d like a FREE Forest Lord short story, sign up for my EMAIL LIST and get “The Rescue” delivered straight to your inbox. I regularly run competitions to win signed books and Audible downloads and I promise not to spam you constantly.

  Thank you so much for reading!

  Steven

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Song of the Centurion has been a strange book for me to write. I started it not long after I completed The Druid but at that time I had an agent who was trying to find a big publisher for the series. So what should I do? I could start work on Song of the Centurion only for a publisher to come in and tell me they wanted The Druid completely changed, and then where would that leave the sequel? I might have written a full novel that would need reworked. It seemed pointless. But sitting on my hands doing nothing for months wasn’t an option.

  So I set aside the 30,000 words I had written for Song and spent 2018 writing a standalone novel, Lucia.

  The Druid never was picked up by a publisher and I parted ways with my agent to self-publish the series. And then I managed to sell Lucia to Audible! Aro
und the same time, I was hired to write some things for a secret project which is really exciting, but I’m forbidden to talk about it for now…

  So, between working on Lucia with Audible and writing pieces for the Secret Project, I’ve also spent this year, 2019, completing Song of the Centurion. Hopefully it reads well despite all the other distractions. Incidentally, I recorded a demo version of the titular song which you can find on YouTube - HERE. One day I’ll do it with flute and vocals and acoustic guitar, when I find time…

  Although I like to make my novels historically ‘accurate’ or at least as realistic as possible, one thing I added here is the tunnel leading from Dun Buic to Dun Breatann. Is this a real thing? Maybe. Almost twenty years ago I worked in Dumbarton Castle as a steward, and my manager at the time liked to collect any gossip or folklore about the area from locals and visitors. Generally, I liked to hear ghost stories, but I remember her talking about this tunnel that led between the two great volcanic rocks that dominate Dumbarton – the castle and the modern-day quarry at Dumbuck. I have no idea where she heard the tale, but it really captured my imagination and it seemed like the perfect way for Bellicus to enter what is, otherwise, an impenetrable fortress. Could it be real? I don’t know, but I do know there are caves in the area, one of which apparently hid William Wallace hundreds of years later, when the English were after him. If it was good enough for Braveheart, why not Bel?

  My next book, as far as I know, will be part three in this Warrior Druid of Britain series. Bellicus, Duro and Narina will have to deal with the Dalriadans and Picts, but those pesky Saxons are, of course, growing in power in the south and Arthur and Merlin will need some help soon. I hope you will join them all in their continuing adventures. Who knows what will happen next? I certainly don’t!

  Steven A. McKay,

  Old Kilpatrick,

  August 2019

  ALSO BY STEVEN A. MCKAY & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The Forest Lord Series:

  Wolf’s Head

  The Wolf and the Raven

  Rise of the Wolf

  Blood of the Wolf

  Knight of the Cross

  Friar Tuck and the Christmas Devil

  The Rescue and Other Tales

  The Abbey of Death

  The Warrior Druid of Britain Chronicles:

  The Druid

  COMING OCTOBER 2019

  Lucia (an AUDIBLE exclusive!)

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to my old mucker Reay McKay for help with the sailing/boat sections, and Dave Slaney for being a great guy! As always, cheers to my mum for beta reading and pointing out any glaring errors, and my editor Richenda who always amazes me with her insights. My wife, Yvonne, helped with the blurb this time around too. Cheers!

  CONCEPT ART

  by Robert Travis

  DURO

  BELLICUS