When the walls had disappeared upon the horizon, Wulfnoth at last let slip a sigh of relief, saying as he did so. “I must confess that those people, near the walls frightened me more than the walls.”

  “Why fear them at all?” Trygve asked still disturbed from the strange site he had seen hours ago.

  “Because, imagine what it must do to one’s mind to live so near such a haunted place, a place where thousands died and where all the sorrows and grief of an empire is concentrated.” Wulfnoth told him, heavily encouraging his steed forward at a goodly pace, a sure sign that he was not wholly convinced that the villagers in question had not ceased their wild chase of them.

  Keeping pace with him, Trygve risked many a glances over his right-shoulder for fear of what lay behind them, no less apprehensive than his traveling companion. “I suppose, is that why no one has sought to return to Atenia-”

  “You must not speak that name!” The druid hissed at him firmly, “It is cursed! It is sacred only to those who hold evil in their hearts, and despise righteousness by their very natures!”

  This caused Trygve to fall silent once again, if reluctantly so.

  Surely a name could not be so terrible a thing to utter, especially when countless people spoke of Atenia, of its empire and of the multiplicity of horrors that had befallen the world after it usurped Roma.

  “The true horror if you ask me; is what befell the city,” Trygve muttered beneath his breath unfortunately for him though, he was overheard.

  “Tush you and the true horror was their defiance of the gods,” Wulfnoth snapped at him, to which he had naught to say, for he agreed with him on that at least.

  “I still feel there is no harm, in the utterance of a name.” Trygve grunted stubbornly, opining against the druid as much out of spite as he did out of frustration at being told to be quiet at all. He was weary of being told what to do, mayhaps the druid ought to learn to listen, the youngest of Freygil’s sons thought to himself bitterly.

  Before them stretching out towards the darkening horizon lay the rest of Norlam, and all the rest of the southron lands he thought. A land that the Caleds reviled, as much as the folk of those lands hated and feared them in turn, due to the countless wars of domination that had been waged between them.

  He could only pray and hope that the people to the south, proved unlike any of the tales that his father and mother used to recount to him as an infant, to get him to behave himself before bed. Gulping a little at the image that appeared in his mind, of them seeking to eat his flesh and tear away his crucifix of the goddess Turan that he had hidden behind the folds of his tunic, he let slip another prayer.

  “Cease snivelling, they will no more devour you, than I would lad.” Wulfnoth sighed in exasperation.

  Glumly, he bit his tongue with his only thought being that mayhaps he should pray for the gods to in place of protecting him send down some thunder to smite his disgusting drunk of a traveling-companion.

  *****

  Rheged as Trygve discovered it was hardly all that different from the lands of Norlion and Norlam, in that there were leagues and leagues of farm-lands. The people sang as they planted the harvest, or cared for their sheep. The language in which they sang was slightly different in terms of accent from those used in Norlam. While Norlion had been comprehensible at times or had appeared to be to Trygve’s ears, this dialect was unlike any other tongue he had ever heard.

  He was amused to find that though it was Wulfnoth’s native tongue, the druid had difficulty understanding and communicating with some of the locals.

  When mocked for this, he defended himself saying, “It has been nigh on twenty-five years since I last spoke with a man in Brittian.”

  “Aye, though how a man could forget their native tongue is a mystery to me,” Trygve snorted derisively.

  “This shows how little you know of the world, given enough time away from the world I suspect man would forget not only to speak, but to write or think.” Wulfnoth muttered cynically.

  By this time they had been on the road for weeks, and had passed more and more abbeys and monasteries. According to Wulfnoth, most were new and dedicated from what he could discern, to Tempestas where Norlion and Jorvik favoured Ziu, and Norlam Fufluns.

  Observing these shrines with mixed feelings of appreciation for the stone-temples that loomed almost eighty-five to six meters high and thrice that size in terms of length, the son of Freygil was rather less pleased than Wulfnoth at the sight of them. For the druid the sight of those shrines was proof that his homeland had begun to pull itself, from the misery of the past inflicted upon it by a number of the Gewisse-kings.

  A line of monarchs with a penchant for madness, such that only a handful had perished in their beds rather than at one another’s hands, with this internecine violence having extended also to the Arnish line.

  Rheged’s keeps though were different, Trygve soon saw than the half-Nordic ones of Norlam, or the partly Caled seeming ones of Norlion. These were purely Brittian fortresses, with their stone dungeons built from grey stone, upon large man-made mounds certainly. Though where there was still a hint of the long-house in the creation of Norse-mixed keeps, and of the dark-grey stones of the Pechs that Caleds still utilised, these forts were slightly brighter.

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  They wore their standards higher on the fort, at its peak and there was some continental influence, Trygve assumed given the wooden battlements and steps along the dungeons. The walls were higher too, he observed with more than a little trepidation.

  The largest of them all though, was that keep that had given its very name to the lands of Rheged. Other keeps were between eighty and one hundred and fifty meters high, whereas this one cut asunder the heavens at two-hundred thirty meters large. The same length in length and wideness, built of what was likely pure marble and sandstone that had likely all but shone with whiteness and scarlet majesty centuries ago had become tarnished.

  Grey almost black, the main dungeon along with its ten towers that encircled it was nonetheless a majestic sight. Originally built with Romalian stones, it had according to Wulfnoth been burnt to the ground once, ere it was rebuilt by the present lord with the assistance of a Gallian master-builder. The towers were a recent design and circular in nature, one-hundred and eleven meters long and wide and more than one ninety-five high.

  As to the great-walls they jutted up from the ground with the vivid pale red now a darkened dirty scarlet, they were themselves twenty or so meters large. At least fifteen to twenty meters thick, with the gates themselves bearing the emblem of the lordly house of these lands; the scarlet rose.

  Those gates though were not immediately accessible, surrounded as they were by a large village, one that had nary a gate in sight. A testament to the pride and sense of duty Wulfnoth assured, of the kin of Ricmaer. It was this sense of duty that had helped the lords of Rheged to rise to the heights of power within their lands, and won them the respect of many throughout Brittia.

  As though to prove the veracity of his words, the city of Rheged or ‘Lower-Rheged’ as some called it apparently, had a population nearer to thirty-thousand people. Most of whom, lived in large wooden two-storey houses that were built using local red-wood and pine-wood trees that were native to the region. Trees that grew far more noticeably towards the eastern side of the large city that, were thicker than the rest of those found in the north of Brittia.

  It was hardly a mighty symbol; in fact it drew a derisive snort from Trygve’s lips, though when he looked to his traveling companion for support, he found him hardly paying him any attention. Having only eyes for the path before them, one that was paved just as the Thistle-Road was, throughout the midlands and east of Caledonia.

  This road though was an ancient one, which dated back to the age of Roma. The Via Albiona was the longest road in Bretwealda, beginning near Auldchester and Morwyn where the Romalians first landed nigh on ten centuries ago, snaking its way through all the midlands and up to Rheged.

  In the time since the fall of the rulers of the greatest empire of men, the roads had fallen mostly into disrepair. It was said some of the stones having even at a distance either been covered by mud and dirt or torn out by some of the local people so that they may build their homes with the aforementioned stones.

  The houses in question had been built in some cases to either side of the road to the south and north of the great city, or near to the walls of the castle.

  This was remarked upon by Wulfnoth who explained to him in a distressed tone, at the sight of the road, “Horror of horrors! How could they do such a thing? The roads have become cracked, by the gods how could Uhtric do such a thing?”

  Trygve had no words for him, as the Via Albiona was the first road he had ever set eyes upon, and from what he had seen in Norlam it had fallen into disrepair there also.

  *****

  The people of the city gazed upon them with visible suspicion in some cases, while others merely appeared curious and intrigued at the sight of Trygve’s clothes. Some of those of an advanced age gaped at the sight of the druid, whom they had not seen in nigh on thirty years.

  Taking notice of their strange comportment at once, Trygve felt his nervousness grow at once, with his attempts to hold his head high and to set his jaw in a determined fashion. The same manner, which he had observed Daegan utilise when she wished to appear majestic. Despite having mocked her in the past, whenever she strove so passionately to appear so grand, he now imitated her. Hardly blind to the irony of his own ridiculous actions, he was also not blind to the fact that he had begun to comport himself as stiffly and timidly, as Indulf.

  The thought of his brother brought to mind, the bitter memory of their arguments and the dark night on the Mound of Griogair. Memories that he sought to purge himself of, not only out of disgust towards his brother but because they brought with them, the recollection also of the terrible visions inflicted upon him by the wraiths.

  In this spirit of hesitation and uncertainty, both men traversed through the city, which was a troubled place with one of the old men, a Satyr who had previously been occupied with cutting up pork. Evidently a butcher given the blood that covered his apron, and the knife he hurriedly put down, when they had crossed through the market-square which lay directly down from the castle-gates themselves.

  “Halt! Brother Wulfnoth! You are Brother Wulfnoth are you not?” The Satyr called, above the hustle and bustle of the other people of the city. He had to repeat himself twice more, before he was heard, racing past more than a few people, as his sons shouted after him, from some distance away behind him.

  When he at last heard the Satyr, who soon caught up with them, Wulfnoth pulled his horse to a halt, having previously paid little heed to the stares of those people around him. Most of whom, had never seen such magnificent steeds in all their lives.

  Visibly annoyed by the butcher, who had leapt just in front of them, the druid growled at him, in the tongue of the Brittians.

  Though he heard the Satyr call out after them, Trygve could no more understand the cry than he could, understand the speech that followed. What he could grasp, was the irritation that the druid felt with his bunched shoulders and pinched expression. It usually meant he longed for ale.

  Just as he began to grow impatient, the druid thanked the Satyr with a puzzled expression turning now to the youth to inform him. “That was Ylgo the Satyr, a local butcher I once delivered the son of, who remembered me.”

  “Was that all that he said to you?” Trygve wondered irritably, only to add with a small smile, “Or is that all that you could remember?”

  “Tush,” Wulfnoth grunted adding with a worried frown, “What he warned me was that Uhtric is a… changed man.”

  His worry soon proved itself infectious, with the younger man staring at him with a pinched brow.

  He tried to keep his voice level, he truly did. But Trygve could hear the height to which his voice rose the moment he spoke, “Do- what does he mean by that? Does he mean that he- he has become violent?”

  “I do not know.” Wulfnoth replied with a frown, not scolding him for his tone or his question, as he might otherwise have done. “He claimed only that Uhtric may not welcome my presence, as he has wished for naught to do with any men from Father Temple.”

  “Mayhaps, we should take his warnings to heart,” Trygve muttered anxiously.

  “Tush, you know as well as I that we have the duty to see this matter through,” Wulfnoth spat furiously tugging on the reins of his horse, urging it onwards.

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