The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(97)

Virico Lugotorix had always been a just and brave man. A thoughtful king instead of a raider or a warmonger. Some had called him a weak king because he’d been taken prisoner by Caesar’s legions and returned home afterward rather than taking his own life in shame. I’d even wondered at his valor when he refused to give me my rightful status in his royal war band and had, instead, tried to marry me off. My betrothal to Aeddan—Mael’s brother, the son of the king of the Trinovante tribe—had been meant to seal a bond between our people and form an unbreakable alliance. My stomach dropped as I realized what my running away—what my disappearance—had done to him politically. I’d learned a lot about that sort of thing during my time in Rome. And now I knew it meant that my father had been denied that vital alliance. He’d been isolated.

He likely still was. No one would be coming to his aid against Aquila.

No one except us.

And I had no way of letting him know that.

Cai and Quint put their heads together to try to figure out a strategy that would get us around the impasse as the girls hunkered down to eat and check weapons and wait for their marching orders—if we could even get that far. In a fog of frustration I left them all to it. I picked up my traveling pack and walked to the far end of the vale, toward the old, forgotten grave barrow, with its lone standing stone at the end of the clearing. When I got close enough, I saw there was another mound there, beside the ancient one. Smaller. Covered in new growth that had yet to cloak its contours completely in soft green.

“Maelgwyn . . .” His name caught on the sob stuck in my throat.

So they had buried him here. I somehow knew they would.

I walked up to stand before the mound, then dropped to my knees and shrugged the straps of my traveling pack off my shoulders. Yanking open the drawstring, I dug around inside and found the small, smooth ebony box that held a handful of earth from a graveyard in Italia, near the Ludus Achillea.

Earth from Aeddan’s grave.

The memory of holding Aeddan’s hand as he sighed out his last breath—the arrow that had pierced his chest one that had been meant for me—crashed over me like a wave left over from the storm on the sea. I’d told him, as the light had left his eyes, to greet his brother, Maelgwyn, in the Otherworld for me. Mael, whom Aeddan had killed. Because of me. One more soul gone over to the Blessed Isles because of me.

One more meal of blood for the Morrigan to feast upon . . .

I pulled the raven-marked sword from its scabbard on my hip and jammed it into the loamy turf of Maelgwyn Ironhand’s grave barrow, using it as a spade to dig a hole. When it was deeper than it needed to be, I emptied the dirt from the little box into the hole and shoveled the earth back in.

“Is it enough?” I called out, thrusting the empty box up toward the empty sky, the empty, ravenless trees. The place where my goddess should have been but wasn’t. “Will it ever be enough? Was Sorcha not even enough for you? Or will you take my friends and my father too? Everyone who’s ever fought with me and everyone who’s ever fought for you because they fought with me . . . All while I listened to your voice whispering in my ear . . . I don’t hear you now, Carrion Eater.”

The grass under my knees was still wet with rain left behind by the storm, but the earth of the grave barrow beneath felt warm.

“Durovernum will fall without help,” I said, my own voice a harsh mockery of a raven’s cry. “Help that I cannot give them if you do not show me the way!”

Silence spun out in the wake of my plea.

Emptiness.

I stood and turned my back on the barrow and stalked back to Cai and Quint. They both bore looks of hopeless frustration on their faces. There was no remedy that they had found. No way around the wall my father had built. With a cry of rage, I threw the empty ebony box into the trees. There was a mad flapping of black wings, and a whole flock of ravens burst into the sky. I watched them disappear . . .

And then I heard Quint say, “Hang on . . .”

His arm lifted, and I looked in the direction he was pointing. At the copse of yew trees where the ravens had been hidden. At first I didn’t see it. And then I did . . . machines. Wooden machines, tucked in behind a screen of bushes. And the smile on Quint’s face was that of a man who’d just seen a marvel. He jogged over to the edge of the trees, Cai following in his wake, and was almost bouncing with excitement by the time I reached them. Elka and Ajani joined us at the same time, curious.

“Catapults,” Quint said, rubbing his hands together with unbridled glee. “Those are catapults . . . and I have an idea . . .”

“Wait,” Elka said, taking a step toward the trees, peering cautiously as if there weren’t manmade contraptions but rather dragons lurking there. “What are they doing here?”

I wondered the same thing myself. But Cai and Quint were already pushing through the trees to investigate, and they had a theory. This was the reason my father had built up the walls.

“These siege engines,” Cai mused, “were doubtless left behind by Caesar’s legions.”

“Right. After they ‘conquered’ our lands.” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm from my tone.

Cai pretended not to hear it. “Exactly,” he said.

“I’m guessing one of the other tribes decided to try their hand at putting our war machines to work for their own ends,” Quint said.