Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

"Alaric? About an hour ago. He's right behind you, about the middle of the column. He will consecrate the wedding and our new altar-stone at the same time."

"Altar-stone? What's this?"

"You'll see. The good bishop has talked the Council into establishing a meeting-place for priests and prayers alike, in the Council Hall."

"Has he, by Mithras?" There was ungrudging admiration in Picus's tone. "How did he do that?"

"Cleverly," I answered him, smiling. "And at a time when it had most effect. It got the chamber finished."

Picus pursed his lips and glanced from me to his father and then back to me.

"You said this morning marks the start of all my father's dreams coming true. The marriage I understand, but what else is there?"

"Well, there's the new Council chamber, as I said, and our new quarters. The fort itself is coming into full use today for the first time as well. This is the first procession of our people as a group along this new road, too. And this is the first springtime of a new century in the year of our Lord the Christ. Think about that, Picus. What you will witness today is, in its own small way, the birthing of a new society, in a new place, surrounded by new walls at the opening of a new age. And all of it — the people and their dreams, the place, the soldiers and their weaponry, and all the hope for the future — has sprung from the mind and from the dreams of your father."

Caius coughed and cleared his throat in embarrassment and would have demurred, had I not cut him short in mid-cough.

"No, Caius, you may not interrupt and you may not dismiss my words. Everything I say is true and there is no way you can escape retribution for your plannings and machinations, so you might as well not try."

Picus spoke for his father and for himself. "Publius Varrus," he said, "your words make me both proud and humble that I should be my father's son."

"Good. That is as it should be. In both instances. Pride is a strong man's sword, and a little humility does no man harm."

We had drawn abreast of Picus's first man who sat stiffly at attention, reining his horse in hard, his naked blade shining in the sun as he stared straight ahead, his motionless eyes fixed on infinity as his Legate rode past. Both Picus and I had drawn ourselves up into our formal stance as we approached him and we remained that way, our bearing a reciprocal tribute to the guards themselves, until we reached the gates at the top of the hill.

The noise there was unbelievable — a cacophony of horns, whistles and cheers of welcome for the bride and her escort. The inside of the fort was brightly and appropriately decorated for the day's festivities. Long bolts of brightly coloured cloth hung from the walls, and Ullic's Celts, brightly clothed at the best of times, were all bedecked in their gaudiest finery. The entire scene was a maelstrom of colours. My ears picked out several sources of music of one kind or another, and off to my left I saw the gigantic brown awesomeness of a dancing bear. Then, as the lead party started to enter through the gates, someone began to beat out a slow, welcoming cadence on the Celtic war-drum, and others took up the beat, the tempo increasing gradually and steadily until the very air throbbed with the rhythm of the percussion. These were the drums that had frightened the lights out of Caesar's men four hundred years earlier, and their effect had lost nothing in power over the centuries. Yet they looked deceptively flimsy, being light, easily carried affairs, nothing more than a dried skin stretched over a wooden hoop a handsbreadth deep, reinforced by two cross-braces that formed a handhold at their junction in the centre of the drum. Struck with either end of a short wooden stick, which these people wielded with amazing dexterity, these devices produced an inordinate amount of fierce, martial, reverberant and threatening noise.

Ullic, grand showman that he was, stood waiting to greet us, surrounded by his family, his chiefs and his Druids, the latter dressed in either all-black or all-white robes, depending on their function. Ullic himself was something to behold, blazing with colour, crusted with jewellery and wearing on his head the symbol of his kingship, the huge eagle helmet I had last seen at our first meeting at Stonehenge. His men had built a platform for him and for his party so that they stood head and shoulders above the surrounding crowds. Uric stood on his father's right, a proud young man wearing a simple tunic of blue cloth tied with a crimson sash and trimmed with a Greek pattern of golden squares. His legs and feet were encased in fur-lined boots with golden studs, and on his head he wore a ceremonial helmet adorned with the horns of what must have been a mighty ram, for they curled downward to rest on his shoulders.

Caius, Picus and I kneed our horses directly to the space left clear for the approach of the bridal party and halted directly in front of Ullic's dais, leaving enough room between Caius and me for Veronica's litter, and between Caius and Picus for Luceiia's chair. The remainder of our people spread out on both sides of us in good order, so that when the bride and her party entered the enclosure of the fort they were able to make their way unhampered to their proper place.

It took about one-third of an hour for our entire group to wend its way into position, but at last everyone was in place and Ullic raised his right arm high, commanding an instant silence, since all eyes were already upon him. He allowed the silence to grow to a point just short of discomfort before he began to speak, and then he welcomed everyone, singling out Caius Britannicus as the prime reason for the wedding being celebrated here in this place and enumerating the achievements of the man that everyone present there had grown to admire, if not to love. After a few minutes of this, and amid a growing tide of approbation, Caius raised his own hand in protest and Ullic stopped.

"You wish to speak, my friend?"

It is amazing how dense a silence a thousand or more people can generate from time to time. Cay's voice rang into the stillness clearly.

"King Ullic, we are here this day to witness the joining of your son in marriage to my niece. These two young people are the celebrants. Eulogies are appropriate for them only, today. May we not come to the ceremonies directly?"

Ullic barked a single roar of laughter. "Hah! So be it! You have the right of it, old friend, we are here for a wedding. Then, by all the gods at once, let us have one. Sound the horns!"

Amid a roar of approval from everyone assembled, a party of Celtic hornsmen began to blow in what was obviously a carefully rehearsed series of calls involving some six or seven different sizes and sounds of horns. I had never heard the like of it; the sounds lacked the brazen clarity of our Roman trumpets and cornua, but the effect was stirring. As soon as the last notes had sounded in the sequence, another party — of drummers this time — beat out an intricate rhythm, which was followed by the same horn sequence, played this time at double the tempo, and followed again by the drummers. At the climax of this second, exciting drum sequence, Bishop Alaric entered the courtyard from the direction of the new Council chamber, whose great, thatched roof dominated everything else in the place. He was accompanied by his acolytes, Father Phonos and our own Father Andros, and by a group of Ullic's Druids, one of whom was robed entirely, from head to foot, in a cowled garment of royal red.

This procession approached the dais and stopped directly at the centre, between Ullic and Uric and Caius and Veronica, and Alaric himself and the red-robed Druid mounted the dais and turned to face the assembly. The silence was complete, and it held more than a little tension mixed with the anticipation. There was a sense of great occasion here, a feeling of portent, for as Caius Britannicus had pointed out to everyone and anyone willing to listen, this was no ordinary marriage.