Hades Daughter (44 page)

When her eyes came back to him, Brutus raised a hand over his head and very slowly waved it back and forth several times, then pointed upriver.

We greet you, and mean you no harm. We continue forwards.

The woman stared, then, very slowly, lifted one open-palmed hand to shoulder height, acknowledging the message.

“I wonder how many more villages we will pass?” Corineus murmured.

Two more, as it turned out, before they approached a site Brutus thought suitable for landing.

In similar fashion to the first village, the people of the next two villages tended to panic at first sight of the ships, then they would slow and stare as they—and their headwoman—realised the foreigners meant no harm.

Not yet, at least.

None of them moved to attack, and Brutus dared to hope that his Trojans would remain unmolested.

At noon the leading Trojan ship moved around a
bend in the river—although still wide, the main channel of the river was now growing considerably shallower and Brutus knew they’d need a suitable site before long—and found the landscape flattening to flowery meadows on either side of the riverbanks, the woods sparser, and, on the northern bank, a very large and relatively clear meadow surrounded by marshes and tidal mud flats.

Behind the clear area rose a hill topped with a rocky outcrop. The riverside flank had a gradual incline, but on every other side the hill fell away steeply.

It would be a good defensive location: with all the Trojan men to hand, and all the wood surrounding them, Brutus knew he could build a wooden palisade within a week. It wouldn’t be large enough to contain all the Trojan camp sites…but with luck it would be large enough for them to huddle within should there be need for protection.

He turned about slowly on the deck, studying the surrounding landscape.

It was good. The site itself was large, relatively level, high enough to escape any tidal fluctuations in the river level, and with a covering vegetation that would soon be cleared away for a camp site. There was a stream…no, three streams emptying into the river at a close distance. The woods in the nearby hills were full of game. There
were
too many trees close to where Brutus wanted a camp set up, a potential hiding place for attackers, but again the thousands of able-bodied men could clear those within a day or two.

And the riverbank at the foot of the clearing was wide and broad enough for a score of ships to unload at the same time.

It was unlikely that he could find a better spot in time for them to disembark before nightfall.

He nodded, smiled at Corineus and Hicetaon. “This is the place,” he said.

D
isembarkation took many hours, and it was not completed until very late that night. Oarsmen manoeuvred ship after ship to the beach where strong men waited with ropes to haul them partway on to the sand. They were helped by a good high tide, and by a sharp drop into the river so that the ships found it easy to move to the beach. Partly weary, partly wary, shipload after shipload of people clambered down to the dry land, hauling out their possessions, carrying struggling sheep and goats and children, and standing, once landed, to stare about at this land to which Brutus had brought them.

Brutus’ first task was to establish a secure perimeter about the landing area and the hill that rose behind it. The first several hundred people to disembark were warriors, swords drawn, fanning out to scout the woods that not only surrounded the landing site and the hill, but the bank on the other side of the river as well.

Brutus wanted no surprises.

Once he was certain the immediate area was secure, Brutus and his immediate sub-commanders—Corineus, Hicetaon, Assaracus and Deimas—took on the task of establishing a camp for the night, no easy task for some twelve thousand people. At best they could hope for campfires and enough space to allow
everyone to stretch out; over the next few days everyone would have to work as hard as possible to build temporary shelters.

As people milled, bustled, shouted, laughed and, occasionally, wept in the doing of their tasks, Brutus climbed to the top of the hill while it was still light. It was a broad-based hill, very high, its almost-level crown large enough for a moderate-sized fortress, and it commanded a good view of the surrounding countryside.

From the river the landscape had seemed to be composed of endless undulating and densely-wooded hills and from his vantage point atop the hill Brutus could see that the wooded hills extended for many miles in every direction. There were small patches of open land where diseased trees had fallen, but generally the forests looked almost impenetrable. In the very far west, however, Brutus saw that the hills levelled out into flat and mostly unwooded plains. Looking back towards the coast he could see a few twists of smoke rising from the riverside villages they’d passed, but there were no smoke trails rising from anywhere further inland. Brutus guessed that, unless word had spread about his fleet and fires had been doused, the only villages in the immediate area were on the river itself where transport was possible.

There were very obviously no large towns or fortresses within several days’ march at the least.

For the time being they were relatively safe.

Hicetaon joined him on the hilltop, puffing a bit after the steep climb, and for a few minutes they studied the landscape together, discussing what they would need to accomplish in order to build a secure camp site for the Trojans.

“And if this is not to be Troia Nova,” Hicetaon said, “what shall it be, then? What name will you give to this first Trojan settlement in the new land?”

Brutus gave a short laugh, caught by surprise. He thought a moment, then grabbed a knife from his belt and leaned down to a patch of damp moss-covered rock. He scraped industriously for a few minutes, then stood back to admire his handiwork:

Here I stand and here I rest. This place shall be called Totnes.

“Totnes?” Hicetaon said.

Brutus grinned. “When I was a toddler and still suckling at the breast of my nurse, she used to sing over me that I would be a great king and go to lands far distant. ‘Tis only fair I name this first landing spot after her—Totnes. Besides, the shape of this hill reminds me most particularly of her full breasts.”

Hicetaon roared with laughter, then sobered as he looked back to where another group of black-hulled ships were drawing up one by one to the landing beach. “All these years I travelled and fought with you, Brutus, I have never doubted that you were a capable and great man. But to see this, to see our fellow Trojans—so many thousands of them—brought out of misery and slavery to a new land to rebuild their pride…well…I have never realised how great you truly were.”

“The fighting is not yet done, my friend. If the Llangarlians refuse to accept us then the worst battle of all may yet be before us.”

Yet even as he said the words, Brutus was certain they were not true.
She
would have prepared the ground for their arrival.

By the time fires were lit and had roared back to cooking coals, and bands of hunters had returned with carcass after carcass of plump deer from the woods, it was near midnight, and people had only enough energy left to huddle by the nearest fire and eat what was handed out to them.

Brutus made sure that the ring of surrounding warriors were fed, and that others would relieve them after a few hours, before he sank down beside Cornelia, Aethylla—nursing both her own son and Brutus’ on different breasts—and Corineus who sat among a group of some thirty people around one of the fires. Everyone looked exhausted, and much of the food lay uneaten. Already over half of the people about the fire were asleep.

Cornelia reached out a hand and briefly touched Achates’ soft downy cheek, then looked to her husband who was finally managing to eat some food.

“What do we do?” she said, then waved a hand vaguely about. “Is this where we stay?”

“For the time being,” Brutus said about a mouthful of barely cooked venison, “but not permanently. We stay here, we rest, we regain our strength and while we do that, I seek out this MagaLlan and negotiate with her our permanent settlement.”

“And the Gormagog,” Corineus said, yawning. “Don’t forget Blangan said that the various Houses of Llangarlia deferred to
two
people, the Gormagog and the MagaLlan.”

“Where
is
Blangan?” Brutus said, suddenly realising she wasn’t in the group of people about this fire, nor any of the nearby fires.

Corineus nodded at the hill. “She said she wanted to see more of her homeland than just the nearby trees.”

Brutus put down what remained of his hunk of venison, and sighed. “I need to speak with her,” he said, and rose, his tired muscles and joints audibly creaking.

“You’re exhausted,” Cornelia said, seizing his hand. “Rest first, surely.”

He gave her hand a squeeze, then let it go. “No. Blangan knows more than anyone the inherent dangers of this land. I need to speak with her before I sleep…or else I shall
not
sleep.”

She turned as he approached, and he saw that she had been weeping.

“We need to speak candidly, Blangan,” Brutus said as he came to a halt by her side. “I have twelve thousand people to protect, and I have known since I first saw you that you were terrified of returning to Llangarlia. What is wrong? Why are you not overjoyed at coming back to your homeland?”

He dropped down to sit at her side. “Blangan, no more evasions. Answer my question. Should
I
fear, too?”

She turned her face away from him, back to the rolling forested hills. “Not as much as I.” She paused, thinking, then came to a decision. “I have been brought home to be killed, Brutus.”

“
What?
”

“Let me tell you in my own way, and to fill in some of the gaps in my story. What did Corineus tell you about me…that I left this land when I was fourteen, married to a merchant who died within six months, leaving me stranded in Locrinia where Corineus, the beloved man, offered me marriage?”

“Aye. And you told me later that you were forced into leaving this land. Why, Blangan? Why did they force you to leave?”

She sighed. “Because it suited them—”

“Who are these ‘them’?”

“My mother, Herron, who was the MagaLlan twenty-five years ago, and my father Aerne, who was the Gormagog. Maybe just my mother…I am not sure.

“I come from the most powerful House within Llangarlia, Brutus. The House of Mag. My mother was the MagaLlan, and I was conceived as her eldest daughter during the midsummer fertility rites. My
father was the Gormagog. I was not my mother’s heir, for that role would belong to my youngest sister…” She glanced at Brutus, wondering if he would remember what she’d told him of Llangarlian society during his time staying in her house in Locrinia.

“I understand. The heir to the Mother of any House is her youngest daughter, born of the wisdom of her maturity rather than the naivety and thoughtlessness of her youth. The younger is always considered the more capable and powerful child.” He paused. “Your youngest sister, your mother Herron’s heir, is Genvissa.”

“Ah, yes, Genvissa. She was only some eight or nine years old when my son was born, and while I can accuse her of much, I cannot accuse her of any complicity in my downfall. No, wait, Brutus, do not interrupt just here. I will talk more on Genvissa later.”

Blangan paused to take a deep breath, then continued.

“When I reached womanhood at thirteen I already had a younger sister, so I knew I would never be my mother’s heir. But as her first daughter to reach womanhood, I nevertheless had certain responsibilities. The most important of those was to conceive a child within my thirteenth year. This did not trouble me. I longed for my own child, and as I had been bleeding at the change of the moon for the previous eight moons, I knew I was physically capable of conceiving. It was just that…it was just that my mother, Herron, the MagaLlan, overrode my own choice of father for that child. She determined that I should conceive of a child by the Gormagog himself.”

“Your own
father
? That is allowed?”

“Under normal circumstances, no. But between the Gormagog and a daughter of the MagaLlan?” She shrugged again. “I protested, but my protests were ignored. Both the MagaLlan and the Gormagog were insistent. They said my child would be special.
Powerful.” She hesitated. “The Gormagog came to my bed one night, and there, despite my protests, he lay with me.”

She closed her eyes for a moment at the memory, and her shoulders stiffened. “I tried to fight him off, and then to close my womb to his seed, but whatever power I had was useless that night. Brutus…I don’t know, but there was
something
there that night that was so powerful that nothing could have stopped my father getting a child on me.

“And, oh, how tragic that was.”

“How so?”

Blangan told him of how, at that moment when she had felt her father’s seed spill into her womb, the Gormagog’s Og power had split in two, divided between the Gormagog himself and the son he had just conceived on his own daughter.

“This land depends on the combined power of Og and Mag, the union of the male and female, to remain in health. At that moment when the Gormagog’s power split in twain, Og’s power was virtually destroyed. This land might
look
rich and green to you, Brutus, coming as you do from an area less endowed, but it has been touched by blight.”

Brutus remembered what he’d seen earlier in the day, the patches within the forest where diseased trees had fallen.

“I understand,” he said. “With the union disrupted, the land dies?”

“It sickens, certainly. And I was, and shall always be, blamed for it. Og’s power had split, and even as my father lifted himself off my body, my mother the MagaLlan rushed into the chamber moaning and shrieking and tearing at her hair,” Blangan’s face twisted bitterly, “and shouting that I had cast a spell of darkcraft over both Og and this land. It was a disaster. There I was, weeping in pain and humiliation, there was my
mother, shrieking that I’d laid a dark enchantment on the land, and there was my father, jiggling, naked, up and down beside the bed and wringing his hands and staring open- and dribble-mouthed at me as if I were darkness incarnate.”