Free Death of an Empire by M. K. Hume Page B

city had learned to trust nothing and no one in this brutish country. The legions had brought order and prosperity to Cambrai, but ambitious kings now squabbled over the proceeds of peace.
    Once again, the travellers saw the evidence of the burning of the enemy dead, as at Tournai, but the patch of scorched earth here was larger in size, the charred remains less scrupulously honoured and the mute possessions of dead warriors less carefully sifted. Myrddion gathered that Cambrai had resisted her rapists, and guessed that the enemy had taken time to ensure that she paid terribly for her impudence. Long before they reached the shattered gates, the stench of swollen corpses, burned meat and hot, cracked stone warned the healers that there would be nothing left alive within.
    ‘Our watcher is still with us,’ Finn Truthteller hissed as he caught a glimpse of telltale sunshine reflecting on metal at the edge of the tree line.
    ‘Aye,’ Myrddion murmured. ‘He’s been keeping pace with us for days, but he’ll approach when he’s good and ready.’
    Finn Truthteller stared at his master with the intensity of a mature warrior who is faced with an enigma. Master Myrddion was so young, barely old enough to take a sharp knife to hisbeardless cheeks, but the lad possessed that rare quality of inscrutability, coupled with the patience of wild things that wait on the edges of dark places for any unwary animal or man who intrudes on their domain. Observing his master’s raven hair, and the black eyes that seemed to trap the light so effectively, Finn could understand why King Vortigern had been prepared to sacrifice a younger Myrddion to appease the gods and the spirits of the earth. Sometimes, Myrddion frightened Truthteller with those obsidian eyes that saw everything and revealed nothing.
    Impatiently, the warrior flexed his stiff shoulders in rejection of such superstition. His master was clever beyond measure and old beyond his years. If the lad could wait to discover what threat the forest sheltered, then so could he, a grown man and a wounded soul whom only Myrddion had tried his best to heal.
    ‘The town appears to be intact, but the smell is vile. If the Huns are the enemy, they leave nothing alive to betray it.’
    ‘But Cambrai resisted. So let’s see the worst. Perhaps someone still lives!’ Myrddion pulled his leather satchel onto his shoulder as Finn flicked the reins on the flanks of the horses.
    Cambrai could have been Tournai’s twin. The gates had been ripped apart by battering rams and fire, and a great slaughter had taken place within the narrow streets that led directly to the gates. On this occasion, the enemy hadn’t bothered to pile the citizens into mounds, but had looted them where they fell. Even so, Myrddion could imagine the desperate last battle fought in the alleyways and narrow twisting lanes of the town as old men, boys, and even women had used whatever makeshift weapons were to hand. For the victors, the sacking of Cambrai had been hard won. Every street, no matter how narrow, had been taken with the loss of many men, while the defenders appeared to have perished trying to slow the inexorable advance. As Finn and his master picked their way through the smashed wood, burned stones andheaped bodies, they found the smell of the dead and rotting corpses so nauseating that they were forced to tie cloths across their noses and mouths.
    ‘Who were the people who defended this place?’ Myrddion asked Finn Truthteller, struck as he was by the height, the breadth of shoulder and the greying yellow hair of many of the corpses that lay near the inner gates.
    Finn shrugged and whistled piercingly to Cadoc to catch the attention of the scarred Celt. ‘You speak the language of a sort, Cadoc. Have you heard anything about these men who fought to the death here?’
    ‘I believe the defenders of this town were Franks, master,’ Cadoc replied as he drew his wagon to a halt just inside the gates where the