Prologue
February 386 AD
Northern Thracia
Death crawled across the land.
The wind roared, blasting snow across the sickle moon. Two Roman cavalry scouts shivered and clutched their woollen cloaks tight around their necks as they urged their weary mounts to plod on through the white drifts.
‘Gods below, I can’t feel my f-fingers,’ said one scout through chattering teeth, his beard stiff with ice.
The second, the tip of his nose blue, nodded briskly. ‘We’re surely finished with this patrol anyway – everything’s quiet out here.’
Both shot darting looks around the land. There were few signs of life, let alone trouble. In the distance hung a dull orange glow – torchlight from the nearest of the six Gothic settlements that studded this imperial territory.
‘Imagine what it’s like there,’ said the first scout. ‘Dry beds, roaring fires, meat roasting on spits, beer…’
‘And Goths,’ the second snorted. ‘No thanks. They don’t take kindly to the likes of us wandering into their villages. Our job is to patrol the lands around these six Haims and watch for bother.’
‘True,’ muttered the first. ‘Maybe we’re not going in there, but we do need to get out of this blizzard.’ He twisted in his saddle. ‘Commander Peregrinus,’ he called back to the officer riding in their wake, ‘permission to turn around. If we set south now, we might make it back to the imperial waystation before the worst of the night sets in.’
The officer, wreathed in cloak and hood, swaying in the saddle, did not respond. For a moment, the scout wondered if the man had died of the cold during the trek and they had failed to notice. He screwed up his eyes to try to see if the fellow was even breathing.
Suddenly, the officer’s fingers flexed on his reins, and two gentle coils of white vapour emerged from the shadows of the hood. The scout shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with the cold. ‘Commander Peregrinus?’ he called again, more timidly this time.
The officer’s attentions remained elsewhere, the hooded head sweeping slowly across the wintry wastes.
‘Pah, he’s not even listening,’ the second rider muttered under his breath: ‘What’s someone of his station doing out on a shit scouting mission with runts like us anyway?’
‘He arrived from the capital, and flashed a few impressive-looking seals. Not our scout squadron’s place to question him, apparently,’ shrugged the first, before blowing into his hands. ‘I’ll try again.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted this time: ‘Commander Peregrinus, permission to turn ba-’
Peregrinus held up a hand to cut him off. ‘Just a little further,’ the officer replied in a low burr, gesturing towards a stand of snow-heavy larches.
Peregrinus walked his grey mare towards the treeline, clumps of snow flicking up under the beast’s hooves. The woods mercifully shielded the small party from the wrath of the storm. He eyed the nearest larch trunks furtively, noticing a runic marking on the bark of one. The two scouts had wandered right past it. ‘Halt here, I need a moment,’ he said. Sliding from the saddle and plunging into the shin-deep snow, he stalked into the trees.
The two scout riders automatically dismounted too, each going for their sword hilts, eyes watchful as they made to follow him, suspecting that the officer had spotted signs of trouble.
Peregrinus’ faceless hood tilted a little and he spread his palms. ‘I need a moment… alone.’
The two riders looked vacant for an instant, then relaxed. ‘Ah, very good, sir,’ said one. The pair turned their backs to give him privacy.
Peregrinus paced on into the larch woods, where the roar of the winds grew muffled. The forest floor here was dry and snow-free, the bracken and twigs snapping under his boots. He passed another rune marking. Then a third.
The sound of a straining bowstring, behind, told him he need look no further. ‘That sounds like an almighty draw,’ he said, halting. ‘Are you expecting trouble?’
‘Turn around, Roman,’ a jagged voice hissed, ‘slowly.’
Peregrinus did as asked, turning as the young hunter stepped from the undergrowth, bow taut and trained on him. Warlike and cold, this is what the Goths of the Haims had once been like: wolves, not sheep, Peregrinus thought. The young man was bare-chested, legs clad in dark green lozenge-patterned trousers. He wore his hair in a spouting topknot, and his moustache hung in two braids either side of his grim line of a mouth. His bare torso was riddled with tribal tattoos, and one striking marking, near the heart, of a prancing stag.
The hunter eyed the shadows of Peregrinus’ hood, ill at ease. ‘You… you are him, yes? You are Peregrinus?’
One edge of Peregrinus’ mouth bent upwards slightly. ‘Yes, I am he.’
‘Why did you bring armed guards?’ the hunter snarled, glancing through the trees at the pair of Roman riders near the stand’s edge.
‘They are scouts. They think I came into the trees to empty my bladder. They don’t even know you are here,’ said Peregrinus, waving gently downwards with a pacifying hand. ‘You are safe.’
The hunter sneered, and relaxed his bow, but only a fraction. ‘I risked my life to cross over the river and come here. Tell me it was not for nothing.’
‘Oh, I can do better than that,’ said Peregrinus, reaching inside his cloak and producing a small wooden case, proffering it.
The young Goth opened the case and stared at the markings upon the wax slab within. ‘By Wodin…’
‘Aye,’ said Peregrinus, ‘now take that back across the river and to your lord in the north. Tell him that it is time to bring his multitudes south, to the empire’s edge.’
The hunter tucked the tablet case into the waist of his trousers and backed away, strapping his bow across his back. ‘May Wodin shine upon you, friend. The Silver Stag will be coming, soon.’
As Peregrinus watched him go, he toyed with the small bronze lion’s fang charm hanging around his neck. He thought back over what he had been asked to do: bring chaos down upon the Eastern Empire…
The faintest beam of starlight betrayed the edge of his lips within the hood, curving into a faint smile like a hunter’s bow.
‘Let it begin,’ he said in a gentle whisper.
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