The Lantern Bearers (book III) Read Online Free PDF

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    Aquila’s gaze lengthened out across the marshes in the wake of the galleys, and far out to sea he thought that he could still make out a spark of light. The stern lantern of a transport; the last of Rome-in-Britain. And beside him the beacon stack rose dark and waiting… On a sudden wild impulse he flung open the bronze-sheathed chest in which the fire-lighting gear was kept, and pulled out flint and steel and tinderbox, and tearing his fingers on the steel in his frantic haste, as though he were fighting against time, he struck out fire and kindled the waiting tinder, and set about waking the beacon. Rutupiae Light should burn for this one more night. Maybe Felix or his old optio would know who had kindled it, but that was not what mattered. The pitch-soaked brushwood caught, and the flames ran crackling up, spreading into a great golden burst of fire; and the still, moonlit world below faded into a blue nothingness as the fierce glare flooded the beacon platform. The wind caught the crest of the blaze and bent it over in a wave; and Aquila’s shadow streamed out from him across the parapet and into the night like a ragged cloak. He flung water from the tank in the corner on to the blackened bull’s-hide fire-shield, and crouched holding it before him by the brazier, feeding the blaze to its greatest strength. The heart of it was glowing now, a blasting, blinding core of heat and brightness under the flames; even from the shores of Gaul they would see the blaze, and say, ‘Ah, there is Rutupiae’s Light.’ It was his farewell to so many things; to the whole world that he had been bred to. But it was something more: a defiance against the dark.
    He vaguely, half expected them to come up from the town to see who had lit the beacon, but no one came. Perhaps they thought it was the ghosts. Presently he stoked it up so that it would last for a while, and turned to the stairhead and went clattering down. The beacon would sink low, but he did not think it would go out much before dawn.
    He reached the ground level; the moonlight hung like a silver curtain before the doorway, and he walked out into it and across the deserted fortress, and out through a postern gate that stood open, and away. He had the sudden thought that for the sake of the fitness of things he should have broken his sword across his knee and left the pieces beside Rutupiae Light, but he was like to need it in the time that lay ahead.

3
The Wolves of the Sea
     
    T HE posting-stations were still in existence, but to use them without a military permit cost money, and Aquila had never been one to save his pay, so it was upward of a week later when he came at last up the track from the ford, on an evening of soft mizzle rain. He saw the light in the atrium window and made for it, brushing the chill, spattering drops from the low branches of the damson tree as he mounted the terrace steps. He crossed the terrace and opened the atrium door, and stood leaning against the doorpost, feeling like a very weary ghost.
    Margarita, who would have been baying her head off at a stranger’s footfall before he was half-way up the valley, had risen, stretching and yawning her pleasure, and came padding across the tiled floor to greet him, with her tail swinging behind her. For an instant he saw the familiar scene caught into perfect stillness in the candle light as though it were caught in amber: his father and Demetrius with the chess board between them—they often played chess in the evenings, on a board with faint ridges between the ivory and ebony squares; Flavia sitting on the wolfskin rug before the low fire, burnishing the old cavalry sword that she had taken down, as she often did, from its place above the hearth. Only the look on their faces, turned towards the door, was not familiar; the blank, startled, incredulous look, as though he were indeed a ghost that had come back to them mired with the white chalky mud of his journeying.
    Then his father said,