by George S. Walker
in Issue 141, October 2023
It was a rainy summer evening as Cerridwen led Lucius and the centurion into the abandoned mine. The Briton’s red hair, plaited in braids, slapped against the dirty wet wool of her tunic, stretched over her pregnant belly. Lucius was proud the centurion had chosen him, and looking forward a bit of adventure after months of dreary camp life. He and the centurion wore armor in case they encountered brigands. The heavily-muscled centurion was intimidating enough without armor, but Lucius was beardless and scrawny at seventeen. The centurion had belittled him: “a child in armor.” But his scabbard held a short sword he kept sharpened with flat river stones.
“How far down?” asked the centurion. His deep voice echoed in the tunnel.
“Ten, twenty polts.” Cerridwen spoke vulgar Brittonic Latin, hard to understand. She was about Lucius’ age and carried a sputtering torch that smelled of boar fat.
The centurion shook his head. “How many paces?”
“Ten, twenty polts.”
The centurion cursed her in Roman Latin, but the curses had no more effect on her than the rain had. Other than Cerridwen’s belly, she looked gaunt. Lucius had offered her some of his own rations, which she’d accepted warily.
“Do you have family?” he asked.
She shook her head no. He wondered if she even knew whose child she was carrying. Lucius’ own family had been scattered by barbarian raids in Gaul. Unable to find his parents or sister, he’d joined the Roman army. That wasn’t an option for Cerridwen. A hundred legionarii were occupying her town for the night. The townsfolk complained, but based on Lucius’ experience in Gaul, their future would be worse after the Romans left. The legionarii were a hundred leagues south of Hadrian’s Wall, retreating toward Oceanus Britannicus. The warlords from the north were coming.
Legend claimed the mine held treasure, yet the Britons in town were afraid to enter. All except this woman they’d pushed toward the Romans as if anxious to be rid of her. Now, bronze coins jingled in a small leather pouch tied to her left wrist: payment from the centurion. Lucius wondered how much the coins would be worth once Roman Britain fell to the warlords. She’d have been better off making offerings to the goddess Juno, but the Britons didn’t believe in Roman gods. Since Cerridwen knew about the treasure in the mine, why didn’t she just take it? Why had the townsfolk cast her out? Lucius didn’t tell the centurion his qualms. He suspected the only reason the centurion had chosen him was because Lucius was afraid of him. If the man kept the treasure for himself, he knew Lucius wouldn’t tell.
“Have you actually seen the treasure?” demanded the centurion.
Cerridwen replied in a quiet voice, “I’ve seen the strongbox.”
“You didn’t open it?”
“I’m not strong enough.”
“We are,” said the centurion.
Lucius wished he’d known they were going to break into a strongbox. He’d have tried to get mallets and chisels from a blacksmith. If they couldn’t carry it out, they might have to hike all the way back to town for tools. In the rain and dark.
The tunnels were crudely dug, not engineered like a Roman mine. The walls had been unevenly chipped away by picks and shovels. There were no support timbers to brace it, and they’d bypassed collapsed sections of the mine. Water and loose stone covered the floor. The townsfolk said this had been a copper mine, not gold or silver. The air in the tunnel didn’t have a metallic odor, and Cerridwen’s torch didn’t reveal obvious copper veins in the stone. It wasn’t a rich mine, so what was the treasure?
The tunnel branched into narrower passages as they descended. Their sandals splashed in muddy water, the only sound in the darkness. Lucius had wanted to bring a second torch, but if he’d spoken up, the centurion would ridicule him for being afraid of the dark. Lucius wasn’t afraid of the dark beneath the open sky, but it was different in the confined passages of the mine. Cerridwen and her unborn baby were at the men’s mercy, yet if something happened to her or her torch, could they find their way out?
“Why is it down in the mine?” Lucius asked.
“So no one brings it out,” said Cerridwen.
“We will,” said the centurion.
Once they had the treasure, the legionarii would lead the retreat, back on their longships to Gaul.
Cerridwen squeezed through a passage ahead, careful not to singe herself with the sputtering torch. The rivulets of water had chosen a different tunnel, so there was less danger of slipping and falling here. The centurion grunted as he wriggled through after her. Smoke from the torch stung Lucius’ eyes, but he crawled through easily, even with his sword and scabbard.
Cerridwen glanced back to make sure they’d gotten through before leading them deeper. The tunnel below wasn’t much wider than the gap they’d squeezed through, and Lucius suspected the mine would peter out soon. If the miners had discovered richer ore down here, they’d have widened the tunnel to bring it out in baskets.
“Why did they abandon the mine?” he asked. “No more ore?” It didn’t look like there’d ever been much.
“They were afraid,” said Cerridwen.
Lucius doubted the Britons were afraid of cave-ins. That was a hazard of every mine. They were afraid of something else. “But you’re brave.”
“Poor,” she muttered.
“And you have Roman soldiers to protect you.”
She shook her head. No one in Britain was counting on the Romans anymore.
The tunnel widened out ahead – no, to Lucius’ surprise, he saw it opened into a huge cavern. Cerridwen raised her torch to reveal a vault at least a hundred paces across. The dancing flames barely lit the far wall. The roof above them was ten times the centurion’s height, and the slap of their sandals on rock echoed in the vast space. This was a natural cavern with smooth stone, not chiseled by miners. The air felt warmer, and a faint breeze blew from somewhere ahead. It smelled like forest, not stone. How could there be a passage to forest, this far down?
“There,” said the centurion. He pointed to the middle of the cavern.
The strongbox looked like it was made of wood, not iron as Lucius had expected. It was square, about three feet on each side. With luck, they could simply drag it out. The centurion took the torch from Cerridwen and strode across the cavern.
As he walked away from them with the torch, Lucius’ eyes adjusted to see tiny glowing forms darting and hovering through the air high above. Not fireflies; they were the size of bats. He couldn’t focus on details but heard tiny cries like creatures protecting their nests. Cerridwen didn’t seem surprised, so she must have seen them before.
“What are you waiting for?” demanded the centurion. “Get over here!”
Lucius’ sandals slapped on the cavern floor as he hurried to join him. The flame of the torch illuminated a strongbox constructed of stout, well-planed boards. Symbols were carved deep in the wood on top, and the grooves were filled with dust. It must have been here for years.
Lucius didn’t know how to read, but he knew the centurion could. “What does it say?”
The centurion shook his head. “Not words.”
“It reads, ‘Waiting for the gift to come,’” said Cerridwen.
The centurion gave a mocking laugh. “Girls can’t read. These aren’t even letters of the alphabet.”
Even if she could read, the phrase made no sense. What gift? The treasure in the box was a gift waiting for the Romans, not the other way around. Lucius didn’t see any hinges. No lock, either. Who’d placed this here, and why?
The centurion shoved, grunting as he tried to tilt the strongbox. It didn’t budge. “Give me your sword.”
The man had his own gladius, but Lucius knew better than to argue. He pulled the short sword from his wood and leather scabbard, and the centurion held out the torch for Cerridwen to take. The centurion jammed the tip of Lucius’ sword into a narrow gap beneath the boards of the lid. Bracing himself, he shoved forward with all his weight, but the tip of the gladius went in only a couple inches. The strongbox itself didn’t move. That must mean the strongbox was filled with gold! But that hope was dashed when he saw the box was built on a stone foundation.
“We could use both our swords,” he said.
The centurion barked a laugh. “You’re too weak.”
Lucius burned with humiliation, not looking at Cerridwen. The centurion was a strong man, and he heaved again and again, grunting as he drove the sword into the gap. When he pried upward, the lid of the strongbox creaked but barely moved. Lucius watched, afraid his sword would snap. He silently cursed the centurion. Now he knew why the man hadn’t used his own sword.
The centurion yanked out the sword, then thrust it into the crack a few inches away. He did it over and over, thrusting and prying as he moved around the strongbox, wheezing from exertion.
Cerridwen was still looking up, entranced by the lights flitting through the air. There must be a dozen. They circled high above the strongbox as if anxious about the centurion. Lucius felt uneasy, too. This was a place the townsfolk were afraid of, and he knew how deep underground he was. He decided he hated mines.
“What are they?” he asked her.
The word she replied – farrier? farrow? – wasn’t a Latin word.
“Is this a temple?” he asked.
“There’s no blood-stained altar,” panted the centurion.
The gap between the strongbox and the lid gradually widened, exposing the nails holding it. The wood creaked louder as the nails pulled free one by one. The centurion handed Lucius back his sword, gripped the edge of the lid, bent his knees, and heaved. With a final groan, the lid came free, falling to the stone floor with a heavy thud.
“Torch, girl,” demanded the centurion.
Cerridwen brought it closer.
Lucius gave an involuntary gasp at what he saw. Instead of gold and jewels, the torch revealed a small body.
The centurion swore. “It’s a coffin!”
But it wasn’t. A tiny baby lay curled on its side, wrapped in the finest white fabric Lucius had ever seen. The baby looked alive, not a moldy, rotting corpse. Still, Lucius shuddered. Even a poor treasure would have been better. He couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Its eyes were closed as if asleep, and it had red hair like Cerridwen’s. Was it breathing? He wasn’t sure. His own breath had grown ragged, his heart pounding.
“Where’s the treasure?” demanded the centurion.
Cerridwen pointed to the infant in the strongbox.
“It’s a tomb, not a treasure!” The man reached out, grabbed her thin wrist, and yanked free the coin pouch.
She cried out as it burst, bronze coins jingling across the cavern floor. When he let go of her, she crouched down and began picking up the coins. She kept one eye on him, and her arm holding the torch shook. Her pregnant belly made it hard to walk in a crouch.
“She didn’t know what was in the strongbox,” Lucius offered in her defense. “She told us that.” He was afraid of this place, and too cowed by the centurion to help her pick up the coins.
“I didn’t pay for a corpse!” said the centurion. He turned back to look in the box and pulled away some of the fabric. “It has a necklace: gold and jewels after all!”
“The gods aren’t kind to grave robbers,” croaked Lucius.
“But the gods aren’t in the mine, are they? And no one needs jewelry on the other side of the Styx.” The centurion reached into the box. As he did, the lights swooped down toward him. They were close enough now that tiny wings, arms, and legs were visible. Their cries grew louder. He tried brushing them away from his face, but his hands seemed to pass right through them.
He straightened up. “The necklace doesn’t have a clasp. No sense breaking it. I’ll just cut the head off.”
“No!” Cerridwen surged to her feet, dropping the torch.
As the centurion drew his sword, the lights darted at his face in a frenzy.
Cerridwen collided with Lucius, pulling his sword from his scabbard before he realized what she was doing. He stumbled off balance. She charged the centurion. He turned toward the commotion, blinded by the lights in front of his face. With Lucius’ gladius gripped in both hands, Cerridwen thrust upward with all her strength, stabbing the centurion in the throat just above his armor.
The man swung his sword, knocking hers from her hands. It clattered to the stone floor. The centurion coughed, blood spurting from his windpipe, gagging on his blood as he staggered, still blinded by the lights. His sword fell from his hand, and he dropped to his knees, choking.
Lucius stood frozen in shock, watching the centurion collapse on the cavern floor. This warrior, who’d killed dozens of men in battle, had just been struck down by a scrawny girl. Lucius, frightened by this place, had been caught off guard, and she’d used his own sword to slay the man.
Cerridwen panted, hands on her knees as the centurion took his last breath. Then she stepped over him, reached into the box with both hands, and lifted out the infant. The fabric fell away, revealing delicate wings that slowly spread like a butterfly’s from its back. The child had wings the same color as Cerridwen’s hair. As she cradled it, tiny hands reached up to caress her face. The glowing creatures floated in the air around her, trilling softly. Cerridwen rocked the baby and cooed, the first time Lucius had ever seen her happy.
Sounds came from the far end of the cavern, a tunnel deeper into the mine: the beating of wings. Hordes of them.
“Cerridwen,” he gasped.
She turned, staring at him. It wasn’t a welcoming look.
Whatever gods watched over this place, they weren’t his. He grabbed the torch and his bloody sword and fled to join the Roman retreat.
©October 2023, George S. Walker
George S. Walker has sold stories to Abyss & Apex, On Spec, The Colored Lens, Electric Spec and in the anthologies Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism & Beyond, Bibliotheca Fantastica, The Best of Abyss & Apex (Vol. 2 & 3), among other places. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.