Chapter 8

Frace filled the wooden beaker with water from the loch and poured it over the young girl’s hair. The plant dye that he had used to turn her brown hair blonde washed out easily enough and after several more beakers of water her hair was back to its natural state. Frace turned the girl to face him and held her gaze.

“You will forget that any of this happened,” he ordered her. “Now return to what you should be doing.”

The girl wandered off without looking back. Frace had chosen her because she had roughly the same body shape and length of hair as Aelfi. The night before, Aelfi had strongly resisted his compulsion to have sex with him and he had needed to find a substitute. It had happened before – the resistance to the spellbound drug – usually when a subject had a very strong reason not to comply. Aelfi was clearly committed to his son and the idea of having sex with anyone else was deeply repugnant to her.

He smiled to himself as he remembered that Aelfi had accepted the compulsion to steal Sardi’s staff – although he had worded his order differently, merely telling her to take the staff and hide it. Frace had guessed right when he thought the relationship between the two youngsters would allow Aelfi to take the staff. He had her take the staff off into the woods to hide it somewhere. He had also given Aelfi the compulsion to wander in the woods all morning so that she was safely out of the way whilst he used his substitute to fool Sardi. His ruse had worked, he knew, as he had spotted Sardi at the door of the hut while he was fucking the young body-double.

“I’ve broken him,” Frace thought. “Losing his precious staff should harm his abilities and having his little girlfriend seemingly betray him will leave him mentally unbalanced. I believe he’ll welcome the idea of going north as he won’t be able to even look at me after what he thinks I’ve done.”

Aelfi found Maeve huddled inside the broch, still crying and shaking at the departure of her only child. Maeve looked up when Aelfi entered the hut and her expression hardened.

“He’s gone!” she snapped. “He’s gone for good. He packed his things in a bag and left. How could you? How could you do that to him?”

The sinking feeling that Aelfi had felt when viewing the scene in her own hut now returned.

“He saw you having sex – fucking! – with his own father, my mate!” Maeve spat. “Sardi knew that there was nothing left for him here after seeing that.”

The blood drained from Aelfi’s face and her legs gave way under her. The shock of what Maeve was telling her was perhaps the only thing that stopped her from breaking down completely.

“I promise I did no such thing,” she told Maeve. “I saw your mate fucking a young girl that looked a bit like me. The other druid, Fraticus, was having sex with my mother beside the other two. Sardi saw what your mate wanted him to see, but it wasn’t me!”

“Do you swear it?” asked Maeve, her tears drying up.

“Of course I swear it!” Aelfi replied indignantly. “I would never do such a thing to Sardi.”

“Then Frace staged all of this?” Maeve questioned.

“I believe so,” said Aelfi. “Frace has been hurtful to Sardi for most of the summer.”

“Well, he’s got what he wanted,” sighed Maeve. “Sardi has left Lindum forever.”

Aelfi rose to her feet, a new look of determination on her face.

“I will find him!” she swore. “I will find him and make him see the truth.”

Sardi wandered blindly along the drove road heading north. He wasn’t even conscious of where he was going. His mind was in turmoil but somehow his body continued to put one foot in front of the other.

“How could she do that to me?” he asked himself. “I thought she loved me. I thought we would be together forever, soul mates. She was my sunshine, my moon and my stars. Now I have nothing.

“And my father! Betrayed by him too. He did this on purpose to hurt me. I know it! Of all the people that he could pick to have sex with, he chose Aelfi.”

“Freedom my staff gone too. Abandoned by the Heralds. What is there left?”

Sardi snapped out of his daze and looked around him. He recognised the drove road and from the position of the sun knew he was walking north.

“I will not give up! I still have my vision of what Scotland could be and that is worth more than anything else. I will continue to fight for that and the best place to start is in the north where the Romans are trying to establish themselves.”

“My plan to learn all that I can of the ways of the druids is a good one. Perhaps I can apprentice myself to Galni. That would kill two birds with one stone. Yes, I can keep a close eye on what he is up to and have him teach me all that there is to know about being a druid.”

With a firm plan of action in mind, Sardi walked with more purpose. He could still feel the hole where his heart had been torn from him, but he had a very good reason to carry on – even if it was alone.

“We are proud of the choices that you have just made, little deer, and who said that you had to be alone?” asked the voice of the Boar inside his head.

“Where have you been?” demanded a surprised Sardi.

“Sometimes the challenges that life throws at us have to be faced alone; it is what makes us what and who we are. This was one such challenge,” said the Boar “Oh, by the way, I think you are walking away from some things that are dear to you.”

“My staff was stolen, I’ve no idea where it might be,” Sardi replied.

“Freedom cannot be stolen, nor can it be lost,” the Boar replied. “You just need to want it badly enough and you shall have your ‘Freedom’.”

Sardi recognised the clever play on words that the Boar had used – equating the name of is staff with the desire of his people to be free of the Romans.

“Could it be that easy?” he asked himself.

“Why don’t you try it and see?” the Boar suggested.

Sardi stopped walking and turned to look back towards Lindum. He held his arms up and called loudly.

“COME TO ME FREEDOM!”

Lindum had to be several miles away and he expected to have to wait a while before the staff would appear – if it ever did. To his astonishment the intricately carved and metal banded staff appeared in his right hand immediately.

“By the Gods!” Sardi exclaimed. He heard the Boar chuckling inside his head.

Sardi turned and began walking north once more, his sadness lifting a little.

“You’re still missing something,” the Boar said firmly.

“There is nothing else back there that I need,” Sardi responded sadly.

“Do not lie to yourself!” said the Boar. “You still love her and you know it. Watch closely, little deer. Do not be so hasty, or you really might end up losing her.”

Images suddenly appeared in Sardi’s mind. He was back at the door of Aelfi and Alma’s hut and there was his father’s cock driving deeply into his friend’s pussy. Sardi tried to force the images away; he did not want to re-live this horror.

“NO!” he screamed out loud.

“Look closely, little deer. You should never doubt her,” the Boar ordered him.

Sardi had no choice. He couldn’t shake the image of his father and Aelfi from his mind. Then the point of view of the images slowly began to change and Sardi found himself now looking at the scene from in front of Aelfi. She lifted her head to scream in ecstasy and he saw...

“It’s not Aelfi!” he screamed internally. “A trick! It was all a trick set up by Papa to fool me! That bastard!”

“She will never knowingly betray you,” said the Boar. “Even using drugs on her, Frace could not get her to do that with him.”

“He used drugs on her?” Sardi asked in horror.