The rain had eased by morning, though the ground still steamed where the storm had passed.
The Mist clung to the Chase like breath, thick and cold, rolling through the hollows where the Romans once marched proud. Taranis stood by the broken road, cloak heavy with water, hair plastered to his brow.
He could still see the ruts of cart wheels half-buried in mud Rome’s mark, carved deep into the land.
“Won’t last,” he muttered, toeing one of the stones. “Nowt they build ever does.”Byrin came up behind, shoulders hunched against the chill.
“They’ve gone, lord. Last cohort took the south road yestere’en. Fort’s empty now.”Taranis grinned, the kind of grin that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Aye, I know. Felt it in the wind. Empire’s breath cut short.”He knelt, pulling a scrap of bread from his pouch, laying it on the old stone. Where once the eagle banners stood. Then he poured a splash of mead beside it.
“For them as fought, an’ them as fell,” he said quiet-like.
“An’ for the land, what outlives us all.”Byrin shifted his weight.
“Spirit night, innit? Galan Gaeaf, like th’owd folk say. When t’dead walk an’ th’winds carry their names.”Taranis nodded, eyes on the fire they’d lit a low orange glow crackling through damp wood.
“Aye. Let ’em walk. Let ’em see what’s come o’ Rome. Maybe they’ll find peace in the storm’s breath.”One by one, the men came forward, tossing bits of bread, small charms, even blades into the flames.
Their offerings for their kin, for luck, for the year turning.
“Break the road,” Taranis said after a time. “Let the dead cross free. Rome’s way ends here.”The sound of stone splitting echoed through the trees like thunder.
Byrin wiped sweat from his brow. “Yow reckon we’ll be free now, lord?”
Taranis looked north, where the sky lightened just enough to show the edge of winter coming.
Free?” he said, voice low. “No mon’s ever free o’ summat storm, king, or ghost. But th’land’ll be ours again, leastways till next lot fancies it.” He turned toward the fire once more.
The wind caught it, scattering sparks into the mist like stars. Somewhere, a raven called deep and hollow. Taranis lifted his blade, resting it against his shoulder.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s feed the fire one last time, then go. Night’s drawin’ in, an’ spirits’ll be walkin’ soon.”Behind ’em, the last stretch of Roman stone cracked under hammer blows.
As steam was rising from the breaks like breath from a wounded beast.Taranis didn’t look back. He just walked, slow and steady, into the mist where thunder rolled soft and low, like the old gods stirrin’ in their sleep.
The rain hadn’t stopped for three days. It came in thin veils that clung to the heather and the men’s cloaks. whispering through the birch like ghosts that had never left the Chase.
Taranis knelt by the dying fire, sharpening the edge of his blade with slow, deliberate strokes. Each scrape of the stone was a prayer, though no priest would have known the words.
“Water’s risin’, lord,” said Caedric, glancing toward the ford. “River’s near burstin’. We’ll not cross ‘fore dark.”
Taranis looked up, eyes catching the faint shimmer of dawn through the fog. “Then we hold. The storm waits for no man, but we’ll not feed it needlessly.”
A murmur ran through the men tired, hungry, but loyal. They’d followed him from the salt marshes to the high woods, and not one had broken yet.
Byrin crouched beside him, rubbing at the scar along his jaw. “Word from the south. Roman riders out o’ Pennocrucium. A full cohort, maybe more. Marchin’ for the hill road.”
Taranis’ mouth twitched at the name Pennocrucium,. The Roman word for Penkridge, though no Stormborne had spoken it without spitting since the fort was raised.
“Let ‘em come,” he said quietly. “They’ll find nowt but mud, ghosts, and trees that whisper their names to the wind.”
Caedric chuckled darkly. “Aye, an’ if the trees don’t get ‘em, we will.”
They waited through the day as the rain thickened. Ravens wheeled low over the clearing, black against the iron sky.
By nightfall, fires burned low and bellies growled. But Taranis was restless the unease that came before the breaking of something old.
He walked to the ridge alone, where the land dipped toward the flooded ford. The air stank of wet earth and smoke from distant hearths.
He spoke softly, almost to himself. “Once, this road ran to Rome. Now it runs to ruin.”
A flash of lightning tore the sky open white veins across black clouds. In its light, he saw them: Roman scouts, three of them, creeping along the far bank, cloaks slick with rain.
Taranis smiled grimly. “So, the eagle still claws at the storm.”
By the time the thunder rolled, the first spear had already struck.
The fight was over quick steel on steel, mud and breath, the hiss of rain on blood.
When it was done, two Romans lay dead. The third crawling back toward the ford with half a helm and a broken arm.
Taranis knelt beside him. “Tell your centurion,” he said, voice low, “Pennocrucium belongs to the storm now.”
Taranis turned toward the woods. Where torches burned faint between the trees his men gathering, more arriving from the north and the marshes.
“Aye,” he said, voice steady. “Let ‘em all come. Rome’ll find no peace ‘ere. Not while the storm still breathes.”
The thunder rolled again, closer now, echoing through the Chase like an oath renewed. Somewhere in the distance, the old road cracked underfoot stone splitting where the spiral mark had been carved.
This chapter draws from the old Roman site of Pennocrucium (modern Penkridge), a key post along Watling Street. Local dialect echoes through “yow,” “nowt,” “lord” the living voice of the Black Country and Staffordshire’s borderlands. These stories honour the land itself where history and myth still meet in the rain.
The clang of steel echoed across the Roman training yard. The sun was still low, its pale light glinting off helmets and polished shields. Taranis moved like shadow and storm, his chains rattling as he fought against three centurions in succession.
Every strike he gave was measured, precise but every parry cost him pain. The iron bindings cut into his wrists, leaving a thin red line that deepened with each movement. He refused to yield.
Caelum stood at the edge of the sand pit. His tunic far too fine for this place a youth of maybe sixteen, bright-eyed and restless. His gaze never left Taranis.
“uncle Marcos,” he said quietly, turning to the older man beside him. “Can those chains come off him?”
Marcos didn’t answer at once. His face was lined from years in service, his eyes as sharp as the swords he trained with. “Chains are the only reason he’s still alive, Caelum,” he said finally. “Without them, some fool would call it fear instead of discipline.”
“But he’s fighting for us now.” Caelum’s voice carried, defiant. “For Rome, at least.”
In the pit, Taranis struck low, sweeping a soldier’s legs out from under him. Before turning the momentum into a twist that sent the next centurion stumbling backward.
The last one hesitated, shield raised, watching the way. Taranis breathed steady, like a man waiting for the storm to break.
The chain coiled once, twice then snapped out, wrapping the shield edge and dragging it down. The sound of the soldier hitting the ground was followed by silence.
Caelum took a step ahead. “He’s more Roman than half your men.”
Marcos shot him a warning look. “Careful, boy. You sound like your mother.”
The youth smirked faintly. “She says the same.”
When the training was done, the soldiers dispersed, muttering under their breath half respect, half fear. Taranis knelt in the dust, hands bound before him. Marcos approached, tossing him a canteen.
“You could have killed them,” Marcos said.
Taranis drank, the water streaking through the dust on his face. “You didn’t tell me to.”
Marcos grunted, half a laugh, half frustration. “One day, that mouth of yours will get you killed.”
“Maybe,” Taranis replied. “But not today.”
Caelum stepped closer, watching the bruised wrists, the marks the chains left behind. “You’re not like the others. You don’t fight for their gods.”
Taranis looked at him not unkindly. “No. Mine are older. And they don’t care who wears the crown.”
The boy tilted his head. “If I asked you to fight for me instead of Rome?”
Marcos snapped, “Enough!” But Taranis only smiled slow, deliberate, dangerous.
“Then, little wolf,” he said softly, “you’d better be ready to pay the price.”
Above them, thunder rolled faintly in the distance, though the sky was still clear.
Chains clinked like faint echoes of the arena’s roars, and the scent of iron still clung to the air. Taranis Storm lay awake in the half-darkness, eyes open to the stone ceiling, counting the rhythm of the guards’ boots. Rome slept, but the storm within him did not.
He had won his life for another day, but victory came at a cost. He had shown them what he was. Not a beaten barbarian, but something far more dangerous a man who learned.
At dawn, Marcos appeared at his cell door, shadowed by two guards. “You’ve made them talk,” Marcos said quietly. “The governor himself wants to see you.”
Taranis said nothing. The chains around his wrists jingled as he stood.
They led him through the inner halls of the fortress, where Roman banners hung stiff and silent. Soldiers stared as he passed some curious, others wary. A man who defied lions and bears without breaking was not easily forgotten.
In the governor’s chamber, incense burned thick. Maps of Britannia sprawled across a marble table, marked with red ink and small figurines of silver legions.
The governor, Decimus Varro, was not a cruel man by Roman standards merely pragmatic. “You are a spectacle,” he said, voice calm. “A man who fights like the gods themselves favour him. Tell me, Briton what drives you?”
Taranis met his gaze. “The same thing that drives Rome. Freedom.”
Varro smiled faintly. “Freedom is an illusion. Order is what endures.” He leaned forward. “Serve Rome, and you’ll live well. Defy us again, and your death will be remembered only as noise in the sand.”
Silence stretched between them, thick as the smoke that coiled from the brazier. Then Taranis spoke, slow and deliberate.
“I have no wish to be remembered. Only to finish what began in the storm.”
Varro frowned not in anger, but thought. “Then we understand each other.” He gestured to Marcos. “Train him. Watch him. If he can be tamed, he’ll fight for Rome. If not…”
Taranis was taken to the training grounds. Men waited there gladiators, soldiers, slaves who had survived too long to be careless. The air rang with the sound of iron on iron. Marcos tossed him a blade, better balanced than the last.
“Your real trial starts now,” Marcos said. “In the arena, you fought to live. Out here, you’ll fight to learn what Rome fears most a man they can not own.”
For the first time since his capture, Taranis smiled. The storm had found a new horizon.
The march south had stripped the world of meaning. Days blurred into rain and dust, dawn into dusk, until even time seemed shackled beside him.
By the time they reached the Roman fort near Corinium, Taranis Storm no longer knew how many nights had passed.
Only the rhythm of iron and boots. The murmur of Latin commands, and the distant echo of thunder in his bones.
The fort loomed ahead stone and order built upon the bones of chaos. Walls cut sharp against the grey horizon, guarded by rows of pikes and men who moved like clockwork. To Taranis, it felt wrong. A place without wind, without life.
Every sound was contained, controlled, sterile. Even the air smelled of discipline oil, smoke, and iron.
The storm in him recoiled.
They dragged him through the gates in chains. Soldiers gathered, curious and cautious. Some spat, others stared. Whispers followed him like ghosts daemon, barbarus, filius tempestatis. Son of the storm.
He smiled faintly. They weren’t wrong.
The cell they threw him into was little more than a pit of stone and shadow. The walls sweated damp, the floor slick with moss.
Above, a slit of light cut through the dark too narrow to touch the ground. He sat in the half-dark, wrists raw and heavy with iron. The silence of Rome pressed close, cold and absolute.
He did not pray. He waited.
When the footsteps came, they came as they always did measured, deliberate, Roman. The door creaked open, spilling lamplight like a wound across the floor.
Three entered.
A centurion, broad and cold-eyed, his crimson cloak pristine even in the grime. A scribe, pale and thin, clutching a wax tablet as if it were a shield.
And a woman cloaked, silent, her gaze as sharp as a blade. Her presence was wrong for this place; too poised, too knowing.
“Taranis of the Stormborne,” the centurion began, voice clipped and ceremonial.
“You stand accused of rebellion against Rome. The murder of imperial soldiers, and the disruption of trade along the Salt Road. Do you understand these charges?”
Taranis raised his head. His hair hung in dark, tangled strands, but his eyes were steady the colour of gathering thunder.
“I understand,” he said. “You’re afraid.”
The scribe faltered mid-stroke. The centurion’s jaw tensed. Only the woman’s expression remained still.
“You will answer with respect,” the Roman said.
“I already have.”
The blow came fast a strike across the face that turned his head with the sound of split skin.
Taranis straightened slowly, blood sliding from the corner of his mouth. His stare did not break.
The silence that followed was heavier than the hit.
The woman stepped forward. When she spoke, her accent carried the soft inflection of the East Greek, or something older.
“You fought well,” she said. “Even Rome admits that. There are ways to survive this. Serve us. Lead men under our banner. Take Roman land, a Roman name. You need only kneel.”
Taranis smiled faintly, the expression more weary than cruel.
“Rome offers gold to every man it fears. But my kind do not kneel. We weather.”
She tilted her head slightly. “Weather breaks.”
He met her eyes. “Only if it stops moving.”
For the first time, something flickered in her expression curiosity, maybe even a trace of respect.
The centurion, however, had no such patience. “Enough. He will be moved south to Londinium in three days. If he refuses Rome’s mercy, he will die as a slave.”
The woman’s gaze lingered on him a moment longer before she turned away. “He won’t bend,” she said quietly. “Not yet.”
They left him in the dark once more. The door slammed shut. The iron bolts fell into place.
Taranis exhaled slowly. The air was thick with the scent of blood and damp stone.
He tasted iron on his tongue metal, blood, defiance.
The light from above had shifted again, sliding across the wall like the movement of time itself.
He whispered, barely a sound. Not to gods, nor ghosts, but to the storm that still lived within his chest. It was quiet now, resting waiting. But it would come again. It always did.
When the night settled deep, the sound of rain returned, gentle against the stones.
In that rhythm, he found memory of his brothers’ faces in the torchlight. Drax’s steady eyes, Rayne’s trembling defiance, Draven’s silence. He had told them he would return. He intended to keep that promise.
The fort around him slept in its illusion of control.
But beyond the walls, clouds were gathering over the hills slow, patient, inevitable.
The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind him, sealing Taranis in a narrow cell. That smelled of damp stone and old iron.
The sound echoed like a distant drum . For a long moment, silence claimed the space as if daring him to break it. No guards, no soldiers, no jeers. Just the cold walls, the narrow slit high in the stone, and the faint, rhythmic pulse of the world beyond.
Taranis lowered himself onto the floor, legs folded, wrists free of chains but shackled at the ankles. The red marks from yesterday’s lashes ached like embers under his skin, a constant reminder of Roman cruelty. Yet he welcomed the pain; it was familiar, honest. Fear, he knew, had no place here.
A sliver of morning light cut across the cell. Illuminating dust motes that danced lazily like sparks from a distant fire. He watched them drift, tracing patterns he alone can read. Shapes of storm clouds, of wolves circling, of the great oak at the cairn.
Memory and instinct intertwined. Here, in solitude, he listened. Not just to the camp, but to the wind, the earth. Even the faint murmur of the brook beyond the palisade.
The door rattled. A shadow fell across the stone floor.
“Eat,” the guard said, tossing a small bowl of gruel onto the floor. He lingered, eyes sharp, measuring Taranis with a caution that bordered on fear. For a moment, the barbarian’s gray eyes met his, unyielding and calm.
The guard shifted uneasily and left. Taranis did not touch the food. Instead, he pressed his palms to the stone. The feeling its cold strength, imagining it anchoring him to the earth while the world beyond spun on.
Hours dragged. The sun arced across the sky outside, shifting the thin line of light that fell into the cell.
Taranis lay back, listening to every sound. From the distant clatter of armor, the muted shouts of guards. The whisper of wind through the treetops past the camp. Even the faint murmur of water in the brook he remembered from home. Each sound became a pulse, a heartbeat he measured and wait upon.
Isolation tested patience. It forced the mind inward, to a place where anger is contained and sharpened into strategy.
He closed his eyes, recalling every strike he had delivered. Every arrow loosed, every lesson of wind and rain and earth. That had been hammered into him long before Roman chains. The storm inside did not weaken it grew.
Marcos appeared at the bars as dusk began to fall, shackles clinking with each step. His one good eye flicked across Taranis’ face, noting the lines of exhaustion and defiance alike.
“Rome believes it can break you with walls and emptiness,” Marcos said quietly. “They do not know the storms from which you come.”
Taranis allowed a faint smirk. “Walls mean nothing to a storm,” he whispered, almost to himself, letting the words settle in the damp air.
Marcos crouched, lowering his voice. “Patience. They will test you again. Always. But storms… storms wait for the right moment to strike.”
From outside the cell, a shout echoed, steel striking wood. The centurion’s voice barked orders to the camp. Taranis’ ears picked out every detail. The rhythm of the soldiers’ movements, the soft shuffle of feet on mud, the clink of armor.
Observation became weapon as much as axe or bow. He cataloged every detail, storing them in the back of his mind.
Night fell, but the world did not sleep. Moonlight cut across the cell in a pale line. He flexed his ankles against the shackles, testing the limits. Each movement was a meditation, a rehearsal of strikes, sidesteps, and throws.
He imagined the centurion in the ring. The Roman soldiers flanking him, and planned counterattacks not just for survival, but for leverage.
The boy from the earlier day appeared at the doorway, clutching a piece of bread. He offered it quietly, eyes wide with tentative trust. Taranis did not take it, but he pressed his fingers briefly against the boy’s in silent acknowledgment. Even in chains and isolation, small acts of loyalty and courage mattered.
Taranis pressed his palms to the cold stone once more, listening to the pulse of the world beneath the camp. Every sound was a warning, every shadow a lesson. Rome had tried to crush him with crucifixion, lash, and intimidation. It had failed.
And as the night deepened. A low rumble of distant thunder rolled across the horizon, almost imperceptible at first, then gathering in strength. He smiled faintly, feeling it in his chest. Rome had not yet learned this: storms do not serve. They return.
Taranis closed his eyes, letting the cold stone and the rising wind guide him. He did not know when they would return to test him, or what cruelty they would devise next.
But one thing was certain: the storm had only paused. The reckoning would come. When it did, Rome would feel the force of a tempest it had tried to chain.
Dawn broke over the Roman camp like a blade drawn through fog. Grey light pooled across churned mud and sharpened stakes, catching on helmets and spearheads lined in perfect order.
The night’s rain had thinned to mist, and every droplet clinging to the leather tents shimmered like glass. The smell of smoke, sweat, and iron hung heavy in the air the scent of empire.
Taranis stirred. His back ached where the whip had bitten, skin raw beneath crusted blood. Yet the fire inside him burned brighter than pain the storm had not passed. It gathered.
Across from him, Marcos watched with his one good eye. The old fighter’s face a map of old wars and fading loyalties. “Rome wants to see storms broken,” he murmured, voice gravel-deep. “They’ll test you again today. But storms… storms don’t break. They shift. They wait.”
Taranis tilted his head, a faint smirk cutting through exhaustion. “And if they try?”
Marcos shrugged, rough amusement in his tone. “Then you show them the wind can cut as deep as the sword.”
Trumpets blared as the camp came alive in a heartbeat. Orders barked in Latin, armor clattered, horses stamped restlessly against their ropes. Two guards approached, eyes cold, hands twitching near the whips at their belts.
“On your feet,” one barked.
Taranis rose slowly. Chains clinked. His shoulders squared, each movement deliberate. The iron at his wrists and ankles was heavy a reminder that for now, he belonged to Rome.
Yet even bound, he carried the air of something untamed. The guards kept their distance, as though the storm in his eyes strike.
They led him toward a cleared space at the edge of the camp. A makeshift ring had been marked out with stakes and rope a place for training, punishment, or testing.
The centurion stood nearby, expression carved from granite. The boy from last night watched from behind a cart, pale fingers gripping the wood. He didn’t dare speak.
The centurion’s voice carried over the murmurs. “The barbarian survived crucifixion,” he said in clipped Latin. “He has killed Roman soldiers with sword, axe, and bow. Let us see if his storm can be harnessed or if it dies in the mud.”
Taranis met his gaze.
“Let him watch,” he murmured in Brythonic the tone sharp, almost ceremonial. The centurion frowned, not understanding, but the words left a chill in the air.
A guard offered him a practice axe, a short sword, and a small round shield. The weapons were worn, dulled, mockeries of what he once wielded but they would do.
He ran a thumb along the axe’s handle, testing the balance. The first bout began.
Two legionaries stepped into the ring, boots sinking into wet earth. They grinned, confident, soldiers against a chained barbarian. Taranis didn’t move until they struck.
The first swing came from the right clean, practiced.
He stepped aside, caught the motion with the rim of his shield, and turned it aside. The counter came low and fast a backhand with the axe that cracked into the soldier’s guard, splintering the wood. Mud sprayed. Gasps followed.
The second soldier lunged from behind. But Taranis ducked, dragging his chain taut to trip him, then drove an elbow into his ribs.
He rose without looking back. Breathing steady. Eyes cold.
He didn’t grin. He didn’t boast. He simply waited.
The crowd quieted. Even the centurion lowered his stylus for a moment.
“Again,” he said.
Another pair entered. Then another. By the third round, Taranis’s arms burned and his wrists bled where the chains bit into skin. Yet his movements only grew sharper measured, adaptive, each strike like thunder rolling closer.
Marcos leaned toward a watching soldier. “That’s no wild man,” he muttered. “That’s a storm that learned to fight back.”
By midday, silence had fallen across the ring. The spectators no longer laughed. They watched uneasy, enthralled, afraid.
The centurion finally raised a hand. “Enough,” he ordered. “Feed him. Let him rest. He will fight again tomorrow with steel.”
Taranis tilted his head, the faintest smirk touching his mouth. “Feed the storm,” he murmured, “and see what it grows into.”
The boy crept closer, slipping a crust of bread from his tunic and setting it by his side.
Taranis nodded once not gratitude, but recognition. A gesture between survivors.
As they led him away, one of the younger guards spoke quietly, incapable of concealing his curiosity. “They say you fought crucifixion itself and lived. What man survives that?”
Taranis turned his head slightly. The grey in his eyes caught the light. “Not a man,” he said. “A storm that forgot to die.”
Marcos barked a laugh, shaking his head. “Gods help Rome,” he said. “They’ve chained lightning and think it’ll sit still.”
When they finally removed his restraints for cleaning, Taranis flexed his wrists, skin bruised and torn. He studied the marks, then smirked.
“At least they removed the restraints,” he said quietly. “I grew up fighting in them.”
The centurion said nothing. The sky grumbled overhead thunder rolling distant but deliberate.
Then, softly, as if remembering something half-buried in blood and rain, Taranis spoke again.
“They put me up,” he said, eyes fixed north. “Nailed me in on the hill at Salinae”
Marcos frowned. “And yet here you are.”
Taranis flexed his fingers, old scars catching the light. “I ripped myself off,” he said simply.
Silence cracked through the camp. Guards shifted. Somewhere, a dog began to howl.
“Rome thinks it crucified me,” he murmured. “But the dead don’t stay nailed not when the gods still have use for them.”
Thunder answered. Closer this time.
Rome had not yet learned that storms do not serve. They return.
The rain had followed them south. Turning the clay of Staffordshire into a sucking mire that clung to boots and hooves alike.
The Romans marched as though it were paved stone beneath them, shields squared, helmets gleaming dull beneath the Grey sky. Between their ranks, chained at wrists and neck, walked Taranis Storm.
Every step tore at his ankles where the iron bit into flesh. Every breath was smoke and ash and memory. Behind him lay the broken circle of stones, the Black Shields scattered or slain. Ahead, only Rome.
The villagers came out to see. From hedges and low doors they watched the prisoner dragged past their fields, whispers coming like crows. The Stormborne, Ring-bearer. Betrayed. Some spat into the mud, others lowered their eyes.
A few, bold enough to remember, lifted hands in the old sign of the ring. when the soldiers were not looking.
At the front of the column the standard rose a square of blue cloth. That had been painted with a face in iron helm, cheeks daubed red with victory.
The mask grinned as though in mockery. The Romans called it their mark of order. To Taranis it was something else: the face of the empire that had swallowed his people.
He fixed his gaze on it as they dragged him past the rise where the heath opened wide. He thought of Boldolph and Nessa, of the wolf in the trees. He remembered the cairn and the promise beneath the oak. The chain jerked and he stumbled, but he did not fall. Not yet.
The centurion rode beside him, face shadowed beneath his crest.
“You see the banner, barbarian? Rome wears a smile even when it breaks you.”
Taranis lifted his head, eyes dark as storm clouds. “Smiles fade. Storms do not.”
The soldiers laughed, but unease rippled through their ranks all the same. For the wind carried his words across the heath, and even bound in chains, Taranis Storm did not sound broken.
By dusk the column reached the ridge where the woods thinned and the land opened to heath. Smoke already rose ahead straight, disciplined pillars from square fires. The marching camp of Rome.
The soldiers moved with the same precision as their shields: digging trenches, raising palisades, planting stakes.
Every camp was a fortress, stamped into the soil like a brand. The ground of Cheslyn Hay, once quiet pasture, now bristled with iron.
Taranis was dragged through the gate cut into the new rampart. The ditch still stank of wet clay, the sharpened stakes gleamed with fresh sap.
Inside, order reigned the tents in perfect rows, fires burning with measured rations, horses tethered and groomed. No laughter. No chaos. Just Rome.
The banner with the painted helm was planted at the camp’s centre. Beneath it the centurion dismounted, barking orders in clipped Latin. Slaves scurried to fetch water and oil for the men.
A scribe scratched notes into a wax tablet, not once looking up at the prisoner he recorded.
Taranis stood, wrists bound, staring at the banner. Its painted grin leered back at him, mockery frozen in blue and black.
Around him the soldiers muttered in their tongue some calling him beast, others trophy.
A soldier shoved him down beside the fire trench, close enough to feel its heat on his raw wrists.
“Sit, storm-man. Tomorrow the legate will decide whether you march to Wroxeter or Luguvalium. Either way, Rome will bleed you for sport.”
The word spread through the camp: arena.
Taranis lowered his head, though not in submission. He closed his eyes and listened. Beyond the walls of the camp, the wind still carried the smell of rain-soaked earth.
The whisper of fox and owl. And beneath that, deeper still, a memory: wolves circling, dragons wheeling, the voice of the tree.
Rest, child of storm. The road is not ended.
When he opened his eyes again, the firelight caught the glint of iron. Not on the chains, but in his gaze.
Even in Rome’s order, storm can find a crack. And cracks spread.
The fire burned low, and the camp settled into its rhythm. As guards pacing in pairs, dice rattling in the barracks-tents, the low cough of horses in their lines. The rain had eased, leaving the air damp, heavy with smoke.
Taranis sat in silence until he felt movement beside him. A figure shuffled forward, ankles hobbled, wrists bound with rope rather than iron. The man lowered himself onto the earth with a grunt.
“Storm of Emberhelm,” he rasped in Brythonic, his accent from the northern hills. “I thought the tales were lies. Yet here you sit, same chains as me.”
Taranis turned his head. The prisoner was older, his beard streaked white, his face cut with old scars. One eye clouded, blind. The other burned sharp as flint.
“And who are you,” Taranis asked, “that Rome keeps alive?”
The man chuckled, though it ended in a wheeze. “They call me Marcos now. Once, I was Maccus of the Ordovices. I led men against the Eagles before your birth.
Rome does not waste good meat. They break us, bind us, and sell us to the sands. I’ve fought in two arenas. Survived them both.”
Taranis studied him. The weight of years hung from his shoulders, yet there was steel still. “Then you know what waits.”
“Aye.” Marcos lifted his bound hands, showing knotted scars across his forearms. “The crowd roars for blood. Some fight once and die. Some fight a hundred times and die slower. But all die.”
The fire popped. Sparks leapt into the dark.
Taranis leaned closer, his voice low. “Not all. The storm endures.”
Marcos’s eye narrowed. “You think to outlast Rome?”
“No.” Taranis’s mouth twisted into something not quite a smile. “I think to break it.”
For the first time, the older man was silent. He searched Taranis’s face, weighing his words. Then he gave a slow nod.
“If you mean what you say, Storm of Emberhelm, then I’ll stand at your side when the time comes. Better to die tearing the eagle’s wings than caged beneath them.”
Chains clinked as they shifted nearer the fire. Around them the camp slept, unaware that in its shadow two sparks had met. Sparks that yet become flame.
The guards had thrown scraps of barley bread to the captives, little more than crusts softened with rain. Most fell on them like dogs, clutching and hiding their share as if it were treasure.
But when the boy, thin as a willow switch, glanced to where Storm sat, his brow furrowed. The man beside him Marcos noticed at once.
“What’s wrong, lad?” the old warrior asked, shifting his chains.
The boy’s voice was a whisper. “Why haven’t they fed him?” His gaze fixed on Taranis, who had taken nothing. His hands still resting on his knees, his eyes far away. as if listening to some thunder only he hear.
Marcos gave a grunt. “Rome plays its games. They starve the strong first. Weak men die quick, but a beast like him…” He lowered his voice. “They want to see how long he lasts. How much fury stays in him when his belly is empty.”
The boy clutched his crust but then held it out with trembling fingers. “He should eat.”
Taranis turned his head at last. His eyes, Grey as storm clouds, fell on the offering. He did not take it. Instead, he placed his bound hand gently over the boy’s.
“Keep it,” he said. His voice was rough, hollow from thirst, yet steady. “Storms do not starve. But you” he pressed the bread back into the boy’s palm, “you must grow.”
For a moment, silence hung around them. The boy swallowed hard, then nodded, biting into the bread with tears in his eyes.
Marcos watched, the ghost of a smile tugging at his scarred face. “A storm, indeed,” he muttered.
Above the camp, thunder rumbled faintly though the sky was clear.
“I’m fine ” Taranis smirked seeing a whip in someone’s hand and wood
“What’s going on?” The boy asked
The guard with the whip dragged a stake of green wood across the mud, planting it near the fire trench. Two soldiers followed, uncoiling rope and hammering pegs into the ground.
The boy’s eyes widened. “What’s going on?” he whispered, clutching what remained of his bread.
Marcos’s face hardened. “Discipline.” His single eye slid to Taranis. “Or rather a spectacle.”
One of the soldiers smirked. “The barbarian thinks himself storm. Tonight, he learns Rome is thunder.”
They hauled Storm to his feet. Chains clattered, mud spattered across his bare shins. The whip cracked once in the air, sharp as lightning.
The boy tried to rise, but Marcos gripped his arm and pulled him back down. “Don’t,” he hissed. “They’ll flay you too. Watch, and remember.”
Taranis did not resist when they bound him to the post. His wrists were raw, but he set his shoulders square. lifting his chin to meet the eyes of the gathered legionaries. The smirk never left his mouth.
The centurion stepped ahead, whip coiled in his hand, iron studs gleaming wet in the firelight. He spoke in Latin, slow and deliberate, for the advantage of his men:
“This is Rome’s law. Defiance is answered with the lash.”
The first strike fell. Leather snapped against flesh. The soldiers cheered.
Storm did not cry out. His lips moved, barely more than breath: words in the old tongue, prayer or curse, the guards could not tell.
The boy’s knuckles went white around his crust of bread. Marcos leaned close, his voice low. “Look at him, lad. That is what Rome fears most. A man who will not break.”
The whip cracked again. Blood ran down his back.
And yet, when the centurion paused, Taranis raised his head and laughed. a rough, hoarse sound, but laughter all the same.
“You call this thunder?” he spat. “I’ve stood in storms that would drown your gods.”
The camp fell uneasy. The centurion snarled and drew back the whip again. But already some of the soldiers shifted, unsettled by the chained man’s defiance.
The guard sneered as he coiled the whip in his hand, the wood of the handle slick with rain. He pointed it at Taranis.
“On your feet, barbarian. Let’s see if your tongue is sharper than your back.”
Taranis smirked, rising slowly, the chains clinking as he straightened to his full height. The firelight threw shadows across his scarred face, making him seem larger than life.
“Screw you,” he said, the words spat like iron nails.
The boy gasped, his hands clutching the crust of bread. “What’s going on?” he whispered to Marcos.
The old warrior’s one good eye didn’t leave Taranis. “Rome’s testing him,” Marcos said quietly. “They want to see if he breaks before the whip… or after.”
The guard cracked the lash across the ground, sparks leaping from the wet earth. Soldiers nearby turned to watch, eager for the show.
But Taranis only tilted his head, the faintest grin tugging his lips. “Go on,” he said. “Try.”
And in the silence that followed, the storm seemed to shift, waiting.
Taranis straightened, chains rattling as he rolled his shoulders. His eyes met the guard’s without a flicker of fear.
“Screw you, ass,” he growled, voice steady. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
The words landed like a stone in still water. A few soldiers chuckled uneasily, but others muttered, shifting in place. The boy’s eyes went wide, his crust of bread forgotten in his hands.
Marcos gave a dry, wheezing laugh. “Storm’s got teeth. Rome should be careful putting its hand too close.”
The guard snarled and snapped the whip through the air once, twice before bringing it down toward Taranis’s back.
But Taranis didn’t flinch. He stood, broad shoulders braced, chains biting his wrists, and took the first strike in silence.
They marched him up the salt-hill at Dodderhill, where the Roman timber bites into the skyline like bad teeth. Below, Salinae steams. The brine pits cough a white breath across the roofs, and every back in the town goes still; men with salt-burned hands, women with brined wrists, children with their mouths parted. All of them looking up. All of them waiting to see a lesson.
Storm’s wrists are raw from the iron. His shirt is torn where they hauled it over his head, the air is cold on old scars and new. There is a cut across his ribs from the morning’s struggle and the dried salt in it stings like sand.
A centurion with a wine-scarred mouth calls the charge in a language that thinks it is the only one that matters.
“Rebel. Murderer. Enemy of Rome.” The words land like stones. Men with square shields drag the condemned in a line. Three farmers. A boy who threw a stone. Storm.
“Use the cross for the big one,” the centurion says. “Make them see.”
They set the upright in the earth, ramming it with a post-driver until the ground answers. The carpenter’s nails gleam in a little wooden tray, thick as a man’s thumb. The hammer is clean. The executioner’s eyes flick to Storm and away again as if he’s looked at the sun too long.
Storm keeps his chin up because he will not bend. He smells oak smoke from the town, the sour of men in mail, the resin of fresh-split palings. He tastes brine on his teeth. A gull wheels and screams once, the cry torn thin by the wind.
A voice from the crowd below: not words, just a keening. Another voice, hoarse, calls his name the way a prayer is called: “Shield!”
He does not look down. He looks at the sky. Cloud, thin and grey and harmless. For now.
“Hold him,” the centurion says.
Four soldiers pin his arms. The fifth takes Storm’s right hand and forces it open against the cross-beam. The leather strap bites his palm. The executioner lifts the first nail. It is cold when it kisses the crease of Storm’s wrist.
Storm hears the old world in the edges of the day. The ring he once wore feels like a phantom weight on his finger. He sees Nessa’s hair in the corner of his sight when the wind shifts. He hears Boldolph and Morrigan somewhere he can’t walk to anymore. Rayne’s voice is the whisper in the hinge of the jaw: brother, hold still and we will live. Brother, lie down.
The hammer rises.
Thunder is far off. Not here, not yet. A single pulse on the horizon like a heart behind a ribcage. The executioner breathes. The hammer falls.
It meets iron and the iron skids, glancing off the nail head. The blow dents the wood and slams into Storm’s bones. He grunts despite himself. Blood beads. The executioner squints, checks the nail, lifts again.
The second stroke strikes home. Iron bites meat. The sky pulls tight.
A woman cries out below. “Enough! He fought for us!”
“Silence,” the centurion barks, not looking down.
Storm tastes copper. His vision narrows, then widens until he can see each hair on the executioner’s wrist, each pore, each fleck of sawdust stuck to the hammer’s face. It is the old sight, the red edge. He could go there—into the roar where nothing hurts until after—but he does not. He holds on. He wants to watch.
“Left,” the centurion says.
They take his other hand. Fingers spread. The nail’s cold mouth finds the vein. The hammer rises
and the wind turns.
Not a gust. A pivot. The kind of turning that changes seasons. Smoke from the brine pans below folds back on itself. Sparrows flatten to the earth. The hairs along Storm’s arms lift.
The first crack of thunder lands atop the fort like an axe into a block. Every man jolts. A standard topples with a clatter of bronze. The executioner flinches, the nail slips, and instead of flesh he drives it through the softened knot of the beam.
The shock carries up his arm. He swears. The soldier holding Storm’s elbow looks at the sky. The sky looks back.
Cloud blooms fast from the western line, rolling in on a bruise-coloured belly. A wolf-long shape seems to run along its edge and is gone. Another crack. Closer.
“Finish it,” the centurion snaps. But there’s a catch in it now, and he makes a sign with his two fingers as if to pinch off something unseen.
The hammer lifts for the third time.
Lightning hits the palisade post a spear’s throw away. Wood screams. Splinters go like hail. Men duck behind shields by training, but training breaks when the sky speaks in a voice older than their gods. A mule rears and snaps its lead. The nail tray overturns; iron skitters like teeth on stone.
Storm moves then.
He lets the red edge take him for a heartbeat just enough. He wrenches, twisting his pinned right wrist so the cut tears long and clean instead of deep. The leather strap splits where sweat has rotted it.
He brings his head forward under the beam, drives his shoulder into the soldier’s throat, hears the wet cough, feels the grip loosen. He kicks back, heel to knee, and the man behind him falls with a scream.
There is always a moment in a fight when the world decides. This is it.
He drives the crown of his head into the executioner’s face; the man drops the hammer, hands going to his nose. Storm grabs the hammer with his left hand, blood slicking the haft, and swings the weight into the chain on his left wrist. Once. Twice. The chain holds. The third blow finds the link that was barely peened shut, and it parts with a sweet, bright sound.
“Hold him!” the centurion bellows, but half his men are looking at the burning post and the other half are looking at the sky.
Shapes break from the heather below the berm three, five, a dozen men with black-painted shields and hunters’ faces. Brianna’s braid is bound with leather; Cadan’s scar shows white through ash. They come without horns or shouts, all knife and certainty.
Brianna hits the left flank like a thrown stone, her knife opening a belly before the man knows his shield is gone. Cadan slides under a spear and cuts the hamstring clean, then is up again and laughing because sometimes that is the only way to keep breath inside you.
“Storm!” Brianna barks.
He throws the hammer. She catches it by the neck and brings it down on a helmet rim, bending iron into eyebrow and eye. She tosses it back and he takes the chain a second time and frees his right.
The centurion finds his voice at last and orders the archers, but the bowstrings are wet now, the fletchings torn sideways by the sideways rain that has arrived without crossing the ground between. Arrows go high and crooked. One finds a farmer’s boy in the line of the condemned. The boy sits down as if to rest and does not get up again.
Storm would carry that if he let himself. Later, he thinks, later, and steps toward the centurion.
“Stand,” the centurion says, not to him but to what moves in his bones.
“I do,” Storm says.
They meet as men meet: iron-toothed and close. The centurion is trained. Storm is made. The first cut is Storm’s forearm across the centurion’s sword-hand, breaking the rhythm, and the second is Storm’s head against the man’s nose—again, because men are made of the same mistakes and the third is Storm’s thumb to the centurion’s eye. The man goes down with a sound nothing like command.
“Back!” a junior officer yelps. “Back to the fort!”
They drag their wounded. They leave their dead. They do not look at the cross. The storm does what storms do it eats the edges of everything.
From the town below, the people cannot see the cut and the grapple, only the outline of men against rain and the lightning that makes ghosts of them. Then those ghosts are gone into the gorse and the broom, and the hill is left with a burning post and an empty beam and a rumour that begins to run faster than hooves.
They bind Storm’s wrist tight with a strip of his own shirt and the last clean linen any of them have. The bleeding slows. His hands shake after it stops. He sits with his back against a birch, watching steam lift off his skin.
“Could have died,” Cadan says, not accusing, not gentle.
“Didn’t,” Storm answers.
Brianna crouches and studies the wound. “You’ll have two scars for one story,” she says. “The tale-singers will thank you.”
Storm looks at the knot of linen. He thinks of a nail driven through the heel of a stranger in a land he will never see, of crosses on a hill where a different empire stakes its truth. He thinks of Nessa’s mouth and Rayne’s eyes and of wolves that do not answer. He feels the tremor in himself and wonders if it will ever stop.
“Was it you?” Cadan asks. “The sky?”
Storm chews that like gristle and spits it out. “No,” he says. “It was the sky.”
Brianna huffs once, almost a laugh. “Then the sky is with us.”
They move as the light fails, cutting north and a little west, keeping to hedges and the backs of fields, avoiding every lane the Romans know.
The storm rolls away toward the Severn; behind it, the wood drips and the undergrowth smells green and clean as if nothing dies.
By the time they reach the low, wet ground where the oaks thicken half a day’s walk from the salt town, close enough to smell wood-smoke when the wind is right night has set.
They choose a place where yew anchors a little rise and an old fallen oak makes a table the size of a man. Cadan lights a small fire that no one will see unless they are meant to. Brianna lays out bread and dried meat and a handful of early wild garlic leaves, because ritual has to start with something you can eat.
Storm stands, because oaths are made on feet.
“We were a ring,” he says. “We were a house. We were a promise to people who do not want us anymore. Today I was meant to die to teach them to fear, and I did not. I don’t know if that is luck or the gods or a debt that will come due later.”
He looks at each of them. There are eleven counting him. Some are men who fought with him when the wolves still ran the ridge. Some are women who learned a knife because no one else would come. One is a boy who was a boy yesterday and is not anymore.
“I’m done waiting for any man’s mercy,” Storm says. “If you stay with me now, you stay knowing there will be no pardon. No ring to call us home. We will be hunted by chiefs and by Rome and by the stories men tell when they are afraid. We will strike and vanish.
We will take food from those who hoard it and give it to those who starve. We will cut chains where we find them. We will keep the lanes dangerous for those who would make them safe for empire. We will be the shadow that says not yet.”
He sets his palm on the fallen oak. Blood from the bandage seeps fresh and red and bright against the old grey wood.
“I name us,” he says, and the words come easy because they are true before he speaks them. “The Black Shields. Not for hiding” he taps the painted face of Brianna’s board, dull black with ash and pitch “but for what we carry in front of us so the ones behind can live.”
Brianna puts her hand over his. “Black Shields,” she says.
Cadan’s hand stacks next. “Black Shields.”
One by one, the others follow, rough palms and finer, scarred knuckles and bitten nails, hands that have stolen and fed and fought and held.
When they step back, the tree holds their blood in a dark print that already looks like a sigil.
A wind runs through the oak leaves though nothing else stirs. Somewhere far off a fox barks and another answers. In the dip of silence after, Storm thinks he hears just for a breath the long, low note of a wolf.
He looks up into the black roof of the wood and does not ask for a sign. He has had enough signs for one day.
“Sleep,” he tells them. “We move before light. The salt road will wake angry.”
Brianna nods, already spreading a cloak for the boy who is not a boy. Cadan checks the edges of the camp, his knife out, his shoulders easy for the first time since the hill.
Storm sits again with his back to the birch. His wrist throbs in time with his heart. When he closes his eyes, the hammer falls, and falls, and falls, and does not find him.
Below, the town spreads the story because towns are made to spread stories. By morning it will have a name it did not have yesterday the Hill of Ashes. By night there will be new chalk marks cut into the backs of gateposts that mean leave bread, and others that mean soldiers, and others that mean the Black Shields have passed.
He lets sleep take him only when the fire dies to a patient red and the rain begins again, soft and fine, washing the last blood from the bark.
From this moment Taranis Stormborne became known as Storm among his men.
StormborneLore 