Pennocrucium was dying.The fort that once rang with steel and Latin orders now lay quiet under a bruised evening sky. The last of the Roman banners hung in the wet like torn skin. The gold stitching dull and heavy with rain.
Fires in the watchtowers had burned down to ash. Barracks stood open. Doors unbarred.No sentries.No horn.No empire.Drax stood in the centre of the courtyard, gloved hands behind his back, cloak dark with rain.
He could still see where the eagle standard had stood, planted in the earth like a promise. He had bled beneath that symbol. Killed beneath it. Buried men beneath it.
Defended it long after others began to whisper that Rome no longer had the strength to defend itself.Now the standard lay in the mud.He let out a slow breath.
“This is how it ends,” he said quietly. “Not with fire. With retreat.”A few of his men were still with him. Not many. Veterans. The ones too loyal or too stubborn to walk away until ordered.
“Praefect,” Maren said, stepping to his side. Rain had plastered the boy’s hair to his face, and his jaw worked the way it always did . When he was circling fear and pretending not to feel it. “The last wagons are packed. They’re taking the southern road to Viroconium before dark.”
“Good,” Drax said. His voice stayed even. He didn’t look at his son. “They’ll be safer south.”Maren hesitated.
“What about us? Us.Not the cohort. Not the banner. Us.” Drax let the word settle in his chest.
“We’re not going south,” he said.Maren swallowed.
“Are we going after them?”
“No,” Drax said. “We’re going home.”The boy didn’t answer, but he understood. Drax saw it in the way the tension left his shoulders and something else took its place.
Not ease. Something older. Something like hunger.Thunder rolled low over the Chase.Beyond the walls, the land lay open and dark. The tree line a ragged edge against a sky. That hadn’t decided yet if it meant to rain or break clear. Mist gathered low over the fields in pale bands.
The air smelled of smoke from scattered farmsteads and peat fires. The smoke that drifted up on this night, every year, since before Rome ever named this place.
Spirit night.Nos Galan Gaeaf.The first night of winter. Drax looked north, toward the low hills and the mist and the deep-breathing dark of the land that raised him.
“Home,” he said.Then he walked into the new winter.
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.
A vibrant, artistic depiction of a tree with colorful leaves set against a dark background, symbolizing the mystical elements of nature.
By E.L. Hewitt — StormborneLore
Dawn came slow over Cannock Chase, the sky still holding tight to the colours of night.
Mist clung to the ground, pale as breath on cold glass. The trees stood quiet as watchers in old cloaks.
Lore walked barefoot through the wet grass, collecting what the earth offered.
Yarrow first pale and feathery, growing in shy clusters where the sunlight would later reach. Good for blood and fever, and for protection against spirits that lingered too close.
He cut it gently, whispering, “For the ones who yet breathe.”
Rowan bark next, peeling in thin curls beneath his knife. The tree shivered, though no wind touched it.
Rowan remembers, the old women used to say and Lore believed them.
Last came the resin pine tears hardened in the bark of a fallen giant, still sweet, still golden.
He held it to his nose, breathing in the scent of memory. Smoke. Rain. Home.
Above him, the crows gathered.
Three at first. Then five. Then a dozen, their wings murmuring like pages turning.
They did not caw. They simply watched.
Lore did not fear them. The crows of the Chase were older than any Druid’s words. Older than Rome’s roads. Older even than the songs of the first tribes.
They followed him as he walked between the birches. Their trunks ghost-white, rising from the mist like bones of giants sleeping beneath the soil.
The air felt listening.
The trees breathed slow.
The old gods waited.
Lore spoke softly, almost too low to hear: “Stormfather. Bound-Brother. Wild King. I hear you.”
The leaves stirred, though the air was still.
And then
A whisper. Not with sound, but with bone and blood.
He rises.
Lore’s heart tightened. No fear only certainty.
The crows took flight at once, black wings cutting the dawn sky. They flew south, toward the marsh track near Landywood, toward the low birches where the Black Shields rested.
The dawn came slow and grey, dragging itself through the fog. As Taranis stood by the brook, cloak heavy with rain, listening to the groan of trees in the wind.
The men were stirring mud streaked, bone-tired, but still breathing. Caedric coughed, spitting into the fire’s ash.
“Reckon we’ve outfoxed ‘em, lord. Romans don’t fancy these woods no more than wolves do.”
Taranis gave a crooked grin. “Aye, an’ I’ll keep it that way. Chase belongs to the storm, not the eagle.”
He slung his satchel, nodding north. “Pack up. We take the old path up past Wyrley Hill, through the firs. If the gods favour us, we’ll reach the ford ‘fore night.”
“An’ if they don’t?” muttered one of the younger lads.
Taranis looked over his shoulder, eyes pale as lightning. “Then we make ‘em.”
They set off through the trees, boots sucking at the mire, breath fogging in the cold. Above, the sky split in pale streaks of silver and white, like a scar the world hadn’t healed.
By midday, the Chase fell behind them and the road opened wide broken Roman stones, weeds clawing through the cracks.
Caedric slowed, squinting. “Watling Street, once. My da said it stretched all the way to the sea.”
Taranis ran a gloved hand over one of the stones. “Sea don’t matter. Storm reaches farther.”
He turned to the others. “Keep low. Scouts’ll be watchin’ the high ground.”
They crossed in silence, shadows sliding between the birch trunks. A crow cried overhead, sharp and lonely.
Then movement was seen over the ridge. A figure on the ridge, half-hidden by mist. A glint of bronze.
Caedric hissed, “Bloody Romans?”
Taranis lifted a hand, quieting him. “Nah,” he said after a long look. “One man. Cloak’s too dark. Looks more like one o’ ours.”
The shape moved closer. A limp. Familiar.
“Taranis?” a voice called, rough as gravel. “By all that’s left o’ the gods, it is you.”
From the fog stepped an older warrior, scar cut deep across his jaw. “Byrin,” Taranis breathed. “Didn’t think the storm’d spare you.”
Byrin laughed, short and hollow. “It near didn’t. Lost three good lads south o’ Salinae, an’ near my own arm with ‘em. But word spreadsfolk say you’re gatherin’ again. Stormborne, back from the grave.”
Taranis gave a small, weary smile. “Not the grave yet, though Rome keeps diggin’.”
He looked at his men mud-smeared faces, eyes bright with a spark that hadn’t been there yesterday.
“Then it’s true,” said Byrin, glancing north. “You mean to march again?”
Taranis nodded. “Not march. Rise. Rome’s road breaks here our land, our law. Time we made ‘em remember.”
He drew a small blade, slicing a mark into the nearest stone a spiral, storm’s sigil.
Caedric watched, grinning. “Yow think they’ll see that, lord?”
Taranis met his gaze, voice low as thunder.
“Aye. An’ when they do, they’ll know the storm’s still breathin’.”
The wind rose, carrying the scent of rain and ash. Somewhere in the distance, thunder answered deep, slow, and close.
The Black Country dialect woven through this story carries the sound of the land Taranis once called home old speech born from forge and field.
Where words still echo the rhythm of hammers, storms, and stories told by firelight.
Much of The Broken Road is inspired by the landscapes around Cannock Chase, Wyrley, and Watling Street places where the ancient and modern meet in the same mist.
The mists of Cnocc clung low across the fields when Taranis turned north. Rain soaked the cloak across his shoulders, each drop heavy as guilt. Behind him, the standing stones of the old circle faded into grey half memory, half warning.
A handful of men followed, what was left of the Black Shields. Some limped. Some bled quietly into the mud. Yet none complained.
They cut through the marsh track at Landywood, the ground sucking at their boots.
“Bloody mire,” grumbled one of them Caedric, a smith from the Chase. “If Rome don’t catch us, we’ll drown in the bog.”
Taranis gave a faint smile. “Better the bog than their chains. Least the land buries its dead with honour.”
The men laughed, low and rough, their voices carrying through the mist. Overhead, crows turned circles against a sky bruised with stormlight.
By midday, they reached the edge of Cannock Chase. The trees rose dark and close, their branches whispering in the wind.
Here, the old tongue lived still the rustle of leaves. Carried the same sounds as the words once spoken in Mercia before Rome built her roads.
“Best not light a fire,” said another man. “The smoke’ll draw ‘em down Watling Street.”
Taranis shook his head. “The legions keep to stone. They fear what grows wild. That’s our road, not theirs.”
They made camp near the brook, the water brown with silt.
Taranis knelt, washing his hands, watching the red earth swirl away downstream.
He thought of Drax his brother in law and blood. Who wasvstanding in that Roman armour like a stranger wearing their father’s ghost.
“Praefect Drax,” he muttered. “You walk in the eagle’s shadow now. But one day, even eagles fall.”
As the others settled, Taranis sat alone beneath a birch tree. The thunder rolled again to the south, echoing over the hills of Pennocrucium.
He closed his eyes and let the sound find him not as omen, but as promise.
“Let Rome march,” he said softly. “The storm remembers.”
By nightfall, the brook had gone still only the soft hiss of drizzle on leaves broke the quiet.
The Black Shields huddled beneath the birches.Their cloaks steaming faintly where the rain met the last of the day’s warmth.
A small fire burned low, more ember than flame. They sat close to it, speaking little. The world had shrunk to mist and memory.
From the shadows, a young scout pushed through the undergrowth, mud streaking his face.
“Riders,” he whispered, breath sharp with fear. “South o’ Watling Street. Legion banners silver eagle, red field. A dozen strong, maybe more.”
Taranis looked up, his eyes catching what light the fire still gave. “Which way?”
“East,” said the boy. “Toward Pennocrucium.”
That word hung like ash. Rome’s fort Drax’s post.
Caedric spat into the fire. “Then your brother’s hounds are sniffin’ their trail back home.”
“Mind your tongue,” Taranis said, but without heat. “Drax walks a path I wouldn’t, but he walks it for his sons. Rome holds chains tighter than iron.”
The men nodded. They’d all felt those chains some on their wrists, some around their hearts.
The fire popped softly. Rain whispered down through the canopy, finding its way to the coals.
“Shall we move?” asked Caedric. “Not yet.”
Taranis rose, brushing mud from his knees. “If they ride to Pennocrucium, they won’t look for us here. And if Drax stands where I think he does, he’ll turn them aside before dawn.”
He turned his gaze toward the south, where the hills of Cnocc faded into night.
The stormlight there flickered once a pale flash through the clouds.
“See that?” murmured one of the men. “Thunder over Penn. He’s sendin’ you a message, I reckon.”
Taranis smiled faintly. “Aye. Or a warning.”
He knelt by the fire and drew a spiral in the dirt the old mark, the storm’s sign.
“Tomorrow we move north,” he said. “Watling Street’s theirs, but the woods are ours. We’ll strike where the road breaks near the old fort make Rome remember who walks her border.”
The men grinned, weary but alive again. For a heartbeat, the fire caught, burning bright as dawn.
Above them, thunder rolled once more. It sounded like a heartbeat slow, vast, unending.
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.
StormborneLore 