12 Drammoch’s SteadingTowards nightfall the four men reached Drammoch’s steading. It stood on a gently sloping hill, beyond which towered a great tumulus, on the summit of which a great trilithon was etched gaunt against the evening sky, as though the stones, a tribute to the old gods, watched over the farmstead, protecting it or threatening it. Gemellus, who had been taught to follow Mithras, with his clean, clear precepts of tolerance and straight thinking, sensed something foreboding, even vicious, in the religion of the British Celts. The three stones on the purple hill above the farm symbolised for the Roman the dreadful and superstitious power of the Celtic gods; thirsty for blood and roaring for anguish. Dark gods for a dark-souled people, he thought, as he looked up towards the pla
