by Jules Watson
His officers were filled with restless energy, for they had spent a long winter locked up indoors. Now spring was here again and they were making ready to travel north, back to the Wall.
Though they all hated the northlands and feared the barbarian danger, they longed, like him, to be back in the saddle, breathing air free of the fug of winter, the smoke, the greasy meat and stale pottage, the stink of piss pots and sour sweat.
As Fullofaudes read, he kept his face absolutely still. But his muscles tensed, his legs bracing on the floor beneath the table. Eldon’s plan had failed in spectacular fashion. His daughter had been expelled from Dalriada and the Dux’s man had been killed – though thank the Christos there was no proof that Fullofaudes had been involved.
Swallowing another gulp of ale, Fullofaudes rose, seemingly unhurried, and stood over the fire, leaning one arm on the mantel and staring into the flames so they all blurred together. The outcome of this was much worse than a few dead men and a scorned queen. Cahir was obviously an unusually intelligent barbarian, and surely would guess Fullofaudes had some involvement in this. So any element of surprise had gone, and with it a certain amount of Roman threat and power.
Abruptly he swung around. On seeing his expression his officers fell silent.
‘What is it, sir?’ one asked, pausing in the act of peeling an apple with his knife.
Fullofaudes took a deep breath, throwing the closed tablet on the table. ‘It seems that our friend Eldon has over-reached himself,’ he said evenly. ‘Stupid fool decided to attack Dalriada when Cahir was away from his fort. The Carvetii were pathetically under-resourced, of course.’
One of his officers let out a whistle and put down his ale cup. ‘And what happened?’
‘The Dalriadans got wind of it and set a trap for him.’ He told them the rest – what he could tell – and the faces around the table that had been laughing and bright with ale now fell into more sober lines. Fullofaudes thought fast, then gripped the back of an empty chair and speared one man with his gaze.
‘I want two extra vexillationes units and two auxilia units to come back north with us,’ he ordered. ‘Draw them from different forts so we don’t deplete one over the others.’
The man just looked at him. ‘Now, sir? It’s not even dawn yet.’
‘Well, I want the messengers out of the gate by dawn!’ Fullofaudes snapped, and at the tone of his voice they all jumped to attention in their chairs. The first man scrambled for his helmet and sword and strode out, and Fullofaudes turned to the next. ‘You have good relationships with our allies the Votadini. I want you to ride to Traprain yourself, taking only a few men with you. Request the Votadini king, in person, to strengthen his defences and double his scouts both along the coast and to his west. They must watch Cahir now as well as the Picts, and report back on any hint of change – anything at all.’
The Votadini acted as a buffer state between the eastern Wall and the Picts, but had become complacent in their wealth and Roman status, despite their dangerous neighbours.
As the man rose, Fullofaudes said, ‘Wait.’ He gazed around at them all. ‘This information is not to leave this room, under any circumstances.’ He took another deep, steadying breath. ‘I want two of the old forts re-garrisoned in secret, even if we have to get the troops from Nectaridus in the south. One can be the outpost in Votadini territory, and the second in the hills at Vindolanda – full complement of men, half cavalry, to be held in reserve. No one will be allowed in or out of those forts, and they are to hide their strength and numbers as much as possible.’ He remembered himself and braced his shoulders, raised his chin, spoke briskly to engender confidence. ‘We will all ride at dawn – I want to get back to the Wall as soon as possible.’
All the officers were on their feet now, the clink of cups and sound of laughter replaced by the jingle of mail, buckles and sword-belts, the thud of heavy boots and scraped-back chairs.
When they had gone, each with his specific orders, Fullofaudes stood by the fire and opened the wax tablet once more, scanning the last lines again, his pulse throbbing slowly in his neck. Cahir had given out that there was plague in Dunadd. All traders had been expelled. Dalriada now showed a blank face to the world, which unsettled him more than any wild Pictish attack.
An uncomfortable prickle ran along the back of his neck, as the logs shifted in the grate, casting up sparks.
By the time Cahir sailed back to Alba with Fergus’s oath of support, warriors had already begun pouring in from every far-flung glen, the remote mountains and the Attacotti islands. Every boy who could lift a spear came, and old men thought past their prime, who would hold a sword or bow one last time.
They came in streams, all flowing to Dunadd.
For days Minna had been at the mountain hut on her own, and the evening she returned she walked the pony out of the ancestor valley and there pulled it up short. A river of fire poured down the glen, lapping at the slopes and the peaks. The campfires of the warriors, more than she could have imagined. Dry-mouthed, she gazed at this enormous weapon she had caused to be forged.
Rhiann’s words kept coming back to her in snatches, as if remembered in a dream. For one moment Minna had been with her in the hollow of snow, and the next the cord of her spirit was tugging her urgently back to her body by the fire. She woke sick to the stomach but holding to a memory of Rhiann’s voice, telling her what she most wanted to know: Your fate in this life was bound to our son Cahir, and it is his destiny to free Alba. We were only the vanguard, but he is the host.
And here was the host. The pony’s ears twitched as Minna’s legs tensed on its back, and she sought to sit straight in the saddle. Since taking the saor and returning she felt as if her skin had been stretched over new bones and expanded flesh, barely able to contain her any more. Along with Cahir, she had wrought this scene of fire and force with her visions, her words.
As the nights without Cahir had drawn out, she had found herself seeking a reason for that in the dark hours, a salve for the guilt that so many would die. She had been drawn to the mountain hut, staring into the cold, black pool beneath the birches where she had seen the vision of the eagle. And as she wondered, so Rhiann’s words had been there, floating up from the memory of the Otherworld dream.
The Source in Alba was expressed through love of the sacred land; the songs and stories; the honour of clan and family; the care of all living things. If the Romans conquered, they would make Alba like Rome, stamp out the druids as they did the Sisters, destroy the rites, the dreams. The Source must be protected or Alba’s very soul would die.
But as Minna had woken Cahir, so she was the one who must mourn for all who would perish at Alba’s hand. Only she could sense the souls, and know how to bless their passing to come. And so she had spent days singing into the pool, chanting the funeral dirges for those who would yet die.
Rhiann had charged her with this: her first task as a priestess, to rebalance the Source. For that is what she was; what she would be. Now she was a Sister. Now she was not alone.
By the time she reached Dunadd, she could feel the momentum of the Source building beneath the ground, shivering in the air. The village resounded with the clang of weapons. Men shouted greetings to each other as servants hurried back and forth stabling horses, hefting packs and swords and spears. And Cahir was back.
Passing Fintan’s forge, Minna saw the bloom of fire, and lamplight falling on Lonán’s sweaty arms. Doorways spilled light and women’s voices, tense and expectant as children screeched and scampered about with excitement. On the wooded ridge to Dunadd’s south the pillars of the druid temple were outlined by bonfires, and Minna heard drumming from afar. The king was there, the gate guards said, with all the chieftains of Dalriada.
The king’s hall was crowded with unfamiliar men demanding food and ale, always more ale. The benches were jostling with drunken warriors polishing scabbards, arguing, kicking the hounds out of the way.
As Minna had stared into the pool, si
nging and weeping, she had seen glimpses of this war. She had lived the blood-lust, the bowel-loosening fear, the fury of a warrior in battle.
Now, as she passed through the hall, the whispers following her, the eyes wondering, she understood that this drunken oblivion was not so strange after all.
Cahir had called a council of chieftains inside the temple. Outside the ring of pillars, druids circled the bonfires, chanting and throwing herbs on the flames so sparks shot high in the night sky.
The hill was surrounded by a crescent of banners, painted with symbols of stag and fox, bear and wolf, horse and eagle. Now, one by one, the chiefs stood before him and presented their numbers and their oaths.
Cahir sat very straight on the chair brought out for him, his hands flat on his thighs. As the numbers grew, he had to force himself to stay still. The Attacotti had come with three thousand fighting men from their islands to the west. Their lord was Kinet, a short man with black hair and piercing eyes, fanatically loyal to his sea and wind gods.
This, added to the hordes mustered by the Dalriadan chiefs from every dun, and the men pledged by Fergus in Erin, would field a force of fifteen thousand men. The Picts would also bring fifteen thousand; the Saxons five thousand, though Cahir and Gede had decided to hold them in reserve, mustered on the Pictish coast, in case they had to face more Roman forces further south.
Thirty-five thousand, to march on Britannia.
This was the only night that Cahir had the opportunity to see the western force gathered together, for come tomorrow they would be sent south in groups, moving secretly through the mountains, regrouping north of the Clutha for their rush on the south. The younger druids would go with them, blessing them with sacred water and rowan, watching the clouds and stars for signs.
His hand on his sword, Cahir now stood up before the chieftains. The shadows thrown up by the flames leaped eerily around the temple pillars, open to the sky. His gods’ faces watched him, carved into the oak.
The chiefs and their guards cheered him for long moments, and he absorbed that acclaim deep into his beating heart. ‘A message has come from our ally, Gede of the Picts,’ he said when they fell silent, in a voice that soared across the throng. ‘The Roman scouts in his pay will soon confirm the positions of their forces for the end of the Beltaine moon.’
Gede would take most of his warriors in a great fleet down the east coast, Cahir down the west. The western commanders would travel by any sea-going craft they had been able to appropriate – traders, curraghs and fishing boats – and would meet Fergus of Erin north of Luguvalium before taking the town.
They must be a swift blade that comes out of the shadows, and strikes before any cry escapes.
Minna stabbed the needle into her palm and caught herself from cursing. Orla and Finola were curled among the pillows beside her, sound asleep. It was very late, and the noise downstairs was only just beginning to die as the oblivion of ale took over. She peered at the cloth, holding it up to the lamp-light and frowning.
‘It can’t be that bad,’ Cahir said behind her.
She dropped her sewing. ‘I fear it could.’ She looked up at him, and they were silent for a long moment.
With a smile, he took the lamp, and Minna pulled the furs around the girls’ shoulders, leaving Lia nestled between them. At their own bedplace, Cahir turned to her. ‘So what is this, a stór?’ He peered at the crumpled piece of linen in her hands.
Minna held out the stringy piece of cloth. ‘I wanted you to carry something from me, and I have nothing that my own hands can make. You already have your great banners …’
Cahir unrolled it, and, when he said nothing, she added hastily, ‘It’s for you to tie around your neck or your arm, with the boar stone. You see,’ she felt herself going red, ‘I have no family symbol, and I am Dalriadan now anyway, but people have said – Nessa said – that I remind her of the sea … so … I decided to embroider this.’ It was an admittedly crude seagull outlined in blue on white, with a black beak like her hair, above a green sea. The gull was a wanderer, too.
His face grave, he curved a hand about her cheek, and she closed her eyes, absorbing the sensation of the sword calluses scraping her soft skin. Then he kissed her, at last giving her his greeting, the hunger leaping between them. It was some time before he broke away and said thickly, ‘I have something for you, from Erin.’
It was a long necklace of crystal beads, tinged with green so they shone like ice, like water. They matched her eyes, and she left them on when he undressed her, hanging between her breasts, cool against the heated skin.
Cahir’s hair was damp from the river meadow as he urgently caressed her, murmuring love into her skin, the vibrations sending jolts along her nerves as his mouth traced her ribs. She could feel the suppressed fire in him, the battle excitement building. But when his mouth closed over one nipple, the warmth between her thighs made her forget all else. Forget that she was losing him.
The lamp guttered out.
Her touch flowed from the soft places under his arms across the hard planes of his back. He was leaving, and so she must take him into her as if somehow she could keep him safe within the halo of her body’s light. Desire and sorrow were wound together with choking intensity.
He sensed the drift of her heart and slid down her body, nestling between her thighs, his tongue shocking the heat back to her core. When he rose up and sheathed himself in her he paused for a moment at their greatest joining, as if he would never part.
Moved by a great reverence, Minna sensed the light growing behind her closed eyes, a glow that enveloped them both. This was sacred, too; an act that blessed them both. Cahir gasped, and she smoothed back his unbound hair, drawing her legs together so she could feel all of his skin from breast to flank.
‘I love you.’
Cahir kissed her palm, moving within her like the sea. ‘I know. I have seen it in your face.’
‘But it’s dark,’ she whispered, tears standing in her eyes.
‘Then I can feel it.’ He dipped his head, his tongue drinking from the scented hollow of her throat as he buried himself again. ‘Can you?’ he whispered. ‘Can you feel it, mo chridhe?’ My heart. He murmured into her hair, winding endearments around her like a soft mantle.
She couldn’t answer, though, her body cleft by loss as well as his warmth. This might be the last time he loved her, when her skin was only just coming to know the moods of his touch. She needed more, for that flame to be exhausted. She needed years.
The terrible longing intensified the joy, and they were drowning in a rush of breath and pounding hearts, sweat on skin, and her cries that he swallowed with his kisses, as if tasting them.
And at last there was no more to say, for the love lay between them unhindered and unbound, and held them as the darkness did.
Chapter 46
‘I will write to you.’ Beneath the brow-guard of Cahir’s boar helmet, his eyes scanned the warriors crowding the port. Two weeks after Beltaine and the bulk of the army had slipped away on foot through the mountains. Day by day Dunadd had emptied.
Minna wrapped her arms around her chest, huddled in her cloak, trying to look as if she were not dying inside. ‘Write? I thought you despised Roman learning.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘So now you speak Latin?’
Cahir grinned, but he was also avoiding her eye. ‘I don’t, minx – I’ve rounded up a trader who does, though. A British trader.’
‘Poor man.’
‘I can’t trust messages will get to you over land, but sea-traders can avoid the armies. And you will receive news in my own words.’
‘That would be wonderful.’ She looked away, blinking in the harsh sunlight.
All of Dunadd had come to farewell the king. Minna stood by Cahir’s command ship, a plank trader with square sails that was tied against the pier, shifting with the swells from a north-westerly wind. Around it, boats of all sizes cluttered the bay. The shoreline was jostling with people; the scent of fear and nerves was as s
harp as sweat in the air.
Leather jerkins had been greased, mail and spear-tips burnished, hair limed into ferocious peaks. Ruarc was resplendent in bronze and iron armour and a gilded wood scabbard, his leaf-green cloak caught by an enormous brooch. On his head was a helmet as ornate as Cahir’s own, winged like a seabird.
Women and children lined the beach. Orla and Finola were standing at the end of the pier with a grim Clíona: Orla was fighting to look brave, her mouth pursed; Finola was less successful. Garvan was also there, sporting a defiant scowl, though Minna had seen the confusion in his eyes. However, despite his best efforts, Cahir had enjoyed no success in softening his son’s heart yet.
Nearby, the noblewomen did not wail and wring their hands but stood in a silent group, bejewelled and finely dressed, their faces proud. Minna summoned her courage; she had to be like them.
Gobÿn strode by, shouting Cahir’s orders to the men loading the boats. War horns brayed, pipes skirled. Finbar and Donal stood by Cahir’s side, for it was to them he was entrusting Dunadd, along with a significant contingent of warriors to guard the fort.
A deep voice boomed out now, trained to reach across the water with a precise volume and clarity: Darach. Cahir removed his helmet and bowed his head before the chief druid. The bustle of movement faded, replaced by expectant silence. There was only the cry of gulls, the slap of the waves.
Darach sprinkled sacred water on Cahir’s brow with rowan-wood, then turned to the four directions, arms raised. ‘Lugh, son of the sun, we ask you to bestow your light on our son Cahir, King of Dalriada, so that he may see his path clearly and follow it. Manannán, lord of the sea, we ask the waves, your steeds, to bear these ships swiftly to the Roman shore. Hawen, boar god, make keen the edge of these blades, and strong the arms that bear them. And the lord of death, he who is not named: if you claim your sons then feast them on the Blessed Isle as befitting their bravery, and return them to life with us once again.’
When Darach had fallen silent, Cahir raised his head, his face shining. A younger druid came forward with his great sword in its battered scabbard and handed it to Minna. She had been told what to do, but never could she be prepared for this.
