by Manda Scott
It was not hard work but the boughs were newly taken from the trees and leaked sap on his palms and fingers. The high, resinous scent made his eyes water and his head float. He put a hand to his head to run his fingers through his hair and found that now his hair, too, had sap on it. He cursed, forgetting where he was. Efnís looked up, shocked, and for a moment it was like looking at Macha when she was angry, or the elder grandmother at any time. Then the northerner frowned and became a boy again, or a young man, bearing new responsibilities.
“Oh, the sap. I’m sorry, I should have told you. I did that on my first time as well.” He left his pot and came round the fire to look. “Hold still. If you move your hand, you’ll spread it further. And don’t touch your hound. If he gets it on his pelt, he’ll try to lick it off and be sick.”
Bán sat like a rock, fixing Hail with a glare that stopped him from trying to sniff out the tallow while there was no-one to guard it. Efnís parted his hair from his fingers. He said, “If we leave it, it’ll spread and you’ll have hair that sticks up for months. If I cut this bit out now, no-one will notice and the resin will be gone. We can burn the cut piece of hair on the fire as an offering to Briga. Would you mind?”
Bán said he didn’t mind. Efnís borrowed his knife, commenting with approval on its sharpness, and deftly cut away the glued lock of hair. They laid it on the fire together and made the invocation to Briga, which always had a wish at the end of it. Bán’s was the wish he always made: that he become a warrior quickly. He made it with his eyes shut tight so that he could see better in his mind the image of himself riding into battle with spear and shield held high. He had opened his eyes again when he heard the first horses; three dozen or more coming at a hard canter down the trackway. His heart leaped with hope until, moments after that, he heard his father’s bullhorn sound the all-clear. He knew the same twist of disappointment he had in the morning but it was swamped, quickly, by the urgent need to see who was coming. He was on his feet before he remembered his chore. He spun round, breathless. “Efnís? May I…?”
“Go and see? Yes, of course. Just take it slowly. You have been breathing the pine-steam and you’ll be dizzy.”
He was already running. Carved and painted horses danced about him as he reached the door, gathering other symbols with them. His father’s she-bear was there, and Macha’s wren, and the bright-painted sun hound that had been the sign of Cassivellaunos when he made his last stand at the river. He was just in time. Ahead of him, the warriors of the Eceni burst from the trees in a scatter of sunlit gold. There were hundreds of them—thousands; every spear the Eceni could muster and others from other tribes. Breaca rode in front, riding tall in spite of her wounds, with her shield on her shoulder and her bloodied spear held aloft and her hair braided for battle and her torc blazing as if the fires of the gods had just given it birth. The blue cloak of the Eceni swirled behind her in the sudden wind, taking up colours from the trees and the moss and the people, gathering patches so that it held all the colours of the tribes except the yellow of the Trinovantes, the colour of the traitor Mandubracios. But that was there too, and the traitor with it. From the moment of Gunovic’s story, Bán had known him: a lean man with the nose of an eagle and watery eyes that would not meet his. He wore battle honours he had not earned and braided his red hair deceitfully. He dismounted now, before Breaca, the ultimate discourtesy. He had come, Bán was certain, to betray her.
“Traitor!” He screamed it as his father screamed before battle, as Cassivellaunos had screamed at Caesar’s legions when they first fought at the river. Beside him, Hail howled his war howl and the sound of it was taken up, echoing, by the sun hound and the she-bear, the boar and the wren and all the other beasts from the great-house that had followed him out to help. They crowded around him, promising blood. When he moved, they moved with him. Together, they hurled themselves at the enemy.
“Bán, no!”
“Get off me!”
“Amminios, don’t! It’s a child. Leave him.”
“Bán!”
A horse reared and he was thrown to the ground. Around him, the people went to war. In the confusion and noise of battle, he heard Hail, howling, and the voice of his mother.
“Bán!”
“The hound…will somebody get hold of that cursed hound—”
“Amminios, stop!”
The world went black and then red and then all colours. When they settled, he heard Efnís speaking, and then his mother again. Both sounded distant and unhappy.
“I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I let him go. I didn’t know he was—”
“It doesn’t matter. You weren’t to know. Get me more water. Bán, can you hear me? Can you open your eyes?”
His head hurt, badly. Cold moss lay on his face, dripping down to his neck. He opened his eyes. The sky was very blue and the sun too bright. His mother made a shadow, leaning over him. Her face was distorted and upside down. He blinked and tilted his head. She moved round to where he could see her properly.
“Bán? Can you see me?”
He screwed up his eyes. “Yes.” His voice was a whisper. He remembered the battle. “Breaca? There was blood on her face. They were going to kill her.”
“No. Bán, it was not so.” His mother was grieving. He could hear it in the way she spoke and her cheeks were wet. He had never seen her weep for him. She said, “The Trinovantes came as envoys under the gods’ peace. You broke the truce and named one of them traitor. It is the deepest insult you could give to them and the gods. You will have to—”
“Stop. That can come later. Let him tell what he saw.” The last voice was one he knew but could not place. It washed over him, like the wind through dry grass, surprisingly warm. He rolled his head to the side and tried to see. Dry, bony fingers closed his eyes. The darkness was more comforting than it had been. The voice said, “Tell us what you saw when the warriors came out of the woodland.”
The image came to him again: Breaca riding at the van of the Eceni nation, with blood on her face and the snake-spear painted in red on her shield. At her side, the traitor with the yellow cloak raised his sword and swung for her horse’s legs. The grey filly screamed and fell. He flinched and his eyes sprang open. The elder grandmother smiled at him and, for the first time in his life, he did not feel afraid of her. “Tell me,” she said.
“Mandubracios,” he said. “He came to betray Breaca. She won the battle and still he came to betray her.”
“If she won, how could he betray her?”
“In the next battle. He would be there, pretending to be on her side, but he would be fighting for the enemy.” He pushed himself up. Something else came that he had forgotten. “Her spear. I saw him break her spear.”
There was silence. A gust of wind rattled the trees. Tethered horses stamped and jingled their harnesses. A crow flew overhead, calling, and was joined by two others. “Thank you,” said the grandmother, distantly. “It is a good answer.”
There were more people around him than he knew. Feet scuffed on grass and shadows passed over him as they stood and walked away. He heard the snap of old joints as the grandmother rose. She spoke across his head. “Efnís, let go of the hound before you choke him. He will do no further harm. Macha, you are the lawgiver. You must explain to your son the debt he owes and the manner of repayment. I will speak with Eburovic and prepare him for what is to come.”
Efnís let go of Hail and for a moment the grandmother’s words were lost in the frenzy of greeting. Bán pushed himself off the ground. His head still spun but with Hail’s help and his mother’s he was able to sit upright. He looked round and found they were alone, but for Efnís. The young dreamer wound his fingers in the long grass and would not meet his eyes. Beyond him, the fairground, which had been inhabited by every man, woman and child of the Eceni, was deserted. Macha said, “Bán, come inside.”
The great-house was busy, but quietly so. The smell of pine was weaker and some of the horse banners had been removed from the walls.
They returned to Efnís’s fire and Bán found that someone else had finished cutting the pine boughs and the torches had been made. They lay in an ordered pile on a sheepskin to one side. The pot on the fire heated only water. When it boiled, Macha filled a beaker and mixed in some herbs and made him drink it. The taste was of burdock, which he knew, and other, more bitter things that he did not. They made his tongue curl and his eyes sting but his head cleared and he could see better than he had done. Macha sat on the ground in front of him and drank the dregs of his drink. Her eyes were on the fire. He had never seen her so serious. He put a hand to her arm. “Where is Breaca? She had blood on her face. She may need healing.”
“No.” With an effort, Macha drew her eyes from the fire. “Efnís, will you leave us? I would speak with my son.”
The young dreamer did not run, but the flurry he left behind him was the same. When they were alone, Macha said, “Bán, Breaca is unhurt. She exchanged harsh words with the Trinovantes and I believe she crossed blades with one of them, but they did her no harm.”
“But—”
Her eyes fixed on his. They were the grey of iron, and firelight danced in the dark of the centres. “Bán, what you saw was a vision, a thing brought on by the pine-steam and your first time in the great-house and…other things that we know too little of. But it was not real. Breaca has not yet fought her battle, the first or the second. The man you attacked is not Mandubracios. He cannot be. The traitor lived in the time of your grandfather’s grandfather. He is dead long since.”
Bán frowned. It made sense but only partially so. He believed in what he saw. “Then who was he?”
“Amminios, second son of the Sun Hound, Cunobelin. He and his brother Togodubnos came as envoys from their father. An envoy is sacred, Bán. Even were it not midsummer, they are not to be attacked.”
Her face and her eyes said more than her voice. And she was weeping again. A fist of ice clutched at his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. Her words from before echoed in his head: You broke the truce and named one of them traitor. It is the deepest insult. She reached for his hand. “Bán, I know you did not mean to do it but the laws are exact and, for this, we cannot pass them by.”
He was going to be a warrior. A small part of his mind told him that this was what it was like to face battle: the terror churning in the pit of his stomach, the dreadful unknowing of what was to come. He tried to ask and found he could no longer speak. He resolved, whatever it was, not to weep.
His mother said, “I have spoken with the elders and they have agreed on a judgement. You owe a debt to Amminios’s honour, to his house and to his person. There are two ways it can be paid. The first is for you to serve him for a year, as Breaca serves the elder grandmother.”
“But he is not blind, or lame. He does not need someone to be his eyes and limbs.”
“No. And so service to him would be different.”
“Like a slave?”
“Yes. I believe so.” He gaped at her. Neither the gods of the Eceni nor their dreamers permitted slavery. Simply to consider it was to risk the wrath of Nemain. His mother was still talking. “We have considered this and it is not acceptable. For many reasons…”
He was a warrior. He could do anything. He squared his shoulders. “I will go if that is what you want of me.”
“No. No, it is not. Most assuredly it is not. You may owe this man a debt of honour, but he…” She was struggling, seeking the words to name a horror, and not finding them. Drawing a breath, she said, “The honour is ours. Amminios does not share it. The elders would not allow you to go to him.” He saw the fear in her eyes, more clearly than before, and the effort it took her to face him. She spoke fast, to get it over. “There is another way. You must give him a gift, something that matters to you deeply. A gift from the heart that would be worth as much as a year of your life.”
She could not look at him then. Her eyes slid away to the fireside, where Hail chewed on the bare end of a torch. He saw the trail of wet on her cheek again and understanding fell on him, crushing him, choking him, grinding his life to dust.
“Not Hail!” He clutched at her, frantic with terror, grasping the startled whelp with his other hand. “Please, please, not Hail. I would rather serve for the rest of my life.”
She caught his wrist. “Don’t say that, Bán. Not on a day like this.”
“But—”
“Just don’t. And no, it is not Hail.” He saw the ghost of a smile. “I do not think he would accept Hail. Your battle hound tried to unman him. If Efnís had not caught him, I think he would have succeeded.”
At another time, he would have been pleased with that. Now, even as the relief swamped him, he cast around for the real answer. “The new bitch? She is good. A man such as that would not know what to do with her, but I will give her if I must.”
“No. Not the bitch. She is a thing you have traded. She is not something you value. There is one other—”
And so he saw it, like a knife-blade too close to be ducked, aiming straight for the heart. “The foal? My dun filly?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Bán, but it’s the only thing that will serve.”
“But she can’t leave her dam. She’s too young. She isn’t weaned yet.”
“I know. So the mare will have to be given with her. They must go together. Tomorrow morning, after the ceremony of the sunrise, you must give them both to Amminios as your debt-gift, with your apologies.”
His day passed in desolation. He sat in the field with the filly, giving her salt and honeyed bran cakes and the other gifts that were brought him. Word travelled fast and people he barely knew—the ones who had come to look at her and admire her during the fair and others he had never seen before—passed by the field and left small gifts: a twist of salt for the filly, a jar of oil to paint her hooves, a sword belt for him to wear in the morning. A day earlier, he would have burst with pride simply knowing that they cared. Now nothing touched him. His father came to be with him for a while. Together, they brushed the mane and tail of dam and foal and polished their hides until they shone. They said nothing. There was no need for discussion. Both knew that she was the best foal Eburovic had ever bred and the dam was his best brood mare. Both knew the years that had gone into making her and that the chances of ever breeding another like her were too small to measure.
In time, his father left and the filly nuzzled Bán’s neck and lipped at his hair and did not understand why he did not play as he used to. He twisted her forelock, as he had on the morning she was born, lifting the silk-sand hair away from her face so that the new-moon star showed to the sky. He spoke to her: promising her great things, that she would be honoured above all the other horses in her new owner’s herd, that she would be gently ridden and well trained and would see great battles; that when her time came she would be put to the bravest and best of the sires and would breed only the best of foals. He lied and he knew it and the words dried in his throat. She blew in his face and butted his shoulder to cheer him, and he smelled the special young-foal smell of her and knew that he wanted to die.
Breaca came later, nearer to evening. Thunderclouds gathered in the west, blotting out the skyline. The red of the sunset leaked from the edges like blood from a fatal wound. He watched it and tried to remember why he had believed himself to have the courage of a warrior. He did nothing to acknowledge his sister. Of all the people close to him, she was the one he least wanted to see. She stood on the edge of his vision, waiting. Presently, when he did not turn to her, she stooped and laid an armload of twigs and logs at the side of the wall. “I brought wood for your fire,” she said. “You should build a fire if you are going to stay out all night.”
That was sensible. He had not considered a fire but it was a good idea, for Hail, if not for him. He nodded to show he had heard and waited for her to go away.
“Bán?” She crouched at his side. Shyly, almost tentatively, she laid a hand on his arm. Her voice had a catch, as if she had been weeping, or
was going to do so, soon. “Bán, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know They didn’t tell me until now. I have tried to make them take other gifts but they say it is in the hands of the gods and they cannot act differently.”
He said nothing, not out of rudeness, but because there was nothing to say. Anyone else would have left him to his misery. Breaca was his sister. She sat down on the ground beside him, moving the quiet, disconsolate Hail out of the way. “Bán? Little brother?” She reached for him, wrapping her arms around him. Her fingers linked through his. Without his conscious thought, his thumb sought out the scar on her palm, running down the ridge of it. She laid her cheek on his head as she had always done and pulled him close to her chest. He could hear the beat of her heart through her tunic. In the old days, when he was a child and she had held him thus, he had counted her heartbeats out loud, to show he knew the numbers and could measure the rhythm. Now they rocked through him, echoing in the emptiness.
Her voice moved down through his head. She was speaking, telling him that she had tried to reason with the elders and had failed and that she had come to offer the only recompense she could think of. “I know the grey filly is not as good, but if you want her she is yours. Would you take her as my gift to you? Please?”
He shook his head. He did not want another horse, ever. He had already decided that. He tried to pull free and she held him tighter. “No.” Her arms bound him close. “Leave it then. Stay with me. Just stay and be still. We don’t have to talk.”
