by Manda Scott
“She’s unhappy. It is not necessarily because of you.”
“And that is why Airmid and your father have followed her?”
Bán looked back to the trees. Airmid stood with Luain mac Calma on the trackway. His father was not there. It was a mistake that had been made often in the last month by those unfamiliar with his family. Today, it was not important. He let it go. “That’s Luain, the dreamer. He brought news from Mona that Breaca did not want to hear. He will have spoken it formally at the council, to seek the approval of the elders.”
The Roman nodded, absently. “Would she leave before the vote?”
“No. They would only discuss it after.” Bán felt sick again. Down at the trees, a flash of gold caught the late afternoon sun and Airmid turned as if someone had hailed her. “Caradoc is there,” he said.
“Then he will have news.” The Roman sat down, suddenly. Bán stood and raised his arm. Luain mac Calma saw it and waved, pointing. Caradoc emerged from the trees and began to walk up the slope towards the yew log that blocked the gateway to the lower field. He walked fast, not quite running; it would not take him long to reach them. The red mare nudged Bán and he did not reach for her as he would have done.
Caradoc vaulted the log, easily. Hail saw him and trotted down the slope to greet him; the young warrior, too, had found ways to get on the right side of the hounds.
“I think—” Bán stopped. What he thought did not matter. The Roman’s attention was focused entirely on the man walking up the hill towards them. The Roman’s skin was grey where before it had been brown and sweat ran freely from his temples. His hands were clasped at his knees, tightly. Bán tried to swallow and found his mouth too dry. His senses expanded overpoweringly. The rush of his heart pulsed in his ears, deafeningly loud. The mare straddled to urinate and the spiked, earthen smell of it, normally so familiar, made him heave. His skin tingled; every place where his tunic touched him became a deep-rubbed sore. The flashing gold of a man’s hair became the source of the sun in a world gone suddenly mad. He rubbed the palms of his hands on his tunic and regretted it. “Is this how it feels before battle?” he asked.
“Yes, but in battle one has a weapon, and at least the illusion of choice.”
“Of course.” And there was no choice. By now it would have been decided whether they would let him go to his death as a warrior bearing a borrowed sword, or if Dubornos held enough sway to see him die broken on the platform. They should have discussed the ways to escape such a fate and had not. Caradoc passed behind a whitethorn hedge and was out of sight for the space of two strides. Without moving his eyes, Bán drew the knife from his belt and held it out on the flat of his hand. “Take it,” he said, shortly. “It gives you choice.” The hilt made a brief pressure on his palm and was gone.
The warrior was close. Hail trotted at his side, grinning. The man reached down as he would with his own hound, fondling the great ears absently. A spear’s length from the Roman, he stopped. The world stopped with him. Bán felt his throat clench and the tears burn in his eyes. He tried to speak and nothing came. The Roman was still, like a statue. His face was quite white.
For one moment longer, they held like that, then Caradoc threw his arm out in the salute of one warrior to another and inclined his head and it was enough.
It was more than enough; words would not have been better. Bán looked away, his eyes still burning. Beside him, he felt the man draw in a breath so deep it might have been his first in the world. In the space after, he swore, softly—a long stream of foreign words in the middle of which Nemain was invoked as a saviour and then Briga, whose bird was the crow. When he ran out of words he looked up at the warrior.
“Thank you,” he said. “Can you tell me why?” He spoke Gaulish, out of respect.
“Mac Calma spoke of his dreaming.” Caradoc crouched neatly on the turf. “And then Airmid told of hers. They are our two most powerful dreamers and what they saw was the same. It is not you that we have to fear and your death will do nothing to stop an invasion, if one is coming. Knowing that, it was only damaged pride and the memory of your ancestors’ actions that called for your death. Neither of these was enough. The dreamers would not do it.”
“You mean Airmid would not do it?”
“No. None of them would. They said so and it swung the vote. Some still voted against, but the majority was with you.”
“And you? May I know which way you voted?”
It mattered to him, one could see it. Caradoc nodded. His eyes were alive with a striking humour, brighter than they had been since the day of the shipwreck. “You may,” he said. “It has changed since the day of our first meeting. When the sea threw you up at our feet, I would have killed you, you know that. Even after your actions in the river, I would have voted for your death because I believed it necessary to preserve our people. But the dreamers spoke against it and I trust them. If they say there is no reason for your death and that it would offend the gods to kill you, then I believe them. I voted to let you go and I am glad there were more of us than the others.”
“What about Dubornos? He will not be glad.”
“No. Not in the least, but you are still a guest. If he kills you, it is murder, which also draws the dreamer’s death, and he will not take that risk. You have the right now to wear a sword but I suggest you don’t do so unless you want him to challenge you. That would be…complicated.”
“Indeed. Thank you.”
In the lengthening silence, the Roman brought his hand to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had done that in his first conversations with Bán, when he was lost for words and they had run out of useful hand signals. He said, “And now? Do you give me a horse and tell me where to ride?”
“If you wish.” Caradoc pushed himself to his feet. “On the other hand, if you want to get home before your daughters bear granddaughters, then you will allow us to escort you south to the port beyond my father’s dun and take a merchant ship from there.”
The Roman laughed, loosely and not very controlled, so that one could read in him the first waves of relief, barely held. “Could you say that again in Latin?” he asked. “I think my Gaulish is failing me. If nothing else, I have no daughters, no children of any kind—but are you telling me that you will ride into the city of your father and your brothers? I thought you were at war with him?”
“Not yet. I don’t fight unless there’s a good chance of winning.”
Caradoc said it again in Latin, taking longer, elaborating as the other asked questions. Bán watched his friend’s face change as the world opened out before him. When the questions ran out the Roman stood and, turning, bowed to Bán. In Gaulish, he said, “Forgive me. It is not every day a man is given back his life. If it is not a discourtesy, I think I would spend some time alone with the gods. I thank you for your company.”
Bán found himself grinning widely, like a fool. Tears streamed down his face and he didn’t care. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“No. But I am not certain I have any other way to repay you.”
It was said hesitantly, with wrong words, and in any case repayment of a debt to a friend was too complex a thing in any language. Bán stood and offered his hand to be grasped, in the Roman way. He put his arm on the man’s shoulder. “Go,” he said, smiling. “Hail and I will hunt now. There will be meat to eat this evening. Make sure you are back in time or Camma will be mortally offended. She is far worse than the dreamers when she’s angry.”
“You would have liked him to stay?”
Bán sat on the knoll under the beech tree. The Roman was a small figure in the distance, walking along the horizon. Caradoc lay back on the grass and peered up through the branches as the Roman had done before him. He thought carefully before he answered.
“I think it would have been better to fight at his side than to fight against him.”
Bán rolled over, resting his chin on his fists. More things had passed, it seemed, than a Roman’s dance with dea
th. He found a withered beechnut left behind after winter and prised it open with his fingers. The mast within was small and shrivelled. He held it up for the red mare and she lipped it delicately from his palm. “Is that what they dreamed?” he asked. “That you were fighting against him?”
“Maybe. It’s hard to tell. You have known a true dreaming; I have only known dreams and all of those confused, but it seems either way nothing is precise. Everything is shapes and shadows and there are a hundred different interpretations, all of which may be true, or none.”
“But there will be war?”
“Yes. There will be war on a scale such as we have never known it. A brother will be the spark that lights the flame and a brother will be the one to fan it.”
A name hung in the air between them. Bán was the first one to speak it.
“Amminios.” He spat it out. The taste of it soured his mouth and the sound took the shine from the day.
“They think so. I am certain of it. As soon as my father is dead, he will act.”
Caradoc rolled over onto his side. A faint scar on one jaw reminded Bán that he was a warrior with a dozen kills to his credit. His grey eyes searched deeply as Luain’s had done once, on a headland. There was an offer of friendship there if one chose to look for it. He said, “My brother will be at the dun. If you want to come with us, you must be prepared for that.”
Bán stared at him. He had not thought past the day and the death he had believed must follow it. “Will I be allowed to go?”
“If you wish to. Your father will go, and Macha. Airmid has been given leave to travel that far. Mac Calma named her Airmid of Nemain, which I think she was not expecting. It sets her higher than any dreamer of the Eceni for the last three generations.”
“But she still has to go to Mona?”
“Yes, of course. She will ride with the Eceni as far as the boundaries of your land and then turn west.”
“Alone?”
“Hardly. Breaca refused to take the oath of the sworn warrior. The offer was passed to ’Tagos, who also refused. That left—”
“Dubornos.” Bán let the full horror of it roll over him. “Dubornos will be sworn warrior to Airmid in her years in Mona? Did she accept it?”
“Do you think she cares? Breaca had already gone out by then. She would have accepted Amminios if it would have ended the council and let her follow.”
“Maybe.” Bán was only half listening. He remembered his sister and the speed she had called from the dun colt. From that he remembered other things. He chewed on his lip, building courage to speak. The grey eyes were patient, waiting. “Will she be there at your father’s court?” he asked. “The dun filly?”
“No.” It was a short word. The eyes said more. Bán read anger and a deeper rage beneath it.
“Is she—”
“She’s dead. I was not there. Togodubnos did what he could but he was unable to stop it. It was fast; ‘an act of sacrifice to the gods of Rome.’ I am sorry.”
“Don’t be. You are not to blame.”
Bán lay back and looked up at the sky. The sun hovered on the brink of the horizon. Opposite it, the first edge of the moon showed in the east. He offered a prayer and the promise of vengeance. Presently he sat up and held out his arm. The other clasped it, as a friend would, gripping at the elbow.
“Will you kill him?” Bán asked.
“Amminios? Oh, yes.” Caradoc of the Trinovantes smiled tightly. “Without question, I will kill him. But not until after my father dies. Nothing can happen until then. In the meantime, we will travel to my father’s dun and see what it has to offer.”
CHAPTER 12
It will be bigger than anything you have ever imagined.
Caradoc had warned her, and then Macha, in the days of preparation before they left the roundhouse. Gunovic had laid the groundwork over the years with his winter songs and Arosted had fleshed it out in laconic monosyllables, sprinkled like his salt. It was her own poverty of imagination, therefore, that had left Breaca so utterly unprepared for the reality that was Cunobelin’s dun.
“It is meant to do this to you. Don’t let it.”
Caradoc rode at her side as she led her delegation out of the ranks of coppiced hazel onto the long, shallow slope that led down towards his father’s land. He was used to it, had grown up with it, watching the improvements and extensions as his father had sought to make his land secure. Coming on it for the first time, Breaca was rendered speechless before the endless acres of grazing land, the richness and order of the planted fields, the height and the span and the haze of smoke and heat hanging in the air that told of more fires—of more dwellings—than she had ever seen in one place.
She was a warrior and it was the dike that struck her hardest, as it was supposed to do: the long, straight, ditch-fronted rampart that marked the first defence of the Sun Hound’s land. It was vast, impossibly so, and stretched further than she could ever have envisaged. Seeing it, she could understand, finally, why the dun was said to be impregnable.
Caradoc, who was also a warrior, sat still at her side, seeing it afresh through her eyes. “It is a long time since these defences to the north were manned; my father does not believe there is any risk of attack from the Eceni. The greater threat now is from the south, from Berikos and his Atrebates who wait on the far side of the sea-river and would plunder my father’s ports if they were given the chance. What you see here is old and not well maintained.”
Breaca said, “But effective none the less. The banks would be hard for attacking warriors to cross in any numbers.”
Caradoc raised a brow, smiling. “If you came with a war band, would you continue?”
A shiver of goose-flight brushed across her spine. She let it pass before she answered. “Yes. But I would do it with care and I would make sure I knew the weak points before I started.”
“Good. If it were me, I would consider bribing the guards at the gates. A wall is only a barrier if it has no gaps.” Caradoc pushed his mount forward. “Today, that should not be necessary. The spies have been following us since we left Eceni lands. My father should know everything down to and including what we eat and drink while travelling.” He was already ahead of her. He turned back, one brow raised. “Shall we go down and see if he will let us in?”
They rode down the long slope together. Caradoc was mounted on the dun colt and looked good on him. The horse had been Bán’s last gift before the party left the roundhouse and if it was offered as much in provocation to Amminios as in honour of his brother, none had chosen to remark on it. It was widely known by then that Amminios had sacrificed the filly to the Roman gods and that her spirit was therefore lost, unable to find its way to the lands of the dead. Even those who had not known her were appalled by that.
Bán himself rode the red Thessalian mare, a mount that surpassed any the Eceni had ever seen. Because of her value to the breeding herd, the elders had been required to give permission before Bán took her south but the vote had been unanimous in his favour. On the journey, the mare had proved skittish and prone to bouts of unnecessary nerves, but Bán had sworn he could bring her safely through a thunderstorm if he had to and they had let him alone with her.
A cattle market occupied the flat plain before the dike. Beyond it the warriors of the Trinovantes waited in a row, all alike in the gorse-yellow cloaks, with burnished helms dull in the early light. Their shields were bronze with circular decorations and their harness mounts matched them. None bore spears but even at this distance Breaca could see the hilt of a sword projecting above the shoulder of each one. She scanned the line, seeking those she knew. Togodubnos was near the centre, recognizable by his tumble of black hair and the breadth of his shoulders. Amminios, red-haired and flashily mounted, was beside him. After that, they were all the same.
Caradoc pointed out his father. “The golden shield is his. To the left of Amminios.” She had passed over the shield, thinking it bronze; in full sunlight, it would have been more impressive. S
he marked it in her mind so she would not forget.
Others were named whom she knew by reputation. Heffydd son of Eynd was the only one who mattered; the false dreamer who got his dreams from the Sun Hound and not from the gods. Airmid had watched him all the way down the slope, but distantly, in the way that said she had been dreaming and had not yet come back to the present. She was already dressed for the longer journey beyond this one; the shield hanging from her saddle was the plain hide of the dreamer and her cloak the hearth-smoke grey of Mona. The brooch at her shoulder was cast in the shape of the serpent-spear, and Breaca wore its partner. That much remained between them.
They rode through the market, doing their best to maintain order. Breaca, as bearer of the royal line, took the lead as she had done since they entered Trinovantian territory. Caradoc, as the returning son, rode beside her. After them, a long column of warriors, dreamers and seamen snaked behind, the order defined by complex rules of rank and status. It had taken a long time to assemble a company that was both safe and balanced. Warriors from all over Eceni lands had put their names forward for the journey—some to honour Breaca as she led her first formal delegation, some for the sake of the Roman, most because they wished to see Cunobelin’s dun and this was their best opportunity. The elders had made the decisions in the end, picking those who would acquit themselves well in case of danger and yet be a credit to their people if there were peace.
It was not a peacetime delegation. Macha, Airmid and Luain were the only dreamers, Bán the only child. The rest were adult warriors and most had seen battle. Cunobelin’s men waited ahead of them. In any confrontation it is easier to let the enemy come to you; better still if you are organized and they are not. Breaca looked down at the calf pens and wicker hurdles hemming her in on either side and swore, with feeling.
“We can form the line when we’re clear of here. He has left you room.” Caradoc rode easily with one hand resting on his thigh. He was facing away from her, nodding acknowledgement to muted cries of recognition from the crowd, and he spoke without turning his head. From a distance, were it seen at all, it could be taken that he spoke to the small group of sheep traders that crowded his horse’s flanks.
