by Manda Scott
“Indeed.” The Roman was trying not to smile and failing. “I have the papers here. They, too, have been attested in my presence by the magistrate. You are a prince of the royal line of the Eceni. It is not uncommon for a younger son to be sent in good faith to be reared in the homes of men who oppose his people. It is a means to ensure that treaties, once signed, will be adhered to. Half of Gaul sent younger sons as hostages to Caesar. They fought at his side and made a good part of his cavalry in later wars.”
“I wouldn’t fight for Amminios if he tore my teeth from my head to make me do it.”
“No-one is asking you to. I am simply saying that by the laws of Rome you are not a slave, and you are free to go home whenever you want to. I don’t want you as a hostage, and neither does the emperor; he’s not at war with your people. It’s late in the year for ships to be crossing the ocean but there’s one leaving Gesoriacum in ten days. I can get you onto it and I’ll pay for your passage. If the ship’s master can be persuaded, I’ll see if they’ll sail all the way up to the lands of the Eceni so you won’t have to travel through enemy territory.” Corvus grinned in a way that Bán had forgotten. “My only stipulation is that you take your mad killer colt with you before it does someone an injury. Civilis nearly lost an arm to its teeth when he tried to take its saddle off. The halter is waiting until you feel well enough to try, or it can rot off where it stands. No-one else will go near it.”
It was a dream, obviously. Bán stared at the lamp. A winged horse flew round the base of it, given life by the undulating flame. It was a long time since he had dreamed with such precision. Iccius was present, as he had been throughout the day, but none of the other phantoms. Bán called a vision of home, of the roundhouse and the paddocks and his father’s forge, and found it came only dimly and was empty of people—a ghost place, lacking even the ghosts.
He called to the river and the sacred pool and the memory of the waterfall in summer, thinking that here, at least, he could expect to find Breaca, or Airmid. The dust in his mind told him that the lands of his past were dead to him, closed off for all time. He thought he should weep for that, but the ache inside did not allow for further weeping. He looked to Iccius for advice and saw him, indistinctly. The blue eyes were the same as they had last been in life, and the message that went with them: Don’t die for nothing.
He brought his dry gaze back to Corvus’s face, seeing afresh the contrast between the vital, vibrant intelligence of the man and the dry husk that was himself. The prefect smiled at him and crooked his brow. “What are you thinking?”
With all that had been done for him, he could not tell the truth. Instead, he said, “That I have no home. That home was given meaning by the people who lived there and all of them are gone. That there is nothing for me to go back to.”
“That’s not true.” Corvus turned to see him better. He stretched out and took Bán’s hand in his own. There was not so great a difference in their size now, nor the colour. Three summers in Gaul had baked Bán brown and he had grown in height to match any Roman.
Corvus said, “You’re upset because of Iccius, I understand that, but you’ll feel differently with time. You must believe it. Do you still miss Eburovic as you did? Or Macha?”
Bán said nothing. With more time to think, he might have found the words to explain that Eburovic was a warrior and had died with a blade in his hand and Macha was a dreamer who could call on the gods to sell her life dearly, but that, like the dun filly, Iccius had been Bán’s to look after and he had failed.
In the space of his silence, Corvus said, “What about Efnís? He was your friend; his people would take you in if you don’t want to live amongst your own. You have so much to do—you could sit your long-nights and take your spear-tests and become a warrior and then, if the elders agree it, you could pursue Caradoc for his blood-guilt.” He used the Eceni words and they came stiffly to his tongue, rusted from lack of use. Still, he cared enough to try.
Bán said, “I am too old to sit my long-nights. It must be done at the right time or the gods will not send the dream.”
“Sit your spear-tests, then. You could still become a warrior.”
“A warrior is nothing without a dream. Could you imagine Eburovic without the she-bear? Or Breaca without the serpent-spear? I could be a hunter, perhaps, or a smith like my father but it wouldn’t be the same.”
Corvus frowned. His hands were steady, feeling a truth that ran beneath the words. Quietly, so that it was just between them, he said, “I won’t let you die, Bán. You’re worth too much for that.”
There was nothing to be said. The gods, too, were not ready for Bán to die. He had seen the chance twice in less than a day and twice it had been taken from him. He thought of life without Iccius and did not see how it could be borne.
Corvus held his hands in stubborn silence. The man was a friend, perhaps the only one. The ache inside parted to give Bán an answer. He said, “Make me a warrior of Rome.”
“What?”
“You are recruiting men for your cavalry wing. I may never be a warrior of the Eceni, but I passed my fifteenth birthday at the full moon before the autumn equinox and in the eyes of the Gauls that is all it takes to be a man. You are recruiting men. Take me. If it is to be said that I was a hostage, then let me follow in the footsteps of my predecessors, the Gaulish hostages to Caesar, and enlist in the emperor’s army.” He did not say, And go to war, and fight, and die as did my father and sister, with a blade in my hand.
The silence counted his heartbeats. Outside, an owl cried, the carrier of dreams, and a horse screamed in anger. Even after so little time together, he recognized the voice of the pied colt. A name came to him, as it had done with Hail. “He is the Crow,” he said. “The pied colt is called Crow.” He said it in Eceni, when all the rest had been in Gaulish. It made more sense that way.
A hand fell on his shoulder. Corvus stood over him, shaking his head. “Go to sleep. You’re overtired. We’ll talk of it more in the morning.”
“You’ll not let me enlist?”
“I won’t stop you from doing anything your dreams tell you to do, but you’re not a citizen, you can’t enlist in a legion and I can’t appoint you directly to the cavalry; that’s not in my power. To do as you say, you’d have to go through four months on probation, which is not something to be taken lightly. If you grew tall enough over the winter, and if the assessors thought you good enough, you might get a cavalry posting, but if not, you’d be in the infantry cohorts or discharged and left with nothing.”
“But you must need men to serve in other ways. I can build. I can cut corn. I can run a stables and a stud farm. It would still be home.”
“Bán, that’s not necessary. We do have need of servants and many of them are freemen, but even so, the best I could offer is to take you as my groom, or teach you to write and make you my scribe, and neither of those is a fit life for a warrior of the Eceni.”
“I can write already. Amminios had me taught. It made me more Roman.”
“Even so.”
The box was pushed back to the wall. The lamplight wavered with the movement and was snuffed out. Outside, firelight cast smudged shadows. Bán found himself lying down with a folded tunic as a pillow and a cloak laid across him for warmth. The beaker of watered wine was left by his head.
“Sleep now, and see what the dreams bring you. You can make your choices in the morning.”
Bán slept and dreamed of nothing. The morning brought him a pied colt called Crow who had stood through the night in a halter because nobody else had dared take it off. By noon, bitten once and kicked, Bán had changed the halter and the colt had eaten in his presence. In the evening, he met with Corvus, and told him his decision.
CHAPTER 18
“The Sun Hound is dead.”
Word spread from the dun with the last days of autumn. “Cunobelin is dead. Amminios is returning from exile in Gaul. He has sworn alliance to Berikos of the Atrebates, enemy of his father. Togodubnos will oppose th
em both. There will be war.” Everywhere, dreamers and elders who had waited all summer for the news gathered their warriors and prepared them for battle. The wisest among them were less urgent. “Be patient. Hone your blades but do not expect to use them yet. The Sun Hound held on to his life long enough. It is too close to winter to fight now; there will be no war before spring.”
On Mona, in the warriors’ school and the council of dreamers, they heard the news sooner than most. Since early spring, Luain mac Calma had sent reports of the wasting disease that was slowly draining the Sun Hound’s life, couched in language that the bearers thought to be trivial but was not. The fact itself was brought to the council directly by Lanis, sole dreamer of the Trinovantes, who rode without rest from the east coast to the west, changing horses every half day to keep the speed. She arrived at the straits in the early evening of the third day after the death and lit a signal fire to summon a ferry from the island. Two men waited with her on the foreshore: Gunovic, the travelling smith, whom she knew of old, and a stocky, straw-haired youth of the northern Brigantes who spoke in an accent so thick that it defied comprehension but who carried as evidence of his good faith a blue stone carved in the shape of the leaping salmon, the mark of Venutios, who was Warrior of Mona, second only in rank to Talla, Elder of elders. When the ferry came, those who handled it had orders to take all three across.
The evening was cool and still. Midges danced in clouds above the jetty, dark patches reflected in darker water against the greyed background of the sky. Breaca stared through them to the cloaked shapes on the ferry. She was one of a dozen, handpicked by Venutios to act as welcome party to Lanis and the two unnamed men who travelled with her. The Warrior himself stood to one side, the strong planes of his face showing in profile against the water. He was not a tall man by Eceni standards, but he had a solid strength that made him seem so. He radiated a calm that on most days would have spread to them all but today did not. The scar on Breaca’s palm itched as it had done all day so that she felt high-strung, like the grey mare before a race, and had no idea why. Those on either side of her stood at ease, expecting no trouble, nor did they have cause to do otherwise; whatever the events in the east attendant on Cunobelin’s death, they posed no immediate danger to Mona or to those who lived and studied there.
The ferry swirled in the grip of a current. It was well known that the gods protected their own and Mona was nothing if not the gods’ isle. If those on the ferry had offered danger, Breaca did not believe they would be allowed to cross the straits in safety. Still, she could not settle. She had stepped forward to speak of it to Venutios when the larger of the two unnamed travellers stood up at the bow of the ferry and a flicker of late light on the water showed his face. “Gunovic!”
The craft was less than a spear’s throw away, swinging against the current. Breaca ran forward to the end of the jetty, the shock of welcome swamped by a wave of unreasoning panic that came close to unravelling two years of Mona’s training. She stretched to catch the ferry rope and turned it round an oak post and hauled it in, calling to him, “Gunovic, are you well? And Macha? Is there ill news of the Eceni?” and he was with her, leaping up onto the jetty with the agility of youth and holding her in his great bear’s embrace and for a moment she was a girl again, greeting her father after a year’s absence and the world was as good as it could ever be. Gunovic was not her father, but he had cared for Macha through a summer’s long illness and had lost his trade because of it and stayed the winter and the spring after that and he was the smith of the Eceni now in Eburovic’s place. She could imagine no-one better. He grinned and the panic ebbed, leaving only the joy and the needling itch in her palm.
“Gently now, there’s no bad news from us.” He ran his fingers through her hair in the way he had done when she was young. “In fact, I think there might be good news if the elders confirm it.”
“Really?” She stood back, holding him at arm’s length to see him better. The late sun lit his armbands and the gift-brooches on his cloak. Nothing had changed of the man but the peace in his face, which was new. Hope made her rash. “Gunovic—is Macha pregnant?”
“No. Not that I know of. And perhaps not ever. I think she would be by now if it could happen.” An old pain cramped round his eyes; he had lost one family to slavers in his youth and had sworn never to love again. To find himself loving and loved and yet be denied children would be the hardest irony. She squeezed his arm and would have apologized for asking but he shook his head and gave a half-smile that took the loss and made it bearable. “With news that good, you would have heard me shouting it from the other side of the straits,” he said. “But it is good all the same. Macha has asked me to be singer of the Eceni in your mother’s place. I have come to ask permission of Talla.”
He was grinning like a boy with his first hunted hare. Breaca hugged him fiercely. It was not news; she had heard it already in the summer, one of the half-rumours that blew to Mona on the backs of the gulls, but there was no reason for him to know that, and to hear it confirmed made her day perfect. There was no-one else, ever, who could have taken her mother’s place. She pulled him close, pressing her face to his shoulder. “Talla will give permission,” she said. “It is long past time we had a new singer.”
“And a new sire for the horse herds. See, I have brought him all this way for your approval.”
Gunovic clapped her on the shoulders and turned her round to show off the big bay horse that stood on the jetty. A straw-haired youth in the black cloak of the Brigantes passed behind her back, leading his own horse. The hand-itch died away as he passed, leaving only the fluttering anticipation that had been with her all day. The stranger spoke with Venutios, who knew him and greeted him gladly. When they stood close, a degree of kinship was clear between them in the wide, blunt faces and the grey eyes. Only the hair was different: Venutios’s was dark, streaked with grey at the temples, while the other was fair. Breaca watched as the Warrior smiled and put a hand on the messenger’s arm. She had never yet known Venutios to make a mistake in his friendships. “Who is he?” she asked.
“His dam won a race against Sinochos’s white-socked chestnut and his sire has bred at least a dozen good—”
“Not the horse, the youth. The one talking to Venutios. Who is he?”
“The lad? His name’s Vellocatus. He’s from Venutios’s people, sent with a private message.”
It may have been private, but it was not welcome. She saw the warmth pass from the Warrior, leaving him still and unnaturally stiff for one who lived his life in the fluid forms of battle. The straw-headed messenger pressed his point, cutting the air with the edge of his hand for emphasis, and then stopped, leaving a silence that spoke as strongly. The warriors of the welcome party stood away and turned their backs, giving the pair privacy. The gesture passed unnoticed. Venutios gazed past them all, staring vacantly at the sun-stained horizon as if he stood on the jetty alone. He looked older than he had done, more burdened, like a man who has been given a shield heavier than is sensible and must carry it in a fight not of his choosing. Seeing him, Breaca made sense, suddenly, of a recent dream of Airmid’s in which a salmon had swum upriver to the spawning grounds, bearing a crow’s feather in its mouth. Her heart jolted within her. Horrified, she spoke aloud, forgetting Gunovic was not of Mona and might not be privy to its secrets. “Gods. They’re calling him home. What time is this for Mona to be choosing a new Warrior?”
It was the time set by the gods and could not be changed. On Mona, more than anywhere else, the gods walked the land and life moved to their rhythms. Every part of the island was sacred. Breaca had felt it when she first stepped off the ferry with Airmid and it struck her afresh each time someone she knew came to visit: a quickening of the pulse and a strengthening of the blood that lifted her higher and sharpened her vision so that she saw more clearly the threads that bound each of them to the land and to each other and understood once again the small place of her own cares in the greater pattern of the worl
d.
In the normal course of things, the renewed clarity would have passed by nightfall on the day of Gunovic’s visit, lost in a flurry of greetings and gifts and gossip. Breaca had news of those things that mattered in her tight-woven world: of her progress in the warriors’ school; of the grey mare’s latest filly foal, which was not turning out as well as it might have done; of Airmid’s new lover, who was the greatest of the school’s warriors, and what Lanis had said of her in open hearing.
Gunovic, for his part, had news of the tribes beyond: of Macha and the progress of her healing, which was as complete as it might ever be; of ’Tagos, who had found that he could wield a sword left-handed, but not a spear; of the Coritani, who had declared a truce and sworn oaths at the autumn council not only of neutrality but of friendship and alliance in the face of possible war in the south. All of this would have taken the best part of the night and the sharpness of vision that was Mona’s would have blurred again by morning, but for two messages, brought together, which changed the face of the world for ever.
Breaca had felt the change before Venutios raised his hand to gather his group at the jetty. In the moments of meeting, she had exchanged with Gunovic the news of a year, condensed into half-sentences and shorn of all drama. There had been no time to reflect on it after. The horns had sounded as the travellers reached the settlement, summoning the warriors, dreamers and singers of Mona to council, and there had been barely time to gather up a cloak and brooch before she was queuing to enter the largest of the great-houses and then standing in rank order with the other warriors behind a fire pit that spanned half the width of the hall, beneath torches that filled the air with pine smoke and burnt tallow, watching, with startling clarity, the play of flame and shadow on the gathered faces.
She heard a murmur pass through the ranks of dreamers gathered on the far side of the fire and looked up. The front line parted and when it came together Talla stood in the space before the fire pit. The Elder could barely walk without aid and yet she was there now, standing erect as the youngest of dreamers, her hair moon-white in the torchlight and her eyes warm with the glow of the fire. Maroc stood at her side, the dreamer who all believed would be her successor. He was a slight, wiry man with thinning wheaten hair and pale eyes. At first glance, he had the look of one who should be casting pots or stitching harness and he had passed as such more than once out of necessity in the lands of Gaul and amongst the tribes south of the sea-river who had turned their backs on the dreamers and the gods. On Mona he made no effort to hide who he was, so that, waiting under the arc of his gaze, Breaca knew the same sense of awe as she did in the presence of the standing stones of the ancestors. A shiver passed down her spine and a high whine, like the hum of summer bees, began to play in her ears. She looked for Gunovic and found him, far out on the side amongst the singers. He was staring straight at her. She smiled but saw no response.
