by Manda Scott
The legions saw her as she rode out of the trees, halfway down the hill. A murmur rippled down the line, growing to a growl. Not inhuman then, but prone to fear and anger. She grinned, savagely, and hoped they saw it. They would have found the ruined carcasses of their dead on their way here. There had been no survivors to tell of the tall, copper-haired warrior and her grey-cloaked killers, but she was known from the earlier attacks and the mark cut on the chests of the dead had been the same, like the message it left. You will die here and go to your gods unwhole. Leave us.
In case they should doubt it, she moved her shield to her right arm so that, coming down the hill with the trees to her left, the sign of the serpent-spear would be plainly seen. Behind her, the thirty of her honour guard did the same. She raised her spear above her head and saw the flicker of iron as the gesture was repeated along the line. Hail ran ahead of her, head and tail high, a war hound greater than anything Rome could offer. He was her living memory of Bán and she used him, as she had done on Mona, to strike the spark of loathing and anger that could be directed at Rome as easily as at Amminios and that became, as it grew within her, the certainty of victory. She felt the mantle of it settle on the honour guard and spread to the warriors beneath her so that the swarms of activity paused and became instead a carpet of upturned faces, and raised spears and blades that flashed in the light and promised death to the enemy.
On the opposite bank, the growl grew. Men began to hammer their blade-hilts on their shields. A pattering noise rose over the music of the stream, like hail on sheet iron, gathering strength. At the far left of the Roman cavalry, a black-haired man in the chequered cloak of the Atrebates tugged at the sleeve of a mounted commander and pointed. Breaca threw up her arm and made a sign in the air as she had seen Maroc do, naming the Atrebatan a traitor and marking him for Briga. The man flinched and fell back, shielding his face as if she had flung stones across the water. The rattle of sword-hilts became a wall of sound, like the roar of a battlefield. Breaca set her teeth and grinned and felt her spear leap in her hand like a live thing. The grey mare raised her head and screamed, as a colt might, giving battle.
Caradoc met her at the foot of the slope. He, too, was leaner and browner than he had been at the meeting on the salt marshes, and even in the rain his hair shone star-gold as if lit from within. He still bore the colours of the Ordovices; the white cloak fell from his shoulders, part covering the stolen mail shirt she had sent him after the first skirmish, and swept back across the haunches of the bay cavalry horse that had been the mount of the Gaulish leader killed earlier in the day. She had sent this later on with the scouts who had ridden to him directly after; a gift because his own dun colt had been killed beneath him, but also a further warning to the enemy: We have fought against you and won. We are ahead of you, at your sides and behind. Nowhere are you safe. Go home.
He had understood, as she had known he would. Even before she reached him, she heard the familiar voice, dryly amused, with the edge of danger to it that she had known in battle against Berikos and earlier, in a river, swimming against the current. “Breaca, welcome. The horse is perfection itself, thank you. Rome knows what it has lost.”
The knot of his honour guard parted to let her through. The drizzle plastered the gold threads of his hair to his forehead. His eyes sparked, like fire struck from flint. He, too, had waited four years for this. He offered her the hand-clasp of a brother for his sister and she returned it, gladly. In this, they were as kin, fighting a common evil. Parting, he studied her without rancour. “You look as you did on Mona, on the night of the choosing. Do you feel it?”
She grinned. “A little. Enough for today, and whatever comes after it.” She did not burn as she had on Mona—the rain, or the presence of the legions, or the will of the gods damped the edges of it—but it was enough; she felt that in her marrow. Those who had known the real thing would feel that—Caradoc and Ardacos and Gwyddhien and the others of the first thirty who followed her. For the rest, word had already passed that the Warrior of Mona had come, bringing the wildfire, and that Rome could not prevail. Above all else, she wanted the enemy to know that, and to feel fear from the start. Glancing down at the stolen cavalry mount, she said, “I’m glad they recognize their horse. Does he ride as well as he looks?”
“Better. Airmid says the hurt of his loss and his presence with us will change the course of a battle. Was his rider of high rank?”
Airmid had stayed with Caradoc; not safe, but safer than riding with the skirmish party. If she knew of the horse, then it mattered. Breaca cast her mind back to the morning and saw nothing momentous. “I don’t know,” she said. “He might have been. He led a forage party of forty. His armour was good. Cumal is wearing his mail shirt.”
“Then he was big, if nothing else. Cumal is the only one I know as big as Gunovic and your father.”
“But he lives and the Gaul died,” said Breaca. “As they all will.”
Caradoc grinned and she swung the grey mare in beside him. Side by side, they rode to the safe mark scored on the riverbank that kept them out of range of the javelins and faced together the army of Rome, so long awaited. On the opposite bank, the ranks of the legions rippled and steadied as bundles of javelins were handed down the ranks and distributed amongst the first three rows. Each man took four, adding to the two he had carried on the march. The front rows drove theirs into the ground to stand upright at their feet for easy reach but showed no signs of immediate action. The ranks at the rear made bundles, threw them down, and then sat. Some began playing dice, others ate from their packs. On the high ground beyond, yet others were raising tents and lighting fires. The breeze carried the smell of roasting horsemeat and thousands upon thousands of sweating men, waiting.
They were quiet now, but for the mutterings of orders and the necessary clash of movement and the occasional hurled oath. On the defending side, also, the warriors had settled. Had they been fighting their own, the individual spear-leaders would have called challenges across for single combat. If the cause for war were weak, it might have been decided by that alone. Against Rome, where the cause was strongest, there would be no single combat; Rome did not allow it, and even if it did, the outcome would make no difference to the battle or greater war. And so the massed ranks waited and neither side chose to make the first move.
Breaca screwed her eyes against the wet. “If I read the standards right, there are only two legions and those who travel with them.”
Caradoc nodded. “Two legions, six wings of cavalry and eight auxiliary cohorts, most of them Batavian horsemen. They are twenty thousand and we are less than three. I could wish for better odds.”
“Always. But as long as they stay on the other side of the river their numbers make no difference, and you have laid your boulders well. They can’t come at the ford more than a century at a time. There isn’t room.”
She saw a movement on the edge of her vision; a warrior had stepped up to the boulders strewn along the defending side of the ford. His cloak was green plaid on brown, the colour of the Catuvellauni, his hair hung in war plaits in a pattern she did not know, laden with kill-feathers that spoke of a lifetime of battle. Caradoc, watching him, narrowed his eyes. “He’s offering single combat,” he said. “And it has been accepted.”
It had. A man was riding forward to the boulders on the Roman side. At their margin, he dismounted and began to thread his way through to the riverbank. The warrior did the same. They stood a spear’s throw apart, with the water a bright, foaming ribbon between them, swirling round the stakes that made it safe. As they matched up, a collective gasp ran through the ranks of both sides as each saw the impossible: the men facing each other were a pair. Breaca looked at Caradoc, the question implicit.
“Chanos’s line is of the Belgae. He has traded for years with Gaul. The other may be a cousin.”
“Or a son?” The one on the Roman side was younger. Beneath his helmet, his fair hair flowed longer and brighter.
“Maybe.”
Whatever the relationship, the insults had been made and returned, the threats and the promises, all in Gaulish. The Romans could have called their man back, but not Caradoc or Breaca. Theirs was not an army amongst which orders could be given but a gathering of warriors, men and women fighting for their own honour, their lives in the hands of the gods.
The hurling of insults continued, as it had to do. Looking past them, thinking beyond their single, small challenge, Breaca said, “Can we hold them, the twenty thousand?”
Caradoc shrugged. “I don’t know. We have to try. Togodubnos needs time to gather the tribes at the sea-river. We can defeat them there, if anywhere, but not before the tribes are ready.”
She said softly, “And the rest, the other two legions? Will we have to hold them, too?” That was the question that had nagged at her since the landings. All summer, the spies had sent word that Claudius held four legions waiting to cross the ocean; so far, she had seen only two.
Caradoc said, “These are the Fourteenth and the Twentieth, come from the Rhine. The Second and Ninth were due to sail from Gesoriacum but if they have landed no-one can tell me where. Runners have been sent for three days’ ride down the coast and they report no other landings. The cohorts would have to fly on the wings of the gods to outflank us here and I don’t think they have that power.”
“Good,” said Breaca. “Then we may still win. If Chanos can kill his kin, then we have a good start.” By the river, the hurling of insults had stopped. Both men had discarded their shields and shed their mail shirts. Both raised their spears. By tradition, they would cast together. It was possible both would die. Breaca said, “Is he good with a spear?”
“The best.”
He was not only good, he knew the other’s ways. Both men threw, then dodged as the spears were airborne. The Gaulish mercenary had cast straight, not expecting a dodge. Chanos had cast to the left, knowing it would happen and guessing the side. The Roman spear bounced harmlessly on a boulder, cracking the haft. The Catuvellauni buried itself an arm’s length up the haft in the unarmoured chest of its target. The enemy fell, choking on blood. Around Breaca, the defending warriors erupted in cheers. Chanos raised an arm in triumph and hurled a final insult—and fell under a triad of legionary javelins thrown by three men who had run forward to the boulder line—an act of unthinkable dishonour.
For a heartbeat, Breaca felt the warriors around her freeze. Nothing had prepared them for such an abnegation of the codes of war. In silence they stared, denying the evidence of their eyes. Then those closest to Chanos reacted, surging forward, shields held aloft, to drag him to safety beyond range of the raining death. Confusion ran along the lines on both sides. Warriors and legionaries howled encouragement and anger. Caradoc pushed his mount forward, his shield raised, shouting over his shoulder to Breaca, “Gather the spears of Mona. Don’t let them—”
“Get back!”
The grey mare sprang forward with her thought, slewing sideways, using the weight of a shoulder on the big bay horse. The cavalry mount crashed back, sliding on wet turf. The sky whickered and darkened. A thousand javelins fell as lethal rain, thrown by legionaries who had been waiting just for this. The riverbank sprouted staves like the spines on a hedgehog. Warriors and horses screamed—and one hound who had run forward to attack an enemy he could not possibly reach—
“Breaca, no! Leave him—”
—and a youth of the Coritani who had slain a Roman in the morning—
“Braint! No! Come back! Breaca… Gods, are you both insane? Gwyddhien, hold Braint. Don’t let her go. Breaca, come back where it’s safe. What were you thinking of?”
Breaca looked up. Caradoc was off his horse, as she was, kneeling at her side with his shield over both their heads. Javelins at the furthest reach of their arc skidded on the grass at either side. The hot, grey gaze scalded her with pain and hurt and impotent fury and the excoriating self-reproach of a leader who lets warriors die without reason. She answered in kind. “It’s Hail. What would you have had me do?”
“Leave him where he lies, as we must leave them all. It was a trap. We didn’t see it. Would you die here for no better reason than a hound?”
It was Hail, who was Bán; she would die for him and Caradoc knew it. She had opened her mouth to say so but Ardacos was there suddenly, a steady presence in the boiling hell. Kneeling at the beast’s other side he stretched to feel for a heartbeat and said, “He’s alive anyway,” which is what she needed to know. With the skill of the ancestors, for which she loved him, the small man ran a practised hand over the white and crimson pulp of the wound and found what Breaca had seen as she ran out to pull the hound to cover. “His left foreleg’s broken. He’ll not walk again without help.” He looked round. “Where’s Airmid?”
Breaca said, “Behind the lines, in safety,” because that was where she should have been, and heard the quality of Ardacos’s silence and looked up.
“No, I’m here.” Nemain, walking on earth. She, too, knelt and her fingers on the smashed and broken leg were already seeking out the detail that could lead to healing.
They were in battle; they could not give time to the wounded. Standing, Breaca said, “Keep him safe. You, too. I’ll find you later.” To Gwyddhien, she said, “What’s happened to Braint?”
“Her man is hit.”
On the riverbank, the screaming of the wounded drowned the noise of falling iron. Around the boulders, an arc of warriors and horses lay dying or dead—those who had been caught too near the river when the volleys began. The margin was so small between the ground that was safe and that which was not. Halfway from Breaca to the boulders, a wheaten-haired warrior of the Coritani lay on his belly, clawing the turf. Braint twisted and fought in Gwyddhien’s grip. “Let me go to him!”
“No. One of you dead is enough. He’ll die at the next volley. Nothing lives out there.”
The girl was weeping, in fury as much as pain. “He will live. They have seen that we know him. They’re aiming away from him. Can you not see?”
Ardacos said, “They’re running out of javelins.”
The air grew clear.
Caradoc said softly, “He’s still alive.”
A horn brayed and the death-rain ceased. The Romans rested on their shields, grinning. Along the western bank, the moans of the wounded rose in the sudden silence. A hundred Catuvellauni warriors stepped forward and hurled their only spears. On the far bank, shields were lifted in unison and the spears clattered harmlessly into the water. Braint bit Gwyddhien’s hand. The tall warrior grimaced and held on tighter. “Don’t throw your life away. Look at them laughing. They’re trying to draw you out.”
There was a need for action, for Braint and for everyone else. Breaca lifted two spears from the turf close by. To Braint, she said, “Can you hit the mark nine times out of nine?” She knew the answer.
The girl spat. Her eyes blazed. “Twelve out of twelve.”
“Then take your spear and help me. But swear first you won’t try to go out to him. He’s dying. We can only make it sooner and mark him for the goddess. Will you swear?”
The girl swore on Briga, her namesake; an unbreakable oath. Gwyddhien released her. Breaca took her to stand at the reach of the furthest javelins and said, “Call his name.”
The Coritani youth was the son of the man who had killed her mother, the man who had been Breaca’s first kill. She had known it since he first came to Mona and, even so, had chosen him for the honour guard for his skills with the spear and his horsemanship. His name was Helovar. When Braint called it, he raised his eyes from the grass as a drunk man might, hearing voices in the night. At the second call, he found the source and, understanding, pushed himself up to kneeling. Two spears took him full in the chest, piercing the boiled leather jerkin. The small sound of his dying was lost in the roll of the river. The Romans cheered. The sky whickered again. A century of javelins grew around the fallen body. Three of them skidded forward to within a spear’s length
of Breaca’s feet. She lifted the nearest, thinking to throw it back, but the shaft behind the tip was of soft iron and had folded over even as the thing gouged the earth. Without thinking, she broke the haft and put the iron in her saddlebag to melt and re-work later. Deep in her heart she was still a smith, her father’s daughter.
At her side, Braint stared through silent, streaming tears.
Breaca said, “He died bravely.”
“He died for no reason.”
“So you will not follow him. You can kill better than that.” She turned to her other side, to Caradoc. “We can’t stand long against this.”
“I know.” He, too, knew the need for action. He was leaning down from his saddle to speak to the Catuvellauni youth who was his runner. “Send word down the line that it is death to approach the boulders. We should lose no more warriors for the sake of it. Braint has shown what to do. Follow her lead if those you value lie dying.”
Like Braint, the youth was weeping openly. He turned his face up to the man who was his god and had been infallible. “If they can reach us, we can reach them, too. We can throw better than them. We should be fighting back.”
“No. We are too few and we have only one spear each. They should be saved for better use at another time. Pass the word.”
The youth turned and ran. Breaca watched for those who believed they could gain in reputation by daring what Caradoc of the Three Tribes and the Warrior of Mona would not, but the winnowing death of the javelins had been too cold, too heartless, and it was clear that those against whom they fought lacked any honour. Near the boulders, warriors moved back a pace save for those few who could hit the mark reliably, who gave death to their friends.
On the far side, bundles of javelins were once again passed forward through the ranks and distributed. The legionaries waited, and watched lifeblood leak from the dead. The Atrebatan traitor spoke to the commander and his word was passed forward. A thousand eyes turned on Caradoc and Breaca and the knot of their honour guards standing beneath the trees. Men spat and anointed their javelins, saying the names of those they hoped to kill. Breaca watched them, unmoved. The fire of Mona burned low within her, dulled by hate and the horror at wasted life.
