by Manda Scott
As if they two were alone, she said, “Breaca, what did the ancestor show you?”
They had been together since childhood, two halves of the same soul. Even Caradoc had not split them apart. Breaca said, “Do you not know?”
“I need you to say it.”
“I saw a land in ruin, the roundhouses destroyed for their timber, the paddocks bare of fodder, the animals dead of hunger. I saw a pen of children enslaved, weeping tears of gold, and their starving parents collecting their worth as if it were corn. Then, as the ancestor’s gift, I saw a battle on a hillside. The eagle of Rome was crushed and the serpent-spear hung over. The ancestor said that if I go east and can raise the warriors and give them heart, if I can arm them, if I can find one among them with the courage and vision to lead them in battle, it may be possible to turn the tide of Rome.”
She did not say, “I saw Graine in the slave pens.” That was private and would remain so. A vision unspoken might yet be robbed of its power.
Across the clearing, the air became sharper and the moonlight more clear. Nobody moved, or spoke. Neither vision was ambiguous; there was no room for different interpretations, only for deciding how the one might be brought to bear over the other. Stone whined and leaned against Breaca’s side, pushing his muzzle under her hand. Graine came to stand beside him, leaning likewise, so that the weight of hound and child crushed against the healing spear wound. There was an odd comfort in it and Breaca chose not to move them.
Cunomar was first to move. He would not look at his mother, but fixed his knife in his belt and crouched by the fire, feeding it small slivers of wood, to make heat and light without smoke.
Airmid, too, moved closer to the flames. To Breaca, she said, quietly, “So you thought to change the world alone. Do you not know that if you set yourself against ’Tagos now, you will die? Efnís’ messenger said so.”
Breaca said, “Efnís is wrong. He forgets that ’Tagos is a man ruled second by his pride and first by his yearning.”
“What?” Airmid laughed harshly. “You would give yourself to him, to feed his longing?” The scorn of the ancestor had never been so biting.
Five days in the cave and three days riding had given Breaca time to imagine all possible confrontations with Airmid. Not once had she imagined anything so public, or so unplanned. She stood, easing herself free of the hound and the child who pressed against her. It had always been easier to face Airmid standing. She said, “How else will Rome accept me but as his consort?”
“If they accept you, then they will also accept your children as if they were his. That is the way of Rome. A man’s children need not be of his seed.”
Striving to make clear the obvious, Breaca said, “But they won’t be safe, nor will you. The children in the ancestor’s vision were enslaved, their parents starving. There were no dreamers: all were dead. I would not ask that of you, nor allow you to ask it of me. The gods gave me that choice and I took it.”
“And now those of us not of the gods make our own choices, which are different.”
“No.”
“You have no power to stop us.”
“Airmid, will you listen to me? I would not take you east to crucifixion, now or ever.”
If she had shocked them before, she stunned them now. Crucifixion was not yet common in the west, as if Rome saved the ultimate sanction for some later time of need. Sane adults did not speak of it, fearing to bring that time closer.
On the fringes of the firelight, Cygfa and Ardacos made the ward against evil. Bone white and shaking, Airmid said, “Do you think we would want to hear the same of you, knowing that you had died alone?”
Her voice did not tremble; she was a dreamer and trained better than that, but the tone dropped and grew richer and so finally, too late, it became clear that it was not, after all, anger that consumed Airmid, but grief beyond bearing, held for too long.
A cloud covered the moon. The clearing closed in, lit only by the hazed amber of the fire. Those on the margins became less than shadows. Airmid stood two paces away, close enough to touch. The heat of her skin was warmer than the distant caress of the fire. The smell of burning-herbs from her cloak mixed with the lift of sea air and horse sweat and still did not quite cover the scent of Airmid, which had never changed. She waited, not moving, and they were children again, first learning of love; they were adults, knowing the endless pain of loss; they were alone, surrounded by friends who would not disturb them. All Breaca had to do was reach out, bridge the gap between them, and the world would no longer be as it had been when she walked out of the cave and scoured clean the stone of the ancestor, in payment of a debt.
Somewhere, a horse whickered, not Breaca’s mare. The hound Stone, long since forgotten, became suddenly stiff, pushing up against her hand. Breaca, guessing, said, “Dubornos?” and found that, on a night of many errors, this once she was correct.
A lean, red-haired man stood at the edge of the clearing. At the edges of her mind, she had been waiting for him; the final piece that completed the pattern and made whole her family-in-spirit.
With Cygfa and Cunomar, Dubornos had been taken captive by the legions and held for two years in Rome. Unlike those two, his scars were of the body as much as the mind. The fingers of one hand had been broken and the strings of both wrists were weak where the fetters had crushed them so that, in place of the shield and long-sword he could no longer wield, he fought now with a long knife and sling.
Tall, gaunt and melancholy, he had given his life since childhood to the rigours and training of a singer, but war had made him also a warrior and he had long since set himself as guardian over the Boudica’s children. It was inconceivable that Graine could have travelled from Mona without his knowing, or following.
He stepped away from the tree against which he had been leaning and it was clear that his presence was not a surprise to the others. He would have been set to hold the horses and would not have left them now without good cause. Cygfa said, “Is it the legions?”
“Who else? The Coritani scouts lost your trail yesterday and they never had Breaca’s, but Rome has a tracker of the Ordovices and she is of a different stamp.”
Cygfa was of the Ordovices. Her mother had ruled them before she, too, was taken prisoner by Rome. White-eyed, she said, “No warrior of the Ordovices would take coin from Rome. No gold could buy them.”
“No. They know that. They have not offered gold, but have taken her children captive and threaten to kill one at each old moon if she does not find the Boudica for them. Already one is dead. Two are living. She would not see them hanged.”
Always the children. One could ask of the gods why they allow such things to happen, but to do so would lose time and would bring no more answers than had already been given. Breaca said, “Have you spoken to her?”
“No. I listened at their camp at dawn this morning. She spoke over-loudly to the Coritani scouts. I believe she knew I was there.”
Ardacos said, “How much of Rome does she bring?”
“Four centuries of the Twentieth plus eighteen Coritani hunters and”—he bowed to Cygfa—“one warrior of the Ordovices who is worth twenty of them.”
“How far—” Breaca began and then, on a wash of bile and a flood of battle-scald, “They’re here.”
A low wind soughed softly down a valley, except that there were no valleys here and the legions had never understood that a guise which worked well in one part of the land would not necessarily do so in another. That sound, heard in woodland, was only ever the horn call of one Roman century to another.
There was such solace in battle. Almost, in that frozen moment, Airmid was forgotten. Breaca reached for her war hound and found Stone ready at her side. The hair stood erect on his spine and his body trembled with the need to fight. Her blade lay on the ground where Ardacos had left it. She reached for it and found that Airmid had already lifted it, and was holding it forward, hilt first.
Airmid said, “They have come for you, only you,
with three centuries of men. If you wish to die cleanly, this may be the night. If you wish your children to live, you will not fight, but will guide them to safety. You cannot do both.”
Breaca shook her head. “I can’t take you west. They will be guarding all the routes to Mona.”
“Of course. So you must take us east, at least for now.” Airmid smiled wryly. “I did not ask for this, or make it happen, I swear it.”
“I know. I will not lose you like this.” All her life, Breaca had trained to think clearly in the crisis of war when others could not. It was her gift, and she cherished it, even now, when the certainties of the ancestor’s clarity were crumbling and could not be made whole. To Dubornos, she said, “Your horses, are they far?”
“We can reach them in time.”
“Good. I have the messenger’s mount. It will make a diversion. And if we put my cloak on it, which is marked with the serpent-spear, perhaps the woman of the Ordovices can prove that she led them to the Boudica. Ardacos?”
The small warrior was already running. “I’ll take it, and Graine’s pony. Give my horse to Graine. He’s better than hers.”
He would have gone alone, and if he had died they would not have known how or when. Breaca said, “Cygfa. Go with him. Fight as do the she-bear.”
The she-bear abjured the honour of warriors, attacking from behind if needful—and they would kill those of their own who were too injured to run rather than let them be captured living by the legions. It was better that way.
Cygfa, too, was already moving. She grinned, fleetingly. “Thank you. I will see him live through to morning. You do the same for the others.”
Cygfa was gone and those left were gathering up their mounts; three adults, a child and Cunomar, who was neither and who wanted more than anything to fight as the she-bear. Their horses were used to battle and all but Graine could mount them moving. Over the churning of hooves, Cygfa’s voice came to them through the trees. “Where do we meet?”
A part of her had already planned for this. Breaca called, “At the place where the land of the Cornovii meets the land of the Coritani, at the joining of the four rivers. Ardacos knows it. Pray that he lives to show you.”
CHAPTER 6
GRAINE LAY AWAKE, WITH HER HEAD ON A HOUND’S FLANK, watching the greased smoke of burning bodies rise uncertainly on a westerly wind.
They were Roman bodies, not those of her friends, and the souls of dead men writhed in the smoke, not knowing how to return to their gods. It was hard not to pity them, however dangerous they might have been while alive. Graine wished for dark and the quiet whispers of the grandmothers, that she might ask for the enemy dead to be escorted home. It was a good thing to wish for, and took her mind away from the uncertainty of the coming days and the horror of the flight from the clearing.
It was important not to think about the ride away from the enemy, or she might never find the courage to ride again. Graine was not a warrior and had no wish to be. Alone of her siblings, she had never ached to ride the battle mounts of her elders, and had never spent her summer days on Mona practising all the warrior’s moves on horseback until she could ride anything and everything with ease. For four years, she had ridden the same pony who loved her and they had been safe together.
On Ardacos’ mount, she had been overwhelmingly over-horsed. Bred and trained for war, sire to two dozen good foals, the beast was in the prime of its life and had rarely been asked to accept any rider but Ardacos, not ever to run from the scene of a battle. When Graine had been lifted into the saddle, it had seemed not to notice that she was there. Certainly, it had ignored every attempt on her part to change its direction and, until shouted back by the Boudica, it had seemed intent on hurling itself through the forest to attack the Roman lines on its own. Called forward and urged to speed, it had raced through the trees as if across open pasture without thought for the safety of its rider. Leafless branches had lashed around it and fallen logs were taken in a single stride, arced over as by a salmon.
Graine had never experienced the horror of an uncontrolled ride. Growing amongst people who rode as soon and as easily as they walked, she had never heard anyone suggest such a thing might happen. The reality was far worse than her imagined fear of Rome. She would have screamed, but had no breath. She would have been sick, but to do so would have shaken her hold on the beast’s mane and, just then, her life depended on not letting go. She might have fainted and crossed into the safety of the dream, but her mother, at last, had seen what was happening and had urged her mare alongside the racing horse.
In full flight, jumping logs and branches and ditches, the Boudica had let go of her reins and, reaching over, had lifted Graine bodily from the saddle, had prised the small fingers loose from their death-clutch on the mane and had gathered her daughter onto the relative safety of her own racing, flying, battle-crazed mount. It was the stuff of nightmares and of myth, and Graine had spent the rest of the ride too afraid and ashamed and astonished and awestruck to think how she might make it into a song.
The flight had continued through the night, and into the next day and night, going more slowly to avoid detection in the daytime, faster at night. Near dawn on the second day, they had come to the joining of four rivers and had moved a little away from it to wait for Ardacos, leaving markers to point where they had gone.
Breaca had led them into a wooded valley where one of the rivers cut deep into the earth and oak clustered densely with elm. Winter had not reached here as it had Mona. Ragged leaves hung yet from the branches; shimmering cold copper overlapped oak rust in the early light.
The wood was unused to human intrusion. Crows had clattered out of the canopy as the riders entered and made camp. They had risen a second time, raucously, shortly after the horses had been settled and a small fire laid. Breaca, Dubornos and Cunomar rolled to their feet and subsided again as quickly at the chittering of a stoat that was Ardacos’ sign. He and Cygfa had appeared moments later, running in over rocks and fallen trees, sharp with the elation of battle, filthy with mud and grit and the freckled spray of enemy blood. They had not brought back Graine’s pony, nor Cygfa’s war-trained gelding. There had never been any chance that they would do; the she-bear always fought on foot and could outrun any horse on a day’s ride. The pony had been a decoy and, by saving the Boudica’s daughter, Ardacos had saved his own mount. Graine tried not to hate him for it.
The returning warriors had told their tales briefly and then settled to sleep under cover of beech furze and year-end grass. Graine was not used to sleeping by day. She had lain down with her head on Stone’s flank, wrapped in her own cloak with Breaca’s spare laid over. A dead elm, taken long ago by lightning, stood to the west, its leafless branches black against the paling sky. The gap it left gave light and a sight of the western horizon and, because she was watching for it, the girl had presently seen the first feather of black smoke and the greater, greasier billows that followed as the enemy burned the bodies of those Romans, and three Coritani traitors, slain by Ardacos and Cygfa.
“Graine?”
She had thought she was the only one awake. Startled, she raised her head. Her mother was sitting up by the last glow of the fire, her cloak around her shoulders, her back against an ancient, fungus-encrusted oak stump. She had been sleeping, clearly, and had woken. Her hair hung around her shoulders, part-braided. For the first time since summer—for the first time in any winter Graine had ever known—the Boudica had set aside the single black-dyed crow’s feather of the vengeance-hunter and was weaving again the many braids of the warrior.
Caught under the scrutiny of her daughter’s gaze, Breaca smiled, not as Airmid would have done, but warmly enough. “Are you cold?”
“No.” They spoke softly, a murmur on the wind, not to wake the others. “Stone keeps me warm.” It was almost true.
“But you can’t sleep?”
“It’s getting-up time. I can’t sleep now.”
There was a short pause, full of indecisio
n. If it had been Airmid who had awoken, Graine would have gone to her, would have curled up at her side and told her of the smoke-feather and the burning bodies and her fears for the wandering souls of the dead. Airmid, in her turn, would have sung the enemy to rest if only because Graine asked for it and then would have sung again that a six-year-old girl might sleep and dream in daytime.
Breaca was not Airmid but nor, any longer, was she the Boudica, who brought victory to her warriors and yet remained a stranger to her daughter. Over the course of two days’ flight, Graine had seen more of her mother at closer quarters than at any other time in her life. Until that moment, lying by the fire, she had not known how much she had wanted that, nor how closely she had studied the changes that were happening.
In the quiet, smoky morning, Graine saw her mother clearly for the first time; a woman with too much care to sleep properly, sitting by a fire, half wrapped in a cloak with part-combed hair lying in cords around her shoulders and her arms bared to the cool air so that the old scars and the new one traced their script across her skin. Her eyes were grey-green with flecks of copper and they were filled now with a turbulence that Graine had never seen in Airmid.
Not knowing what to say, Graine said nothing. Frowning, Breaca leaned forward and pulled something charred from the fire. Holding it out, she said, “There’s some hare’s meat left. If you eat, it might help you sleep?”
It was the smile that made the difference more than the words. Graine had never seen her mother shy before, nor thought herself a cause of shyness. With an odd, swooping sensation in her stomach, she uncurled herself from Stone and shuffled into the shelter of her mother’s outstretched arm. In its curve, in the surety of its grip, which had held her close over two days of hard riding, she was safe, who had not known how much she was afraid. She buried her face against a tunic that smelled of horses and sheep’s oil and leather and clung as tightly as she had done when she was first hauled unwilling from the womb.
