by Manda Scott
Graine sat on the beaten earth of the floor carving a serpent-spear while Breaca stood at her workbench on the back wall and drew fine wire finer, so that it might be twisted into a rope after the fashion of the ancestors.
She had asked her question quietly, in a long period of silence, and Graine stopped to think of the answer. The serpent-spear lay part-finished in her hands. It was the third she had carved and each one was subtly different, as if, each time, she learned more of how it should truly be, but had not yet reached perfection. Stone lay at her side, hunting in his dreams, so that his toes twitched and his ears flagged sideways. Outside, a redbreast flew onto the rim of a leather bucket and dipped for water and flew away again. She heard the high twin notes of its call, and the crows and the bark of a hound in the steading, not quite out of earshot.
Behind that was not silence, although she would not have noticed if her mother had not drawn her attention to it. Sitting still, she put her mind into listening and, perhaps because of that, saw the slight thickening of the air that she had come to recognize, so that when she looked into the back of the forge and saw the old woman sitting there, who had not walked in through the door, she was not surprised.
That was not good. Hoping the world might change, she said, “I don’t think I hear the spears as you do. I’ve watched you beating out the blades and each one has its own rhythm and you are a part of it. A warrior would hear it, who was matched to the blade, but what I hear in the wood is different.” And then, because her mother had looked up and was smiling and had not said anything of the old woman sitting on the pile of hides by the workbench, she said, “The elder grandmother is here.”
“Is she?” Breaca leaned back, letting her own weight draw the gold wire of the king-band-in-making. She was no longer smiling. “Is there a reason?”
There was always a reason. Once before, Graine had been a conduit for a message from the grandmothers to Breaca, and it had not been welcome. Then, the ancestors had sent back from Gaul not her father, as they had been asked to, but the traitor brother who called himself Valerius.
Graine did not want to be party to a second betrayal. She glanced fleetingly at the grandmother and away again, as Airmid had taught her. Seen like that, the old woman was as real as Breaca, an ancient, wrinkled relic of the past leaning back into the corner of the forge, dressed in her finery as if for council with a fox skin draped down her back like a cloak, weighted at the edges with nuggets of gold and eagle feathers, and a pair of crow’s wings lancing forward across her sagging breasts to meet in the dip of her chestbone.
In life, the grandmother had been the bane and the boon of Breaca’s life, and Airmid’s before her in the years when each had served as the old woman’s eyes and limbs in the infirmity of her old age. In death, the grandmother had ushered the Boudica-to-be through her long-nights, and then come to her since, in moments of need, to guide the way. More recently, she had guided her to the ancestor-dreamer and the slaying of a Roman governor which had gone so badly wrong afterwards. Since then, the grandmother had appeared more to Graine than to Breaca. This was the first time she had shown herself in the company of them both.
Graine glanced at her askance. The grandmother grinned. Loudly, she said, Tell your mother that she should stop wasting her time making blades for a war host that does not yet exist.
Graine stared at the floor. “Why can you not tell her?” She did not ask it aloud. Breaca was watching her, studiously avoiding the far corner.
In her mind, the grandmother laughed. Your mother chooses not to hear me. She has closed herself off from us and thinks herself stronger for it. Tell her to make a set of spears after the manner of the Caledonii and to take them to Camulodunum as a gift for the governor. It will impress him more than an armband that confers no powers on the one who wears it.
Breaca let go of the gold wire. It sprang into a coil and fell to the floor. With exaggerated care, she laid her pliers on the bench.
Speaking directly to Graine, she said, “Rome knows nothing of the power of a king-band. They see gold and recognize good workmanship and neither Tonomaris of the Coritani nor Berikos of the Atrebates will have anything like it. Thus ’Tagos will be set apart when we go to meet the governor at Camulodunum next month and may be given added trading rights. If that helps us to feed the starving next winter, I will do it. The war host will exist in time. I spent last summer finding those who could be trusted to join me. This summer we will train them to fight. It is not something that can be done fast. Tell that to the grandmother.”
“She can hear,” said Graine, and then, a little desperately, “You could see her if you looked.”
“No.” Breaca would not look. Stiffly, she took a small rake and riddled the ash from the furnace. As if it had been Graine’s idea, she said, “Why should I make the heron-spears? They have not been used since the time of the ancestors. I only know of them from Ardacos. Even if it were wise, the blades must be made of unalloyed silver. I may not have enough.”
You have plenty. It’s in your work chest. Make three, said the grandmother, nodding. Box them in yew and blue wool and take them as your gift.
“Why?”
Because I ask it and I have never yet let you down, however much you think so. You will know what to do when it matters.
The old woman’s laugh was the call of a crow, and then she was a crow, and then nothing but a thickening in the warped air above the furnace and the fine cry of a redbreast in the beech trees outside.
Graine breathed out, heavily, and saw that the serpent-spear on her lap was spoiled and she would have to start again. Breaca was standing at the forge with a rake in one hand and the beginnings of a spear-head in the other. As her voice had been, her face was shorn of all humour and warmth. Graine stared at the floor and found her mouth too dry to swallow. There were aspects of her mother she had never seen and she did not want to find them now.
“You don’t have to make the spears,” she said. “But I know how to carve the hafts if you want to.”
Breaca’s attention came back from a long way distant. There was a moment when Graine thought she had judged wrongly, and that she had just damned herself for ever as a mouthpiece of the ancestors.
The horror of that must have shown on her face; Breaca frowned at her and then simply frowned and then stared out of the door and blew air hard through her cheeks and when she looked again at her daughter, it was with the sharp, dry humour that held all of her family safe at its centre. “Did the grandmother tell you how the hafts are made?” she asked.
Giddy with relief, Graine said, “Maybe. I didn’t dream it, but I know that I know. Do you want to make them?”
“No. I want to make a spear for Cunomar, and then one for Eneit, and then I want to take those two out to the forest and teach them how to hear the songs so that they can sit their spear-trials with some chance of success. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do both. We don’t have to sleep, after all, or eat, or do anything except work metal for the next half-month. We’ll need Airmid’s help; this is too dangerous for you to do alone. The heron-spears of the Caledonii are as much a work of dreaming as they are of the forge.”
They were, and it was an old dreaming, older even than the elder grandmother and the ancestor-dreamer who came to help with it. They worked together for the next half-month. At the end of it, there lay on the workbench a king-band by which ’Tagos might impress the governor in Camulodunum, three silver-bladed heron-spears, packed in wool in a box of yew as a gift for the same governor, and two others, for Cunomar and Eneit, that were just as much an act of dreaming, but held it differently, without such a tangible promise of death.
CHAPTER 11
THERE WAS NO BREEZE IN THE CLEARING. THE STRAW SACK hung at the height of a warrior’s heart, quite still. Thirty paces away lay a spear, product of Breaca’s forging and Graine’s dreaming, with help from Airmid. The blade was the length of ’Tagos’ right foot from heel to central toe; the longest Roman law allowed. Th
e haft was of pale ash, polished to a matt smoothness so that it came soft to the hand, and a bulb of knot-grown blackberry wood made a balancing weight at the end. It was a weapon with which any youth might be glad to take the warrior’s tests of the long-nights.
Breaca picked it up from the forest floor and held it out, balanced on both palms. “Eneit, this is yours, made for your height. As the elder, you should throw first. When the dreamers name the dates for your long-nights, you and Cunomar will be sent out separately. The gods and your dream will send you home again, but if you both return together, you will take the spear-trials in order of age. You should be prepared to go first.”
Eneit stroked his palm along the wood with the shyness of new knowing. In so many ways, Lanis’ son was Cunomar’s opposite; his oak-dark hair grew no more than a hand’s breadth long so that it would have been impossible for him to weave the warrior’s braids at the temples even were it legal to do so. His wide, open face was already brown from the weak spring sun, so that his eyes, his hair and his skin were all of a colour, with only the shades of them different.
Eneit’s parentage was the only blight on his life and he bore it, as everything else, with a quiet fortitude. Lanis was not a woman to cross without serious forethought; she had forbidden from the outset her son’s acts of rebellion against the enemy, particularly his efforts to learn from Cunomar the warrior skills that would make him a man. Because it was the enemy’s rule first and his mother’s second, Eneit had no difficulty flouting it; his doubts were rooted elsewhere.
Still absorbed in his spear, he said, “You know I have never thrown anything such as this.”
Any other boy might have been ashamed of his lack; Eneit told the truth and did not expect censure. Breaca said, “I know. How could you? There was no smith to sing the soul into the blades at their making, no dreamers to fashion the haft and no-one to teach you the ways of the warrior. But you have the mind for this; just remember that it’s a test of heart, not of strength or skill. Anyone can throw a stick in a straight line, that’s not the point. Take it. I’ll show you.”
The blade of Eneit’s spear was not the elongated wedge of Breaca’s normal making, but a flattened leaf shape, curved from tip to hilt. The wood of the haft was straight and smooth and the balance clean. Airmid had sung over it and Graine had made the pattern that wove as salmon scales down to the blade. No-one living could hold it and not be touched.
Eneit, who was the son of a dreamer, swung his new gift to his shoulder and gasped, a soft indrawing of breath, as if caught unawares by a lover’s touch, so that days of struggle at the furnace and the turning lathe were made worthwhile.
He glanced shyly at Breaca. “Thank you.”
It was easy to see why Cunomar cared for this boy; the morning became warmer in his presence.
Breaca smiled. “You are more than welcome. Not everyone is touched by the soul of the spear on first meeting. But that’s not the test. You must not only feel it, you must quiet your mind until your soul sings with it, as one. And then you must let it go. Do you know how to hold for a throw?”
He made a good attempt and she helped him to find the place of effortless standing. He naturally used his left hand and so his left foot was fore and his right arm slack. She had him test the balance point of the spear, finding the one spot where, held at shoulder height, the butt and the head matched each other and it felt weightless.
“Good.” Breaca stepped back. “Now we wait. You need time to quiet the noise of your thinking so you can hear the soul-song of the spear. Cunomar and I will go for a walk through the forest and come back. Then we will walk away again, and again until you no longer know that we are there. When the time is right, I will tell you to throw. You are aiming for the straw sack but you must not try to cast towards it, simply let it become the end point of your thoughts. If your mind is clear and your soul is at one with the spear’s, it will seem to fly of its own accord and will strike true. You don’t have to make anything happen. Just still the voice of your mind.”
Eneit grinned at her. “Just?” He was Lanis’ only son. He had lived all his life watching his mother work to still the voice of her mind.
Breaca clasped him lightly on the shoulder. “It takes practice and we have plenty of time. If it doesn’t happen today, there is always tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Don’t try to do anything, don’t try to get it right, just open to the song of the spear.”
On Mona, as Warrior, she had taught hundreds their spear-trials. Each had come fit and well-trained and had single-handedly hunted and slain boar or deer with a spear before ever they came to her. Each had believed the spear-trial the easiest of the warrior’s tests and each had learned, slowly, over months, that it was the hardest.
Eneit had never made a kill in the hunt, nor wanted to. He had never held a spear, but he had a quiet mind and understood the many pathways of distraction. Breaca did not walk far into the forest with Cunomar and never out of sight. As the sun rose slowly and the shadow of the target sack became shorter, she watched the stillness settle on the older boy’s face and the half-smile linger on his lips. He did not tense, or test the wind or plan the arc of the throw, but simply watched the swaying mass and listened for the song of the spear.
Breaca watched with admiration and faint regret; if she had been given a hundred like him on Mona, the war against Rome might already be won.
When his face was most still and his left arm most relaxed, she positioned herself a spear’s length behind him and said, softly, “Throw!”
The spear arced in the windless air, a foot high and a foot to the left. It passed the sack by an arm’s length and skidded on the grass of the forest floor. Eneit’s face lost the peace of lightly focused rapture. “I missed.”
Breaca said, “Eneit, that was the best first throw I have ever seen and I taught the warriors for ten years on Mona. Anyone can throw at twenty paces with accuracy. Not everyone can hold themselves still for a thousand heartbeats before they do it, nor let the song of the spear free with such grace. It was beautiful, truly. If we practise like this every day for a month, you will be able to hold still for a morning and cast at forty paces.”
Eneit’s brown eyes grew wide as pebbles. “Do I have to do that in the spear-trial?”
“If we follow the rites of the ancestors exactly, the cast is at fifty paces and there are crow feathers hanging from the neck of the spear to catch the air and twist the path of its flight. The elders are unlikely to make you wait for a morning but in the world of battle, the Romans might easily do so.”
Breaca spoke for Cunomar as much as for Eneit. Her son had watched the trial with a growing sense of disquiet, as if it were both meaningless and unnecessarily difficult. A winter in Eneit’s company may have mellowed his temper, but his patience wore thin as quickly as ever, and he still lived and breathed for the right to sit his long-nights and the spear-trials that were part of the ceremony.
She said, “If you were waiting in ambush and the enemy were delayed in coming, you must keep your mind clear and ready, through rain and insects, gales and the close or distant deaths of your shield mates until they reach you. This is why the tests are set as they are; we wouldn’t ask of you anything that would not be asked in battle.”
“Father won the spear-trials of three different tribes. Did he have to wait half a morning for each?”
Cunomar had retrieved the thrown spear and brought it back. He stood close by, turning it over in his hands, seeking the soul that Eneit had so readily found.
Breaca said, “In the spear-trials, as in battle, each time you throw is the first time and the last. Your father was different because he requested the right to sit the tests with three tribes. Most of us are happy to pass them once.”
“But in the winter tales, Dubornos says that you were never called on to sit the spear-trials. Is that true?”
“It is. I had already killed, as had Cygfa; the warrior-trials were not required of us.”
She knew the
mistake as the words passed her lips and regretted it. Cunomar’s pride, always a fragile thing, cracked on the rock of his half-sister’s fame.
His lips set in a thin hard line that had nothing of his father about it. “I have killed,” he said. “Ardacos keeps the tally so that I may wear the kill-feathers one day, when such a thing is no longer ‘illegal’.” He spat the word, as an insult to all who had allowed Rome to set and keep the laws.
He was her son; if he was arrogant, or ignorant, she had helped to make him so. Knowing it, Breaca said, “You have not killed with a spear. The ancestors’ rites do not allow kills with a knife or a sword-blade to exempt the child-become-adult from the warrior’s trials.”
As did all of the she-bears, Cunomar hunted with his knife; it was part of their courage, to reach close enough to the enemy to kill with a short blade. It was also the reason the boy had survived this long; in the heat of battle, he was always shielded, left and right, by others sworn to the bear and those he killed were distracted. To fight with a spear, one against one, would have killed him. No mother could say that, only let the silence read it and wait.
Cunomar did not listen to silence. He said, “So, then, let us see if the ancestors find me as acceptable as Eneit.” He picked up the second spear, made for his height and his arm. The haft was of dark yew and the butt-weight of burred hazel. The marks of the she-bear ran the length of the blade. Very carefully, staring straight through his mother, he paced an additional ten paces back from Eneit’s stance.
“I have killed boar with a spear before,” he said, “Ardacos taught me. It wouldn’t be fair to Eneit if I threw from as close as he did.”
“Cunomar, it’s not about—” Eneit stopped. He had lived through the winter as the foil for his friend’s anger; he knew as well as anyone the futility of reason when pride was in the way. He pursed his lips and shrugged and said, “Think of the wild geese we watched yesterday and the way they flew. It helped me to quiet the voice in my head and hear the soul-song of the spear.”
