Dreaming the Hound

by Manda Scott

  Valerius’ attention was on the hound, which had gone ahead, down a track made by another moon than the one that lit the night. Without thinking greatly, he said, “It would seem so. If we need blades, it must be to fight. Not tonight, but soon.” The tremor beneath his feet steadied and became more certain. Leaving the birch, he followed it forward and left, between two boulders.

  Longinus’ voice sought him out. “Have your gods told you which side we’ll be on?”

  “Not yet. Have yours?”

  “Hardly.” Longinus barked a short, pained laugh. “Mine are too busy trying to keep me alive to be concerned with minor details like which side of a foreign war I might be asked to fight for.” He pushed himself forward as far as the boulders. “We should run again. Dawn is not so far and I have no wish to find out what happens if we are not back by the fire before daylight.”

  “I think we’re here. Come and look.”

  Had the hound and the thrumming of the gods not guided him, Valerius would never have found the grave mound. Even standing a spear’s length from the opening, he was not certain what it was, except that he could hear voices that were not in his ears, nor even in his head, but in the far corners of his soul. They were angry, but not with him, or perhaps he was simply so used to the anger of the dead that he had become inured to the power of it. He tilted his head, trying to hear beyond the wash of noise to what lay beneath.

  Longinus reached him, and regretted it. “Gods, Valerius …” The Thracian had forgotten his pain. He gripped the hilt of the blade at his side, which was a good, solid Roman cavalry blade and of no worth at all against those already dead. He took in the grave mound, and its opening. “It’s very small,” he said faintly.

  Despite himself, Valerius laughed. “The dead do not need great space.”

  “Nor light, I should think. Did you bring a flame?”

  “I did.” Since his time in the god’s cave, Valerius had carried the means to make light everywhere; tinder and a candle and a small rod dipped in a mix of pine resin and sheep fat that flared and held a larger flame than the candle might have done. He lit it now and carried it in his sword hand, as an act of trust. “I won’t make you come, but I think you should.”

  “So do I.” Longinus was hoarse with nerves. “I’ll go where the light goes. Just don’t let it go out.”

  Longinus was right; the mound was small. Valerius crawled through an opening that would have been cramped for a child, and on through a tunnel that came out, at length, into a chamber far smaller than the one inside the dreaming mound of the ancestors on Hibernia.

  His pine resin flame flickered on rock and bones and dried turf. He could feel others around him: Cunomar, the spoiled child; Cygfa, the warrior who was Caradoc reborn as woman and terrifying for it; Valerius’ own father, not Luain mac Calma, but Eburovic, master bladesmith of the Eceni, whom he had known as father for all of his childhood. Above them all, stronger, nearer, so close he could touch her, was Breaca.

  She was not here. She could not be here; the space in the mound did not allow it, but she had been, and left a part of herself behind. Valerius made himself look beyond the shifting shadows to the flame and all it touched on, to the rock and old bones and mouse droppings and then, blindingly—how could he not have seen them at the start?—to the five blades that lay on ledges cut into the walls.

  The pressure in his head was astonishing; not in the ancestors’ mound in Hibernia or in Mithras’ cave in the western mountains had he felt so closely the presence of the dead, or their certain intent to kill. Theirs was a serpent’s hiss that filled his mind, designed to steal his soul and drive him empty back into the night to die. Uniquely, their hatred seemed impersonal; they did not loathe Valerius for who he was or what he had been, simply for being there, and for having come uninvited.

  He had been invited; he believed that with all that he knew to be true. Closing his eyes, he sought the same thread of the moon and the direction of the bull that bore the moon between its horns, and found it, and stepped forward to meet what was there, less inimical than the rest.

  Slowly, the world became iron, woven and beaten and woven again, and bronze molten and flowing, red as life blood, cast into the shape of a feeding she-bear that rose on her hind legs to look at him. It spoke in the voice of Eburovic, not-father to Valerius, who had spent the whole of one spring in the making of just this one blade.

  Take it, blade of my soul. Keep it safe. You will know what must be done with it and when.

  Through all the years of his haunting, in the uncountable taunts of the dead, Eburovic had never hated his son, nor wished him ill. Valerius asked, “Why now?” and heard nothing.

  “We shouldn’t be here.” Longinus said it, whispering. His voice was lost in the spitting havoc of the dead.

  My son, lift the bear from the stone. It is yours by right.

  “You are not my father.” It was true. When had he come truly to believe it? Sometime on Mona, when yet another dreamer had mistaken him for the Elder and regretted it after. “Luain mac Calma sired me.”

  Nevertheless, I give you the blade of my making to hold and to keep until I ask that you relinquish it.

  “What of the others? Not all five blades were made by you.”

  No, but still, they are good. Take them. In the war that is coming, they will be needed. Too few are left that carry the goodwill of the dead.

  “Valerius, we should …” Longinus, living, was less tangible than the dead.

  The ghost was the centre of the world, all-powerful and all-knowing, as Eburovic had seemed to the child Bán, who grew to be Valerius. It made the salute of one warrior to another and then of the warrior to the dreamer. It formed its left hand into the crescent of Nemain, that could have been the horns of a bull. Please? It spoke, earnestly. As the one who was your father in all but blood, I ask it of you. More lives than yours depend on it.

  No ghost had ever pleaded with Valerius. He had been threatened, barracked, promised death and an eternity of others’ vengeance in the lands beyond life, but never had any one of them asked him for a favour.

  The novelty of it shocked him, and the sudden clarity, as of fog lifting with the dawn; this once in his life, he understood exactly what he must do—and could do it.

  He said, “Longinus, if you trust me at all, help me carry the blades. Choose whichever suits you best, except this one, and keep it. The rest we will keep in our riding packs. Do it now, without thinking. Or if you must think, think of the Crow-horse and what it was like to ride him, not the shadows that would bring you to ruin. Think of the Crow-horse, think of what it is to hold him when he is in full flight … Good man, well done. Now follow me out. If you can run, we will run. If not, we will walk. If we are back at the fire before daylight, we will be safe.”

  “I can run.” Longinus was behind him, step for step and breath for breath, crawling out through the entrance into the night and back down the track along which they had come. “You wouldn’t believe how fast I can run.”

  CHAPTER 34

  THE SOUND OF HAMMERED METAL MARKED TIME AT THE SITE of the Eceni horse fairs.

  For lack of anything better to pass the time, Breaca beat out the tang of a sword blade in the new forge, built by the she-bears next to the great-house.

  The day was sharp with frost and potential. A brisk wind sent clouds in the shape of herons across the sky; a thrush clucked in the trees behind the forge, not quite in time with her hammer; across the clearing, six new warriors arrived as a group, bright in their blue Eceni cloaks, with the clan marks of the fox about the hems and sleeves.

  Through the making of the tang, they were greeted by the she-bears assigned to that day, helped to settle in the great-house, shown what food and weapons and armour was available, and showed in turn what they had brought on their pack horses, which was considerable; for a people starved through winter, the incoming warriors had brought more than any of Breaca’s group had imagined. Over the half-month since the snows had be
gun to melt, the stores of grain, of dried meat, of oat bannocks baked for the journey, had grown as the stocks of blades and spear-heads fell.

  They were not many yet, the warriors who flocked to her call, but they were the beginnings of a war host. On the day Cunomar left to take his message to Camulodunum, one hundred and eighty warriors had already gathered. By the day after, when he had still not returned, that number had risen by sixty and continued to rise through the morning.

  Breaca watched as each new group were not only given weapons and shown the beginnings of how to use them, but were also instructed in how best to evacuate the great-house. Gunovar did it, crouching on the sandy soil, drawing maps with the point of her knife and showing the waymarkers used by the she-bears: the black-painted staves and bear-claw marks slashed on trees that would show the warriors the way out of the clearing to the forest and, perhaps, back in again.

  They were not sent away; an army forced into retreat before it has ever formed is one crippled from the start. Still, no-one doubted it would happen if Cunomar failed.

  He would not fail. Breaca needed to believe that, and had made herself do so, through the evening and sleepless night after his leaving and again as the new day dawned and he had not yet returned. She calculated three times the time it might take him to reach the city, give his news and return. At her best estimate, he could appear any time after noon on the day following his departure. She marked it in her mind and then forgot it: counting the heartbeats did not make the time move faster.

  Halfway to noon, with nothing else to do, she began work on a fresh sword-blade. Elsewhere, others found their own occupations. Graine sat cradling the head of a heavily pregnant hound bitch who lay in the spring sun in front of the smithy, enjoying the warmth from the fires; Airmid spoke to the dozen or so dreamers who had come with their warriors, as had always been the case in the old days: one dreamer for every warrior, to keep their heart in battle; Dubornos and Gunovar began schooling the incomers in use of sword and spear; Ardacos stood at the roasting pits, seeing to Cunomar’s hunted deer; and Cygfa … finally Cygfa came, who had been keeping watch on the southern trackway to Camulodunum.

  She came in too fast on a foundering horse and threw herself to the ground outside the forge. “Theophilus of Athens and Cos sends a message: ‘Your son is not dead. They have not put him to the question. But the procurator is bringing him north at speed, with three hundred mercenary veterans behind him. Put your affairs in order, and hide whatever you would not wish him to seize in the name of the emperor.’”

  Breaca laid down the half-made blade. “Did Theophilus meet you himself?”

  “No. He sent a messenger who turned back; he did not wish to be seen by the procurator, but he brought this, as evidence of his good faith.” Cygfa opened her hand. A staff of applewood spanned her palm, wound about with two snakes in the sign of the caduceus that was the physician’s personal mark. She said. “He’s telling the truth. I saw a cavalcade of horsemen riding hard on the track north from Camulodunum. They have wagons in train, which slows them, but they will still reach ’Tagos’ steading by midday.”

  The morning became very still. With exaggerated care, Breaca placed her hammer across the anvil, as if the angle of it mattered and must be got right.

  It was not like battle, this destruction of a vision; there was no fire in her soul, or clash of blades, or swing and strike that might lead equally to life or death but would at least be action.

  Outwardly, nothing had changed. The wind still blew from the east, sending clouds in the shape of herons to spear across the snow-thin sky. The same thrush chucked in the thorns on the edge of the clearing. Stone lay at her side and she could still feel the easy rhythm of his breathing against her shin, although he had lifted his head and was looking at her, cross-browed, as if she had spoken his name and then nothing more.

  Reaching down to rub his ears on his skull, she said, “And if they find the steading empty, they will set their Coritani tracker to find us. We have hidden the tracks to here well enough to keep away the legions, but not one of our own.”

  Others had gathered; those who mattered, so that she was not alone. Ardacos came from the roasting pits, and Dubornos from the warrior-training. Gunovar was close, and Airmid, who stood now at her left side, and held Graine’s hand. The she-bears and the new warriors of her war host who had trekked through melting snow and knee-deep mud to come to her grouped in a half-circle a short distance away from the forge, and made a show of not listening.

  Looking out at them, Cygfa said, “How many have we?”

  Breaca shook her head. “Not enough to face three centuries of time-served veterans who scent gold and slaves for the taking.”

  Quietly, Ardacos said, “Of those who have come, less than a dozen have lived through war. The rest are as untrained as the she-bears were before winter. They need half a month, at the very least, to learn how to hold themselves in battle or they will die to no cause.”

  He spoke aloud what they all knew. The choices were clear and well rehearsed; they had talked of little else since midwinter, so that the paths forward had become tales for the telling, like the hero tales of the singers.

  Because it needed to be spoken aloud, Breaca said, “We could wait for them here and fight, and lose everything. Or we few can take half of Cunomar’s she-bears and meet the procurator where he expects to find us at ’Tagos’ steading and delay them at least until the remaining warriors have had time to disperse. It is not what we dreamed. It’s not in any way what we prayed for, but it was always the risk and we cannot, with any honour, endanger the lives of those we have called here. If they can be sent to safety, to fight at another time, we have to make it possible. Dubornos, I want you to—”

  “No. Lanis can do it. I won’t leave you.”

  Breaca’s mind had already run ahead. Shocked, she brought it back. Dubornos was smiling at her. There was more humour in his gaze than she had seen in all their joint adulthood.

  He said, “Caradoc tried much the same and gave in. I won’t leave you and you haven’t time to waste trying to make me. Lanis knows the land here better than I do. She’s a dreamer; the warriors will listen to her. She can organize the evacuation.”

  “She can, yes, but she has not given me an oath to protect the Boudica’s children or die in the attempt. Would you not honour it now that we have most need of you?”

  Breaca would have softened that, but there was so little time. Dubornos flushed and then paled. Stiffly, he said, “What would you have me do?”

  “Take Graine and—”

  “No!” Graine broke free of Airmid’s grasp and stood on her own in the doorway. She glared at her mother, making a straight line of lips that wavered. With the sun behind and the fire in front, held between two lights, she looked more ethereal than she had ever done. “I’m not going away without you. If you leave without me, I’ll follow you, and you won’t be able to stop me.”

  There was no time to make it easier for her, either; every heartbeat, now, brought them closer to disaster.

  “Forgive me,” said Breaca, “I love you,” and, taking her knife from her belt, she struck her daughter on the head with the back end of the hilt near the temple, where the damage would be least afterwards when she came to her senses.

  Graine moaned and crumpled to the floor, blue-lipped and twitching. Dubornos knelt and gathered her, carefully.

  “Wait.” Breaca put her hands to the torc at her neck. She had worn it since the day after ’Tagos’ death when Cygfa had first handed it to her, and had felt nothing more than the warmth and weight of its metal. Any power it might have had seemed to have waned. “She should have this. You will need to hold it until she is of age—”

  She stopped, because she could no longer speak. The woven gold had become thick, corded snake coils that writhed under her hand, pressing on the vessels of her neck. In the caverns of her mind, a gap opened, and a mountain wind blew through. She could have fought it, possibly she would
have done, but Airmid’s hand on her wrist stopped her, and Airmid’s voice, carefully guarded, said, “Breaca, you are still first born of the Eceni. Don’t discard that now.”

  She took her hand away. The pressure around her neck eased. The wind died in her mind.

  Dubornos stood waiting, cradling Graine’s broken head against his shoulder. Her daughter should have something to carry through her life apart from memories. The brooch of the serpent spear with its tags of black wool was pinned to Breaca’s shoulder, as it had been since the day Caradoc had sent it as his gift from Gaul.

  “You are my first thought and my last, for all time.” Caradoc had sent the message then and Breaca said it now, quietly, as she unpinned the brooch and set it on Graine’s tunic, a gift from both parents that would go with her into adulthood.

  Dubornos understood, and could explain it when the child was old enough. His black eyes thanked her.

  Breaca leaned forward and kissed her daughter and then, to his surprise, Dubornos. “Protect her for me,” she said.

  “With my life.”

  She had never seen him weep. Tears smeared his cheeks as he nodded to those who were left, to Ardacos, Airmid, Gunovar, and last to Cygfa, to whom he had given the spark of his soul knowing she could never return it, and carried his too-light burden from the smithy.

  There was quiet after he had gone, as there might have been before battle, if the body of a slain scout had been found and the strength of the enemy tested and found real.

  Breaca said, “We need someone to hide the blades. I have not worked all winter to lose them now. Gunovar, you can—”

  “I can come with you and see what your son has made of himself in the company of Rome. The warriors can take the weapons made so far. The unworked iron will have to stay here; there isn’t time to bury it. And don’t try to hit me as you did your daughter. I’m too old for that, and you don’t have time to lose fighting me instead of Rome.”

  Starkly, Breaca said, “You know how we may die?”