The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  And beyond the Lugi ship and pier, on the rocks below the cluster of priestess houses, stood a cloaked figure that Rhiann knew as well as the outline of the Stones. Her heart gave a peculiar lurch, and she waited only long enough for the boat to be secured by ropes before clambering out onto the slick timber planking.

  The Lugi ship had now cast off, and the figure on the shore raised a pale hand that was answered by the call of a war trumpet, booming faintly across the water. And suddenly Rhiann realized she was running along the pier, hopping over the last few rocks and all but flinging herself into Setana’s wiry arms.

  ‘Child!’ the old seer exclaimed, rocking on her heels. Her voice was muffled by Rhiann’s cloak for, bowed with age, she only reached the younger woman’s shoulder. ‘Dear child, you have returned so soon?’

  Her breath squeezed out by the fierceness of her own embrace, Rhiann remembered herself at last and pulled back. ‘I am so sorry, Sister,’ she said, with a half-sob she disguised as a laugh. ‘It …’ She trailed off, hands pressed to her breast, breathing deeply. ‘It has been a stormy journey.’

  Setana peered out from her own hood at Rhiann, her shrewd blue eyes a keen contrast to the rest of her face, which was round and almost childish. ‘Ach, as it often is, my chick.’ She waved her hand at the departing Lugi ship, beating under fast oar back down the sea-loch. ‘Though the weather keeps few from our door, at such times.’

  Rhiann put back her hood to her shoulders so she could breathe properly. ‘Was that the Lugi king himself ? Why was he here?’

  Setana clamped Rhiann’s forearm as the damp wind gusted, plucking at the deer-head brooch on her cloak. ‘Why they all come – to expunge their guilt, child! Will they get this alliance, deserved or not? Will they be blessed with children? Is the fever sweeping the tribe a curse, and if so how can they regain the Mother’s blessing?’ She sighed and shook her head, and wisps of grey hair escaped her hood. ‘They wish to control the world, dear souls, yet it is not like that. The Mother has her hand on the loom, more than they will ever know.’

  ‘And why did this king come?’ Rhiann asked evenly.

  ‘He would not say. He begged Nerida to ask the Stones, and tell him if what he planned would be favoured by the Goddess or not, if it would keep his people safe.’

  ‘And she did not know of what he spoke?’

  Setana shook her head again, mouth pursed. ‘He is not the first. Even before you came at Beltaine the visits and offerings from chiefs and kings had grown more frequent – and urgent. They sense the disquiet of the land, you see, as we do. Yet we are sending them away with little but the love of the Mother, and this is not enough for them.’ She sighed again, and it was Rhiann’s turn to pierce her with her gaze.

  ‘The Stones are not speaking?’

  Setana cocked her head to one side her full cheeks shiny and red with the cold, like crab apples. ‘Oh, they speak to us, for the earth is restless, and Her power heaves and swells like a fractious sea. But no clear seeings have come, not for any of us here – there is only mist and confusion. Perhaps this is a time when men are to be guided by their hearts alone – and for this, I fear.’ With one of her abrupt mood changes, Setana suddenly smiled up at Rhiann, clasping her hand. ‘But enough! Nerida can tell you more; she will be so pleased to see you again, and so soon!’ Setana’s bright eyes came to rest on the pier behind. ‘Goddess be! What have you brought us?’

  Rhiann turned to see Didius swaying green-faced on the end of the pier, clutching his new sword and Rhiann’s pack. The blade, made for tall Alban warriors, nearly dragged on the ground, while his too-large helmet had been pushed back above his high forehead.

  ‘That,’ Rhiann said, beckoning Didius forward, ‘is our Roman captive, Didius. Yet he is my own personal guard now.’

  ‘Welcome.’ Setana studied him, and Didius couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. Then he thought better of that and sketched an awkward little bow, scraping his scabbard chape on the rocks. At that Setana laughed, though not unkindly, the lines around her eyes crinkling into folds. ‘You look a trifle pale, Roman. Ask for our healer Tirena; she will have you feeling fit again before nightfall.’

  Rhiann smiled at Didius, taking her pack from him. ‘The boatmen know where to go, Didius. There are some huts for men. Take our things there and I will find you.’

  Many of the blue-cloaked Sisters nodded at Rhiann as she and Setana made their way through the settlement. They appeared to be returning from the seeing rite in the Stones, for some clutched drums and elderwood flutes for the sacred music, and some pots of scented oil. All of them were soaked by the rain, and most hurried along with their hoods drawn up.

  The cluster of roundhouses and worksheds crouched on the landward side of the Stones headland, sheltered from sea storms by a screen of stunted rowans and hazel trees. The mud walls were yellowed with salt, the thatch roofs dark with damp, and the garish decoration of noble houses was nowhere to be seen. There were no cries or shouts, beyond the faint, high piping of the novices chanting somewhere; no babies or dogs; no clanging smiths’ hammers or male laughter or wood saws or rumbling carts. Everything the Sisters did not make was given to them in payment for their gifts of seeing, their blessings, their special dyes and herbs, and their stewardship of the Stones.

  For a moment, Rhiann allowed herself to be soothed by this softer world, by the muted colours and low, murmuring sounds, and the dank mist that blurred all the shapes into paleness. Yet they were already at Nerida’s modest house, and it was with trembling hands that Rhiann lifted the door-hide and entered.

  Nerida glanced up from the fire and, with a cry of surprise, put aside the spindle she’d been winding and groped for her ash staff. ‘Daughter, this is unexpected!’ She was of the same height as Setana, but her face was a finer oval, and where Setana’s hair was grey and frizzy, nearly untameable, Nerida’s had turned to the pure whiteness of snow, held in two long braids. In her youth her beauty would have been severe, with arched brows and prominent bones, yet deep wrinkles and sagging flesh had softened that remoteness.

  ‘I greet you, Eldest Sister,’ Rhiann murmured, as Nerida stepped over the scattered tufts of unspun wool to embrace her fiercely.

  ‘Come, come, warm your hands!’ Nerida sank back into her rush chair, as Setana shook the rain from their cloaks.

  ‘I have some gifts for you first.’ Rhiann dug through her pack and, with bowed head, presented Nerida with pots of Linnet’s best goat cheese, Eremon’s three armbands and a large assortment of bronze brooches, since the Sisters had no smith. The other iron goods – cauldrons, pots, fire dogs and chains – were in the boat.

  As the Eldest Sister gave thanks, Rhiann slid to the hearth-bench, at last able to study Nerida’s face more closely. And what she saw there alarmed her. For Nerida’s shoulders were distinctly more bowed, and her blue eyes had retreated further behind their folds of flesh, the skin stretched more thinly over her bones.

  Something is weighing on her … With a shock, Rhiann suddenly realized that Nerida was regarding her with the same scrutiny, and no doubt coming to the same conclusion. Swallowing, Rhiann spread her hands to the fire, then tucked them under her skirts. ‘Setana told me of the Lugi king, Sister, and I confess I am driven back to these shores by the same winds that drove him.’

  ‘No doubt, daughter,’ Nerida said softly, and for a moment sorrow gleamed in her eyes. ‘The far, faint clamour of coming war, we will call it.’

  The words hung there, as stark as the room around them, with its bare walls, earth floor, box bed and swept hearth. Taking a cup of honeysuckle tea from Setana, Rhiann fixed her eyes on her own fingers, stiff with cold. ‘Yes, war. Yet as you had no answer for him, perhaps you have none for me.’

  Silence fell, as the hazel boughs in the fire cracked and settled, and Setana moved behind the chair to put her hand on Nerida’s shoulder. ‘First you must ask,’ Setana prodded Rhiann gently, and Rhiann drew a shaking breath, suddenly swept with the
terror of so many things.

  What would happen to Eremon if they would not help her?

  What would happen if they agreed, but she failed them and him in the Stones, cut off from the Goddess as she was?

  What would happen if they could draw no Source, and Eremon was left helpless, as the Roman wave broke over him?

  With an effort, Rhiann steadied her mind and voice, and told her elders all the things that had so lately occurred. Then her eyes swept up to fix on Nerida. ‘I know the Sisterhood has always remained outside the squabbles of the tribes, but this is different.’ Her desperation was creeping into her words, and she forced herself to sit back, her palms slick with nervous sweat around the rowan cup.

  ‘Daughter,’ came Setana’s seer voice, lower and slower than her usual tone, her eyes unblinking as she stared into the fire, ‘do you think we do not know this is different? The Romans threaten all Alba; the Romans threaten our Mother, our Lady. They may be Her children, too, but they will throw down the Stones, and reshape the very land, and enslave our people.’ Her voice faltered, and then her eyes closed. ‘We know. Oh, we know, for though we can see nothing clearly, we hear the sound of battle, and the cries of children, and the mist is red with blood …’

  Setana was the greatest of seers, and her voice had the power to draw the listener into trance. Rhiann carefully set down the cup, her skin pebbling. Setana’s message was the same as her own dream.

  ‘The kings and chiefs come,’ Nerida continued heavily, ‘and we look in the pool and the seeing bowl and the fire, ‘and we tell them what we just told you. And they are troubled, give their gold to the loch, and their grain and meat to the Sisters, and leave. But we do not know what lies in their hearts, or where it will lead.’

  ‘Eremon wants all the kings to join him and Calgacus in the alliance,’ Rhiann murmured. ‘Yet many will not, for they fear the shifts of power, and having their lands taken by the Caledonii or Epidii. They do not see it is the Romans they must fear!’

  Nerida was thoughtful, her fingers twirling the empty ash spindle. ‘We cannot lie to convince them, child; we can only tell them what we see and don’t see. Their souls are darkened by their own greed and deceit and treachery, and that is what guides them. Yet … it is in my own mind that we must do more to protect the Mother, if indeed Her own warriors hesitate.’

  ‘Eremon does not hesitate!’ Rhiann burst out. ‘He has taken a force to defend the Novantae homes! If he can strike a blow there, perhaps he will weaken this northern advance, and save us.’

  Setana’s gaze sharpened, returning to the room. ‘Her man was made the King Stag in the Stones, Sister,’ she murmured to Nerida, her grip tightening on her shoulder. ‘Perhaps they will still be alive to his call. For the power we draw here is not for female alone, but for male too – God and Goddess. For those who draw swords for truth, as well as those who draw forth life. Perhaps we can forge a blade of it and send it homing, to him. It has been done, long ago.’

  Rhiann’s eyes darted from one to the other, hope daring to rise in her heart.

  ‘When?’ was all Nerida said, turning her face up to Setana, the line of her sagging throat blurred by firelight.

  Setana paused, her head cocked to one side as if listening. The eve of the longest day is in two weeks. Let us do it then, for we offer to the sun, and the sun is the face of the God.’ Suddenly she looked directly at Rhiann, the light in her eyes seeming to pierce all the veils Rhiann had drawn around her heart. ‘Yet Rhiann must be the centre around which we circle, for it is her bond to her man that will direct what we call forth.’

  Nerida paused, then bowed her head. ‘So shall it be.’

  The warm rush of relief in Rhiann was doused with sharp, cold terror. The centre, all of them relying on her to be the pillar for the power they would call. Did she have the skill and strength to be that any more?

  Slowly, Rhiann rose to thank them both, exchanging the priestess kiss on their spirit-eyes. The Goddess still came through Rhiann for the people; She had even come for Eremon once before, called by Rhiann’s love. Surely She would do so again, when the need was so great.

  It was after Setana left, as Rhiann paused at the door on her way to her lodgings, that Nerida suddenly spoke once more. ‘You were right to seek us out, daughter.’ Looking back, Rhiann could see nothing in the fire shadows but two white ropes of hair across her breast. ‘Yet while you are in retreat here, I ask you to consider the other reasons you have come.’

  Rhiann’s blood was suddenly beating hard against her throat. ‘I don’t understand, Sister. Why else would I come?’

  With a sigh, Nerida took up the iron poker against the chair’s arm and swiped at a crumbling piece of burning wood. ‘Perhaps you are running from something also, child. Think on that.’

  Rhiann stared at the back of Nerida’s head, and suddenly she remembered another time they had both been caught in these same poses: Rhiann flinging up the door-hide to stalk out, trembling with rage and grief; Nerida silent, her eyes sorrowed, letting Rhiann’s anguish about her dead family wash over her. For Nerida had understood then, as Rhiann did not, that her anger was not for the Sisters or even for the Goddess, but for Rhiann herself.

  On impulse, Rhiann crossed the floor and knelt by Nerida’s side, afraid to see in her eyes any hint of that rift still remaining, wanting to tell Nerida what happened by Linnet’s pool, but constrained by the deep shame of it.

  Yet Nerida turned and smiled at Rhiann with the old sweetness, and laid her hand in blessing on Rhiann’s bowed head. You are welcome home again, child, as you always were, as you always will be. Sa! Do not let an old woman scold you.’

  Her palm curved around Rhiann’s head and rested there, stroking her hair.

  *

  In a hut buffeted by storm winds, Eremon squinted at a rough map scrawled on the earth floor, the lines of it wavering with the fire shadows. His Novantae hosts did not use or need maps, for they knew every expanse of sedge, stretch of bog and wind-blasted ridge-top as though it were their own dun. Yet things were changing, and if they asked for his help, they needed to accept his ways as well.

  With his dagger-tip, Eremon had just drawn the line of Agricola’s forts across the narrow neck of land between the Forth and Clutha inlets. The Novantae lands were well south of this, but Eremon could see now why Agricola had left them alone. The great bulge of Novantae territory was cut off from the rest of Alba by broken ranges of high, lonely hills, and wide stretches of boggy wastes. Behind this natural barrier, the coastal lands afforded good grazing and harbours, but one could only get to them by sea. So these strange, isolated people had remained behind their hills and defensive bogs, quiet and complacent, until the Roman fort across the southern strait sent troops to collect taxes and supplies.

  At first the Novantae gave in, too scared by what had happened to the Damnonii and Selgovae duns to their north and east, battered into submission by iron bolts from Roman war machines. But as the year dragged into another year, and they were afflicted with sunseason floods that ruined crops and rotted the grazing, so the Roman demands began to bite more deeply.

  The Novantae king, accompanied by his chieftains, went to the nearest Roman fort to explain the situation, and to offer up, in desperation, their weapons and the skills of their best fighters. But they were laughed at. In anger the king did the only thing he could do to retain his honour: he called out the commander of the Roman fort for single combat.

  In reply, the king was speared where he stood.

  Afterwards, the king’s surviving son – the youth who now sat opposite Eremon – gathered more men and razed that fort to the ground, as well as raiding the civilian camp that had grown up around the larger fort over the strait. That was nearly two moons ago, and though the bulk of the people retreated to their fishing villages, the Novantae scouts had travelled far to glean that a large force of Romans on the Forth had been assembled and thoroughly provisioned, and was now on its way.

  ‘So what is it t
hat you want to do?’ Eremon asked, swilling the murky brown ale in his cup, eyeing the king’s son over the fire.

  The prince, a heavy youth with a florid, blunt face and bulbous nose, held out one arm, the fringe of his cloak frayed against his tattered tunic. ‘What you did for the Damnonii, prince of Erin! We need a great victory!’

  Eremon pursed his lips, rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘A great victory it was, at first, but the Romans came down upon the Damnonii in fire and fury.’ He shook his head. ‘Most of them were killed.’

  The young man’s deep-set blue eyes raked over the men crouched around Eremon on the floor: Conaire silent by his shoulder; Rori and Fergus polishing their spear-tips; and Colum sharpening his meat-knife on a whetstone.

  ‘What?’ the Novantae youth cried. ‘Do you come here flashing your gold torcs of Erin, only to turn coward on us?’

  Conaire hissed, and Rori and Fergus both straightened with alacrity. Calmly, Eremon stretched his legs to the fire. His trousers, bound with laces up to the knee, were damp from spray and rain, and his shoulders ached from rowing. ‘No,’ he replied, his voice cool. ‘But I won’t let hot blood cloud my mind. If you think that we can take these Romans now in some pitched battle, you are mistaken.’

  The youth’s brows narrowed, and he struck the ground with his spear-butt. ‘Then why did you come?’

  Eremon picked up a burnt twig from the edge of the hearth. ‘You have high ground, bogs and moors, thick forest. We must use them to our advantage.’ He pointed at the map with the blackened stick. ‘You tell us that an army comes from Agricola’s northern base, perhaps three thousand strong. We cannot meet it head on, but we can do something else – bite its hide, harry and weaken it.’

  The young man’s mouth had by now dropped open. ‘You speak of dishonour, grubbing about in the woods like badgers! We must storm them as one, in a glorious charge—’

  ‘That glorious charge will get you all killed,’ Eremon interrupted dryly. He crossed his legs and leaned forward. ‘You asked for my help, and this is how it must be. Right now, we do not have the numbers to face the Romans on a battlefield. But we have other strengths, other ways to teach them a lesson. And if we drive these invaders out of your lands, we are also buying the rest of Alba another season.’