The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  ‘I am ready,’ she answered breathlessly.

  At her words, the chanting of the priestesses abruptly changed. Now came the song Rhiann remembered from that rite with Eremon: a low, sibilant chant, panting and throbbing, a primal beat that surged up from Rhiann’s soul. And there it began to awaken old memories, of when people ran with the deer in the endless forests.

  Nerida rested one hand on Rhiann’s forehead, and Rhiann breathed in the scent of the clay on her palm. ‘Reach down into yourself, Sister. Reach back through the years, through the lives. Tonight, with our song, we have opened the door of time, and now you must step through it! Become the Caller! Become the Mother of the Tribe, who calls the deer for sacrifice, so that people may live. Become She who calls the Stags, so that they make Her fruitful!’

  Rhiann closed her eyes, swaying on the spot.

  The beat of the skin drums, the priestess chanting and the saor all swept her somewhere away from this night, with its grey light and faint stars, away from this hilltop. She tasted the sharp damp of the forest on her tongue, she chased flashes of torchlight with her eyes, dancing with lithe limbs, she heard the whoops and cries in a forgotten tongue …

  She let herself remember …

  She was the Caller, and They would come.

  CHAPTER 13

  Too restless to stay by the tiny, shielded fire in the hollow, Eremon crept instead in the darkness to the ridge-top. Now he crouched with both hands on the ground between his legs, and listened to the haunting calls of wolves as they rose and fell far away under the moonlight.

  A cracked stick betrayed a man’s step, and Eremon’s head went up, his nose scenting the air.

  ‘It’s me,’ Conaire said, his bulk blocking out the faint stars above, scattered over Eremon’s head like campfires on a battle plain. His foster-brother squatted beside him, and handed over a skewer of what smelled like mountain hare. ‘Get it out of your mind, and perhaps you’ll sleep.’

  Eremon hooked hands over his knees, his mailshirt clanking. ‘There will be no sleep for me.’ He cocked his head up to the night sky. ‘Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel them close?’

  ‘They are close,’ Conaire replied practically. ‘We know exactly where the Romans are. And I bet their commander isn’t sleeping either – he’ll be pissing in his little skirt at the prospect of traversing these valleys.’

  Eremon sighed and dropped his shoulders, sniffing the meat. ‘I still wish we could face them in battle; throw all we have at them …’ He took a bite. ‘Listen to me. I am restless, that is all. I feel as though my bones are pushing through my skin!’ He snorted, scratching one leg. ‘I do not know what is infecting me.’

  ‘I do.’ Conaire gulped down the meat. ‘You’re as keen to shed Roman blood as I am.’

  Eremon raked a greasy hand through his hair. ‘That is for certain, brother, although why it’s burning in my bones the way it is—’

  ‘Let it burn. It will be soon; this night, the next night. They are merely sheep for us to herd in those glens down there.’ Conaire paused, talking through his mouthful. ‘Perfect prey.’

  The scouts had been keeping pace with the Roman advance up the long, river valleys for days, as the southern column drew closer to the warband’s hiding place. In the north, the Novantae had pinned the other column of Romans on the shores of a wide loch. Unless they swam for it, they were not moving, apparently, until their commander joined them with reinforcements – rescued them, Eremon amended, with a stab of satisfaction.

  ‘If we’re lucky, Agricola has sent a commander with no stomach for being stalked,’ Conaire added. ‘We might be home before Lugnasa.’

  Eremon heard the faint note of anxiety, and reached up to Conaire’s shoulder. ‘This mission may take weeks or even moons, for we must harry these Romans from the high ground, the bogs and hills, until we drive them north once more. But brother, once we are closer, you and I can circle to Dunadd, if only briefly. You will see Caitlin long before the babe is due.’

  ‘That is what I need to do.’ Conaire let out his breath.

  ‘Don’t forget that she is in Linnet’s hands,’ Eremon offered. ‘And Rhiann will be home soon; she will never let anything happen to Caitlin.’

  ‘I know.’ Conaire rose, massaging the old scar in his groin, which bothered him when the ground was damp. You should give yourself some sleep.’

  Eremon stared over the edge of the ridge, to the valleys falling away to north and south in long seams of black. ‘I will.’ When Conaire’s crunching steps had faded, Eremon tilted back his head to look up at the stars, kneading the earth with his hands once more.

  Rhiann. What was she feeling at this moment? Did she know that he rocked here, as restless as if his bones were on fire, alert to the very air? The wolves howled again, the eerie sound swelling and fading, and Eremon turned his head towards it. Did Rhiann know why his senses tugged at him, plucking at his heart until he couldn’t sleep? For some primal sense told him that nearby was one he must face.

  Perhaps sooner than anyone thought.

  *

  With her back to the greatest Stone, Rhiann breathed, sinking deeper into the space between worlds, her arms outstretched. Cold night. Bright stars. Dark trees.

  Come.

  High moon. Pale mist. Stream on stone.

  Come.

  Skittering hooves. Pawing ground. Shuffling breath.

  Come.

  Scent of lust. White of eye. Red of flank.

  Come!

  Clash of hearts! Crash of heads! Scream of rage!

  Come!

  At last, they heeded her Call.

  When she felt the breach of the pulsing ring of power, Rhiann opened her eyes, her sight unfurling within Thisworld and the Otherworld at the same time. Her spirit-eye burned on her forehead, the saor blurring the edges of the swaying Sisters around her, the cold stone, the damp sea air.

  On the fringes of the firelight, among the looming Stones, two pairs of glowing eyes bobbed. And from Rhiann’s outstretched fingers, threads of Source streamed, two rippling ropes. One reached away to the thick darkness on her left; the other to the shadows on her right.

  Come! she cried in her heart, and they stepped out of the shadows.

  The starlight glimmered on their antlers, dipping as they sniffed the air and the ground. The flames gleamed on wet noses, and the green points of their eyes. Dimly, Rhiann was aware of the drumming around her, through her, in time with the rhythm of her heart. And then her senses swelled, and she felt the great, pulsing hearts of the two stags, beating as one, beating with her.

  Around her, the priestesses hummed and swayed, tossed their painted heads and blew out warm breath. And the stags dipped their necks again and pawed the ground.

  In the dark tent, Agricola’s eyes flickered open.

  He had not slipped into deep sleep for days, for he couldn’t stop gnawing on this decision to cross the mountains, wary of being trapped in such narrow valleys. But the men of his northern column needed him, and the sooner he merged their forces once more, the better.

  For these Novantae were not just mindless, leaderless raiders after all. There was a force – a significant force – loose in this bleak moorland. Agricola turned over on his side, the flimsy blanket in his camp bed rucking up around his hips. We are here now. We must just get through these mountains, and quickly.

  He had said that to his men. Yet when he was alone, the sick dread in his gut would not let him sleep; the fear that even though he led his army the most direct way, getting tangled up among these valleys and brooding hills was a mistake. The coastal route would have been safer, with the sea at their back, but his northern force would have been all but decimated by the time he got there, leaving his army vulnerable and far from its bases.

  Agricola turned over again. Curse it! There never was an easy answer, not in war. It was the best decision, he must trust in that and the Fates – and rush through these mountains as quickly as possible. He wriggled a hand up to
scratch his side. The skin felt hot, and it itched, yet it was not the skin … he somehow itched from deeper inside, in his bones. And he felt unnaturally awake, his limbs thrumming with some tension that made them quiver. Damn it, had he eaten some strange plant that didn’t agree with him? Yet he didn’t feel sick.

  Suddenly, he sat bolt upright. His muscles burned, as if flames were licking along each limb. The lamp next to his bed was sputtering, but still gave off a feeble light. Agricola swung his legs to the floor and groped for a robe. There were those letters from his eastern forts that he’d not opened yet … he’d read them, and keep his mind busy.

  In another two days they’d be free of these hills and emerge onto the plain to the north. Two days. He would not give in to fear and superstition in the meantime.

  Drawn by the shining ropes streaming from her hands, the stags danced closer to Rhiann, snorting and pawing the earth, lunging forward, then leaping back. Their breath was a merged cloud of mist glittering above their tossing antlers. She could feel the heat in their blood, sense the blind rage building in her own heart and gut. Yes … it was the irresistible, single-minded focus on the rival, which blotted out all else.

  Now one stag reared up on his hind legs, bellowing; now the other.

  I must choose, Rhiann realized, with sudden clarity. I must choose the King Stag. Her consort. The one who would triumph.

  She chose.

  Eremon had given in at last to the twitching of his muscles, the impulse that tore at his mind as strongly as his heart. He could not deny this instinct that seemed to have arisen from the deepest corners of his being – and he had learned to listen to that along with his brain.

  Now he crept among the hollows of wet bracken, rousing all the sword and spearmen. He had already sent Nectan’s archers to dispose of the Roman sentries, for they were masters of coming upon an enemy unawares.

  ‘Now, it is now,’ he murmured as he moved among the sleeping men, his face burning despite the cold air on his cheeks.

  The Novantae prince’s hand was instantly on his sword, as he came fully awake. ‘In the dark?’

  ‘In the dark,’ came Eremon’s answer. ‘They had no room in their valley to build a camp ditch. They will not be expecting a night attack.’

  ‘Yet they have scouts,’ the man said.

  ‘No longer; the Caereni have done their work.’ Eremon was struggling to rein in a surge of uncharacteristic impatience. ‘It must be now.’

  Agricola threw down the thin, wooden tablets and, wetting his finger, nipped out the sputtering lamp flame. Then he went to the tent flap, rubbing his eyes, straining his night vision to adjust to the faint grey sky. The mountain air bit at his fingers and nose. Around him, he could just discern the dark humps of the soldiers’ bed rolls, stretching far out into the darkness. The valley was so narrow that 1,500 men could only be wedged in along a considerable, yet thin, line.

  He had allowed no fires, even though for days there had been no sign of any men in these barren, wind-swept hills, and chosen a defensible position among the half-rotted stone dykes of an old farmstead.

  But something still wasn’t right.

  The tugging and twitching in his bones was only growing greater, until at last he cursed, giving up on sleep altogether, and reached for his cloak and sword belt, squatting to lace his boots. Outside, Agricola strained cold air through his teeth, checking first on the handful of officers’ horses at the centre of the camp, patting the snuffling nose of his own mount.

  Then he made his way to the edge of the men, where a scree slope reared steeply from the valley to a ridge above. On the way he cocked his head as, far away, a wolf howled and was answered by another.

  The guard posted on inner watch had come smartly to attention, and now he turned his back as Agricola passed his water against the scree slope, noting, in the starlight, the thin layer of frost on the tumbled stones. He raised his eyes higher, to the looming heights that seemed to frown down at them all like a dark fortress. ‘Frost,’ he muttered to it defiantly. ‘In summer!’

  Then he shook himself dry, dropped his tunic and stepped back, his boots crunching on a stray patch of frozen grass.

  It was then that his head went up, sensing the air.

  Rhiann let one hand fall, and that twisting, shining rope of light was instantly extinguished.

  The other hand pointed now at the chosen stag, larger and more fiery than the other, his chest deep and proud, his eyes rolling at her. From the fingers of that one hand the Source surged even brighter, all of it focused now, no longer split. It entwined with his antlers, and rimed them with silver, like starlight on frost. It danced between the tines, glittering on his brow. It clothed his bunching flanks in pale light. It was power and rage and strength, glorious at its peak, but then a warm tide of love swept through Rhiann from her heart, and tinged the silver with red-gold.

  My beloved, she found herself whispering, and the Source spilled out even stronger, pulsing in waves. My dearest beloved, come back safe to me …

  The Chosen One reared, and his hooves struck the earth as he bellowed with rage and charged. The other stag also reared as the first rushed on, and their antlers met with a resounding crack.

  Gripping his unsheathed sword, Eremon cast a glance back over his shoulder. The spearmen and archers had done well, creeping like ground fog to the dark places beneath boulders and in the shadows of the gnarled trees that clung to the hillside. Now he looked down the steep ridge to the broken walls outlined in silver, and the dark humps of men in between.

  The flock at rest, he thought grimly, and sank deeper on his haunches, for the restlessness had now become rage, sweeping away his caution in a flood of heat, rising up from his loins.

  In the shadow of a great rock beside him, Conaire was still, but his teeth flashed once in a grin. Eremon tried to grin back, yet what came was a baring of teeth, and then he knew it was time … it was time … it was time …

  He stood and stepped into the light, raising his sword, heedless of anyone below seeing him now, for it was too late for them …

  Eremon dropped his hand, and the silent air exploded in a hail of spears and arrows, before shrieking Alban men swept down the slopes from both sides of the valley in a flood-tide.

  At the first screech Agricola instinctively unsheathed his sword, racing for the tumbling walls, heart pumping in sudden panic. But before he broke free of the cover of the scree slope, he heard the deadly hiss of arrows and higher whine of spears, and then all around the thuds and clashes and cries of pain.

  A screaming savage landed right in front of him, leaping from a great height, and Agricola could only stab and slash at this daemon who danced around him, his face striped with starlight and shadow, his eyes those of a rabid beast.

  Then the man fell under Agricola’s blade, and the Roman governor of Britannia stumbled over the body, shouting to rouse his men.

  The other stag screamed, its brow running with blood, as the hooves of the Chosen One raked down his sides. Fierce antlers stabbed at flanks again and again, and the hooves now stamped and shredded flesh into rags, as the chanting of the priestesses grew louder, resounding through Rhiann’s mind and heart and out through her hand …

  … Eremon slashed with his father’s sword and leaped, lightning-quick, among the Roman soldiers rolling to their feet, slicing across white throats and unprotected heads until blood ran hot in his mouth and eyes. And all the while his head swung from side to side as he sought the one he sensed, the one he had come for.

  He cleaved the knots of fighting men with his blade, until before him the rotting, wind-scoured wall fell down into a tumble of stone steps, and Eremon raced up them until he stood on top of the wall, searching the fighters with desperate eyes.

  Directly below him, a Roman soldier ran an Alban through with a javelin, and Eremon heard the bellow escape his own throat in answer. At the sound, the man looked up … and they were Agricola’s eyes, filled with hatred. Eremon felt the breath leave h
is chest, replaced with instant rage.

  That ruthless face had haunted his dreams, taunting him with its sneering mouth and cold contempt. And here was his own sword, and there the face.

  With another yell, Eremon lowered his weapon and tensed to jump, but a knot of Roman soldiers swept around their commander just as a blade grazed Eremon’s calf. In the darkness, screams and confusion that followed, Eremon was caught in the milling knots of fighters, until the men around him, Alban and Roman both, were dead or wounded, or had fled. It was then he heard the panicked whinnies, and far on the other side of the throng he glimpsed men in cloaks whipping their horses into a gallop, fleeing north.

  Shuddering as the rage abruptly left him, Eremon’s sword dropped to the ground and he sank back against the cold stone. And somehow, in all the darkness and blood he felt Rhiann, as if her breath brushed his cheek …

  … and the Chosen One stood over its vanquished enemy, splashed in blood, its sides heaving, its head lowered until the torn velvet on its antlers brushed the ground.

  CHAPTER 14

  Rhiann barely remembered the first moments after the rite: the blood-soaked grass under her palms, the scent of damp soil, the pain in her head. She was carried by chanting Sisters, bathed by Fola’s tender hands, and then she slept.

  She awoke in darkness on a pallet by Fola’s own bed, sensing a presence looming over her. Yet as she started, she recognized Didius in the shielded glow of a single lamp.

  ‘Didius, why are you here?’ she whispered, groggy from the saor. ‘Were you not in the men’s house?’

  Didius leaned forward with a cup of water, pressing it to her parched lips. ‘They let me come, lady,’ he answered, glancing up at the dark hump of Fola in her bed. ‘I … I needed to see you.’