The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  Eremon grinned. ‘No one told me how comforting a scolding wife can be.’

  ‘Yes, well, you made the mistake of choosing a healer and a priestess for a wife.’ Rhiann cocked her head at him, squinting in the sun. ‘Perhaps you would have been happier with a quiet, plump little cattle-lord’s daughter?’

  Eremon’s only answer was a snort, yet he cupped her belly with both hands, softly rubbing the skin through the wool of her dress. In the week since Rhiann told him her news, he had scarcely kept his hands off her belly, for it was just starting to swell between her hip bones.

  Now Rhiann closed her eyes with a little sigh, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her eyelids and the heat of his hands over her stomach. The lack of sight made all the sounds around her leap forward: Eremon’s faint breath; Cù whuffling somewhere in the reeds; the buzz of the myriad, awakening insects. She was suddenly very conscious that they were alone. With a queer flutter Rhiann opened her eyes, dazzled by the light, moving towards Eremon’s hazy outline, searching for his kiss first with her fingers and then her lips.

  Pressed up against him, Rhiann felt the answering hardness against her thigh, and heard the slight catch in Eremon’s throat. Under her fingers, his pulse beat in his neck as rapidly as her own, and eagerly her mouth opened to him. They were alone, and it was warm out of the wind if they retraced their steps to the firmer ground among the grasses …

  Yet suddenly Eremon’s hands were on her arms, putting her firmly but gently away from him, and he turned his face to whistle for Cù. Rhiann was too surprised to respond as Eremon dropped a tender kiss on top of her head. ‘You are right,’ he said, his voice faintly husky. ‘I promise I will harass you no more.’ He grinned down at her, though a dark flush still stained his cheekbones. ‘I will see you in the Hall, aye?’

  Speechless, Rhiann watched him thread his way along the path, her herb-knife still clutched in her fingers. Then she looked down, cupping her belly in an echo of Eremon’s touch.

  That night, Rhiann lay sleepless by Eremon’s side after another chaste kiss that effectively turned aside her hands, which had been sliding their way across his back. With dawning dismay, Rhiann realized that Eremon was unable or unwilling to rouse himself to the fire that she still felt burning in her own blood.

  But why? What did this mean? Rhiann turned over on her side, blocking her ears to the soft, contented wheeze of his infernal breath. Could it be that her fears were coming true after all? For if her own husband was treating her differently, this was surely just the beginning. Soon, all the dun would know of her condition.

  In the nights that followed, fed by the lingering darkness, an irrational dread began to take form in Rhiann’s gut. The people would see her as no more than a dumb, breeding woman. Perhaps they would no longer seek her healing, preferring Fola instead, for she was unadulterated by worldly concerns. Perhaps the men would no longer pay heed to Rhiann’s thoughts, even though she had accompanied Eremon on many of his adventures and had travelled Alba to gain warriors to his side.

  On the heels of this dread, a greater terror began to worm its way into Rhiann’s mind. For ever since the long dark, not once had she received so much as a hint of her dream, or any stray glimpse of what was to come. How could this be? Had something changed in her? The warm season was wheeling closer, the campaigning time drawing near. How could the meagre remains of her sight fail her now?

  It seemed to Rhiann that something in her had turned away from the outer world and was contracting inwards, curling around the life that grew inside her. That’s all she could feel.

  That’s all she dreamed.

  There, in that dark, the sounds of the world came only faintly, as a dull hum. People’s feelings were no more than the buffeting of a distant storm, a powerless tempest that did little but stir the swirling warmth in which they floated, the child and her.

  In her sleep, Rhiann saw and felt as it did. She was surrounded by her own steady heartbeat; floated on a dreamy stillness; gazed with sleepy wonderment at the lights that flickered around them. She couldn’t talk to the child, for as yet it had no thoughts, and the rhythm of its life was so slow as to be pure sense only. She merely drifted with it … and nearness was all they shared.

  Yet it was this very nearness, this feeling that Rhiann was unable to describe even to herself, which was the source of the joy that pierced her along with the terror. For a part of her had always felt alone, and as much as she loved Eremon, they were separate beings. But this being was inside her, fused with her, made of her.

  And so, the joy.

  The joy was a primal thing, which had no time for Rhiann’s terror. It just existed, as the babe existed, untouched by the outer world, drifting and turning in the timeless, sheltered womb in which she held it. The joy was not under her conscious control. The joy was the light beneath and behind all others, and it held Rhiann as she held the child, curling around them both.

  CHAPTER 60

  Rhiann released Liath’s bridle as one of the stable-boys led the mare into the first empty stall. It was a fine day, and most of the pens were empty, their residents either training by the river or being exercised by masters who were just as eager to escape the stifling confines of the dun.

  Rhiann had just returned from Lorn’s own dun, there presiding over the blessing of the new-sown barley fields.

  Linnet could have gone, but despite her promise to Eremon, Rhiann’s aunt still found it difficult to look upon Urben’s face. Rhiann had managed to ignore him, even though she felt his pig eyes bore into her back as she sprinkled the blood of his first lamb into the turned earth. It had, in fact, taken the whole ride home for Rhiann to realize what had stopped her from throwing the contents of the mead cup in Urben’s face: his son had saved Eremon’s life.

  Satisfied at her show of restraint, Rhiann paused to set down the basket of chickweed and burdock leaves she had collected on the way home, then reached up to stretch her back. Her shoulders had spent too much of that day somewhere around her ears.

  Suddenly, she jumped at a loud clunk in the last stall, at the opposite end of the stable. It was the unmistakable sound of a sharp edge on wood, followed by a swish and a scrabbling of reeds underfoot, followed by another clunk.

  With narrowed eyes, Rhiann crept towards the last stall. The front of each partition was fenced, with wide spaces between the horizontal palings. And from ten paces away Rhiann now glimpsed the gleam of dim light on polished iron, and a man-shadow forcefully swinging a blade around his head in great swoops.

  Silently, Rhiann edged closer, her head low, until she was right at the junction of the last two stalls. Then, abruptly, she straightened. ‘What are you doing with that sword?’

  There was a foul curse as Eremon jerked, the downward sweep going wide, his knuckles cracking on the far wall. ‘Hawen’s balls!’ Whirling, he dropped the sword and immediately stuck his grazed fingers in his mouth, which somewhat diluted the effect of his glare.

  Rhiann advanced, leaning both arms on the stall gate. The light, hazy with the motes of chaff and horse dust, shone on the thin film of sweat that coated Eremon’s bare torso, and his chest was heaving up and down with exertion. The lines of tattoos across his belly were blurred by the flush of his skin, but the jagged scar that cleaved his left side had only grown more vivid with suffused blood. Even in the half-shadow it was an angry score, reminding Rhiann too well how it had looked when infected.

  ‘By all the gods, woman!’ Eremon removed his bloody fingers from his mouth. ‘Never, ever creep up on me again when I have a blade in my hand!’

  Rhiann’s own mouth dropped open as Eremon stooped to retrieve his sword. ‘And why are you whirling that thing around when I distinctly told you it was too soon?’ she snapped. ‘You could hurt yourself !’ She was suddenly shaking with anger, and hardly knew why.

  Eremon shrugged one shoulder, brushing straw from his blade and peering at it. ‘I’ve got to exercise these muscles, and I didn’t want anyone to see, not until
I can do it without wincing.’

  ‘Wincing?’ Eremon’s head jerked up at Rhiann’s tone. ‘Conaire is doing an able job of training the men,’ she stormed, as I just saw! They don’t need you yet.’

  Eremon was at the gate in two strides, a muscle jumping in his jaw. ‘Of course they need me! And I won’t waste any more time acting the invalid for you!’ Breathing hard, he rested the blade along the top of the fence, eyes bright with reined-in frustration. ‘We are running out of time.’

  Rhiann gasped as if he had hit her, and Eremon frowned and ducked under the gate to take her arms. ‘I will not be crossed in this, a stór,’ he said quietly.

  Rhiann turned her face to the shadows. Suddenly she could not rid her mind of the scene she had witnessed on the river meadow moments ago. It was the pattern that had drawn her attention: swordsmen in rigid formation, spearmen and distinct lines of archers. Mounted warriors had been galloping up and down in thunderous charges, but in perfect time, the horses turning on their hind legs as one. One beast … she had heard Eremon speak of the Romans moving as one beast.

  ‘Eremon,’ she forced out, ‘you are drilling all the men together as one again. As an army.’

  The heat of Eremon’s indignation faded away, and his brows drew together as he paused to choose his words. ‘Rhiann,’ his hold on her arms softened, ‘I thought you understood. Agricola has only two choices now. I see them before me as if they were my own. He can give up, or’, he took a deep breath, ‘he must find a way to engage us with all his forces, in one battle that will decide all. The time for raids and ambushes is over.’

  Fear roared in a bright flood along Rhiann’s veins. ‘For two years you have triumphed over him, Eremon! Two years where you used what we have to win: our valleys, mountains—’

  ‘That was because I did not have the men for anything else! But now, if the gods will it, we may be joined by others. And then we have a chance, a real chance!’ Eremon’s eyes flared. ‘Remember that the vision Declan once had was of all Alba rising behind me. And all of Alba we will have, at last.’

  Rhiann swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘You cannot face the Romans in open battle, Eremon, you cannot. Not when you have found a better way: to hide, and strike. To run, and fight another day. This is how we won before!’

  ‘And is that what you want for our child, Rhiann? Always to be running, always hiding, always fearful? For if we do not defeat these Romans once and for all, that is the only world our babe will know.’ Rhiann turned her head away again, as if to stop his words, but Eremon grasped her face, resolute, and gently pulled it back to look at him. ‘Do you want him to hear Roman boots thudding across his own land? Do you want him to cower, waiting for the sword in the night, or the ships with their bolts of fire?’

  Rhiann’s jaw clenched within his fingers. ‘Not open battle,’ she begged, her eyes swimming with tears. ‘Not when defeat leaves you nowhere to run.’

  ‘Rhiann.’ Eremon shook his head, and sweat-soaked tendrils of hair fell across his brow. ‘You gave me your dream, of the eagles crying, the cauldron and sword. You have shared it with me now for three years. In it, there is a great battle, you told me yourself.’

  ‘Not any more!’ The words exploded from her. ‘Eremon, I do not dream this any more, I have not for three moons, ever since the baby …’ She blinked stinging eyes. ‘I cannot see what will happen any more.’

  Yet Eremon only regarded her calmly, prying her hands free and clasping them to his chest, cradled in his palms. ‘It does not matter, a stór, for the dream has come enough now. We know the outcome.’

  ‘No, we don’t! You don’t understand, Eremon, I can’t see anything at all, I can’t feel it, I can’t sense it. The dream was all I had and without it I am blind.’

  Eremon pressed Rhiann’s wet cheeks into his shoulder. His skin was salty on her lips. ‘You have already done all you could, my love, more than I would ever ask of you. It is because of you we even have the chance of this alliance.’ He groped for her hand, pressing it to his wounded side. Under Rhiann’s finger pads, the knitting skin was nubbled, already forming a hard ridge of scar tissue. ‘It is only because of you the Epidii even have a war leader. You have done your part, Rhiann, and now it is up to me to do mine.’

  Yet his words did nothing to calm Rhiann. ‘And what good is a dead father to this child?’ she blurted, pulling away from him.

  Eremon released her suddenly, and the momentum made Rhiann stumble before she righted herself. His eyes were cold now, the lines of his face carven as if from stone. ‘Our people must live free or die; it is how we are made.’ He paused. ‘Even you, Rhiann.’ Then suddenly his brow creased with confusion. ‘You have ever been my staunchest support in this. Why has your heart changed? Why?’

  Rhiann’s hand went to her belly. ‘Because I have a family now, as well as a people. It …’ She swallowed, her voice hoarse. ‘It has changed me, as I knew it would. For the child’s sake, I don’t want to fight. How many battles do you think you can survive?’ She shook her head, tears flinging out from her eyelashes. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’

  Eremon had gone very still. ‘It is because of this child that I want to fight, Rhiann. To make this land free, for him, for her, for all that will come.’ For a moment, his mouth softened. ‘The decision is made,’ he said simply, neither angry nor apologetic. ‘We must fight the Romans openly for this to be resolved. All I wait for is the men.’

  Unable to look on him any longer, Rhiann turned and left, striding blindly, the sunlight fractured by the tears in her eyes.

  That night she avoided the King’s Hall, and instead took to her bed early, thinking over what Eremon had said. Now that her anger had cooled into a dull knot of dread, she could acknowledge that one of his points was right: the dream had hinted at a great battle to come. Yet something else had been wrong, and Rhiann frowned as she sought for it, tried to pin down the unease in her belly that was nothing to do with the child.

  You have already done all you could, Eremon said.

  Rhiann examined her memories of the dream, holding them up one by one, and then she knew that was Eremon’s mistake. For she had not yet done what the dream had asked of her: to gather the Source and, in that, save her people. The destiny that had called her for more than three years had not been fulfilled. All she had done, the travels in inner and outer worlds, had been a prelude to the real exercising of her power.

  And that was what struck Rhiann with such fear, lying there in the warm darkness. For if she had not discharged her duty, then she was not in fact meant to slip away into the slow season of motherhood. She would be called on, in a way she could not foresee.

  Much later, Rhiann opened her eyes to the dancing shadows cast by a single lamp. Eremon was lying with his arms behind his head. ‘Alea iacta est,’ he said.

  Groggily, Rhiann blinked. ‘What?’

  Without looking at her, Eremon gathered Rhiann close with one arm, as if they had not quarrelled at all. ‘I’ve never told you much about my home, have I?’ he said, his voice rising and falling in a dreamy cadence. ‘We were on a busy trade route, despite being in the far north of Erin. We had traders come direct from Gaul, and even as far as Hispania!’ The hollow of Eremon’s throat moved as he smiled. He smelled of damp night air and wood-smoke. ‘Some would think Dalriada a backwater, but we received a fair amount of news and goods from the empire of Rome. You could even get scraps of copied texts – if you knew whom to ask, and if you paid well.’

  Rhiann murmured, ‘And you were interested in such?’

  ‘Yes!’ Eremon chuckled. ‘My father would not have understood, but my druid teacher did. He was so proud I could read a little bit of Greek – the druids always respected the Greeks, he said. That is how I found out about the Greek historian Polybius, and what he wrote about the Roman army.’ His chest moved in a sigh beneath her cheek. ‘All young warriors are interested in fighting, but I was fascinated by the thought of fighting in far away lands, fighting with
armies.’ He hesitated. ‘Little did I know I would call upon that knowledge after all.’ Then he gave a faint shrug. ‘I also found out about Julius Caesar, the Roman general. Once, he crossed a great river with his army, invading his own country and breaking its law to seize power. After they crossed, he said, “Alea iacta est”. It means “the die is cast”.’

  Rhiann rolled off Eremon’s chest so she could see his face, resting her chin in her hands. ‘But what does it mean?’ she asked.

  The edge of Eremon’s mouth lifted wryly, his eyes on the roof. ‘It means, sometimes there is no going back.’ Both of them lay entirely still. ‘I think, a stór,’ Eremon added quietly, ‘that we reached that place some time ago, though I never marked its passing.’

  Rhiann swallowed hard, her fingers folding the edge of the linen sheet, remembering her dream. If neither of them had fulfilled their destiny, there was no running away. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, knowing now that she must surrender such thoughts. ‘I think so, too.’

  They were both silent, and when Rhiann saw how Eremon’s gaze still moved dreamily over the firelit roof, she suddenly said, ‘Is it very beautiful?’

  ‘What? Erin?’ Eremon smiled, his eyes lighting up. ‘As beautiful as the dawn. So green … a green never seen in this land, a stór, so bright, so pure. The grass is sweet and fresh, the winds are mild, the cattle are fat!’ He laughed like a boy. ‘The rivers run with gold, the plains are flat and endless, and you can race your horse for leagues and leagues, as fast as the wind!’

  Rhiann watched Eremon’s hand move gracefully through the air, drawing pictures. I would like to have seen him then, she thought suddenly, warmed by the curve of his smile, soft with memory. Unburdened, before the hardening.

  Suddenly Eremon’s eyes came back to her, and he reached out to tuck Rhiann’s hair behind one ear. ‘I would love to take you there and show you, a stór. Show you my home.’