The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  In a low voice that echoed from the rock bowl of the spring and the ridge above it, Linnet called on the Mother to bless the warriors and protect Dunadd while it lay empty.

  For a long time after Linnet fell silent, Rhiann was loath to break the circle, for the warmth and sense of bonding soothed her as much as the sun, spilling over her hair from the clearing in the trees. Yet at last they all stirred and broke apart, blinking and smiling at each other. Linnet had set a stone jug of mead to cool in the water, and now she filled five ash cups, and poured one out as an offering to the spring.

  Rhiann took her cup and sat on the lip of the pool. ‘Aunt?’ she ventured, brushing fallen birch leaves to spiral across the still water. ‘Have you decided where you yourself will go while the men are away?’

  ‘Go?’ Linnet turned, her brows drawing together. The sunlight struck sparks of copper in her hair. ‘I intend to go nowhere, child. If our people are safe in the high duns then I will certainly be safe here on this mountain.’ She sipped her mead, her eyes sharp over the lip of the cup. ‘In fact, you all could come and stay with me.’

  Rhiann’s gaze lifted to Caitlin’s, who was biting her lip, her mead untouched. Meeting Rhiann’s eye, Caitlin, rather unhelpfully, did nothing but screw up her face.

  Rhiann sighed and twirled her cup in her hands, mustering a smile for Linnet. ‘Actually, aunt, Caitlin and I have decided to follow the men.’ Just as she had as a child, Rhiann fixed her eyes intently on her feet, waiting for the explosion.

  Yet Linnet herself was silent.

  ‘What?’ Fola erupted, her cup falling to the mossy ground and spilling its contents. Ignoring the splashes on her skirt, she looked wildly from Rhiann to Linnet, just as Caitlin chose the moment to leap in.

  ‘Mother,’ Caitlin said, stepping forward to Linnet, ‘I have come to ask you if you will take Gabran for me.’ She smiled weakly. ‘He is weaned now, he takes after his father in his love of solid food.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Though my heart aches to leave him, we must be practical. Aside from my own concerns as a mother, he may be the next king – we cannot risk him.’

  ‘Yet you will risk yourselves!’ Fola glared down at Rhiann, trembling. ‘I cannot understand – you are safest here!’

  ‘Peace, daughter,’ Linnet murmured, laying a hand on Fola’s arm. ‘It is love that drives them, and it overrides such matters as safety.’

  Relief flooded Rhiann, and she rested her cup on the spring’s lip. ‘I confess we thought you would fight us, aunt, though our minds are set. We have talked about it at length, together.’

  ‘And what do your husbands think of this?’ Fola demanded, her hands clenched by her sides. ‘I cannot believe they will support such folly.’

  Rhiann and Caitlin exchanged rueful glances. ‘They do not know yet,’ Caitlin confessed, raising her chin. ‘But we think that their way lies dark before them, and they will need the light we can give – at the end.’

  Fola’s own chin jutted out, her calm face set with a hardness Rhiann had never seen before, and she drew her priestess cloak closer as if seeking its strength. ‘And what about your child, Rhiann? How can you go riding about the land at six moons along – into war! It is ridiculous!’

  Rhiann appealed to Linnet with her eyes now, and to her surprise her aunt seemed to rouse herself from some deep thought. ‘The early days are more dangerous,’ Linnet pronounced. ‘If she takes care, she will be well.’

  Fola gasped at Linnet’s response, obviously confused. Then she snapped her mouth shut and crossed her arms. ‘Then I am going, too. She needs my help.’

  ‘Old friend.’ Rhiann rose and took Fola by her elbows. ‘You must stay here with my aunt. If anything were to happen to us, I want my people to have the benefit of your skills and wisdom. There is little left of the Sisterhood; we must keep it safe.’

  ‘If you are so concerned about preserving all that, then you would do best to save yourself, Rhiann! Your people need you!’

  ‘That may be true,’ Rhiann countered gently, ‘but I have risked much for Eremon. Nerida and Setana told me to open to his love, and now that I have unleashed that power, I cannot turn my back on it.’ Fola’s whole body was trembling, and her dark eyes welled with hurt. When Rhiann saw what lay there, she simply stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her friend, foreheads touching, nose to nose. ‘Bramble I used to call you once – blackberry eyes. Do you remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ Fola whispered. ‘And I called you Little Seal because you loved the sea.’

  ‘And then we lost each other,’ Rhiann murmured, ‘in the darkness that fell over me. Through Eremon I have found that light again, and I cannot let it go.’ She pulled back and held Fola at arm’s length. ‘I feel that if I follow it, if I hold to that love, then I will find safety. I share this with you, as one priestess to another, and ask you to accept it.’

  Fola’s eyes shone with a film of tears. ‘Let me come,’ she whispered.

  ‘No.’ Linnet now drew herself straight, her eyes commanding as they rested on Fola. ‘I have seen some of what will come, and child, you are not there.’

  ‘Seen it?’ Rhiann immediately turned to Linnet. ‘When?’

  Linnet breathed in deeply, and let it out, her shoulders lowering. ‘At your birth I saw it.’

  ‘My birth?’ Rhiann strode to her, excited. ‘What are you talking about? Why did you say nothing?’

  Linnet’s eyes flickered with something that resembled guilt. ‘I could not be sure it would come to pass.’

  Rhiann was suddenly breathing hard. ‘That is why you won’t argue with us, isn’t it, aunt? You know we must be there.’

  Linnet’s throat bobbed as she swallowed, and at last she nodded. ‘I saw you, Rhiann, on a great battlefield. Not Caitlin, not then, for of course I thought her lost to me. But you, I saw clearly.’

  Instantly, Caitlin was on her feet, her fair braids flinging out as she grasped Linnet’s arm. ‘And our men, mother? What did you see of Conaire?’

  ‘Yes!’ Rhiann echoed. ‘What of Eremon?’

  Yet Linnet’s palms came up to hold them at bay, and abruptly she turned to look out over the wind-rippled surface of the pool, her face hidden by the shadows. ‘Of the men I saw nothing,’ she said. ‘I am sorry.’

  Although the people were grieved to abandon their homes at Dunadd, they did it without question. For days Rhiann and Fola laid offerings in pits before doorways, burying the household gods, closing the houses and sprinkling the lintels with sacred water.

  Aldera and Bran’s house was the last. With a blessing, Rhiann laid a joint of pig meat, some loom weights and one of Bran’s finer arm-rings in the pit before the door. She then recited the ritual words slowly, her hand gripping the spade, for the strange lurching visions were coming more and more now since Beltaine, slipping in almost between each thought.

  A few days ago while baking bannocks, it was as if the house around Rhiann shifted subtly, and she was suddenly somewhere else, clad in furs, cracking mussels over a fire – she actually tasted the salty meat on her tongue. And just now a brief flicker had come of a red wool tent that bucked in a searing wind, unlike anything in Alba.

  ‘Lady?’ Rhiann had been unmoving for so long that Aldera was obviously concerned.

  ‘I am … well.’ Flushing, Rhiann took Aldera’s arm to straighten, pushing that odd, dizzy feeling and the roaring away. ‘The offering will keep the house safe for your return,’ Rhiann murmured, smiling at Aldera with sympathy.

  ‘So it will,’ Aldera agreed, sighing. ‘Hush,’ she ordered, when her youngest began to wail in her arms, and then, ‘I hope your own birth goes easy, Rhiann.’

  Rhiann did not miss the lack of her formal address, and it warmed her, for Aldera had known her since she was born. ‘Thank you. I pray so, too.’

  Aldera’s eyes were suspiciously moist as she reached for the hand of her next eldest child, a boy lingering against a broken plough-share in the yard. ‘Come, laddie,’ she murmured, and set
her chin resolutely towards the gate, where her kin waited with their carts. She did not look back.

  Chilled despite the bright sun, Rhiann stood for a moment in the yard behind the open village gate. Most of the roundhouses were already deserted, as people moved away from Dunadd in family groups, going north, east and south, following the winds.

  The paths between the houses and workshops had fallen silent, devoid of all the sounds that had cradled Rhiann since she was young: dogs barking and children wailing; cook pots clanking; the thunk of axes and hammers; men arguing; women scolding. Only the chanting of the druids floated down from the shrine, for Declan and his brethren would ritually close the King’s Hall, supervise the battle offerings and bless the warband on departure.

  Yet departure for where? Eremon had not decided yet.

  A pang of grief welled up from deep inside Rhiann, and she wrapped her arms about her chest, allowing it to pool in her heart, for once not forcing it back down. There was no one to see her, after all, and her grief was the proper way to honour Dunadd, she realized suddenly, her tears a blessing for all who had lived here.

  Yet she was given little peace for such musings. The watch horn suddenly blasted out from the walkway above, startling her, and Rhiann wiped her cheeks with both hands and composed herself, walking a few steps to peer under the tower. Eremon was coming over the causeway on Dòrn. He had been gone for four days, visiting the scouts on the eastern borders, and Rhiann strode forward eagerly to greet him.

  Eremon’s boots and trousers were splashed with the mud of hard riding, as were those of Conaire, Rori and the five other horsemen who had accompanied him. Yet what Rhiann saw in Eremon’s face as he dismounted seemed to darken the bright sun. She glanced at Rori, his freckles standing out like drops of blood on his white cheeks. Conaire’s features, too, were closed in and set.

  With no word, Eremon threw Dòrn’s reins at Rori, then his fingers closed hard around Rhiann’s elbow as he immediately steered her up the stairs to the top of the palisade. There he released her, gripping the pointed oak stakes instead of her arm, looking out over the river meadow.

  ‘What is it?’ Rhiann said at last, for Eremon seemed reluctant to speak, or even look at her. His knuckles were pale ridges beneath his tightened skin.

  ‘The scouts were reporting people fleeing over the mountains from the east and south,’ Eremon said at last, something held in check in his voice. ‘They are Damnonii tribesmen – and Venicones.’

  ‘Venicones!’ Rhiann had only ever heard this tribe mentioned along with curses, for they had been among the first to ally with Rome four years ago. Why would they come west?’

  ‘They were driven.’ Eremon spoke so softly Rhiann had to crane to hear him. Suddenly, he turned to face her, white-lipped with fury, his eyes dark with anguish. ‘Let me tell you all at once,’ he forced out. ‘For then I cannot speak it again.’

  Sheltering her throat with her hand, Rhiann nodded dumbly. And so, in a slightly trembling voice Eremon told her, the terrible words flowing straight from his fathomless gaze into hers.

  The entire Roman army from all Britannia had been gathered, and was on the move – yet this time burning every league of ground, razing every homestead, byre, hut and hill-fort. No one, not even allies, were being spared, from the Votadini lands north. And no mercy was being given. After crushing the desperate warriors, the Romans were skewering children, even babes in the womb, with lances. Old ones were cut down by sword or arrow as they stumbled away. Women were being ravished, their throats cut.

  The Romans were leaving nothing to be salvaged once the army passed.

  They had left nothing for Alba.

  When Eremon had finished, Rhiann’s fingers were pressing into her throat so hard she coughed, the spasm turning into a gag of nausea that she swallowed down. It stung her, as tears welled and slid from under her closed eyelids, down her cheek and over the back of her hand. Yet even with eyes closed, Rhiann couldn’t shut out the visions Eremon had conjured.

  ‘What does this mean?’ she whispered eventually.

  ‘It is Agricola’s way to force us into open battle,’ Eremon said slowly. ‘If we do not stand up to him, he is making it clear there will be nothing left and no quarter given, even to the innocent. He will not rest until it is done, and by all reports he has gathered an army more than double the size of anything unleashed on us before.’

  Rhiann had begun to tremble. ‘And you now have your own army.’ Because of me. Because of the Sisters. I brought Eremon to this.

  Without an army of his own, Eremon could not possibly have chosen to fight such a force. They would have fled, whether he hated to do so or not. They could have gone into hiding. Yet that would never happen now, because the Sisters sacrificed themselves, and because Rhiann had taken their story into every dun across the land.

  Rhiann rubbed her eyes with balled fists, as Eremon took her arm. ‘Rhiann, we will need more than just our own warriors. We must gather every man that can hold a spear, any weapon at all. Even the farmers, the herders, the fishermen must come with us.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘The Roman force is in Venicones lands, directly east,’ Eremon’s voice was bleak. ‘They cannot cross the mountains, so they are heading north, as they did before, yet more slowly because of the destruction they are wreaking. We need to gather our forces at Calgacus’s dun, then come down from the north and meet them.’ His hands moved up Rhiann’s arms, gently pulling her fists from her eyes. A kiss touched her forehead. Our parting has come sooner than I wished for,’ he whispered brokenly.

  Rhiann gulped a deep breath and opened her eyes, groping for his hands. ‘No, cariad. There is no need for partings.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Eremon’s frown descended over his face like a thundercloud.

  Rhiann brought his hands to her lips. ‘I am coming with you.’

  The cloud in Eremon’s face abruptly cut off all remaining light, and he reared back as if she had slapped him. ‘No! You and the child must be safe—’

  ‘You have just been telling me that nowhere is safe!’

  ‘Yet I will not invite that danger by flinging you in the path of a Roman army!’

  Rhiann cupped Eremon’s cheeks with her hands. His jaw was like iron; his eyes even harder. ‘The safest place for me is with you, Eremon. Caitlin and I are coming with you and Conaire to Calgacus. Aldera and Bran and the druids will lead the women.’ Eremon swore, his teeth grinding as he tried to pull his face away, yet Rhiann summoned every shred of strength to hold him still. ‘I’m not letting you leave me behind.’

  ‘You seek to order me?’ Eremon gripped her hands and tore them from his skin. ‘I will remind you of who leads this warband.’

  ‘It is not a matter of leading, or authority!’

  ‘No? What is it, then?’ he cried. ‘Foolishness? Mule-headed female stubbornness?’

  ‘Eremon.’ Rhiann raised her chin with dignity, curling her palms about her elbows. ‘It is a matter of love,’ she said quietly. ‘We must face what will come, together. Triumph together, or die together. You know in your heart this is right.’

  A muscle leaped in Eremon’s neck; his eyes narrowed with anguish. ‘Gods, Rhiann, of course I do not want to be parted from you! But how could I forgive myself if you were harmed?’

  ‘It will most likely come down to one battle; you told me so yourself. We will wait out of sight. If you are defeated, then there is no safe place for us in Alba anyway.’

  ‘That is not true!’ Eremon burst out. ‘You could run far into the mountains. Gods, what if you fell into Agricola’s hands?’

  ‘I’ve already told you, I won’t run!’ Rhiann held his hot, angry gaze with her own, unflinching. ‘No one has the right to tell another how to face their own death. And have you forgotten I am Ban Cré? Have you forgotten my dream, and how we lead the people together? Have you forgotten my duty to them?’

  That hit home; Eremon’s eyes darted wildly around as if seeking
some way out. Then to Rhiann’s surprise he gave a loud yelp of frustration and violently kicked the palisade with one muddy boot. From the force of the kick, everything he had heard that day had gone into it. The timbers shivered, and the guards further down the walkway glanced up, startled. Yet Eremon ignored them, turning his back on Rhiann and gripping the stakes again.

  She gave him a few moments, until his ragged breathing slowed, and the blood rushed back into the white bones of his hands. Then Rhiann slipped her arms about his waist, curving into him as much as the baby would allow, her thighs against his. She could feel the trembling running through his body. ‘The time for being ruled by our heads is fast receding, cariad,’ she whispered. ‘The Goddess is love, and if we cling to love, She will help us to our path.’

  Leaning up on her toes to peer over Eremon’s shoulder, Rhiann saw his eyes close, and another oath pass over his lips, silent this time. For a moment the battle in him surged along every nerve in her arms. Then at last quiet fell. Slowly he turned, his arms coming out to hold her, tucking her head under his chin. He smelled of horse sweat and drying mud.

  ‘Then I will cling to love,’ he muttered into her hair, ‘and perhaps your Goddess will look well on me when at last we meet.’

  Rhiann craned back to look up at him, the tears drying across her cheeks. The sun sheened his eyes, so they appeared as clear as sea water. ‘When that time comes, cariad, we will take that path together, whatever it may be.’

  CHAPTER 64

  Rhiann fixed her eyes on the valley between Liath’s pale, twitching ears. The dip was deepened by the shadow of the gatetower above, which fell across half of the mare’s head, and half of Rhiann’s body. One of Rhiann’s arms was in sunshine; the other cold in the shadows. Perhaps it was easier this way, if she only saw what was around her as blocks of light and shadow, and did not allow them to form pictures. Then she wouldn’t really know she was leaving Dunadd until she was far away.