The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  ‘Many of the Venicones escaped north and were taken by Taexali scouts,’ Calgacus informed Eremon. ‘The traitors at last know, to their cost, the value of a Roman vow.’

  ‘I heard this news.’ Eremon sighed, staring into the shadows of the curving wall. ‘You know of course that Agricola took this road once before – in the western lands of Britannia, the lands of my grandmother’s people. He laid waste to them, conquered them utterly.’

  The words hung in the air between them, as a draft of warm air lifted the edge of the hanging, making the shadows tremble. This is destruction that cannot be ignored, prince,’ Calgacus said heavily, sinking into his carved chair. For the first time that day, the Caledonii king allowed all his feelings to show. ‘It is meant to drive us to war.’

  Eremon reached for his ale cup. ‘That it is. What else do you know?’

  Calgacus leaned back. ‘Our scouts estimate a Roman army of ten thousand. They are moving slowly, so thoroughly are they scouring the countryside of any sign of life.’ His mobile mouth turned down with brief pain.

  ‘We will have almost three times that,’ Eremon remarked.

  Calgacus nodded. ‘So it appears.’

  Eremon took a deep breath and met Calgacus’s gaze. ‘So. Where are they, where are they heading and what are we going to do about it?’

  That at least brought a smile to the king’s face, and he sat forward, his forearms resting on his chair. ‘Aye, my young friend, you do bring a fresh breeze of energy into this Hall. The truth is I am waiting on the latest reports to come in, hopefully in the next few days. Then we can make a plan with the other kings.’

  ‘Then let us speak plain now.’ Abruptly, Eremon also leaned forward towards the bark map spread on the bench, its edges weighted with daggers. ‘I believe the Romans are making for this dun specifically. They wish to finish what they started last year.’

  Calgacus nodded, tenting his fingers under his chin. ‘I feel this, too.’

  ‘Your lands are the gateway to the interior of all Alba,’ Eremon continued. ‘From here, the glens spread north, south and west, allowing easy access to the high ground. If the Romans take the Caledonii lands, the mountains are laid open to them. There will be nowhere left to hide, for any of us. We cannot let them get this far north.’

  ‘Indeed we cannot,’ Calgacus agreed, his eyes beginning to glow with the fire that Eremon could always stir in him. ‘And I have thought of a place to make our stand.’ He stabbed at the bark with one finger. ‘Here. It is a lone ridge that rears from a wide plain. From it, one can see far. It is a strong place, called the Hill of a Thousand Spears by some. I do not know why. Perhaps a battle was fought there, long ago.’

  Eremon nodded. ‘Soon it may have a new name, then. Yet let it not be where the hope of Alba was lost.’

  Calgacus turned those keen, gold-flecked eyes on Eremon, and gripped his shoulder. ‘Hope will never be lost while we can raise a sword.’

  For a moment, Eremon let himself be held by that male strength, relieved that it was not only his to muster for others. Then he smiled and reached for his cup, holding it up to the king’s hand. ‘Let us drink to that, my friend.’

  Yet the chink of their bronze cups was a cold sound within the pool of warm lamplight.

  CHAPTER 66

  It was the strangest, most frustrated turning of Rhiann’s life. For as the bustle of the war camp swirled around her in an escalating blur of noise, smell and urgent movement, she became ever more still, drawn away unwillingly to another world unfolding inside her.

  Her body was growing more heavy and slow, and for those few days at Calgacus’s dun Rhiann sat on a bench on the sun-warmed walls, her hands spread over her belly, as from below came the roar of the men in training, the clash of swords and shields, the thunder of horses. Yet it was not only Rhiann’s increasing weight and tiredness holding her there. For though her energy had played a large part in creating this – 30,000 men in a frenzy of excitement and preparation – she sat silent in their midst now, her thoughts and heart turned entirely inwards, with no part to play.

  Suspended in this void of activity, so Rhiann’s inner life sprang into full being. The tangled visions had now formed themselves into some kind of parallel world, running alongside and within her own. They were frustratingly inconsequential: women weaving and nursing; birthing babes and tending cauldrons; singing and stamping their feet around a fire. Sometimes there were even glimpses of priestesses, robed and white-masked, singing to the Stones. Yet Rhiann didn’t recognize either the women or their clothes, or even their songs, though the meaning tugged at something buried in her subconscious.

  As Rhiann looked out at the plain before the dun, covered with tents and hazed with smoke, she could still sense these inner sights and sounds as a murmur all about her, and if she closed her eyes and sought one vibration, like Aedan tuning his strings, that picture became more clear than the rest, before subsiding back into the whispering stream once more.

  And though the visions themselves were not violent, as the days passed Rhiann grew ever more fearful. For the first time she was completely at a loss, spiralling down into a world she did not understand. She knew she had not fulfilled her dream, yet why then did she not receive it? It was as if the single, fierce guiding light she had followed so fervently for three years had suddenly been extinguished, to be replaced by all this: visions so clear they lived and breathed, yet seemingly useless to her all the same. They weren’t about battles, or warriors, or even kings. They were just … life.

  And what of the babe? The visions began with the child and, at first, as every one came, it would kick. Now, with the visions like a continuous stream, the child never seemed to sleep, turning and rolling and kicking until an anxious Rhiann would hold her belly and sing to soothe it.

  Rhiann didn’t want to scare Caitlin, yet she did ask, hesitantly, if Caitlin had experienced anything like it during her pregnancy. Was it something that came to all mothers, she wondered, an opening caused by the baby that allowed stray memories of other lives to flood in? But no, Caitlin frowned in confusion when Rhiann tried to explain, so she let the matter drop, and her fear increased. It wasn’t normal, then.

  Every night, Rhiann lined up her goddesses by the side of her bed, and prayed with desperation to receive the dream of power just once more. The alliance was based on one woman’s dream, and one man’s vision. What if she and Eremon were wrong?

  Every night, though, her prayers went unanswered.

  Only the child flew with Rhiann in sleep, its soul-flame a tiny bloom of fire next to her own. Holding hands, she and the babe skimmed the mountains, cold among the stars, and out over glittering, moonlit seas. The child showed her Alba, spread out below, but its thoughts were formless, the feelings vague.

  Love of the land.

  Grim beauty …

  Turning slowly in the starry sky, Rhiann’s anxious mind groped to understand what the child was trying to tell her. That all would be well, and Alba remain hers?

  Or that she was meant to say farewell?

  It was the eve of the longest day, and Eremon paused for a moment, imagining all the things he would rather be doing. Instead, here he was, squatting in the shadows of a stifling, smoky hall, with sweaty warriors shouting boasts and laughing far too loudly.

  The atmosphere among the nobles now was that familiar battle mixture of excitement and aggressive bravado, driven by buried fear. Everyone was getting drunk, and trying to outdo each other in war stories, singing and even wrestling. Yet the tension didn’t make Eremon’s blood sing as it had every time before, and so he had retreated behind one of the oak pillars that held up the roof, where the thatch sloped low to the eaves.

  Conaire still managed to find him. ‘Here.’ He handed Eremon an empty cup and squatted against the curving wall, his long thighs jutting out. ‘I had to lop off a few heads to get this.’ He waved something before Eremon’s nose that sloshed invitingly, then poured a stream of ale into his cup. ‘So why
are you hiding over here?’

  Eremon glanced sidewise at Conaire as he drank, considering that familiar rise of cheek and eyebrow. He realized that though Conaire had always read his mind, lately Eremon had found himself speaking aloud almost everything that ran through his head. It was odd, but relieving.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ Eremon murmured, his head swinging back into shadow, ‘about the times we stood here at this hearth, fighting for an alliance. I thought then that when the time came I would feel different. Exultant.’ He shrugged uneasily.

  Conaire swigged the ale. ‘And how do you feel, then?’

  ‘That this hall stinks of old blood, from weapons and men and animals, and yet … that is nothing to the blood that will run in a battle with the Romans, and much of it Alban.’ He turned, seeking for the calm of Conaire’s eyes. ‘And I brought them here. Without me, perhaps they would keep running, hiding—’

  ‘And their lands would be stolen.’

  Eremon shook his head. ‘Perhaps so, but still they would live.’ He gulped the ale.

  Conaire’s silence echoed the sympathy in his face. His broad hand came down on his brother’s shoulder, a weight Eremon knew as well as that of his sword. ‘You are tired, brother, that is all.’ Conaire ground Eremon’s shoulder bones in what passed for a brotherly squeeze. ‘You only gave them a chance. It was their choice to seize it.’

  Eremon digested that, but could not shake off the sick dread that had settled in his belly. All those lives in his hands.

  ‘So! At last we move out tomorrow, and I am glad to hear it!’ Lorn’s voice shocked them, booming out of the shadows to their left. He raised his own flask, shaking the contents. ‘I appropriated this earlier. Can I take a seat, my friends?’

  With a sigh, Eremon shifted along on his haunches and then sat down with his back against the wall, his legs stretched out. Lorn curled up cross-legged, placing the flask before him.

  Calgacus had called this feast to announce the latest information from the scouts tracking the Roman army. If the Albans moved out tomorrow they would be at the Hill of a Thousand Spears in four days. The Romans, coming up from the south in one block, could not reach the same point for at least six days, giving the Albans time to choose the ground. All that remained tonight was to go over their battle dispositions once again.

  Eremon tried to shrug off the nagging doubts he had, drawing confidence from the ale, its warmth seeping into his belly and uncoiling the worst of the fear. The Albans outnumbered the Romans three to one. The Albans were defending their homes, a thought which gave a man’s sword arm great strength.

  In common with the Britons and those of Erin, the Albans did not make a formal battle plan, or recognize separate units. Each man fought on foot or horse as he wished, relying on courage and weight of numbers to carry the day. Wings of infantry under Conaire, cavalry under Eremon and chariots under Lorn had therefore excited a great deal of attention, and not a little scorn. Yet in the week they had been here, drilling their men on the plain, warriors had been joining their units in droves, boosting the cavalry to 2,000, and the chariots to 1,000. Conaire had 2,000 specially trained foot soldiers under his command, drawn from the Epidii and the best of the Caledonii. The rest of the warriors and commoners would fight on foot under their own kings and chiefs, with Calgacus as overall war leader.

  ‘Calgacus has received the final tally,’ Lorn said. ‘I was nearby when his druids came.’ He drank, and wiped his chin. ‘You were right, Eremon – with his infantry and all our units, that makes about twenty-eight thousand, with more coming every day. Can you believe it?’

  Eremon smiled wearily. ‘Since the Romans have, by all reports, ten thousand, I would have to believe it, or despair.’

  ‘Do not despair!’ Lorn exclaimed. ‘At the very least, we will die a glorious death, and the bards will sing of our names for ever, while we feast in the Blessed Isles. I can live with that.’ He chuckled.

  Eremon thought suddenly of Rhiann’s hair in the sun, the tumbled threads of flame and copper, amber and roan.

  No, he thought. It is not only a name I wish to leave. There is more to me than that.

  Much later in the night, Eremon escaped the noise and heat to walk alone on the long walls of the dun, letting the cold moonlight and sea-wind cleanse him of ale fumes and smoke. The revelry in the hall and camp showed no signs of letting up, and Eremon grimaced as he thought of all the sore heads on the ride south tomorrow. He couldn’t begrudge them this time, though.

  On the other side of the river rose a dark smudge of low hills. Rhiann had said she was going up into those woods to conduct the rites for the longest day, and although Eremon warned them to stay hidden, he had sent Rori and Fergus to guard Rhiann and Caitlin from afar.

  Eremon only sensed the soft step behind him when it was already too close to do anything about it. Nevertheless he tensed, whirling, hand halfway to his sword-hilt.

  ‘Prince, I greet you.’

  Eremon’s breath rushed out of him as he recognized Nectan’s voice, floating from the shadow of the gatetower. ‘I should have known it was you; the only man to walk on feet of air.’ He grinned, beckoning Nectan forward into the moonlight. How are you, old friend? When did you arrive?’

  ‘Just this dusk,’ Nectan replied. The Caereni chieftain was arrayed in his finest, with beaded quiver, shell necklets and wrist guard. His face tattoos appeared darker in the pale grey light, drawn over with dye or ash. ‘And I have brought a gift, prince – all who can wield bow or spear among the Caereni and Carnonacae; some three thousand men. They came for the King Stag, to give him their strength.’

  Eremon’s breath hissed out from his teeth in surprise. So many! ‘It is no more than we vowed to you,’ Nectan added softly. ‘Even so, I thank you. You are a staunch ally, and great friend.’

  Nectan’s head bowed in solemn acknowledgement, as the wind stirred the feathers at the ends of his braids. ‘Prince, apart from greetings, I searched you out to speak of Maelchon of the Orcades.’

  Eremon had straightened before he knew it. ‘I have not forgotten him, if that is what concerns you. Calgacus will despatch a small guard for our rear, yet there is only so much shoreline we can watch.’

  ‘I know this.’ Nectan’s teeth bared in a grin. ‘That is why I have left a chain of scouts across the land to the north. They will fall back to this dun when we have left.’

  Eremon muttered another oath, shaking his head. ‘I wonder what we would do without your foresight, friend. I know that Maelchon has been far too quiet for too long. Yet I had not forgotten him: after all, the tribes have only come together here because of the Sacred Isle raid. Be assured that his presence still writhes in my gut, but though I long to hunt him down, there are more pressing matters at hand.’

  ‘True, yet while he lives, my service to the Mother will remain incomplete.’ Briefly, Nectan touched a new tattoo on his brow: a crescent moon. The moon was the face of the Goddess for these people, Eremon remembered Rhiann telling him. ‘Like you, prince, I do not feel we have seen the last of the Orcadian king,’ Nectan murmured. ‘Well do I hope it is my shaft in his neck that brings him down.’

  Eremon shook his head. ‘No, friend, it is my blade that must end his life. You seek vengeance for your goddess; I seek it for my wife.’

  CHAPTER 67

  The druids had offered a prince’s ransom in weapons to the Ness, the banners of the eagle had been taken down from their gold-tipped poles and, with solemn ceremony, the great gates of the Dun of the Waves had been ritually closed.

  Now the greatest army ever assembled in Alba lumbered its way around the edge of the northern mountains, crossing coastal lowlands only now coming into their full sunseason glory. The air was heavy with the scents of flowers and ripening hay; the fields spilled over with green barley.

  Amidst all the richness, Calgacus rode at the head of this enormous, restless beast of war, Eremon and Conaire at his shoulders. Watching the Caledonii king from the corner of her e
ye, Rhiann saw that he stared straight ahead, sparing no glance for the wealth of his land, which would, left untended, leach away after its brief flowering. Or worse, be burned into a blackened ruin by Roman soldiers.

  Rhiann herself was living with the same threat of darkness that she saw reflected in the king’s eyes, running beneath the warmth of the sun and hum of bees. For as they left the dun, the domestic thread of her visions shifted; the sense of them shot through with looming destruction and danger, though nothing came clearly.

  At dusk on the second day, the army only halted when there was barely enough light left to unpack and make camp. Rhiann was already on the ground when she noticed that Caitlin still sat on her horse, unmoving and staring into the last glow of the sun over the western hills.

  In the long, shallow valley in which they would camp, mist was beginning to curl up from the damp ground, and Rhiann shivered, then blinked her vision away from her inner world to this one. ‘Caitlin?’ She reached out tentatively to touch her sister’s knee.

  A shudder flowed over Caitlin’s skin, and she turned to Rhiann as slowly as if she were awakening. After leaving Calgacus’s dun she too had grown quiet, her excitement seeping away the further they rode east. ‘I was just thinking how Gabran loves warm weather,’ she whispered. ‘He hates wearing clothes.’

  Rhiann squeezed her knee. ‘He will be a little brown hazelnut when you see him again.’

  The last light had almost faded now, a copper smear low on the horizon, as campfires flared into life all around them. ‘Will I, Rhiann?’ Caitlin asked, so quietly Rhiann had to strain to hear her. ‘Will I see him again? And will he forgive me if I do not?’