The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  Rhiann looked up into her stricken face. ‘I saw him as a king on the day he was born. And so you will be with him again, for he needs you to guide him to this kingship.’

  Caitlin’s sweet mouth twisted. ‘He needs his father for that.’ Then her chin dropped, her jaw tight with shame. ‘Oh, Rhiann, I suffer from such dread—’

  ‘Sister,’ Rhiann clasped Caitlin’s cold hands on the reins, ‘you have always been so brave. Do not fail Conaire now, when he needs you most.’

  Caitlin’s eyes closed as she swallowed, and when they opened again some measure of strength had been forced into them. ‘You are right. I must be proud of him, and send him to war with an open heart. I must.’

  Rhiann released her, drawing the edge of her cloak closed with a sad smile. ‘I do not think the Goddess can ask that of us.’ She held her belly as she reached up to her saddlepack and fumbled with the buckles. Perhaps if she could quiet the child, she would then be able to quiet her thoughts, and be calm for when Eremon returned from his war council this night. He needed her here, in Thisworld, however strong that strange call of the Otherworld was proving to be.

  Rhiann was already asleep when Eremon came to her bed at the edge of camp, in a little hollow screened from the other men by hawthorn bushes. Slipping under the pile of furs and hides on their bed roll, Eremon clasped Rhiann’s curved back into his belly, his face and hands cold from the damp night air.

  ‘I have spoken to Calgacus about our battle site,’ he murmured, in answer to Rhiann’s sleepy enquiry. The sounds of horses and male shouts were faint, muted by the shoulder of the small ridge. ‘The Hill of a Thousand Spears runs down to a plain, and to the west of that is a wooded rise – high enough for you to see our progress, but far enough away to allow an easy retreat, should you require it.’ The stilted words were at odds with the trembling force with which Eremon pressed Rhiann’s back into his chest.

  ‘Caitlin and I will be safe there,’ Rhiann murmured, reaching up to stroke the back of his neck. ‘We will.’

  All of Eremon’s breath rushed out of him then, and Rhiann sensed the control he had been exerting with the men slide away. She hesitated about sharing her fears with him when he had so much on his mind, but she could keep them inside no longer. What if there was some message for him, for the men, that she was somehow missing?

  So Rhiann told him all that had come to her, and what did not, and he lay still and said nothing for a long time. ‘I am so confused,’ she whispered at last, ‘so scared of letting you down. But Eremon, try as I might, I cannot pierce these mists and tell you anything clear.’ Her voice lowered. ‘It is like watching thousands of lives, but I cannot see the meaning in them, the pattern, the message. I am sorry I cannot be more—’

  ‘Shhh.’ Eremon’s arms tightened around her. ‘I do not understand the priestess sight,’ he began slowly, ‘though I have always listened to you, a stór, and respected what you told me. And if there was a message for me, you know I would hear it. Yet I think … I think you are just meant to hold the baby now, Rhiann.’ His breath was warm in her ear. ‘And if that is what is calling you, then heed it. Curl around our babe and shelter it with your thoughts as well as your body. If you do no more, you have already done enough.’

  Tears stung Rhiann’s eyes, drawn both by his tender words and by frustration. For he would go to war, and she could not fight by his side, nor aid him at all, it seemed.

  ‘Perhaps … perhaps we should not …’

  ‘No.’ Eremon cut off that thought with one soft word. Then his lips were pressing behind her ear. ‘We have come too far for that, mo chroi. We are set on this course now; we must face it with courage.’

  At dawn Eremon was wakened by a touch on his shoulder. In the cold, grey light Rhiann recognized the white gull feathers dangling from the ends of Nectan’s dark braids. His feet were before her face, the boots dark with dew. The air was chill and silent, broken only by the dancing call of a thrush from a dripping rowan tree on the ridge-top.

  ‘It has happened,’ the Caereni chieftain announced, his face an expressionless, pale blur in the dawn. ‘The Orcades king has come.’

  Rhiann choked back an exclamation, as Eremon sat up, the hides falling about his waist. ‘Tell me,’ he barked to Nectan, extracting the ends of his twisted tunic from between their bodies, straightening it over his chest.

  ‘Maelchon has forged an alliance with the Lugi,’ Nectan said. ‘Luckily for us, two Lugi scouts deserted him, and nearly killed themselves reaching my men.’

  Her heart pounding, Rhiann remembered the raven sail of the Lugi king from her first sunseason visit to the Sacred Isle, and Setana standing on the shore as the ship slid away past the Stones.

  ‘So where is he?’ Eremon demanded, running fingers swiftly through his unbound hair.

  Nectan fingered the dagger at his waist, its hilt inlaid with pearl shell. ‘He landed on the coast to the north-east, yesterday. The plan appears to have been for him to remain in hiding, then come upon our rear in battle.’

  ‘How many men are with him?’

  ‘Two thousand, all on foot.’

  Eremon paused for a moment. ‘Go and inform Calgacus. We must leave at once if we are to head him off. I will take five hundred on horse, plus as many of your own men as you require.’

  Rhiann only waited until Nectan trotted away before struggling free of the bedclothes. ‘Eremon, you cannot go after him with so few!’

  He was already pulling up his wool trousers and lacing them at the waist. ‘I will make it enough.’ He reached for his mailshirt. ‘I cannot take any more and reach him in time – I must be back at the battle site a day before the Romans come.’

  He quickly eased the mailshirt over his head and tied it with deft fingers, glancing at Rhiann when it was done. She was standing frozen, her knuckles at her mouth. The fierce light in his eyes softened. ‘Don’t forget, we will have the element of surprise, a stór.’

  ‘Eremon.’ Not so soon …I am not ready … ‘Let Maelchon come and be dealt with by the whole army. Do not face him with so few, please—’

  Something absolute settled over Eremon’s features. ‘I must make him pay for what he did to you, and I must do it with my own hand. Nor can we afford to deal with him at our backs when we have the Romans to face.’ He turned away, groping for his sword-belt, and swung around with it laid across his palms. Do you not understand, Rhiann? You, of all people?’

  Rhiann’s love for him twisted inside her. No! she almost screamed. Looking at Eremon now, she could hardly remember the fierce hatred that drove her to stab Maelchon in the eye. She could find no echo of the fury that burned in her, making her strong and hard. All she could see was the softness of Eremon’s vulnerable throat, the place she had kissed so many times.

  Then her own words to Caitlin came back to her. Do not fail him.

  With shaking fingers, Rhiann took a step forward and grasped the heavy sword, sinking awkwardly to her knees in the dewy grass. Eremon looked down at her in surprise. Reaching around his waist, she reverently buckled on the sword-belt, settling the chain and scabbard over his right thigh. Then he helped her to her feet, and she gently took his hand from her arm and stood straight before him, pale and composed. ‘May you avenge my honour, husband,’ she said quietly. ‘My love will be the wings that carry you; my fury the strength in your blade.’

  Eremon’s hands came out slowly, and he took her cold cheeks within them. His eyes were shining. ‘Rhiann, it begins today.’ He took a deep breath, struggling to find the words. ‘You have seen me fight but once, yet you know what I have to find inside me to do it.’

  Rhiann swallowed and nodded, holding his eyes. ‘I know.’

  ‘The man you held in your arms last night, you will not see him again, not until this is all over. You understand?’

  At their feet, the tumble of hides and blankets was already cooling from the heat of their bodies. ‘Yes,’ Rhiann whispered.

  Eremon pressed his lips to her foreh
ead. ‘Then forgive me, and love me all the same.’

  Rhiann choked back the tears that lodged in her throat. ‘The Goddess go with you,’ she said, and Eremon drew her to his chest. Then he swooped down for his boar helmet, spears and cloak.

  ‘Wait for me on the wooded rise at dawn in two days. There I will come to you and our child.’ He held her eyes. ‘I swear it.’

  CHAPTER 68

  Eremon stood on the crest of a ridge, peering into the lightening gloom of the narrow glen as if he could pierce it with the intensity of his gaze. Across the dark chasm he could just see the glitter of the rising sun on the swift-flowing river in its cleft. It was the second dawn after leaving the army camp, and Rhiann.

  ‘How can we be sure they will come this way?’ he asked one of the Lugi deserters, a thin, weasel-faced man with a squint.

  ‘There are bogs and hills to be avoided, lord.’ Crouched at Eremon’s feet, the man pointed. ‘This river valley is the fastest route, and King Maelchon pressed upon us the need to move fast.’

  ‘Yet they may have changed their plans when they realized you were gone,’ Conaire remarked, picking dirt from his nails with a dagger.

  The other Lugi scout now turned to gaze at Eremon from where he squatted under an oak. He was almost all hair; his head covered with a wild black mane, his face by a beard, his ears tufted. Buried in all that hair, his eyes gleamed like berries in a hedge. ‘Many of the scouts felt as we did,’ he said. ‘We have given allegiance to the Orcades king in many matters of the north, but not in order to kill our own kind, not for the sake of the red invaders. They will keep our flight secret. So long as you do not harm our king.’

  Eremon absorbed that. ‘Do you know if others in Maelchon’s army feel the same?’

  The weasel man broke in, eager to please. ‘We were all too feared of him to speak of it openly. He has many spies among us, too.’

  Uncertain, Eremon studied the ground below, gnawing the scar on his lip. The broken, confusing shadows of dawn still stippled the lower parts of the glen, even as the higher slopes were touched with gold. Yet he could make out the dark humps of boulders, the gleam of dew on the deep beds of bracken, and the white foam of the river as it hurled itself against its rocks. He swung around to Nectan, waiting silently in the shadows behind Conaire. ‘What do you think?’

  Nectan’s keen glance rested briefly on each scout in turn, then rose to the ridge on the other side of the valley. ‘My men and I can go to the north there, and watch for his approach – on the coastal flats he cannot hide two thousand men. If he appears to commit to this path, we can get back here before him.’

  ‘And what if he chooses another path?’ Conaire wondered, uncrossing his long legs. ‘He takes a chance this way, and he will know it.’

  The weasel scout grinned his gap-toothed smile, startling within the grime on his face. ‘You are all on horses, Erin lord. There will be other places to confront him if needed.’

  ‘Yet here we have the advantage,’ muttered Eremon, ‘and I cannot risk him getting closer to our forces.’

  ‘He will come, lord,’ said the second scout. ‘It is said that he knows no fear, and that is his greatest weakness.’

  ‘My king.’

  The sibilant voice slid into Maelchon’s ear. Uncanny how they could do that, these withered, stinking druid priests.

  ‘What?’ Maelchon did not take his good eye from the marshy ground beneath his feet. The last thing he needed was to twist his ankle, and he was slowly – grudgingly – growing used to the extra care he had to take now his vision had been compromised. Yet to one side he saw the ranks of his heavily armoured guards draw back from the pale, dirty robe of the druid as he glided forward. The stench that emanated from the old man’s skin and breath was greater than Maelchon could bear, and the king drew away by stepping around the edge of a sodden hollow of sedge and reeds. The path inland from the northern coast had changed from sand to boggy lowlands, crossed by many rivers and streams.

  ‘I do not like those hills ahead, my lord. My senses are sharpened by them.’

  Maelchon spared the old man a swift glance, though he avoided looking at him as a rule. Yet those Otherworldly eyes, like the unblinking stare of an owl, were not fixed on him but on the sweeping, wooded ridges ahead. Firm ground, Maelchon thought sourly. At last! ‘The scouts have reported no sign of the enemy.’ He slapped at a midge biting his earlobe. ‘Their entire force is at least two days away to the south-west – I know their exact position.’

  Choked by a sudden, fine cloud of insects, Maelchon swatted at his neck. Damn lowlands! He was rarely so bothered on his own cold, windy islands. He spared a thought for the irony of this, since it was lust for these very lowlands that had driven him for so long, though he never would have led such a warband himself had Agricola’s message not made it plain that continued Roman support relied on him proving his loyalty in person.

  ‘Lord,’ the druid whined again, as irritating as the midges, ‘we should be cautious. I tell you the path is perilous.’

  Maelchon halted, breathing hard at the effort of maintaining pace. Some way behind him, the Lugi king and his men struggled in the same way, though Maelchon wondered, and not for the first time, if their lack of speed was indicative of wavering resolve. He wiped sweat from his brow and flexed his shoulders to adjust his mailshirt. ‘The river valley is the swiftest south-west route.’ He rolled his good eye at Gelert. ‘There are treacherous bogs around these foothills, and to the west the land gets too high. You know that speed is of the essence.’

  As the druid frowned, Maelchon sighed. The priest had been useful in the matter of the Sacred Isle, but that was the business of the gods – and this was war. He simply could not afford a slower march, and risk getting caught in the open, cut off from his Roman allies. Agricola had said to meet his men on the coast at a very particular time. He had clearly communicated his displeasure should Maelchon be late.

  The king hawked and spat on the ground, hitching his sword-belt up around his ample belly. ‘Your fear weakens you, druid. The Lugi scouts report a safe traverse of these hills. Go back to your mutterings. You may speak to me when you have more than foolish fancies to report.’

  Silent at last, the druid bowed, and Maelchon swept beyond him. He didn’t particularly care what the man did now; the time was past for dealing with such Otherworld matters. Now it had come down to warriors: his men; Calgacus’s rabble; and the blight on his heart that was Eremon of Erin. And, of course, the prince’s red-haired whore. She who had scarred him.

  At that thought the ruined eye stabbed him with pain, as it often did, and Maelchon schooled his face into calmness. It hurt when he was angry, and therefore he would only become angry now when he needed to, when the prince of Erin faced him across his blade.

  Savouring such thoughts, Maelchon did not take note of the druid melting away, to where the lines of baggage ponies brought up the rear.

  Eremon sharpened his sword blade in a hollow among the bracken, more to pass the time than anything else, for he always kept it obsessively honed.

  He found, to his surprise, that he was more excited than nervous. For the first time since his arrival in Alba, he was to lead a confrontation between tribesmen, not against Romans. And among these people, as among his own, there were certain rules of war. The concepts of honour and glory were strictly defined, and would, he hoped, deliver him his victory.

  Eremon’s eye now fell on Aedan, crouched alone in the wet bracken lower down the valley. He had taken himself away from the rest of Eremon’s men, who huddled in the damp, blowing on their sword hands and flexing them to keep them warm. The bard was wrapped in his embroidered cloak, yet studying his averted head, Eremon did not think he was terror-struck. Alba had been a forge for them all, and not the least Aedan.

  The bard now turned his head, a silent song moving on his lips. His grey eyes were glassy with the bardic trance and his cheeks were flushed, but he seemed to be cradling some inner core of calm, and E
remon bent back to his sharpening, satisfied.

  Conaire’s feet padded up through the damp undergrowth behind him, and his foster-brother squatted down. ‘Nectan has them sighted, brother.’ Conaire grinned, folding his arms around his knees like an excited boy. ‘Lugh blessed us with his light, for it was the sun on their spears that gave them away.’

  The Epidii spear-tips had been wrapped in scraps of hide and cloth, and each man had shielded his horse’s eyes with leather, and muffled the snouts. No sound of horse or sight of man had been allowed to escape their hiding place.

  ‘I think we will need the blessing of every god we can muster,’ Eremon remarked, laying his sharpening stone on his knee.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Conaire’s eyes glittered. ‘It is the weakness –and strength – of men we are relying on.’

  ‘I would drink to that if we had one, brother.’

  ‘Later,’ Conaire said, slapping him soundly on the back. At Dunadd, when all this is over. Then I will drink an entire keg of Rhiann’s mead with you, and gladly suffer for it.’

  Maelchon’s men shied like horses as the first of Nectan’s arrows flew out of the dark trees clothing the upper slopes. His warband was halfway along the bracken-filled glen, strung out in a long line by the banks of the rushing stream.

  It took a moment of shock for the Orcadian king to register that the missiles had not been loosed to kill, for they thudded into the ground a short distance before the leading scouts in a neat arc, their shafts vibrating from the impact.

  With surprised oaths, Maelchon’s guards fell back around him, as the Lugi warriors edged into a similar ring around their king. Yet those curses were mild compared to the growl that now tore itself from Maelchon’s barrel chest as a lean, dark-haired warrior rose to his feet a good way up the hillside, unfurling his limbs from the bracken around him. He was naked to the waist, his gleaming torso crossed only by the jewelled strap of a magnificent sword that hung across his back. On his head was a helmet of polished iron with a bristling boar-crest of bronze.