Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  “And if I remember all that you said, in the dream you rode a gelding.” Longinus ducked down to peer under the horse’s belly, confirming a thought. “This is a colt.”

  “Yes.”

  “But a good one,” said a voice neither man fully recognized. “You could do worse.”

  They spun, together, reaching for blades that were extensions of living flesh.

  “Longinus, no!”

  Valerius threw an arm out, stopping a strike before it had begun. Hissing a breath through clenched teeth, he said to Civilis, “Old man, you forget yourself. We’re at war. We have killed warriors who crept at our backs in the dark as you have just done. If you wish to die before your time, don’t leave your blood on my blade. I don’t imagine the legate treats kindly those who slay his favourite horsemen.”

  “I don’t imagine he does, although he would have to move fast to claim your lives before my Batavians, and any death devised by Rome would be better than what they might offer, I promise you.”

  Civilis stood three stalls away. Off his horse, he seemed less frail. His eyes focused without effort, and with some amusement, on the two men who threatened his life.

  The freckle-faced boy stood at his side, grinning. The old man ruffled his hair with unfeigned affection. “Gentlemen, I apologize. My courtesies have abandoned me. If you will blame it all on the curse of old age and a weak bladder, I would be grateful. In recompense, allow me to introduce my daughter’s daughter’s son, the first boy child of my line. There are nine women living who carry my blood and my name, and only this one boy, who will one day be a man and wield his great-grandfather’s blade in battle. For now, he is the best healer of horses we have got. If anyone can make your gelding sound again, he will.” He patted one lean shoulder. “Thank you, Arminius. You may go now.”

  The boy wanted to stay. He shaped a plea, looking up at his great-grandfather. Whatever he saw in the old man’s face led him to abandon it. He paled, until the freckles stood out like mud spatters across his face. Bobbing a bow to Valerius and Longinus, he ran for the door.

  Civilis lowered himself to sit on the edge of a drinking trough. There was little about him now to indicate old age, but a residual stiffness and the silver of his hair. His gaze flickered over Longinus and returned to linger on Valerius. His brows were entirely white. The blue-grey eyes beneath seemed paler than they had, and sharp enough to strip a man to honesty.

  “Tell me, you who are named for a dead emperor whom every man came to despise before his death, if you listen to the noises outside, what do you hear?”

  Valerius leaned back on the nearest oak upright. The shaking had passed, for which he was grateful. He turned over one hand and studied the broken edge of a nail. He had played the board game of Warrior’s Dance with lesser men than Civilis of the Batavians and, rarely, with greater.

  The question was not a hard one to answer. The sound outside was one he had known from his teens, a noise unique to the legions that only thousands upon thousands of men can make, in their ordered urgency, preparing for war: the clash of armour and the random shouts of excited men and the holler of horses who feel the beginnings of battle fever that might, if everyone were lucky, last the duration of a march and into the battle beyond. The subtle nuances were unique to each cohort and each legion, but the broad press of it reached into parts of Valerius he had thought long dead, so that his hand came unasked to rest on the hilt of his blade and his blood thrilled freshly through his veins.

  As much for that as for any instinct for the game, Valerius offered the truth, unadorned.

  Looking the old man directly in the eye for the first time, he said, “I hear horses eating hay that have been well cared for and know themselves safe. I hear harness being readied by men who know their horses as brothers and who savour battle. I hear part of a legion, but not all of it, preparing to march under a man who has kept it too keen for too long, so that the men have gone sour and cannot tell the real thing from a drill.”

  “Indeed. You are at least part of what you say, then.”

  “Am I?”

  They were no longer playing. Each man of the three had lived this long because he knew the difference between threats and reality; because, in his gut, he responded to one and not the other. A pace further down the aisle, Longinus had not moved. Nothing about him had changed, and everything; his smile was as open, his yellow hawk’s eyes as genial, his balance as good — and he could kill now, effortlessly, where before it had been only a thought.

  Valerius had clear priorities: Longinus must not die, and the IXth must march down the ancestors’ Stone Way into ambush; these two things mattered more than the life of an old man, however honoured in the past.

  Rehearsing in his head the lies that would be necessary afterwards, Valerius judged the distance from himself to Civilis, and the moves it would take to grasp his head and twist until the sinewed neck had broken. Already, he felt regret at a needless death. He took a small step sideways, to find a place of better balance.

  “Ha!” Civilis laughed aloud. With studied nonchalance, he leaned back on the stall and hooked his thumbs in his belt, then crossed his feet at the ankles. “Gods, man, do I look like a fool? If I don’t walk out of this barn first and free, both of you are dead men, in ways you have never yet dreamed of. The Batavians have their own honour, and while I may be retired in Rome’s eyes, I am first rider until my death for my countrymen. Petillius Cerialis knows that. He needs us. As you need me — Valerius of the Eceni.”

  The silence into which that fell would have brought lesser men to their knees. Down both sides of the line, horses stamped, restlessly. The white-legged colt with the moon and spear on its black brow kicked the sides of its stall, scattering splinters across the floor. Longinus caught Valerius’ eye and stepped back three more paces, giving them both space in which to move. The quiet was broken by the whisper of iron on fat-softened leather as he drew his blade from its sheath.

  “No. Longinus, put up. He isn’t going to betray us yet.” A grain sack lay near Valerius’ feet. He kicked it closer and sat down. Very carefully, he cupped his palms to his face, pressing the tips of his fingers to his closed eyes. When he was as certain as he could be that the turmoil inside did not show on his face, he let drop his hands and faced the older man.

  “When did you know?” he asked.

  The old man’s smile held a hint of sadness. “Son of my soul, how could I not know from the start? For twenty years, you were the son I never had, the younger brother of my fighting days. It grieves me to the core that you believe I could forget. I knew you from the moment I saw you ride that flea-bitten donkey of a messenger’s horse up the hill. It was already foundering and you held it up for the last dozen strides.”

  Civilis reached for Valerius’ hands and opened the palms and read the scars there as if they told him as much as Corvus’ letters. There was pity in his eyes when he raised them. “You forget, the first time I saw you, you were riding the Crow-horse and he was trying to kill you. It is a good thing for a man to remember, particularly at the end of his days when the moments of true glory have been few and are to be cherished.”

  “You do me great honour.”

  What else to say? Valerius had come expecting physical danger, and had prepared for it. There was no preparing for this.

  “Yes?” Civilis barked a short laugh. “It would count for more if you had the decency to be honest and tell me that I am right in what my heart craves.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That you plan to destroy Cerialis and the Ninth legion in the way my kinsman, the hero Arminius, destroyed Augustus’ three legions in the forests and marshlands east of the Rhine.”

  It was exactly what he planned. Valerius said, “Your heart craves the destruction of the legion you are sworn to serve?”

  “I serve him who gives me gold to fight, that I may come to greater glory in battle. When the son of my soul returns to my life and is Arminius come to life again, gold
is as nothing, or the legions’ oaths. My ancestor, too, was sworn to the legions. He is not heralded in our winter halls as a traitor, but as one who outwitted Rome. I am old. I have lived through too many battles. Each winter, I fear the coughing fever and the loss of more teeth and the slow death of a body that has survived too long. For the past five years, I have prayed to the horse-gods at mid-summer that they send me one last, glorious battle, by which my name might be measured amongst the heroes. This year, they have answered. They have sent me you.”

  Tears stood proud in his eyes as he spoke. With a terrible dignity, he said, “I beg you, from the floor of my heart, let me come with you, to join in that which you plan.”

  Valerius picked a straw from the floor, flattened it and folded it across and across. Studying the result, rather than the man, he said, “I am not Arminius and this is not the Rhine. I have delivered an urgent message from Camulodunum, which suggests a route the legate might take to reach the city in time to relieve it. As a result, if and when it is asked of me, I will lead Petillius Cerialis and however many cohorts of the Ninth he can muster at short notice back down the ancestors’ Stone Way towards the place where the watchtower was burned two nights ago. The track passes for half a day’s ride between the forest and the marsh. If the legate is so foolish as to march his men down there without adequate protection, and if the Eceni warriors are waiting, with the she-bears and the newly sworn spears among them, then it may be that the Ninth legion will, indeed, be destroyed in the way that your greatgrandfather’s cousin destroyed Augustus’ three legions.”

  His gaze came up then, to meet the other man’s, and the regret there was laid over other things, more complex. “I will do everything in my power to make that happen. The future of this land is at stake, and all that comes after it for all generations. I will not let an old man, even one who rightly names me brother, put that in danger.”

  “Am I a danger?”

  “You may be. If you come, then the entire wing of Batavians will come with you. How many of those will agree with you that their oath to serve the legions is as nothing compared to a glorious death in battle?”

  There was a pause, and time to reflect, then, “Follow me,” Civilis said.

  Pained joints cracked as the old man pushed himself to standing. He walked down the horse line to the white-legged descendant of the Crow. It did not pin its ears at him, nor threaten to bite. He lifted a soft leather rope from a nail and twisted it into a halter. The horse nodded its head to let him slip it over its ears.

  The love with which the old man rubbed his age-twisted hands down the beast’s face was displayed without shame. After a while, hoarsely, he said, “The Batavian squadrons will ride with the Ninth anyway, whether I join you or not. You’re right, I am old and they honour me, but at least half are blood-sworn to my nephew Henghes who is given wholly to Rome and cares nothing for the names of his ancestors. The other half, I think, will follow me. They would not fight against their fellows, but they would fight against the legions in support of your warriors if they saw me doing the same. It is not what I would want, but it’s the best I can give you.”

  Civilis turned, holding out the halter. “Except that I can also give you this colt. He is the Crow’s grandson and he has some of his fire without all of his hate. He is not a match for the horse that holds your heart, but nor is he as difficult to ride or to handle. If I were your age, I would ride him into battle and feel honoured that he carried me.”

  Valerius felt the drain of battle exhaustion, and had not yet fought. Without trying to conceal it, he asked, rawly, “Civilis, I could not have hoped for as much. How can I thank you?”

  “You walk with a god at either side of you, Valerius. Ask your question of them, not an old man who craves their company. Rome will brand me traitor, but the gods and my people will know that I have followed in the footsteps of Arminius, a man I admire above all others. What greater glory can there be than that?”

  CHAPTER 8

  AT DAWN ON THE FOLLOWING DAY, SIX COHORTS OF THE IXth legion marched south towards Camulodunum, side on to the salted wind.

  Grey, blustery light rebounded off three thousand polished helmets and raked across curls of strip armour kept free of rust by daily attention. Four men abreast, with two javelin-lengths between each row, and twelve between each cohort, the legion marched fast and light, taking neither mules nor carts, but bearing their packs with them, each man burdened with only enough food and equipment for two overnight encampments.

  The legion’s eagle and the cohort standards crowded in a scarlet and glittering forest in the early rows, flanked by the officers on their horses with the cavalry, better mounted, just behind. These first ranks departed at dawn. The last of the men, waiting their turn, passed through the eastern gates of the winter fortress around noon. In between was an unbroken snake-line of mounted and unmounted men and the measured tread of their footfalls.

  They marched south along the ancestors’ Stone Way, a paved trading route so old that a hundred generations of wagoners had brought their raw iron and salt and copper and enamel along its length from the southern ports of the great river to this sea port with its access to snowbound lands across the sea, and carted the hounds and leather and Nordic amber and walrus ivory and mutton and bales of wool back south to the great river and thence to Gaul, the Germanies, Iberia, Rome and all the rest of the empire. The legions used the trackway, and had repaired it, but it was old when Rome was young and had been a trading artery when the ancestors still used flint to tip their spears.

  A full wing of five hundred Batavian horsemen trotted on either side of the leading cohort, hooves hammering on the stone like the roll of distant thunder. They were big, broad-shouldered men, armoured in chain mail and bearing cloaks of undyed lambs’ wool with green checks like studded emeralds woven along the hems. They rode into a possible war unhelmeted, with their gold hair tied up at the right temple and their arms bared to the sun, the better to show off the quantity of armbands in enamelled gold and silver that was their pride and their wealth.

  Like their riders, the horses were big and bay and fit, and uniformly harnessed in good oxhide with quantities of silver at the harness mounts. Each mount had its mane pulled newly short and its tail tied up to keep it from providing a handhold for the enemy in any battle. The Batavians were taught from childhood that if they had the ill luck to be unhorsed in battle, they should grab the tail of an enemy horse and swing themselves up by it to unseat the rider and claim the mount for themselves. Twenty years of battle amongst the tribes of Britannia had not convinced them that the warriors against whom they fought would never dream of grabbing the tail of a passing horse.

  Valerius rode at their head with Civilis on one side and Longinus on the other and only the standard-bearers between him and the legate, Petillius Cerialis. His mount was the white-legged almost-black colt with the beautiful neck, whose mane and tail, at his insistence, had been left unpulled and untied.

  Civilis had been blind to the vices of a horse he clearly loved, or was sweetening the truth when he made his gift; the beast was not significantly easier to ride than the Crow-horse, who had sired its sire, only younger, and less predictable. It shied and spooked sideways at patches of sunlight or grasses waving alongside the trackway; it napped at every lift of the wind and every crash of armour from the ranks. It had not bucked Valerius off on mounting, but only because he had been warned that it might do, and had the practice of sitting its grandsire.

  As the morning progressed, a shifting, treacherous mist drank what was left of the light so that, by noon, they rode as though at dusk. Away from known surroundings, the not-black colt became more wilful, not less, sidling three steps sideways for every one forward. Men on either side gave it clear space, grinning. Valerius bit his lower lip and cursed at it roundly in Hibernian.

  At a point when his horse had remained parallel with Longinus’ for more than a stride, the Thracian said, “You’re enjoying that.”


  Valerius arched a brow. “Not as much as you think. If we get back to the steading alive, you can have him. I’ll go back to the Crow-horse.”

  “No thank you. Some of us like to ride without fear for our necks. I’m happy with what I’ve got. It’s better by far than the one I rode in on.”

  Longinus rode a bay gift-horse that was indistinguishable from any other in the Batavian cohorts. His only concern, voiced the evening before, was that it would respond to the Batavian battle calls, which were foreign to him, and that he might therefore find himself charging into the enemy at a time not of his choosing. Who or what the enemy might be had not been discussed: the two incomers had been dining as Cerialis’ guests at the time, on wood pigeon roasted in honey with figs and olives and a quantity of good red wine and the only shadow on the evening had been Valerius’ refusal to drink anything stronger than water.

  Valerius had plainly not intended insult and made up for it later by acknowledging his position as a sworn Lion of Mithras. He had found himself therefore the highest-ranking initiate of the bull-slayer in the IXth legion, the centurion who had been Father having been swept to the god in an epidemic of pneumonia at mid-winter, and had spent the time between the second and fourth watches, two hours either side of midnight, conducting an initiation in the cellar-shrine beneath the quartermaster’s stores.

  Longinus, who preferred the moon-gods of Thrace over the Persian incomer, had not been privy to the underground rites, only seen the new peace in Valerius’ eyes as he had emerged, so that it seemed as if a night of lost sleep might not have been a disaster.

  Later, in the grey light before dawn, with the first dew beading the grass and cockerels calling, the pair had walked up into the horse paddocks to another shrine that Civilis told them of, where the sign of a running mare had been chiselled onto a rock above a spring. Above was a far older mark of a moon, and a hare, and the two men had poured water in libation for their respective gods, and for each other.