by Manda Scott
Quickly, then, the narrow track of turf between forest and track had become the debatable territory, the no man’s land where neither legionaries nor warriors held sway. For no better reason than that it existed, and could be deemed a victory to take and hold, this band of green had become the focus of the fiercest fighting.
It lay open now, and quiet. Peace fell raggedly. Men and women on the brink of slaughter dared to breathe deeply and think of more than survival.
A hot afternoon sun burned away the last of the mist. Shafts of slanting light fell equally on the dead, the dying and those left standing who drank water from skins passed along each line and glared at those opposite. Behind them, the marsh lay innocent as a new day, spreading green-grey and flat but for rushes and tussocks of sphagnum moss. Damp scents spiked the air, delicate in the carnage.
Breaca stood in the shelter of a budding birch and counted the numbers left standing. For as far as she could see to either side, there were more warriors than legionaries amongst the living and more legionaries than warriors amongst the dead.
For these two facts, and for signs of battle sense emerging amongst pockets of previously untested warriors, she was grateful. For the lack of the passion within her, she was afraid and heart-sore and numb. She had killed efficiently enough, and given a lead to the youths who had followed her part of the battle, but the gap in her soul was vast as the eastern horizon and the wind blew through without cease. She spun the hilt of her blade over and over in her hand and ached to hear the music that was gone.
“There are not many who will see what’s missing, and fewer who will know why.”
The voice spoke from just behind her left shoulder. Branches wavered and parted and Cygfa was there in a shine of blond hair laced with kill-feathers and a tight, taut smile and grey eyes sharp and hard as midwinter ice. Her face was freckled finely on one side with spots of dried blood, as if she had come too close to someone else’s death. Her blade hung at her side, unused. She was breathing lightly and fast, like a horse at the end of a race.
Cygfa had always been beautiful; she was everything of Caradoc, her father, but made as woman and more graceful. Two years’ imprisonment in Rome with the half-man her father had become had left her quieter and harder, less forgiving of others and startlingly savage in battle. Rape after rape by the procurator’s men had driven her further down the same path; she was bright and brittle, like a blade that has been over-polished and must rust soon, or break.
There was nothing to be done, or said. Airmid had offered healing and been turned down after three days. Only Valerius, flawed and clearly damaged, had offered a kind of example. Alone of the warriors, Cygfa had accepted him without question, seeing in him the one man who could teach her how to destroy everything of Rome.
Breaca said, “Have you run down the full length of the track?”
“Most of it.” Cygfa grinned, and accepted the water-skin. She rinsed her mouth and spat and the water was threaded red where her lungs had bled a little from the run. “There was no reason to stay after I’d passed on Valerius’ signal and I wanted to get here before him.”
“To see him fight?”
“Partly. I saw him in Gaul; he’ll be different now and I would like to see it. But not only that.” Cygfa handed the skin back. Her gaze was sharp and cold as a flaying knife in winter and she made no effort to soften what it cut. “If it comes to a battle between your brother and your son for leadership of your warriors, do you know who you would have as your successor?”
Except Valerius, no-one else had dared touch on this. There was relief in having it spoken so openly. Breaca said, “You have already chosen. You showed it on the morning the messenger died. With your clear support, it should not come to a battle, only to words.”
“Possibly, but Valerius will need more than me on his side if the war host are to accept him. The youths only know what they see, but most of the spear-leaders are old enough to remember when he was burning their steadings and slaughtering their warriors. It is not only Cunomar who believes he will side with Rome again in the end.”
“He knows that. It’s why he took the message from Camulodunum to Cerialis himself when he could as easily have sent Hawk or Longinus. He’s brought the Ninth legion this far. We may only have trimmed the tail of the snake, but we wouldn’t have done it without him.” Breaca watched Cygfa shrug. “You think it’s not enough?”
“It’s a start. He needs to be seen in battle, not just by us, but by the legions. When it’s obvious whose side he’s on, the warriors will begin to see who he is and what he can do. Until then, they are waiting each moment for him to betray us, and they’ll side with Cunomar if there’s any conflict in the meantime.”
“There will only be conflict if I am seen to be failing,” Breaca said. “It won’t happen before Valerius is ready.”
“Thank you.” Cygfa had always been the most straightforward of Caradoc’s children. “I had hoped for that. And first, Valerius is on his way with the Batavians. They may do all the fighting for us, but if we need to join them, would you let me hold your shield side against the last few legionaries?”
Breaca shifted her grip on her blade. For ten years in battle, Cygfa had taken her shield side, and never had to ask. She said, “That place is always yours, until you don’t want it.”
Under the hard and brittle mask was the daughter who had shared life and death too often to count. Cygfa said softly, “That won’t ever happen.” She blinked fiercely and forced a smile. “Watch for the black horse with the white legs and the moon on its brow. Your brother has found himself a mount to match the Crow-horse. If it brings him through alive, I’ll fight him for it before Cunomar ever gets the chance.”
For the first time that day, Breaca grinned. “That would be something to watch.”
The day fell apart smoothly, in the way of a dance laid out by the gods.
Valerius rode with Civilis at the head of his cavalry. At his word, the Batavians reined their mounts to a walk and rode in single file down the green turf track. The black colt with the white legs and the moon between its eyes led the way, stepping delicately over the bodies of the slain as if they were sleeping and must not be disturbed.
The line of living legionaries greeted horse and rider as if both were old friends. All of them knew Civilis and the colt he had trained; most had heard overnight of the messenger-decurion who was a Lion of Mithras, hidden god of the legions, and had risked his life to bring word from stricken Camulodunum. If they did not recognize Valerius directly, they knew that he brought victory and rescue and that the fighting, for them at least, was almost over.
They stepped forward onto the green turf, crashing sword hilts to shield rims in greeting. The rhythm of their welcome-chant matched the beat of the horses’ walk, solidly four-time. They barely took time to notice the wall of warriors waiting at the end of the line.
There were two hundred cavalrymen and a little over three hundred legionaries; not enough to match them evenly, but sufficient for each horse to shield each pair of men. Thus, as the last of the Batavians passed the first of the Romans, the rider halted and swung his mount inward so that he faced the shields and lowered blades of two men who knew him, at least by sight, and greeted him, smiling, in Latin.
Each of his fellows did likewise, so that, to Breaca and Cygfa, stationed at the fore of the massed Eceni warriors waiting at the distant end of the trackway, the line of approaching faces became instead a broad band of bay horseflesh with chain mail shimmering above.
The war host did not chant, or stamp, or greet, but waited in silence, as Valerius had asked that they do. As he had not asked, but was inevitable, the overwhelming majority slid their blades from their belts as he approached, and watched him with hate and suspicion naked on their faces.
Quietly, for no-one else’s ears, Cygfa said, “If he makes one wrong move, there is nothing you or I can do to save him.”
The white-legged colt walked on alone to the end of the lin
e until it faced the warriors, close enough for them to feel the soft rush of its breath damp and hot on their faces. White-eyed, waiting, believing and unbelieving, each one of them was ready to kill the man who rode it if he betrayed them now to Rome.
Facing them all, unsmiling, Valerius raised his sword arm.
His blade was Roman, and the mail shirt he wore. The sun was almost gone, carved to thin strips by the trees, so that the evening was more green than gold, shading to grey. Stray shards of light sparked off the honed edge of his blade, and the chain mail and the silver at his harness mounts. The white-legged colt snorted and shook its head, spraying white frothing saliva equally onto Breaca and on the Roman centurion who held the end of the legionary line less than three spear-lengths away.
The centurion grinned up at the mounted man and pressed the heel of his hand to the centre of his sternum in the universal greeting that passed between all initiates of Mithras.
Breaca saw a wave of grief pass fleeting over her brother’s features. He closed his eyes and touched the middle knuckle of his own thumb to the same place. His lips moved in prayer, and she felt the pressure grow around her as the waiting became too much and too uncertain and more than one of the warriors reached a decision to kill.
Without warning, too fast to be seen or to stop, her brother’s raised blade came down, whistling, and severed the sword wrist of the centurion.
Two horses along, Civilis raised his voice in the battle cry of his forefathers. The hornsman of the Batavians blew three barking notes that covered the start of the shouting. Before the last sound died, the slow unreality of the dance had changed to the hammer of conflict.
Four centuries of legionaries, trained to respond to any attack, however unlikely, came to fighting stance in moments. Led by Civilis, reborn as the hero Arminius, the Batavians hurled themselves into battle against the men who had been their comrades, singing paeans to death.
At the end of the line, the mass of Eceni warriors, led by the Boudica, took on the nearest century of men. Breaca fought with Cygfa at one side and Dubornos at the other and did her best to let the rhythms of fighting pull her forward so that she might remember what it was to kill without thinking, without planning, just because the opening was there, and so mend the hole in her soul and let the wind blow through less coldly.
Valerius was never far away. He watched her as he had in the forest, when she tested herself with the blade, and, as it had then, the knowledge of that spurred her forward, and gave her a spark that was not truly hers, but was good nonetheless.
Towards the end, she felt his attention waver and saw him draw his horse upwards to kill someone. It was not as savage as the annihilation of the procurator, but neatly efficient and done without thought, part of a greater move that broke through the last remaining shield wall of the enemy.
She heard him shout orders in guttural Batavian and saw men answer who had never been under his command and yet followed him because he led them to victory. He drew them together, a fist of mail and flesh, and drove it into the small circle of legionaries, smashing it apart.
Breaca watched it, with her heart and soul laid bare to the beauty of it. Dubornos swore softly at her side. “I had forgotten what it was to watch him fight. He is as born to it as you are, but he cares less about living. If he had been with us in the beginning, so much might have been different.”
Thoughtfully, Cygfa said, “It’s a pity Cunomar isn’t here to see it.”
Which was when they found that the Boudica’s son was nowhere to be seen, and that he should have been, and so set about finding why he was not.
CHAPTER 12
VERY SUDDENLY, THERE WAS NO-ONE LEFT TO FIGHT. On the ancestors’ trackway, with marsh in front and forest behind, Valerius sat his new mount and gave attention to breathing before his chest exploded and his heart leapt out from between his ribs for lack of air. His head swam with the aftermath of battle; more than usual, the swarming spirits of the dead clamoured for attention and an explanation of the betrayal that had killed them.
He fought to see past them, to where Breaca must be among the living. Like a lover felt from across a room, he had known exactly where she was throughout the fighting, and had only lost the sense of her towards the end. Still, he believed he would know if she were dead.
Longinus came to him, pushing through the throng. “Your sister lives,” he said shortly. “And Civilis.” Longinus, too, was breathing as hard. The last few legionaries, encircled, had faced outwards and fought with the ferocity of men who have nothing left to lose.
Civilis had hurled himself at them, spurning shield and helmet. He had fought as the Germanic tribes of his heritage fought: with a savagery that drove hardened soldiers to desperation. Desperate men make errors and all those who came against Civilis made mistakes that killed them, and thus denied him the death in glory that he craved.
“There you are!”
The old warrior rode up to Valerius and clapped him thunderously on the back. His face was scarlet and the wattles of his neck purple almost to black; his hair shone like frosted silver in contrast. His horse and his blade were both running wet with sweat and blood and the slime of men’s guts. His eyes shone as those of a youth in first love, or first combat.
“Son of my soul, what a battle! And that only the first half. Gather your warriors now; we have a fast, hard ride to Cerialis’ camp before nightfall.”
Valerius’ breathing had calmed a little. His hair straggled across his brow, pasted in place by sweat and other men’s blood. He ran his fingers through it, rearranging the gore. Somewhere, he found the energy to laugh.
“I don’t think so, old man. We are training youths here in the hope that they may live to fight on, not sending them to death, however draped in glory.”
Civilis shook his head. “Valerius, this is not a time for jest. We have to ride. Now.” He spun his horse. Valerius shifted the white-legged colt so that it blocked his way. The Boudica’s brother was no longer smiling. He laid a hand on Civilis’ reins.
“No.”
“I don’t understand.” The old man frowned. “Will you let Petillius Cerialis keep to his night camp in safety and ride on in the morning to attack your people? Is that what we have fought for through this afternoon?”
The old voice croaked high, like a crow. Inevitably, he had been heard, so that more ears than Civilis’ were awaiting the answer.
Cursing inwardly, Valerius raised his voice to match it. “We fought this afternoon to halve the ranks of the Ninth and we have nearly succeeded. One cohort at least of the three is gone. Tomorrow, we will wait until Cerialis has ridden on and do the same again. Perhaps better, now that we are half cavalry. What we will not do is attack in a fortified camp a man who has made his reputation in the conducting of sieges, from within and without. We don’t have enough—”
“Valerius.” Longinus spoke, quietly urgent. Among the crowd, men and women parted to let a small knot of others through.
“… warriors to indulge in suicidal displays of valour. In any case, I don’t want to set one half of your Batavians against the other. Henghes is good and those who follow him might yet decide to join us if we give them half a chance. It will make our lives a lot easier if a full wing of Batavians could guard against the remaining cohorts of the Ninth should they find themselves able to muster—”
“Julius, it’s your sister.”
He had to turn, then; Breaca was next to him, with Longinus at his other side, looking concerned, and there was no time to explain that he knew his sister was there, and had known it before the crowd parted, or that he knew she was angry and had no idea why, only that he was exhausted and not ready for confrontation in front of a thousand strangers, when the battle was so recently won and the plaintive whispers of the dead still filled the spaces between the land and the sky. He breathed in noisily and so missed the first of what she said to him.
“… thinks he can storm Cerialis’ night camp with a handful of the she-bear
.”
“What?” The words caught up with him late. “Who?”
“Cunomar, who else?”
Breaca was angry with Cunomar, not with him. Ridiculously, the relief of that left him giddy.
She said, “He hasn’t been seen since the oak tree fell and trapped the legionaries. Ardacos believes he has taken his she-bears and run them along the side of the track to the night camp, to attack it when dark has fallen. It is something they sing about at the winter fires: the attack of the she-bear on the eagle under the kiss of Nemain’s moon.”
Valerius found that his mouth had fallen open and closed it. Presently, when it was clear some answer was expected of him, he said, in wonder, “He really is determined to prove he can outmatch me, isn’t he? Do the songs say that any of the she-bear lives through to morning? If so they’re lying.”
He thought Breaca might lose her temper, which might not, after all, have been a bad thing. He braced himself for it, and saw her smile and shake her head and realized how much of her he still had to learn.
“Of course they’re lying, that’s what songs do. But if we are to keep any of the she-bear alive, you’ll have to gather the Batavians, and as much of the war host as can find horses, either to stop him, or to help him. Can you do that? Will you?”
He thought, This has come too soon, and saw from her face that she knew it. He said, “I can help him, Breaca, I can’t stop him. Only you can do that.”
She shrugged, and he saw that the anger was founded on grief and frustration turned inward on herself and the failings of her body.
“The survival of the war host matters more than one warrior’s dreams and ambitions,” she said, and stepped back. Louder, for the listening ears, she said, “Cygfa will go with you. Where she goes, I go in spirit, if not in fact. Ride to the aid of my son, knowing that I would be with you if I could.”
