by Manda Scott
CHAPTER 13
THE BRIGHTNESS OF THE STARS, THEIR SHARPNESS AND THE patterns they made in the void, told Bellos that he was dreaming.
He watched them for a while, until the pinpoint lights resolved into patterns that made sense: the Hunter gave the salute as he always did to the Hare, who was coursed for ever by the Hound; the Serpent surveyed a God and the three Swans who accompanied her. Lost in the wonder of them, Bellos did not immediately remember that neither Serpent, nor God, nor Swans were ever laid out in the stars in the world of his blindness, and it was some time before he understood that if the god came to him now in the dream time, whatever her form, it must have meaning.
He strove to gather his attention, not to be lost in the small things that might drag him back into the fog of unclear dreams, to recall instead the questions a dreamer might ask of the gods when he encountered them.
A wren flittered past and he was halfway to joining it, for the thrill of flying and the sense of freedom. His own voice said, “Stop. Think,” and he stopped and thought and made himself remember that he was dreaming and should look up. Above, the shape of the god was closer and made of more stars and the swans that were with her had circled and become nine, thrice three. His feet tingled and his breath seared his throat.
Hoarsely, he said, “What is it that you want of me?”
A voice he had known from before his own birth said, “Bellos, whom do you love?”
The words sank into him, setting light to his blood, to his bone, to his flesh; the sound of the all-mother, who could have called him home to the lands beyond life at any moment if she had so chosen, and instead left him to live out his span on the earth with only the faintest of memories of her company to warm him.
He answered, “You, above all else.”
She laughed with him and for him and through him and then, not laughing, said, “And when you are on the earth and I am a memory carved in stone and wood, whom do you love then?”
He might have said Thorn, but did not; in the dream one does not tell the half-truths of daylight. He said, “I love Valerius, but only as a son loves his father. He knows that.”
“Perhaps.” The god to whom his soul had long been given considered awhile. He feared he might lose her and strove to keep his attention fixed on the last wave of her voice as it swept over him, and over and over. Presently, she said, “If there were one who needed help, and helping that one would help Valerius, would you do it, even if I tell you that it may cost more than you imagine?”
No god should need to ask that question. He spoke to the far side of death without fear. He could give his life in the morning and have no regret. He said, “Of course.”
“Thank you. I am well served. Watch then, and do what you must.”
The wren that had caught his attention returned and it was impossible this time not to join it, not to fly for the freedom of it, for the stretching of spine and limbs, for the freshness of the day and the heightening of the scents, for the sight, from high above, of a small child with ox-blood hair sitting straight-backed and cross-legged before a fire and a weapon, with a finely made youth lying in the shadows behind her.
Bellos stopped and ceased to be a wren. For a long time, he did not know what form he took, only that he could watch and listen and learn. At the end of it, he had some idea of what was required of him, if not yet what it might cost. He had much less idea of whether he could do it, or how.
He made himself wake and drink water, that a full bladder might bring him back if he journeyed too far in the dream. Then, lying warm under the bed hides, he settled himself to sleep and held to the memory of Valerius, and all that he knew of him.
Her grandfather’s blade lay on the far side of the fire pit, waiting.
Graine felt the pressure of it, like the threat of thunder, or of war, and could do nothing. The silence that held her was not unfriendly, but there was an ache behind her eyes that was different from the pain that kept her awake at nights, and a murmur in her ears that was not the chatter of her mother’s war host in the clearing outside, and a knowing in her heart that her grandfather was there and had a need to speak to her and she should be able to hear him, and could not.
Sighing, she pressed her hands to her eyes and cursed the empty dark. Once, she had liked the dark; the grandmothers had come in the almost-dreaming at either end of sleep and shown her the ways of gods and the long-dead ancestors. The pathways between life and death had seemed open to an eight-year-old girl in ways the outer world was not, and if nothing had ever been certain, there had been a safety in the grandmothers’ presence that kept the worst excesses of war at bay.
Then the men of Rome had come to collect their dues bringing every excess of war, and all safety had gone. Graine was alive, which was a miracle, and she was grateful for it, and had been since the moment of waking on the folded sheepskins in the bed beside her mother with the Romans gone and the war host gathering and the world made whole again.
Except that the world was not whole and could never be. With that same waking had come the slow understanding that the grandmothers had gone from her, and the dreaming with them. No ghost, it seemed, would deign to visit an eight-year-old child who had been raped by half a century of men and their absence left the world unmade with nothing the living could do to mend it.
Madness loomed close if Graine thought about that, or a despair so profound it was the same thing. For twelve days, she had hovered on the edge of insanity, until it was hard to remember how she had been before. Now, she made herself breathe in the smoke from the fire and the dampness of the air and dug her fingernails into the grooves on her palm where she had dug them each time before.
Nothing was left to distract her. The steading was quiet for the first time since the procurator’s death. There had been some peace in the noise of war. Graine had lain alone in her hut until the chatter of the warriors wove into a blanket of wordless sound that could seem safe to a child who needed to hear it that way.
Smoke, too, wrapped her close; rain spattering on the thatch had damped the air and smoke from the fire pit seeped sideways to the walls before ever it rose to the roof. The thickness of it dulled the glow from the fire so that only the deepest red leached out to colour the sword lying opposite.
The sword: her grandfather’s battle sword, with its blade of blued iron and the feeding she-bear in bronze as its pommel. It was three years since the Boudica had hidden the blade in a place no man could discover, and yet Valerius had found it and brought it back and hidden it beneath a stone that had been sacred to Briga since the time of the oldest ancestors.
If the grandmothers still spoke to Graine, they would have been able to tell her how such a thing could have happened. Or Eburovic, her grandfather, whose blade it had been and who had been last to die with it in his hand.
Nobody spoke, only the fire cast out its blood light and the blade was washed red as if newly used and the sense of waiting was more urgent than it had been and there was nothing Graine could do to change it.
She had always been a patient child and Rome had not taken that from her. She sat for a long time, quietly. Smoke seeped steadily sideways. Rain dribbled through gaps in the imperfect thatch. Beyond the walls, where such things did not matter, a man cursed. A woman laughed and another, intimately. A trio of hounds squabbled over a scrap from the midden. A hen in the hut’s rafters clucked contentment and roused her feathers, dropping one down, so slowly down that it might have taken the whole of the night to touch the child watching its fall from—
“Graine?”
The fire was dead for lack of wood. The rain had stopped, and it was a day and a night since the warriors had left to attack the men of Rome. The soft voice in the doorway was Valerius’ and should not have been. Graine realized all of these things before she knew that she was lying sideways, and so had fallen asleep, and that the feather might have been the beginning of a dream, her first that was free of the memories of the night that had broken her.
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She clung to the drifting shape, wanting it to return.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” Valerius was still there. “Should I go away?”
“No.” She sat up. “I’m awake.” She looked round. “I thought you were with the Ninth legion, leading them into ambush?”
“I was. The first part of the ambush is done. I am riding now with your mother’s war host to help Cunomar attack the Roman night camp.” He did not explain how he could be there and riding at the same time. She did not think to ask. He said, “I can’t stay. I need to be with the warriors. I’ve brought your grandfather to speak to you.”
She rubbed her eyes and stared into the dark by the door. “Why can’t I see him?”
“If you can see me, it’s enough. What would you ask him?”
So many questions. Why can I not dream? What will it take to heal? Words danced in her head. For no better reason than because it was there, she said, “What should become of his blade?”
She waited, watching the dark. From the shape that was Valerius, her grandfather spoke. You are the holder, but may not hold. One who is bound to you by earth and sky may carry it in your stead and for your care.
She said, “Hawk? He’s bound by the oath of earth and sky, but he’s not Eceni.”
There was silence. Panicked, she said, “Valerius?” and then called it, “Valerius!”
His voice sounded a long way off. “I’m sorry. I have to leave. There’s someone else here who needs to meet you, someone still in the land of the living; a friend. May he come in?”
“If he’s a true friend, yes.”
Valerius was too shadowed to see properly. He stepped back and someone new came in, who was not Hawk, or Dubornos or Ardacos or anyone else of the Boudica’s inner council. He stepped forward and there was fire light, where there had been only dark.
He sat where Hawk usually sat and he was the opposite of the dark Coritani: blond as threshed corn with his hair a little wavy and pale brows that made silvering lines against a pale face. His eyes were those of a wildcat, greenly yellow at the rims and piercingly bright. They skinned Graine and dissected her and put her back together again. She wanted to feel uncomfortable at that, and did not. She stared back and saw the glare of them reduced.
“I’m sorry, that was unnecessary.” The stranger pressed his palm to his forehead in deepest honour. His voice had a rolling lilt to it that she recognized sometimes in Valerius. He said, “I am Bellos. You are Graine, who is of Nemain.”
“Was of Nemain. I’m not any longer.” It was becoming easier to say it. Bellos did not flinch in the way her mother had done. Graine said, “I can’t see the paths to the gods any more. I am only Graine, daughter of Breaca.”
“And also Graine daughter of Caradoc. Never forget who your father was. I met him when I was a child. He would have been proud of you, as you should be of him. Any child would be proud to have either of these for a parent, but still, you were more, and could be again. Do you want to heal?”
“Of course.” She snapped it without thinking and saw the cat’s eyes widen. Softly, Bellos said, “You know better than that. It isn’t good to speak idly in the dream.”
“This isn’t—” She stopped. Valerius had been a shadow and was gone, returned to his warriors, riding through the night, taking the shade of Eburovic with him. Bellos of the cat’s eyes had lit her fire with a sweep of his hand, and yet there was no warmth, only light enough to see him by. Hawk was asleep; she could hear the rise and fall of his breathing. Graine said, “It can’t be. I’ve lost the dreaming.”
She felt him smile. “This is my dreaming, the gift of Briga. I am on Mona. If you would heal, you must come to me here.”
“The legions are on the western coast, preparing to assault Mona and all who remain on her.”
“I know. The battles have not yet begun. Until they do, and are over, I will be here.”
“Hawk won’t let me go.”
“Yes he will.” Hawk stood behind Bellos. His eyes were bright as the bird for which he was named, but nothing to the cat’s eyes that still held her. He said, “My mother was a dreamer of the Horned One. She would never let me stand in the way of another’s dreaming. If you need to go to Mona, I’ll help you to find a way.”
“Thank you.” The dream of Bellos put his palm to his forehead once more. “You should leave with the dawn.”
“We can’t. We have to tell mother.”
From far away, Valerius’ voice said, “Breaca is returning to you. She’ll be at the steading before dawn. Dubornos is with her, and Gunovar. Both know the ways to Mona and could guide you. Tell them I said that, and remember the words of your grandfather. Hawk should carry the war blade of the ancestors. Hawk, not Dubornos. Eburovic has said it.”
“But how can we—”
The air became hollow and then full again. Graine opened her eyes. Bellos was gone. The fire was unlit. The feather was still falling from the ceiling. Hawk slept resonantly on his hides. Graine lay awake in the dark listening for the sound of horses that would tell of her mother’s return.
CHAPTER 14
CUNOMAR BALANCED HIS MOTHER’S GIFT-KNIFE ACROSS one finger and watched reddening sparks reflect from the blade.
A southwesterly wind blew warmly, raising glowing filaments of ash from fifty different fires in the Roman night camp. It teased and blurred the murmur of Latin and Germanic voices recounting the day and the occasional clash of sword to shield as one guard met and challenged another in their ceaseless circuits of the camp. The dark mass of the legate’s pavilion was a shadow in the sparking lights, blotting out the fires behind it.
The ditches Valerius had marked and the Batavians had dug were invisible shadows with unclear edges. For those studying it from the outer rim of the forest, crossed and sharpened stakes were the most visible markers of the camp’s limits, strung along the inner edges to repel invaders foolish enough to brave the ditches and the slops that had been dumped into them at nightfall.
The one song of the she-bear that told of an assault on a Roman night camp spoke only in the loosest terms of how the Boudica, aided by Airmid, dreamer of Nemain, and Ardacos, father of the western she-bears, had entered such a camp and brought about by their dreaming the death of the governor.
The event had taken place while Cunomar was a prisoner in Rome and he had heard his mother speak of it only twice in the years since his return. Her account bore very little resemblance to the song, but by questioning Ardacos and Airmid through the years he believed he had come to a fuller understanding of what had been done. Whether he could replicate it was entirely another question, but the bear rewarded valour above all else and Cunomar had thirty-eight she-bear warriors left alive, far more than the eight who had accompanied his mother.
A fire was extinguished in the northwest part of the camp, and another beside it. From the dark to Cunomar’s left, Ulla said, “The fires are going out faster now. There are half as many as there were at nightfall.”
“When there are thirty, we can attack. Any more and we’ll be seen. There are never any fewer. I’ve watched enough camps in the western mountains to know that much, whatever the songs say about the absolute dark of the Boudica’s raid.”
Another fire flickered out. Patches of dark leaked through the night. Around Cunomar, the remaining she-bears drank water, and did not speak. The sweat and grease of their bodies warmed the night. A warm wind blew their smell ripely back into the forest, away from the camp.
Within the stockade, a string of six camp fires rippled to nothing one after the other, as if a god had blown them out. Cunomar spun his knife high and caught it. His guts fluttered liquidly and were still. His missing ear was painless. He braced his feet slightly apart and swung his shoulders a little to loosen them. The earth rocked to the rhythm of his feet, pleasantly. He swayed with it, back and forth, and came to a still point in the centre.
The earth continued to rock under his feet.
Ulla said, “Hor
ses. Two of them. Coming through the forest, not up the track.”
“Cavalry. Valerius has turned traitor.” There was no time to think, and no need. Cunomar spat. There was time for that. A flashing of eye whites and naked iron showed him where the thirty-eight blades of his honour guard waited for his command.
A small part of him considered storming the night camp and, with enormous regret, abandoned the thought. There was no hope, any longer, of secrecy, and the lives of those who followed him mattered too greatly to be cast away on a whim, however willingly they might have died on his behalf.
“Go.” He swept his hand back. “Become part of the forest. Don’t return without my call.”
He waited alone, with his feet braced and his mind empty as the elders had taught him.
The two incoming horsemen rode to the camp’s gates. They gave a password, and were admitted. The dark mass of the legate’s tent became suddenly less dark, lit from within by a brazier, and then torches. Shadows of men played on its wall. Cunomar hissed out an oath and dropped to a crouch. He edged a pace forward, and then stopped, as the shifting brightness of the legate’s tent was blocked by a darker shadow.
“I don’t think so,” said Valerius, softly. “Two very good friends of mine are currently risking their lives in an effort to convince the legate that his night camp is not under threat. I would prefer it if you did not prove them wrong.”
The skin prickled on Cunomar’s scalp. He would have believed Ardacos could approach so close in the dark without his knowledge, but no-one else. His knife came silent to his hand. He saw no metal glimmer near Valerius’ starlit shape.
He said, “You have sent the Thracian into the camp?” Disbelief coloured Cunomar’s voice, and contempt for a man who would send his soul-friend to danger and keep clear of it himself.
“Longinus has gone in, yes, and Civilis, who was the soul-father of my early days in the Roman cavalry. He’s the Batavian who turned his cavalry against Rome in your mother’s name today. Without him, the Eceni losses would have been much higher.”
