Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  They were fit, too, and able to vault easily up on the stirrup of Ulla’s linked hands to the rooftop. She came last, pulled by Cunomar himself who lay on his belly with two of the others holding his ankles so that he could grasp her wrists and haul her bodily up.

  They were armed only with knives, and the storm no longer hid them. Cunomar jammed the haft of his flagpole in a crack between two tiles and then, stooping low, led them at a run across the rooftops, jumping from green-mossed clay to the brilliant verdigris of bronze and then, more delicately and with prayers to the bear, onto a single-pitched thatch roof with a roof beam that was barely more than a stick and swayed as they ran across it.

  Before he left the gilded roof, Cunomar had seen his mother reach the barricade and turn right, towards the south, where a greater opening had shown itself. Since then, she had been out of sight. For the first time in several years, he was very glad he could neither see her nor be seen in battle; very badly, he did not want the Boudica to rescue this particular group of untried youths at this particular breach in the barricade.

  A midden gave an easy, if pungent, route from the rooftops down to the ground. Cunomar grabbed a handful of thatch as he left the roof and used it to clean the filth from his feet and calves as the others joined him.

  They were in an alleyway, within the circle of the barricade. To their right, two groups of eight men stood with their square-sided Roman shields held edge to edge in two equal lines before the opening in the barricade. One on the right gave an order in Latin and they drew their swords. They were not Roman, but mercenaries, men of the Atrebates whose grand-elders had fought against Julius Caesar. In two generations, they had taken on the weapons and language of Rome.

  Cunomar cursed them, softly, and with rising elation. Dawn was real now, and the weather easing. The air was no longer a single sheet of rain. He and his few she-bear were alone behind a wall that sheltered thousands of the enemy; death was a word or a breath away. Its promise was glorious, but life and victory were more glorious still.

  Ulla tapped his forearm. “We can’t take them as we did in the forest; they’ll see us.”

  “There are spare javelins beyond where they’re standing.” He had seen them from the rooftop. “You and I need to go to the far side to get them, the other three stay on this side. Wait for the wedge to hit.”

  They waited. The youths outside the barricade were chanting the name of the Boudica. At a certain point, when the noise had gathered their courage for them, they charged forward, all on foot.

  Cunomar heard the barked Latin, and the names of Jupiter, Mars Ultor and the horned god spoken in Atrebatan, and saw the first line of mercenaries lean their shoulders against their shields and hold them secure while their comrades stabbed from behind with javelins, aiming for the faces and eyes of the youths who came at them, shouting war cries.

  Screaming, the youths died, as it had been clear from the start that they would. At the height of it, Cunomar dodged left and then right, out of the alley. The javelins he sought lay loosed from their bundles, with the binding thongs ready cut so the men could reach for them cleanly.

  Cunomar picked up two, one in each hand. He was at the far end of the mercenaries’ row. The man nearest him was at full stretch, his javelin buried in the face of a young girl warrior. He saw the shadow coming for him and cursed and tried to pull free and, failing, jumped back and reached for his sword. The javelin took his throat, uncleanly, because he was still turning. Ulla struck past.

  Because the man at whom she aimed was turning, because Cunomar was in the way and was unbalanced, because a man was thrashing his way to death near her feet, she missed and the force of her strike carried her, too, off balance.

  Cunomar saw the lift of her shoulder and heard her short, stifled oath. He saw her brown skin, almost washed clean of the lime paint, and the rugged red-white lines of the scars on her back from the flogging — a thing he had almost forgotten and had contrived not to see in any of them for days now — and saw her stumble towards the man he had killed — who was not yet dead.

  In the same slow, water-logged movement, he saw death come at her as the dying man raised his sword. He had no need to put strength into the thrust, only hold it still, at breast height, and let her fall onto it, as she was doing, slowly, liquidly, inexorably.

  “Ulla, no!”

  Cunomar had not known that he could scream so, nor that he cared as much. Death was beautiful and glorious and he had no intention of letting his newly discovered shield-mate find glory in the heart of the she-bear this soon.

  He was off balance, but not as badly as she was, and, in the trapped time of too many futures, the god allowed him to move, allowed him to slew sideways and stretch out his arm and push her away in her headlong flight so that she came up against the man she had tried to kill, and the wicked, honed iron of the upheld blade scored instead along the inside of Cunomar’s thigh and out again, missing his testes by the thickness of one night’s sharpening.

  They were in battle and could not stop. Cunomar’s man had died, and Ulla’s had not, until he was taken from behind by Scerros’ girl cousin, whose name was Adedomara, or Mara when they were in battle and there was no time to shout anything that took longer than a breath.

  “Mara! Right!”There was no time, and an Atrebatan on her right whose brother was dying because of her.

  Scerros took him, striking low and angling up, to pierce the muscle of his thigh and, by luck although he would later claim it as skill, the great pumping vessel of the man’s thigh that pulsed gouts of bright blood in time to his dying heartbeat. Two others struck and if none of them made clean kills their men went down and were no longer a danger.

  They were still seven against twelve and those men shielded and armoured and ready now, turning away from the gap, but for three left to hold it, who had only to place their shields at the barricade’s opening and lean on them and those outside could not reach past. The other nine made a wedge of their own, properly, and levelled their gladii and came forward at a half-run, aiming to split the straggling line of Cunomar’s she-bears in half.

  “Bears! Break on the wedge!”

  They had practised this only once. Valerius had insisted on it when they looked down from the hillside and watched the retired veterans drilling with the Atrebatan mercenaries in the square before the forum. When Cunomar had resisted, Ardacos had taken Valerius’ side. “The veterans are old; they’re not stupid. The time to find out how to act is now, not when they have drawn up in formation against you.”

  The she-bears had done as was asked of them then and they did it again now, not smoothly, but well enough, so that the Atrebatans ran onto nothing but the side of a timber warehouse and those in the front had to swerve to one side and the greater bulk behind had to slow for fear of crushing them.

  Valerius had said the legions could reverse a wedge and come back again in any direction at the shout of a single command, or the lifting note of a trumpet. These men were not Roman; they had not trained through a dozen winters in all weathers and all manoeuvres. That fact alone kept the she-bear alive.

  It was hard to think clearly, to consider tactics when the blood was underfoot and the air sharp with fear-sweat. Cunomar sprinted left and felt Ulla and Mara with him. Scerros was on the other side of the wedge with three of their seven — their six; one was down, cut in the side by a passing blade. There was no time to see who it was, only that it was not Ulla or Mara and that Scerros, terrified, was running the wrong way.

  The barricade made a safe wall to protect their backs. Cunomar reached it and raised his stolen javelin.

  “On me!” His voice reached over the screams of the wounded. Ulla and Mara came to him and faced the mercenaries, who might not have been able to reverse a wedge, but were more than able to stand together in line and had done so and were waiting now, looking sideways along the street, holding their shields linked, unshaken, laughing, waiting…

  “There are veterans coming down pas
t the house where you left your flag.” Ulla said it, quietly. Cunomar could feel her heat, smell her sweat, and her unconcern with dying. She had nearly died. He had saved her. These things came to him separately, unconnected.

  She glanced at him, fleetingly, without fear. “We could make the line of the bear. If we’re going to die, it should be to best effect.”

  No-one who had stood in the line of the bear had ever survived to tell of it after. Each warrior marked a circle in the dirt or on the turf and was oath-sworn not to leave it, except to attack bodily the nearest of the enemy, with hands and teeth and knife, using flesh and bone as the foil to trap the enemy’s blade, so that, in dying, at least one ghost would be their companion in the journey through the other-forests to the heart of the she-bear to whom their souls were given.

  Scerros was nowhere to be seen. The other three were close enough to hear the idea. They were afraid and courageous together and were already looking at Ulla as if she had joined the bear and become part of the mystery. Cunomar felt a fierce, unexpected pride, for himself, for the others, most especially for Ulla. For the first time in his life, he knew that he had something to live for that mattered more than proving himself in the eyes of his mother and Ardacos.

  Cygfa’s voice rang distant in his head, separated by time and war: A leader sees the greater picture and knows that lives matter more than glory. He had known she was right when she said it; as with the shield-mates, understanding was different and ran far deeper. Urgently, he wanted to stop the battle, to find his sister and tell her that he had finally understood.

  There was no time; as Ulla had said, a company of Roman veterans was coming and the three who held the breach in the barricade behind him had beaten back the youths of the wedge. For the she-bear trapped on the wrong side of the wall, there was nowhere to go — except up.

  “Up!” Stepping back to set his shoulders to the wall, Cunomar slid his knife into his belt and looped his fingers. He shouted at them, over the howling of warriors. “Over the barricade! On my shoulders, as we did with the flag.”

  Ulla saw and understood; she was his shield-mate and soul-mate. She joined him and shouted at Mara. “Go now, before they see!”

  Already the mercenaries were moving, breaking the line to run forward, surprised as much as cheated; Eceni warriors never left the heart of battle — never.

  The Boudica had done so, once, to save the children. The children were left now to save themselves — and were hesitating. Mara stood still, numb, not knowing what to do. Cunomar yelled, “In the name of the bear, save yourselves! Ulla, go first.”

  Mara was moving. Ulla would never leave him, he could see that. He had no power to order her, and no time. The mercenaries were within reach. He gave up, and took his knife and said so they could all hear, “No, you’re right. We’ll make the line of the bear.”

  He was going to die. There were things he should do, invocations he should speak, hidden names of the bear he should hold in the forefront of his mind, where instead was the memory of Ulla, clad in lightning, laughing, and the first of the Atrebatan mercenaries coming in lazily, grinning, wall-eyed and flat-nosed with his blade held out in front of him, with no idea at all that he was about to kill the Boudica’s son.

  Cunomar spoke in his mind the ninth, secret, name of the she-bear, and felt his knife blade slip in the sweat of his hand and cursed, because there was only one chance to kill, and felt the mud warmly wet between his toes with another man’s blood and remembered all the things that he loved in life, all at once, in a rush.

  He stepped forward, bunching his muscles, and fixed his mind and his heart on the throat of the man who came at him so that it became the whole of his world, and a fitting target. At the end, he was amazed at the power of the terror he felt, and how it lifted him past everything else, soaring.

  Soaring still, he made his leap.

  The noise was extraordinary. In the middle of it, he heard someone shouting his name. He thought it was Cygfa and wished he had made amends with her and knew that he would have to wait in the lands beyond life, because he was dying and had not yet made his knife stroke, which was strange, because the wall-eyed mercenary was no longer grinning and there was more blood between Cunomar’s toes when he landed on mud and not on the body of the man at whose throat he had aimed. He stumbled and put a hand out and felt iron slice across his fingers and swore.

  A shadow passed over him. “Here! Take it, damn you, there are forty of them coming. Take the blade and do something useful with it.”

  It was Cygfa, looking just like their father, and beautiful. Dumbly, Cunomar took the blade she thrust at him. There was still no possible way to escape. He felt Ulla at his shoulder and did not know if he should be glad they would make the crossing and come to the bear together or sad that she had not survived to see more of the wonder of life.

  Cygfa said, “Move to the right; let the others through. We need even numbers.”

  He did as he was told, because nothing made sense and the bear would be hunting for him. He waited to feel the pull of the forest and used the time to follow Ulla and Cygfa in a spider-scuttle to their right, so that more shadows could come out of the gateway behind him and make a line, and then another.

  The incoming warriors were not of the she-bear. They did not fight naked and only with a knife, but clothed in leather and stolen chain armour with shields and long-swords and some of them with stolen legionary helmets.

  He recognized warriors he had seen fight against the legions in the west. Braint was there, who had been Cygfa’s lover in the days before their captivity in Rome, and was Warrior of Mona, with all the responsibilities of that rank; she had no reason, nor any means, to be here.

  Others stepped into line alongside her, men and women who had fought in the invasion battles against the first influx of the legions and fled with the Boudica and Caradoc to Mona, to keep up the resistance there. They were as well drilled as the legionary veterans; more so because they had spent all their winters training and had not sunk into the wine vats of retirement in their twilight years.

  They made a line, with Cunomar at the end of it. Ulla said, “I would be your shield, as Cygfa is for your mother. Will you honour me and accept it?”

  He said, “It should be the other way round. You have the courage. I was slow and followed your lead.”

  Ulla grinned. The crease it made in her cheeks was the last place where the white lime paint stayed. “You brought us to this,” she said. “If we die now, it will be in the best company. Half the warriors of Mona are here.”

  It was too late to argue. The veterans slowed and steadied and made the same decision. The two lines stood for a moment apart in mutual recognition and then, surging equally forward, met in a cacophony of broken bone and buckled armour. Ulla became his shield. They fought together, with Cygfa always on the edge of their vision, bright-haired and brilliant, fighting with Braint for the first time since she was taken as prisoner to Rome.

  Partway through, when the dead began visibly to rise, it came to Cunomar that he was not going to die and that this was a thing to celebrate, and that he could only do that fully when the line of veterans was gone and their city rested free under the Boudica’s banner. The shock and numbness left him, and he soared instead on new fear, one that transmuted into true battle fever, and that was the third new thing that came to him on the first day of Camulodunum’s battle.

  He fought and killed and was hit and felt nothing and saved Ulla and was saved by her and saw the dead walk all around them and felt each breath in a gift from the gods and each breath out his gift to them of continued living, and of fighting, and of killing, and of friendship.

  They came to rest near the timber warehouse, with the winnowed crop of veterans behind them, the fallen made surely dead by a knife-cut to the throat.

  Exhaustion lay on them, so that it was impossible to imagine lifting a blade one more time, or raising a shield, or fending off a thrust. Speech was a thing to be imagine
d, for later. Shield-mates thanked those who had saved them with a nod and a croak. Wounded warriors bound the wounds of others hurt more deeply.

  Someone passed round a goatskin of water. It was branded on one side with the serpent-spear and on the other with the heron of the Elder of Mona. Cunomar drank and passed it to his right, where Cygfa was leaning on her shield, laughing breathlessly at something someone else had said. She caught her brother’s eye and sobered a little.

  “That was good. We hadn’t thought this would be the first breach. Breaca will be proud of you.”

  He had forgotten his mother. There was a time when his own need to be seen would have kept her in his vision through any battle. He turned to look, and so found that the gap in the barricade which had been narrow enough for two men to defend easily had widened and was being made wider by youths from the war host who had organized themselves into teams and were dismantling the barriers far faster than the veterans had erected them.

  Somewhere at the back of the milling crowds were horses and somewhere within them was his mother. Breaca had mud smeared across her face so that it looked like a darker version of the she-bear paint. She was gaunt-faced and hollow-eyed but she caught him looking and smiled back and when Cunomar had pushed his way through the gap to reach her, he read in her face the same kind of pride that he had felt for Ulla, and had never truly seen before.

  The braids at her left temple had come loose, pulled by the weight of the kill-feathers woven within them. She tugged one free and held it out. It was black, with a gold band about the quill for uncounted numbers of Romans slain.

  “You should have this,” she said. “I never tried to make a bear line with four warriors in the face of forty legionaries.”

  Cunomar felt himself flush. “You would never have been so foolish as to allow the warriors who followed you to be cornered with no alternative. A good leader sees ahead the dangers that will come.”