Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  He was not alone; even as recently as the night before battle, the Boudica’s war host had been quite clearly split in their feelings for Valerius and his leadership of them. The vast majority of the youths still hated the Boudica’s brother for what he had been. A smaller number had damped their fireside songs and learned from him soberly and when the time came to apportion the war host it had been quite clear who would follow him willingly and who would not.

  Snail had been one of those most clearly willing, and he had been more accurate than most with his spears. That was no guarantee that he could do in war what he had done in practice, but it was worth trying.

  The fighting eased, as it always did; neither veterans nor youths had the stamina for long engagements. Two lines faced each other with the dead between, two sets of strangers locked in their own bubble of life and death while fire and sword and spear wreaked havoc in the other parts of the city.

  In the quiet, Valerius pinched running sweat from his nose and said, “Snail, the one with the ram’s head in white on his shield. I want you to kill him with your spear.”

  The lad was solemn and thought too much. His wheat-brown hair was thin and the aftermath of the rain still stuck to it so that he seemed all head and vast, shocked eyes. He closed them and the dreamer in Valerius saw the prayer that came and went, silently. The man in him saw the moments of self-examination and uncertainty, and mourned them for being out of place in the midst of battle. Snail said, “You do it. You’ll kill him. I might miss.”

  “You won’t.” Valerius reached over. “Give me the standard so you can aim cleanly. Do it quickly, before he sees you.”

  “And before I have time to think too deeply and spoil my aim?” Snail smiled, sadly. Saying nothing, Valerius twitched the Crow-horse away to give the lad a clear line. From his left, he heard Longinus murmur orders and saw that Conna’s half-troop was making a diversion. Three spears sprang from their ranks, aiming for the left hand end of the veterans’ line. The ex-centurion with the mark of his former unit painted fresh on his shield turned his head to shout a new order.

  Snail’s spear arced high, densely grey against the paler grey of the sky. For the briefest of moments, it hung in the air, seeming true. Then the spinning flight faltered and it fell to the right and struck, not the man, but his shield. What it lacked in accuracy, it made up for in strength. Iron bit deep into cowhide and laminated birchwood. The haft wavered with the force of the throw and then sagged, dragging the whole shield with it.

  A speared shield is worse than useless, a drag on a tired arm and a slow, unwieldy thing to lift and turn; any man who has survived more than one battle knows that. Before the haft had stilled, the centurion had thrown his scutum down and dashed forward to the clutter of dead men and discarded weapons ahead of him. A fraction later, without any command, four of his men followed, two to each side, as protection. “Go!”

  Longinus and Valerius shouted it as one. Long days of training bore fruit. The line of youths on foot dashed forward, keeping to their shield pairs, the one on the left protecting the one on the right so that the latter could strike with impunity.

  Valerius was pushing the Crow-horse forward when he remembered Snail. He risked a glance back. The youth was an ugly, shocked green and showed no sign of moving. The too-vast eyes fixed on Valerius, asking questions he could not read.

  “Come on!” Against all the rules of battle, Valerius turned his back on the enemy. Longinus was in the front of the action, closing with the centurion. Valerius could feel him as he used to feel Corvus; at once a safeness in the unsafe chaos of combat while yet a hidden flank, vulnerable to unseen attacks, to be protected at all costs.

  “Snail! Get back or come forward. Don’t take root!” He had shouted himself hoarse for half a month saying exactly the same: that the key to survival in battle was to keep moving. Breaca had taught him before either of them had ever been in battle, and then Corvus and Civilis and every other commander of any worth: Watch the enemy; know who’s behind and ahead and at the sides; never stand still unless you have a wall at your back and others hold shields at either hand.

  He might as well have been speaking Thracian. Snail was locked in a world apart. Staring blindly ahead, the youth said, “Their shields. You told us to go for their shields if we weren’t sure of a kill. I did that.”

  “I did. You remembered. Well done.” The Crow-horse had begun to fight the bit, jogging and spinning; it, too, knew what was not safe in battle.

  In the fighting lines, the centurion had picked up a new shield. The four men who supported him had turned back to back so that each was protected by the others. Like that, they sidled crabwise back to their lines. The remainder of the veterans advanced to meet them, fighting a way forward. Screams rose high and harsh, telling their own tales; three of the youths in the centre were wounded, possibly dying, and Longinus needed help.

  Urgently, Valerius said, “Snail, choose. I can’t do it for you. Go back if you need to; there’s no dishonour in it. You’re no good to us with a sword in your throat.”

  “Breaca’s dead.”

  “What?” Valerius spun, scanning the west whence the smoke came.

  A hand grabbed his wrist. Small fingers clawed at the skin, bird-like, dragging him back. Weeping, the boy said, “Conna … I’m sorry. Her new name was Conna … The centurion killed her. It’s my fault.”

  Valerius prised the fingers loose from his arm. Conna. He tried to write the name on his mind, where he would not forget it afterwards.

  He said, “It is no-one’s fault. I told you before, there’s no blame in battle.” Don’t seek blame when you fight. Not before or after, especially not in the heat of battle. You do your best. If friends and lovers die, there is nothing you can do about it but make sure you live to mourn them.

  He had said that, too, too many times to count. The youths of the war host who followed him had listened, grimly silent each time, and had believed they understood. He had known as he was saying it that the breath was wasted; everyone found blame for themselves in their first battle. Hardness came later, when the numbers of the dead were so great they became impossible to count.

  Unexpectedly, Valerius found it mattered to him that the shocked, shaking boy should never grow to the point where it was impossible to count his own dead.

  They were not in the legions; he could not give orders, only ever advice, as of one equal to another, that might or might not be heeded. With what authority he could find, he said, “Snail, go back beyond the barriers. I need you alive for other days.”

  There was no time to make the boy listen. They were fighting against professional men who could read a battlefield as they read the roll of their dice. Valerius had been seen to give orders. Snail had been marked from the beginning as his standard-bearer — and the veterans knew that standard.

  “Valerius!” His name was shouted in Latin, by a voice he did not know, and then a moment after, in Thracian, by Longinus.

  “Valerius! Javelins!”

  He was still holding the standard. Clutching it, he bent double, his face buried in black mane and scalding horse sweat. His free hand held Snail by the scruff, forcing the boy hard down onto the neck of his mount.

  He felt a finger’s touch of cold air and heard the breath of flying iron, marred in its purity by the ugliness of tearing flesh, and there was blood lacing the sweat that ran down by his face. The Crow-horse stood as if carved. Only the juddering of its neck under his hand gave away the presence of the wound midway down its crest.

  Valerius had not lost so many horses that he had become hardened to the prospect of their dying; he knew exactly how much he loved this horse. A wave of panic loosened his bowels and another after it at the thought of what it would do to his reputation if he were to lose control on the field of battle. He sat up, cautiously, and released his hold on the youth.

  “Snail, you have to go back. We can mourn— Get down!”

  He dropped the standard in the mud. The blade
missed them both, but only by luck. The gods had not warned him, neither Nemain’s whisper nor the bellow of Mithras’ bull. A part of Valerius railed at that, even as the rest wrenched his sword free and spun the Crow-horse and made space to swing a cut, to fight, to keep the centurion and the four men who protected him — how in Mithras’ name were they all still alive? — away from Snail who was almost certainly about to die for nothing more than the crime of being young and grief-stricken and afraid.

  All of that notwithstanding, for the next few moments there was no time to care about anything but staying mounted, and thus staying alive. Released at last into proper combat, the Crow-horse exploded in a frenzy of killing.

  It was years since it had been wounded in battle; Valerius had forgotten what it was to sit the full heat of its battle rage. It was like riding the riptide of a mid-ocean storm, like bestriding lightning and the havoc of thunder. The beast reared and struck and slewed and bit and the veterans who had known it when it had fought on their side had no inclination to fight against it now.

  A veteran lost his footing and slipped headlong in the bloodied mud and died for it. The centurion lifted a spent javelin and hurled it. Snail screamed, high-pitched like a wounded hind, and Valerius lost a heartbeat’s attention in making himself not turn to look. A sword came at his shoulder and only the Crow-horse, swivelling without any command, kept it away. Valerius blocked the back-handed cut that followed and returned it. The force of that made his fingers numb.

  Someone else killed the man he was fighting; he thought it was Knife but could not be sure. The Crow-horse had already turned to face a new foe, the centurion, who was not, evidently, afraid of the horse.

  He grinned and stepped past it and lanced up with a new javelin at Valerius’ thigh. “You should have stayed with us, twice-traitor. We might have kept you alive.”

  Valerius and his mount were welded now; the thoughts of one were the actions of the other. They spun to face their enemy. The Crow-horse reared. The centurion stepped back out of range, raised his shield high and, stepping in, brought the edge slamming down on the beast’s forelegs as it dropped back to the ground.

  The hammer of wood on flesh was sickening. Valerius felt it as if his own arms had been crushed. The Crow-horse grunted and staggered but did not fall. It screamed rage and pain, spewing great gobbets of white spittle across them all. Valerius felt the red haze of true battle fury begin to mist his vision and fought for calm; too much rage killed men as easily as too little. The centurion laughed, and threw another javelin, goading him on.

  There was no time for finesse. Valerius would have sent the Crow forward, trusting it to run the man down, but that the battlefield became suddenly overcrowded and the beast skittered sideways, shoved from behind. Horses milled about him, where there had been none before.

  Longinus was there; still alive, still safe. He shouted, “Slingers, here!” which made no sense because the slingers were all with Breaca on the other side of the city.

  The impossible happened twice over. A slingstone whistled in front of Valerius’ face and killed the centurion, striking clean at the bridge of his nose so that bone and cartilage pulped one into the other and his eyes were broken open. A second took the man who had held his left. Valerius did let the Crow-horse surge forward then and the third of the centurion’s men died to a striking forefoot.

  Longinus took the fourth man in the back, shaking his head at the shame of it, and then there was a rout: a swift pursuit of fleeing men by seasoned warriors who killed efficiently with spear and sling and blade who had long since lost count of their dead and did not care if they saw a man face-on before they killed him.

  Then it was over, with only a wounded boy to be tended if he was alive, and a horse, first to be brought back into some semblance of control, and then to have its wounds, too, tended, if it would allow.

  Slowly, the Crow-horse began to settle. Valerius fitted his sword back into its sheath. His hands were shaking so that he fumbled and took longer than he should. He drew a steadying breath and dared to look around.

  Longinus was with Snail, who must therefore be alive. Between him and them waited a short, wiry warrior with a broad, flat burn scar across his face that joined nose to ear and a single gold-banded kill-feather fluttering in his hair.

  Catching Valerius’ gaze, the newcomer cocked one eyebrow upwards. “In the west, we still thank men for saving our lives,” he said, and then, “Madb is here. If you remember who I am, I will show you where she waits.”

  His voice was full of the music of the western tribes. He carried himself with the pride of kills unnumbered so that it was hard, but not impossible, to remember the boy he had been when, like Snail, he had carried a standard for a man he did not fully trust. Unlike Snail, he had fought with unimpeachable courage and had found a taste for battle. Which made it even more strange that he was here.

  “You are Huw of the Silures. Fifth cousin on his mother’s side to Caradoc. How could I forget the best slinger on Mona?” Valerius found his mouth dry and swallowed. “Why are you here in the east when Suetonius Paullinus has two legions and four wings of cavalry bent on the destruction of Mona? Has the island fallen? Are we too late to stop its destruction?”

  “We may be, but I doubt it. Luain mac Calma sent us. He said you would need some warriors who knew how to fight to balance the youth of the Boudica’s war host.”

  “And you’ll have seen by now that he couldn’t be more right. But what’s happening on Mona? Is Paullinus’ assault not going to happen?”

  “The assault was all but started when we left. Mac Calma has the dreamers and the gods on his side. What need has he of warriors when we could be killing Romans to better effect in Camulodunum?” Huw looked to the scattered bodies and back. “Although we were perhaps later than we could have been. Your mad horse is bleeding from its neck and the blow to its forelegs has crushed the flesh. I like my head in one piece so I’ll not offer help, but Nydd is here and while he still hates you, he has always loved your horse. He has some skill with healing. If you ask, he may give it.”

  “Thank you. I’ll ask him if I need it.”

  Valerius said it abstractedly, looking past him to where Longinus was helping Snail down from the skewbald mare and then right a little, to where a woman with slate grey hair and the bright eyes of a jackdaw leaned on the neck of a roan gelding, staring back.

  Hoarsely, Valerius said, “Madb?” and saw her nod.

  The Crow-horse was calmer. It was as safe as it ever was to take it among other horses. Together, horse and man wove a path through the throng.

  The jackdaw-woman had a strong face and broad, peglike teeth. She bared them, grinning. “It was good to see your beast fighting again. I thought he might be too old, that you might have retired him to the stud paddocks.”

  “He would kill himself running at the hedges before he would let a war past and him not in it.”

  Reaching over, Valerius grasped the woman forearm to forearm, as the Hibernians did. He felt uncommonly pleased. He said, “Madb of Hibernia, it warms the strings of my heart to see you again, even if you are fighting again in a war that is mine and not yours. Are you here at Luain mac Calma’s command, or do you follow your own path?”

  She eyed him askance. “I take commands from no man, as you well know. But I heard Braint was coming east and thought it would be good to see you again. It’s a while since I saw a man fight and heard music in my head while he did it.”

  “I’m glad it was music to you. I was hearing the voice of all the men I respect swearing at my care of a wounded boy. He seems to be alive, which is good.”

  “The lad on the brown patched mare?” She looked beyond his left shoulder and nodded. “He won’t fight for a while, but that’s maybe as well. He’s not made for fighting, that one. Not like your Thracian cavalry friend. I hadn’t thought to see him fit to ride yet, still less fight, but he, too, was good to watch.”

  “Thank you.” Longinus had heard her as
he was intended to. He was alive, unhurt, only dirty with the spillage of other men’s guts and the blood of a wounded boy. He finished tying a sling of torn woollen cloak round Snail’s neck and helped the boy to stand. His eyes roved the length of the Crow-horse and then Valerius. He said, “We’re both out of practice.”

  “Of course. But better with each battle. We should move before the fires reach us. The wounded can go back beyond the outer ditch. The rest can come forward with us and our new cavalry troop.”

  He used the Latin again, turma; he was never going to cure himself of it. Longinus grinned at him, rolling his eyes.

  Madb spat to one side. She said, “If Braint hears that, she’ll have your skin for a horse blanket.”

  “She may have it anyway. Does she still pray nightly to see me dead?”

  “She might do, I don’t ask of her nights, but she prays daily, aloud and in company, to be able to fight with the Boudica and Cygfa, the bright-haired daughter who fights as if the gods directed her blade. If the Elder of Mona had asked, she would have stayed to give her life for the gods’ isle, but she is more than happy to be here. She joined your sister in the west side of the city, where the fire is strongest. She leads five hundred horse.”

  “Five hundred?” Joy leaped like a summer fish in Valerius’ breast. “So then we have more than a wing and that equal to five of the enemy.”

  It was almost true. The warriors who fought for Mona were the best that the tribes could garner, raised and trained on the island, where the legions had not yet set foot.

  Valerius edged the Crow-horse sideways to make room for Longinus to mount and turned to look about him. Known faces, scarred and aged with battle, wise-eyed and steady, stared back. Not all of them smiled any kind of greeting — very few, in fact — but none made the sign to ward against evil or spat in the wind to avert his gaze.

  Most of them looked west, to where the city was burning. Breaca’s fire was vast now: a great long line of flame spewing smoke that veiled the entire western quarter of the city.