Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  When the Trinovante informant had come with news that a certain group met nightly in a hidden shrine at the back of the temple, he had known without question who they were, and how many. All he had needed from her was the location, and the extent to which they had stored their armour in advance.

  This he had been given, explicitly: “They will have everything they could want or need. I clean the room for them, and every part of it is hung with racks of armour, except for the length of one wall, which is lined with gravestones, carved to mark their honoured dead.”

  The veterans came out in a wedge, aimed at the thickest part of Cunomar’s line. They killed three of the younger Eceni before the door crashed back against the wall. A part-shaved head fell and cracked, severed cleanly by the speed of the men’s passing and the ferocity of the leader’s stroke. A dozen other youths fell back, their war howls croaking to nothing.

  The true she-bear had faced a wedge at the watchtower and knew how to deal with it. They had Valerius to thank for that; he had made them practise through the winter. Remembering, those who knew found each other in the throng and made pairs or threes or fives and pressed their shoulders together so they could act as one.

  They stepped sideways, beyond the sweep of the wedge, and threw spears and then fragments of broken marble the size of fists at the legs of the leading men. A handful tripped and were killed as their shields sagged. One ran straight into Cunomar’s spear, swung horizontally, like a staff, so that the haft broke his neck.

  The Romans had been a century; a full eighty men. In that first charge, they were reduced by less than a dozen. The remainder abandoned their fallen and split into their tent parties as readily as if they still slept each night in marching camp, not in their gilt-roofed villas.

  They made squares, two to a side, facing outward, with shields held as impenetrable barriers and swords poking through. Unlike the men of the IXth, they did not stand still inviting attack, but came on, holding their squares, killing more of Cunomar’s warriors as they did so.

  “We need slingers!” Ulla shouted it, running from the path of the oncoming death. She paused to hurl a fist-sized piece of marble. It bounced uselessly off a shield.

  They had no slingers, who were all with Valerius, paired with the better slingers of Mona, picking off defenders inside the vast space of the temple.

  Cunomar shouted, “Don’t let them get to the gate!” He had said that before, as they lay planning in the grey dusk. “If they get out of the garden, they’ll come at the temple from behind. We’ll lose hundreds before they’re stopped.”

  His followers had listened to him then. Faced with the ferocity of the veterans’ onslaught, very few heard him now.

  Ulla was close, and Scerros and a scattering of others who had fought with them at the barriers on the first day of the city’s assault. Cunomar raised his knife and howled his mother’s name. More struggled to join him, perhaps twenty in all.

  “The gate!”

  He ran without waiting to see if they followed. By the skip of their shadows ahead of him he knew that they had, and that two, at least, had been too slow and had fallen.

  Fifteen lived to reach the gate.

  “Spread out! Make two lines!”

  Cunomar swept his arms wide. His warriors were slow, white-eyed and panting. Those who had fought at the barriers without fear found themselves undone now by the veterans and their methodical brutality.

  Still, the days of drilling above the city worked. Fifteen made two lines, and blocked the gate.

  Cunomar shouted, “Ulla! Scerros! Go out through the gate. Close it and wedge it. Find Valerius, bring him back to help.”

  They turned to leave. A part of him exulted that his leadership at last carried sway and the need to obey him overrode the need to stay. A greater part of him broke apart at the loss. He wanted to say something and there was no time: three tent parties of veterans had already formed an opposite line and were advancing at a shuffling run. He could smell the sourness of ill-fed breath, and the unwash of their bodies and the sleek, new oil on their leather armour.

  Shadows came and went as the gate opened and shut behind him. Something close to gratitude let Cunomar focus his intent on the veterans’ leader, who advanced in the centre, opposite him.

  The man’s teeth were foul, and he had shaved with something rough, so that the skin was blotchily red on his chin and cheeks. Between, patches of black hair sprouted through. He could not have eaten a proper meal in three days at least, but he danced on the balls of his feet and when he raised his blade it was with a certainty of killing that Cunomar had never met before, except perhaps in Valerius, and then it had not been directed at him.

  The man coming at him grinned. The air became fetid with old and new sweat. Cunomar spoke the ninth name of the she-bear and set his intent entirely on his enemy. Free of fear, he raised his shield and rammed it onto the incoming blade, twisting, to make a gap in the shield wall opposite. His own knife curved in an arc that should have ended in the other man’s bowels—

  And did not, because Ulla was there with her spear and had stabbed at a white flash of face beneath the helmet. Her scream or his split the air.

  “Ulla!” Cunomar’s howl soared louder. “Get out! Find Valerius!”

  “Don’t … need to.” Ulla was still alive. She danced back, leaving her spear. “… already here.”

  He had no time to look up, or around. The fighting was as fierce as he had ever seen or imagined. The twenty-four men of the veteran line fought on for the gate as if their honour and lives depended on it. They failed to reach it, but each took at least one of the war host with him as he died.

  Slowly, amidst the miracle of his own continued survival, Cunomar came to notice that there were far more warriors in the garden than had come with him, and that a smaller proportion of them had shaved their heads in an arc above the ears, or pasted white lime in their hair.

  When a slingstone passed him, and killed the man who most immediately threatened his life, his battle-slowed mind realized why. As he fought forward, away from the gate, and heard it opened, and tasted clean air in the stifling heat, and felt bodies slide past him on into the garden, and then caught a glimpse of the black oak door and saw yet more warriors pouring through that, he knew both relief and frustration, equally, which was not a new feeling, and far less welcome than the sweet, unhampered clarity of battle.

  The fighting slowed, and it became clear to Cunomar that he was no longer needed; fresher arms than his took on the last two dozen Romans and forced them back against the wall and began the slow, dangerous task of killing.

  He was leaning against the second of the two marble fountains when a cool voice he knew and loathed said, loudly enough for others to hear, “That was well done, son of the Boudica. It would have gone hard for all of us if they had broken out and come into the temple at our backs.”

  “Valerius.” Cunomar turned slowly. His whole body shuddered with exertion and the aftershocks of combat. “Has my mother returned to the field of battle?”

  “Would I be here if she had?” Valerius, too, was grey and slow. A wound on his forearm bled freely and he had a shining blood-bruise the size of a fist on the opposite elbow with the flesh already swelling on either side of it.

  Cunomar said, “So we need to talk.” They had always known it would come to this, or to more than this.

  “Evidently.” Valerius smiled, crookedly. “I would suggest we had better go elsewhere, where fewer ears are listening. Shall we see what the veterans kept on the other side of their black oak door?”

  CHAPTER 29

  IN DAYLIGHT, WITH THE SUN SLANTING FROM THE WEST, Cunobelin’s grave mound was a peaceful place.

  Breaca stood inside, facing the back wall with her knife in her hand. Experimentally, she stabbed the dry earth, and then again, a handspan to the right.

  Go more to the left. The opening was aligned for the sun’s angle on the day of my death.

  She knew him
by his voice; not the texture of it, dry as the dead earth, but the round curves of the vowels that had been Caradoc’s after him and she heard still daily in Cygfa, who was most like her father, and so most closely mirrored her grandfather.

  She turned, slowly. Had it not been daylight, she might not have seen him. He was not as distinct as her father had been and far less than the newly dead of the burning city, bright with the shock of their slaughter.

  Cunobelin, Hound of the Sun, war leader of two tribes, was a twist in the evening light, no more substantial than that. As she had done in the night, Breaca patched him with Graine’s eyes and Cygfa’s hair that he might seem more readily human. He smiled for her then, and she saw that more easily than the rest; his smile had always been the warmest part of him.

  She set her knife on the floor. “I thought the westerly sun might warm you more than the chill light of dawn,” she said. “If you would rather I not disturb your mound, I’ll leave it now.”

  Why did you come again? Like all the ancient dead, his voice was the rustle of wind in winter leaves.

  “I saw the sun slide off the bronze doors and it reminded me of what Luain mac Calma did for you on the day we first brought you here.”

  Mac Calma did it better.

  “Yes. The engineer who built the temple to honour Claudius knew how to celebrate the full light of the noon sun, but Luain mac Calma built this mound so that the sun honoured you in its setting as well as its rising.”

  Breaca lifted her knife and pricked the tip along the wall to the left and found the rectangle, as long as her arm and half as wide, where the earth was packed less hard. She began to dig there, using the back edge of the blade.

  Clots of earth fell out over her. Brushing them away, she said, “I met Caradoc in here on the third day of your funeral. We fought; he had just fathered Cygfa by another woman, and I had not known; these things mattered then. I was going to put your ring on the bier as my honouring of you. He stopped me, saying that you would not want that gift returned.”

  As with so many things, my third son knew me best. It is to my eternal regret that I did not care for him better.

  “He would have been a different man if you had, and perhaps not as great.” The truth of that sat newly between them. Breaca hacked with greater energy at the walls. “Remembering Caradoc, I remembered also the last time I saw you in life. You called me daughter, and made an oath.” She gave more power to the words, sending them to echo off the curving walls. “‘The gods have not seen fit to grant me a daughter. Now, perhaps, I have the beginnings of one. If you need help in the name of the Sun Hound, it will be given, even to the ends of the earth and the four winds.’”

  … even to the ends of the earth and the four winds.

  Two voices spoke the binding of the oath. The dead man’s was the stronger.

  “Is it binding beyond the grave?” she asked.

  Always. As you will find in your turn. Humour warmed his voice, and something deeper, that might have been regret. What would you ask of one who is bound to give aid? Would you have healing from a dead man you did not trust in life? Would you trust in my care for you — daughter of my spirit?

  The quality of his voice reached her, where his smile and his presence had not. Truthfully, she said, “You are grandsire to my children. If you were to offer me healing, I would welcome it and trust its giving.”

  The earthen wall was crumbling faster under her knife. She stabbed through living turf to the clear air beyond. A strand of evening sunlight threaded in through the gap and cast amber light on the floor at the Sun Hound’s feet.

  He became easier to see; a strong man with a pelt of tawny hair and the cloud-grey eyes she had loved in his son. He regarded her thoughtfully, no longer smiling.

  In all your rememberings, do you recall the prophecy of the ancestor-dreamer?

  Caution pricked up the length of her spine. She remembered, then, to whom she was speaking: the man who could outmatch any other at the game of Warrior’s Dance, and who never stopped playing. She turned, and laid down the knife for a second time. For the first time, she gave him her undivided attention.

  “It would be a hard thing to forget,” she said. “I brought my children east on the strength of it, knowing I might lose them. My daughter has gone west unhealed because of it. My son moulds his life around it, striving to be something he does not understand.”

  The twist in the sun sharpened. The air at its margins became less blurred. You were given three tasks to complete, he said. Name them for me. The soft edges of his vowels were as iron.

  It was not hard to take herself back along the path of her life, to find again the cave in the mountains and the taunting presence of the ancestor-dreamer; only something Breaca would not have chosen to do.

  From clear memory, she said, “For the first task, I was to find a way to give back to the people the heart and courage they had lost. For the second, I was to find a way to call forth the warriors and to arm them, to find the warrior with the eyes and heart of a dreamer to lead them. At the last, I was to find the mark that is ours — the ancestor’s and mine — and seek its place in my soul.”

  She was breathing fast when she finished, as if they had matched swords in challenge. In her own defence, she said, “The Eceni have been given heart to rise in revolt. The war host is gathered and armed. The mark of the ancestor-dreamer has been revealed as Briga’s. If it rests in my soul, it is up to the god to show it. I have done what I can.”

  No, you have not. Who is the warrior with the eyes and heart of a dreamer who can lead your people, and give them back the heart and courage they have lost? His eyes burned her, studs of molten flint that pierced her soul.

  She had no answer for that.

  Think. He was leaving. The threat and promise of his presence became less tangible. What was left of him came closer, so that she could feel the place where the air moved around him. Find the answer and it is all answers. Think.

  He laid a hand on her head and she was cold and hot together. A depth of care swept her so profound as to leave her shuddering, and a passion for life that she had known once, and forgotten.

  Cunobelin said, It has given me great pleasure to see you again, daughter of my soul. If you feel so moved, it would be good to have the window open, to let Luain mac Calma’s dream live again.

  His parting voice fell about her lightly, like autumn rain. In the asking is the healing, and the answer. Remember, too, my other gift. Neither was it given lightly.

  Feet brushed on grass. A cloak whispered, not Theophilus’ robes. A living voice said, “Breaca? Do you want to be alone?”

  Airmid paused at the open grave mouth, a little back so that she had to shield her eyes from the low-set western sun. Her gaze took in the new light cast on the floor and the clods of hacked earth heaped at the back wall and the unsheathed knife laid on top. “You’ve cut a window in the back wall,” she said.

  Breaca said, “It was here before, when the mound was first built. Luain mac Calma made it so that the light came in from the west to fall on the urn that held Cunobelin’s ashes.”

  “He bathed the dead with two suns. I’d forgotten.” Airmid hesitated, as if she might leave. “Did you come to find peace? Or to talk with the dead?”

  “Both. Come in.”

  Airmid smelled of river water and Theophilus’ rosemary oil more than flesh-smoke and the blood and terror and pain of the healing fields. She did not bring much of war to disturb the quiet of the grave. She came to sit opposite, in the darker shadows. Tentatively, she said, “The battle for the temple is almost over. I saw what you did to free Illenna’s mother. It was an honourable thing.”

  Breaca frowned. “The woman with the rust-coloured hair? I’d forgotten her. I didn’t do it for the honour. She was a mother who had lost her daughter. In all the killing, there was no need to make more pain.”

  “Breaca?” Airmid reached for her hand. “Do you need me to tell you not to fight any more if it sickens
you?”

  “No, it’s obvious. I was coming to find you, to tell you that I was going to give my shield and blade to Cunomar because Valerius does not yet command enough support amongst the war host. Then I saw the sun pass off the temple doors and remembered a promise.”

  She opened her hand. Cunobelin’s ring lay on it, which had been his first gift. The gold did not spark with any particular life, but lay still and quiet on her palm in the evening light. It was heavy with a man’s weight. On the flat surface was a hound, raising its muzzle to greet the sun. Breaca pressed it into the calloused flesh of her thumb and watched the hound mark grow white and then red.

  Watching the colours fade, she said, “Cunomar has spent years yearning to be the warrior with the eyes and heart of a dreamer, trying to build himself to be that. I am his mother. I wanted him to succeed. Until today, I believed it possible.”

  Gently Airmid said, “Your son is exceptional, and an honour to both of his parents, but no follower of the she-bear has the mind and heart of a dreamer, nor will they ever. Their hearts are given in oath to the bear, which is a great thing, and enough. Cunomar will learn to celebrate that and it will make him the stronger.”

  There was such calm in the knowing of that, in having a half-met thought confirmed. Breaca tried the ring on her fingers. It was too big for any except her thumb. She let it hang there, loosely, a spark of honeyed warmth in the light, and wondered why it was so difficult to speak.

  She waited for Airmid to fill the silence, which lengthened, unfilled.

  In time, when waiting was harder than speaking, Breaca said, “Valerius, then. It has always been him; he began as a warrior, but the dreamer is as strong in him now, if not stronger. I knew it when he came back to us, only that I did not know how to disappoint Cunomar.”

  A small stifled cough, or a laugh, or perhaps the beginnings of weeping reached her across the short space.

  Breaca raised her eyes at last from the ring. Airmid was staring at her, blinking. A wide wash of feeling crossed her face that was surprise and laughter and exasperation all together. The dreamer made a tent of her fingers, pressing the tips together, and brought herself by some effort to quiet.