Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  “Breaca, I loved your brother when he was Bán; he was an exceptional child. I grieved for his loss and grieved more when we found he was alive and had lost his soul to the legions. I celebrated and could love him again now that he is Valerius but rides amongst us, but know this: your brother is a dreamer and has been from the day of his birth. If he had remained as Bán and had never been taken, he would be Elder of Mona when his father is gone. It was for this he was conceived and raised and he showed all the promise of its fulfilment as a child.”

  Breaca said, “But he’s a warrior. You’ve seen him fight. He shines in the way Caradoc did, in the way Cygfa still does; or brighter than either.”

  “He shines as you do, in fact, and for that we must be grateful that the gods see further than the plans of the elders. Bán would have been an exceptional dreamer, but he would not have known enough to destroy the Ninth, or perhaps to help us destroy the remainder of Paullinus’ legions. The gods have shaped him for the need of his time. Very few men could have taken up the burdens he has done and come through them with heart and soul intact. He is a remarkable man and he fights as a remarkable warrior, but he is a dreamer first and a warrior second, and he will never lead the greater mass of the Eceni into battle.”

  There was relief in that, too, if only for Valerius’ sake.

  “Who then?” Breaca said. “Who else is left? Cygfa has never shown any facility for dreaming, and Dubornos is too damaged. Ardacos is of the she-bear, but if you are right about them, then he can never be—”

  “Breaca…” Airmid was not smiling now, nor close to laughter. She leaned forward and put both palms flat on the ground on either side of the sunlight. Her face was luminous in the old light.

  “Listen to me. Think. Who was made Warrior of Mona younger than any yet? Who did the elder grandmother lead through the long-nights after the old woman was dead? Who carries the wildfire that can weld together green youths with no battle experience and carry them so that they come through the fight alive? Who has this morning spoken with the dead in a grave mound, and before that in the caves of the western mountains, and before that on her long-nights? Who has been pushed beyond endurance and should be left to live in peace, but that we need you to lead us, and we need you healed?”

  Think.

  The Sun Hound had said the same and Breaca had not thought. She could not think now.

  The ring dazzled her. She covered it with her hand and looked up. Airmid’s gaze was a slant of sun across her face. Breaca looked away, at the earth of the wall.

  Airmid said, “If it’s too much, if you can’t do it, we can still ask your brother.”

  “No. It’s not that. I can do it. I want to do it, I just need time to think.”

  Not only to think; she needed time simply to listen to the thronging ghosts that came to her then.

  The elder grandmother was first, saying again, more gently, her words of the long-nights. The blood of the ancestors runs in your line, else you would not dream as you do, and there again, decades later, standing in the corner of Breaca’s workshop, directing her in the making of heron-spears that only a dreamer-smith should make; and here now, in the shifting space of the grave mound, saying, If we had named you dreamer early, would you have made of yourself the warrior that you are?

  The ancestor-dreamer followed and made the same offer as before, redolent now with other meaning: I promise you nothing, only that I will be with you. The air crackled with dry, caustic laughter.

  Then her father was there, Eburovic, solid in the bulwark of his smithy, making her a blade with the serpent-spear on the pommel, and matching against her in play-fight with the ancestor-blade of his lineage, which bore the feeding she-bear. He was real to her now, in Cunobelin’s grave mound, as he had not been when his blade had been lifted to moonlight from the dark of Briga’s altar.

  She felt the touch of his smile. “We sent your blade to Mona with a warrior of the Coritani,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Don’t be. I asked for it. There are things yet to be done with it. For now, enough that you know who you are. He was everything the Sun Hound was not: an open, clear, straightforward man, shining in his honesty; she loved him, and he was dead.

  The dead came less distinctly after Eburovic, or she was less able to see them; Macha came to her and Gunovic and Maroc and a dozen other elder dreamers of Mona, each one less tangible than the last.

  In time, there was only sunlight, and Airmid, living dreamer to the Boudica, who was solid and real and sat very still, as if breathing might break something too fragile to risk with a breath.

  Breaca said, “Why did you not tell me before?”

  “In the beginning, I thought you knew. How could you not when all of your life has pointed to this? Later, when it was clear that you didn’t…” Airmid looked away for the first time, and back again. “I love you. I would not burden you with more than you can bear.”

  “And now?”

  “Now you know who you are; and the choice is still yours. You don’t have to take this if you don’t want it. The Boudica leads to victory because she is that victory, not because she has been cajoled into leadership, however benignly.”

  “Benignly?” Breaca pressed her palms to her face. The ancestor had been last of the ancient dead to leave. In the after-shine of her parting, a war spear cracked twice over and became crooked. The two-headed serpents of its haft writhed out and wove over it, staring to past and to future: Briga’s sign, before it was ever hers; god of war, bringer of life and death, hope and loss, holder of past and present, and all that stands outside time.

  A single unchallenged god-voice said, Boudica.

  “Airmid?” Breaca reached out, blindly. Long, lean fingers caught her own and held them, offering strength and an anchor in the present. Breaca leaned back and, as they had done in childhood, they lifted each other to standing. The patch of sunlight lay between them. They came together awkwardly, as strangers, afraid of what they might find. Breaca tilted her head to the shoulder that was offered. Airmid kissed the place on her crown where the Sun Hound had placed his hand. The feeling now was all of heat, passing down into the earth beneath their feet.

  “You’re back,” Airmid said. “Welcome.” Her voice was something to revel in, to enter and never leave.

  “I am back. And I do want to lead the war host. I always did. It was only that I thought I wasn’t fit.”

  “You are fit now. The warriors will see it, I promise you, down to the greenest of untested youths.”

  Breaca eased herself free. She stooped to pick up her knife. “It still may be too late. I left the field of battle early. If the warriors of the war host think I’m lost and have already accepted Valerius or Cunomar, we can’t undo what’s done. Would you come down with me to see?”

  CHAPTER 30

  FIRE HAD NOT YET REACHED THE ANTECHAMBER TO THE temple, only a drifting of smoke that covered the smell of anticipation and battle fever that the veterans had left behind.

  Beneath that, more dryly, was the scent of incense and old, spilled wine. Cunomar felt the hairs rise up on the back of his neck. Like a hound, he stepped stiff-legged into the space and turned round in a circle studying all of it.

  It was a place that had been much inhabited without anyone’s ever having lived in it until the veterans had need. The stone pavings of the floor were tracked by many feet, worn in places where the traffic had been highest. The walls, too, were of faced stone, and the roof of bare tiles with no lining. Torch holders stood out with black planes of soot behind from countless nights of burning, but there were no chests for storage, nor beds, nor signs of a workshop.

  Instead, chain mail and scale armour hung from wall brackets alongside pieces of horse harness and old battle-worn weapons fixed on polished wood, preserved as they were when last used with bloodstains on hilt and blade.

  Between and among them were the standards of the legions made in miniature; small gilded eagles clutching crossed lightning bolts stared fro
m each wall to the door, a wild boar in red ran across a blue pennant that stretched half the width of one wall, a goat stood carved in time and wood, a horse, a three-headed dog, a ram with curled horns such as was never seen in Britannia; all of them were more than their shape alone, and the living wood knew it; the sense of being watched, then, was perhaps explained.

  Cunomar said, “This feels like a shrine to the might of the legions. We should be gone from here, and burn it like the rest.”

  “This is only the antechamber. The true shrine is in the cellar beneath.” Valerius leaned against the far wall, one arm crooked up to pillow his head. He was grey with exhaustion, or pain, or both.

  “The first temple to Mithras ever built in Britannia is in the cellar that can be reached from this room and the centurion’s house beyond the garden. I was brought first to the god here.”

  “Would you have us preserve it?”

  “In the midst of a city that is burning to nothing? No. In any case, the god is in the stones and the earth, not in the places men build for him. He won’t mind the touch of fire from here.” Valerius let his legs fold and sank to sit on the floor with his back to the grey wall.

  They were alone, but for Longinus who stood quietly by the door, lest too many of the wearily celebrating war host unwittingly disturb the Boudica’s brother and son in their conversation.

  The necessary people waited close by outside: Ulla and Scerros and a handful of others who gave support without question to Cunomar; Longinus for Valerius, obviously, and Knife and the boy Snail who had found a role tending the wounded, and a wild Hibernian woman with jackdaw eyes, and Huw, the slinger with the scarred face, both of whom fought for Mona.

  There were a surprising number of Mona’s warriors who supported Valerius and did not appear to notice the existence of the Boudica’s son. Cunomar had intended that to change with the battle for the rear gate to the temple. He was not certain that it had.

  “We should talk,” Cunomar said, to the man sitting on the floor opposite. “And then tend to the wounded. My mother withdrew from the battle at its height. She has done what she can and that is momentous; Rome’s capital in this province is ours and we can burn every part of it. But we have three more legions and other towns to take before we can call ourselves free. To succeed further, the war host must be led from strength, not weakness. You said once that you would not let one man’s search for personal glory destroy the war host. I would ask you now if you still think—”

  “The leadership is yours.”

  “—that my conduct in the taking of the city … What?” Cunomar rubbed his one ear, and felt foolish that he had done so.

  Valerius’ head had fallen back against the wall so that he looked up at the ceiling, as if he might find inspiration there, or support.

  He said, “The leadership of your mother’s war host is yours. Those who follow me will continue to do so, and I will follow your leadership. You have only to say what you intend and we will do it.” His voice was entirely flat.

  Something had disturbed the warriors outside the door. Raised voices twittered, sharp as morning birdsong. Very suddenly, Cunomar wanted to be in the fresh air, with only the stench of the newly dead thickening the air.

  He stood, pressing his hands to the wood of the table. “Let me be clear. You are saying that you concede all leadership of the full war host to me and that—”

  “Julius?” Longinus spoke from the doorway. There was fondness in the word that went deeper than the careless intimacy of the battlefield or the bed, and a depth of care that took notice of the other man’s exhaustion and forgave a decision badly made, and spoke of something else, that brought hope in a hopeless world.

  All of these Cunomar heard, and misplaced, because he did not at first understand that the Thracian was talking to Valerius, who evidently had another name.

  Thus he turned too late, only after Valerius had risen, and Longinus, quite gently, had said again, “Julius, your sister is here.”

  Valerius had thought perhaps he might sleep leaning against the wall, and eat there when he woke and then sleep again, and only after that begin to deal with the aftermath of the decision he had made as he watched his sister leave the battlefield.

  Seeing her return, he rose on limbs that resisted, so that he came up stiffly, and more slowly than he wanted, and leaned back on the wall because simply standing was enough.

  Breaca leaned against the doorpost, matching him. She wore a cloak in Eceni blue for the first time since the start of the war, pinned with a brooch in the shape of a serpent-spear with tags of old wool hanging down. Stone was with her, less lame than he had been, and Airmid was smiling which was something Valerius thought she had forgotten how to do.

  “Have you come to a decision?” The Boudica’s voice filled the room, as it would not have done before.

  “No,” said Cunomar.

  Valerius said, “Yes.”

  Breaca looked from one to the other and back again. The sharp edge of her smile was one that Valerius had seen on a boat, newly come from Gaul, and before that, not since his childhood. He could have wept. It seemed possible that he was actually weeping. He did not put his hand to his face to check.

  Amused, his sister said, “Should I go away again, until at least you find common ground on that?”

  “What?” asked Valerius.

  “I have just been seen to leave the field of battle. If one or other of you wishes to claim leadership of the war host, I have no right to deny it.”

  Valerius had not been weeping, only tired. He laughed, rustily. “Look behind you,” he said, and nodded past Breaca to the gardens, where the she-bear and the warriors of Mona had joined with the others of the war host and were no longer stripping the dead or lifting the wounded, but gathered in a solid mass of waiting, expectant humanity. “If you want to turn round and tell them that you’re leaving again, you’re welcome. I’m not at all certain they’ll let you.”

  He found the energy to join her at the doorway. Cunomar had the sense to come to stand at her other side. Together, the Boudica, her brother and her son faced the mass of men and women who had just followed them to the edge of death and back; each one had been driven to the edges of resilience, each one made that small step beyond where he or she could have gone alone.

  Between them, they had taken by force the first and only Roman city in their land. To do so, they had fought for two days almost without break in a way none had ever experienced or imagined; fighting through streets and in brick-built villas, against armed Romans and unarmed Trinovantes. They had killed at times with honour and courage and at other times without either of these, and the taint of that, and the euphoria of victory, lay equally on them.

  They were greater than they had been, perhaps greater than they had ever imagined, and could be greater still, but they needed to be told so, and to be given a reason to find the paths to victory in themselves.

  Out of habit, and two decades’ training, Valerius opened his mouth to speak. Breaca was there before him.

  “Warriors of the Boudica…”Her voice carried better than it had done when she first addressed them at the marsh edge, but not far enough; the garden was full and more were pressing in at the gate, or climbing the unclimbable walls. The hum and the press of a spreading rumour drowned out the first words, even when they were shouted down by others, who thus made more noise.

  A plinth stood to one side of the door, that had until recently borne an urn. Breaca vaulted onto it, and stood framed by the white wall of the temple. Like all of them, she was burned and stained with ash and smoke and the debris of battle. Unlike them, she had been visited by a god, and it showed. She stood tall against the white stone of the temple and the late afternoon sun cast gold over the burnished red of her hair and polished to shining jewels the iron and bronze of her belt buckle, of her sword hilt, of her serpent-spear brooch.

  Other gods came to add their touch: the wind lifted her hair and made of it a widening copper hel
met. Her cloak bellied back, so that she was late sky blue against the white, with the cast of sun all around; a crow danced on the gilded tiles of the rooftops and cawed three times. The last call fell into a profound and waiting silence.

  There was no question, then, of the leadership. If the Boudica’s brother or son had tried to take it, their own supporters would have killed them; if the Boudica had tried to walk away, they would have blocked the gates until she gave her whole heart to staying.

  Seeing that, knowing it, Breaca cast her voice out to its farthest reach, and began again.

  “Warriors of the Boudica. You have won a city, and the first part of a war. Not one of you is without injury. Each one of you has lost friends, lovers, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers in this battle and all that has led to it. But still, we have faced the army of Rome, which has fashioned an empire by virtue of its own might, and we have won. This was the legions’ capital, their first fortress, their pride in the province of Britannia. When we leave, it will be ash, to be blown on the wind and taken back to the earth. Never again will an army sink its foundations into the clean ground of Camul’s dun.

  “This is only the beginning: Rome’s other towns must be laid flat, Rome’s legions must be destroyed. Our land must be made free. With your help, with your blood and your courage and the help of the gods, we will make it so. Our children and our children’s children will live in a land in which Rome is a distant threat, long forgotten, and we will be the cause of that. Never forget. We are the war host that will vanquish the legions.”

  She spoke the last into a silence as thick and crisp as when she had started. It softened, slowly, as five thousand battle-weary minds understood the full measure of what they had done and what they were asked to do.

  They needed a response and were all too tired to think until, far at the back, someone unnamed shouted, “Boudica!” and gave them their answer.