Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  Braint had not jumped, even when Corvus swung his bay mare out to the side within almost-touch of her face. Amongst all the lime-painted, grey-greased warriors of Cunomar’s she-bear, she alone was unpainted and almost unadorned. She wore a single banded feather in her hair from the tail of a peregrine tiercel and two eye teeth of a wildcat hung from a horsehide thong round her neck. She had worked dust and mud into her hair so that it looked like an upturned sod of turf, but for the rest, her skin was brown from a summer of sun and wind and matt from the dust of the marching men and before the first troop of the first cohort of the first century of the XIVth legion had passed, she had become another shadow in many shadows amongst the nettles.

  She lay still and silent, and seemed not to notice the flies. Except when he had agreed to attack the legion early, before the remainder of the warriors joined them, Cunomar had never seen her smile.

  He remembered stories his mother had told of Braint as a girl on Mona and later in the battles of the invasion, of her grief at the death of her boy-cousin and her vitality as she came out of it, and her fearlessness so that she had lured an entire troop of Gaulish cavalrymen to their deaths, using her own body as bait.

  The fire of that was still there to be seen, but grief and joy had burned away equally in its heat, leaving her unyielding as iron. She was unquestionably a good warrior, even excellent. Cunomar was coming slowly to the view that, next to his own family, she might be the best he had ever met.

  Now, from his left, without moving, she said, “Mac Calma was right. They do have archers. Look.”

  For the time it took four ranks of the wing to ride past, Cunomar looked and saw nothing. Then he saw the flicker of a scarlet fletching and from that traced the outline of an arrow and so a bow and the brown-skinned, hawk-nosed man who bore it. Once seen, it was easier to find the others.“They’re all here.”

  Braint had told him of the hidden danger the evening before, when the fires of the legions had been hot sparks on the horizon. Their own fire had been three barely red lumps of charcoal in a pit. Leaning into it, so he could see the red on her face, she had said, “Luain mac Calma has three informers among the Siluran scouts used by the legions. They report to him only in exceptional circumstances and then only through an intermediary. If the truth has reached us cleanly, they have been keeping watch on a dozen brown-skinned archers who can shoot a dove from the sky and the hawk that is following it and then turn and kill a hunted hare and the hound when both are going the opposite way. They can do all this standing or sitting or on horseback and in any direction.”

  “How far can they shoot?” Cunomar had asked.

  “Two spear-casts accurately. Three if they are aiming for a target as big as a warrior.”

  “Then if we don’t have more warriors than they have arrows, we are finished, and all the lives wasted.”

  “No. Mac Calma has sent us with five slingers. All we have to do is to keep them alive while they target the archers. Can your she-bears do that, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” he had said. “Against mounted cavalry we are at a disadvantage. We can run in and cut the heel-strings of the horses but that’s costly in lives. We can throw spears, but the archers will be faster. We can run at them, but we have not enough in numbers to overwhelm them. We could try to attack at night, but they are well fortified and have sentries at every second pace who change eight times overnight and are alert. What do you suggest?”

  Braint had turned her head at last and looked at him. Warmed only by the embers, her gaze was long and cool and dispassionate. It was like being regarded by a hound; he had never enjoyed that. Eventually, she had said, “I suggest that you ask the bear for help and do as she advises.”

  He had asked the bear. The answer had not been distinct. He had danced to her under the first rise of the horned moon until exhaustion and the soft rhythm of palms pounded on the earth — they had not dared use the skull drums this close to the enemy — had lifted him out of himself and into the savage care of the beast to whom he was sworn.

  He had smelled the hot meatiness of her breath and felt the brush of her hair against his face and seen a thousand bears set against a thousand cavalry horses, ripping them asunder, leaving three dead.

  Somewhere in the chaos, a deer calf had died twice, and a serpent had coiled on itself and struck at the back of his head so that he could feel the puncture of its teeth in his scalp. Afterwards, he had retold it all to those who had pounded the earth, hoping one of them might see some clarity.

  It was Ulla who had said, “The slingers don’t need much time, only long enough to see and kill the archers. We can do this, if Braint can direct the slingers. We have the horned god of the hunt to guide us, and half a night to make real the dreams of the bear.”

  Cunomar had not been sure then. He was not sure now. He wanted glory and the death of Rome, not the annihilation of the she-bear brought about because he had failed in his first duty as a leader to protect his warriors.

  The time for doubt was past. The end of the column was eight horses away. The outriders were stepping within an arm’s reach of his head.

  He offered his soul to the bear, knowing the value of it, and that all life was a lesson, to be mined for all it could give, even if — particularly if — that mining ended in death.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and reached for the spear haft that lay across the ground in front of him.

  Corvus said, “There! In the nettles! Something moved!”

  All twelve of the archers fired. Arrows whistled, silk stripped fast on silk, and embedded solidly in meat and bone.

  Someone, or something, died, twitching. Afterwards, the jangle of harness and pound of feet sounded as nothing, so that the air was filled with silence, and two words of congratulatory Scythian spoken by Flavius.

  Hoarsely, Ursus said, “Gods, that was close. They could touch the horses, almost, from there.”

  Corvus had to swallow to speak. “If we have not just shot a sleeping hog.”

  “Hogs don’t lie sleeping while two legions march by.” Ursus waited and waited and then said, “Do they?”

  Corvus said, “They might do, if they have been fed the right plants by the dreamers. Something feels wrong. I think— Move! Cover the archers!”

  The slingstone passed by his face. He felt the wind of it. In the sudden slowing of his mind, he believed that he could see the black paint that coated it. His soul shrank from the threat.

  An archer died. A second was knocked in the shoulder.

  “Right! They’re on the right!”

  Corvus screamed it. A trumpeter — outstandingly courageous — sounded it clearly to the troop and the infantry ahead. By that act alone, the man made himself a target. He died for it, to a thrown spear, not a slingstone, at the same time as the third of the twelve archers.

  There was time to shout his name, and the promise of honours, so that his departing ghost and the men of his tent party might hear it, so that someone might survive and remember, and then there was mayhem and the howling of bear-warriors up the line as far as Corvus could see and the screaming of horses and of men and women so that no single voice had any chance to be heard and only the trumpets and the standards kept discipline and order.

  Corvus killed a woman with red hair and brown skin and did not pause to see if he knew her. He ducked a stone and pushed his shield to cover Ursus, who had moved his own shield to cover Corvus. They each thrust and hit flesh and bone and tasted blood that was not their own and their world shrank to the immediacy of survival, except that they had a duty to protect the infantry and Corvus had to think also about that.

  There were warriors on the left now, as well as the right. Corvus looked about and saw another trumpeter close to the knot of surviving archers who were firing from behind a human shield of cavalry, and scoring hit after hit, earning with each shot the gold and effort and tedium of their keep.

  “The trumpeter…”Corvus mouthed it to Ursus, who nodded. They fo
ught closer until the man saw them and fought back so that they were joined in an island of relative calm with death and wounding all about.

  “Sound the two-serpent strike.”

  The man stared at him, and grinned, and sounded his trumpet so that the notes flew high and pure as larks over the fighting men. They had drilled and drilled until men and mounts equally knew what to do to the sound of that, and a horse would take its own part even if its rider were dead or beyond control.

  The bay mare knew it as well as the rest. Corvus felt the bunching of muscles beneath him and the straining for air and the kick of acceleration as she saw a gap and went for it. He made himself sleek and lay tight to the mane with his blade in one hand and his shield covering the horse as much as his own body and let her carry him to relative safety.

  Ursus was behind him, and the trumpeter, and a growing band of his men. He swung round and felt the judder as the mare jumped off the road and began the curve that would strike at the backs of the attacking warriors. Ursus peeled away from him and rode the other way, to the right. Every second man followed him round.

  For a moment, all Corvus had to do was ride. He did so, and ignored the still, small voice in the deeper part of his mind that wanted to know what it was the archers had first killed that might not have been a sleeping hog, but he dearly hoped was not a certain man.

  There were fewer warriors on the left side and they were not experienced against horses. They died without fuss. Corvus saw a movement in the shrubs to his left and directed his horse towards it. The trumpeter followed, sending silver lark-notes cascading behind. Flavius and two of the archers abandoned formation and came with him.

  The deer calf had died only once, when Cunomar threw his knife into its chest.

  The wound had been small, easily stuffed with dried grass and moss so that there was no smell of fresh blood that might alert passing horses. He had sewn shut its anus and prepuce with sinews so that they did not leak and similarly give it away. He broke its forelegs and worked them until they moved through the death-stiffness. Braint had found and woven the birch bark to make ropes long enough and strong enough to reach and not to break.

  Pegging it in position without crushing the nettles had taken half the night so that the sky was pale and the sun roaring red on the eastern horizon by the time they backed away, laying the bark ropes along cleared lines so that a stone would not cut or block them. They had time for a single test, with Braint on the roadway and Cunomar in the far elder scrub, watching as much to see if he could be seen when he tugged on his end of the spear haft as whether the movement it made was enough to catch the eyes of passing horsemen.

  So much had hung on it. So much had succeeded. So much was so close to failure.

  Corvus rode directly at him. Braint came up to a crouch. Without any sign of urgency, she picked a stone from her pouch and fitted it in her sling. Cunomar had not known she used that. He regretted never having learned it himself. For no clear reason, he said, “He loves Valerius, and is loved by him.”

  She smiled, thinly. “I know.”

  They were close enough to smell the horses. She stood and drew back her arm.

  A brown-skinned man in red silk moved with the same certain speed.

  Frozen, Cunomar said, “Archers! He has two of the archers!”

  For the rest of his life, however short or long, Cunomar would remember the pain in her face as Braint picked one target from the three that were possible, and the startling accuracy of the stone, and the venom with which it was sent, as if by killing the man who posed most danger she might damage the others whom she hated most.

  She died, not knowing if she had succeeded.

  Cunomar would also never forget the impersonal death of an arrow, of three arrows, sent with such speed that they might all have come from the same bowshot, so that there was not time for her parting soul to dally or consider the life that had been lived.

  She was alive, and then she was dead and the only reason Cunomar was not likewise was that Ulla had thrown a spear and three others of the she-bear had come from the other side and none of them was a slinger, but one was lucky and knocked the remaining archer from his horse, so that the immediate threat was over and Cunomar could reach for the bear and fail to find her and still drag his spear clear of the birch ropes and leap from the elder, and fight, and try not to die, and not have to think yet, at all, about how he was going to break the news of Braint’s death to Cygfa.

  He saw a flash of movement on the edge of his vision; in a moment of bear-inspired madness, he hurled his spear.

  Corvus watched the second slingstone pass his face and did not need to look to see if this one was painted black, the better to send his soul to utter annihilation, he could feel the hatred in it as it passed. He heard the impact and the slump of a man falling and jinked the bay mare sideways in case there were more slingers and swung with his sword for a warrior who came at him.

  He missed, and missed again, and saw Breaca’s son leap from cover and knew he had been recognized. A spear passed him, harmlessly, and he pushed the bay mare forward into the melting maelstrom of warriors.

  He had more men and more horses and they were, with all due modesty, manifestly better drilled than any native warriors. Even so, lesser men, more poorly drilled, had won against odds in the past and horses are only valuable against infantry if those on the ground are afraid of horses, and do not know them.

  The Eceni against whom he fought now lived and died and took their first steps on horseback. He fought, moreover, the warriors of the she-bear who did not care about living, but only death in the embrace of the bear, and honour afterwards for the life lived complete.

  As if in proof, the Boudica’s son broke through the guards round the archers and drove his knife into the chest of one of the horses. Corvus watched him leap onto the back of the falling beast and take its rider down with him. Cunomar’s blade flashed red. His face was frozen in a scream of pain and triumph that no sane man could stand against. No officer would ask it of those who trusted their lives to him.

  Except that there was a way, for men who had drilled to perfection and who trusted their commander.

  Corvus shouted to the trumpeter, “Line! Call for a line! Back here. Form on me!”

  Silvered larksong burst high over the carnage — and ceased.

  The trumpeter curled up like a leaf, clutching his right shoulder from which a thrown knife protruded. His trumpet hung from the thong on his forearm. Corvus hacked once more at the shrieking banshee that assailed him — he thought it was a woman but did not stop to look — and pushed the bay battle mare forward to the man’s side. He used his own blade to cut the trumpet’s cords and was grateful that he kept it sharper than was necessary and that the kills of the day had not blunted its edge, more grateful still that he had learned the skills of sounding the horn, and the basic tunes of command.

  Half of his men had heard him shout in any case. They were already grouping into pairs and then threes and then sixes and eights to form the line that would sweep the flat ground and trample into the earth those who thought to stand against them.

  Corvus wet his lips and lifted the shining weight of the trumpet and drew breath and sought the first note, shakily — and was drowned by the brasher, louder sound of ten horns braying in unison from the front of the column.

  “No! Gods curse you, no…”

  He could have wept. The trumpet call was redundant. His men were on either side of him, only six were straggling to catch up, one of those wounded, two assailed on both sides and unlikely to live. Eighteen men were with him and they could have swept the broad, flat land from one end of the column to the other.

  “We could still do it.”

  Corvus looked to his left. Flavius was there, flushed and breathing hard and caught on a wave of victory. Their eyes met. Flavius grinned and did not hate him. He said, “We didn’t hear it. The horns are too far. We can only hear you. Tell us to charge.”

  Ei
ghteen men wanted to believe that. Not one of them would have spoken against him later. Even the governor would have acknowledged that in battle not all commands can be heard. The deified Caesar had once failed to call back his men and had sent instead a second signal for luck when he knew they had run on to victory against his command. Against such a precedent, what general could discipline men who had fought and prevailed?

  Corvus lifted the trumpet to his lips. He had no need to call the line, they were already with him, drilled to perfection, sweeping round the fulcrum that he made, turning like the arm of a wheel to face south, so that they could run parallel to the road. The warriors were scattering. Two more had died. The Boudica’s son was calling, calling, to no avail…

  The horns brayed again, louder. The great bull-horn of the governor’s own cavalry contingent that took two men to carry it sounded a single, long, earth-shuddering note. The standards of both legions and the Quinta Gallorum swung hard to left and right.

  “No, damn you! Not now!” Corvus hurled the trumpet at the hard ground. It bounced and his bay mare shied and he kicked her, which was unforgivable. His men swept about him, hard-faced, protecting him in the depth of his folly, when he was too lost in rage to guard against the slingers or spear throwers who still assailed them.

  He cursed again and closed his eyes and swallowed and brought himself back into balance. Never in his life had he lost his temper in the field. He did so now, and turned the battle mare and swung his arm for want of a standard and, with a bitterness that stayed with him for the whole of the fast, hard ride back to the column, led his men away from victory to follow the governor and protect the rear of the now-running legions wherever they might lead.

  “They’re gone,” said Ulla. “Why?”

  “The governor’s horns called them back in a way they couldn’t ignore. Why that should have happened is anyone’s guess. Maybe Valerius has arrived early and attacked the front of the column and they see him as more of a threat than us and need their better troops to set against him. We can’t catch them on foot. They must know that.”