by Manda Scott
Cunomar knelt by Braint’s corpse. His own body was lacerated with cuts and bruised all down one side where a horse had fallen on him. He felt nothing. He leaned over Braint and put a hand to her throat to feel her pulse as if she might still be alive, which was ridiculous, but he did it all the same.
The arrows had passed into her chest in front and out again at the back, only lodged by their scarlet and black fletchings. Like that, she was unable to lie flat, but was arced, as if in agony, with her chest reaching to the sky.
She had not stiffened yet. Gently, Cunomar lifted her to sitting and propped her against his knee. He broke each of the arrows at the haft and laid her back again to rest. With his thumbs, he closed her eyes and held them shut for a while, that she might not stare so at the evening sky. Numbly, “She was Warrior of Mona. We should take her with us. Those she led will want to mourn her.”
Ulla said, “Cygfa will want to mourn her.”
“If she comes back. She went with the Boudica and we have heard nothing. It may be they are not coming back.” The thought rose unbidden from the formless fears of Cunomar’s mind and was spoken before he could force it down.
Ulla stared at him and opened her mouth and closed it again. She said, “She will come back and the Boudica will come back, and then we have the legions trapped. Valerius isn’t ahead of us; he’d have sent word with the scouts if he were. The legions aren’t running towards war, they’re running for safety, to somewhere they can defend better than an open road. All we need do is wait for Valerius to bring up his sworn spears and we have them trapped like sheep in a fold. Tomorrow, we will set the war host on them and by evening the land will be free of two more legions.”
Tomorrow …
Unheralded, the old nightmare returned to Cunomar, of the bear turned at bay in its den, ready to savage the first fumbling fool who came near. This time, he was in no doubt that the she-bear had sent him the image, with all its portents of danger.
Afraid to name it aloud, Cunomar made himself smile for Ulla. “Tomorrow is too far to think of. First, we need to take the wounded back to the meeting place and hope that Valerius has reached it. He has Theophilus with him who can look to the injuries. When that’s done, we need to build a pyre for Braint that will show everyone how great she was. Will you help me carry her?”
Ulla put the flat of her thumb across his mouth and smoothed away the false smile. Her gaze peeled away the layers of his falsehoods. “Of course; I’ll always help you. Why do you have to ask?”
CHAPTER 38
CUNOMAR AND VALERIUS LIT BRAINT’S FUNERAL PYRE together, at dusk, before the assembled warriors of the war host and within sight of the camped legions.
Insects made black the evening air. Swifts and bats scythed through them, shrilly. Camp fires by the thousands, and tens of thousands, sent smoke to the still-blue sky.
A low ridge separated the two armies, a wrinkle in the land less than the height of a man.
West of it glowed the fires of the legions, set out in perfect lines, rank upon rank in the settling dusk.
They were so few, and so crisp in their arrogance. As Ulla had said, they had found safety. A blind-ended valley held them secure with steep walls of green earth rising on both sides and behind to pen them like sheep. It helped Cunomar to think of them still as sheep and therefore helpless; too many terrors lurked in the image of a trapped bear turning against those who hunted it.
East of the ridge, the fifty thousand warriors of the Boudica’s war host prepared for war in the Boudica’s continuing absence. Genial chaos abounded at scattered family camp fires as those too young or too old, too frail or too afraid to fight vied to bring forth tales of how they would turn the tide of a battle with a skin of water handed to a warrior at a crucial moment, or a horse held and brought forward when it was most needed.
To the southern side, more orderly fires blazed for Civilis and his Batavian cavalry, newly summoned by Valerius to join in the war host. Left and right of these, the Boudica’s brother had set his own warriors, who followed him now as if none of them had ever doubted his value as their leader.
At the front of them all, Braint’s fire touched the sky. If the height of a pyre was testament to the honour and courage of a warrior, this was the worth of half a legion.
Days of hot sun had left dry wood by the armload and the refugees from Verulamium had discovered in their wagons supplies of pitch pine and lamp oil and whole fleeces of crisp brown wool and given them freely as gifts to the departed woman and to the gods, that the Warrior’s fire might light the sky and reach to the Roman legions with its foretaste of doom. They, at least, were confident of tomorrow’s victory.
Cunomar was not at all confident. The enormity of what had happened grew on him slowly through the day until, by the lighting of the fire, he was hollow and sick.
Before he had ever arrived bearing Braint’s body in his arms, Valerius had begun to hold the war councils and to sketch out a strategy for the battle that must now happen. To Cunomar, when the spear-leaders had left, he had said, “We should never have turned them at bay. It’s my fault; I asked you to harry them and didn’t know the valley was there to offer them shelter. I’m sorry.”
Any question of a bone thrown to a hound was gone. The Boudica’s brother and son were united in the need to salvage victory from catastrophe, or at least to avert defeat. Cunomar had said, “We could ride away and leave them. They won’t risk coming far off the road.”
Valerius had pinched the bridge of his nose. “If we were fewer, we would certainly do that, but we have thirty thousand refugees now that yours are come from Verulamium; we can’t leave them to the slaughter that would follow. In any case, the warriors are convinced that the gods will send a miracle and the Boudica will appear out of the setting sun to lead them to victory; someone has said it and they hold it as truth. We could no more persuade them to leave than we could persuade them that they might not win tomorrow. There’s no point in trying. They need to believe that we believe in them.”
Cunomar had said, “Do we not believe in them? We outnumber the legions five to one.” There was still room for hope. He did not want to abandon it.
“The deer outnumber the hounds at the start of a day’s hunting but they still die,” Valerius had said. “This is a time when training and experience matter, not numbers. We’re against the Fourteenth and the Twentieth who have fought through every summer and drilled through every winter for the past twenty years. We have perhaps two thousand warriors of Mona who have a decade’s experience of battle. Your she-bears are dedicated but they have only ever fought in towns and in woods. Do you remember fighting the veterans in the garden behind the temple? It would be like that, but worse. To fight in open country against a standing legion is like trying to sail a small-boat into an ocean in full storm after paddling it across a placid lake. For the rest, we have forty thousand enthusiastic amateurs most of whom have been forbidden to hold a blade since the first invasion. We need luck, a great deal of it, to stand any chance at all.”
Valerius had not been smiling; all hint of the dry, self-mocking humour was gone. That was at least as worrying as what he had said.
Grimly, Cunomar had said, “Then we need to make that luck happen.”
“I know. If your mother would join us, it might make the difference. In her absence, you and I must do what we can.”
“Is she coming back?” To his own ears, Cunomar sounded like a child. Just then, he did not care.
“I hope so. But the scouts have yet no word of her.”
Thus had the evening begun, making others believe what could not be believed, and hiding a growing dread. For want of anyone better, Cunomar had helped to light Braint’s fire, not because he had a right, or that she would have wanted it, particularly. Wishing himself elsewhere, he had touched his pine torch to the tags of tinder at the margins and stood with it as the flames licked up past his face.
He wanted Cygfa to be there, so that she could rage at
him over Braint’s death and he could tell her how much he was sorry. He wanted the Boudica there, a walking miracle, to prove that such things were possible. Very badly, he wanted Ardacos, simply for the old warrior’s presence.
Because none of these was there, because he was not even sure that they were still alive, Cunomar had spoken aloud the words of invocation to Briga, for the sending of a Warrior of Mona into her care. Then, on Valerius’ advice and in the presence and hearing of the gods and assembled warriors he had named Huw of the Ordovices to be Braint’s successor, unless or until the Elder of Mona should choose to appoint another in his place.
His voice was deeper than he ever remembered, as if Braint’s death had broken the last bridge to his childhood, when he had thought it all gone long ago. The echoes of his words fell away and were burned with the moths in the leaping flames. A bat shrilled past his head, drifting cooler air at the place where his ear had once been. He had combed lime paint through his hair in her honour, and stained it with berry juice so that it stood black like the spines of a hedgehog in the long ridge from brow to neck. He felt it stiffen in the heat, stretching his scalp. The old scars of the bear on his shoulder itched as they had not done since they were first cut in the caves of the Caledonii. He tried to read a message in that and failed.
He closed his eyes and watched the flames fan red on the inside of his lids and opened them and turned to his left, to where Valerius stood, dark-cloaked and dark-haired, with his fine-etched nose and high cheeks, a perfect mirror to Luain mac Calma, his father, who was Elder of Mona, and yet somehow still Roman for all that he bore not one stitch of Roman dress. The flames dealt kindly with him, washing smooth the lines of care about his mouth and eyes, raising the cloak of bitter humour to leave him simply a man, exhausted almost beyond endurance, but trying still to do what he believed to be right.
It was possible, then, to see his mother’s brother clearly as a man unwillingly divided, lodged in the un-gap between two nations; for the first time truly to admire, rather than despise, his daily struggle to reconcile the opposites within him. It was possible — and suddenly overwhelmingly necessary — to understand that exactly this paradox was the key to winning an otherwise impossible battle.
Formally, in the language of the great-house, because the moment required it, Cunomar said, “There is one thing left unspoken in our plans for tomorrow: in the event that the Boudica does not ride out of the sunset, we will need a leader to take the war host into combat. I name you now as that leader. The warriors of the she-bear will follow the Boudica’s brother into battle. You only need give the order and we will give our lives to make it happen.”
“No.”
Something punched a hollow space in Cunomar’s chest. “You won’t let us fight?”
“Not at all. I will do whatever I can to persuade you to fight short of holding you at sword point. I was going to say that the sworn spears of the Boudica’s brother will follow the Boudica’s son wherever he leads, that you only need give the order and we will die to make it happen.” Now the fire etched new lines on Valerius’ face. “I have set out the battle plan because I have rather more experience of the legions than most and know what’s needed, but I will not lead the tribes into battle.”
There was stillness and a crackling of fire. Braint’s hair took light and burned in a sudden dandelion puff of flame. The air smelled briefly rank and then sweetly again, of pine resin.
Cunomar said, “I don’t understand. Why not? Are you unwilling to attack Rome?”
The sharp, self-mocking smile returned. “Hardly. I’ve been attacking Rome for years. I will lead the right wing in the wedge and be honoured to do so. But I will not take full leadership of a war host that has gathered in the Boudica’s name. That place is rightfully yours, and I believe that you are capable now of taking it. In any case, they wouldn’t follow me.”
“We would,” said Huw, quietly. “The warriors of Mona will follow you anywhere. Where we go, the rest will follow.”
There was a curious satisfaction in that. Cunomar nodded. “Thank you. The she-bear will be honoured to follow the grey cloaks of Mona wherever they may lead.”
A muscle twitched under Valerius’ eye. He said, “Then they will all follow your banner.” There was a set to his jaw that was exactly like Breaca’s when she was at her most stubborn. Cunomar had never seen it in any other living person besides his sister, Graine. He had thought that he shared the same intransigence, and that it would outmatch any man’s. In this, too, it seemed he was outdone by Valerius.
He turned back to the fire. The flames had reached Braint’s body, flowing over and down like sunlit water so that it was possible to imagine them cool and pleasant. As he watched, her face scorched red and then black and began to melt. Her sword lay along the length of her body. The hilt pulsed red in the drifting heat. Cunomar remembered her alive, and the cold spark in her eyes, and how that changed at the prospect of battle. She had never needed to seek the she-bear, or read a message in the tug of old scars, to know what to do and how and where.
He set aside the last remnant of his pride. “I can’t lead,” he said, quietly. “I don’t know what to do.”
Valerius regarded him for a long, cool moment. He opened his mouth to speak. On his unreadable face, Cunomar thought he read pity. Above all else, he did not want that.
Forestalling whatever might come, he said, “I’m not saying this only because I need to make recompense for Braint and this is my only payment. I am saying it because you were fighting for Rome before I was born. You have led more men into more battles than I have led hunts and all of them successful, whichever side you were on. I don’t want to die for no reason. Tomorrow I will do so if you can’t tell us how to win against the trained men of the legions. It’s not enough to have set the battle plan; we need you on the field to tell us what to do if — when — they do something we haven’t planned for.”
Night had come while he was watching the pyre. The sky was darker than it had been, and the fire brighter so that it consumed all of the horizon. To the west, the sun broke open and bled onto the silhouette of the ridge.
Valerius swept a hand through his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. He said, “There is such a thing as god-luck and it’s as necessary in battle as any amount of training. All the things you say are true. We face annihilation if we are not disciplined and the tribes have never fought with discipline. It takes years to make a legion of the calibre of the Fourteenth. We have one night and if we have any sense at all, we’ll spend most of it sleeping. Lacking that, the warriors need instead a figure they can follow and believe in. Someone whom the gods will openly support, and who has the ability to swing the course of battle by the power of his presence. In the absence of the Boudica, the Boudica’s son is the only possible replacement.”
“Not at all the only replacement, but perhaps, now, a worthy one.”
Cygfa’s voice reached them from the darkness beyond the fire. She had always moved as quietly as the she-bear. Cunomar jumped, and hated himself for doing so. Valerius, he thought, came close, which made him feel better. He held the other man’s gaze and saw his own sudden ache reflected.
There was a moment’s held balance. Valerius nodded, very slightly, and took a half-step back, leaving the space open and all that it implied.
It took more courage than Cunomar had ever mustered for anything, more than facing the bear-elders and their knives, more than the two different mornings of his own crucifixion, to turn to his sister now and say, “Braint’s dead. It was my fault. We didn’t know you were coming. We lit her pyre without you. I’m sorry.”
He saw Cygfa through a veil of flame. Her face was blurred, softened, so that she looked again like the half-grown girl he barely remembered from their childhood on Mona.
Presently, she asked, “How?” She was looking at Valerius.
Cunomar said, “Arrows. The cavalry had archers. Two of them came at us. She killed one with a slingstone. The oth
er shot her. She knew it would happen. She gave her life to kill the better of the two and so give us a chance to kill the rest of the troop.”
The fire-soft eyes turned at last to him. She was still a thing of flame, outlined against the growing dark. He thought the ice at her core had melted, but did not know what was in its place, only that she was stronger for being less brittle. “Did you kill them?” she asked.
He should have done; better to have died trying than to live and have to admit failure. Cunomar said, “No. That is, I believe I killed one, but can’t be sure. The rest … they were on horseback. They were set to ride over the top of us when they were recalled. They ran one way and we ran the other. They will be waiting for us tomorrow.” His own blood ran to ice with the saying of it. The words came like dry straw from his throat.
Astonishingly, she smiled. “Then we’ll greet them as Braint would wish us to. At least the fire you have built for her will show them who she was. Thank you for that.”
She took a moment to watch the flames and then looked equally at Valerius and Cunomar. “If it helps,” she said, “I would have followed either or both of you willingly in tomorrow’s battles.”
Neither of them wanted to speak. It was Huw, new Warrior of Mona, who said, “… would have…? Then you are not alone?”
Cygfa stepped back. Other shadows moved where she had been. Cunomar thought he had finally stepped over the line into dreaming because Graine was there on her small, fat cob, looking as close to whole as could be imagined, and then Ardacos and Hawk and Gunovar and Efnís and a gold-haired dreamer he did not know and last — it should not have been last; Dubornos was missing and the gap he left was astonishing for its size — his mother rode out of the sunset, as someone, somewhere, had said she would, and came to a halt in front of him.
His mother. He stopped thinking then, and simply looked.
