Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  “Luain mac Calma.” Corvus spoke the name into his hair; a blessing, or a curse. “I asked him if we would meet in death. He promised me that we would meet once more in this life. I didn’t believe him at the time.”

  Once more. The words cut them both, and were believed.

  Valerius said, “He’s my father, did you know?”

  “Yes, he told me. I had always thought it, only when Eburovic was alive, it seemed impolite to ask. He was there in the beginning, at the first shipwreck. Will he be here now, at the end?”

  “I don’t know. He thinks Graine is the wild piece on the board. He sent her back to Breaca so she would be here. It may be he thinks that’s enough.”

  “For the sake of your people, it would be good to think so.”

  “Yes.” The weeping had stopped and there was, after all, no need to talk. Valerius sat still, listening to a heartbeat and feeling the press of a cheek, and of lips on his head. Then he sat a little higher, and the head was beside his, and it would have been a small thing to turn inward and seek the kiss and the solace that had been ten years denied.

  A part of him wanted to. The greater part, god-connected, did not. The gap between the two ached with an old, familiar yearning.

  Unsteadily, Corvus said, “I think this is enough. To have met, to have spoken—”

  “To know that there is no hate.”

  “And never was?”

  “Never.”

  The night was cooler than it had been. The glow of Braint’s pyre was a setting sun on the wrong horizon. It was hard to part. Harder still to imagine leaving. Hardest to imagine battle, and the endings it might bring. They came apart, slowly, making the moments draw out beyond their span.

  Corvus picked up the Horus and wiped the water from it with the hem of his cloak. He said, “Luain mac Calma knows the things we don’t. If anyone can rescue sense from nonsense, it is him. He spared my life on Mona. I like to think there was a reason, and that it was not for the destruction of us both, or our people.”

  The stepping stone was free. Valerius crossed the stream again with dry feet and did not stumble. From the far bank, which was Eceni at least until morning, he said, “Whatever comes, know that I am sorry for all that I said and did that hurt you.”

  “I always knew that. I was just not always able to let you know that I knew.”

  The joy of that would have melted him if he had stayed on the Roman side. Valerius gave the salute of warrior to warrior and said, “Until tomorrow then, and whatever comes after. If I cross the river to the gods first, I will wait for you, however long it takes.”

  “Will your gods allow it, when they are not mine?” Corvus had never dared voice that doubt before, to himself or anyone. He watched Valerius pause on his own side of the river and search within in a way he had never done in his younger years. The answer, then, when it came, was quiet and solid and certain, and settled in Corvus’ heart as a bandage ready for expected pain.

  “They will always allow it. It’s only men who need ownership. The gods allow more freedom.”

  The message came from the gods, and was for all who could hear it. The smile was for Corvus alone, and he treasured it.

  CHAPTER 40

  VALERIUS WALKED ALONG THE SIDE OF THE STREAM. WHEN he could no longer hear the sound of footsteps going the other way, he bent to wash his face.

  Nobody came to join him or to ask unnecessary questions. There was no moon, yet, to open wide the pathways to Nemain. No bulls grazed near the two armies to bring him closer to Mithras. Even so, a boundary had been crossed that was more than the wetting of feet in a river and a last remembrance of love. The night was crisper than it had been, so that the stars were punched holes in the void and god-light leaked through. He turned in to walk across the open plain towards the camp, and set himself open, waiting.

  Cygfa met him, who was the last he had expected. She stood alone, in night so black that only the brilliance of her hair gave her away, and even that was a strange, muted pewter, not the corn gold of her father’s daylight legacy. She had changed since the battle for Camulodunum and Valerius did not fully know why. Guessing, he said, “I’m sorry about Braint.”

  “Thank you. So am I, but it was a good death and a good day to die. Few of us are privileged to cross the river under the same moon as Dubornos. Did you hear of that?”

  “Yes. Airmid told me, and then Breaca.”

  “How much did they say of what passed between him and me?”

  “That you offered yourself to carry his life on after his death, but he…” Valerius struggled to find words that would suit and would not further offend the sudden stiffening, and the edge of something else he still could not read. She had not been stiff in his presence since they had left Gaul on a ship when he had still thought he fought for Rome. He did not want to remember that. He had grown used to the ease of her presence, and her acceptance of him for all he had been. It would hurt to find it lost.

  She turned and he led her closer to the camp, to where the firelight might let him read her. She took his lead, but pushed him a little eastward, towards the tent that the refugees had given him, and the red light of its brazier.

  There, she said, “Dubornos wouldn’t accept what I offered. He couldn’t. Perhaps I should not have offered, but I felt it right at the time.”

  “Then it was right.” Luain mac Calma would have said that better, so that it sounded less glib, or Efnís, or Valerius himself if he had been less raw.

  “I know. And he said what he needed aloud in front of everyone. They will have told you that.”

  They had reached the tent, close enough to smell the charcoal that filled the brazier, and the rosemary oil someone had sprinkled on it. Valerius gave thanks, fervently, that he had not smelled that before he saw Corvus. In the years when their lives had been lived as one, they had often set rosemary oil on the fire before love; it would have been far harder to leave if the memory of that had filled his head. He brought his attention back to Cygfa and what she was saying.

  “… will not have told you what he said to me alone, as he held me.”

  “What was that?”

  It mattered. It mattered enough to have made her stay awake on the night before battle and come out to the dark to find him. It mattered enough to turn her face the same bloodless white as her hair, both given colour only by the brazier. He knew that, and even so it was hard to think through the scent of rosemary oil and the sudden havoc of twinned god-space that had opened within him.

  He held on to one of the guys of the tent and clenched his hand on it until the hide dug a groove, knowing that he would regret it in the morning, and through the day’s battle.

  Cygfa was no more free of the chaos than he was, only for other reasons, that he could not yet see. She closed her eyes and the effort she took to speak was clear. “Before he gave himself to the gods, Dubornos said, ‘You are bed for other seed than mine. When the time comes, do not let it past.’”

  She had been raped in Rome and again at the end of winter by the procurator’s veterans. If she had ever desired a man, he could not imagine it might happen now. It was not good to think ill of a man who had just given himself to the gods, but Valerius cursed the dead singer for a fool and did not retract it after.

  He said, “Dubornos was already walking with the gods when he spoke. He may have been talking as they do, in the images of dreams and half-thoughts. To be a bed for seed does not always mean that one has to bear a child. Men, too, can nurture ideas, or followers, or—”

  “No. I knew him as well as anyone. He was not talking in dream pictures. I’ve been talking to Gunovar. She was there and was part of it with him. She felt what he felt. She saw what he saw.”

  A certain dread came over him. He held the guy rope and had no care for the damage to his hand. “What?”

  “That there is more to this than a single tribe or a single people. What matters now is not whether we win or lose the battle tomorrow, or whether you or I live
or die in doing that. What matters is that the lineage we carry continues beyond us, that children are born and nurtured who can hold the power of the gods and join it to the land. Breaca was told in the first dreaming of her long-nights that what mattered was the children and that is still so; without the children — the right children — we can win tomorrow and still lose. With them, we can lose and still win.”

  He had walked across ice and the ice had broken and he was falling through endless, black, ice-frozen water. His hair stood on end and his tongue had swollen in his throat. He tried to remember Corvus and could not. Longinus was within shouting distance. He could not find the breath to shout.

  “No.” Valerius said it flatly, and found it in himself to step back. “You don’t want it. I don’t want it. If it must be done, let it be by others than us.”

  “Who?” Cygfa looked like her father, when scorn was his weapon. “You think I should send you to Graine perhaps?”

  “Don’t!”

  She had come close and he must have tried to push her away. Her hands were on his wrists, holding them. Her face was close to his, so that he could smell her breath and her sweat and none of it was what he had just left by the water’s edge.

  It was not what he wanted. He could not imagine ever wanting it, except once, and that had been Nemain, which was different … He remembered river water and the run of it over his skin and the memory was sacred, and would not be pushed away.

  Nor would Cygfa. She was the stronger and the gods lit her eyes. She was her father made woman, or simply come again to earth in different form. Valerius had never loved Caradoc, only respected him and envied his life.

  She was too close, too earnest. “Valerius, listen to me. Our two lines must continue. Graine is of the Sun Hound, but she’s too young. Cunomar could get a child on someone but he is only one part of it and there is no-one to match you. You are son of the Elder of Mona, one of the greatest, possibly the greatest there has ever been. Macha was his match; if she had stayed, there is every chance she would have been chosen in his place. If your life had been different, it would not be Efnís who was named his successor.”

  Uselessly, “I don’t want to be Elder of Mona.”

  “I know. And you don’t want to father a child and I don’t want to bear one, and yet it must be done. It must be done.”

  Cygfa swayed back, so that she was not so close and yet still held him. Her eyes challenged, as they had once done on a different riverbank in Gaul. He had been so arrogant then. Both of them had. She said, “Ask your gods and see if they accept what I say. If you can truly say they don’t, I will leave you.”

  That was the fear and the desperation: he already knew what they wanted. If he spoke it aloud, she would not have to leave him.

  Cygfa felt his resistance end. He saw the sudden upsetting of her balance, as if she had been depending on him to outmatch her and, now that he had failed, did not know what to do.

  She gathered her courage, a smaller figure now, following a path she had never wanted to tread. They were near the tent. She still had hold of him, and tugged him towards it. “In here?”

  They were too close to hide from each other, and had shared too many battles. He could feel her fear, and the courage it took for her to keep to what she believed was needed.

  “No,” Valerius said. “This child should have nothing of Rome. Come with me,” and he led her away from the stitched hides and the red glowing charcoal and the too-strong scent of rosemary oil and back to the water’s edge, upstream from his meeting place with Corvus.

  The river curved round to the east and swung back again in an oxbow. The apex of the curve was a point halfway between the two competing armies. There was just enough light from the fires of both camps by which to see the ground and each other.

  Here, elder, heavy with hard green berries, made a stand with drooping willow. The grass was ankle deep and untrodden as yet by war. Water hissed smoothly; no crossing stones stopped the river. They disturbed a roosting crow that flapped raggedly away; its feathers cracked in the dark.

  Thinly Cygfa said, “Briga blesses us? Or not?”

  Valerius said, “Or Mithras. The raven is the first of his beasts, before the hound and the bull and the serpent.”

  Cygfa forced a smile. “If we meet the others, it could be an interesting night.”

  She was so deeply afraid, and striving so hard not to show it. It was easier, then, to find some strength in what they had been given.

  Valerius searched his own soul for compassion, and found it, and a kind of love that was rooted in respect for all she had been; enough to let the two gods within bring some sense of passion.

  He held only her hand. “I have no experience of this.”

  “And I have too much.” Her body was rigid as a cornered deer.

  “Then will you guide me, that your experience might be different from what it has been?”

  “I can try, but if I fail, you have to finish.”

  “I can try.”

  They lay down together under the berried elder, and moved slowly, and were gentle each with the other so that there was time for compassion and duty to become passion and something approaching need.

  Near the end, while he could still speak, Valerius said, “If we do this, will you stay out of the battle, to keep the child alive?”

  He felt her smile stretch the skin of his shoulder, where her teeth had just grazed it. Her voice rolled into his marrow. “No. Nothing will keep me out of the battle, any more than it will you. But I may not do as I had planned and follow Braint across the river if it seems that we are losing.”

  “Good. Very good. It would be very hard indeed to lose you.”

  He surprised them both with the sincerity of that, and the depth of feeling. It was enough, evidently, for them both to climb the last hill and find release and rest, believing that a child had been made, that would carry the lineage of moon and sun and build a life in a future yet to be fashioned.

  CHAPTER 41

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN BREACA’S LIFE, THE TORC OF THE eceni ancestors settled easily about her neck. The ancestor-dreamer did not hiss warnings of hubris from the cave of her mind; the Sun Hound did not burden her with foretellings of doom if she let his line or hers fall into ruin; the weight of ceremony of a hundred generations did not settle on her, demanding that she be their equal.

  The end-burnings of the fire that had once been a friend glowed red in the dark and she sat with it, the only one awake in a host of thousands and tens of thousands on the almost-morning of battle. The torc lay warm as a living snake against her skin, but there was no threat in it. She felt its presence as she felt Valerius’ hound, a thing that hovered on the edge of understanding but nevertheless gave comfort and a measure of protection.

  “The hound is his dream.” The voice came from behind her, rich with the currents of sleep. “The serpent-spear is yours. Each of you carries that which you need most to hold it close.”

  “I thought you were asleep?”

  “I was.” Airmid sat up and eased round beside her. “Efnís is leaving at dawn. He’ll take word back to Luain mac Calma of what we plan. I should speak to him before he leaves, but not yet. There’s time enough before the light comes.”

  Time enough to be together. They leaned against each other in the dark, shoulder to shoulder, warmth to warmth, breath to breath. They had never said goodbye on the morning before battle, only their closeness was more tangible, and time was slowed for a while, then too fast.

  It was still slow now, near dawn, as if the pulse of the earth yet slept.

  They sat quietly, healed and healer, and watched the fire. Presently, Breaca took off the torc and balanced it on the joined tent of their knees. “When you gave me this after ’Tagos’ death, I felt it as a living thing, the serpent of the serpent-spear, filled with the power of the ancestor-dreamer.”

  “And now?” Airmid’s head was on her shoulder, a heavy, necessary weight. Impossible to imagine it gon
e, or that other mornings might not see them joined like this.

  “Now it feels empty. Not dead, simply empty, like a vessel that has been drained, and is waiting to be filled again.”

  “It is,” Airmid said. “All that was in it is in you. Can you feel that?”

  “Yes.”

  Breaca turned the torc between her hands. The workmanship still left her breathless. The ancestors, having more time, had learned to work gold in ways smiths working under Rome could never do. In its simplicity was its beauty, in the unsullied purity of the red Siluran gold and the weaving of the wires and the open loops at the end for the kill-feathers. There were no feathers on it now, nor had been, since the first year of the legions’ invasion.

  Airmid ran her fingers along, bridging the gap with her fingers. “If you’re going to wear it in battle again, there should be something here, for who you are. Wait…” and she reached for her own pack and brought out a feather cast in silver, one-third the size of a real crow’s feather, battered, with one end bent.

  Breaca said, “I thought the procurator’s men stole all of those.”

  “So did I.” Airmid held it out flat on her palm, so that the fire could make it gold. She had red thread with her and began to bind the shaft. “Gunovar found this afterwards in the ruin of ’Tagos’ hut. She gave it to me to hold until you were well again.”

  “Thank you.” More than the newness of the torc, the feather was the confirmation of her wholeness.

  Breaca watched Airmid’s long, fine dreamer’s fingers weave the thread to the feather and the feather to the gold. “I thought they might come, now, at the end; the elder grandmother, the ancestor-dreamer and the Sun Hound and all those who came before and since. I have sat half the night awaiting them.”

  “If it were truly the end, they might do so. There is a battle first, before any endings come. Would their presence help you fight?”

  “No.” The thought made her grimace. “I can live without help from past ghosts.”