Dreaming the Serpent Spear

by Manda Scott

  Cygfa fought beside him, a shining beacon in the noon sun. She struck and swung and pulled her colt back, and shouted, “We can do it! Valerius, your name will be sung at every winter fire for generations. What a father this child will have!”

  They were killing and not dying. In the centre, Breaca held her warriors together and they, too, killed more than they lost. On the understanding of that, a battle hinges. Valerius saw desperation grow in the expressions of those he faced and, for the first time, began to believe the war host might win.

  He was thinking that when the trumpets blew again, differently. In the valley, where the governor held his reserves, two thousand rested men moved into formation and marched forward, ready to fight.

  The last two cohorts of the XIVth legion came over the ridge in a slower wave than those who had come before.

  They descended the slope steadily, in fast, tight order, with their shields together and their blades poking between. On reaching level ground again, the men at the sides turned their shields outwards, making a grid of wood and iron that only a long, fast cavalry charge might fracture.

  There was no way to withdraw before them; discipline among the warriors had long since been lost, and any chance of retreat in order. As far as Breaca could see was a boiling mess of battle and all behind her.

  If they come at you in tight ranks and you can’t go back, break out to the side. Don’t give them a front to come in at.

  Valerius had said that twice in the evening and again in the morning. Knowing what might come, he had used his warriors to give her room, luring the cavalry out to the side. She thanked him for that, alive or dead, and saw the way she could go.

  “Out!” She shouted it over the tumult. “Out to the sides! Make them spread out to reach us!”

  Her voice was lost in the clash of living and dying. Gunovar heard her and the two dozen of her closest honour guard. They passed the message on. It moved sluggishly through the fighting mass, slowing to a standstill in pockets where to live mattered more than to pass a message of things that happened too far away to be seen.

  Five spear-lengths to the legionaries. Few of these bore javelins; most carried the short, stabbing gladii, knifing out between the shields. Breaca looked around her and saw no enemy close. Taking a risk, she drew the colt high into a rear and raised her sword arm high.

  “The sides! Go out to the sides.”

  They heard her then, the hundreds who were close, or they saw the flash of sunned metal and knew her and the colt who had become a second Hail, and fought for her with the heart of a hundred warriors. The war host opened, slowly, like a stick untidily cleft, ready to absorb the oncoming men.

  The enemy heard her too, or knew her by her hair and the torc and the cloak; it had mattered to be seen and known.

  Somewhere nearby, she heard her name shouted, in Latin. A trumpet sounded a rippling clarion that held her name somewhere within it, and was the cry of the huntsman to his hounds, on finding a greater and better quarry. The whole mass of the legion swayed her way.

  “Move!” That was Hawk, at her side. His colt was married to hers, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “Get out! If they catch us here, against the mass of the battle, they’ll crush us as a hammer crushes tin.”

  Gunovar came to her other side. The honour guard closed on her, a shield of living flesh. Together they cut across the grain of battle, fighting towards clear land at the edge.

  They were within sight of clear land when the javelin hit. Iron punched her left arm, high up, above the ridge of her shield. She grabbed at the colt’s mane and held her breath against the flooding blackness and a long, cold wait before the pain.

  Jubilation followed her from the legions’ ranks behind. In the blurring confusion was a memory of Valerius by the fireside, dry in his humour, in the time before he gave her the spear. If you’re hit, nothing will stop them. Even so, I think it would be better if you were not.

  She felt the touch of his mind, and of Airmid’s, and there was cool and a sense of running water and it mattered only to stay mounted and to fight a way out across turf churned to blood and thick with the dead and debris of both sides: corpses and armour and weapons that made every footfall treacherous.

  Somewhere a crow called, and the deep bass tones hummed through her chest. She threw her shield away and felt better, and pushed the white-legged colt towards clear land.

  Graine had sat with the warriors as they planned a strategy that made her mother a visible target and had hated it and still had not found a good reason to argue. Death came in war; if Briga sought a life, no amount of care would save it; if Briga chose to spare a life, no amount of risk would end it.

  It was Briga, then, who had put a solid line of horse warriors in the way when the Roman governor in the white plumed helmet recognized her mother and directed the javelins of his men against her.

  His order had seen the fury of the battle redoubled, when it was already as hard and as hot and as murderous as anything Graine had ever seen. Blades flashed brilliant in the sun and the screaming wounded drowned the war howls of tiring warriors. For too-long moments, it was impossible to know who lived and who died.

  Graine looked away, to the farther side of the field where Ardacos held a small knot of the bear-warriors and guided them as a warrior guides a thrusting-spear. Beyond him, Cunomar was recognizable even across the field of battle by his white limed hair that stood proud from his head and the king-band he wore on his arm. He and his bear-warriors were engaged with the flank of the enemy and had withstood one cavalry charge, melting away to let them through and running in after to cut the horses’ hamstrings from behind. They had learned that from the Batavians in the battle for the invasion, and put it to good use now against them.

  The front had become skewed and they were fighting with their backs to the ridge. Graine watched her brother sprint up to the top of it, to gain momentum in the run down so that he could better leap for the back of a passing horse and haul the rider to the ground. He had endless energy. His third run was as fast as the two before it — only that he stopped on the ridge and looked across to where the Boudica was enmired in the spreading mass of the XIVth legion.

  Or, perhaps, had broken free.

  Airmid said, “Hawk’s alive,” and so Graine had turned back to look and saw the moment when the white-legged colt broke free of the battle’s edge out into the clear ground beyond.

  Theophilus, physician of Athens and Cos, said, “That wound won’t kill her,” and it mattered a great deal to believe him.

  Those who fought with the Boudica were not of the same opinion. Gunovar was there and Hawk and they were clearly trying to persuade her to put aside the late-sky cloak and put on a helmet and make herself less of a target.

  There was a moment when it seemed she might have agreed, but it was already too late for that; a hammerhead of legionaries had broken free of the melee and was coming for them in disciplined formation and Valerius and his honour guard were fighting Corvus’ cavalry just behind, so that even if they had managed to render her ordinary, there was nowhere left for them to run. They made a stand, therefore, because there was nothing left to do.

  Graine watched Hawk lean down to wrench a shield from a dead warrior and pass it up to Breaca with something that looked like a salute and then Gunovar found a spear and they set their horses in a line, with the honour guard finding order at the sides, just in time to meet the first of the oncoming men.

  It was not possible, then, to look away.

  Finally, Corvus was close enough to be seen.

  His presence burned through the necessary concentration of battle, until the flashing blades and sweating, crashing masses of horseflesh became thinly grey. Valerius fought and lived by instinct, not thought, and that instinct drew him forwards, to the man on the bay mare who battled in a halo of god-given protection close to the edge of the main fighting.

  A cavalryman came at Valerius and died and it occurred to him that he, too, lived in th
at same halo, where men died because he did not have to waste time in thinking, only needed to let his body act.

  He was within almost-reach of the black colt when something sighed in the midst of battle. By chance, the fighting mass ahead of him swayed open, and by chance he looked through.

  “Breaca’s down!” Someone screamed it. Later, he found it was himself.

  Corvus turned before anyone else. His standard-bearer turned a little after, and a trumpeter after that, who sounded a single note, as of the hunt that has found fresh quarry. The bay mare leaped high as a deer and came down nearer to Breaca.

  The Eceni had the better horses; Valerius was sure of that. He set the Crow-horse racing, and did not care who came with him or who might try to get in the way.

  The new shield was too heavy, which was why Breaca dropped it too low, which was, in turn, what let in the blade that smashed across her back so that only the mail shirt she wore kept her living.

  Her white-legged colt was twisting away even as the blade was coming in, but the dead on the ground made the turn unsmooth so that the arc of it threw her off balance and the force of the blow sent her down.

  She rolled, and did not hit any loose blades, which was a miracle.

  She rose and Hawk had thrown himself from his own horse and was beside her, helping her up, and then Gunovar too had dismounted and pushed in tight on the other side and they were fighting on foot with the horses behind them and the honour guard desperately trying to keep the legionaries at bay.

  They failed, and drew back to the flanks so that the Boudica’s three could fight unhampered, and yet not fear attack from the sides.

  In an odd way, it felt better than riding above the battle, working strategy against the legions. Breaca tasted her own sweat and the blood of dead men and savoured them, and raised the too-heavy shield again to block a strike that came for her head and knew that she could count on the fingers of her one good hand the number of times left she could do that.

  She wanted to tell Hawk and Gunovar to leave her and knew she had not the breath and that if she had, it would be wasted. She blocked another blow, badly. The edge of the blade flashed by her face. Hawk struck at the man who had delivered it and did not hit him. They were all tiring now.

  Breaca said, “We should … stand back to … back.” She had learned that on Mona a long time ago as the way for warriors to die who knew there was no future.

  Hawk nodded, and licked his lips and waited until the smash of the next shield pushed him round. Gunovar stepped back and fitted in the space between. Breaca slipped on spilled guts and came up again and Hawk was still there, pressing his shoulders against hers, solid and sure and dependable. Of all her children, she had never thought to die in the presence of the newest. It left hope, at least, that the others might live.

  The thinning ranks of the honour guard gave way. Two legionaries came at her at once.

  Breaca struck back with her own blade and was lucky; it glanced off one helmet into the cheek of the man beside, who reeled back, holding his face and screaming.

  Blood splashed in her eye, blinding her. She blinked hard and when she could see next, both of the men in front of her were dead and Valerius was where they had been, protecting her bodily with the Crow-horse, slashing frantically on both sides. A dozen warriors of Mona followed him, spreading death in their wake.

  Very quickly, where had been mayhem was a circle of quiet.

  Breaca felt Hawk sag against her and tried to remain standing; to fall now would humiliate them both.

  Her brother threw out orders as a green-stick fire throws sparks; Huw and three other slingers took position in front of her, and warriors behind; Longinus and Cygfa came up on either side to support the three standing warriors. Valerius turned in and she could not read his face. “Breaca, can you mount?”

  The white-legged colt was too far away to reach. It was hard to think clearly. She said, “Your horse won’t take us both.”

  He stared at her blankly, then, “I know. I didn’t mean that. I just need to know if—”

  “Bán!”

  She screamed the wrong name. The gap when he did not know himself nearly killed him. Someone else knew it first and faster. A bay mare that she had reared from a foal slewed round in a perfect turn. A blade came for her brother’s head, swung by a man who had once been a friend.

  She screamed that name, too, and did not expect him to answer; Corvus brought death and, this time, would not be deflected.

  Corvus brought death; Valerius answered him.

  There was no respite in the fighting about them, no quarter given from either side to let them settle it alone, only one more man to fight in the disintegrating chaos of the battle and others coming in at either side. From the edge of his eye, Valerius saw Huw fit a slingstone and shouted “Don’t!” and did not know why he had done so.

  Iron flashed in the too-hot sun. Corvus’ blade came murderously for his head. The Crow-horse spun out of the way and reared and slashed, because Valerius had thought it, or the beast had thought it and Valerius had followed its lead; in battle, there was no distinction between these two, and never had been.

  Corvus’ mount was almost as good. A bay mare marked with the brand of the Eceni on its shoulder, it skittered sideways, avoiding the dead on the ground, spinning to send its rider forward with his shield high, protecting them both, and his blade coming up in an underhand stab that reached for Valerius’ heart.

  His face was clear above it, framed by a helmet that bore dents on either side with the black hair fringed below and the wide black eyes and the runnels of sweat and the lucid, focused concentration that had lasted through the day and would last on as long as was needed.

  They could have spoken, perhaps, between the sobbing breaths of battle, but there was nothing left to say.

  If I die first, I will wait for you.

  Neither had said, If you kill me, I will still wait, but it had been there, and was again, thick in the air between them.

  Valerius countered the stab and turned his open shoulder in to give a target and danced the Crow-horse back when the invitation was not taken and the edge of a shield came instead for his face, and then his arm. He swung his own sword at an exposed flash of brown skin and saw blood spring fresh to the surface.

  The surprise of that slowed his shield so that he, in turn, was wounded on the thigh, and a long scrape up the neck of the Crow-horse who screamed its own anger and high-stepped over a wounded Siluran and rose and lashed out and came down again too soon, stumbling: for all its heart and hate, the Crow-horse, too, was tiring.

  Valerius had never thought to sit on this horse and find it tired. Shock clove his heart as Corvus had not done. The doors to his mind fell open then, and the hallways were empty of everything; of gods and love and past and present; of a child unborn and a sister newly healed; of strategy and tactic and basic battlefield survival; everything but the impossibility of losing this horse and finding a life worth living beyond.

  Despair dragged at him, heavy as death. Through a rising red mist, it came to him that he was tired and beyond tired and, because he had seen it in others, he knew that this killed more men than stupidity or arrogance or bad luck together.

  He and his horse slewed round, avoiding another strike by too small a margin.

  If I die first…

  We could die together, which would befitting, and good. A glimmer of that, and how it might be made to happen, probed through the fog.

  Searching for open ground, he dragged the Crow-horse back. Corvus followed, as if joined by birth-cords neither could break.

  The rest of the battle had faded to nothing; after Huw, no-one among the war host had attempted to intervene, except to keep killing the legionaries and the cavalry and make space for Valerius to do what he must. To his left, Breaca had not yet found a horse. He wanted to shout to Cygfa and had not the time nor the breath.

  Valerius feinted and feinted and each time let his shield drop, because he w
as tired, and Corvus, who knew him best, saw it, and came in harder. Valerius struck and was countered and the back stroke cut him again, on the neck this time, where the armour ended. He jerked his head back and swore and let the Crow-horse dance sideways as well as it could and waited for the next cut, which should come high, above his shoulder, and did, so that he—

  “Valerius! Move!” That was Longinus; in time, with the right name and still too late.

  The Crow-horse was already turning. He owed his life to that. The blade sang with his soul’s name and shaved hide and metal from his back. He had nothing ready to counter the stroke, and the horse, which might have done so, was spent. He used his knees to turn it and it answered more slowly and the backswing this time was aimed not for him, but for the horse; a broad, arcing sweep that took its neck as the god took the bull at slaughter, opening vessels and windpipe down to the bone so that it fell as if pole-axed and only the fact that they had been turning threw him clear.

  “NO!”

  He screamed for the horse, which could make no sound. The Crow-horse lay thrashing in a mindless gallop. Its life blood flooded the earth, whipped to foam by its ending breath.

  Life was still in its eyes. Valerius threw himself bodily for its head and lay along it, weeping.

  They gave him space for that, the men and women who lived and died around him, because to grieve for a horse mattered more than the battle. Or perhaps they left him for Corvus who had brought his own horse to a standstill and watched, white-faced, above.

  There were no words. Corvus said them anyway. “I’m sorry. It will wait for you, as I would have done. It’s better like this. Your war host is losing. The reserves of the Fourteenth have broken them. When the Twentieth are sent, it will be over.”

  They had trained together so often in how a mounted man might make a sure kill of the enemy on the ground. Valerius made himself stand, because he would not die lying down. The gods made his world slower, that he might seem to live longer. In a timeless infinity, he saw the beginnings of the sweep that would finish him, and mapped its progress, back and round and down towards his head—