by Manda Scott
Cunomar had never heard who won that fight, so many generations ago. Now, the fault in the blade cost Hawk his life, or seemed to. The great blade leaped from his hand like a salmon at spawning, and sailed high, spiralling, to come to rest three strides from where he stood.
Three strides, and it might as well have been three days’ ride. Hawk stood unarmed before the wolf-caped rider and smiled at him, as a true warrior smiles facing death. He drew his knife, which was a brave thing, and pointless; even the she-bear would have had trouble against such as this.
He threw a smile at Cunomar, said, “Take care of Graine for me!” and stepped in to face his end.
Three strides. The blade was within Cunomar’s reach. He had almost taken it up, for the ease of it, and the chance to give it back to Hawk, that he might at least die with his brother beside him and the ancester-blade in his hand.
The shade of Eburovic stopped him, solid as the earth, as the sky, as the sweating, blowing colt and the black-bearded man who rode it. His grandfather stood before him, so close that Cunomar could see every wrinkle and line in his skin, could see the brown eyes and their care for him, could feel the eternal cold that wrapped him, could hear again the words that had been cut into Cunomar’s soul since before he returned to his homeland. If my grandchild ever wields my blade, know that the death of the Eceni will follow, and then, newly, Is one man’s life, even your brother’s, worth so much loss? The she-bear is your god and my dream. In her name, I ask you not to do this.
There was nothing he could do. His oath was to the bear, his soul given into her care in the caves of the Caledonii. The binding was complete and for life and there was nothing and no-one who could override it.
He was caught in the living reality of his nightmare, but that it was Hawk who was under attack and by a wolf-man, not a bear. He could still fight, though. He had his knife and his courage and his brother had need of him. Cunomar turned, ready to help, and found that he was already too late, and that the nightmare was made complete.
“Hawk!”
No-one heard her shout this time; the noise of battle was too great. Graine watched her brother’s blade fly high from his hand and gouge a line in the earth less than a spear’s length from the back of her horse. Dubornos had been sworn to her, and she had let him die, because he wanted it. Hawk was sworn to her before all the others and so she to him and he manifestly did not want to die; he had said so to the deer-elders on the night of the horned moon.
The grey race-filly stood still as stone. Graine slid to the ground and was running even as Cunomar was running. He might have reached the blade before her, but he faltered and she did not. The thread that drew her to the weapon was the soul-thread that had bound her to the hare, only brighter, because now they were in battle. She lifted it and heard the song at last.
The hilt swamped her hands. The blade had its own balance in the way the practice blades on Mona had never done. The feeding bear on the pommel offered its own weight and its own momentum. It dipped down, so that the long sweep of blued iron that was the blade rose without effort; and all she had to do was let her hands be the balance point between the two.
The ease of it was uncanny, so that she stared at the blade and the old marks made by the ancestors, and the new ones hacked by Hawk in his endeavours and—
“Graine!” Someone screamed her name, from beyond the end of the blade. She looked up, remembering the battle. Wolfskin came at her, grinning, and another man at his side.
She heard the wolf-caped one shout, “Flavius! This one’s mine! Her life for Corvus!” and the earth rolled with the hammer of their horses and their blades sang for her life and somewhere the elder grandmother said, Now is the time of choosing. Which matters most, your line or your land? which made no sense even as she saw Cunomar leap for the man, Flavius, with his blade bared and Hawk at his side and together they might reach him, but that still left Wolfskin, who had proved himself in battle, and now came directly for her, grinning, with his blade swept back.
She tasted death and tried not to be afraid and failed.
Then her mother was there, throwing the white-legged colt forward in all her terrible fury, and Stone was at her side, where he had wanted to be all through the battle.
The grandmother smiled and said, Good, and the world was made right.
She felt her father close.
He had been there from the moment she had slithered from the back of Valerius’ horse; a silent presence, watching. He was not alone. The grandmother was there, and the ancestor-dreamer and the Sun Hound and his lineage; they stood all around, these ancestors of her line, in the place where their children’s children lived or died. She listened for the deep bell-note of Briga’s crow and did not hear it any louder than it tolled for all the other dead.
Hawk fought brilliantly. Even as she saw him lose the blade, she knew that she had seen something exceptional and that others had seen it, enough to be sure the memory of it lived on after his death. She began the keening to Briga as the blade fell from his hands, and then stopped, because Cunomar had stepped close and she heard her own father, as clearly as she had first heard him, saying, If my grandchild ever wields my blade, know that the death of the Eceni will follow. I trust you to see it does not happen.
Cunomar heard him too. She saw him stop, and put his hand to his face and turn away from the blade and draw his knife instead. Relief left her weak, and not looking beyond so that it was too late when she shouted.
“Graine! No!”
I trust you to see it does not happen.
Far, far too late. The world hung on a blade’s edge and was falling to destruction. Graine, slim, slight, fragile and as recognizable as her mother, had walked onto the field of battle with a blade in her hand, and was about to die for it. Distantly, she heard Venutios set his question again. If it comes to the choosing, which matters more, your line or your land?
She had no idea if it had come to the choosing, only that Graine must not die. There was a poor spear’s throw between the oncoming cavalrymen and the child who carried all hope for a future in the light of her smile.
Two men came at once, each seeking the glory of having slain the Boudica’s daughter. Her two sons dealt with the incomer, Flavius, and killed him. The gods gave her the other, the wolf-caped savage, as their gift. She set the white-legged colt into a leap that halved the distance and brought him up alongside. Stone came from the other side, running almost as sound as he had done through his youth. Her heart leaped to see him.
The wolf-man did not swerve. He saw the woman, the horse and the hound and deemed them no threat. His blade was within reach of Graine.
He was right; she was too far away to stop him, except there was a move that her father had taught her, lifetimes ago, when the names of the heroes were still sung by the fire, and the ways they had died in the certain saving of others. She had never practised it; even in play-fights, the risk had always seemed too great. She set the parts one by the other in her mind now, and they were perfect.
She had less than a horse’s length to make herself ready, to leap for the neck of the oncoming horse, cutting up for its throat even while her weight pulled down and round as a bear does in the kill, so that it stumbled and fell and she heard the crack of its neck and the scintillating havoc of an armoured body slamming into the ground at a speed that must surely be fatal, before she let herself know that a sword blade had already hit her, quite hard, somewhere under her bad arm. That was always the risk: the heroes had all died making this move; it was why they were heroes.
She heard Graine, and Valerius, and her father, all say her name. Somewhere nearby, Stone howled, and Hail with him.
The world closed into black.
CHAPTER 46
VALERIUS RODE IN THE MEMORY OF A DREAM BECOME A nightmare. He rode a white-splashed black horse at speed from a battlefield, but it was Graine who clung on behind him, not Breaca. His sister was on the race-bred grey filly, held on by a wrap of her own cloak
that bound her and kept her from falling.
Her family surrounded her; an honour guard of blood and spirit sworn to shield her with their lives. Cunomar rode on one side with Stone slung across his saddle; in the midst of battle, as they shouted orders for the rear guard, he had stopped to pick up the hound his mother loved. Ulla followed him, with Hawk and Cygfa on the sword side. Airmid, Bellos and Theophilus came bunched together behind.
They galloped fast, but not fast enough to outrun the blood that Breaca was losing, nor, possibly, the half-wing of tiring cavalry who followed, led by Sabinius, who had been standard-bearer even in Valerius’ time and, like Civilis, should have died long since. He drove his men like one possessed, screaming Corvus’ name.
Ardacos was there to stop him, standing in a circle drawn in the dirt, oath-sworn to remain there until death forced him out, to take as many of the enemy with him as he could, knowing those who died on either side would serve as worthy companions in the long trek through the other-forests to the welcome of the she-bear in whose care they might rest and hunt and fight and rest again, for ever blessed.
He was not alone. Fifty of his own warriors, old, scarred men and women who had lived two decades in the care of the she-bear, drew their own circles in the earth and made the bear-line on either side of Ardacos. Behind them, in a second row, stood Scerros and the younger warriors who had followed Cunomar.
One other was there, newly come to their ranks: seeing them make their stand, and only barely understanding, Knife had swung off his horse and joined them, swearing his soul to the bear as had only ever been done twice before on the field of battle; and now a third time.
They were of the bear and the bear was in them and Valerius had no doubt they would sell their lives dearly, but that the cavalry would still overwhelm them. To buy more time than they alone could manage, Longinus drew together the horse-warriors of Mona to stand on either side of this line of living shields. Thus was Valerius’ oath to him broken; to stay now in the chaos of the retreat was to die. They had both known that in the frantic moments of parting.
“I will wait for you in the gods’ care,” Longinus had said, “however long it takes. Don’t forget me, when you meet the others who will be awaiting you.”
Valerius had clasped him close and kissed him. “I won’t forget. Beyond life, there are no limits to love. I will come to you, and there will be time, then, for all that has never been said.”
“It would be good to hear that.”
They had parted then, and not too soon. Huw had stayed to help Longinus, and Madb and all the horse-warriors of Mona and of the Eceni, and there had been no time for a proper parting from any of them. The trumpets were calling and those who remained faced more than the remnants of the Quinta Gallorum; the last cohorts of the XXth were coming from where they had waited through all the long day for their moment of triumph.
The battlefield was a slaughterhouse, and the refugees in their wagons were as sheep awaiting the cull. Between and beyond, warriors stayed to fight, or ran, as their instincts drove them; whichever they chose, most of them died.
There was room for hope that Ardacos’ bears and the horse-warriors who fought under Longinus’ command were better led and better trained and so might live, but numbers did not tell in their favour.
They were giving their lives so that the Boudica’s honour guard might live; it mattered to remember that. Valerius ran his hand along the black coat and it came back wet with sweat and other men’s blood as it had in all the repetitions of his dream. His horse jumped a log. A long-practised part of him waited to fall off as they landed, and did not.
Airmid came up alongside. Breaca’s blood stained her tunic. Clotted streaks of it painted her face. She looked more fearsome than the she-bear had ever done.
Over the thunder of running horses, she said to Valerius, “In the dream of your childhood your left hand was cut off at the wrist. If you have altered that much with the changing paths of your life, we can be grateful.”
He shouted back, “I would rather lose a hand than lose Breaca.”
“We’re not given that choice. We can’t change what has happened, only keep Graine safe, and Cygfa, and the child she will bear. Do you know of anywhere we can go so that Breaca can be quiet at the end? A god-space would be good, if there are any in the mountains that will hold us.”
Thus did Airmid of Nemain give Valerius of Nemain and Mithras the key to all that was of the other part of him. He looked for a peak he knew, and measured the distance to it.
“If we can ride hard, there’s a cave that I know of, given in recent years to Mithras, but other gods were there first. It’s near the fortress of the Twentieth but that’s empty; Paullinus pulled every last man and servant out for the attack on Mona.”
“Can you get us there in time, do you think?”
“Yes.” His horse was fresher than any of those who might follow, and it had been trained by Civilis, who was one of the greatest horsemen of his age.
Valerius set his courage and his mount to the first of the slopes that led to the mountain and heard the others follow him. They were nine, and one of them dying, and they left behind a battle whose loss spelled the ending of a nation.
The rider walked his horse out of the trees near dusk, as they made the foot of the mountain. Valerius swung his blade at the misted shape, and then drew it back again, hissing through his teeth.
“You’re late,” he said. “The battle’s over.”
“If the battle were what mattered most, then I would, indeed, be late,” said his father, Luain mac Calma, Elder of Mona. He moved his mare alongside the white-legged colt so they rode head to head up the track. “Are you going to the cave of the bull god?”
“Unless you have something better.”
“Not at all.”
“Will you come?” It surprised Valerius how much he wanted that.
“I think not. You can do all that is needed. I’ll wait here, and guide you to Mona after. The island is safe for now, and when it is no longer so, we have a welcome in Hibernia for everyone who survives the battle. There will be more than you fear and less than you hope.”
Valerius did not have the heart to think of more dead. “Will Rome make Mona unsafe?” he asked.
“Yes, and eventually Hibernia too, but not in our lives, or our children, or our children’s children, and there will be time before that to do what is needed so that the line may survive while the land is in thrall to the descendants of Rome. Go now. Breaca needs you more than a future that may never happen.”
They came to Mithras’ cave at dusk, exhausted and riding spent horses, and found the place abandoned to the gods of stone and water.
The waterfall outside with its spreading hazels was thin with a summer’s lack of rain. A winter’s rock fall had partly obscured the entrance. A jar of honey had been stuffed into a crevasse, and someone had offered a child’s toy sword, not yet rusted. Otherwise, Valerius could see no sign that anyone had been up since he had so rashly removed the false trappings of the god.
He was too tired to think. He let the colt slow to a halt and dropped to the ground on legs that would barely hold him. The grey race-filly slowed with him. Breaca lay along its neck, pliant as a child in sleep.
“Is she still alive?” That Airmid had to ask made the question more urgent.
“Yes.”
He left them and used his hands to scoop aside the worst of the rubble from the entrance. All the way up the mountain he had thought of the tight, snaking passage and the last difficult drop into the cave. Cygfa, Cunomar and Hawk had joined him by then, clearing stones. Theophilus filled waterskins from the river. Bellos and Airmid held Graine safe between them, and kept Stone holding to the last threads of life.
Valerius said, “The way in is hard even when you’re awake and whole. We’ll need light inside. I’ll go in first, and light a fire and come back.”
He lit more than a fire. In their haste to abandon their shrine, the officiate
s of the bull god had left behind reed torches hung on iron wall brackets and a handful of honey-tallow candles and a miniature brazier, still heavy with old charcoal, and a cache of tinder lodged beneath.
He lit both from the ember-pot Airmid had given him and crouched, breathing life into the flame until the light loosed its rippling, incandescent magic across the god’s lake at one side of the cave, and lit to brilliance the eternal shining wetness of the walls and ceiling that arched above.
Once, he had been blinded by the magnificence of the god’s fire laid across water in the utter darkness of the cave. Now, he stood surrounded by jewelled light and his heart was a black cavern, filled with too much fear to acknowledge beauty, or remember awe.
From the numbness of utter loss, he asked the favour of both of his gods to remain in this place that had been most recently given only to one of them. Mithras did not walk to him across the water with his hound at his heels as he had once done, but Valerius allowed himself to feel a sense of welcome, and carried it to those waiting outside.
The way in was hard, and harder with Breaca, who was cool by then, and slippery with her own sweat. They carried her to the lake’s edge, where the brazier had settled to glowing coals and made the water a sheet of lost blood. The blushing scarlet gave her colour, so that she looked almost well, as if she slept in the wake of battle and could rise again, and fight again and this time win.
So that she might be warm and comfortable, they made a bed of folded cloaks and a pillow from the sheepskin saddle pad from Graine’s pony. They set Stone alongside and he had life enough left for his warmth to reach her. Airmid sat by her head, Bellos by her feet, Valerius held one side and Cygfa the other. Graine sat near the brazier, silent and white. Hawk kept vigil near the entrance, and left after a while, to set signs for Cunomar and Ardacos, in case they should survive and should track them this far.
He came back and nothing had changed but that more blood had seeped from the wound in Breaca’s side, staining the pale blue of her cloak. He took his place again in silence.
