The White Mare: The Dalraida Trilogy, Book One

by Jules Watson

  ‘Can we not go closer?’ she begged Agricola over her shoulder.

  ‘No.’ He stood, hands behind his back, rocking easily with the motion of the ship. ‘I am not here officially, Samana, remember.’

  ‘But we can’t see anything!’

  Agricola smiled. ‘Then use your imagination, my witch. The burning will be the signal, soon enough.’

  But the sun had to sink two hand-spans before she saw the smoke at last rise against the sky, clouding it as blood clouds clear water.

  Chapter 52

  Eremon was saddling Dòrn in Calgacus’s stables, preparing to leave, when he heard the shuffling of feet. At the look on Conaire’s face beside him, he swung around. It was Lorn.

  The Epidii warrior was ill at ease, but kept his head high, his eyes fixed on the stable wall. ‘I did not return to Dunadd with the druid.’

  Eremon regarded him gravely. ‘I see.’

  ‘Lugh knows I have tried my best, prince of Erin, but I cannot defeat you. Perhaps the gods have sent you a different fate. The way you faced those men down …’ He looked at Eremon, puzzled. ‘It was not the response I expected.’

  ‘I will always act so.’

  Lorn let his breath out. ‘Urben’s son will be the servant of no druid, only of his own gods. And they seem to favour you, so I will listen.’ He eyed Eremon warily. ‘I do not like you, prince, but I am loyal to my people. What you said … about bonding the Epidii together, the people of Alba together … it felt like truth. A bard’s truth.’

  ‘And you are far-seeing to sense that,’ Eremon said. ‘I need you by my side.’

  ‘I have courage too, prince, and boldness. But know that my oath to you only lasts as long as the Roman threat. After we win … who knows?’

  ‘I will take my chances. Will you ride back with us?’

  Lorn nodded.

  ‘Conaire is my second-in-command in all things,’ Eremon added. ‘Your loyalty to him will not be displaced either.’

  Lorn met Conaire’s eyes, but when he spoke, it was to Eremon. ‘I won’t always agree with you.’

  ‘Nor would I want you to!’ Eremon grinned at Conaire. ‘You don’t accept my every word as law, do you, brother?’

  Conaire stretched his massive shoulders, holding Lorn’s eyes. ‘No. But I obey your direct orders.’

  Lorn nodded again. An understanding passed between them.

  When he had gone, Eremon and Conaire led their horses out into the sunlight.

  ‘Brother,’ Conaire remarked, ‘let’s get home now before any more surprises come our way. The Epidii cub, giving you allegiance! Hawen save us!’

  Eremon smiled. ‘Some have been good surprises, though. Now I have Calgacus’s personal support, a united tribe – and I still have a wife, just!’

  Conaire’s grin faded. ‘Eremon, what you said that night in the stable … about Rhiann.’

  ‘I don’t want to speak of it. It was the ale talking, that is all.’ Eremon buried his head in Dòrn’s flank, tightening his saddle.

  But he felt Conaire’s eyes on his back.

  Calgacus gave them a formal leave-taking, but on the day of departure was also there to see them off at the gate. He had come from his hunting hounds, and his faded tunic was marked with muddy paw prints, his hair tangled. But it was as if a golden light shone out from him over all others.

  ‘Farewell, prince of Erin.’ The King reached up to Eremon on his horse, and the two men clasped wrists.

  ‘I thank you for your support,’ Eremon answered.

  ‘That you have. If you are ever in need, then call on me. And I would be grateful if you’d keep me informed of all developments.’

  ‘Of course.’

  They smiled into each other’s eyes, and Calgacus lowered his voice. ‘I look forward to the time we take ale together again. Time to ride, time to talk.’

  ‘I, too.’

  ‘Well met, my son.’

  Calgacus watched them pass out through the tall gates of the Dun of the Waves, his hand raised. A lone bard sang their farewell from the battlements above, and a line of warrior-guards saluted with their spears.

  Up ahead, Rhiann and Caitlin rode beside Conaire with his standard. As ordered, Eremon had left Rhiann alone, but his eyes now followed the graceful line of her back. Though she was in love with Drust, she had not rejected Eremon as husband. The reasons were political, but still he had not lost her entirely.

  He sighed, the pain stabbing anew, just when he least expected it, and with one last glance at Calgacus he brought up the rear of the party.

  ‘My lord!’ Aedan dropped back beside him, his grey eyes dancing. ‘I have written a song about your meeting with the King, and your triumph over the druid. Will you hear it?’

  Eremon smiled his assent, and settled back in his saddle.

  Dunadd called them home.

  They smelled the smoke from a league away.

  ‘What …?’ Eremon drew rein and shaded his eyes against the low sun, gazing down the last rise in the track before it curved around the hills to Dunadd.

  Rhiann stopped too, patting Liath’s neck. The mare’s head drooped, and even Caitlin and Conaire’s jesting had long since fallen away into exhausted silence. Soon Rhiann would be home again; in her own little house, her own comfortable bed …

  ‘By the Boar!’ A string of curses rent the air, and Eremon wheeled to face them. ‘Lorn, take your men and escort the women back to the dun. If there is any sign of danger, then retreat with them into the hills until we know more. The rest of you, ride with me, as fast as you can.’

  ‘What is wrong?’ Rhiann cried. ‘What do you mean by “danger”?’

  Eremon’s eyes were chilled. ‘Crìanan is burning.’

  Chapter 53

  A rutted cart track led off the main path, angling towards the sea. As he galloped down it, Eremon strained to see across the marshes, and to his relief realized then that Dunadd itself was safe. The banner of the White Mare still flew from the King’s Hall.

  Crìanan was another matter. When they thundered up the ridge to the port, a ruin of smoking houses met their eyes. The piers had been burned to the waterline, and the corpses of wrecked boats lay forlornly on the tidal sands. The sound of women’s wailing filled the air.

  Across the dark bay, the palisade of the Dun of the Hazels was scorched and splintered, and smoke obscured its high crag. There, too, lay boats, half out of the water on the rocks, skeletons of blackened frames and broken masts.

  Eremon leaped to the ground and grabbed the shoulders of a man hauling a crumbling roof-post from the collapsed walls of a house. ‘Who did this?’

  The man’s eyes were soot-rimmed and heavy with grief. ‘The red invaders.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘A week ago. We dared not return until now.’

  Eremon released him, his throat closing over with rage.

  Finan met him outside the gates to Dunadd. ‘It was unexpected, my lord.’

  Eremon looked up at the sturdy gate timbers, the rock walls of the crag. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Five ships, with many oars. They ran in on a westerly from the Isle of Deer, so swift that the defenders at the dun only had time to launch a handful of boats. But they were soon rammed and sunk.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘The Romans bombarded the dun and the port with iron bolts and fireballs.’ Finan was pale. ‘My lord, they did all that from the ships, from the water!’

  Eremon closed his eyes. ‘Casualties?’

  ‘Around a hundred. The fishing fleet was out, thank the gods. But after the bombardment, soldiers landed, striking down all who had not fled, then leaping back aboard their ships. They left as swiftly as they came.’

  Eremon let his breath out. ‘If Dunadd was ignored, then it was not a concerted attack.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. It was a warning.’

  Sick with dread, Rhiann scanned the milling crowd at Dunadd from Liath’s back, but could not see Linnet. She leaped
down and pushed through the jostling bodies, then ran up the path through the Moon Gate. And there Linnet met her, and they threw themselves into each other’s arms.

  ‘I didn’t know if you were alive!’ Rhiann cried.

  ‘Inside here we were safe.’ Linnet’s eyes were shadowed with grief. ‘The poor souls at Crìanan were not.’

  ‘Dear Goddess! And what of Eithne’s family?’

  ‘They are well. Only Crìanan and the Dun of the Hazels were attacked.’

  ‘I’ll get my medicine bag, then. Take me to the injured right away.’

  ‘Daughter.’ Linnet’s voice was bleak. ‘They left none injured.’

  Eremon sent Lorn back to his father’s dun, with orders to mobilize the southern chieftains into a stronger chain of defence. The scouting posts on southern and western flanks were increased in size and number, but most importantly, all the cliff-top duns near the sea were furnished with beacons, to signal each other and Dunadd of seaborn threats.

  Eremon would not be caught out again. Agricola had a fleet, even though he did not come to destroy Dunadd.

  He came to teach me a lesson, Eremon thought. One that I have no intention of learning.

  And then it struck him that if Agricola had ships on the west coast, he likely had a sea presence in the east as well. And Calgacus’s people lived by the sea.

  He called for a messenger. ‘Deliver our news to Calgacus the Sword. Give it only to the King, in person, using my name as passage.’

  As he watched the messenger ride away from the gates, he wondered if the Caledonii nobles would consider this a ‘development’.

  For days, Eremon supervised the levies in the clearing of the destroyed buildings and piers. Linnet and Rhiann had the sorrowful task of attending to the funeral rites of the people who died, and purifying the site so that it could be built on again when the mourning period was over.

  So it was some time before people turned their attention to what had transpired at Calgacus’s dun.

  ‘Gelert rode in with a great rage in his face,’ Linnet told Rhiann on the beach, as they gave the last scatterings of ash and flowers to the sea. ‘He did not explain what happened, just gathered his belongings and told his brethren he was going away.’

  ‘Away where?’

  ‘To wander Alba, to commune with his gods, retreat into the forests: I do not know.’

  Gelert’s sudden departure was a relief, but when the first shock of the attack had receded, and the rebuilding began, Eremon knew it was time to carry the full truth of his background to the council himself.

  Lorn came from the south to speak for him, far more eloquently than Eremon would ever have expected from the brash young warrior, and Rhiann gave her support, showing little of the anger that still dwelt in her eyes whenever she looked at him.

  Declan the seer, who was now acting Chief Druid, was calmer and more practical than his master, and had never understood Gelert’s hatred of the prince. He listened carefully, his fingers interlaced at his chin, and then rose to report that he read the signs in the flight of the birds, in the entrails of a trapped hare, in the falling of bones across the diviner’s hide.

  And the gods were clear: the Epidii needed the prince of Erin now more than ever.

  For the fear of the Romans, which receded after the fort raid, had now returned in full. The people could not face being vulnerable again, leaderless, no matter what the prince had said or done. He was a strong war leader, he had trained many men, strengthened their defences – and perhaps most of all, he now had the support of Calgacus the Sword.

  Of all the Epidii, Talorc and Belen would not meet Eremon’s eyes, which grieved him. But he knew that Belen was a practical man, and would accept what was best for the tribe. And as for Talorc, Eremon’s daring gamble had appealed to a warrior like Calgacus, and eventually, no doubt, when his heart had cooled, would have the same effect on Brude’s cousin. Only Tharan voiced dissension.

  ‘Crìanan never would have happened if you had not launched that needless fort attack,’ he raged.

  ‘The council itself agreed to it,’ Eremon replied coolly.

  Tharan glowered beneath thick white eyebrows. ‘The Roman chief did this to get at you personally, prince. Instead of bringing us safety, you put us in danger!’

  ‘There may be some truth to that. But I guarantee that Agricola has also raided the east coast. He is testing us. And because of my levies, the strength that he saw here at Dunadd may make his step falter.’

  ‘Bah!’ Tharan shook his shaggy head. ‘Your tongue is gilded, and too much for me.’

  But he did not speak out again.

  It was some days before Rhiann retrieved Didius from Bran’s house. As she approached, she noticed that a strange arrangement of earth channels had been dug around it, filled with dark sludge that seemed to flow down the slope to the outer walls of the dun. On the upslope side, one of Bran’s daughters was emptying a pot of cooking water into a shallow pit.

  It seemed that Didius had kept his promise to Bran.

  Now she found him in the forge with the smith, plunging a new adze head into the water barrel. As the steam hissed and cleared, the Roman’s face emerged, blackened with soot and sweat. His tunic sleeves had been torn off to fit the length of his arms, and his upper lip was covered with a scraggly moustache. He looked happy.

  ‘Aye, he’s been a good apprentice,’ Bran confirmed, laying down his hammer. ‘Once the children stopped shrieking, they’ve quite taken to him. He tells them stories; he can speak properly now, all right.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Rhiann raised her eyebrows at Didius, who smiled shyly. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘Bran, I want you to remove his leg chains.’

  ‘Are you sure the prince would allow it?’

  ‘I will answer to the prince. Now take up your chisel.’

  Didius did not speak as they returned to her house, but his eyes remained so fixed on her face that he stumbled over a sack of wool outside the weaver’s shed.

  Rhiann caught his arm and steadied him. ‘Working suits you better than captivity, does it not?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I know you are a builder,’ she continued. ‘I freed you because I want you to help rebuild our port.’ She watched him carefully, wondering if he would refuse.

  He thought for a moment, and then his brow cleared. ‘I will do as you wish, lady.’

  ‘You have no objections to undoing the work of your own people?’ Her voice roughened with pain, and he coloured.

  ‘I do not love the slaughter of women and children. But do not ask me to strengthen Dunadd. Do not ask that of me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I cannot betray my commander. I will help you to build houses, or forge tools – but not create weapons or defences.’

  She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘You furnish us with no information. Nor can we access your skills for our own ends. So what is the reason to keep you here, son of Rome?’

  ‘Do you mean to send me back?’ His face lit up with hope.

  ‘Alas, no. You know too much of us.’

  ‘Then what will become of me?’

  Rhiann’s answer seemed to rise up from a deep part of her. ‘One day, our two peoples will meet on a great battlefield.’ As she said it, she knew it was truth, and smiled at him sadly. ‘Perhaps then you can return to them again.’

  ‘You have always been kind to me, lady. You saved my life.’ Didius pushed his chest out, but his cheeks flamed brighter. ‘Being your personal guard would not be a betrayal of my people.’

  Rhiann looked down at the short, round figure, the stumpy legs, the belly pouching over his belt. ‘I am honoured, Didius. But you must take an oath that you will not abuse the freedom, and seek to escape.’

  ‘I swear it on my father’s good name, and on my own honour.’

  ‘Then so be it. I hope never to need your services, but it would ease me to know that you are by my side.’

  The Roman’s dark eyes shone with pride.
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  Eremon’s reaction, however, was more prosaic. ‘Then he will have to defend you with his fists, for he cannot carry a weapon.’

  ‘He will not harm any of us.’

  ‘I doubt that applies to me.’ On the rocks above the beach at Crìanan, he and Rhiann watched alder piles being driven into the silt.

  ‘If he proves himself, in time can I furnish him with a spear?’

  ‘Perhaps. But why is this important to you?’

  Rhiann was caught off guard. ‘I don’t know. But there is something about him …’

  ‘Well, he obviously does not have the courage to attempt an escape, or to take his own life. So what use he will be to you, I can’t imagine.’

  From the walls of the Dun of the Tree, Samana watched the Roman ships gliding out of the harbour, their oars stabbing the air.

  They were bearing north, up the eastern coast. She did not know what Agricola’s plans were for them. He dealt with the Venicones leaders himself now – after she had put in all the work to bring about their surrender!

  She looked out across the field-strips below, golden rivers of barley flowing in the afternoon sun. Soon the harvest would begin, the granaries would fill … and Roman traders would come to lay silks at her feet, and unseal jars of wine for her to taste. Normally she gloated over such things, but today she did not care much for what went on in her own lands. Her heart was in the west, and it chafed her to know how close she had been.

  To him, the man to whom her own spell had bound her …

  Goddess curse all magic, curse the Romans … and above all curse him!

  Restless, she paced the length of the walls and back. Her sight was not as strong and clear as Rhiann’s. From here, she could not discern what Eremon did or said; how he moved and ate and slept.

  She could only hold up her memories to the late sunlight, one by one, examining them and wondering if he was happy.