Dreaming the Serpent Spear (16 page)

Breaca said, “It needs to be immeasurably better before we can take on a full legion.”

She wiped a slick of sweat from her face. On either side along the trackway, a dozen similarly disorganized skirmishes still raged, as warriors of all ages engaged legionaries in rings or lines. Plumed helmets in black and white reared at intervals above the lines of battle. She saw one in red that reached higher than the others, and watched it fall. Spears arced over and vanished into the mere.

Exhausted, Breaca sat on the turf and thought of Valerius and what he would say at the lack of discipline in the warriors of her war host. She thought of Ardacos, and how the she-bears he had led for ten years in the western war had not needed the discipline of rank and fear, but had followed the fire and heart of the bear with Ardacos as their leader in spirit more than in flesh.

She thought of the warriors of Mona and the years that went into the training of them, so that each took to the field in absolute trust of their own skill and those around them. She looked at the wavering line of untested, untrained warriors and considered what it would take to bring them to that. She felt the weight of her blade in the palm of her hand and the numbness that had been in her since the start of the day’s fighting and she ached almost to weeping for the loss of the sharp, exciting pain that drew her into battle and sang inside of immortality and of stories by the fire.

F
AR FROM THE FIGHTING, THE LEGION’S NIGHT CAMP ROCKED
to the rhythm of marching. Row after row, column after column, centuries of men flowed in through the gap in the trenches that Valerius had left as a gateway, dropped their packs in the place their tent would stand — where it had stood in every marching camp they had ever raised — and began to help with the digging of trenches, and the raising of the earth rampart with the network of crossed staves on top, and the pitching of tents and, as evening came, the building of fires and the cooking of meals.

They were drawing lots for guard duty, and finding in their packs the strips of dried mutton and figs and hazel nuts that would enliven the evening meal, when the peace was shattered by the harsh, high squeal of a legionary cornu blaring the alarm. Three notes sounded three times, with a gap left between the second and third repetitions, and a minor flurry at the end.

“Gods, they’ve cut off the whole of the third cohort and two centuries of the second. Your sister’s been busy.”
Because his life and the actions of the next few moments depended on it, Longinus spoke in Thracian, quietly, and contrived to frown.

In Latin, loud enough for anyone to hear, Valerius said, “The tail of the legion is under attack. Find Civilis. Be ready to ride.”

He was already turning. The legate’s pavilion lay offset to one side of the centre point of the camp, where the direct and lateral pathways crossed. The pennants of the legion and Cerialis’ personal mark of the dolphin in blued green on white hung still in the mist. Lucius, the message-youth newly branded for Mithras, stood outside with his head tipped up, like a hound startled into the scent.

Valerius called to him, “Cerialis? Where is he?” and followed the jerk of the boy’s head inside.

Finely cured goat hides scented with rosemary oil and rosewater made the roof and walls of the legate’s pavilion. A brazier kept it warm. A clerk’s desk was placed to one side.

Valerius caught the legate in the act of rising from his bath. He was damp and draped in linen about the thighs. His armour hung from the centre pole of the tent, slick with oil and polish.

“Your excellency?” Valerius let the tent flap crack closed behind him. “You heard the alarm? The rear part of the second cohort is under attack and the third is in grave difficulty. The centurions have already sounded the recall-at-speed, but if the Eceni war host has command of the forest, even those who can run may not be able to reach us here without help. With your permission, I would take Civilis and his Batavians and make the rearward centuries secure.”

There was a risk in offering a tactical opinion to the man who considered himself the master tactician of all Britannia, more skilled than any previous governor and at least the equal of the one currently waging war in the west. Valerius, waiting, took time to pray.

Cerialis reached for his undershirt. Whoever his bath-attendant had been, he was no longer present. He said, “How soon before they attack the camp?”

Valerius shook his head. “I don’t think they will. Even the Eceni are not mad enough to attack a fortified night camp, but the cornicen of the second cohort has signalled that his men are in combat against superior numbers and that he has lost connection with the ranks behind.”

Cerialis’ body was knotted with scars in front and behind, testament to tactics of attack and retreat that had been less than wholly successful. He pulled on his shirt.

“You can’t go,” he said. “The Batavians are not reliable.”

“Civilis has been with the Ninth since they were stationed on the Rhine.”

“And he dreams of death in glory in circumstances just such as these. You would find yourself at the centre of a bloodbath, with discipline abandoned in the quest for a name sung in the winter halls.”

The smell from the brazier was not unlike the one sacred to Mithras. The red of it was the red of spilled blood and the mottling of a bull’s hide. The governor’s armour was ruddy in the heat, and made a mirror, disjointedly.

Valerius took a soft step to the side, and another, until he could see the legate’s face clearly reflected alongside his own. Watching himself and the other man equally, he said, “We need horsemen to reach the rear ranks in time, or they
are lost. Better to risk Civilis than to lose the better half of the Batavians.”

Their eyes met, glancing off polished iron; a legate and a decurion-turned-messenger who offered tactics in a voice so dry, so clear, so lacking in emotion that it was hard to see past it.

Cerialis averted his gaze first. He reached for the beaker of wine that sat on the clerk’s desk and drank, savouring the richness. He did not offer any to the dry-voiced decurion standing just inside his tent. Presently, he said, “I need cavalry here; we can’t be without horsemen when the forest may be full of rebel warriors. Take the half-wing you brought here with you under Civilis’ command. Leave me the other half under his sister’s son, Henghes, who is prefect and would lead them now if they were not so heart-sworn to the old man. Find Henghes and send him to me. And signal the second cohort to make more speed in their retreat. The men are to reach here with all expediency, only to fight if actively engaged.”

“Excellency.”

The tent flap let in a little cold as it opened and closed. Cerialis drained his wine to the dregs and let the clerk-boy refill it before he looked again at the armour in which the decurion’s face had been reflected. It was hard to remember the shape of it, only the passion in the black eyes that was the opposite of the empty dryness of his voice.

Outside, Longinus held the white-legged colt for Valerius to mount. The beast stood well in the chaos of others’ mounting. Through the commotion, men of the second cohort flooded in, running now, knowing themselves lucky not to be caught in the carnage, and grateful to their legate for ordering them in to the safety of the night camp with its
ditches and stockade, not forcing them back to save men who were beyond saving.

Behind, half of the Batavians had mounted, half had not. Riding out, they took the track south, with Civilis at the head, and the horns of a full cohort sent them on their way. They kept to the centre of the paved trackway this time, pushing hard, and the legionaries of the second cohort ran sideways to let them past and then ran on again, in near-order, for the camp.

When there was no-one to overhear, Longinus said, “You have exactly what you wanted: the half-cohort that is most loyal to Civilis rides with us and the rest are left behind. Did you bewitch the legate?”

“No. I told him the truth and he heard it. The gods support that above everything else, always. Tell the standard-bearer to blow five times on his horn.”

Down the length of the ancestors’ stone trackway, the fivefold notes of a Batavian cavalry horn ripped apart the remains of the fog and let the sun in, blindingly.

Hearing it, knots of warriors and legionaries paused in their fighting. Blades and teeth and gouging fingers loosened their bite on flesh and skin and bone. Legionaries and warriors alike believed the sound signalled help for them alone, only that the warriors had been told to appear afraid, and did so, convincingly.

Without orders, or any coherent agreement, both sides stepped slowly back, relinquishing the narrow strip of green turf that had become their contested ground.

Early in the fighting, warriors who wanted to live had learned not to take on any groups of legionaries who formed
a shield-wall and advanced on them. The legionaries, for their part, had found that stepping off the trackway into the forest was suicide; once past the first rank of trees, it was impossible to hold their shields together, and with the wall gone, they were easy pickings for spear and sling.

Quickly, then, the narrow track of turf between forest and track had become the debatable territory, the no man’s land where neither legionaries nor warriors held sway. For no better reason than that it existed, and could be deemed a victory to take and hold, this band of green had become the focus of the fiercest fighting.

It lay open now, and quiet. Peace fell raggedly. Men and women on the brink of slaughter dared to breathe deeply and think of more than survival.

A hot afternoon sun burned away the last of the mist. Shafts of slanting light fell equally on the dead, the dying and those left standing who drank water from skins passed along each line and glared at those opposite. Behind them, the marsh lay innocent as a new day, spreading green-grey and flat but for rushes and tussocks of sphagnum moss. Damp scents spiked the air, delicate in the carnage.

Breaca stood in the shelter of a budding birch and counted the numbers left standing. For as far as she could see to either side, there were more warriors than legionaries amongst the living and more legionaries than warriors amongst the dead.

For these two facts, and for signs of battle sense emerging amongst pockets of previously untested warriors, she was grateful. For the lack of the passion within her, she was afraid and heart-sore and numb. She had killed efficiently enough, and given a lead to the youths who had followed her part of the battle, but the gap in her soul was vast as the eastern
horizon and the wind blew through without cease. She spun the hilt of her blade over and over in her hand and ached to hear the music that was gone.

“There are not many who will see what’s missing, and fewer who will know why.”

The voice spoke from just behind her left shoulder. Branches wavered and parted and Cygfa was there in a shine of blond hair laced with kill-feathers and a tight, taut smile and grey eyes sharp and hard as midwinter ice. Her face was freckled finely on one side with spots of dried blood, as if she had come too close to someone else’s death. Her blade hung at her side, unused. She was breathing lightly and fast, like a horse at the end of a race.

Cygfa had always been beautiful; she was everything of Caradoc, her father, but made as woman and more graceful. Two years’ imprisonment in Rome with the half-man her father had become had left her quieter and harder, less forgiving of others and startlingly savage in battle. Rape after rape by the procurator’s men had driven her further down the same path; she was bright and brittle, like a blade that has been over-polished and must rust soon, or break.

There was nothing to be done, or said. Airmid had offered healing and been turned down after three days. Only Valerius, flawed and clearly damaged, had offered a kind of example. Alone of the warriors, Cygfa had accepted him without question, seeing in him the one man who could teach her how to destroy everything of Rome.

Breaca said, “Have you run down the full length of the track?”

“Most of it.” Cygfa grinned, and accepted the water-skin. She rinsed her mouth and spat and the water was
threaded red where her lungs had bled a little from the run. “There was no reason to stay after I’d passed on Valerius’ signal and I wanted to get here before him.”

“To see him fight?”

“Partly. I saw him in Gaul; he’ll be different now and I would like to see it. But not only that.” Cygfa handed the skin back. Her gaze was sharp and cold as a flaying knife in winter and she made no effort to soften what it cut. “If it comes to a battle between your brother and your son for leadership of your warriors, do you know who you would have as your successor?”

Except Valerius, no-one else had dared touch on this. There was relief in having it spoken so openly. Breaca said, “You have already chosen. You showed it on the morning the messenger died. With your clear support, it should not come to a battle, only to words.”

“Possibly, but Valerius will need more than me on his side if the war host are to accept him. The youths only know what they see, but most of the spear-leaders are old enough to remember when he was burning their steadings and slaughtering their warriors. It is not only Cunomar who believes he will side with Rome again in the end.”

“He knows that. It’s why he took the message from Camulodunum to Cerialis himself when he could as easily have sent Hawk or Longinus. He’s brought the Ninth legion this far. We may only have trimmed the tail of the snake, but we wouldn’t have done it without him.” Breaca watched Cygfa shrug. “You think it’s not enough?”

“It’s a start. He needs to be seen in battle, not just by us, but by the legions. When it’s obvious whose side he’s on, the warriors will begin to see who he is and what he can do.
Until then, they are waiting each moment for him to betray us, and they’ll side with Cunomar if there’s any conflict in the meantime.”

“There will only be conflict if I am seen to be failing,” Breaca said. “It won’t happen before Valerius is ready.”