Dreaming the Serpent Spear (19 page)

“When there are thirty, we can attack. Any more and we’ll be seen. There are never any fewer. I’ve watched enough camps in the western mountains to know that much, whatever the songs say about the absolute dark of the Boudica’s raid.”

Another fire flickered out. Patches of dark leaked through the night. Around Cunomar, the remaining she-bears drank water, and did not speak. The sweat and grease of their bodies warmed the night. A warm wind blew their smell ripely back into the forest, away from the camp.

Within the stockade, a string of six camp fires rippled to nothing one after the other, as if a god had blown them
out. Cunomar spun his knife high and caught it. His guts fluttered liquidly and were still. His missing ear was painless. He braced his feet slightly apart and swung his shoulders a little to loosen them. The earth rocked to the rhythm of his feet, pleasantly. He swayed with it, back and forth, and came to a still point in the centre.

The earth continued to rock under his feet.

Ulla said, “Horses. Two of them. Coming through the forest, not up the track.”

“Cavalry. Valerius has turned traitor.” There was no time to think, and no need. Cunomar spat. There was time for that. A flashing of eye whites and naked iron showed him where the thirty-eight blades of his honour guard waited for his command.

A small part of him considered storming the night camp and, with enormous regret, abandoned the thought. There was no hope, any longer, of secrecy, and the lives of those who followed him mattered too greatly to be cast away on a whim, however willingly they might have died on his behalf.

“Go.” He swept his hand back. “Become part of the forest. Don’t return without my call.”

He waited alone, with his feet braced and his mind empty as the elders had taught him.

The two incoming horsemen rode to the camp’s gates. They gave a password, and were admitted. The dark mass of the legate’s tent became suddenly less dark, lit from within by a brazier, and then torches. Shadows of men played on its wall. Cunomar hissed out an oath and dropped to a crouch. He edged a pace forward, and then stopped, as the shifting brightness of the legate’s tent was blocked by a darker shadow.

“I don’t think so,” said Valerius, softly. “Two very good friends of mine are currently risking their lives in an effort to convince the legate that his night camp is not under threat. I would prefer it if you did not prove them wrong.”

The skin prickled on Cunomar’s scalp. He would have believed Ardacos could approach so close in the dark without his knowledge, but no-one else. His knife came silent to his hand. He saw no metal glimmer near Valerius’ starlit shape.

He said, “You have sent the Thracian into the camp?” Disbelief coloured Cunomar’s voice, and contempt for a man who would send his soul-friend to danger and keep clear of it himself.

“Longinus has gone in, yes, and Civilis, who was the soul-father of my early days in the Roman cavalry. He’s the Batavian who turned his cavalry against Rome in your mother’s name today. Without him, the Eceni losses would have been much higher.”

In the camp, more fires were being lit. Valerius’ outline became sharper. His face was still impossible to see. Only his voice could be read.

Thoughtfully, that voice said, “If you kill me now, Civilis and his Batavians will be lost to the war host. I think they would be useful to protect our backs while we assault Camulodunum. Even if we wipe out every officer and serving man in the camp, there are still four cohorts of the Ninth left behind in winter quarters.”

It came late to Cunomar that Valerius had chosen the path of greater danger in coming to meet the Boudica’s son unarmed and alone in the dark; or it could be made to seem so afterwards to those who might choose to use it.

Noiseless, he slid his knife back to its sheath. The firelight played across his face. The elders of the Caledonii had spent a winter teaching him how to school his thoughts so that nothing might show to an enemy, even one taught on Mona to read the minds of men laid bare in their eyes. Thus armoured, he said, “The she-bear do not kill unarmed men, whoever they may be.”

“Thank you.” A thread of amusement came and went in the dry voice. “Is there a reason why your sister Cygfa could not be the one to lead the war host if your mother proves unfit? She would seem to me admirable in every respect.”

Cunomar was not expecting that. He had never considered his sister a threat. It took him a moment to remember why. “My mother was shown the final assault on Rome in a fever-dream. Cygfa was on the right wing, and Ardacos on the left. Dubornos is a dreamer who fights as a warrior and he was not seen anywhere else. It could have been him, but he’s too damaged by Rome’s inquisitors ever to lead the host.”

“I see. And so of all those close to your mother, you are the only one left to take that place if she can’t. Apart from me.”

A fire flared on the edge of the camp, brightly. A small, deliberate movement brought Valerius’ face from shadow so that, at last, he could be seen. He looked exhausted and ageless. Neither, or both, may have been true.

He said, “We should be plain about this. I have no wish to lead the Eceni now or later. But I will not let one man’s search for personal glory destroy the war host, or lead it to ruin. The future of our people and our land rests on this war. They matter more than your vanity, or mine.”

Thus were their private lines of battle drawn. Cunomar said softly, “And I will not let one man’s treachery destroy
what my mother has given her soul to build. You forget, I was with you in Gaul when you betrayed the men you had fought for.”

His eyes fed on the other man’s face. He believed — he was certain — that he saw a flicker of grief, or doubt, or fear, break through Valerius’ mask of control. It was worth the comfortless night, just for that.

Raised voices in Latin broke the moment. Torches flared at the camp’s margins. It became necessary to move quickly and silently into the shelter of the trees and there to wait, pressed to the cold earth, until a tent party of eight armed men had gone past, thrusting light and iron into the undergrowth.

A long silence passed after they had gone. Cunomar pushed himself up to a crouch and brushed the dead leaves from his face. Nothing moved around him. He had no idea if he was still in company, or alone. Into the dark, he said, “It was not a search for personal renown that brought the she-bear here tonight.”

“What then?”Valerius was very close. His voice was distant, as if he had been sleeping, or dreaming.

Cunomar said, “There are two thousand legionaries in there. To attack it with thirty-eight she-bears would be madness. We had intended to enter in secret, and kill only the legate, as the Boudica killed the governor in the days when my father was held captive in Rome.”

“Unless you had been caught, in which case you, too, might have been taken captive to Rome. You should consider some time that the Boudica’s son might be worth more to Rome alive than dead. I don’t think this emperor would find it in his heart to offer a pardon.”

Clouds broke apart then, and allowed the moon to reach them. By the sudden light, Valerius looked as much like his father as he had ever done, and he was, without question, exhausted. He said wearily, “If we may consider tonight? We need to give the warriors another chance to fight in the morning. They need greater experience of battle before we assault Camulodunum. The veterans of the Twentieth who call it home won’t be strung out in a line with a marsh at their backs, they’ll be defending the land that was their prize for twenty-five years with the legions. They’ll fight like bears turned at bay and even with a battle-hardened army we’d be hard pressed to defeat them.”

…
like bears turned at bay
…

It was inconceivable that Valerius could know of his nightmare. Stepping out of the moon’s light, Cunomar said, “We can’t take on the column again as we did today. They’ll be waiting for it.”

“Obviously. So we have to take them as they begin to break camp.” Valerius sank to a crouch. He drew a square in the soft loam with his finger.

“This is the camp,” he said. “We are here, on the western edge. Longinus and Civilis are inside now, spreading lies to the legate. Unless you can suggest something better, this is what we will do…”

A series of horn calls shaped the morning.

Cunomar waited within the shelter of the trees with the she-bear spread out on either side of him. In the night, when he had called them back to him and whispered what Valerius had asked of them, Ulla was the one who had said what the rest had not. “I would rather we had done as you first
planned, but there’s no going back now. Valerius has given us the best part, and the rest of what he wants to do is sound if the men within the camp can do as he says.”

If. Everything hinged on that. Cunomar lay in the cold morning, watching legionaries light fires and cook barley cakes for breakfast. Around him, the whispers of the spear-leaders echoed Ulla’s doubt and made it stronger.

More than the destruction of the IXth, Valerius’ fragile standing with the war host depended on the success of his plan. If the she-bear fought well and made it happen, they would bolster his cause as much as their own. If they failed, they would damage their own reputation as much as Valerius’. The bitter irony of that did not make their morning any warmer.

Inside the Roman camp, the hum of activity was already sharp; the remaining men of the IXth legion had woken before dawn, if they had slept at all. The morning’s activities, the striking of tents, their packing, the dismantling of the camp, progressed faster than usual, as they strove to make themselves ready for the road.

Cunomar had lain by an uncounted number of night camps in the western mountains, watching the same pattern unfold: always the centuries who had arrived first were first to pack their tents and leave, while those who had marched in last were left to fill the ditches and cover the fires.

Usually, the men talked, or sang, or whistled as they worked. In the clearing at the edge of the ancestors’ trackway, they worked in a silence that pressed in from the edges so that every clatter of a shovel and flap of a falling tent echoed to the trees and back.

A single centurion stood near the western edge of the camp and prayed aloud to Mars Ultor, god of the legions, that the men of his century caught overnight in the forest were, even now, marching down the track to join their legion.

Ulla had no Latin. Cunomar, who had lived two years in Rome, put his mouth to her ear and translated for her, the words no louder than a breath.

The threefold notes of a cavalry horn shattered the silence, and the prayers, and the muttered translation. The noise rose and looped and rose again, exactly as Valerius had said it would:
Three notes rising, falling and rising again are the signal of a party under attack by overwhelming numbers, in urgent need of rescue. It’s a long time since I last blew a horn but then even a cornicen under attack might make a mistake. If I can make it sound even halfway authentic, the camp should fold into chaos.

It must have been more than halfway. With a sliding sense of urgency gripping his bowels, Cunomar watched the camp fold very rapidly into chaos.

The silence was abandoned: men shouted and ran and shouted again; horses were gathered; horns blew with no obvious coherence.
Wait for one long note blown on a rising scale. That’s Civilis’ call to the Batavians to mount and be ready to ride.

The note came, soaring up to greet the dawn. Half of the Batavians were already mounted; theirs was the apparent failure, theirs the need to recover their honour. Civilis was amongst them, a white-haired fury, shouting orders that could be heard far into the forest.

Cunomar kept watch on Longinus, who was calmer, and stood with Cerialis. There was a moment when a decision hung in the air. Cunomar saw Valerius’ soul-friend tilt his head in deference, and make a small gesture with his hand,
taking in the cavalry and the ancestors’ trackway. Very soon after that, the decision was made.

Cerialis is impulsive. All he needs is a moment’s quiet encouragement to tip him into action. Longinus is there to give that word. If he can do what we need, the legate will lead the cavalry charging out and on up the trackway.

What if they turn round and come back?
Cunomar had asked.

Civilis’ men may block the trackway. If they fail, or decide they can’t fight their own kind, we’ll be stranded on foot against Batavian cavalry. I would suggest that we all run into the forest and don’t look back.
Valerius had grinned as he said it, so it was hard to tell if he were serious.

Cunomar, who had decided he was almost certainly very serious, nevertheless had no real intention of leading his warriors into the forest. Watching the sudden, clashing order that descended on the cavalry as their legate joined them, he allowed himself at least to consider the option.

Even by the standards of Rome, the exit of Petillius Cerialis, riding at the head of his cavalry to the rescue of his stricken cohorts, was impressive.

A flurry of trumpet calls announced his departure. The notes had barely died when the signal was given for men on the ground to clear the palisades that blocked the gates. As the last one was freed, the legate and two hundred and fifty horsemen of the Batavian cavalry burst from the gates in a hammer of furious vengeance.

They went from standing to racing, all on fit corn-fed horses who knew the sounds of the horns as well as any men, and strove to answer them; all but two, which went lame within the first five hundred paces and had to be pulled up. Just beyond the margins of the forest, Cunomar watched
Civilis and Longinus, swearing roundly, drop back and away from the rest.

These men are my friends. They have risked a slow death for this plan. I would appreciate it if your warriors could refrain from killing them afterwards.
Valerius had not smiled as he said that, and the edge to his voice had made it perfectly clear he was serious.

Nobody killed Longinus or Civilis. They stood at the side of the track and appeared to confer, then, with evident dejection, turned and began the slow, lame walk back towards the night camp.