Dreaming the Serpent Spear (59 page)

Night had come while he was watching the pyre. The sky was darker than it had been, and the fire brighter so that it consumed all of the horizon. To the west, the sun broke open and bled onto the silhouette of the ridge.

Valerius swept a hand through his hair and pinched the bridge of his nose. He said, “There is such a thing as god-luck and it’s as necessary in battle as any amount of training. All the things you say are true. We face annihilation if we are not disciplined and the tribes have never fought with discipline. It takes years to make a legion of the calibre of the Fourteenth. We have one night and if we have any sense at all, we’ll spend most of it sleeping. Lacking that, the warriors need instead a figure they can follow and believe in. Someone whom the gods will openly support, and who has the ability to swing the course of battle by the power of his presence. In the absence of the Boudica, the Boudica’s son is the only possible replacement.”

“Not at all the only replacement, but perhaps, now, a worthy one.”

Cygfa’s voice reached them from the darkness beyond the fire. She had always moved as quietly as the she-bear. Cunomar jumped, and hated himself for doing so. Valerius, he thought, came close, which made him feel better. He held the other man’s gaze and saw his own sudden ache reflected.

There was a moment’s held balance. Valerius nodded, very slightly, and took a half-step back, leaving the space open and all that it implied.

It took more courage than Cunomar had ever mustered for anything, more than facing the bear-elders and their knives, more than the two different mornings of his own crucifixion, to turn to his sister now and say, “Braint’s dead. It was my fault. We didn’t know you were coming. We lit her pyre without you. I’m sorry.”

He saw Cygfa through a veil of flame. Her face was blurred, softened, so that she looked again like the half-grown girl he barely remembered from their childhood on Mona.

Presently, she asked, “How?” She was looking at Valerius.

Cunomar said, “Arrows. The cavalry had archers. Two of them came at us. She killed one with a slingstone. The other shot her. She knew it would happen. She gave her life to kill the better of the two and so give us a chance to kill the rest of the troop.”

The fire-soft eyes turned at last to him. She was still a thing of flame, outlined against the growing dark. He thought the ice at her core had melted, but did not know what was in its place, only that she was stronger for being less brittle. “Did you kill them?” she asked.

He should have done; better to have died trying than to live and have to admit failure. Cunomar said, “No. That is, I believe I killed one, but can’t be sure. The rest … they were
on horseback. They were set to ride over the top of us when they were recalled. They ran one way and we ran the other. They will be waiting for us tomorrow.” His own blood ran to ice with the saying of it. The words came like dry straw from his throat.

Astonishingly, she smiled. “Then we’ll greet them as Braint would wish us to. At least the fire you have built for her will show them who she was. Thank you for that.”

She took a moment to watch the flames and then looked equally at Valerius and Cunomar. “If it helps,” she said, “I would have followed either or both of you willingly in tomorrow’s battles.”

Neither of them wanted to speak. It was Huw, new Warrior of Mona, who said, “…
would have
…? Then you are not alone?”

Cygfa stepped back. Other shadows moved where she had been. Cunomar thought he had finally stepped over the line into dreaming because Graine was there on her small, fat cob, looking as close to whole as could be imagined, and then Ardacos and Hawk and Gunovar and Efnís and a gold-haired dreamer he did not know and last — it should not have been last; Dubornos was missing and the gap he left was astonishing for its size — his mother rode out of the sunset, as someone, somewhere, had said she would, and came to a halt in front of him.

His mother. He stopped thinking then, and simply looked.

For every night of his childhood and most of his growing youth, Cunomar had seen his mother by firelight. Better than daylight, the dance of living flame opened her to him, as moonlight opens the hunter’s trail. From the first opening of his eyes, he had watched the softening light play
on her hair and thought it a live thing, a river of copper, cascading onto the rock of her shoulder just for him.

Later, older, he had watched the wildfire come alive when she was near battle, had seen, and not yet understood, the quite different fire that filled her when she was close to childbirth, had watched, and mourned, the progressive damping of the flame through their last years on Mona and their time in the Eceni lands as she had grieved over the loss of the land and the exile, for ever, of Caradoc mac Cunobelin, his father. Always, it was at night that he had best understood what had touched her.

He studied her now by the light of Braint’s pyre and her hair was a river of fire again, and the wildfire shone in her and she was all that she had been and still everything was different so that he had no idea at all what had touched her, only that he regretted with every fibre of his being that he had not been a part of it.

He stepped forward, ignoring the heat, and reached up for her. Behind, scores of thousands of gathered warriors and refugees saw the Boudica’s bear-son greet the Boudica, framed by the Warrior’s fire and the night beyond, and the thunder roll of their cheering reached as high as the flames and joined the two horizons.

It was impossible not to be moved by it. Impossible, also, to speak. After a while, when they had shouted themselves hoarse and the waves of it were dying away, so that he thought he could be heard by her, but no-one else, he said, “We shouldn’t be here. I know that, and it’s my fault and I’m sorry, but I can’t undo what’s done. We need you now to find the victory within it.”

I
CAN’T UNDO WHAT’S DONE. WE NEED YOU NOW TO FIND THE
victory within it
.

Nobody could undo what had been done and Breaca had no idea if she could find victory, only that it was needed or the land was lost. Thus were the dark weft and the bright woven together; a war host of fifty thousand facing at best eight thousand legionaries, and the advantage all with the enemy.

… there is such a thing as god-luck … it is as necessary as any amount of training…

Valerius had said that, and had gone on to set a battle plan that was as solid as any man might devise. It was clean and easily learned and had the twists in it that might yet confound the enemy. He had given himself the most dangerous part of it and Breaca had not taken that from him, believing it their best hope of success.

She spoke to him of it, sitting by the fire when the spear-leaders had departed and the camp was settling to sleep. “Dubornos openly gave his life for this, to carry our
need to the gods. Are you thinking to do the same in the battle tomorrow?”

He was leaner than when they had parted in Camulodunum, and his skin had seen more sun. His humour had become freer, too, so that she could see the many parts of him, dreamer and warrior, boy and man, Eceni and Latin, Nemain and Mithras in the dryness of his smile and the solemn quiet that had followed it.

Leaning forward, Valerius gave his attention for a moment to Stone, who lay across their feet, then said, “The gods guide, they rarely demand. It is up to each of us to listen to the whispers and make what we can of them. Dubornos has told them of our need and our sincerity with the magnitude of his gift. I would not presume to follow him. I will do what is needed tomorrow. As will you.” He paused and she thought he might leave and then, quite differently, he said, “In Camulodunum, you said that I should bring you the serpent-spear if you were whole when you returned. You’re as whole now as I have ever seen you. If you are ever to have it, tonight is the time. Shall I bring it?”

He was shy then, a boy offering his first-made carving to his older sister. The box he brought to her was as long as he was tall, but light. He laid it in the fire’s light and sat back, watching her.

She would have admired the box for its workmanship, but the night was short. Opened, a spear lay within, with a haft as long as her body of white ashwood and a long, narrow blade in the shape of a leaf.

Her heart had skipped a beat and come back to its rhythm faster. “Is this a true heron-spear, as the Caledonii use? I would not wish to cast one of those lightly on the morning of battle.”

“No.” He lifted it for her, balancing it across two fingers. For the first time in her presence, the maker in him shone through, eclipsing the dreamer and the warrior. “The blade isn’t silver and I have made no feathers to bind at the neck and alter its flight. Airmid carved the serpents of the haft.”

“And you have brought the sun into the iron of the blade,” she said, in wonder.

Such a gift she had never received. She held it closer to the fire and saw the curls of sun-red copper beaten into the blue iron of the blade, so that it drew in the fire and made it brighter. She saw the serpents that curved in living patterns along the wood, and the smooth running lines of the hound beaten in copper into the iron of the blade.

She stood and tested it; the balance was perfect. The song was subtle and took some time to hear over the crack and spit of the fire. When at last she reached it, or it her, it was the song of her own soul, set in counterpoint.

She said, “‘Find the mark that is ours and seek its place in your soul.’”

“I’m sorry?”

“The ancestor’s prophecy. This was the third task: I was to gather and arm a war host, then find the warrior with the eyes and heart of a dreamer; both of these are done. The final task was to find the mark that is ours — mine, the ancestor’s, Briga’s — and seek its place in my soul. I thought I was to come to understand it more and had been struggling to do so. Now…”Breaca lifted the blade and let its light glow soft before the fire, “you have given it to me.”

She sat down, feeling weightless. “I don’t have the words.”

“You don’t need any.” His smile came from his own soul, shorn of all irony.

They sat with the blade and the hound and the fire. A long time later, Breaca said, “Three tasks and three answers. A life might end on the completion of that.”

“Or it might be only beginning.” Valerius lay back with his hands laced behind his head and one knee cocked up. His eyes sought hers and held them. “Tomorrow is the culmination of all that we have lived for, you and I. It is still possible that we may all come through it alive.”

He was the brother she had lost and was only now beginning to find. He was balancing better the two broken halves of himself. His own hound had returned, the dream of Hail that ran at his side. She was coming to learn that it was only there to be seen when he was in most danger, or had opened his soul most widely to one or other of his gods. It lay between them both, a long, warm, intangible shape made of uneven light and shadow. She rested a hand on her knee and could feel the coarse hair that ran the length of its neck.

She said, “It is true that the gods guide and do not demand, but they also protect, I think, or give each of us the means of our protection. Don’t forget that in the heat of battle.”

A while later, when the hound was less easily seen, Valerius said, “And the gods give us their luck, which is in you. Don’t forget that, either, in the heat of battle.”

He rose some time after that, and went to talk to Longinus and Theophilus, who were waiting for him with news of a tent that the refugees from Verulamium, or Canonium, or Caesaromagus had found in their wagons. Thinking to honour him, they had erected it and lit a brazier inside, so that the
once-Roman who had burned their towns in the name of freedom could sleep in comfort as did the legions’ generals.

Breaca and Airmid joined them in the ring of others admiring aloud the fine-dressed hides and the neat double stitching of the seams and the way the light from the brazier made shadows on the walls. It was a good way to end the night, to laugh with friends and to come away again after, to sleep by the last heat of Braint’s fire.

Or not to sleep, but to sit with Stone at her side and think.

… the gods give us their luck, which is in you…

Breaca stared into redness. The pyre fell in on itself again. The heap of ash was down to shoulder height. She let her gaze soften until all she could see was red.

As if he asked it again, she heard in the flames Venutios’ question and wondered whether she might yet escape its answer. As if she held it again, she felt the stone that had crushed Dubornos’ skull and released his soul from his body. As if it were real, and knowing it was not, she watched the horned moon become full and saw the hare that was on its surface step down onto the earth. Soft wind breathed on the embers that had been Braint. Fire soughed and sighed and became, distantly, the belling of hounds, picked for their voices, and their speed. They hunted without cease, but did not kill.

Stone raised his head and whined softly and laid it down again to rest. From behind, Airmid murmured, “You should sleep. The battle will need you sharp and awake.”

“Maybe later.” Breaca was as sharp and awake as she had ever been in her life. Impossible to imagine ever sleeping again.

“Do you want help to reach to the heart of the fire?”

To have the understanding even to ask that question was a gift beyond measure. She reached back and found Airmid’s arm and squeezed it. “Maybe later.”

They sat in silence in the circle of their family. Graine lay curled in her cloak. After a while, Stone joined her and she made him her pillow, never waking from sleep. Cygfa sat up talking to Gunovar somewhere near a small stand of hawthorn. Hawk slept with the bear-blade of Eburovic as his companion. Cunomar and Ardacos and those who followed them were gone; somewhere within earshot, the skull drums of the she-bear played their discordant rhythm, just far enough away not to disturb the rest of those who needed to sleep.

Valerius was still awake, sitting up with Longinus and Theophilus. She could see his outline in silhouette, and the growing tension that lacked any obvious reason. He shifted a little, and she saw that the hound had left him again and he sat alone staring out into the night as if waiting for something, or someone.