Dreaming the Serpent Spear (61 page)

He held on to one of the guys of the tent and clenched his hand on it until the hide dug a groove, knowing that he would regret it in the morning, and through the day’s battle.

Cygfa was no more free of the chaos than he was, only for other reasons, that he could not yet see. She closed her eyes and the effort she took to speak was clear. “Before he gave himself to the gods, Dubornos said, ‘You are bed for other seed than mine. When the time comes, do not let it past.’”

She had been raped in Rome and again at the end of winter by the procurator’s veterans. If she had ever desired a man, he could not imagine it might happen now. It was not good to think ill of a man who had just given himself to the gods, but Valerius cursed the dead singer for a fool and did not retract it after.

He said, “Dubornos was already walking with the gods when he spoke. He may have been talking as they do, in the images of dreams and half-thoughts. To be a bed for seed
does not always mean that one has to bear a child. Men, too, can nurture ideas, or followers, or—”

“No. I knew him as well as anyone. He was not talking in dream pictures. I’ve been talking to Gunovar. She was there and was part of it with him. She felt what he felt. She saw what he saw.”

A certain dread came over him. He held the guy rope and had no care for the damage to his hand. “What?”

“That there is more to this than a single tribe or a single people. What matters now is not whether we win or lose the battle tomorrow, or whether you or I live or die in doing that. What matters is that the lineage we carry continues beyond us, that children are born and nurtured who can hold the power of the gods and join it to the land. Breaca was told in the first dreaming of her long-nights that what mattered was the children and that is still so; without the children —
the right children
— we can win tomorrow and still lose. With them, we can lose and still win.”

He had walked across ice and the ice had broken and he was falling through endless, black, ice-frozen water. His hair stood on end and his tongue had swollen in his throat. He tried to remember Corvus and could not. Longinus was within shouting distance. He could not find the breath to shout.

“No.” Valerius said it flatly, and found it in himself to step back. “You don’t want it. I don’t want it. If it must be done, let it be by others than us.”

“Who?” Cygfa looked like her father, when scorn was his weapon. “You think I should send you to Graine perhaps?”

“Don’t!
”

She had come close and he must have tried to push her away. Her hands were on his wrists, holding them. Her face
was close to his, so that he could smell her breath and her sweat and none of it was what he had just left by the water’s edge.

It was not what he wanted. He could not imagine ever wanting it, except once, and that had been Nemain, which was different … He remembered river water and the run of it over his skin and the memory was sacred, and would not be pushed away.

Nor would Cygfa. She was the stronger and the gods lit her eyes. She was her father made woman, or simply come again to earth in different form. Valerius had never loved Caradoc, only respected him and envied his life.

She was too close, too earnest. “Valerius, listen to me. Our two lines must continue. Graine is of the Sun Hound, but she’s too young. Cunomar could get a child on someone but he is only one part of it and there is no-one to match you. You are son of the Elder of Mona, one of the greatest, possibly the greatest there has ever been. Macha was his match; if she had stayed, there is every chance she would have been chosen in his place. If your life had been different, it would not be Efnís who was named his successor.”

Uselessly, “I don’t want to be Elder of Mona.”

“I know. And you don’t want to father a child and I don’t want to bear one, and yet it must be done.
It must be done.”

Cygfa swayed back, so that she was not so close and yet still held him. Her eyes challenged, as they had once done on a different riverbank in Gaul. He had been so arrogant then. Both of them had. She said, “Ask your gods and see if they accept what I say. If you can truly say they don’t, I will leave you.”

That was the fear and the desperation: he already knew what they wanted. If he spoke it aloud, she would not have to leave him.

Cygfa felt his resistance end. He saw the sudden upsetting of her balance, as if she had been depending on him to outmatch her and, now that he had failed, did not know what to do.

She gathered her courage, a smaller figure now, following a path she had never wanted to tread. They were near the tent. She still had hold of him, and tugged him towards it. “In here?”

They were too close to hide from each other, and had shared too many battles. He could feel her fear, and the courage it took for her to keep to what she believed was needed.

“No,” Valerius said. “This child should have nothing of Rome. Come with me,” and he led her away from the stitched hides and the red glowing charcoal and the too-strong scent of rosemary oil and back to the water’s edge, upstream from his meeting place with Corvus.

The river curved round to the east and swung back again in an oxbow. The apex of the curve was a point halfway between the two competing armies. There was just enough light from the fires of both camps by which to see the ground and each other.

Here, elder, heavy with hard green berries, made a stand with drooping willow. The grass was ankle deep and untrodden as yet by war. Water hissed smoothly; no crossing stones stopped the river. They disturbed a roosting crow that flapped raggedly away; its feathers cracked in the dark.

Thinly Cygfa said, “Briga blesses us? Or not?”

Valerius said, “Or Mithras. The raven is the first of his beasts, before the hound and the bull and the serpent.”

Cygfa forced a smile. “If we meet the others, it could be an interesting night.”

She was so deeply afraid, and striving so hard not to show it. It was easier, then, to find some strength in what they had been given.

Valerius searched his own soul for compassion, and found it, and a kind of love that was rooted in respect for all she had been; enough to let the two gods within bring some sense of passion.

He held only her hand. “I have no experience of this.”

“And I have too much.” Her body was rigid as a cornered deer.

“Then will you guide me, that your experience might be different from what it has been?”

“I can try, but if I fail, you have to finish.”

“I can try.”

They lay down together under the berried elder, and moved slowly, and were gentle each with the other so that there was time for compassion and duty to become passion and something approaching need.

Near the end, while he could still speak, Valerius said, “If we do this, will you stay out of the battle, to keep the child alive?”

He felt her smile stretch the skin of his shoulder, where her teeth had just grazed it. Her voice rolled into his marrow. “No. Nothing will keep me out of the battle, any more than it will you. But I may not do as I had planned and follow Braint across the river if it seems that we are losing.”

“Good. Very good. It would be very hard indeed to lose you.”

He surprised them both with the sincerity of that, and the depth of feeling. It was enough, evidently, for them both to climb the last hill and find release and rest, believing that a child had been made, that would carry the lineage of moon and sun and build a life in a future yet to be fashioned.

F
OR THE FIRST TIME IN BREACA’S LIFE, THE TORC OF THE
eceni ancestors settled easily about her neck. The ancestor-dreamer did not hiss warnings of hubris from the cave of her mind; the Sun Hound did not burden her with foretellings of doom if she let his line or hers fall into ruin; the weight of ceremony of a hundred generations did not settle on her, demanding that she be their equal.

The end-burnings of the fire that had once been a friend glowed red in the dark and she sat with it, the only one awake in a host of thousands and tens of thousands on the almost-morning of battle. The torc lay warm as a living snake against her skin, but there was no threat in it. She felt its presence as she felt Valerius’ hound, a thing that hovered on the edge of understanding but nevertheless gave comfort and a measure of protection.

“The hound is his dream.” The voice came from behind her, rich with the currents of sleep. “The serpent-spear is yours. Each of you carries that which you need most to hold it close.”

“I thought you were asleep?”

“I was.” Airmid sat up and eased round beside her. “Efnís is leaving at dawn. He’ll take word back to Luain mac Calma of what we plan. I should speak to him before he leaves, but not yet. There’s time enough before the light comes.”

Time enough to be together. They leaned against each other in the dark, shoulder to shoulder, warmth to warmth, breath to breath. They had never said goodbye on the morning before battle, only their closeness was more tangible, and time was slowed for a while, then too fast.

It was still slow now, near dawn, as if the pulse of the earth yet slept.

They sat quietly, healed and healer, and watched the fire. Presently, Breaca took off the torc and balanced it on the joined tent of their knees. “When you gave me this after ’Tagos’ death, I felt it as a living thing, the serpent of the serpent-spear, filled with the power of the ancestor-dreamer.”

“And now?” Airmid’s head was on her shoulder, a heavy, necessary weight. Impossible to imagine it gone, or that other mornings might not see them joined like this.

“Now it feels empty. Not dead, simply empty, like a vessel that has been drained, and is waiting to be filled again.”

“It is,” Airmid said. “All that was in it is in you. Can you feel that?”

“Yes.”

Breaca turned the torc between her hands. The workmanship still left her breathless. The ancestors, having more time, had learned to work gold in ways smiths working under Rome could never do. In its simplicity was its beauty, in the unsullied purity of the red Siluran gold and
the weaving of the wires and the open loops at the end for the kill-feathers. There were no feathers on it now, nor had been, since the first year of the legions’ invasion.

Airmid ran her fingers along, bridging the gap with her fingers. “If you’re going to wear it in battle again, there should be something here, for who you are. Wait…” and she reached for her own pack and brought out a feather cast in silver, one-third the size of a real crow’s feather, battered, with one end bent.

Breaca said, “I thought the procurator’s men stole all of those.”

“So did I.” Airmid held it out flat on her palm, so that the fire could make it gold. She had red thread with her and began to bind the shaft. “Gunovar found this afterwards in the ruin of ’Tagos’ hut. She gave it to me to hold until you were well again.”

“Thank you.” More than the newness of the torc, the feather was the confirmation of her wholeness.

Breaca watched Airmid’s long, fine dreamer’s fingers weave the thread to the feather and the feather to the gold. “I thought they might come, now, at the end; the elder grandmother, the ancestor-dreamer and the Sun Hound and all those who came before and since. I have sat half the night awaiting them.”

“If it were truly the end, they might do so. There is a battle first, before any endings come. Would their presence help you fight?”

“No.” The thought made her grimace. “I can live without help from past ghosts.”

“But you know something of what is needed before the fighting starts?”

“Last night, when I was watching the fire, a hare stepped down from the moon, and there were hounds that were not Stone who followed it. Graine was there. She helped.”

“Can you bring that into being?”

“I think so. Later, when we must.” She did not mention Venutios’ question, nor had she done so to anyone.

Dew had formed on the grass around them, beyond the heat of the fire. In the trees behind, a kestrel fed mewling young. Somewhere too close for comfort, the skull drums of the she-bear started up again, maddening as biting flies. Even so, it was dark and the line of the eastern day had not yet begun.

Breaca reached out, and took the half-bound feather and the torc and laid them aside. “It’s still night,” she said, “and we have time to be together before we must be all that we have become. I think we can make better use of it than this.”

This much, at least, had not changed. They did not say goodbye, but they lay together in the dark beyond the red wash of Braint’s fire and let drop the last boundaries that divided them, and shared the stretching time when the pulse of the earth was still slow and they could watch each heartbeat, and savour it.

The hare raised its head and snuffed the air.

Graine froze in her forward movement. She lay face down in long grass with morning mist curling round her like fire smoke and her hair sodden with dew.

She could feel the hare’s presence as a second heartbeat in her chest, and nurtured it, as she might a new flame in too-damp tinder. Warily, afraid to crush it with her own clumsiness, she attended as lightly as she could on the dry,
tickling sensation that teased the roots of her mind, on the spiking sense of urgency that did not come from her, or from her mother a spear’s throw to the left, or from Stone, close by on the right, but from the hare ahead.

These four — herself, her mother, the hound and the hare — were all part of the hunt, and Graine the centre of their web. Her own heart hammered too hard and would not be quiet. She had not
felt
like this since before the procurator’s men had assaulted her, possibly not even then. It was as if sight had been given back to her after long months of blindness and the world held more colour than it had done before. She wanted to tell Bellos and was not sure that it would be fair.

The hare relaxed. The distant sounds of the war camp were no longer as unsettling as they had been. The skull drums of the she-bear, begun long before dawn, were no longer driving it mad.

Graine edged forward. She had never wanted to be a hunter, but her mother had asked it, the dazzling stranger, infinitely familiar, who had woken her with a hand on her ankle and an offering of fresh oat bannock and river water flavoured with dried elderflowers. Her mother who had held her close and pressed her lips to Graine’s hair so that her breath warmed her head and there had been a moment’s safety in the unsafe world, and that, too, had been something to nurture before the morning snuffed it out.