Dreaming the Serpent Spear (65 page)

The she-bear were on foot and so slower and he had time, just, to understand the catastrophe of the trenches, and to realize that they might face the same in mirrored image — and to see it, and shout a warning inward to Ulla and Ardacos who ran on the far side with his older bear-warriors, and to jump the trench, howling, and to hurtle on towards legionaries who were distracted by the carnage on the far side and had not yet cast their javelins.

The bear was with them, clearly; under blazing mid-morning sun, they ran beneath the arc of the late throw so that the lethal, singing hail passed over their heads and landed harmlessly beyond, and then they were in, hurling themselves at shields and half-drawn blades and men were dying, and they were not of the bear.

Cunomar dodged a shield that smashed for his face, and tasted blood where the edge caught his cheek, and stabbed for an exposed eye with his knife and felt the puncture and grate of the socket. If the man screamed, the noise was lost in the chaos around him. The Boudica’s son screamed his mother’s name and heard Ulla echo him and then Ardacos’ deep bear-howl. His nightmare was as nothing, banished by the force of their intent. Without fear, he immersed himself in battle. A small part of him, cold and quiet in his core, listened for the trumpet calls of the enemy.

It mattered that the Boudica be noticed, and known.

She was dressed to catch the eye: for the first time in years, she rode into battle wearing a cloak in the late-sky blue of the Eceni, not Mona’s grey. The sun-serpent torc of her ancestors blazed at her neck. Her hair was a banner of spun copper made gold in the high, hot sun. She bore the broad-bladed spear, made for her in hope and love by Valerius and Airmid in the days before they left Eceni lands.

Copper whorls along the blade caught the morning, brightly, as if she held aloft a rod of flame. Its balance was perfect, and its song caught the strings of her heart, calling in echoes of Briga and the full panoply of ancestors. She was the warrior with the eyes and heart of a dreamer. In final and complete fulfilment of the ancestor-dreamer’s prophecy, she led the central mass of her war host into battle.

In the matter of being noticed, she had succeeded; already the javelins of the centre ranks converged on her. Beyond that, it mattered also that the governor should have personal reason to unleash his legions against her.

She knew her enemy now, and had an idea of what would hurt. After the destruction of Valerius’ wedge, she had no qualms about doing it.

As she rode, she dipped from her horse and thrust her spear into the body of the injured hound, putting an end to its pain. Someone in front of her shouted at that; it might have been the Atrebatan hound-boy but she believed not; she did not rise up in time to look.

Hawk, riding close behind, bent further and cut an ear and threw it to her as they rode. She impaled it on the bloodied end of her spear and held it high like a legionary standard. A great many men shouted at that. The first
javelins flew, loosed by rage, not reason. They fell five horse-lengths short.

Two strides on, almost within javelin range, she brought the spear to her shoulder and waited until its song rang in resonance with the rhythm of her horse, and of her heart.

Suetonius Paullinus, governor of all Britannia, sat ahead of her cloaked in his arrogance and dignity with his white plumes making a perfect aiming point above his head.

The spear sang. The white-legged colt ran its heart out. Breaca lifted herself high from the saddle and hurled the spear as high and as fast and as true as she had ever thrown anything.

It passed into and through the unarmoured chest of the Atrebatan hound-boy, who fell dead.

The rage of the legions shook the earth. Javelins made white the air and treacherous the ground on which they landed.

Already the war host was slowing. The second volley fell a long-step closer and more of the javelins were targeted on the Boudica; it had not been only the governor who had favoured the hound-boy and the grey-blue snakeheads he kept. As the third volley began to hit shields and drive past their heads, Breaca threw up her arm and shouted, “Back! Get back! They’ll finish us!”

Throughout the evening of Valerius’ orders and all the morning’s preparation, the men and women who had been chosen to follow the Boudica and so hold the central brunt of the Roman attack had been schooled in two things. The first of these was that the Boudica’s spear throw was the preparation for retreat and that the rearmost ranks must be ready to turn about and run, or Breaca and those who rode closest to her would be driven onto the Roman sword points and certain death.

They were not a standing army; the warriors were not used to drill and discipline, so took a long time to slow down and longer to stop. The legionaries ahead took another long-step forward and raised their arms for their fourth volley. Breaca swung up her shield and felt the crows gather in the other worlds and Briga breathe close.

Hawk shouted, “Come! We’re clear!”

The pressure behind her was less, and then nothing at all. The colt had been schooled by Civilis and Valerius had showed her all it could do. She spun it rearing and sent it forward and the leap was of a hare before a hound, or a stag from a clifftop.

He brought her clear. They scaled the ridge and down the other side and there was room to stop and turn and a moment to pause, to drink from the hundred skins passed amongst them, to slide a hand down the sweat-soaked neck of the horse and to thank him, to be still and hear the songs of the weapons and of the horses and the deep, thrumming call of Briga’s crows, not yet drowned out by the shouts of five thousand men pushed past the limits of their own exertion.

Then the flood gates opened, and the legions came.

Men and men and men in full battle armour, shining as silver in the sun, crested the ridge and flowed down it, like the foaming edge of a wave. In their midst was a red horse with a white helmet plume rising above.

The leading ranks saw the war host in front of them, and tried to stop and failed. As Valerius had predicted, the weight of armour, and of men behind, pushed them on in growing disarray. He had drawn what must happen next half a dozen times in the ash of the fire, so that its creation now seemed inevitable.

“Go!”

The shout came from her left and right together. Breaca threw up her arm and held the centre still while the remains of Valerius’ wedge hurtled forward on the right flank and Cunomar’s she-bears sprinted forward on the left. Within moments, the entire front line of the war host curled in like the sickle points of a horned moon, drawing the running legionaries on into a void of iron where they could be crushed together and slaughtered without room to swing their blades. All that mattered to make it happen was that the Boudica send the centre forward at the right time.

Five spear-lengths. Four. Three…

“Go!
”

She launched the white-legged colt forward, and her warriors followed in a great solid wave.

The two sides came together in a splintering of bone and flesh and armour. Death rode attendance, and reaped a fast harvest. Breaca sat a colt of black lightning and it rose and killed as her blade rose and killed and she heard the songs of both and saw Hawk still alive at her one side and Gunovar at the other and there was room, then, for a fierce, abiding hope in all the chaos.

“We’re winning. More of theirs are dead than ours by five to one.”

Bellos said it, and neither Airmid nor Theophilus argued, which meant it might be true.

Graine stood above all three, on a bale of part-cured sheepskins on the headboard of a wagon with Stone shivering his tension at her side. In theory, she had a crow’s view
over the battlefield. In reality, she looked beyond, to where the hare had gone, showing the way to freedom.

She dared to look now at the battle. On the field, the brazen heads of the legionaries flowed into the crescent of the war host as blood flows into water, thinning as they went. The wings of the moon folded inwards, Valerius’ horse-warriors on one side and Cunomar’s bears the other. The bronze mass of men was crushed between, and began to crumple at the edges. She said, “Valerius’ horned moon has worked.”

“So far,” said Airmid, distantly. “There’s danger far out to the right. I can feel it.”

That was the cloud on the day. Under full sun, Graine was cold. She said, “Then Valerius will feel it too.”

“We can hope so.”

T
RUMPETS RANG FRANTICALLY, TUNEFUL AS BIRDSONG.
Three notes ripped and ripped again. Before they could sound for the third time, Valerius spun the Crow-horse on its hocks. Longinus was with him; he had drilled as often, as hard and as long; the trumpets sang to his heart’s blood. Cygfa was slower.

“Come on!” Valerius screamed it over the crush and pulp and then, quieter, when she was close enough, “It’s Corvus.”

It was Corvus, stationed out of sight on the right, who had waited until they had committed to the field, and then come at their backs. Because it was what Valerius would have done, he was ready for it. His honour guard followed him, as fast as they might. He had less than two hundred now, against a full cavalry wing of five hundred.

Led by Huw, who used his sling with startling efficiency, Valerius’ horse-warriors broadened out in a line as they fought their way free of the melee. It took longer than it should have done; the footing was cluttered with the pulp of dead men and no room to fight easily free from them.

“Come
on!”

A line of cavalry came at a gallop, curving back in a bow’s arc that let the front ranks meet first, and the rest hold back to circle the outskirts if needed. The cavalry manuals offered two standard ripostes to that and Valerius had neither the time nor the trained men for either, only warriors who would give him their hearts and horses that he believed — that he had to believe — were faster and stronger and had far greater stamina than the enemy.

“Left!”

He swung his own blade and his own horse and they followed, as geese follow the lead bird, as fish the eye of the shoal, only slower, because some were still fighting.

He led them over the ridge and back down and the slope gave them speed and momentum as it had done to the legionaries. He did not run headlong into a waiting horde, but turned hard at the bottom so that all who followed him swung out wide and back in again and came in at the right hand side of Corvus’ arched bow of riders, the sword side, where the shields were no use, against men whose focus had been in front, and whose vision had been blocked by the ridge.

The clash was short and sharp and light and only six of the enemy died. Valerius pulled the Crow-horse far out to the side and back in again, stinging now at the rear of Corvus’ men as a hornet stings a horse.

To live, the cavalry had to turn and fight, leaving Breaca and the central mass behind them. Valerius darted in again, and killed, and danced back, saving his horse’s strength for when it was needed.

Even so few, they made Corvus’ wing spread out, and forced men to fight one on one when they were better in
solid ranks. It was not perfect, but it was better than he had hoped for and, after the disaster of the ditch, far more than he deserved.

Cygfa fought beside him, a shining beacon in the noon sun. She struck and swung and pulled her colt back, and shouted, “We can do it! Valerius, your name will be sung at every winter fire for generations. What a father this child will have!”

They were killing and not dying. In the centre, Breaca held her warriors together and they, too, killed more than they lost. On the understanding of that, a battle hinges. Valerius saw desperation grow in the expressions of those he faced and, for the first time, began to believe the war host might win.

He was thinking that when the trumpets blew again, differently. In the valley, where the governor held his reserves, two thousand rested men moved into formation and marched forward, ready to fight.

The last two cohorts of the XIVth legion came over the ridge in a slower wave than those who had come before.

They descended the slope steadily, in fast, tight order, with their shields together and their blades poking between. On reaching level ground again, the men at the sides turned their shields outwards, making a grid of wood and iron that only a long, fast cavalry charge might fracture.

There was no way to withdraw before them; discipline among the warriors had long since been lost, and any chance of retreat in order. As far as Breaca could see was a boiling mess of battle and all behind her.

If they come at you in tight ranks and you can’t go back, break out to the side. Don’t give them a front to come in at.

Valerius had said that twice in the evening and again in the morning. Knowing what might come, he had used his warriors to give her room, luring the cavalry out to the side. She thanked him for that, alive or dead, and saw the way she could go.

“Out!” She shouted it over the tumult. “Out to the sides! Make them spread out to reach us!”

Her voice was lost in the clash of living and dying. Gunovar heard her and the two dozen of her closest honour guard. They passed the message on. It moved sluggishly through the fighting mass, slowing to a standstill in pockets where to live mattered more than to pass a message of things that happened too far away to be seen.

Five spear-lengths to the legionaries. Few of these bore javelins; most carried the short, stabbing gladii, knifing out between the shields. Breaca looked around her and saw no enemy close. Taking a risk, she drew the colt high into a rear and raised her sword arm high.

“The sides! Go out to the sides.”

They heard her then, the hundreds who were close, or they saw the flash of sunned metal and knew her and the colt who had become a second Hail, and fought for her with the heart of a hundred warriors. The war host opened, slowly, like a stick untidily cleft, ready to absorb the oncoming men.

The enemy heard her too, or knew her by her hair and the torc and the cloak; it had mattered to be seen and known.