Dreaming the Serpent Spear (9 page)

Longinus had never been afraid of combat. He turned to salute Valerius. His yellow hawk’s eyes held all the light of battle and only a little of warning. Grinning, he set his horse down towards the trackway before Valerius had time to reply.

I don’t intend to die, I swear it…

Valerius had said it to Breaca, truthfully. In his analysis of the possible dangers, he had not included the Batavian cavalrymen who were stationed with the IXth legion, for the simple reason that he did not think any would still be alive who might recognize him.

It was over twenty years since he had trained with the native tribes on the banks of the Rhine and the Batavians, of all those who fought for Rome, threw themselves hardest into the most dangerous conflicts, vying with each other to perform the most outstanding acts of bravery and self-sacrifice and so win a place — posthumously for preference — in their winter sagas. To die of old age was anathema to a Batavian and the overwhelming majority avoided it with a good two decades to spare.

Riding north into country policed by a wing he had once known was the kind of easy risk against which Longinus would have offered long odds and Valerius would have accepted with a light heart and the certainty of winning.

He would have lost. Julius Civilis, by order of the emperor Caligula citizen of the Roman empire, had survived
every battle and was enduring the curse of old age with commendable dignity.

Buffeted by a wind that had no care for rank or honour, he rode straight-backed up the hill towards his legate and the new visitor and it was impossible not to recognize him, however much the sun had leached the colour from his hair and the wind chiselled cracks on his skin.

Valerius was not as exhausted as he had made out, but nor was he as battle-fresh as he would have liked. He stood by his swaying horse and watched the slow approach of the man who had once named him soul-son and brother.

It was a moment’s work to assess the sources of danger and put them in order: Longinus was his first concern. The Thracian was nearly at the bottom of the slope and had hailed the iron trader; he was thus beyond reach of the men on the hill and his horse had enough fire left to carry him into the forest and the safety of the trees if the need arose.

Of those who might have posed a danger to Valerius, and so, indirectly, to his sister’s cause, the legionaries who formed the legate’s guard were young and bored and more concerned by the blustering wind and the unexpected prospect of a long march down the ancestors’ Stone Way with battle at the end of it than they were by any possibility of attack from the messenger who had just ridden in. They stood hunched against the wind, their bare forearms blue with cold and their noses dripping freely.

The mason posed no danger at all, which only left the legate. Cerialis was close enough to kill, and he had made of himself a gift; his sword was clipped into his sheath so that he might mount his horse smoothly without the risk of dropping it and his mind, unlike those of his legionaries,
was reaching forward to the glories of combat and the planning required to bring it about.

What was left of the legate’s attention was all for Civilis; his features had softened, as if the approaching rider were a distant grandfather, still remembered fondly from childhood.

Almost forgotten, Valerius tested the spring of the turf beneath his feet. The salt on the wind tasted sharper than before and the scudding clouds seemed more richly textured. The irony of that was not lost on him; the world always became most beautiful when death was closest. For so much of his life, the Boudica’s younger brother had wanted to die. As the Batavians did, he had thrown himself into the hearts of uncounted battles and had killed and killed and mourned the fact that he emerged alive. Only recently had he discovered how badly he wanted to live, and only in the short time since his return to the Eceni had he come to understand how much he was needed, and that he had an obligation to live that went far beyond his own needs and wants.

The man who wishes most to live must abandon all fear of death. He had learned that long ago, in the days when Civilis’ hair had been the colour of washed gold and the sun had blessed his face with freckles, not lines.

The old cavalryman was close now and the weight of his age showed more clearly, and the effort he was making to hide it. His hair was no longer flowing gold, but ice-white. Against all Roman law, it was bound up at the right temple in a warrior’s knot, with the many teeth of his enemies plated in silver and left to dangle to his chin. His hands were cramped and rested on the pommel of his saddle; cold and sixty-five winters spent on horseback had cracked and
swollen the joints so that holding the reins clearly pained him and it was the hours of training that had gone into his horse that enabled him to ride it so safely, not the strength of his grip.

The passing years had changed Civilis almost beyond recognition. There was the hope, always, that Valerius, too, might have altered; Breaca had once failed to recognize him, leaving room to believe that others might do the same.

Remembering late the role he had assigned himself and the lie within it, Valerius opened the messenger’s satchel he held in his hand. Addressing the legate a little louder than was necessary, he said, “The message from Camulodunum is written here in full. Would you have me read it?”

“Later.” Petillius Cerialis flicked a dismissing hand and gestured towards the advancing cavalryman. With uncharacteristic delicacy, he said, “Julius Civilis has retired from service to the emperor, but he is still our best horseman and retains the respect and war oaths of his tribesmen. If he advises herbs or a hot mash for your mounts, do not refuse them.”

Valerius bowed. “His name is known throughout the legions and your care for him honours you both. I would not dream of refusing him.”

He turned and saluted the oncoming rider. The beginnings of battle fever burned like old blood on his tongue, a welcome friend. His body prickled to the promise of violence in a way it had not done when Breaca had killed the messenger.

A lifetime of war had taught him that danger was better faced head on. True to that training, he stepped forward, saying, “Julius Civilis, prefect of the Batavians, greetings. Your name is known from one coast to the other as the
officer who led his men to swim the Great River and destroyed the Eceni horses in their lines.”

The horse picking its way with such delicate care up the tussocked slope stopped at the sound of the river’s name. Civilis, once prefect of the First Batavian cavalry, tilted his face towards the man who had spoken to him. A chaos of memories swept his face. Tears sprang fresh to his eyes.

“There are not many who still choose to remember that. Were you there at the first battles?”

Civilis’ voice wavered. His gaze focused only briefly on Valerius and then wandered uncertainly to the legate. There was no hint of recognition. Offering a prayer to the gods of poor memory, Valerius said, “Not as closely as you were. I fought with the Quinta Gallorum, but not all of us were in the front lines.”

That much was true. Valerius stood very still, waiting. The Civilis of old would have known that a certain member of the Fifth Gaulish cavalry had not only fought in its foremost ranks, but had swum the river into the blazing core of battle with Civilis’ Batavians.

A heartbeat passed, and a second. At the foot of the hill, Longinus had reached the iron trader and talked the man into turning his wagon round. The legate had stepped away, but was still close enough for Valerius’ blade to reach. Civilis stood two paces away. He was neither armed nor armoured. His life could be measured in parts of a breath.

“The Quinta Gallorum? That was Corvus’ wing. I served under him before they gave me my own command.” The old man’s head lifted a little, as an old hound might at a distant hunt. He frowned and the crags of his face deepened. “Then I should know you. There are too few of us left who fought
in that battle to forget each other.” Rheumy eyes searched Valerius’ face and slid away, finding more of interest in his horse. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Tiberius. I was named for the man who was emperor when I was born.” The deceit was slick, and hateful. The gods did not honour the makers of lies.

“Ah, yes…” The old man’s larynx bobbed in his throat. “I remember now. You served under Rufus on the Rhine. A good man, before the natives cut his throat. They carved their witch signs, too, on his chest. And cut off his…”

Civilis abandoned all attempt to remain in the present. His gaze drifted over all the men to a past horizon none of them could see. The waxen contours of his face melted. Spit gathered creamily at the corners of his mouth. It seemed possible he might weep there, before them all.

The legate stepped forward to hold the horse’s bridle before the old man let fall the reins and the beast became unruly.

He said, “Old friend, war is upon us. The legion must march south to Camulodunum to stem the rot of revolt. Your Batavians will accompany us as honoured escort. This messenger and his companion will ride as our guides. If your horse boys could take care of their mounts, it would speed our progress.”

“Their horses?” Civilis’ gaze became noticeably sharper. He studied Valerius’ strawberry roan and then looked down the hill to the place where Longinus was escorting the iron trader back towards the fortress. “Oh, yes.” He nodded, thoughtfully. “I expect we could take care of their horses.”

“I
TOLD YOU THEY’D TRY TO STEAL OUR HORSES.”

Longinus leaned peaceably against a wall at one end of the covered barn that housed the Batavian cavalry’s remounts. Down the length of the line, horses by the dozen dozed and ate hay and watched from their stalls the new men who had come to disturb their morning’s peace. Their breath warmed the air, mellowing the scents of urine and horse dung, of leather oil and newly cleaned harness mounts and the sweat of many horses recently exercised. The beasts whose heads turned to look at the incomers were sleek and well muscled and fit. Not one of them was in any way broken in wind or limb.

Valerius stood a little further down the line with one foot hitched onto a trough and observed the small flurry of activity taking place in the stall ahead of him.

Without making the effort to turn, he said, “They’re not trying to steal them, they’re doing their best to make them fit to ride again so they can take us safely south as you wanted. Myself, I would have said we’d do as well if they’d
give us one of theirs to ride instead. Have you noticed that they’re all bay?”

“Bay and big and they’ve been training all winter. Yes, I had. If they kept them like that in Camulodunum, you might not have crippled your pretty roan in that ride up the hill.”

“It was necessary. We had to be seen to be desperate. And he might be saved yet. The horse boy knows what he’s doing.”

With some interest, Valerius watched the care of the gelding he had taken from the dead messenger and then ridden into the ground to impress the urgency of impending war on the legate. In that much, he had succeeded; Cerialis had ridden back to his fortress and even now was issuing orders with a speed that unnerved his juniors, and set the legion abuzz with the foretaste of action.

The care of the horse was less certain. It was lame in both forelegs with heat and swelling in the tendons that could leave it lame for life if not treated with skill. Valerius had come to like it in the short journey north and was not proud of the damage he had done. Encouragingly, the beast was being groomed and fed and clucked over with much disapproval by a freckle-faced lad not yet in his teens who had Civilis’ hawk-beaked nose and gold Batavian hair.

Civilis himself had gone to use the latrines, leaving them alone. The lad spoke to the horse and studiously ignored the man who had ridden it to such harm. Experimentally, Valerius tossed him a silver coin from his messenger’s pouch and watched as the boy tested it with his teeth, nodded at the result, and then tucked it up between cheek and teeth for safe keeping. He looked no less wary afterwards than he had done before; certainly no more prone to idle conversation.

Valerius slid his back down the nearest wall until he crouched on his heels, hugging his knees to his chest. From that less threatening height, he said, “Civilis will be with us again shortly. My soul-friend the Thracian and I will have to ride south again to show the legate where best to fight the Eceni. If your kinsman were inclined to honour us with fresh horses for the ride and for the battle after, which ones do you think he would give?”

He spoke in Batavian, the language of all sentiment, where soul-friendships were made between men for life and sealed in blood and the bonds of kinship were stronger by far than any oaths taken or given by Rome. One or other of these two facts reached places the silver had not touched. The boy’s eyes grew round and then narrow in thought.

Newly shy, his gaze flickered down the horse lines to a certain place and back again. He grinned conspiratorially and, in well-schooled Latin, said, “To give a gift honours the giver. The greater the gift, the greater the honour.”

“Indeed.” Valerius offered another silver coin and saw it taken with less mistrust.

He pushed himself away from the stall’s edge and walked down the line. At the place the boy’s gaze had alighted, the hindquarters of a horse faced the passage between the stalls.

Alone of all those around it, the beast stood facing the wall. Similarly alone, it was not the rich, red bay of every other horse in the barn, but the colour of aged walnuts, so darkly brown as to almost be black. At Valerius’ approach, it snaked its head round and pinned its ears back, savagely. He stopped abruptly and stood in the alleyway between the stalls with his hands laced before him and his face wiped entirely of feeling.

A long moment passed. Valerius let out slowly the breath he had taken. A trivial comment to Longinus on the unruly nature of Batavian horses died unspoken in his throat. The world was very sharp, suddenly. He was aware of the beast’s part-white ear flicking towards him, of the white splashes on its brow, of the individual strands of black hair in its tail, of the narrow stripes of black down all four hooves where ermine marks at its coronet no bigger than a denarius gave colour to feet that would otherwise have been completely white, as its legs were completely white, to knee and hock and above.