Once Every Never (26 page)

Boudicca cried out, aghast. “But the sacrifice is incomplete—”

“I am sated with the blood of mine own, Queen of the Iceni!” Comorra cried out harshly and raised the blazing silver-white flares higher. “I crave the blood of the enemy! Do not deny my wishes, Mighty Queen. Let this one’s life serve to carry my doom to the field of battle. It is my wish!”

With that, Comorra swung around and—just as she’d rehearsed with Clare—handed off the flares and closed her cloak, dousing the light of the glowsticks. The Iceni warriors gasped. Once back in Clare’s possession, the flares were just as invisible as she was. In the utter darkness that followed such a blinding light it would appear as if Andrasta had vanished into thin air. Clare quickly doused the flares in the swamp and poled the skiff away, steering it behind an obscuring stand of trees in the middle of the bog. Stunned silence followed in their wake.

“
ARE YOU SURE
it worked?” Clare asked as Comorra snapped the reins, urging her ponies to a trot. They had made solid ground south of the gathering and circled back around to retrieve her chariot. Clare held the sides of the little wicker cart as it jounced over the uneven ground. Al’s pilfered glowsticks and extinguished flares were back in her pockets and Comorra had ditched the cloak over the side of the skiff where it had swiftly sunk without a trace. Now they just had to get out of there—before moonrise drew back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz and exposed the two girls for the goddess-impersonating fakes they were.

“You’re sure Boudicca won’t kill him? Connal’s safe?” Comorra glanced over her shoulder, a grim smile on her pale face. “Did you not see them? Her warriors? Even if my mother was still bent on completing the sacrifice, they would never have let her. They will not risk angering the goddess. Connal will live to fight another—”

She broke off abruptly and hauled the ponies to a halt, peering into the darkness of the forest far ahead.

“Comorra, what—”

“Shh!” She held up a hand to silence Clare. Then she pointed. Clare looked over the princess’s shoulder, straining to see. At first she could make out nothing in the gloom. But then, under the light of the now fully risen moon, she saw it. The glint of metal. Armour and shields. Spear heads.

Romans.

“We have to go back,” Clare whispered.

Boudicca was gathered together with her warrior elite, their backs to a swamp in a place that was tailor-made for an ambush. They would be caught totally unprepared. The Romans were intending to end Boudicca’s war before she’d even begun to fight it.

“We have to warn them.”

Comorra nodded, and guided the chariot ponies toward a wider stretch of track where she could turn them around. The next thing Clare knew they were hurtling back whence they’d come, bent low in the cart to avoid whipping branches.

“How did they know?” Clare asked as they careened through the trees. “How did the Romans know about the gathering?”

Comorra shook her head. “Who can say? Paid off a disgruntled slave, maybe. It doesn’t matter. They know.” She shot a brief glance back over her shoulder. “Clare … I’m sorry. About before. About attacking you.”

“Uh … okay.” Clare held on tight as Comorra expertly steered the chariot between two towering oaks. “No hard feelings. Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if there were. Is there a reason you’re bringing this up now?”

“Things are about to get very dangerous, I think.”

Oh?
Clare thought.
Like it’s been a stroll in the park so far tonight?

“I will warn my mother and do what I can to help. I just wanted you to know … if something bad happens … that I think of you as a friend. A
true
friend.” She pulled the ponies to a halt where the trees began to thin at the edges of the bog. Then she turned and gripped Clare by her shoulders. “Find somewhere safe to hide now, Clare. Unless you have any extra magic this night, you must promise me that you will stay safe and let the warriors make war.”

“That’s a promise you don’t have to ask me for twice, Comorra.”

The girls hugged briefly and Clare jumped down from the chariot platform. Comorra slapped the reins and the ponies surged forward. The chariot broke through the cover of the trees and, at the princess’s shouted warning, the gathering of Iceni devolved into ordered chaos. Now they were preparing to fight.

THE SKY LIT UP
with what looked like dozens of miniature meteors—trails of fire arcing through the velvet black. Flaming arrows.

Damn it, Al!
Clare cursed silently.
Why do you have to be right about everything?

The battle was spilling out past the edges of the clearing now, coming ever closer to where Clare crouched, hidden behind a large yew tree. From beneath a rain of fiery Roman missiles and under the glare of a full, baleful harvest moon the Iceni rushed to meet their fate.

Clare kept glancing upward into the night, but in a sky full of fiery death there was no raven to call her home.

Suddenly the tide of battle shifted. Almost too late Clare saw the line of Roman soldiers driving a clotted knot of thrashing Celts straight toward
her
tree. In an instant they were almost on top of her. Clare had to move.
Now!

She ducked frantically as the blade of an Iceni pike whistled over her head and then dodged to avoid being skewered by a Roman gladius. Then she turned and sprinted for all she was worth. A flaming arrow grazed her pumping arm and slammed into the ground beside her as she ran.

“Stop aiming at me!” she screamed, as terrified and indignant as only a semi-super-powered seventeen-year-old girl could be. “I’m invisible, goddammit!”

What she was
not
, however, was incorporeal. She looked down to see that the arrow had left a black burn mark and a smear of sticky, smoking pitch on the sleeve of Al’s jacket. Terrified, Clare poured on a burst of speed. A sheltering stand of elm trees was near—about thirty yards. Maybe twenty … She probably shouldn’t have glanced back over her shoulder.

Because when she turned her gaze forward again, it was only to find herself without sufficient time or space to avoid running headlong into a hard-eyed, scar-faced Roman soldier stepping out from behind a tree. A soldier who seemed surprised to discover himself jolted into the air by the touch of a girl appearing as if by sorcery right in front of his eyes. The shock-contact with Clare knocked him back a good couple of steps before he could recover himself—which he did with alarming alacrity.

Hooray for all that Legion training
, thought Clare as the soldier swung his wicked-looking short sword back in a prelude to removing her head. He would have done it, too—if not for the absolutely timely, gloriously
painful
tackle that knocked the wind out of Clare—and Clare out of reach of that deadly swing.

She rolled to a stop some feet away and looked up just in time to see Connal, his teeth bared in a terrifying grimace, spring to his feet after sending her flying. He was still shirtless, and the swirling blue designs of the war paint on his limbs and torso seemed to slide and dance over his skin as he moved. Clare wondered briefly why on earth the Iceni eschewed armour. The Romans had armour—shouldn’t they?

And then she realized: Connal didn’t
need
any armour. She watched dumbfounded as he dispatched the veteran soldier with a darting feint and a quick, short thrust of his sword. The blade slid between the buckles of the legionnaire’s armoured breastplate and sunk in almost to the hilt, as if the man inside were made of butter. The soldier toppled over with barely a grunt, and before he even hit the ground Connal had freed his weapon with a casual kick, the blade making a black and silver arc in the moonlight. In a profound state of shock, Clare absurdly found herself thinking about how graceful the young Druid made the act of killing look.

And then, just for fun, she fainted.

CLARE AWOKE
in a dark, leaf-filled hollow, tucked under a mossy outcrop somewhere deep in the forest. She opened her eyes to see Connal crouched motionless in front of her, watching her. A sense of relief washed over her at the sight of him. She was safe. But then she remembered how he’d looked when he’d dispatched that legionnaire—a wide-eyed, wild-haired, whirling tangle of limbs and iron and deadly grace. Suddenly she didn’t know what to feel.

Now his sword lay naked on the ground beside his feet. Connal’s skin was spattered with blood that looked black in the moonlight. The blue paint on his face and naked chest was smeared now, marring the intricate designs. Clare swallowed nervously and sat up, her side aching from where he’d shoulder-checked her.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“It’s okay.” Clare grimaced a bit from the pain.

“No. Not that.” He shook his head. “Well, yes, I am sorry I hurt you. But that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“I’m sorry you had to watch me kill that man.”

“Oh. Right. That.”

“You have not known death before now, have you, Clare?”

She thought about that. Aside from her beloved beagle, Reggie, buried in a corner of the yard back home, Clare hadn’t ever experienced death firsthand. She’d certainly never had to
watch
someone die. Or be killed. Until now. Until Connal.

“I thought not. I
am
truly sorry.”

She looked at him and smiled wanly, feeling older than she ever had before. Possibly even a little wiser—if that was possible. “Are you crazy?” she asked him finally, finding her voice. “You saved my life, Connal.”

“Oh, I am most definitely
not
sorry about that!” he said, grinning a little. Then his expression shifted. “I think, though, that I was only returning a favour, was I not?”

Clare blinked at him. “How did you know?”

“The rest of them couldn’t see you hiding behind ‘Andrasta’ in the back of that boat, Clarinet, but I could.”

Of course he could. Clare had hoped he’d been too hopped up on whatever mystical narcotics they’d shovelled into him to notice. She wondered if Llassar had seen her too.

“Don’t be mad,” she said. “I know you keep saying it was your destiny and everything, but—”

He shook his head. “If it was so, I would be dead even now.” He toyed with one of the bracelets on his wrist, his expression thoughtful.

Clare followed his gaze. The matched silver cuffs were works of art—with knotted designs that looked like stylized ravens chasing foxes, or maybe the other way around.

“Those are beautiful,” Clare said.

“Boudicca had Llassar make them for me,” he said softly, a touch of something that sounded like regret in his voice. “She has had him make … a lot of things.”

“He’s a talented guy,” Clare said.

Connal nodded. “Llassar’s gift is great. His magic, powerful. He is one of the only Druiddyn left I know of who can work the blood magic. The Raven’s magic. And although he does not do it lightly, he does it for her. For Boudicca.”

“Why do you sound as if that’s a bad thing?”

“Blood magic has consequences, Clarinet. Sometimes unexpected ones. But she asks it of him because it is a hard temptation to resist. Especially when one is as wounded in spirit as Boudicca is.” Connal shrugged as if there was a heavy weight on his shoulders he needed to shift. “Blood magic offers the pathway to retribution in her eyes. But I fear this war of hers may be one of those consequences. Andrasta—the
real
Andrasta—does not give without taking her Raven’s share.”

In the far distance they could hear the faint cries of those still fighting and dying in the forest. A look flashed across Connal’s face that told Clare he wished he was fighting too. Alongside his queen. Or as her spirit warrior, maybe.

“Connal, I hate to tell you this,” Clare said, “I really do. But even when you
did
lead her spirit warriors, it didn’t matter. Boudicca still lost.”

He frowned at her, confused. “What do you mean—even when I
did
lead them?”

“I mean the Iceni aren’t going to win this war. With or without your sacrifice.”

“You have seen this? In your … distant future?”

“Yes. Sorry.” She watched a flurry of emotions twist across his handsome face. “But listen, it’s not … they don’t conquer everything. I mean, the Romans don’t get the whole island. Parts of the west stay unconquered. The Celts fight … they hide. And in the end, a lot of years from now but in the end, the Roman Empire goes down itself and fades away. And please don’t tell anyone that because I’m pretty sure I’ve already drastically altered history as it is.”

“Clarinet. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“I can believe that.” Clare had come a long way from thinking of herself as just an average teenager from Toronto. She laughed a little. “I’m the kind of girl a guy like you only meets once every—I don’t know—never?”

“Will you stay and help us fight this fight?”

“I can’t. This isn’t my world, Connal.”

He reached up and put a hand on either side of her face. “But you keep coming back. Something draws you here …”

A shiver ran up Clare’s spine as Connal tilted his head and pulled her closer. Despite the powerful attraction she felt for him, she couldn’t help thinking about Comorra and how
she
felt about him. Clare reached up to push Connal’s hands away, her fingertips brushing the cold metal of his silver bracelets.

Suddenly the
shiver
turned to
shimmer
and Clare jerked her hand back, startled, as the familiar, electrified jolt of energy flooded up her arm.

“What the hell?” Clare glanced back and forth from her fingertips to Connal’s silver bracelet. His wrist cuffs weren’t just made by Llassar. They were tied to her, somehow. Specifically. They were shimmer triggers, too—just as the torc and the shield and Comorra’s brooch were. Why?
How?

She stared at Connal, waiting for an explanation. The Druid prince looked wary and, for some reason Clare couldn’t immediately fathom, almost
embarrassed
.

“Is there something you should be telling me? Maybe something about what exactly it
is
that draws me here?”