Ravens of Avalon (47 page)

By the uneasy flicker in his gaze she knew that Tingetorix sensed the presence of her inner adviser. He and the other experienced men had been surprised to find her so knowledgeable about the problems of training and supply. With every hour the partnership between the Iceni queen and the Great Queen was becoming smoother.

When the Morrigan was with her, Boudica did not feel the emptiness Prasutagos had left in her soul.

“Yes, my queen.” He bent his head and put his horse into a canter to do her will.

When she turned back to the road, her daughters were there. Like her, in body they had recovered well.

Rigana was surveying her with a frown. “Is he going to teach you to fight?” she asked abruptly. “I want to learn, too. I don’t want to be helpless before a man ever again.”

Boudica started to shake her head, but there was something very un-childlike in Rigana’s eyes. Among those who had joined the rebellion there were boys who were no older and not much bigger, and who had far less reason to kill Romans than she.

“And what about you?” She looked at Argantilla.

“Caw says I am too small to do anything but carry more arrows to the archers,” she said a little tremulously, “but I will do what I can …”

The child Tilla had rescued in Colonia had gotten his growth this past year and promised to be a big man. He had become her most devoted protector.

“Don’t even
think
about sending us somewhere safer—if there is any such place now!” Rigana said dangerously.

Boudica sighed. That was true enough. If this rebellion failed, there would be no refuge for them anywhere. She looked at her daughters, and felt the Morrigan’s fury amplifying her love and her pain.

“Very well … we will seek our fate together, whatever it may be …”

hey had been on the road for three days when a small man in a ragged Roman tunic came limping into camp. Boudica left Rigana struggling to hold her sword steady at arm’s length for a count of ten and followed Crispus back to the fire in front of the wagon that carried her gear. A tightly woven woolen cloth had been stretched from the wagon to provide some protection from the thin drizzle, supported in front by spears.

Tingetorix was already questioning him when she arrived.

“My lady—” He turned to her. “This man brings news both good and bad.”

The man’s eyes widened as she came into the firelight, and she wondered what he had heard. He made an obeisance.

“Great Queen, I was once a freeholder and a notable man among the Trinovantes. Now I am called Tabanus, a debt-slave in Colonia. There are many of us—we will help you however we can.”

She nodded. “They’ve heard we are coming, then?”

“Yes, Lady, and they are afraid. There have been evil omens—the statue of Victory fell from its pedestal, and in the theater and senate house evil cries have been heard. Someone had a vision of a devastated city down by the seashore, and the waters turned red.”

“Our gods are stronger than those of the Romans because they belong to this land,” she said softly. A slight fuzziness in her awareness told her that the goddess was with her. She was grateful. Cathubodva would know best what to say now.

Tabanus nodded. “A few hundred men are stationed in the fort at the old dun, and in the city there are men who once served in the legions, but they are old now, and Colonia has no walls. They have sent to the procurator in Londinium, and another messenger has gone to the fort north of Durovigutum.”

Boudica nodded. The Romans had built an outpost to guard the road they were putting through the fens.

“No one knows what force the procurator may send them, but Petil-lius Cerealis has part of the Ninth Legion and some cavalry.”

“Is he the sort of commander to sit and wait for orders, or will he set out immediately he gets word?” asked the queen.

“They say he is a hothead. I think that he will come as soon as he can muster his men.”

Boudica could feel the goddess considering. “How many experienced warriors are there among us?” she asked. Though the Morrigan might know all things in Her own realm, the part of Her being that was acting through Boudica depended on information available to the queen. “Gather them together, and men who are good hunters as well. Tingetorix, I want you to take our fastest horses and lead them north. Send scouts to learn what road they are taking, and attack them from ambush. This is important—you must not let them catch you in open country. Hit them from cover with javelins and arrows and slings, shoot from trees.”

“I understand.” His sidelong glance noted the slave’s wonder at her expertise and he smiled beneath his grizzled mustache. “You need not fear any surprises from the Ninth Legion, my queen.”

he Romans have built a camp on the heights above the strait,” said Ardanos. “Paulinus has brought men from two legions. They will take another day to rest, or maybe two, and then they will embark. I have sent runners to every farmstead. Every man who can carry a weapon will be here soon.”

“But it would be far better if the soldiers never reached our shore,” observed Helve. Someone stifled nervous laughter. “We do not have the powers of the masters from the Drowned Lands who could use sound to move great stones, but here are thirty trained singers. We will raise a barrier of sound against the enemy. Go now and rest while you can …”

As the meeting dispersed Lhiannon found her steps lagging. Would the thatch above the meeting hall soon be blazing, or would this place become a healers’ shelter where she worked to bind up wounded men? She looked around her with a sigh. The first vision was far more likely. If the Romans managed to cross the strait, she did not think the refugee army the Druids had put together would be able to stand.

What use was the rite they had performed at the Lake of Little Stones? The power had been raised and sent eastward, but at most it had only delayed the enemy. Would their singing do more?

She ought to seek her bed as Helve had commanded, but tension sparked along each nerve. There would be no rest in the House of Priestesses, where she would have to barrier her mind against Coventa’s nightmares and old Elin’s weeping. Her frown relaxed as she realized that her spirit had already set her on the path to the Sacred Grove.

A soft wind was whispering through the leaves of the oak trees. Even in her moments of greatest anguish Lhiannon had always found peace here.
“Holy goddess … holy goddess …”
The melody sang in her memory, though it was only afternoon. She closed her eyes, opening her awareness to the spirit of the grove.

But it was another spirit, more familiar but infinitely less peaceful, that she found. She blinked, and saw a man in a white robe sitting beside the altar stone. She hesitated, fighting an impulse to flee, but he was holding out his hand. When she first saw him in the robes of the Arch-Druid he had looked like a stranger. Now, for the first time since she had known him, he looked
old.

“Once more we sit together on the eve of battle,” he murmured. “And once more I desire only to know that you are near …”

That was just as well, she thought tartly, for if he had asked her to lie with him now she would have slapped him. If in him the fires still burned, he had learned to keep them banked, and as for herself, the armor she had grown around her heart could not be taken off in one afternoon.

“What do you think will happen when they come?” she asked.

“It will be our magic against the spirit of Rome,” Ardanos said thoughtfully. “I keep thinking about the stories Brangenos told of Vercingetorix, who could not defeat Caesar though he had all the Druids of Gallia to help him.”

“And you are afraid that the will of this commander may bind his men into an entity that can resist the Druids of Britannia?”

“It is possible. And if they make a landing, I fear our warriors will not be able to hold them. Lhiannon, if that happens you must save yourself. You said that becoming Arch-Druid changed me, and it is true. I have to plan for defeat as well as for victory. Coventa has had visions of a house of priestesses on the mainland within a sacred grove, with you as their leader, but for that, you must survive.”

Lhiannon shivered, though the wind had ceased. Golden rays of late afternoon sunlight shimmered through the trees. “Mearan saw something of the sort when she lay dying.” The old High Priestess had seen Mona drenched in blood as well. “But I hardly dare to believe in this prophecy, since all the others have served us so ill …”

“Perhaps …” He took her hand. “But Lhiannon, it is the only hope we have!”

“And what about you?” She turned to face him. “Will you flee as well?”

“While our priests stand Helve and I are bound to stand with them,” he said with a sigh. “Just now, my dear, my own survival does not seem very likely. But I can face my own end with more peace knowing you are free.”

And how will I face life, knowing you are gone?
she wondered. Suddenly the shield around her heart did not seem so impervious. From a tree in the grove a raven called, and from somewhere across the fields its mate replied.

avens perched on the gate to the palisaded fortlet that the Romans had built up against the dike that had once defended Camulodunon. It was open, its garrison fled. It had been only five days, thought Boudica, since they had marched out of Teutodunon. Now she watched her haphazard army streaming down the road past the Roman dike that had once sheltered the emperor’s encampment and making camp in the remains of Cunobelin’s dun. Tents and wagons covered the land halfway around the city whose red roofs glowed from the hilltop two miles away.

She recognized Tabanus pushing through the crowd, and signaled to Eoc to let him approach her.

“I am glad to see you safe.” She had been surprised when the Tri-novante slave had volunteered to go back to Colonia, and found it amazing that he had been able to leave once more.

The man shrugged. “My master is running about like a chicken destined for the pot, and for certain, no one else is paying attention. Some of the veterans wanted to blockade the main roads, but we started a rumor that this would encourage you to attack the houses on the side streets, and their neighbors stopped them.”

“How many have left the city?” asked Morigenos, joining them.

Tabanus shrugged. “A few … the others fear they will be picked off more easily if they leave.”

“What are they thinking?” asked Boudica, sitting down on a bag of grain. “Without walls, they must know they cannot resist us.”

“Their leaders were in the legions,”
the goddess spoke within.
“They think that no barbarian can defeat Rome. They believe that their brother soldiers will rescue them …”

“And will they?”

“Listen—what do the ravens say?”

Boudica smiled, remembering how she had heard them during her poppy dream. One was calling now from the fort, and from somewhere overhead another answered. As she looked up, it flew over her right shoulder, and she saw a few white feathers in its wing.

“The ravens say that someone brings us good news,” she said aloud, and in the next moment they all heard the stuttering hoofbeats of a horse fast ridden coming down the road. Eoc gave her one of those uneasy looks that had become the common response to her pronouncements, then turned to watch with the rest as the rider appeared. A wave of cheering followed him.

“We smashed ‘em!” The messenger slid off his horse, still talking. “We did what you said, my lady, and got most of the men on foot. The commander skittered off with his cavalry, didn’t stop till they reached their outpost, and doesn’t dare stick his nose outside his walls. Tingeto-rix and the rest are on their way back, but he wanted you to know right away. Attack Colonia whenever you please, my queen—there’s no one to stop you now!”

Boudica nodded as the murmur of angry anticipation that spread through the camp found an echo within. As they neared Colonia, ragged men of the Trinovantes had begun to join them, with no arms but their shovels and hoes. They had suffered far more than the Iceni, and far longer, and their eyes burned with a fanatical fire. Secure in her own country, Boudica had not understood the extent to which the Romans had forced the Trinovantes to pay for their own subjugation.

Pollio is dead, but the men who sent him, the men who raped my people, are still in the town. They, too, must die.

More men, and more weapons, arrived every day. Now men of substance were coming in, bringing supplies and workers in wood and leather and iron as well as more food. It would take a day or two more to organize them, but any Roman who changed his mind about fleeing Colonia would not get far now.

“The Great Queen’s army fills the plain, She leads them to the war-A hundred thousand in her train And every day brings more.”

She gazed up at the city with narrowed eyes.
Count our campfires, Romans. Listen to our songs … We won’t keep you waiting long!

hat are they waiting for?” murmured Coventa.

Lhiannon squinted across the water as the afternoon sun glanced off Roman helmets. Through dry lips she murmured, “It must take a lot of time to organize so many men.” There were certainly a lot of them; the shelving ground on the other side of the strait shimmered with points of reflected light.