Dreaming the Eagle (18 page)

She stayed. She had no choice. Beneath her, the last of the men had entered the hollow. Their exact numbers were hard to count but thirty or more gathered close to the fire and a handful of others squatted by the stream. At a signal from the fire-tenders, spearhafts were brought from the shade of the rowan and distributed, one to each. Spearheads of stone were collected from a central pile, chosen with care so that, even when each warrior had taken the best he could find, there were as many left behind that were not quite perfect.

The leading fire-tender turned to the group and clapped his hands. As one, each man knelt with his right knee to the earth, settled the spearhaft across his left thigh and bound spearhead to haft with a leather thong taken from his hair. They worked quickly and in silence. At the end of it, the leader clapped again. The warriors stood and made a ring round the fire. Names were called in the same fluting birdsong. At the sound of each one, a man stepped forward, presenting himself and his weapon to the cauldron and the keepers who stood beside it. What came next stopped Breaca’s breath in her throat. The vat had not seemed big enough to take a whole man, but she saw each of the warriors step in and duck down until only the top of his hair was visible, and when they stepped out they were no longer men but glistening halfghosts, silvered grey to match the coming dawn, sliding as wraiths through the mist rising up from the stream. They gathered at the shores of the pool, taking care not to enter the water, standing in silent ranks with their spears held away from their bodies. There were seven yet to enter the vat when the first blood-red edge of the sun lifted over the eastern horizon. Seeing it, one of the men set up a song in a minor key with many repetitions. Before the second phrase, the others had joined in.

Breaca felt the grandmother stir. Her voice was less harsh than it had been, and more easily heard. In all the noise down below, they could speak aloud without risk of detection. ‘Look at the patterns,’ said the grandmother. ‘It is the pattern that matters.’

She looked. The woad gave the grey, Airmid had taught her that; when mixed with melted bear grease or horse fat, it turned a warrior’s skin to the silvered, trout-belly grey that offered perfect camouflage at dawn or dusk. The heroes of the past had used it often; the singers’ tales told of them rising like ghosts from the mists of a river to confront their enemies. In the dark of the night, Breaca had not seen beyond the transformation it wrought on the men. Now, looking with care and with the added light of the dawn, she saw that the fireleaders had used also the blue woad, mixed perhaps with spit or egg white, to draw signs on chest or back, or, in a few cases, the forearms of the warriors. It took a long time before the patterns became anything more than random lines. It was only when the men lined up again by the fire, closer and all together, that she saw what they were.

‘They are wearing the serpent-spear. The sign you put on my shield.’ Breaca felt stupid for not having seen it sooner. She said, ‘It is different. Not as you drew it.’

‘No. In this, the serpent head is on both ends, facing both left and right, looking back and looking forward. For these men, that which has happened is as important as that which is to come. The past carries the seeds of the future and both must be honoured. For you, it will be the same. When you return, you will repaint the sign on your shield to match this one.’

‘Is it my sign?’ She felt a spasm of the old fear. The spear was not a living thing. It could not talk to her in the dream the way the frogs spoke to Airmid or the wren to Macha.

The grandmother was ruthless. ‘It is yours until you earn another. Now look at the leader.’

The fireleader entered the cauldron last. He drew his own sign, working on his forearms. Breaca saw the outline as he began and her heart leaped, knowing it. ‘Is it a hare? The leader has the sign of the hare?’ The hare was Nemain’s beast, as sacred as the wren. It could cross between the worlds at will, carrying word from the gods to the people and back. Only in her moments of greatest hope had Breaca imagined the hare might be her dreaming.

The elder grandmother said, ‘Yes, it is a hare. He has earned it. It may save him yet. Watch, now. They are nearly ready.’

The old woman sat upright, peering into the hollow. The warriors were grouped at the fire again. The song had died away and the leaders had set up a new, harder chant, tossing phrase and counter-phrase back and forth between themselves and the warriors, beating their spearhafts on the empty cauldron to keep the rhythm. The tone of it was quite different from the birdsong of their earlier music. This was a promise of war and death, not a welcome to the sun. The power of many voices poured into it, raising strength and hope. Breaca felt it rock through her, calling an answer from her heart. Without thinking, her fingers matched the rhythm, tapping it out on her thigh. ‘When are they going to fight?’ she asked. ‘And whom?’

‘They will fight as soon as the sun is fully up. It will not be long now. When it happens, you will watch and learn. You will not go down.’ The grandmother reached back into the fox run in the gorse and drew out a spearhaft, such as the men had used below. ‘Did you see how the binding was done to fix stone to haft?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Do it now.’

Breaca’s belt pouch was tied with a leather thong of the right length and weight. She unthreaded it and used it to bind back her hair, tying it loosely at the nape as the men had done. It was not perhaps necessary, but she wanted to follow the ritual exactly. The grandmother clapped as the leader of the warriors had done and Breaca knelt with her right knee touching the earth, balancing the spearhaft on her thigh. The position was awkward, but became easier with time. As the men had done, she swept the thong from her hair with one hand and held the stone spearhead next to the haft with the other. The winding of the thong, too, was harder than it had looked. Twice she dropped the stone to the earth. Twice, the grandmother picked it up and handed it back without comment. In the hollow, the chanting reached a climax with a wild pounding of feet and stopped, cleanly, on a beat. Breaca finished the final turns of the thong in silence. It was not perfect; she could see how it could be done better, but it was tight and she knew in her heart that the spear would kill for her if she asked it. The haft felt light and vibrant in her hand. In first greeting was the promise of things to come. The sun blazed fully over the eastern rim of the bowl and caught the milk-blue of the stone, turning it gold. A breeze ran over the top of the valley, bringing the smells of smoke and blackthorn and rowan and the wild-bitter war scent of woad. Breaca smiled at the grandmother. The life of the sun and the spear sparked through her. The old scar on her palm, relic of her first kill, began lightly to throb. ‘Where is the battle?’ she asked.

The grandmother nodded, with the patience she granted importunate youth. She lifted her hand and gestured east to the sun. In the last moment of silence, softly, she said, ‘It is here.’

The screaming was almost human; a long, piercing ululation that could have been a war cry from the throats of a hundred warriors. Breaca stared down the valley, out onto the path at the eastern edge, seeking its source. Only when the first bird stooped from the sky did she realize that she was not to witness a battle of equals; not man against man, warrior to warrior, a battle of heroes; but men - small men - against eagles, the greatest of birds.

The numbers were not even. From the beginning, the sky was dark with the flooding barrage of wings. She saw the first of the warriors die in the hollow below her, his eyes pierced through to the brain, his head crushed in talons that could break the neck of a deer. His cries, choked on blood and pain, were the signal for the greater mass of the birds to strike. They did not stoop from a height, wings folded, as falcons do, but flew in at a shallower angle, powering on wings that spanned far more than the spear-lengths of the men who opposed them. They struck out in passing, raking eyes and arms and shoulders, and flew on, wheeling at the valley’s walls to come in again. They did not mark flesh on every pass, nor did they escape each time unscathed. The warriors fought in pairs and for every man wounded or killed, one was left to stab upwards with his stone spear. Birds fell, screaming harshly, to have their skulls beaten by the spearhafts or their bodies impaled. Even so, they did not give their lives cheaply and more than one man was injured beyond hope of rescue by the strike of a dying eagle from the ground. The warriors fought bravely and with a sense of long practice. Each time one of their number died, his surviving partner sought out another, similarly bereft, to make a new pair. Still, the numbers dwindled and the spaces between them became larger. The eagles were uncountable and they knew no fear. It was never going to be an even battle.

Breaca watched in horror. Had the grandmother not kept a hand clamped to her arm, she would have run down to help, whatever her orders. Instead, she put her fist to her mouth to keep from crying out, biting on her knuckle as, one by one, the men of the serpent-spear fell to the eagles. ‘The woad grease is not helping,’ she said. ‘Why did they use it?’

‘Because it is what their fathers used and their fathers before that and still they have not learned to do otherwise.’ The grandmother was scathing. It was not clear if the scorn was aimed at Breaca for her ignorance or at the warriors for their blind faith. ‘The woad is not useless. If you watch, the talons slide on skin where otherwise they might strike, and even those that strike leave wounds that would heal faster with less chance of infection were the men to live. But they will not live. It takes more than good camouflage and sliding skin to defeat the eagles. Watch the warriors. Learn from them. They work in pairs when they should work in larger groups; they use spears alone when swords would give them a wider strike and shields offer safety. They are learning, but not fast enough. These are the last. After them, there will be no more.’

‘What?’ That caught Breaca’s full attention, as the rest had not. ‘How can they be the last? This is Eceni country. We are everywhere, like the stalks of corn in a field.’

The grandmother smiled, thinly, like a snake. ‘Breaca, these are not Eceni. They are the ancestors, do you not see? The Eceni are tall and fair-headed and they use weapons of iron and bronze. These are small and dark and their weapons are stone. Their blood runs in your line, else you would not dream as you do, but there is not enough of it to bring them back. If they lose here now, there are none to follow them. And they are losing.’

That was clear. And, although the grandmother’s hand had fallen from her arm, it was also clear that to run down now with only a spear would be suicide, and achieve nothing. Breaca said, ‘These are only the men. There must be women and children. If they live, then the people live with them.’

‘Perhaps, but the eagles will kill them. The women are already preparing to fight but they will not win. After them, the children will die.’

‘Then we should go to them, talk to them, help them to escape.’

‘Maybe.’ The grandmother tipped her head sideways, considering. ‘It would be a good thing to save the children. They would carry the blood at least.’

‘That is not enough. There must be those old enough to carry their ways, their dreams and their tales. How else does a people know itself ?’

‘How indeed?’ The grandmother smiled happily, as if a point had been well made. She looked down into the valley. Three warriors were left, standing back to back in a triangle, their spears held aloft, facing the death that was coming. One of them was the fireleader with the symbol of the hare on his forearms. He set up the war chant and the others followed. The first of the circling eagles tipped its wings and began the powered descent.

‘We should leave now,’ said the grandmother. ‘It will not serve them to have another witness their deaths. The gods know this has happened. They will deal with it as they can.’

‘And the women and children? The bearers of dreams?’

‘Are beyond us. I am sorry. Truly. If it were possible, I would take you—’

‘Get down!’

Breaca screamed it, throwing herself forward, thrusting the grandmother back. The eagle was above them, the great wings curving round, thrashing the air, as the talons swept forward to strike. In that moment, all Breaca could think of was the size of it; that the valley had distorted her sense of scale and she had not been prepared for the crushing, overwhelming immensity. There was no time to plan. The spear leaped like a live thing in her hand. It was piercing upwards as the first of the talons struck. She did not aim for the chest, as the warriors had done, but for the head, for the sun-gold eyes and the shrieking maw and the shining red road of its throat. The flint sang as it flew, mournfully, as the warriors had done. She saw the glance of the sun on the stone and the fountain of blood and smashed bone as it bit into living flesh. The climactic, bitter-sweet joy of the kill washed through her as it had never done before. The throb in her palm waxed and waned and was still.

The eagle died at her feet. The weight of it dragged the spear down, smashing the haft against her arm. She was already on the ground, kneeling at the grandmother’s side. The old woman lay on the turf, her eyes wide and white. Dark blood flowed freely from a punctured wound on her shoulder. It pumped, faster and more brightly, from a gash on her neck.

‘Don’t move … don’t. I’ll bind it.’ Breaca’s belt knife hung from its thong. She wrenched it loose and cut along the hem of her tunic, making a ribbon of wool. Fear made her careless and she cut the heel of her hand. The grandmother turned her head. Breaca put a hand to her forehead, holding her still, fighting for words and reason and a way, any way, to stop the bleeding. ‘Don’t. You mustn’t move. You’ll make it worse … hold still. Let me bind it. When it’s stopped, we can leave. I’ll carry you’

‘Breaca.’

It was the voice she knew, the one that brooked no argument. She let fall the strip of wool. ‘Yes?’

‘Give me the spearhaft. It is my staff. I would hold it.’ She had not thought where it came from. The staff was to a dreamer what the blade was to a warrior. She wrenched it from the throat of the eagle, cutting the bindings of the stone free with a flick of her knife. The end was stained with blood and spattered with flesh and bone. She rubbed it clean on the grass.