Dreaming the Hound (10 page)

The wood was unused to human intrusion. Crows had clattered out of the canopy as the riders entered and made camp. They had risen a second time, raucously, shortly after the horses had been settled and a small fire laid. Breaca, Dubornos and Cunomar rolled to their feet and subsided again as quickly at the chittering of a stoat that was Ardacos’ sign. He and Cygfa had appeared moments later, running in over rocks and fallen trees, sharp with the elation of battle, filthy with mud and grit and the freckled spray of enemy blood. They had not brought back Graine’s pony, nor Cygfa’s war trained gelding. There had never been any chance that they would do; the she-bear always fought on foot and could outrun any horse on a day’s ride. The pony had been a decoy and, by saving the Boudica’s daughter, Ardacos had saved his own mount. Graine tried not to hate him for it.

The returning warriors had told their tales briefly and then settled to sleep under cover of beech furze and year-end grass. Graine was not used to sleeping by day. She had lain down with her head on Stone’s flank, wrapped in her own cloak with Breaca’s spare laid over. A dead elm, taken long ago by lightning, stood to the west, its leafless branches black against the paling sky. The gap

it left gave light and a sight of the western horizon and, because she was watching for it, the girl had presently seen the first feather of black smoke and the greater, greasier billows that followed as the enemy burned the bodies of those Romans, and three Coritani traitors, slain by Ardacos and Cygfa.

‘Graine?’

She had thought she was the only one awake. Startled, she raised her head. Her mother was sitting up by the last glow of the fire, her cloak around her shoulders, her back against an ancient, fungus encrusted oak stump. She had been sleeping, clearly, and had woken. Her hair hung around her shoulders, part-braided. For the first time since summer - for the first time in any winter Graine had ever known - the Boudica had set aside the single black-dyed crow’s feather of the vengeance-hunter and was weaving again the many braids of the warrior.

Caught under the scrutiny of her daughter’s gaze, Breaca smiled, not as Airmid would have done, but warmly enough. ‘Are you cold?’

‘No.’ They spoke softly, a murmur on the wind, not to wake the others. ‘Stone keeps me warm.’ It was almost true.

‘But you can’t sleep?’

‘It’s getting-up time. I can’t sleep now.’

There was a short pause, full of indecision. If it had been Airmid who had awoken, Graine would have gone to her, would have curled up at her side and told her of the smoke-feather and the burning bodies and her fears for the wandering souls of the dead. Airmid, in her turn, would have sung the enemy to rest if only because Graine asked for it and then would have sung again that a six-year-old girl might sleep and dream in daytime.

Breaca was not Airmid but nor, any longer, was she the Boudica, who brought victory to her warriors and yet remained a stranger to her daughter. Over the course of two days’ flight, Graine had seen more of her mother at closer quarters than at any other time in her life. Until that moment, lying by the fire, she had not known how much she had wanted that, nor how closely she had studied the changes that were happening.

In the quiet, smoky morning, Graine saw her mother clearly for the first time; a woman with too much care to sleep properly, sitting by a fire, half wrapped in a cloak with part-combed hair lying in cords around her shoulders and her arms bared to the cool air so that the old scars and the new one traced their script across

her skin. Her eyes were grey-green with flecks of copper and they were filled now with a turbulence that Graine had never seen in Airmid.

Not knowing what to say, Graine said nothing. Frowning, Breaca leaned forward and pulled something charred from the fire. Holding it out, she said, ‘There’s some hare’s meat left. If you eat, it might help you sleep?’

It was the smile that made the difference more than the words. Graine had never seen her mother shy before, nor thought herself a cause of shyness. With an odd, swooping sensation in her stomach, she uncurled herself from Stone and shuffled into the shelter of her mother’s outstretched arm. In its curve, in the surety of its grip, which had held her close over two days of hard riding, she was safe, who had not known how much she was afraid. She buried her face against a tunic that smelled of horses and sheep’s oil and leather and clung as tightly as she had done when she was first hauled unwilling from the womb.

A while later, when the smell of charring meat lifted from the fire, mother and daughter broke apart a little and drew the hare’s haunch from the embers and shared it with each other and with Stone who pushed between them to lie across their feet.

Thoughtfully, Breaca said, ‘I’ll shave his hair this morning, before we move on.’

‘Whose hair?’ Graine was leaning against her mother with her eyes shut and did not want to open them.

‘Stone’s. He’s too good a hound to be seen as he is in the east. The Romans make slaves of hounds as they do of people, but they have no eye for what lies beneath the surface. If I cut his pelt so that it looks as if he has mange, they won’t see past it and he’ll be safe.’

A cool morning became suddenly colder. Graine hugged her knees to her chest. She stared into the fire and wished the grandmothers had spoken to her in the dark. On Mona, they would have done and she would understand at least a little of what was happening. ‘You’re still going to go east, to reclaim the torc of your people?’ she asked.

‘Our people. They are yours as much as mine. Yes. And to raise the warriors to battle. The ancestor was clear about that. I could not, with any honour, go back to Mona.’

Too much hung on too delicate a balance and Graine saw no way to move it in the way that she wanted. She had felt the cutting

pressure in the clearing when Airmid had faced her mother and the worlds lay open and all possibilities were equal. There was one thing that had not been spoken and should have been. It was in her power to do so now.

She tested it a time or two in her head and then, when the grandmothers did not chastise her for it, said, ‘Did you know that Gwyddhien was dead?’

Gwyddhien had been Airmid’s lover from before Graine was born. She had led the warriors of the Silures and, in the Boudica’s absence, those of Mona. She had been killed leading a late-season battle against Cartimandua’s Brigantes, who fought for Rome. Afterwards, Airmid’s grief had been a private thing, not spoken of. The rush to leave Mona and find the Boudica soon after had been a good way for her to lose herself in action.

There was no telling what the Boudica thought or felt. Quietly, without moving, she said, ‘Yes. Cygfa told me.’

Cygfa. Not Airmid. Which meant either that her grief was too new and too raw to allow her to speak of it or, more probably, that she disdained to use so obvious a hammer to crush Breaca’s intransigence.

Graine had no such qualms. She said, ‘Airmid will not go back to Mona now. Without Gwyddhien to hold her, she is free to follow you.’ She did not say, ‘She would have followed you anyway,’ because she was not sure of that, only hoped so.

‘I know.’ Breaca nudged the fire with her toe, shifting the sticks to make heat without smoke. ‘We spoke of it last night. Airmid will not turn back to Mona and I have no power to make her. Cygfa will do as her own mind commands and she will follow me east whether I want it or not, as will Dubornos; both have said so. Cunomar might be commanded, but I think it more likely he will take it in his head to attack the legions alone to prove his worth. You are the only one I could send back. I could order Ardacos to take you back to Mona and he would do it, staying to be your protection, however much he hated me for it.’

There was an odd tone in her mother’s voice. Caught between fear of leaving and terror of going on, Graine looked up. Understanding left her mute. Eventually, ‘You don’t want to send me back,’ she said.

Breaca smiled crookedly. ‘I want very badly to send you back, but I don’t have the right. You are bound to Airmid as mother to daughter. Where she goes, you go. It is not for me to force you apart.’

The hollowness in Graine’s midriff became a void. Swallowing, she said, ‘Did Airmid tell you that?’

‘No. The ancestor tried to and I didn’t believe her. Then the other night, fleeing the legions, I knew it was true. When you were about to fall off Ardacos’ horse and break your neck, it was Airmid who saw what was happening. Her horse wasn’t fast enough to catch you, or you would have ridden these past two days with her, not with me.’

A quantity of silences made some sense, and the uncertainty in her mother’s eyes. Graine found her hands wrapped tight in Stone’s pelt, as they had been in the mane of Ardacos’ horse. Her fear now was different, and very little of it for herself. She freed a hand and, searching, found her mother’s, which was cold, and squeezed it.

There were no words that would set the world right again, or none that could be found. Presently, Graine felt herself gathered more tightly in her mother’s arms, felt her mother’s lips press into the top of her head and heard her own name spoken over and over, as a litany, too low truly to be heard. Warm breath filtered through her hair and the words rocked down through her skull to reach her ears from the inside.

At the very end, when the hair of her crown was warmly damp, she heard a single sentence that made sense.

‘Small child of my heart, I love you; while I live, I will not let Rome kill you, I swear it.’

VII.

THERE WAS SNOW IN THE LANDS OF THE ECENI, AND A HEAVINESS to the air that smelled of old, uncleared dreams.

The thin blanket of white did nothing to cover the starved ribs of the earth. The deeper Breaca’s group moved into occupied territory, the more the hedgerows were unkempt, ditches clogged, field edges a harvest of weeds. Paddocks were churned to slipping mud and yet empty; too many sheep and cattle had grazed too hard and then died for it.

It was too much like the land of the ancestor’s vision. When Breaca said so, Dubornos said, drily, ‘The people pay their taxes in the meat of their beasts, and in corn. The land must yield twice over now: once for those who farm it and once for those who claim its ownership.’

Ardacos said, ‘And the rest of life? Where are the birds? The foxes? The hares? Are they, too, paid in taxes?’

‘Some. Rome will take fox pelts and hare’s meat if there is no beef. As to the others, would you stay in a place where the earth itself was made slave to the legions? They have left, and will return when the gods have restored the balance to the worlds.’

The knowledge did not make each day’s travel easier. Breaca led them, caught between the driving urgency of the ancestor’s command and the needs of her own oath, newly made on the head of her daughter, to keep Graine safe, and as many of those who travelled with her as may be.

She rode as she had done since the retreat from the clearing, with Graine held on the saddle in front of her. Outwardly, all was the same. Inwardly, the quality of her caring was different and those who rode with her knew it. The part of her that remained bound to the ancestor-dreamer scorned the collapse of her resolve and predicted death of the worst kind for those who travelled with her. The rest of Breaca - the greater part - drank in the essence of her daughter as one dying of thirst drinks in cool water. Do you wonder that the children of your blood cleave to others? She had forgotten, if she had ever known it, what it was to be lost in the love of a child. She rode each step forward with equal weights of hope and terror balancing the two sides of her heart.

In deference to Roman laws forbidding warriors to carry any weapon longer than a skinning knife, Breaca and her party rode unarmed into the occupied territories. Their blades, and all that marked them as warriors, were left in a grave mound of the ancestors to which Airmid had led them on the evening after Ardacos and Cygfa had rejoined the group. The mound lay low, hidden by scrub and thin plates of river mist. As they approached from the west, at dusk, the rising moon cast shadows along its length, making it larger and less welcoming than it might have been.

There was no sense of safety here. Riding close brought the hairs upright on Breaca’s arms and made her mare snore steam into the frostbitten air. Stone walked stiff-legged at one side and Ardacos, cursing under his breath, held his horse tight at the other. Before them was only moonlight and shadow and a huddle of rocks and turf built around the bones of the dead; they were used to these things and should not have felt so keenly the dread of ancient wrath.

Airmid alone seemed untouched. She rode close to the mound’s entrance and slid to the ground. The moon cast her in silhouette, part of the rocks and the turf. She knelt a while at the guardian stones, tracing hidden lines on their surfaces. From where she waited, Breaca could hear the cadence of a murmured half

dialogue such as she might have had with the ancestor in the cave.

‘This is the place.’ Airmid backed away from the mound. The pressure of the stones had softened her features, blurring them as if newly wakened from sleep. She said, ‘Efnis has been here, and one other of the tribes, but not in the past three years, and no-one of Rome. The ghosts of the ancients have guarded this place against all but the strongest dreamers. If there is anywhere better to keep your blades safe from Rome, I don’t know of it.’

She spoke to a gathering of silent warriors, and one child. Ardacos coughed and pushed his horse forward. It was leery of the silvered light and crabbed sideways, unwilling to face the dark.

Ardacos was not a weak man. Over twenty years, he had killed more Romans singlehanded in service to the she-bear than any other living warrior. Breaca trusted him in battle as she trusted few others. It was not cowardice, then, that moved him when he said, ‘This place is Nemain’s as much as it is the old ones’. The god is not of the same stamp as the she-bear and I would not willingly offend either. If it would be best for my blade to be buried in some place away from here, I will do it.’

Airmid smiled. Her skin was bone white in the moonlight and quite beautiful. Her voice came from other worlds. ‘The bear is as welcome here as any other, or as unwelcome. It is the danger of this place that will protect what you would leave.’