Dreaming the Hound (57 page)

They were not sent away; an army forced into retreat before it has ever formed is one crippled from the start. Still, no-one doubted it would happen if Cunomar failed.

He would not fail. Breaca needed to believe that, and had made herself do so, through the evening and sleepless night after his leaving and again as the new day dawned and he had not yet returned. She calculated three times the time it might take him to reach the city, give his news and return. At her best estimate, he could appear any time after noon on the day following his departure. She marked it in her mind and then forgot it: counting the heartbeats did not make the time move faster.

Halfway to noon, with nothing else to do, she began work on a fresh sword-blade. Elsewhere, others found their own occupations. Graine sat cradling the head of a heavily pregnant hound bitch who lay in the spring sun in front of the smithy, enjoying the warmth from the fires; Airmid spoke to the dozen or so dreamers who had come with their warriors, as had always been the case in the old days: one dreamer for every warrior, to keep their heart in battle; Dubornos and Gunovar began schooling the incomers in use of sword and spear; Ardacos stood at the roasting pits, seeing to Cunomar’s hunted deer; and Cygfa … finally Cygfa came, who had been keeping watch on the southern trackway to Camulodunum.

She came in too fast on a foundering horse and threw herselfto the ground outside the forge. ‘Theophilus of Athens and Cos sends a message: “Your son is not dead. They have not put him to the question. But the procurator is bringing him north at speed, with three hundred mercenary veterans behind him. Put your affairs in order, and hide whatever you would not wish him to seize in the name of the emperor.” ‘

Breaca laid down the half-made blade. ‘Did Theophilus meet you himself?’

‘No. He sent a messenger who turned back; he did not wish to be seen by the procurator, but he brought this, as evidence of his good faith.’ Cygfa opened her hand. A staff of applewood spanned her palm, wound about with two snakes in the sign of the caduceus that was the physician’s personal mark. She said. ‘He’s telling the truth. I saw a cavalcade of horsemen riding hard on the track north from Camulodunum. They have wagons in train, which slows them, but they will still reach ‘Tagos’ steading by midday.’

The morning became very still. With exaggerated care, Breaca placed her hammer across the anvil, as if the angle of it mattered and must be got right.

It was not like battle, this destruction of a vision; there was no fire in her soul, or clash of blades, or swing and strike that might lead equally to life or death but would at least be action.

Outwardly, nothing had changed. The wind still blew from the east, sending clouds in the shape of herons to spear across the snow-thin sky. The same thrush chucked in the thorns on the edge of the clearing. Stone lay at her side and she could still feel the easy rhythm of his breathing against her shin, although he had lifted his head and was looking at her, cross-browed, as if she had spoken his name and then nothing more.

Reaching down to rub his ears on his skull, she said, ‘And if they find the steading empty, they will set their Coritani tracker to find us. We have hidden the tracks to here well enough to keep away the legions, but not one of our own.’

Others had gathered; those who mattered, so that she was not alone. Ardacos came from the roasting pits, and Dubornos from the warrior-training. Gunovar was close, and Airmid, who stood now at her left side, and held Graine’s hand. The she-bears and the new warriors of her war host who had trekked through melting snow and knee-deep mud to come to her grouped in a half-circle a short distance away from the forge, and made a show of not listening.

Looking out at them, Cygfa said, ‘How many have we?’

Breaca shook her head. ‘Not enough to face three centuries of time-served veterans who scent gold and slaves for the taking.’

Quietly, Ardacos said, ‘Of those who have come, less than a dozen have lived through war. The rest are as untrained as the she bears were before winter. They need half a month, at the very least, to learn how to hold themselves in battle or they will die to no cause.’

He spoke aloud what they all knew. The choices were clear and well rehearsed; they had talked of little else since midwinter, so that the paths forward had become tales for the telling, like the hero tales of the singers.

Because it needed to be spoken aloud, Breaca said, ‘We could wait for them here and fight, and lose everything. Or we few can take half of Cunomar’s she-bears and meet the procurator where he expects to find us at ‘Tagos’ steading and delay them at least until the remaining warriors have had time to disperse. It is not what we dreamed. It’s not in any way what we prayed for, but it

was always the risk and we cannot, with any honour, endanger the lives of those we have called here. If they can be sent to safety, to fight at another time, we have to make it possible. Dubornos, I want you to—’

‘No. Lanis can do it. I won’t leave you.’

Breaca’s mind had already run ahead. Shocked, she brought it back. Dubornos was smiling at her. There was more humour in his gaze than she had seen in all their joint adulthood.

He said, ‘Caradoc tried much the same and gave in. I won’t leave you and you haven’t time to waste trying to make me. Lanis knows the land here better than I do. She’s a dreamer; the warriors will listen to her. She can organize the evacuation.’

‘She can, yes, but she has not given me an oath to protect the Boudica’s children or die in the attempt. Would you not honour it now that we have most need of you?’

Breaca would have softened that, but there was so little time. Dubornos flushed and then paled. Stiffly, he said, ‘What would you have me do?’

‘Take Graine and—’

‘No!’ Graine broke free of Airmid’s grasp and stood on her own in the doorway. She glared at her mother, making a straight line of lips that wavered. With the sun behind and the fire in front, held between two lights, she looked more ethereal than she had ever done. ‘I’m not going away without you. If you leave without me, I’ll follow you, and you won’t be able to stop me.’

There was no time to make it easier for her, either; every heartbeat, now, brought them closer to disaster.

‘Forgive me,’ said Breaca, ‘I love you,’ and, taking her knife from her belt, she struck her daughter on the head with the back end of the hilt near the temple, where the damage would be least afterwards when she came to her senses.

Graine moaned and crumpled to the floor, blue-lipped and twitching. Dubornos knelt and gathered her, carefully.

‘Wait.’ Breaca put her hands to the torc at her neck. She had worn it since the day after ‘Tagos’ death when Cygfa had first handed it to her, and had felt nothing more than the warmth and weight of its metal. Any power it might have had seemed to have waned. ‘She should have this. You will need to hold it until she is of age—’

She stopped, because she could no longer speak. The woven gold had become thick, corded snake coils that writhed under her hand, pressing on the vessels of her neck. In the caverns of her mind, a gap opened, and a mountain wind blew through. She could have fought it, possibly she would have done, but Airmid’s hand on her wrist stopped her, and Airmid’s voice, carefully guarded, said, ‘Breaca, you are still first born of the Eceni. Don’t discard that

now.’

She took her hand away. The pressure around her neck eased. The wind died in her mind.

Dubornos stood waiting, cradling Graine’s broken head against his shoulder. Her daughter should have something to carry through her life apart from memories. The brooch of the serpent spear with its tags of black wool was pinned to Breaca’s shoulder, as it had been since the day Caradoc had sent it as his gift from Gaul.

‘You are my first thought and my last, for all time.’ Caradoc had sent the message then and Breaca said it now, quietly, as she unpinned the brooch and set it on Graine’s tunic, a gift from both parents that would go with her into adulthood.

Dubornos understood, and could explain it when the child was old enough. His black eyes thanked her.

Breaca leaned forward and kissed her daughter and then, to his surprise, Dubornos. ‘Protect her for me,’ she said.

‘With my life.’

She had never seen him weep. Tears smeared his cheeks as he nodded to those who were left, to Ardacos, Airmid, Gunovar, and last to Cygfa, to whom he had given the spark of his soul knowing she could never return it, and carried his too-light burden from the smithy.

There was quiet after he had gone, as there might have been before battle, if the body of a slain scout had been found and the strength of the enemy tested and found real.

Breaca said, ‘We need someone to hide the blades. I have not worked all winter to lose them now. Gunovar, you can—’

‘I can come with you and see what your son has made of himself in the company of Rome. The warriors can take the weapons made so far. The unworked iron will have to stay here; there isn’t time to bury it. And don’t try to hit me as you did your daughter. I’m too old for that, and you don’t have time to lose fighting me instead of Rome.’

Starkly, Breaca said, ‘You know how we may die?’

The broken dreamer splayed her hand flat across the scars of her face. Her crooked mouth twisted, accentuating the scars. ‘Do you doubt it?’

‘No. Of course not. I’m sorry. Your life is yours to cast to the gods as you wish.’

The rest gathered round: Cygfa who had been to Rome and stood in the shadow of her own crucifix and kept her damage to herself; Ardacos, who could yet go north and be an elder amongst the Caledonii; Airmid, heart of her heart, soul of her soul, who could have been Elder of Mona and taken the dreaming west to

Hibernia.

Breaca said, ‘I would prefer that all of you left, now, with Dubornos and Lanis and the warriors, but I don’t have the power to compel you.’

They all knew it, and struggled to find the words. In the end, it was Cygfa who said lightly, ‘I don’t think the procurator would stop long at the steading if he found only one woman within it.’

Which was why, in a shorter time than any of them imagined possible, Breaca of the Eceni led half of her son’s honour guard and all but two of the men and women who held the strings of her heart down to the steading to which she had brought them two years before.

Shortly thereafter, as the trackway trembled to the hammer of incoming horses, she led them out again to stand before the emperor’s procurator of taxes and his three hundred mercenary veterans.

She left Stone at the gates so that he might not scent the enemy and attack them out of hand and rode the grey battle mare because it was the most reliable of all her horses, and dressed in a new tunic of Eceni blue with a knotwork of muted grey bordering the sleeves and neck and hem, because it looked least warlike. She left her hair unbraided to hang to her shoulder and her shield hidden and outwardly bore no knife nor anything edged that might conceivably be considered a weapon, nor any armbands that might show undue wealth, but only the corded gold torc of the Eceni that weighed like rope about her neck.

As she rode her mare forward to greet the head of the incoming riders, she sought through the voids of all-time for the grandmother, the ancestor, or Nemain. All were silent.

‘It does us no honour and I regret it deeply, but we cannot feed three hundred men. Winter has left our stores empty and the trading has not yet begun.’

It was true, after its fashion. Certainly the steading had little by way of provisions and the two dozen she-bear warriors who had followed Breaca from the great-house had brought only enough from the great-house to feed themselves. As befitted a settlement in mourning, the she-bears wore tunics tied with unmade rawhide belts and no gold and their belt-knives were short and could not be challenged under Roman law. They occupied themselves with tending the horses or the fields and none welcomed the procurator, or invited him in.

Later, if they had to fight, there would be no risk that any of them had broken the guest laws and incurred the gods’ disfavour.

‘Thank you. We bring our own provisions.’

Breaca had addressed the procurator in Latin and he replied to her in Eceni, through a youth of the Trinovantes who wound a finger in his hair and stared at the ground and would not look up.

Without waiting for the boy to finish, the procurator pushed his flea-bitten grey gelding through the gates. He was a man in a hurry; his eyes fed on the gold at the Boudica’s neck, not the quiet wool of her tunic or the carefully combed sheen of her hair. His men followed him, orderly as any legion.

Cunomar and his eight she-bears were in the second century, flanked by veterans from Camulodunum, men whom Breaca recognized by sight but not by name. She had traded with them in the time before Eneit’s death, swapping belt buckles for raw bronze, or an armband for iron; two had been present in the theatre to witness the spear contest with the former governor.

One of these nudged his neighbour and said something coarse in gutter Latin but Breaca’s attention had already passed behind to the rear of the column where rode a Coritani youth who bore in his topknot the trio of red kite feathers that marked him as a scout of the legions, and, more importantly, displayed openly the warrior marks of a fire lizard on his arms.

Each was both a warning and a declaration of enmity and each was unnecessary; his face, seen in profile, was a younger stamp of the slave seller Breaca and Cunomar had killed in the forest beyond the horse fair and she would have seen that in him anywhere, without need for reminders.

He rode at the tail of the second century and made no effort to hide himself; quite the reverse. Passing by, his eyes met Breaca’s and he nodded a greeting that carried more threat in its cool, quiet understanding than all the procurator’s mercenaries put together. Because it mattered not to show the depth of her shock, she saluted him after the manner of the Coritani warriors and was surprised when he returned it.

A standard-bearer rode to the front of the column, holding aloft a banner on which weighing scales stitched in silver graced a scarlet background. He signalled with it and the rearmost century stepped out of line and encircled the steading. It was done smoothly, the product of much practice.