Dreaming the Serpent Spear (60 page)

She had thought that, and then who it might be, and was going to go over to speak to him when the night stirred and she was too late.

“Valerius?”

A voice called it from the dark beyond the fire. Breaca watched her brother stand, slowly, as if, now it had come, he would rather have continued to wait. Huw came into the light, the young slinger with the scarred face who was now Warrior of Mona. Brilliant metal flashed between his two hands.

Valerius did not take what was offered: a small statuette of the falcon, Horus, dented on the head, with one eye made
of jet. He stood with his head bowed, staring at his clasped hands, and did not move.

It was Longinus who asked, “Where is he?” He had no need to give a name; he, too, had been waiting.

Huw said, “On the other side of the ridge. The scouts have him. They’ll kill him if you give the order.”

“No!” Breaca said it, standing now. “Valerius, is it Corvus?” and then, when he gave no answer, “Go. He was a friend before this began. He may be again when it’s over. It’s not for us now to turn our backs on friendship.”

And then Longinus said it again, kindly, and with other threads in the weave, “Go. I’ll wait here, where there’s warmth. There’s a long night yet before the day begins; we can mend then whatever might be broken,” which was enough finally to unglue her brother’s feet and set him moving into the dark beyond the fire.

He felt sick, which was ridiculous on the eve of battle. He had thought Theophilus might offer to come with him and had not been sure he could find the voice to send him back. He was grateful that had not been needed. He followed Huw through the dark, blindly, and chose not to think of where he was going or why.

They came to a place where a small stream ran along the base of the ridge, and a hazel stood on either side. He had marked them for the spear-leaders for the day to come; not because they were useful for cover — there was no cover to speak of in the open plain in front of Paullinus’ valley — but as rallying points, easily seen by all the warriors.

“Here.” Huw pressed the small Horus into his hands. “I’ll not be far,” and faded back to the shadow of the ridge.

The night was empty. He might have been alone under the stars, except that there was a faint scent on the breeze that he would have recognized anywhere, at any time, in the blind heat of battle, on the cold of a winter’s mountain, in a throng of drinking legionaries in a filthy tavern in a Gaulish sea port — or here, at the edge of an ordinary plain on which the future of a province would be decided at daybreak.

He said, “Why are you here?”

“To see you.” Corvus was sitting on a rock with his bare feet in the stream. Coming so recently from the firelight, it took some time for Valerius to see him. The water was first, making silvered furrows around his ankles, then the slow revelation of a man.

He looked more tired than he had at Prasutagos’ steading, when he had sent the procurator’s veterans away and so saved Breaca’s life. His hair carried more silver than it had done in the years of his youth and he was, perhaps, a little thicker in the waist. Beyond all of those, he was the same man who had been shipwrecked on the Eceni coast twenty-three years before, the same officer who had lifted a boy from slavery and brought him into the cavalry.

They stood on opposite sides of the stream, and words would not bridge it.

After a while, Corvus cleared his throat and asked, “Do you still have your mad horse?”

“Yes. And Cygfa has his grandson. He has the spirit of his grandsire, but isn’t quite as mad.”

“Gods … With two of those on the battlefield … we should leave now.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

The false levity withered. The river ran yet between them. Valerius leaned in and set the bronze Horus on a rock mid-stream. Its jet eye glared at him. He said, “This is yours. You should have it back.”

“Thank you.” Corvus made no attempt to take it. “It’s travelled a long way to be here.”

“From Alexandria?”

“Yes.”

“You never told me his name.” Valerius had no idea why he said that. There had been years when he could have asked and the answer would have been given freely.

Corvus said, “I am not sure I ever knew his real name. He called himself Alexandro.” He said it in the soft, southern way, sliding the consonants across the root of his tongue. He smiled, thinly, so that the river caught the reflection of it. “I was his Hephaistion.”

“You loved him that much?”

“I thought I did. Love was … very different then. Simpler.” Corvus reached to turn the falcon round, his fingers tracing the dent in its head. “I was nineteen. I thought I knew everything there was to know of life and love and all the things between them.”

“And now?” Valerius asked it softly.

“Now I know nothing and know that I know nothing. No … that’s not true.” Corvus drew a short breath and hissed it out, shaking his head. “I never know what to say in your company any more. For gods’ sake, must we sit like this with a river between us when it will all end tomorrow?”

It was hard to speak, but necessary. “There’s room here,” said Valerius, “and equally on your side. I can cross or you
can. I don’t think there’s room for both of us and the Horus on the stone in the middle.”

“No.” Corvus barked a laugh. “No, there isn’t. So then, shall I cross or will you? It seems to matter. What do your gods tell you?”

“That it should never have come to this.” Valerius’ voice snagged in his throat. “Wait, I’ll come over.”

He got his feet wet, and stubbed his toe, and landed like a thrown fish on the far bank and lay laughing, shakily. He was weeping, which felt better than he might have supposed.

With the heel of his hand, he smeared the wet from his eyes and sat up. “I’m supposed to be leading the right wing tomorrow. I doubt they would follow me if they saw this.” He could say that, and lose nothing; it would be obvious from the opening of the battle lines.

Giving as little away, Corvus said, “Then we’ll meet. The Quinta Gallorum are set to hold the left.”

“There is still time to change it.” Valerius thought about that. “But we won’t. We will do what we must because there is no way now to change the things that really matter.” He sat up. Tears leaked down the line of his nose, as if a tap had opened and could not be closed off. He reached out, fuzzily, and took hands that waited for him. “Quintus Valerius Corvus. I loved you more than I knew. I would never have thrown it away so lightly if I had known what it meant.”

The hands that lay in his were still and cool and only a small tremor betrayed them. Corvus said, “Someone told me once that men are doomed to learn through pain until they can find a way to learn through joy. It seems we have a lot to learn, each of us.”

“We do. Was that from him?” He nodded to the Horus.

“No. But it was of that time. A woman. She was to Isis what you are to Mithras. And now, I think, to Nemain? Or is it Briga?”

“Nemain.”

“It must be hard to hold true to them both at once.”

“Impossible. I am still two people in one skin. I imagine I will always be.”

“But one soul, and that Eceni and that is where the treasure lies.” Corvus lifted Valerius’ hand and traced the lines of the palm with one finger and said, “You know that if I could restore to you all that is lost, I would do it.”

“I know. Thank you.”

Without speaking, they had moved, and sat close, so that it was possible once again for Valerius to tip his head sideways and find a shoulder waiting, as it had always waited, and the weight of a cheek on his crown and to feel an arm round him and the steady — so very steady — rhythm of a heartbeat that sang to his own. The gods were there, quietly, without conflict, so that it was possible to be young again, and know nothing except the simplicity of love, and at the same time to be older, and know that there was everything still to know.

“Luain mac Calma.” Corvus spoke the name into his hair; a blessing, or a curse. “I asked him if we would meet in death. He promised me that we would meet once more in this life. I didn’t believe him at the time.”

Once more.
The words cut them both, and were believed.

Valerius said, “He’s my father, did you know?”

“Yes, he told me. I had always thought it, only when Eburovic was alive, it seemed impolite to ask. He was there
in the beginning, at the first shipwreck. Will he be here now, at the end?”

“I don’t know. He thinks Graine is the wild piece on the board. He sent her back to Breaca so she would be here. It may be he thinks that’s enough.”

“For the sake of your people, it would be good to think so.”

“Yes.” The weeping had stopped and there was, after all, no need to talk. Valerius sat still, listening to a heartbeat and feeling the press of a cheek, and of lips on his head. Then he sat a little higher, and the head was beside his, and it would have been a small thing to turn inward and seek the kiss and the solace that had been ten years denied.

A part of him wanted to. The greater part, god-connected, did not. The gap between the two ached with an old, familiar yearning.

Unsteadily, Corvus said, “I think this is enough. To have met, to have spoken—”

“To know that there is no hate.”

“And never was?”

“Never.”

The night was cooler than it had been. The glow of Braint’s pyre was a setting sun on the wrong horizon. It was hard to part. Harder still to imagine leaving. Hardest to imagine battle, and the endings it might bring. They came apart, slowly, making the moments draw out beyond their span.

Corvus picked up the Horus and wiped the water from it with the hem of his cloak. He said, “Luain mac Calma knows the things we don’t. If anyone can rescue sense from nonsense, it is him. He spared my life on Mona. I like to think there was
a reason, and that it was not for the destruction of us both, or our people.”

The stepping stone was free. Valerius crossed the stream again with dry feet and did not stumble. From the far bank, which was Eceni at least until morning, he said, “Whatever comes, know that I am sorry for all that I said and did that hurt you.”

“I always knew that. I was just not always able to let you know that I knew.”

The joy of that would have melted him if he had stayed on the Roman side. Valerius gave the salute of warrior to warrior and said, “Until tomorrow then, and whatever comes after. If I cross the river to the gods first, I will wait for you, however long it takes.”

“Will your gods allow it, when they are not mine?” Corvus had never dared voice that doubt before, to himself or anyone. He watched Valerius pause on his own side of the river and search within in a way he had never done in his younger years. The answer, then, when it came, was quiet and solid and certain, and settled in Corvus’ heart as a bandage ready for expected pain.

“They will always allow it. It’s only men who need ownership. The gods allow more freedom.”

The message came from the gods, and was for all who could hear it. The smile was for Corvus alone, and he treasured it.

V
ALERIUS WALKED ALONG THE SIDE OF THE STREAM. WHEN
he could no longer hear the sound of footsteps going the other way, he bent to wash his face.

Nobody came to join him or to ask unnecessary questions. There was no moon, yet, to open wide the pathways to Nemain. No bulls grazed near the two armies to bring him closer to Mithras. Even so, a boundary had been crossed that was more than the wetting of feet in a river and a last remembrance of love. The night was crisper than it had been, so that the stars were punched holes in the void and god-light leaked through. He turned in to walk across the open plain towards the camp, and set himself open, waiting.

Cygfa met him, who was the last he had expected. She stood alone, in night so black that only the brilliance of her hair gave her away, and even that was a strange, muted pewter, not the corn gold of her father’s daylight legacy. She had changed since the battle for Camulodunum and Valerius did not fully know why. Guessing, he said, “I’m sorry about Braint.”

“Thank you. So am I, but it was a good death and a good day to die. Few of us are privileged to cross the river under the same moon as Dubornos. Did you hear of that?”

“Yes. Airmid told me, and then Breaca.”

“How much did they say of what passed between him and me?”

“That you offered yourself to carry his life on after his death, but he…” Valerius struggled to find words that would suit and would not further offend the sudden stiffening, and the edge of something else he still could not read. She had not been stiff in his presence since they had left Gaul on a ship when he had still thought he fought for Rome. He did not want to remember that. He had grown used to the ease of her presence, and her acceptance of him for all he had been. It would hurt to find it lost.

She turned and he led her closer to the camp, to where the firelight might let him read her. She took his lead, but pushed him a little eastward, towards the tent that the refugees had given him, and the red light of its brazier.

There, she said, “Dubornos wouldn’t accept what I offered. He couldn’t. Perhaps I should not have offered, but I felt it right at the time.”

“Then it was right.” Luain mac Calma would have said that better, so that it sounded less glib, or Efnís, or Valerius himself if he had been less raw.

“I know. And he said what he needed aloud in front of everyone. They will have told you that.”

They had reached the tent, close enough to smell the charcoal that filled the brazier, and the rosemary oil someone had sprinkled on it. Valerius gave thanks, fervently, that he had not smelled that before he saw Corvus. In the years when
their lives had been lived as one, they had often set rosemary oil on the fire before love; it would have been far harder to leave if the memory of that had filled his head. He brought his attention back to Cygfa and what she was saying.

“… will not have told you what he said to me alone, as he held me.”

“What was that?”

It mattered. It mattered enough to have made her stay awake on the night before battle and come out to the dark to find him. It mattered enough to turn her face the same bloodless white as her hair, both given colour only by the brazier. He knew that, and even so it was hard to think through the scent of rosemary oil and the sudden havoc of twinned god-space that had opened within him.