Ravens of Avalon (58 page)

As they reached the shelter of the first trees Lhiannon looked back. Beyond the flicker of Roman torches, another figure moved among the dead. Tall and graceful, a glimmer of light followed where it passed. She touched Rianor’s shoulder.

“Is that one of our women, walking down there?”

He followed her gaze, swallowed, and then, very softly, whispered the final verse of Brangenos’s song—

“The Great Queen walks the battlefield And weeps for all the slain, To Her embrace their souls they yield, She takes away their pain.”

The Morrigan weeps …
thought Lhiannon, and found a bitter comfort in knowing that they did not mourn alone.

he has lost a great deal of blood,” said Brangenos as they laid the queen down on the hill.

“Yes—” The fitful moonlight that shafted through the trees showed them the gashes on Boudica’s long limbs. Those had mostly stopped bleeding, but there was a deep slash in her side that looked bad. All they could do was to bind the wounds and lay her, wrapped warmly, on a litter of branches. Lhiannon looked up as Caw came back through the trees.

“The Romans are searching the east and south, along the road. We cannot go that way.”

“I have hunted all through these hills.” Kitto spoke from the shadows where he and Argantilla had been scraping a shallow grave for Rigana. “I can lead you past the Roman fort and around to the west of this ridge. From there we can make our way to my father’s farm.”

It would appear that the Goddess had not abandoned them entirely. For the first time Lhiannon dared to hope they might escape. To what, was a question for another day.

or Boudica, consciousness returned on a wave of agony. She was lying on something that jerked and swayed; each movement sending agony jolting through every limb. She drew a shuddering breath, felt below her ribs a pain so profound that she could not even scream. The motion stopped and something sweet was forced between her lips. She recognized the taste of poppy seed in honey and presently knew no more.

When again she found herself aware, she thought she was on the ship that had carried her to Avalon. But Prasutagos was beside her, his skin bronzed and his hair burnished to pale gold by the sun.

“I saw you on your pyre. Am I dead, too?”
Her heart leaped as he smiled.

“Not yet, my love. You have a way to go.”
His face began to dim as the motion beneath her increased. She clung to the vision, trying to ignore the persistent gnawing agony.

“Don’t leave me again!”
her spirit cried.

Darkness swirled between them, but she heard his voice, as through her pain she had heard it long ago—
“Boudica, I am here …”

The next time she woke she was lying in shadow on something soft that did not move. Familiar voices murmured nearby. She must have made some sound, for Argantilla’s face swam into view above her.

“Mother! You’re awake! How do you feel?”

As if I would rather be whipped again, and weak as a day-old pup,
she thought, realizing in just how many places she was hurting now. “The better for seeing you,” she said aloud. “Where are we?” she added as Tilla managed a watery smile.

“At Kitto’s farm. They have been kind.” The girl stopped, swallowed. “Rigana—”

“—is dead. I saw her fall. It was what she wanted.”
It is what I wanted, too …
Boudica did not let that knowledge alter her smile. It would have been better if she had died on the battlefield. She was a danger to them all. But Lhiannon would never grant her the mercy stroke now.

She found that she could remember the battle quite clearly, and wondered if the trauma to her flesh had somehow insulated her from its terror, or whether the magnitude of the disaster helped her to bear her body’s pain.

Argantilla moved aside and she saw Lhiannon, her face gaunt and her eyes shadowed by fatigue. With gentle efficiency the priestess took her pulse and tested the temperature of her brow.

“You have a little fever, but we were able to clean and stitch your wounds while you were unconscious, and they seem to be doing well. Rest while you can. The Romans are searching. We cannot stay here long.”

“Are there horses?” Boudica asked.

“We can get them. We could make a horse litter, I suppose …” Lhiannon said doubtfully.

“Tie me into the saddle. If I fall, tie me over it. If I die, bury me as you did Rigana,” she said baldly. “If you are in danger of being caught, slit my throat and run. I will not be dragged in chains through the streets of Rome.”

Lhiannon’s lips set, and she touched Boudica’s brow once more. “I will not allow you to die. We are making soup. You must drink as much as you are able to build up your blood. We will stay here as long as we can.”

he Roman road was closed to them now. Kitto guided them by winding tracks and cowpaths to the farm of his uncle, who in turn passed them on to a foster-brother and so, guided from one friend to the next, they made their way through the lands of the Cornovii and Dobu-nii toward Avalon.

The countryside was full of rumors. It was said that the commander of the legion in Isca, hearing of the great victory that his fear had kept his troops from sharing, fell on his sword. If so, thought Lhiannon bitterly, that was one Roman officer whom they had managed to kill. The rest of them were vigorously alive, slaughtering anyone they suspected of sympathy for the Killer Queen.

But the Romans had not yet begun to look westward. Most of Boudica’s army had come from the south and east, and it was they who were the targets of the legions’ wrath. Those Iceni who made it back to their homes might soon wish that they had died on the battlefield.

The fugitives rode slowly by hidden paths, and they encountered no patrols. As they moved on, Boudica seemed to grow stronger. Her wounds were beginning to close. But though she never complained, when they stopped each night she fell immediately into an exhausted sleep, and her color alternated between flushed and pale.

When we get to Avalon she can rest,
thought Lhiannon.
I will make her

well.

The old moon had worn away and was swelling to the full once more by the time they descended the southern slopes of the Lead Hills and saw across the marshes the pointed tip of the Tor.

nd so, after everything, I am back at Avalon,
thought Boudica.

They had brought her to the apple orchard to bask in the dreaming peace of the afternoon. She wished that she could believe that everything that had happened since she and Lhiannon left this place had been a nightmare. But that would have been to lose Prasutagos. She did not tell Lhiannon, who was working so hard to make her live, that he came to her in her dreams.

Sunlight spangled the grass beneath the apple trees that grew below the Blood Spring. In Avalon the world seemed very fair. But in her homeland things might be otherwise. Was it cowardice to flee what the Romans would do to the Iceni now? At the thought, Boudica started to raise herself, and a wave of anguish felled her once more.

The wounds on her arms and legs were healing, but there was something very wrong within. Perhaps the decision to live would not be hers. And why was she surprised, she wondered when the darkness receded and she was able to focus once more on the leaves. Some fates could not be fought—losing her son, losing Prasutagos, losing the battle for Britannia …

Goddess, why did You betray me?
Her eyes stung with angry tears.
You promised me victory …
But since Manduessedum, the place in Boudica’s mind where the Morrigan had been was empty. Perhaps what she thought was the Lady of Ravens had been no more than a delusion born of her own rage, and it was she herself who had betrayed them all …

ituitos, look out!” Boudica’s cry jerked Lhiannon awake, heart pounding. “So many, damn them—I can’t get past their shields!”

Since Manduessedum the priestess had learned to sleep lightly, alert for the first muttering that meant Boudica’s fever was rising once more. Brangenos helped to dress her wound, and Coventa or Argantilla could keep watch during the day, but through the nights Lhiannon fought for Boudica’s life as fiercely as the queen had battled Rome.

The light of the oil lamp showed her Boudica flailing as if she held a sword. In the hut they shared, two steps took her to her patient’s side. She soaked a cloth in cold water and laid it on the queen’s burning brow. Bogle, who had risen when she did, rested his head on the pillow.

“Hush, be easy, my dear one. The battle’s over. You’re safe with me now …” Lhiannon judged the time to be near midnight—she could safely let her patient have more willow-bark tea. “Wake now—open your eyes and I will give you something to make it easier.” She held the cup to Boudica’s lips and the queen swallowed. Her eyelids fluttered and she drank again.

“Damn all Romans …” she whispered as Lhiannon eased her back down. “I fought them a whole day. I should not have to do it all over again.” She laid her hand on the dog’s head.

“Never mind, darling. Eventually the memories will fade. It takes time for the dead to leave us,” said Lhiannon. “At first we see them everywhere. But as time passes and the world is changed they withdraw, and we go on.”

“Not always,” Boudica replied. “And it is not all nightmares. Pra-sutagos is with me all the time.” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to hear me speak of him.”

“He was a good man,” answered Lhiannon briskly. “But he is dead, and you must think about getting well.”

“Perhaps.” Boudica sighed. “When we were here before, you found the way to Faerie, and I could not follow you. But I think that where I am going now, one day you will follow me.”

Boudica had always been a strong woman with good muscle on her tall frame. With time and childbearing she had even grown matronly, until she lost that softness during the campaign. But now, stark in the lamplight, the good bones of her face stood clear. Lhiannon’s belly clenched as she recognized how fever was wearing the flesh away.

“You could still go there,” Lhiannon said desperately, trying to deny what she had just seen. “The Faerie queen could heal you, or keep you living until—”

“Until nothing.” Boudica cut in. “Life eternal and unchanging, never meeting the ones you loved, never growing wiser, never returning to this world to live anew?”

Lhiannon winced, hearing from Boudica the argument she herself had offered the Faerie queen.

“Would you wish that for yourself, Lhiannon? Why would you want it for me?”

“Never seeing Prasutagos again, you mean?” Lhiannon asked bitterly. “But when he was dying, would you not have taken him anywhere he might live a little longer if you had the chance?”

“Prasutagos was my—” Boudica fell silent, eyes widening as she met Lhiannon’s gaze.

Now do you understand?
thought the priestess.
Now do you understand that I love you?

“He was your husband,” she said aloud. “Nor did I ever try to part you while he lived. But I will not let him drag you down to death if there is any way you may be saved. Curse it, Boudica,” she added suddenly, “do you
want
to die?”

“Not just at the moment, no,” the other woman said honestly. “I didn’t want to go into battle, either, but when the time came, I did it. I admit it is easier when a thousand warriors are baying for blood all around you. It is hard to go through that door alone. Prasutagos had to do it, and I had to help him. But you won’t help me … It hurts,

Lhiannon,” Boudica said then. “Would you condemn me to live in agony?”

“I daresay it does,” the priestess said tartly. “You have always had the constitution of one of your own ponies. Except when you lay in childbed have you ever known pain? You lived soft for seventeen years and then spent three months in one campaign. What do you know of the long struggle that exhausts the soul?”

Boudica recoiled as each barbed word struck home. Bogle unfolded his long limbs and stood looking from one woman to the other with anxious eyes. A lifetime of anguish the priestess had not known she held was flooding forth, and she could not stem the flow until she was done.

“You lost one battle—I have had to spend all my strength in fruitless magic and see our warriors slain again and again. To fail and die is hard, but it’s harder still to fail and fight on, knowing you will probably lose!”

Boudica was weeping silently. Lhiannon felt suddenly sick and old. The hatred she felt for the Romans was a bright, clean thing, a justified rage. What she and Boudica were doing to each other now was the shadow side of love.

But weak as she was, the queen was not yet beaten. After a few moments she took a deep breath and fixed the priestess with the gaze that had commanded an army.

“And what about the things
you
have not dared?” she asked. “When I first came to Mona, your deepest desire was to sit as Oracle—at least,” her lips quirked, “when you were not dreaming of lying in Ardanos’s arms. Helve is dead, and you are our High Priestess here. Why haven’t you seized the chance to ride the spirit road?”