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DREAMING THE BULL
A BANTAM BOOK: 9780553814071
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781407093765
Originally published in Great Britain by Bantam Press,
a division of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Manda Scott 2004
The right of Manda Scott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Characters and Pronunciation of Names
Maps
Prologue
I: Autumn–Winter AD 47
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
II: Summer–Early Autumn AD 51
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
III: Autumn–Winter AD 51
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
IV: Autumn AD 54
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Author’s Note
Bibliography
About the Author
Also by Manda Scott
Copyright
THE SECOND NOVEL IN THE ACCLAIMED BOUDICA SERIES.
Hailed by her people as Boudica, the Bringer of Victory, Breaca now leads the resistance against the occupying legions of Rome. Opposing her is Julius Valerius, an auxiliary cavalry officer whose increasing brutality in the service of his god and emperor cannot shield him from the ghosts of his past. Caught in the middle are two children, pawns in a game of unthinkable savagery.
Continuing her acclaimed retelling of this great tale, Manda Scott has written a novel of uncompromising mastery that captivates the heart and challenges the mind as Boudica and this man who calls himself Julius Valerius confront each other – and their own inescapable destinies...
Manda Scott is a veterinary surgeon, writer and climber. Born and educated in Scotland, she now lives in Suffolk with two lurchers and too many cats.
Manda Scott is known primarily as a crime writer. Her first novel, Hen’s Teeth, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her subsequent novels are Night Mares, Stronger than Death and No Good Deed, for which she was hailed as ‘one of Britain’s most important crime writers’.
Dreaming the Eagle, the first book in the Boudica series, is also published by Bantam Books and the third book, Dreaming the Hound, by Bantam Press.
Also by Manda Scott
HEN’S TEETH
NIGHT MARES
STRONGER THAN DEATH
NO GOOD DEED
BOUDICA: DREAMING THE EAGLE
BOUDICA: DREAMING THE HOUND
Heartfelt thanks to H.J.P. ‘Douglas’ Arnold, Roman military historian and astronomer, for his unfailingly cheerful reading of the various drafts of this novel and its predecessor and for his insight, honesty and accuracy; without him, the writing and research of the Boudican era would have been immeasurably harder and the result far less coherent. As ever, there are places where I chose to ignore his advice and any inaccuracies of fact or concept are entirely my responsibility. Thanks to Robin and Aggy for input on caves and for general support in the writing. Thanks of an entirely different nature to Debs, Naziema, Carol and Chloë who, at various times and in various ways, kept the realities together and to Tony, for friendship, grounding and thoughtful sanity. Thanks in perpetuity to my agent, Jane Judd, and especially to my editors on both sides of the Atlantic for their care, insight and stamina. Finally, thanks to all those who have shared the dream and do so still.
Listen to me. I am Luain mac Calma, once of Hibernia, now Elder of Mona, adviser to the Boudica, Bringer of Victory, and I am here to teach you the history of your people. Here, tonight, by this fire, you will learn what has come before. This is who you were; if we win now, this is who you could be again.
In the beginning, the gods ruled the land and the ancestor-people lived in their care. Briga, the three-fold Mother, held them through birth and death, and Nemain, her daughter, who shows her face each night in the moon, gave succour between these two journeys. Belin, the sun, warmed them, and Manannan of the seas gave them fish. The ancestors saw that this island of Mona was sacred to all the gods and for untold generations warriors, dreamers and singers from the tribes have come to sit here in this great-house and learn.
With time, the tribes grew, each with its own strengths. Rome, too, was growing; her traders sought hides, horses and hounds, tin and lead, jewellery and corn and they found them here in abundance.
It was greed for corn, for silver, and for our people as slaves that brought Julius Caesar to our shores. He came twice and each time the dreamers of our ancestors called on Manannan to send a storm to wreck his ships and drown his men. The first time, Caesar barely escaped with his life. A year later, returning, he fought a small battle against the heroes of the east, at the end of which they agreed to talk with him rather than spill more blood. He offered them trading treaties and monopolies on the wines and enamels from Gaul and Belgica and those who saw their future in trade, and saw no threat from Rome, agreed.
We lived in peace for nearly one hundred years. In that time, a single man came to rule over the tribes on either side of the great river: Cunobelin, the Hound of the Sun, dealt skilfully with Rome. While the Caesars Augustus and Tiberius marched their legions out over Gaul and the Germanies, Cunobelin sent envoys promising peace and trade, but not so much of either that he offended the tribes who hated Rome and who might otherwise have come to view him openly as an enemy.
While Cunobelin lived, there was peace. There were many among our elders and grandmother-councils who watched the Roman subjugation of Gaul and feared that we would be next. Amongst those were the Eceni, the Boudica’s people. Their lands bordered those of the Sun Hound and, although they were not at war with him, they refused to trade in anything Roman, nor would they sell to Rome their horses, hides or hunting hounds, which were the best the world has ever seen.
The Eceni were in conflict with the Coritani and it was in killing a Coritani spearman that Breaca, who became the Boudica, won her first kill-feather. She was twelve years old and still a child, but the warrior showed in her clearly. Breaca’s half-brother, Bán, was younger, but his head was cooler and his heart perhaps more open. The gods loved Bán and sent him dreams of a power unknown since the time of the ancestors. Breaca loved him as any sister loves a brother.
In Cunobelin’s lands, life was not peaceful; the Sun Hound set his own three sons against each other, thinking to teach them by constant competition. Togodubnos was eldest and could hold his own. Amminios, the middle son, thrived in the constant conflict but Caradoc, the youngest, and the most ardent warrior, loathed his father and escaped to be with his mother’s brother, a seaman.
The gods, who know these things better than we, caused Caradoc’s ship to be wrecked on the eastern shores and the lad was washed up, half-drowned, at Breaca’s feet. Thus began one of the greatest alliances in our history, although it took them years to come together and without war it might never have happened.
With Caradoc was shipwrecked a Roman, Corvus, who came to know the Eceni and care for them. In the spring after the shipwreck, Breaca and her warriors escorted Caradoc and this Corvus south to the lands of the Sun Hound. They were well received and treated with honour, but for Bán, who fell into a game of Warrior’s Dance with Amminios and beat him. Above all else, Amminios hated to lose and it was this that spurred him to mount an attack on the returning Eceni.
They fought a battle at the Place of the Heron’s Foot and many were slain. The greatest loss was the boy, Bán, against whom Amminios held his grudge. Breaca saw her brother slain and his body taken by Amminios and although the dreamers have searched all the pathways to the other world, none has yet found his soul that it might be returned to the gods.
Four years ago, two things happened to change the peace of the tribes: Cunobelin died, leaving his sons to fight amongst themselves, and across the Ocean a new emperor came to power in Rome. Claudius was weak and had a need to prove to the senate and the people that he had the skills of Julius Caesar, whom they still revere. He sent four legions and four wings of cavalry against us. Forty thousand men and their horses, servants, engineers and doctors took ship for Britannia.
The battle of the invasion lasted two days and will be told for ever round the fires. A thousand heroes lost their lives on the first day, for the death of ten times that many Romans. Late in the evening, when we were winning, Togodubnos and Caradoc found themselves trapped, unable to advance or retreat. Their deaths were certain until Breaca led a charge that smashed the Roman lines and freed those caught within. It was then that she earned the name by which we know her: Boudica, Bringer of Victory.
Togodubnos was wounded and died that night but his brother Caradoc took up leadership of his warriors and, with Breaca, prepared to fight the next day. They would have fought without rest until all were dead or we had victory but the gods deemed it otherwise, sending an entire legion across the river in the early morning so that there was no time to make a stand against them.
We dreamers called a mist and the gods demanded that Breaca and Caradoc lead the warriors and children to safety – without them, you would not be alive and Rome would rule unhampered. They did not wish to leave the field of battle but Macha, who had been mother to Bán and was more than a mother to Breaca, demanded it. Macha herself stayed to hold the fog and it lifted only with her dying, at the very end when all of our people had escaped.
And so we live now with the results of that. Rome marched north and captured Cunobelin’s dun. They call it Camulodunum and have built a fortress there of a size to numb the mind. Breaca and Caradoc fled west and now, with the support of Mona and the dreamers, hold the western lands, killing all Rome sends against us. The time is right for our victory. The old governor who led the invasion will be recalled shortly. Replacing him is Scapula, a general renowned for his savagery. But between one and the other is a space of time when the Roman legions in Britannia are leaderless and we will hit them then, when they are weakest, and perhaps drive them back into the sea.
One thing more: I have spoken of Breaca’s brother Bán and his death at the hands of Amminios, brother to Caradoc. I have travelled in Gaul and I am coming to believe that Bán did not die, but was taken into slavery by Amminios. Later, escaping, he joined the cavalry, serving under Corvus, the Roman officer who had been shipwrecked in Eceni lands and was his friend. A man of Bán’s description, showing knowledge of our people and great skill with horses, fought in the invasion battles and serves now with the cavalry at Camulodunum.
If this man is Bán, if he did join the enemy cavalry, it can only be because he believed that Amminios had slain Breaca and all his family. Left thus alone, he might easily have considered that he had nothing left to live for.
He must know otherwise now – the Boudica is renowned from the west coast to the east and in all ways she is unmistakable. Nevertheless, this man has not come to us asking help and forgiveness. I believe his true commitment to Rome and all it stands for was made after the second day of the invasion battle, when he found his mother’s body burning on a funeral pyre. If he holds himself responsible for her death, then it may be that he fears himself beyond redemption, for ever cut off from his gods, his people and his closest family.
If I am right, this is a man to watch and fear. The boy that I knew was a dreamer to match the power of his mother and a warrior almost to match his sister; if Bán has lost his connection with the gods and the love of his family, then he will be damaged beyond all knowing. Damaged men are ever the most dangerous, to themselves and others. We stand against them at our peril.
I do not believe the gods would cast out one of their own, however appalling his crimes, and I am seeking ways to find Bán and to speak with him. If I am to do so, it is imperative that Breaca, Airmid and Caradoc continue to believe him dead.
You, here, are in the great-house under the care of the gods. I swear you now to secrecy; only on my death or that of Bán can you speak freely and then only to Airmid, who will know what to do. For now, you may sleep, and dream, and know that the gods take care of you.
He had been branded once before, long ago, when his name was not Julius Valerius. Then, Bán had fought the men who held him down and it had been done badly so that the wound had festered and he had nearly died. Now, kneeling tied and blindfold in the claustrophobic dark of a wine cellar, beneath a house that was less than three years old and with the snuffed wicks of the candles sending rank smoke into the dark, he yearned for the touch of the iron. When the masked centurion wiped the wine down the line of his breastbone and pressed his thumb in the centre to mark the spot, he leaned forward to meet the pain.
He had forgotten how bad it would be. The shock was blinding. Fire, and something worse than fire, wrapped his heart, closing tight, like a fist. It wrenched at his breath in a way that wounds taken in battle had never done. He forced himself to silence but need not have done; the noise of one man was lost in the echoing chant of forty male voices. The stench of burned flesh drowned in a flood of sweet smoke as someone threw a fistful of incense onto the brazier.
Later, he wondered at the expense of that: frankincense cost more than its own weight in gold. At the time, he only knew that, however briefly, the pain of the fire consumed the other greater pain of his soul and it was for this that he had come to the god. He threw himself into it, riding the heat that spread from his chest until it drew him out of himself and he watched his body from a place apart, one with the fire and yet separate. At its height, when the bearable became unbearable, someone standing behind stripped the blindfold from his eyes and cut the cords at his wrist and someone else lit the seven lamps before the sun-disc so that, in deepest darkness and blinding pain, the god’s light offered solace.
He would have liked to have accepted the offer, to have fallen into the waiting, welcoming arms of the deity, to have known peace and certain salvation. The men branded on either side of him did exactly that. From his left, he felt the shudder of flesh that matched exactly the moment of surrender when a horse first accepts the bridle. From his right he heard a whimpered exhalation, as of a man at the climax of love. For these, and the others beyond them, divine joy engulfed all pain, erasing its threat for ever.
It was what he had been promised and what he had craved. In an agony that was more of the heart than the body, he cried aloud in the void of his soul for the voice of the god. He was not answered. Too soon, the iron was gone, leaving only the ache of scorched flesh and a curl of smoke that rose to join the taint of those who had been branded with him.
The centurion stepped back, swinging the reddening iron. The double curve of the raven blurred and steadied and lit the space between them. Hidden eyes regarded Valerius from behind the god’s mask.
‘Know now that you are my Sons under the Sun, the last for whom I will be Father and special for ever because of it. I will leave this province soon, with the governor, travelling with him to Rome to accept such postings as the emperor chooses to bestow. I will be a centurion of the second cohort of the Praetorian Guard. Should you come to Rome, make yourselves known to me. The new governor will arrive with next month’s first auspicious tide. With him will come new officers to replace those who are leaving and new recruits to replace those we have lost. Meantime, the welfare of this province, the honour of our emperor and of the legions is in your hands and those of your brothers under the god.
‘You are his now, first and foremost. Before the legions, before all other gods, you belong to Mithras to death and beyond. He is a just god; ask and he will give you strength; weaken and he will destroy you. By the brand will you know and care for each other and if the god grant that we meet again, I will know you by it also.’
They were seven in the row, naked as infants, newly marked and newly named. Not one spoke. On the far side of the room, a man’s voice set up the chant of the newborn. It was joined by others and others and, last, by the new initiates until the full weight of forty-nine voices surged onto the walls and fell inwards, deafeningly. As the sound faded, a single lamp was lit beneath the image of the god. The centurion turned and saluted. Behind him, the others did likewise. From his place above the candle on the northern wall, smiling Mithras, capped and caped, caught his bull and drew his blade along its throat.
Only the children sleep on the night before battle and sometimes not even them. On the night before the Roman governor of Britannia took ship and left for ever the land he had conquered, two thousand warriors and half as many dreamers gathered awake on a hillside, less than a morning’s ride from the most westerly of the frontier forts. Singly and in groups, as their gods and their courage dictated, they prepared themselves for war on a scale not seen in the four years since Rome’s invasion.
Breaca nic Graine, once of the Eceni and now of Mona, sat alone at the edge of a mountain pool. She tossed a pebble in the palm of her hand and sent it skipping over the water.
‘For luck.’
The stone bounced five times, shattering the moon’s reflection. Shards of broken light scattered into darkness and were lost. The river ran on unheard, the music of its passing drowned beneath the stutter of bear claws played on hollow skulls nearby. The light of a thousand restless campfires gilded the water’s edge and smoke hazed the air above it. Only by the river was there solitude and darkness and the peace to ask favours of the gods.
‘For courage.’
The second pebble clipped the edge of the moon and was lost. On the unseen slopes behind, the skull-drums reached a crescendo. A woman’s voice called out in the language of the northern ancestors. Other voices answered, grunting, and the un-rhythm of the drums changed. It was not good to listen too closely to that; over the years, more than one soul had been lost in the mesh of woven bone-sounds and had never found its way home.
‘For Briga’s care in battle.’
The third stone, more accurate than those before it, bounced nine times and sank into the moon’s heart, carrying the prayer directly to the gods without the intermediary of the river. If a warrior believed in omens, it was a good one. Breaca, known as the Boudica, sat as the moon settled again and was whole, a crisp half-circle of silver lying still on a bed of moving black.
She picked up a fourth stone. It was wider and flatter than the others and bounced smoothly on her palm. She breathed a different prayer into it, one for which tradition did not supply the words.
‘For Caradoc and for Cunomar, for their joy and their peace if I am taken in battle. Briga, mother of war, of childbirth and of dying, take care of them for me.’
It was not a new prayer; in the three and a half years since her son was born, she had spoken it countless times in the silence of her mind in those moments before the first clash of combat when everything and everyone she loved must be put aside and forgotten. The difference now, in the rushing dark by the river, with the chaos of preparation held temporarily at bay, was that she had spoken for the first time aloud and had felt the prayer clearly heard. She was beside water, which was Nemain’s, and on the eve of battle, which was Briga’s, and the gods were alive and walking on the mountainside, called in by the scores of dreamers whose ceremonies lit the night sky.
After nearly four years of despair, she could feel the promise of freedom just within reach if bone and blood and sinew could be pushed hard enough and far enough to make it happen. Knowing a hope greater than any she had felt since the invasion, the Boudica drew back her arm to throw her stone.
‘Mama?’
‘Cunomar!’ She turned too fast. The pebble skittered over the water and was lost. A child stood on the river bank above her, tousled from sleep and stumbling uncertainly in the dark.
She reached up and lifted her son by the waist, bringing him down to the water’s edge where he could stand safely. ‘My warrior, you should be sleeping, why are you not?’
Blearily, he rubbed a small fist in his eye. ‘The drums woke me. Ardacos is calling the she-bears to help him. He’s going to fight the Romans. Can I watch the ceremony?’
Cunomar was not quite four years old and had only recently begun to grasp the enormity of war. Ardacos was his latest hero, second only to his father and mother in the pantheon of his gods. The small, savage Caledonian was the stuff of childhood idolatry. Ardacos led the band of warriors dedicated to the she-bear; they fought always on foot and largely naked and surpassed all others in the stalking and hunting of the enemy by night. The skull-drums were his, and the chanting that accompanied them.
Breaca said, ‘We’re all going to fight the Romans but, no, I think the ceremony is sacred and not for our eyes unless they call us in. When you are older, if the she-bear so grants, you can join with Ardacos in his ceremonies.’
The boy’s face flushed in the fire glow, suddenly awake. ‘The she-bear will grant it,’ he said. ‘She must. I’ll join Ardacos and together we will drive the legions into the outer Ocean.’
He spoke with the conviction of one who has not yet known defeat, nor even considered it possible. Breaca had not the heart to disappoint him. ‘Then your father and I will be glad to save you some Romans to fight. But in the morning we must kill the ones in the fort beyond the next mountain, and before that Ardacos and two of his warriors must make the land safe for us. It may be he has need of me in a part of his ceremony. If I go to him, you must go to bed first. Will you do that?’
‘Can I sit on the grey battle mare before you go to kill the legions?’
‘Yes, if you’re good. See, your father’s here. He’ll hold you while I go to Ardacos.’
‘How did you know—?’ The child’s face was awash with awe. Already he believed his mother part-way to divinity; for her to predict the appearance of his father out of the maelstrom of the night was only another step to godhood.
Breaca smiled. ‘I heard his footsteps,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing magical in that.’ It was true; more than Cunomar, more than any other living being, she knew the tread of this one step. In the chaos of battle, in the silence of a winter night, she could hear Caradoc walk and know where he was.
Now, he waited at the top of the bank. With the firelight behind, his face was invisible and only his hair was lit. Spun gold flickered around his head so that he looked as might Camul, the war god, on the eve of battle, or Belin who daily rode the mounts of the sun. It was a night to sustain such fancies and the gods would not be offended.
In the voice of men, Caradoc said, ‘Breaca? The she-bears have called your name. Are you ready?’
‘I think so. If you will take care of your son, we can find out.’ She passed Cunomar up to the waiting arms and hoisted herself up by the hazel roots. ‘Briga gives me luck and her care should the luck fail. It appears I may have to find my own courage.’
The fourth stone was forgotten, deliberately so. There was no way to predict what the gods might make of it. Breaca could not imagine them exacting retribution from a child for his mother’s failure to cast a stone truly and Caradoc made his own fate in battle. She had seen him fight too often to believe he could die before her.
She pulled herself up the last half-length of the bank. Caradoc’s face was lined by lack of sleep and the weight of leadership. He hugged her lightly. ‘The she-bears believe you have courage to spare. Tonight would not be a good time to disillusion them.’
Breaca grimaced. ‘I know. To them I am god-filled and can never die. You and I know the truth: courage is too fickle to be held fast from one day to the next. Like sweeping the moon in a fishing net, the water sifts through and the light stays as it was. Each time I ride into battle I believe it will be the last.’
She should not have said that. The fourth stone was not fully forgotten and Caradoc could read her as well as she could him. He asked, ‘Does the coming battle feel bad to you?’
‘No more than it ever does. And it doesn’t matter. There are enough in Mona’s council who know what to do if we do not survive.’
‘Thank you. I will fight better believing they will not be called on.’ He kissed her, a brief press of dry lips on her cheek, and then, quickly, ‘If Ardacos can do as we need, fewer may die.’
‘We can hope so. Take care of Cunomar. I can find the she-bears on my own.’
Away from the river, the hillside was alive with warriors painting themselves and each other, weaving their warrior’s braids and fixing at their temples the kill-feathers that gave notice to the gods of the numbers of enemy already slain.
Ardacos’ she-bears formed a circle on the western slope of the mountain, sheltered by late-berried thorns. The night was alive with the clatter of bear claws played on bone-white skulls and it was hard to hear anything beyond the soft, insistent absence of rhythm. The sound was a river that washed into the mind and soul and carried them to places Breaca had never been, or wished to go. Older than the ancestors, it spoke directly to the gods, promising them blood in return for victory and demanding courage and something greater than courage as its price.
Knowing exactly the limits of her own courage, Breaca nic Graine, known throughout the tribes as the Boudica, bringer of victory, stepped forward into the firelight.
The men and women of the she-bear made a circle around her. In daylight, she could have named each one. They were her friends, her closest comrades, warriors for whom she would die in battle and who would, without pause or question, die for her in return. Lit by the leaping flames, those who circled her were barely human and she could not see Ardacos at all.
‘Warriors of the she-bear, we have need of you.’
‘Ask.’ The voice was a bear’s, carried on a wave of drumming. ‘The bear lives to serve, but only one whose heart is great enough to know the risk may ask.’
‘The gods will test my heart as they test yours.’ The words, like the rhythms, were the ancestors’, old beyond imagining. Pitching her voice above the rattling claws, she said, ‘We who fight battles in daylight ask the aid of those who hunt men by night. There is a task for which no others are suited. There is danger beyond that which any others can face. There is need of one who can track and one who can hunt and one who can kill and leave not a single one of the enemy alive. Can you do this? Will you do it?’
The dance throbbed. The drums tugged at her soul. Waves of passion, of regret, of love and loss and pity scored her heart. Fighting for outward calm, she said again, ‘Warriors of the she-bear. Can you do this? Will you do it?’
A single bear-robed figure shuffled forward. It could have been man or woman, both or neither. In a voice Breaca had never known, it said, ‘We can. We will. We do.’
‘Thank you. May Nemain light your way, may Briga aid your fighting and the bear guard the honour of your dying. I am grateful – truly.’
The last sentence was hers alone, not given by the generations before. Breaca stepped sideways, leaving open the place before the fire.
On a soft, husking cough, the skull-drumming stopped. The circle opened and disgorged into its centre a decurion of the Roman cavalry and two of his auxiliaries. As if under Roman orders, the three marched to stand before the fire.
The officer stood a little ahead of his men and was more richly dressed. His cloak was a deep liver red, striped at the hem in white, and his chain-mail shirt caught the moonlight and made of it stars. His helmet gave him a little extra height, but did not bring him close to the stature of the two warrior-auxiliaries who flanked him, each a hand’s length taller. Beneath their helmets, the face of each was painted in white lime; circles around the eyes and knife-straight lines beneath each cheek made them other than human. All three smelled, overpoweringly, of bear grease, stoat’s urine and woad.
They made a line before the fire. Each bowed a little and gave something himself, or herself – at least one of the disguised warriors was a woman – to the flames. The offerings flashed as they burned, giving off the greens and blues of powdered copper and the whiff of scorched hair. When the fire was quiet, all three turned and lifted their cavalry cloaks so it might be seen by their peers that, beneath the chain mail of their disguise, they were naked and that the grey woad that was their protection under the gods coated all of their skin. A small incision on the left forearm of each bled a little into the night, black against the silvering grey. The skull-drums chattered a final time in recognition, approval and support. When they stopped, a measure of magic departed the night.
It was hard to move, as if the earth had become less solid a while and, returning, the pressure of it bruised the soles of the feet. Breaca moved further away, giving room before the fire to the drummers and dancers; they had further to return and would feel the strangeness more strongly. The enemy decurion followed her.
‘Am I Roman?’
The man tipped his head slightly, and by that, by his voice and by his lack of height, Breaca knew him. She smiled. ‘Ardacos, no, no-one could imagine you Roman. But by the time the enemy are close enough to realize it, they will be dead.’
She laid her palm on the hilt of his sword, the only part of him another could touch without desecration until he had killed his foes or died in the attempt. ‘You know that if it were possible, I would go in your stead.’
‘And you know that there are some places where the Boudica excels and others where the she-bear is all that will suffice.’
Behind the skull paint, Ardacos’ eyes were bright as the stoat’s that was his dream. He had been her lover for a while between Airmid and Caradoc; he knew her as well as any man, knew the weaknesses, real and imagined, that she took pains to hide from the greater mass of warriors.
He said, ‘I couldn’t lead the warriors down the hill tomorrow if their lives and mine depended on it. I couldn’t stand with my back to the sunrise and speak to them with the voice of Briga so that they believe themselves touched by the gods and fit to defeat any number of legions. I couldn’t dream of riding alongside Caradoc in battle, weaving the wildfire so that the weak and the wounded find new heart and can fight where before they thought themselves dead.’ Less soberly, he said, ‘The gods give to each of us different gifts. I could not be the Boudica, but also I do not wish it. You should not wish yourself a she-bear. Be grateful you don’t spend your life with the stink of bear grease in your nostrils.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Do you think I don’t?’
‘No. You think you don’t, and I know you don’t know the first part of it.’ He grinned, showing white teeth. He, too, was forbidden to touch anyone but those with whom the night’s oaths had been spoken until at least the first of the enemy was dead. Deliberately, he kept his hands folded across his sword belt. ‘We must go while the night is still with us. The Romans are soft and they drink wine in the darkness to give themselves courage.’ More formally, he said, ‘Be of good heart. We cannot fail.’
‘And if you do, the bear will take you.’
‘Of course. It is the promise we make. But it is made gladly.’ He turned, sending his cloak spinning. ‘Wait by the fire. We will return not long after dawn.’
The air stank of woad and bear grease and thus of conflict. For a child conceived in battle and born into war, it was the familiar smell of childhood, as common as the scent of roasting hare, if less pleasant. Cunomar, son of the two greatest warriors his world had ever seen, clung to the mane of his mother’s grey battle mare and tried, surreptitiously, to breathe through his mouth. His mother’s arms kept him safe on the horse’s neck in that place, ahead of the saddle, where brave children rode if they were good and did not ask too many questions of those preparing for war.
It was hard to be good. The night had been alive with a shimmering danger and few of the adults had time for a child. Only Ardacos had said good things but then he had needed to begin his ceremony and when he had finished, the man who emerged was somebody else.
Cunomar liked Ardacos. One of the child’s earliest memories was of the small, dark-skinned warrior with the creased face bending over him in firelight, signing with his fingers the wards of protection before lifting him and carrying him away to hide in the dark of a river valley where they lay together under the hanging boughs of a hazel tree with running water at their feet and boulders on either side for protection. Cunomar remembered little else but that the night had been unusually long and rain had fallen through most of it, masking the sounds of fighting so that he could not tell how close the enemy had come, or how sorely the wards had been tested.
Ardacos had been the real protection, greater than the wards. He had crouched next to Cunomar through the night with his battle knife drawn; together they had listened to the sounds of killing. When dawn came, the little man had walked soft-footed into the rain and returned with the newly severed head of an enemy soldier, to prove it was safe to come out. It was then Cunomar had decided that when he was older, he would be a warrior like Ardacos and would fight under the mark of the she-bear, coating himself in bear’s grease and woad that the enemies’ eyes might not see him, nor their blades bite.
In the year since, Cunomar had learned to recognize the distinctive patter of claws on a skull that called the warriors of the she-bear to the start of their ceremony. He had watched exactly how the little man mixed white lime with river clay and used it to make his hair stand up on his head so that he seemed taller and more fierce, and how he painted rings round his eyes and lines on his cheeks in the shape of a skull to warn his foes of impending death. The result was terrifying and Cunomar was not surprised that the enemy fell dead before the warriors of the she-bear. The only surprise was that they kept coming back and had not yet learned to return whence they came and leave for ever the land that was not theirs.
They would do so soon, everything and everyone said so. The promise had been heard daily through the summer in the quiet talk of warriors preparing for war and in the certainty of the dreamers, only now the woad said it in a way that could not be ignored. After a while, when the stench of it seemed less overpowering, Cunomar realized the extra sharpness was of the stoat, which was Ardacos’ dream, and that the bear-warrior had mixed it in to make him stronger.
Even without that, Cunomar would have known that this battle was going to be greater than the ones that had marked the high points of his life so far. Alive with a gilded pride, he had heard his mother speak to all those gathered on the hillside. As a cold dawn sharpened the air and Nemain, the moon, lowered into her bed in the mountains, Breaca had stood on the back of her mare and addressed the massed ranks of warriors and dreamers, naming them all Boudegae, bringers of victory, and swearing before them that she would fight for as long as it took to rid the land of the invader.
She had seemed truly like a goddess then; the mist had parted and the first slanting rays of the sun had lit her from behind, melding her with the battle mare so that two became one, a thing greater than either apart. The light had burnished her hair, making copper of the flaming bronze, casting in relief the warrior’s braid at the side and the single silver feather woven within it that marked the scores of the enemy who had died at her hand. The serpent-spear on her shield had glistened wetly red, as if freshly painted with Roman blood, and the grey cloak of Mona had lifted behind her in the wind. At the end, she had raised her blade high, promising victory, and there was not one among those gathered who doubted they could achieve it.
They had not cheered for her because the enemy was too close and might be alerted but Cunomar had seen the flash of a thousand weapons raised in salute. He had ached with pride but this time, perhaps because he was older and understood more, he felt the knifing pang of a new fear that had nothing to do with the possibility of his mother’s death or even the closeness of war but was rooted instead in the awful possibility – even the probability – that the fighting might be over before he was old enough to join it.
Watching the warriors begin to disperse, he had prayed silently to Nemain and to Briga, her mother, and to the soul of the she-bear that the war into which he had been born might not end before he was of an age to carry a weapon and win honour for himself and his parents.
Cunomar pushed himself back against his mother’s chest until the links of her mail shirt pressed cold on his neck and he felt the shivered thrill of danger. Grinning, he looked around to see who he might share it with. Airmid, the tall, dark-haired dreamer who held half of his mother’s heart, stood on a rock to their left but she was lost in the world of the dream, her face still and her eyes fixed on a horizon that only she could see. Efnís, a dreamer of the Eceni, and Luain mac Calma, the Elder dreamer who journeyed often to Hibernia and Gaul, were near her but both were similarly preoccupied. Each was too distant and too intimidating to share a child’s morning joy.
More promisingly, a few paces to the right was Cygfa, his half-sister, who sat astride the neck of the great chestnut horse that had once belonged to an officer in the enemy cavalry and was now their father’s war mount. Caradoc himself was turned away, speaking to a woman who stood on his sword side, but his shield arm held his daughter to his chest, loosely, because she was eight years old and could manage the horse well enough on her own, but distinctly, so that everyone could see that Caradoc, war leader of three tribes, honoured his daughter in the time before battle.
Cygfa wore a torc in woven gold around her neck, a gift from a chieftain of the Durotriges who was one of his parents’ allies, but it was the stolen legionary dagger in its enamelled silver scabbard dangling at her hip that Cunomar coveted most. Turning, she saw him and grinned. He scowled back, dramatically. He had recently begun to understand that his sister was more than twice his age and would therefore become a warrior before him, but he could not accept at all that she should carry the spoils of victory when he could not. Forgetting what good children did, he raised his head and wriggled round to tug at the front of his mother’s cloak.
‘Mama, when the enemy are all slain, can I have a—?’
Her fingers tightened on his shoulder and for a joyful moment he thought she had heard him and was about to promise that the sword of the enemy general would be his when she returned. Then he looked up into her face and followed the line of her gaze down into the valley to the place where the parting mist gave up a figure, and then another, both coated in iron-grey woad-grease with lime stiffening their hair and painted in white rings round their eyes. They carried something heavy between them and left it at the bottom of the hill. The smaller of the two ran forward alone.
Cunomar let go of his mother’s cloak and pointed. ‘Ardacos,’ he said distinctly. ‘He has killed the enemy.’
‘We can pray so.’
Ardacos was one of his mother’s closest friends. Cunomar knew that she feared for the bear-man and tried not to show it. Breaca spoke to the battle mare and they walked a few steps down the slope. The mare was old but she came alive when the woad spiked the air. She walked forward lightly, as if ready to run. At a rocky outcrop, screened by a straggle of rowan and hawthorn, they stopped. Ardacos loped up the slope towards them.
‘It is done.’ Breathless, the little man gave the salute of the warrior first to Cunomar and then to his mother. The lined skin of his face was smoothly stiff beneath the white clay paint but his eyes were fired with exultation and only a small measure of pain. In answer to Breaca’s unspoken question, he said, ‘There were eight of them, all thick with wine and afraid of the night. Only one fought well. We lost Mab but the beacon is ours.’
‘And the others? Do we have the whole chain?’ Cunomar heard a tension in his mother’s voice that made his stomach lurch and left his mouth dry.
Ardacos said, ‘We do. The dreamers and the gods were good: the mist cleared for us when we needed it. We raised a torch and saw it returned with a second to show that the chain is whole. We have every beacon from here to the coast. When the governor’s ship leaves harbour, we will know of it. However good a general his successor might be, he will still sail in to find the country ablaze and his armies in flight and it is Roman work that will have made it possible. We will turn every one of their weapons against them, as we turn their horses, their armour and their blades.’ The little man grinned, cracking the ring of paint around his mouth. ‘To this end, I have a gift for the warrior-in-making.’
He meant Cunomar. The boy’s heart surged. Ardacos signalled behind him and the second warrior ran up towards them. Even before she reached the top of the slope, Cunomar could see what she brought. He thought he might weep with joy and wondered if that would be a good thing to do on the eve of battle. Before he could decide, Ardacos had knelt before his mother’s grey mare and held out a legionary sword in both hands. Formally, using the cadences of a singer, or an elder in council, he said, ‘For Cunomar, son of Breaca and Caradoc, cousin and namesake to Cunomar of the fires, who gave his life that we might live, I bring the weapon of the bravest of this night’s enemies.’
Stripped of its sheath, the blade lay naked across Ardacos’ palms, a thing of silver smeared stickily black. Cunomar felt his mother’s hands on his waist and then he was swung down to the ground and she was standing behind him, one hand on his shoulder.
Before she could prompt him, the child drew himself up and, following the conventions he had heard in the summer councils, said, ‘Cunomar, son of the Boudica and of Caradoc, warrior of three tribes, thanks Ardacos of the Caledones, warrior of the she-bear and of the honour guard of Mona, for his great gift and pledges …’
He ran out of words. He had no idea what he pledged; the weapon held all his attention. It was smaller than his mother’s war sword and he was sure he could lift it. With both hands, he grasped the hilt and pulled. The blade slid off Ardacos’ open palms and fell, point down, to pierce the turf between the warrior’s feet. Cunomar’s pride fell with it, turning to shame and fear of failure and the ill omen of a warrior-to-be who could not raise his own sword. Tears welled in him and spilled over and he took a breath to howl his disappointment.
‘No. Look. There is no harm done. See, we can lift it together.’ His mother’s arms encircled him, stemming the grief. ‘It’s an enemy sword and Mab’s blood is still on it. We must clean it and dedicate it to the gods and then we’ll put it away and keep it safe until you’re a warrior and can wield it in battle.’
That was not what he wanted. Cygfa had her knife and could wear it openly; he wanted the same, or better. He felt his lower lip quiver and the tears massed again on his lids. His mother ruffled her fingers through his hair and went on as if she had never meant to stop. ‘But before that, you can try one swing, to get the feel of it. See – I’ll hold it, you can make the stroke.’
With one hand she lifted the blade, making it light as straw, and with the other she pressed his own small fist in before hers and he found that he could make the backhanded killing stroke in the way he had seen Cygfa do when their father first began to teach her, and then, because it was a Roman blade, he followed it with a lunge forward as the enemy were said to do, killing empty air that had every Roman in the world at the end of it.
His mother laughed, breathlessly. ‘That’s good. See? The blade knows its rightful owner and—’ She stopped, and this time he did not have to look up to see why because he had seen the thing before her and it was his own small gasp that had made her look with him to the horizon where a beacon fire blossomed like a second sun. Cunomar knew in the depths of his soul that it signalled the beginning of the war to end all wars and that he would not be old enough to wield his new blade before the fighting ended.
The world changed, dizzyingly fast. Breaca stood, suddenly, taking the Roman blade out of reach and her son did not protest. He heard her call out a name and a cry rose up around him, the keening of the grey falcon that was the sign of the Silures in whose land they lived and fought, and of Gwyddhien who led the right wing of the honour guard. The sound multiplied as her warriors joined it and the mountain rang as with a multitude of hunting birds. The child’s world darkened as men and women in uncountable numbers mounted their horses and raised their shields, blocking out the sun.
Cunomar turned, seeking his mother, and found she was crouching beside him again, snapping her fingers and whistling into the long shadows beneath the hawthorn trees where the war hounds lay awaiting battle.
Three hounds emerged. The grey-white bitch was first, who had been called Cygfa until Cunomar’s half-sister was born when the hound’s name had been changed to Swan’s Neck and then to just Neck. She was foremost among his mother’s brood bitches and had given birth to Stone, the tall young hound who came out next and who would run beside the grey battle mare and help the warriors to defeat the enemy. But it was three-legged Hail for whom his mother waited, for whom she would always wait, sire to Stone and uncounted others. The great white-spotted war hound had once belonged to Breaca’s brother Bán and, because of that, was now and for ever the most beloved of the Boudica’s beasts.
The singers told more tales of Bán, lost brother to the Boudica, than of any other hero, living or dead. For one who had died before he ever sat his long-nights, the litany of Bán’s achievements was dauntingly long. Hare-hunter, horse-dreamer and healer, he had been born with power such as had not been seen since the time of the ancestors. His first battle had shown him also to be a warrior; as a child not yet come to manhood, he had, they said, fought and killed at least twenty of the enemy before he was tricked into carelessness and slain. The tragedy was made worse by the fact that it had been Amminios, brother to Caradoc, who had betrayed the boy-hero and slain him. The singers played heavily on that; it would have been far less of a tale if the traitor had been an unknown warrior from another land.
They sang of the hero’s hound, Hail, in the same