Dreaming the Bull (15 page)

As Longinus had said they would, the herd followed their leader. The Crow came at the gallop and two wings of horses followed behind. They might have stopped if he had asked it of them but he could not be sure and, in any case, Valerius had his pride; the grandmother’s curse had not robbed him of that. The mount by an armed and armoured man of a running horse was a feat celebrated by cavalry and warriors alike and all of them, however preoccupied with death and survival, had heard the churning roll of massed horses at the gallop. In full view of his god, his enemies and those who might have been his friends, Julius Valerius, duplicarius of the third troop, Fifth Gaulish Cavalry, servant of Mithras and of the emperor, executed a near-perfect cavalry mount on a running horse ahead of a herd that would have crushed him to pulp if he had failed and fallen beneath them. Afterwards, he thought it would have looked better if he had not thrown away his shield.

Only Longinus knew what he planned to do. The Thracian screamed himself hoarse clearing men back from the barrier. To do that, they had either to press forward, making space, or to duck out sideways into mere or forest. Men did all three and many of them died. Those who survived watched their duplicarius face his pied horse at a jump that reached the height of its stifle with no clear view beyond and saw the horse gather itself and leap. Three dozen of the closest horses in the herd followed him, before the bulk of them balked at the height of the barrier and turned away.

Valerius, riding high over the battle in what should have been a crowning moment, tasted the dust and ashes of failure and knew once again that his god had abandoned him.
Seeking solace in the approval of men, he saw the moment when Longinus was struck on the arm by the backswing of a Coritani blade. He shouted and the one man left whole on the battlefield who recognized his voice heard him and turned; and so Corvus, who had fought his way through to his tribune and gained a clear space around him, was struck from behind by a spear and then a blade.

It was then that Valerius, howling Eceni war cries, gave up all pretence of being a man and let the unbridled savagery of the Crow-horse run wild. Man and horse killed together, endlessly. At least one of them enjoyed it.

In the cool, well-lit hospital, insulated from the aftermath of battle, Valerius said calmly, “Did you know they have awarded Marcus Ostorius the oak-wreath for saving the life of a fellow citizen?”

It was the highest order of personal valour any man could win. Longinus’ eyes stretched wide. “Who did he save? Not one of the legionaries—they were all dead, and I’m not a citizen so I don’t count. Corvus then? The tribune saved Corvus? I thought I saw him go down.”

“You did. He took a sword cut to the back just before you ran into the Coritani shield boss that knocked you out. When the horses pushed the Eceni back, Marcus Ostorius carried him out beyond the barrier and we brought him back on a litter. You would have got the same but you were delirious and wouldn’t get down from my horse.”

Longinus grinned. It creased the bruised half of his face and the cost showed. “I wasn’t going to give up the only chance in my life to ride him, even if you were holding me crossways in front of the saddle.” He shook his head, at
himself or the memory, and stopped smiling. He reached out for Valerius’ hand and gripped it. His palm was clammy and cold. In a while, when it was warmer, he said, “Why are you here and not with him?”

He asked it too casually; they knew each other too well for that not to be seen. Valerius thought a moment and gave him the truth. “The tribune has forbidden him visitors. In any case, I don’t think Corvus wants—”

He looked down. Longinus had pressed the falcon-headed dagger back into his palm. Shaking his head as if to one of slow wits, the Thracian said, “Go and see him. If nothing else, he needs to know what you did. Tell Theophilus you are necessary to his recovery. He’ll support you, and a tribune can’t overrule a physician in the practice of his craft.”

Valerius waited for a long time in the corridor outside the door. The hospital was arranged in concentric squares around a main courtyard; the windows of the most secluded rooms faced inwards, away from the cacophony of the fortress. The walls were lime-washed with the insignia of the legions and wings; the Capricorn, the Boar, the Pegasus, painted in subdued colours at intervals along their length. The air smelled cleanly of cut sage and rosemary: the sweet undertones of festering flesh were confined to the areas around the few rooms where men were clearly dying.

Valerius stood outside a door on which the Eye of Horus had been newly painted in blue and breathed in air spiked with lemon balm and a light, peppery incense and the smell of a man he would know with his eyes closed.

He had tried twice to enter but neither time with any conviction. It was, he knew, his own failure of nerve more than Marcus Ostorius’ orders that had prompted the doctor to turn him back. In the few days since the battle, Valerius had found he could dissect his own motives as
cleanly and with as little passion as he judged others. Standing on the wrong side of a closed door, he knew that he did not want to see the extent of Corvus’ injuries, to find if a body that had once revelled in its battle-scarred wholeness was crippled beyond repair, as had seemed likely when they had brought him out over the barrier. Deeper than that, Valerius was afraid that a different, less material door that had always been open had finally been closed. If so, it had closed before the battle and nothing that had happened since would open it.

The first sign of that closing had come in the chaos of arming men as they gathered to depart for the Eceni fort. Men and horses had milled in semi-organized chaos in the annexe where the army gathered before departure. Valerius had been ordering the horses of his troop when Corvus called him to his side.

They had ridden knee to knee, a little away from the wing. Corvus rode his remount, a red roan mare with all four legs white to mid-pastern and striped hooves. She was finely bred and outclassed most of the rest of the wing but she was not the horse who had borne him through the invasion battles and should have borne him through this; that was a bay mare of Pannonian descent and Corvus had loaned her, possibly given her—who can ask for a loan back from a governor’s son?—to Marcus Ostorius.

Valerius noted it with raised brows. To another man, the gesture could have meant anything. To Corvus, it asked questions and answered them all in one movement. “If he is to fight the Eceni and live, he needs a decent horse.”

Valerius smiled tightly. “The Ala Quinta Gallorum has some excellent horses. You did not have to give him yours.”

“You would rather I gave him your pied man-killer?”

“The governor would hang you for attempted murder did you even suggest it.”

“So instead, he has mine, which will not kill him and may, instead, keep him alive.”

“And does he know that his horse is his nursemaid, as well as his prefect?”

He had always been able to read Corvus’ moods. This time, as ever before, he sensed the change before he saw it. As never before, the understanding came as a blow to the chest that knocked his heart from its rhythm.

Anger burned in the prefect’s eyes. With quiet force, he said, “If you say that again or anything like it, I will have you flogged and demoted to the ranks. Do you understand me?”

In eight years, however they might have fought, Corvus had not used his rank as a weapon. Feeling the skin tighten to parchment on his skull, Valerius said, “Perfectly.”

You will know neither love nor joy
… The curse had not debarred him from feeling the withdrawal of love, nor from mourning its loss. He had imagined it a thing for ever, as certain as the rising and setting of the moon, something solid he could rail against in safety and return to later, when the rage had burned out. Shock left him hollow and weightless. He fought to listen, to mark Corvus’ words and their meanings, inner and outer.

Corvus said, “Good. Then listen and consider your answer carefully. As you may know, the client king Prasutagos now lays claim to rulership of the Eceni. He does so through a woman named Silla who professes the royal line. She has borne her “king” two stillborn sons and may yet present him with a living child to act as his successor.”

He paused, waiting for a response. None came. The world of fortress gossip had long since brought Valerius news of ’Tagos’ kingship, but not the reason for his elevation. Men raised in a world of men had thought wine and gold enough to buy status. Valerius, raised differently, should have seen the truth, but had not. In his mind, Silla was too young to take any man; she was three years old and sharing his bed, clinging like a limpet for warmth because, even in the height of summer, she could not bear the aloneness of lying apart. She was six, lying on the turf outside a forge, watching her father make a sword that would one day bear the serpent-spear on its pommel. She had no interest in swords, and so, instead, she watched a late wasp land on a leaf and tried to grasp it. Her brother brought her the crushed comfrey leaves to take the ache out of the sting. She was eight, kneeling in mud with her arms tight round the neck of a hound, holding the beast back so that he would not run after the riders on their way to Cunobelin’s dun. Her voice reached out across years, high and childlike:
Don’t be gone more than a month. He’ll stop eating and die without you.
Her dress was the green of old oak leaves, just before the turn. It had a border of bright saffron yellow along the hem. The memory of it stayed as an afterglow in Valerius’ mind.

He had been gone a lifetime. The hound might well have stopped eating and died. Silla had borne two sons to ’Tagos and both were dead. Her daughters, if she had any, would not be counted by Rome.

Corvus was speaking again. “… which means we will pass through his lands on our way to the fort and the king will undoubtedly wish to offer us hospitality. It seemed to me that you may wish not to meet this man or any of his
near kin. If this is the case, it may be that there are reasons you would be required to remain at the fortress. There is still time to find a temporary replacement as second in command of the third troop.”

“You could have me flogged, you mean, and I would have to stay behind?”

Valerius had meant it as a joke, of sorts, a means to break through the formality. Corvus nodded, as if the possibility were real. “If you like, although I had considered something more certain. Were you to be flogged now, I suspect the governor would still require you to ride out at noon.”

“I’m sure he would. I’m grateful, but if the prefect permits, I would prefer to ride with a whole skin.”

“But you are certain you wish to ride?”

“I am.”

They had reached the south gates of the fortress. Valerius turned the Crow-horse away. He was tired, suddenly, of word games. In the past, they had not been necessary. In the future, perhaps they would not be possible, replaced by the distant formalities of rank. It was not a concept he wished to consider in depth. He said, “It was a good thought and I am genuinely grateful, but there is no need. ’Tagos may know you when you meet. He will not recognize me.”

Corvus caught at his bridle. Alone of all other men he could handle the Crow-horse without risking his arm. Baldly, he said, “And if the warriors we fight bear the mark of the serpent-spear on their shields, or if they are led by the red-headed woman whose mark it is, what then?”

The wind whistled between them, raising the hairs on their arms. In four years, neither of them had mentioned the existence of the serpent-spear or of the woman whose mark
it was. That Corvus did so now marked either his desperation, or the utter diminution of his care.

Against a rising panic, Valerius said, “The warrior who bears the serpent-spear is not here. You heard the tribune. She’s in the west, leading the uprising with Caradoc.”

Corvus shook his head. “That was over a month ago. Marcus Ostorius has ridden across the land since then, and Breaca has had time to do so also. If I were your sister, I would be raising resistance in the east. If she and Caradoc take us on two fronts, they can beat us.”

Valerius felt his worlds collide, as they had not done since before the invasion. He closed his eyes and sought his god, who did not come. The brand lay cold on his chest. A grandmother cursed him, laughing.

I had no choice. I have none now.

Fool.

Thickly, he said, “I will do as you will do and for the same reasons. I am committed to the legions, I have taken the oath before the emperor and another before the god. Whoever we meet, however we meet them, I will follow orders and I will fight.”

“And if you are ordered to crucify their children?”

The pied horse flung up its head, and the bridle ripped from Corvus’ hand. Biting hard on his own lip, Julius Valerius, duplicarius of the third troop of the Ala Quinta Gallorum, saluted his prefect with rigid precision. “Then I will follow your lead, in that as in everything.”

It had been a parting of the worst kind and nothing that had happened since had improved it. They had, indeed, spent a night under Prasutagos’ care and the client king had
not known either of them. In truth, there had been little risk that he would; the conversation had been of other, deeper things. More, it had marked the ending of something neither had believed would ever end.

Valerius stood now in the hospital corridor outside a room that smelled of lemon balm and knew that he did not have the courage to open the door.

“The hero of the battle. You didn’t tell me that last time. I wondered how long before you came back again.”

Valerius spun on his heel. Theophilus, the lean and long-nosed doctor, leaned against a wall behind him. Once, he had ministered to an emperor but then the emperor had changed and it was no longer politic for members of the old court to remain in Rome. He had fled to Germany and found a home amongst the legions on the Rhine, travelling with them to the new province of Britannia as part of the invading army. Since then, he had become sole medic to an entire fortress, alternately tending to men sick with fever and those wounded in combat. It was hard to tell if he was happier when men came back injured from battle or whole.