Dreaming the Bull (30 page)

The ferrywoman reached her cloak from its peg. Her wide, sea-raw fingers pinned it high on the right shoulder. At the door, having thought her words clear, she paused.

“Just remember, while you’re away, that there’s more lives depend on you living to fight on than that one man. It would be no honour to his memory to lose a land and its people because he is gone.”

The land of the Brigantes was grey. In the lowlands, grey mist leaked over barren grey rock. In the high mountains, which were never as high as the startling, snow-bright peaks of the west, thin grey slush rendered hard ground mud and made sodden the lying firewood so that, for the last two nights of a five-night journey, Breaca and those who rode with her ate raw the hares and small fish that Ardacos had hunted and slept in pairs sitting upright, sharing cloaks and the warmth of their bodies.

They were thirteen, the five whom Sorcha had identified, with two of Gwyddhien’s Silures to hold the horses ready within reach of the enemy and five of the bear-warriors, hand-picked for their skill in the hunt. The thirteenth was Tethis, a cousin of Ardacos’ just past her long-nights and not yet tested in battle. The reason for her coming had not been apparent when they set out, but Ardacos had brought her and no-one argued. On the fifth day, they learned why she had come.

Through the length of the journey, Breaca and those closest to her had considered the means by which they would locate and free Caradoc. Each of them had believed that he
or she alone was capable of penetrating the vast encampment on the northern river where the Brigantes shared fires and food with three cohorts of the Fourteenth legion. A massed attack was impossible; the only possible route was by stealth, but the question remained as to who should go in and how they would best avoid capture. Breaca could not go. On that everyone was agreed; her height and her colouring were too well known by the enemy and there was no disguise in the world that would effectively conceal her when the Brigantes were expecting her to come. The others did not share her notoriety, but in truth each of them was known to the enemy and none could plausibly pass as either Roman or Brigante. Tethis had deferred to her elders and those with greater experience of battle, saying nothing until the morning of the fifth day when the whole group lay on a hillside within site of the camp and had not yet found a way to do what was needful. Then she showed what she could do.

She had been born and raised in the land of the Caledonii far to the north and had never yet set foot on a battlefield. No-one, Roman or Brigante, had ever seen her. Better than that, she had the small size and dark colouring of the ancestors so that, with a little planning, she could pass as one of the Brigante girl children, not yet come to adulthood. Dressed in only a thong-belted tunic with her legs streaked with mud and her hair flying free, she became yet another urchin underfoot, to be scolded and sent back to the fields, or, if close to the Roman encampments, put to work as a messenger, paid in tarnished copper coins and later lured into a tent for work that would not be paid.

From warrior to urchin, the transformation took place before them and it was clear even to Braint, who had been
intent on something similar with far less chance of success, that Tethis was their best, if not their only, hope of reaching Caradoc. The arguments had been abandoned and the girl had left just before dawn, running down over the grey hillside to vanish into the river-mist that concealed the noisome chaos of the fort.

Throughout the long day, they waited, twelve battle-proven warriors, while a girl who had not yet won her spear walked alone among a thousand legionaries and three times that many enemy warriors. Tired, frustrated and eaten alive by impatience, Breaca lay on her cloak on a ledge of crumbling slate veiled by a swath of dying bracken that lipped over from the hillside above. Straight edges of rock dug into her flesh through the folds of wool, autumn insects crawled from the bracken to explore exposed patches of skin, ants laid a trail a hand’s breadth in front of her face. After a while, she began to pray for rain, simply for a change in the attacks on her person.

The rest of the group were no more comfortable. Below and to the right, Braint lay close to Ardacos, each on a similar slate outcrop. Others lay within hailing distance, making hare-nests in the damp bracken or lying out as Breaca did on the rocky outcrops that littered the landscape. One could choose soft lying and be wet, or remain dry but cold and hard. Either way, the day stretched each of them to the limits of their endurance.

There were ways to pass the time. Breaca counted the crows that flapped like thrown rags in the wind, tumbling down to the carrion feast of hanged warriors below. In the afternoon, when the wind backed to the east and rolled the stench of those bodies up the hillside to choke the hidden
watchers, she began instead to count the dead, to separate and identify men from women, adult from child, blond hair from dark. They were not close and they had hung in the wind for many days so that she counted and re-counted and the numbers were never twice the same, but the effort kept her awake and alert while she waited, always, for the shouted challenge and the clash of weapons that would mean Tethis had failed.

“She’s coming.”

Ardacos had moved since the morning. He spoke from the bracken to Breaca’s left. A moment later, he raised his head so she could see him. He was naked but for a belt and a loin-flap of bearskin, his body lightly greased with goose fat against the cold. He edged closer, flowing like water over the rock, and, for a moment, the smell of him covered the stench of putrefaction rising from the valley. His face was lined and creased with four decades’ exposure to cold and biting wind. His smile was a rare thing, given as a gift, and she had learned to read it only after years in his closest company. As he gave it now, it was a preparation for disappointment.

“She’s halfway up and alone,” he said. “See … there.” He pointed further south than she had been looking. On the hillside, bracken shivered and was still. A hunting fox would have made such a movement, or a badger, caught abroad in daylight. Ardacos chittered like an angry stoat and was answered in kind.

Tethis ran the last few strides. She was alone and looked neither hopeful nor happy.

“I don’t care what she says. We will get him out.”

“No. He cannot be freed.”

“He can. It is only that we have not yet found the means. One of us should go in and look again at night when the guards are fewer.”

It was dusk. They had moved across to the other side of the hill, out of sight of the encampment and away from a wind that had come on suddenly and flung the bracken flat. The bear-warriors and Gwyddhien’s Silures stood watch in a full circle. The five and Tethis remained in the centre. The girl had brought dry firewood; its collection had been her reason to leave the camp. Ardacos had dug a fire pit and they burned the wood for warmth alone. None of them could have stomached food.

An orange glow leaked up from the pit. By its light, they were all too pale, too worn. Breaca ground her knife on her whetstone, a rhythmic scratch and scrape that was lost on the wind. Without that much movement, she would have needed to walk, to squirm through the bracken, to run, to take her blade and attack single-handedly the series of guard posts that stood between her and the distant tent, now identified, where Caradoc was held.

She sat across the fire from Tethis. The girl was small, compact, collected and deeply moved by what she had seen. She chewed her lip, thinking what to say next. Ardacos asked a question in the northern tongue that none amongst the others understood and was answered cuttingly. Breaca recognized only the name of Cartimandua, spoken twice with heartfelt loathing. In the rest was surprise, vehement assent and flat certainty, but no hope.

At the end, they fell to a heavy silence until, choosing his words, Ardacos said, “She doesn’t want to tell you this because she’s afraid it’ll only add to your grief, but I think
you have to know. The tent in which they hold Caradoc is set over an outcrop of rock. They have him chained to it by neck and ankles. The only way you could free him would be to take a smith along who had time to break the iron. Eight legionaries sleep in there, two awake at all times. They sit with him, talking, or watching him sleep. His every move—every one—is accompanied.” His eyes reflected more grief than Breaca had ever seen. He said, “I’m sorry. Tethis is right. There’s no way to get him out.”

“There must be. She just hasn’t found it. Ask her how she knows this.”

“I’ve already asked. She took him his meal. She spoke with him while he ate it.” Ardacos paused. His gaze met Airmid’s, Gwyddhien’s, Braint’s before it would meet hers. Whatever he saw there gave him the strength he needed to continue. Looking finally at her, he said, “Tethis offered him death. It was all she could give. She has a knife and could have used it on him—and then herself—before the legionaries could reach her. For him, and for you, she would have done this.”

Cold crushed her, black, crawling ice, that sucked heat from her body and the fire equally. It took more courage than she had ever known to ask, “Why did she not?”

“He forbade it. The Romans hold hostages. They have taken alive Cunomar and Cygfa, Dubornos and Cwmfen, and hold them in another place away from here. He has seen them, and they have let him speak briefly with Cwmfen so that he knows she has not yet been harmed, but he doesn’t know where they are now, or how Cygfa fares, or Cunomar.”

Cunomar.
Child of her heart, soft-haired spirit of the gods. She had imagined him safe with Dubornos, even now
on Mona, guarding his sister against his mother’s eventual return. Her mind protected her; reason rode over the all-engulfing pain. She said, “So if he dies, they will die, but they will die anyway. He should have taken what Tethis offered.”

“No.” Ardacos shook his head. He tried to speak and stopped and swallowed and she had nearly reached for him to drag the words out when he said, hoarsely, “It’s far worse than that. If Caradoc dies, they will live, that’s the promise. They will be taken to Rome and held for a lifetime in an underground prison, never seeing the light, nor free water, nor the rising of the moon. It was Cartimandua’s idea. She knows that a warrior does not disdain to die, however appalling the circumstances, but that to be made to live in a house such as Rome builds, without sight of the earth, the sky, the stars, for a lifetime is unthinkable. They have promised him this and he believes it. To buy their deaths, and his, by whatever means, he will stay alive.”

Caradoc. Cunomar. Cygfa, who was her father born again as a woman.
Numbly Breaca said, “They will crucify him. All of them. They will take them to Rome and make of it a spectacle. Five of them, one after the other, a day apart, with him last.”

“Yes. He believes so.”

It was too much. Pain rose in her like the bloating of decay. It grew up from her abdomen into her chest, eating the air until she breathed through a reed and barely that. It clamped round her neck, choking her, swelling her tongue and blocking her mouth. It rose up through her cheeks and blocked her eyes, depriving her even of the release of tears. Her mouth made the shape to say
Caradoc
and then
Cunomar
and no sound came out.

Around her was silence. Nobody dared speak or had any idea what to say. Nothing could be said. A whispered voice she recognized later as her own said, “Hail was with them. He was guarding Cunomar.”

Hail.
Another in the litany of loss and death. Ardacos was weeping. She had never seen him weep. His tears fell where hers could not. Looking round, she saw it in all of them, in Airmid, Gwyddhien, Braint: a brightness of the eyes, running over in the firelight as sap from cut bark. Only Tethis, who had not known him, and whose stillness, whose pallor, was now given reason, did not weep. For her, because no-one else would give it voice, Breaca said, “He was my war hound. Hail. If Cunomar is taken, then he must be dead.”

Tight-voiced, the girl said, “He is. I am to tell you he died in battle protecting Cunomar and that Dubornos sang the rites for him. It was his voice the warriors heard in the valleys as they were leaving the battle of the salmon-trap.”

I will unleash such vengeance
… But what use is vengeance when the world is in ashes and all is lost? Her heart stopped. When it started again and she could speak, she said, “Who killed him, is it known?”

“The decurion of the Thracian cavalry. The one who rides the pied horse.”

She had never known what it was truly to hate. She knew it then, perfect and pure and alive with its own meaning. She heard it clearly in her own voice, saying, “Then he will die, and Scapula with him. They have not won. They will never win.”

“Caradoc said you would say that. It was his message to you: never to let them win. And I was to tell you that he loved you, that you were his first thought and his last, for all time.”

“Breaca, this isn’t battle; there is no possibility of an honourable death. If we’re caught, Scapula will make examples of us that will rock the tribes from coast to coast, and that’s the least of the dangers. What we are trying hasn’t ever been done and the gods may not condone it. We risk the loss of not only this life but all the ones still to come. You were in my dream but these things are not fixed. You don’t have to join us.”

“Yes, I do. You dreamed a chance to find Caradoc and bring him back. I won’t jeopardize that dream. The gods would not ask it of me, nor should you.”

Breaca sat on a rotting stump on a river bank in the rain. A fire burned on the gravel near the water, the threading smoke lost in the spume from the waterfall behind. The vestiges of the sunset smeared old blood across the western horizon.

The world was full of blood and none of it hers. She had not been killed, or even lightly wounded, however often she threw herself at the enemy. Those fighting on both sides had come to believe her blessed by the gods. Her warriors
followed her into ruinous danger and most came out alive. Legionaries by the dozen had died on her blade, too weakened by fear properly to fight back. Ambushed auxiliary troops had been routed without engagement at the sight of her battle mare. Assailed without respite, Scapula gathered his legions as a hen gathers her chicks and retreated step by bloodied step towards the safety of the fortress at Camulodunum. He had come to acknowledge the Boudica’s existence, and to fear her, but not enough to release Caradoc and send him back to those who mourned his loss.