Dreaming the Eagle (52 page)

He and Breaca had parted at the edge of the trees, just before the first steps out into open ground. Caradoc had stood with his back to the dawn. The remains of the mist had scattered a fine spray on his hair and across his shoulders and the cold morning light made of each drop molten metal, to match his eyes. He was troubled. Breaca could see it in him, but not the cause. For the first time in two years, she found she welcomed his presence. Reaching forward, she had touched a fingertip to the hilt of his blade, returning the warrior’s oath as she had never done before. She had not spoken. She was not sure if, in that moment, she could have spoken, but they were interrupted in any case by Brock of the Dumnonii who was unsure of his place in the line and when he had been reassured and was settled, the moment, and the queer trick of light that had cast Caradoc in silver, had passed.

They parted, each to take either end of the line. In the last instant, he had stopped her, saying, ‘Don’t think about who is in front of you. If we are truly facing the dreamers, what you see may not be real.’

She had said, ‘I will know Airmid.’

‘Be sure that you do.’

The group walked uphill out of the valley, moving slowly not to break the line. All around them, night was giving way to morning; greys and blacks to the pastel colours of the dawn. A blackbird followed them beyond the last hazel, chucking a warning. In the paddocks beyond the greathouses, grunting sows roused themselves and ewes called to their lambs. High in the upper fields, a colt squealed in irritation and raced the length of a wall. The hammer of his feet rolled from the hills.

Braint said, ‘We should have got the horses. I would have rather died on horseback.’

‘It was too far and dawn too close. We would have been seen before we got there.’ Breaca looked east. A gap in the clouds showed a lining of molten gold, awaiting the first real rays of the sun. She thought of Venutios, dead, and the peace he had brought and was glad that it was gone and not dampening the wild, clear fire that burned in her, quite different from the battle fever that had gripped them all in the greathouse when the choosing of the thirty had begun. The field was sharp in her mind and the ordering of the warriors. The weave that bound them was sound, and each shone with a defiance and certainty that made the whole stronger than if each were fighting alone. Braint was her only worry; the girl blazed with enthusiasm, but lacked the training of Mona.

Breaca said, ‘Be careful when the sun rises. If they are good, they may use it to blind you. Don’t look to your left without raising your shield hand for shade.’

‘I won’t.’

They skirted a patch of gorse, shield locked to shield. The land lay open to the first ditch and wall of the dreamers’ compound. The warriors’ school had practised here often. Breaca had once held off an attacking party of ten with only Cumal for company. To Braint, she said, ‘If we are split from the rest and there are more than four against us, turn your back to mine and — what is it?’

‘Warriors! Look! A whole line of them!’

They rose from the ditch, fully armed and decorated for war. Kill-feathers hung from the ends of their torcs in the manner of the ancestors. They wore the tokens of their dreams about their necks and in their hair. Their shields were solidly grey, denying allegiance to the Warrior. Their blades were steady.

Breaca swallowed the bile that scalded her throat. ‘It’s the honour guard. They have sent against us those who survived the last choosing. They are too many. We can’t meet them in a line like this.’

It was the worst she could have imagined. Caradoc was far to her left, Gwyddhien ten paces back, deep in the arc of the crescent. Breaca could see him but not her. They should have planned for this and had not. It was too late to make a new signal that the honour guard would not know. Cursing, she raised the Warrior’s horn to her lips and blew the call for a spearhead. Pausing to make sure Braint had understood, she began to run.

They were twenty-three, one untrained. They made the transition from the crescent to the spearhead as fast as any might have done it, coming together in a wedge focused on the hornbearer. Breaca would die now, that was certain; none lived from the first rows of a spear. She felt sorry for Braint, who was behind her right shoulder in the second rank. Caradoc had stepped into the shield space on her left and once again the door closed that had been open. She had no need for the Warrior’s horn now, except to show defiance, which was reason enough. Raising the serpentblade that had been the gift of her father, she put the horn to her lips and blew so that the sound gathered them and hurled them forward, like a pack of hounds loosed for the hunt or horses given free rein to race. Her only regret, as the mass of the wedge built speed behind her, was that she had not had time to engrave her own mark on the boss of the borrowed shield.

A contrasting horn sounded in the dreamers’ compound, with higher notes and more delicate than the one just blown. The sun broke through the gap in the clouds, streaming light onto the field of battle. The morning came alive with colour and sound. The warriors of the honour guard threw down their shields and sheathed their blades. Those at the edges dropped to one knee. Those in the centre moved aside smoothly as a well-greased gate and they, too, knelt. Behind them, the gates to the compound stood open and the ranks of dreamers waited, dressed for ceremony. At the front, alive and whole, stood Venutios. His shield was iron grey marked with red, the colour of freshly spilled blood. The symbol painted on it, still wet so that the edges blurred, was the serpent-spear.

Talla stepped forward to meet the charge of the warrior’s wedge which halted, quivering, as a spear might when thrown into oak.

‘Welcome, Warrior of Mona.’

The Elder’s voice was thin and dry as an autumn leaf. Her eyes and smile were those of the elder grandmother so that one might weep, unguarded, on the field of battle, which would be unforgivable but might be unavoidable if the driving fire inside could not be quenched, or stilled, at least.

Shaking, Breaca sheathed the serpentblade and noticed, late, that her hand had not throbbed with the promise of combat. The warriors of the wedge crowded round her, swearing their lives for hers. Caradoc was there, who was already oath-sworn. Braint and Cumal joined him. Gwyddhien stepped out from the third rank of the spear. She spread her palms wide, as a gambler might on losing a close-fought game. Her smile showed no resentment. ‘You took the horn and blew it when no-one else did,’ she said. ‘I would have died for you then, willingly.’

Talla nodded. Breaca looked past her. Airmid stood just behind with Venutios and there was no question of betrayal, of anything but care and an overwhelming love. She wore the silver brooch with the coral inlay she had just won in a bet and she wept, which was heartbreaking, but not badly so; a dreamer could be forgiven tears on the battlefield where a warrior could not. Because speech was unsafe and the questions too difficult, Breaca asked only, ‘Ardacos?’

Airmid said, ‘He lives. He is being tended, as are the others. He says to tell you that it is only now beginning. He will join your honour guard when he is fit, if you have need of him.’

‘I will always have need of him. He carries the soul of the ancestors.’ A flash of yellow caught her eye as a cloak lifted in the breeze. Among all the clamour and the movement, Gunovic stood waiting with Lanis, whose very presence was a reminder of the Sun Hound’s death.

Without turning, Breaca knew that Caradoc had seen it and made his decision. She felt the rightness of it settle on them both. To him and to Airmid, to Braint and to Gwyddhien, to any who listened, she said, ‘With what is to come, we will have need of you all, however you choose to serve.’

The ferry bumped against the oak pilings of the jetty, pulling against its tether with a gentle insistency. Two horses stood ready, held by the white-cloaked warrior of the Ordovices who had taken the last ferry of the evening to bring a private, urgent message. Breaca sat on a rock a spear’s throw away, not quite out of sight. In all the havoc of the Warrior’s naming and the swearing-in of the honour guard and the preparations for the delegation to the Sun Hound’s funeral, it was good to take Hail away and spend some time alone. The late sun warmed her back and the berries hung ripe from the rowan. The water of the strait furled against the rock at her feet. Straggling willowherb dusted seeds on the surface. If she narrowed her eyes and glanced at the water - just so - the flow of the current against the rock and the scatter of seeds and the reflection of the berries made the shape of a spear, thrown against-

‘Am I interrupting?’

‘No. I was waiting for you.’ She opened her eyes. Caradoc stood a short distance away, dressed for travel. His cloak was the white of the Ordovices, like that of the messenger waiting on the jetty. He was strained, as Venutios had been, a man carrying a new weight. No word had spread of the nature of the message that called him away, but she could guess.

‘You are setting out for your father’s funeral?’ she asked. ‘Do the Ordovices want you to lead their delegation?’

He nodded. ‘They do, but not immediately. There is something else I must attend to first.’ On the jetty, the messenger turned his back to them, giving privacy. The urgency still showed in the way he stood. The horses moved, restlessly, flashing their harness in the sun. Caradoc squinted against the sudden brightness. ‘Breaca, I—’

‘You have to go. I know. We seem always to be parting on river banks.’ She smiled. In the chaos, some things were simple, and very wonderful. ‘Some time, perhaps, we might correct that.’

It was the pain in his eyes that warned her. He was more than strained; almost, he looked as he had done at the paddock gates back in the Eceni lands, when she had refused to take from him her brooch. She searched his face for a reason and failed to find it. Confused, she said, ‘Have I changed so much? I am Warrior, but it was luck made me so. You could have gone for the horn, or Gwyddhien - even Braint had it in her to think and run - and I would be in the honour guard now, swearing my life for theirs. Or yours, if you had been prepared to give up the Ordovices for Mona.’

He had not been; of all those who had picked a black pebble and survived the tests, he was the only one not to have joined her guard. She had not been sorry; she could see the shape of a battlefield in her mind’s eye, with Mona on the right flank and the spears of the Ordovices making a solid wall on the left. The only questions were the names and numbers of the enemy and the timing of the battle but that was the future and the present was Caradoc, who was unsettled and unhappy and was staring at her now in a way that mixed disbelief with a dangerous, unguarded hilarity, as if he might begin to laugh and never stop.

‘What is it?’ she asked. The clear, grey gaze raked her full length. ‘Do you really not know what you did?’

‘I cast aside two years of Mona’s training and allowed myself to get so angry that it overwhelmed my reason. If Maroc knew how shallow grew the roots of his teaching, he would be horrified. It was nothing special. If Gunovic tells me one more time how proud my father would be, I will throw him into the straits.’

Caradoc raised a brow. His self-control was returning. Both were glad of it. ‘Would he not be proud?’ he asked.

She grimaced. ‘The dead have the advantage of the living; they can see the truth of things. Eburovic would be more concerned, I think, that I did not give way to arrogance.’

‘Which, being aware of it, you won’t.’ He lifted one foot up on the rock and rested an elbow on his knee, thinking. Looking up, he said, ‘When you argued with Gwyddhien after Ardacos was wounded and ran down from the hill, why do you think I followed you?’

‘You were oath-sworn. You had no choice.’

‘No. I did it because it was so very clearly the right thing to do. I would not have gone against Gwyddhien and Venutios but when you did, the least I could do was follow. The same when you faced the dreamers’ fog and made the decision to fight; it may have been nothing special to you but none of the rest of us could do it. I have never in my life felt as helpless as I did then. Even on the deck of the Greylag as she broke apart and sank, I knew that if I could jump clear and swim I had a chance. The power of the gods was everywhere and I did not believe I would die. Last night, the gods were nowhere and I was paralysed. I could hold the stand around Ardacos, I could lead the left flank of the advance, but I could not have faced the fog and made the decision to fight, and I did not run back for the horn.’

‘But I am nothing like Venutios. I don’t carry the peace of the Warrior as he did.’ The fear of it had gnawed at her soul since the morning. She had hidden it from Gunovic’s teary joy, from Maroc’s knowing smile, even from Airmid. She could not hide it now, before one who had been there; who must be made to understand.

He was gentle with her, as a man with a child on its first horse. ‘Breaca, you don’t have to carry the peace. What you carry is quite different. If you listen to the singers with the right ear, you’ll find that each of those chosen has brought a different quality to their time as Warrior. Venutios was the peace. It was a part of him; he spread it without effort, simply by being. You couldn’t do that even if you tried.’

‘But then what will I carry with me? Anger? Is that what Mona wants? What she needs? Do you really think so? It’s what I felt when the dreamers’ fog was closing on us.’

‘Was it? I don’t think so. It may have been at the start but it is not what we saw. What did you feel when you blew the horn to call the wedge? Don’t tell me anger. I won’t believe it.’

She might have done; it was easy, if untrue. She thought for a while, letting the notes of the horn blast afresh through her mind, and the pure, sweet moment after. In time, she said, ‘I felt as I did just before I broke Venutios’ blade - as any of us does when we cast a spear and it flies true and there’s that moment just before it hits the target when we know, with absolute certainty, that it will pierce the centre. It’s the battle joy that comes before the killing starts and the screams of the wounded. It burns through, like wildfire, and nothing can stop it.’