The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (19 page)

She wavered, holding the pot tight in her fingers. ‘Lady,’ she said at last, with a sigh, ‘I might be able to find something to help.’

When she came back out soon after, Keeva leaped up from the bench outside the door. She said nothing until they climbed the steps to the king’s hall. ‘You can really heal?’ she asked then, curious. ‘How do you do it?’

Minna hesitated. ‘My Mamo was a green-woman, a wise-woman.’ Keeva stared at her. ‘Then you are interesting altogether, Minna the slave.’ Her teeth flashed white in the dim light. ‘I like that. Most people are interminably boring. That’s why I’ve caught the eye of the blacksmith’s lad, Lonán. I’m the only girl who argues with him and happily walks away. The others simper and flutter around him, and he hates it!’

For the first time, Minna expelled her breath in a light-headed laugh. The sense of the plants was tingling in her blood again.

‘You often seem afraid, too,’ Keeva said more gravely, ‘but I don’t think you lack courage.’

Now Minna’s head went up. ‘I’m a slave – how brave can I be?’ The maid shrugged and cocked her head, birdlike. ‘Life is not always a straight path. I loved my island, but my father fell so ill he could not feed all of us, and so I came here seeking a different future than fish, fish and more fish. If you take any opportunity to make yourself useful to the nobles, then you never know what could happen. Even to you.’ She turned and gazed down at the darkened village. You just don’t know.’

Brónach was searching … seeking … fingers of her spirit reaching through the murky veils, endeavouring to part them
…
to see …

But all remained dark, the ether around her a thick, impenetrable fog. Wait … there … through the veils, was that a glimpse of something? Men fighting, struggling against each other with swords drawn … or … a horse galloping … no, a huge bird, winging its way over mountains?
Ah …

Then the veils fell back, cutting her off, and Brónach could see nothing but darkness again.
She knew nothing.

With an inner wail, she felt the edges of her spirit dissolving back into her body, becoming heavier, losing the lightness of soul. The walls of the mountain hut were forming around her once more, and she had a sense of herself spreadeagled naked before the fire. No! She would not come back yet, until she had
seen
! Desperately, Brónach grappled with the Otherworld mists, using her will, her rage, to try to tear them aside.
She had to see; she had to know.

Would Cahir stand up to the Romans? Would he fall? What would happen to Dalriada? Great, important questions, and Brónach was from a royal line of seers, the descendant of Rhiann herself – it was
she
who must receive the answers! It was she who in her secret dreams stood before the king and spoke the gods’ will. Not those wittering druids, who kept their feeble eyes on the stars and scorned the female power of the earth. That power had been lost over the centuries, the power of the Sisterhood, but she would find it again.
She alone.

And instead of wariness, she would see respect in Cahir’s eyes. No longer would she be the useless princess, condemned by a barren womb to a life of duty, sniffling fevers and festering wounds. She would be the beating heart of his people, and noblemen would bow as she passed!

Brónach flexed her clawed fingers and rolled on her side. She was shivering violently, but ignored it as she must ignore all privations – cold, hunger, pain. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth with thirst, but she could still taste the self-hatred.
Weak, weak
! she railed at herself.

Beside her, a clay pot spilled the dregs of the potion over the earthen floor. Breathing through despair, she thought:
It was not strong enough. I must try something different … something more potent.
But she had already made herself sick twice this moon, and was now sallow-faced and exhausted.

Slowly, she dragged herself upright, pausing to hold her forehead as a surge of dizziness hit. The wind on the mountain scoured the hut, a draught gusting under the eaves into the fire. Brónach stared hungrily into the shifting flames. Was it there, then, in the flames, not the flight, that she would find her answers? Or in the sacred pool outside amid the old birches? She shuddered at the memory of the hours spent by that freezing water, in frustration plunging her hands in to grope for visions as if they were fish.

Her eye fell on the circle of goddess figurines propped around her. Their faces were stony, eyes blank and uncaring. Without thinking, Brónach dashed them all to the floor. Then she sat there panting, gazing down.

Chapter 18

A
t the outpost fort of Fanum Cocidii the Roman scouts lined up outside their headquarters in the rain, eyes fixed coldly on the barbarian fighters lounging about the courtyard. The barbarians stared back, teeth bared in feral smiles.

Broc felt the hatred burn in him. These men were not the dreaded blueskins whose raids he’d been repelling for months, but they were still Alban – Dalriadans. They were all the same to him: bloodthirsty murderers, beasts who could not appreciate the benefits of Empire. As a green boy, Broc had sneered at them like all of his blood, but now, riding this windy land, the hatred had sunk deep into his bowels. He was green no more.

A man couldn’t be when hordes of tattooed men kept bursting from the trees, hacking with vicious blades, their eyes white; when his friend, a man he had diced with, and laughed with, crashed to the ground with a spear quivering in his guts.

Broc glared at the Dalriadan warriors jesting with each other in the drizzle. Though the Dux had deigned to meet with their so-called kings, these savages must be under no illusions about what the Roman
areani
really thought of them.

The door to the command quarters opened and men spilled out. Broc and his unit stood to attention as the Dux, a short, lean man, stalked past to the gate, his weathered face grim. Behind came the King of Dalriada, his chieftains, the King of the Carvetii at Luguvalium, and the cowed chiefs of the Maetae.

Kings. Chiefs.
Broc’s lip curled. How they clung to their petty titles, their foolish notions of power. When he thought about the thousands of soldiers just like him patrolling the Wall, gazing out across the bare plains, Broc felt the vast power of the Roman army behind him, and knew these minor kings were doomed.

‘Looks like something got stuck in their gullets,’ the scout next to him muttered, rain dripping down his chin. ‘No smiles, no handshakes, no back-slaps.’

Broc glanced at him. ‘I heard the Dux say he didn’t expect them to take these new taxes lying down, anyway. You know he has something on his mind: we will be ordered into the saddle before dusk.’

‘Keep it down,’ an officer growled further along. ‘Some of these bastards speak our tongue.’

Cian waited on the road with the other grooms and shield- and spear-bearers, holding the black stallion’s bridle. Like them, he stared across the hills that rolled away from the Codicii fort, but unlike them, facing nervously north, he stood apart. Looking south.

From long practice his mouth formed a tight, contained line, revealing nothing. But his heart beat like a bird in a snare, and the more it struggled, the more he held it down. The muscles in his legs and arms all strained towards that road, urging him to break and run, to disappear into the hills, swift as a deer, racing for the Wall. He could feel every fibre tightening, yearning to be set free.

Then darkness washed over him. When he thought of running, his mind was filled with an image of Minna’s face the first time he saw her, her eyes swimming with unshed tears by Eboracum’s river. Another lost one, hurt and vulnerable. That’s all he could remember about her now through the red fog of his endless rage. And the barbarians had caused her pain, too, those bastards who stalked his own dreams. So he couldn’t
abandon
her – he had to protect her, or lay down his own life for being no man at all. He had to make it all turn out right this time. He could not fail, not again …

Then the other part spoke up, hard and gleaming as a sliver of bone in his heart.
Run, you fool. There will never be another chance.
Cian scowled and hunched into the wind, cursing himself with a passion.
Weak and stupid, useless beyond all measure.

But he didn’t run. Instead he turned his back on the south, burying his nose in the horse’s neck, smelling the old, comforting scent of the animal, the lanolin and leather. And for once, he shut his ears to the hisses and taunts around him.

Outside the fort, Cahir mounted his stallion and said nothing to the man gazing anxiously from his own saddle: one of his southern chieftains from the Clutha river. The chief tried to speak, but Cahir held up his hand. ‘Not here, Finn. Wait until we are on the road.’

Around them the hundred or so Dalriadan and Carvetii warriors were mounting up, talking and laughing in a release of tension. But up on the walls the Dux and his officers remained still and watchful, their eyes hidden by the shadows of their helmets.

As the large party trotted away from the fort, Maeve’s father, Eldon, King of the Carvetii, spurred his horse to Cahir’s side. He was heavy-set and clean-shaven, with clipped, dark hair. Hunched in a hooded cloak away from the rain, he regarded his son-in-law with disapproval.

Cahir stared back with raised chin, ignoring the cold drops trickling in his eyes. Eldon’s nostrils flared, as if he smelled something unpleasant.
He did not consider my wealth so when he handed his daughter over.
Gold from Erin, amber from the north sea, tin from Kernow – that’s all Eldon had ever cared for.

‘Do not expect me,’ Cahir hissed under his breath, ‘to bow my head to any stray demand of the Dux Britanniarum without due consideration. I am not some dog, to curl up at his feet and lick them.’

Eldon’s plucked eyebrows rose. ‘It is not a stray demand,’ he replied evenly. ‘If we enjoy the army’s protection then we must pay for it, son-in-law. They need the grain to feed the extra troops. After the recent Pictish attacks in the east, surely you can see the sense in what he asked?’

‘Protection,’ Cahir repeated, with a snort. He gazed over the rolling heath to the north, obscured by veils of drifting drizzle and mist. He longed to get back to his own lands, to leave these hills so scarred by blood and pain. ‘I do not think,’ he continued, meeting Eldon’s eye, ‘that you could class my relationship with the Roman administration as one of protection. After all, the Picts have not attacked us for at least a year now – they have been kept quite busy with their own raids on the Roman army.’ He smiled stiffly. ‘So what indeed am I paying for, Eldon? Perhaps to ward the Roman-kind away, rather than the Picts; to keep the Roman eagle from my door, not the Pictish wolf.’

Eldon’s clenched reins made his horse skittish. ‘Indeed you are, Cahir, and don’t you forget it.’ He glanced back at the disappearing Roman fort, its timber walls a dark blot on the rain-washed hills. Unconsciously, Cahir looked back, too, and fancied he could still see the outline of the Dux’s helmet.

Fullofaudes had been unfailingly polite when he told Cahir he was raising the grain tithe and tax on trade goods by an enormous percentage. His narrow face had remained pleasant, but scrape that thin patina away and the man had iron inside him, iron and ambition. Cahir understood him better than he knew.

‘Do not be foolish,’ Eldon went on darkly. ‘Resist and they will crush you. Instead, join us properly. Allow a Roman garrison at Dunadd, a Roman port, and you will enjoy the same privileges as we do. We can merge our two kingdoms,’ he lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘swallow the Maetae, the Attacotti, make us one block of power from the Wall all the way to the northern sea.’

The same privileges.
Cahir scanned King Eldon’s clipped hair, his manicured hands, the soft, pouched belly.

But he knew it wasn’t differences on the outside that made them Alban or Roman any more, not with the mixed bloods. It was on the inside, the soul. It was Cahir’s pride in his lineage that made him Alban; his passion for the land, the old tales and old ways, a passion he kept hidden from all but his most trusted men, because if he spoke of it he would be opening himself to ridicule from some quarters and outright rebellion from others.

He nodded coolly. ‘I have heard you, father-in-law, but must make up my own mind. I am a king, after all, and have my people to answer to.’

Eldon frowned. ‘Think of my grandson Garvan; what he could inherit if you do it my way. And what you will bring to ruin, Cahir, if you follow some foolish path of your own out of misplaced pride.’

‘I
am
thinking. And I will take my own counsel.’

Eldon and his men peeled away to the west soon after, for Luguvalium. That afternoon, the Maetae turned off as well. Only then, as they crossed the wooded lands to the Clutha did his chieftain Finn come cantering back to Cahir’s side. The rain had cleared, bathing them in pale sunshine.

‘I won’t do it!’ he declared furiously. ‘I cannot!’ He glared at Cahir, though there was fear behind his grey eyes. ‘No trade comes through our hills any more, for people are too afraid to travel when the Roman scouts scour the plains. Three sunseasons we have had too little sun and too much rain. The crop is pitiful, Cahir. We cannot do it. We will have hunger in the dun even without paying this.’