The Boar Stone: Book Three of the Dalriada Trilogy (31 page)

Every day, when the men were watering the horses, Cahir unrolled the birch map and pored over it with Minna. ‘I recognize this,’ she would say, or, ‘No, there were two rivers meeting here.’

Once, unsure of the path at the top of a pass, they had to wedge themselves into the rocks, pressed so close that Cahir’s breath stirred Minna’s hair. As she was trying to summon a memory of the vision, her brow creased, he glanced up with an unreadable expression. ‘If anything happens to us, do what you must to save yourself, Minna. Run or hide until danger passes. Promise me.’

She hardly heard the words, drawn into his blazing eyes. Then the wind buffeted them, and she became acutely aware of his thighs bracing against the rock. At that moment the Picts seemed only a vague threat, for she was desperately fighting another battle – the way something inside her was dragged towards him whenever he was near, as if they were tied together.

By the time they met the mountains over the moor – the high spine of Alba – Minna didn’t need to strain to hear the song of the land any more. It was all around her.

She easily ignored the cold, her chapped lips and cramped hands, for every time they crested a pass the grandeur of the peaks ahead took all awareness of her body away. She couldn’t feel anything inside when the power of her surroundings was so complete. It only left awe; that, and nothing else.

The sheer heights poured with snow-melt streams, dwarfing the valleys along which they crept. And it was these peaks that raised her up each day in the frosted dawn, when every muscle cried out. It was this power that blessed her, healing her of all pain and weariness, her lingering cough and weakness.

The majesty of the hills
was
the song of Alba, and their royalty demanded surrender.

The decurion Flavius Martinus left the latrine with a scowl. Habitancum was one of the most northerly outpost forts, stuck up high on the Alban moors above the Wall. The wind swept incessantly along the stone trough of the latrine and his rump was no doubt now blue as a Pict’s face.

‘Sir.’ A lanky figure detached itself from the gate and came alongside.

Martinus tensed, for the youth had no armour and his clothes were filthy, coated with what looked like weeks of mud. Still, the garrison had let him in. He squinted, then recognized the cub. ‘Juggler boy, hail. Your ugly face gave me a fright.’

Whenever his troupe played the Wall this boy always had a grin plastered over his face. Martinus had diced with him, got drunk with him, and the damned pup had never stopped joking for a moment as he slid the Roman coins from the table-top into his pockets. But he was not smiling now: he was gaunt and haggard, his face bloodied by scratches.

‘I need to speak with you.’

The decurion shrugged, re-adjusting his heavy cloak across his shoulders. ‘Hurry up, then.’

‘I have come to join the scouts.’

Martinus snorted. They stood back for a column of cavalry leading their mounts from the stables, the hooves clopping on the cobbles. ‘And you think just by strolling in here, I will take you.’

The youth kept his bleak eyes on the ground. ‘I was hoping so.’

Martinus rubbed his hands together in the cold wind. The dusk was drawing in from the moors already, and most of the streets were in the shadow of the high, stone walls. ‘It doesn’t work like that. Go down to Eboracum, sign up there and see where you get posted. Good luck.’ He strode away.

After a moment the boy was loping alongside again. His eyes were eerily blank, and Martinus couldn’t repress a sense of unease.

‘I am the best rider you’ll ever see,’ the boy said, though it wasn’t boastful, just distant, as if repeating something by rote. ‘And I have travelled these lands for years, and I speak the Alban tongues as well as ours. I’m an asset.’

The decurion sighed with irritation. He was exhausted and short of temper after another raid by the blueskins this week in which he’d lost ten men guarding a Votadini quarry.
And how did they always know where his men would be
? It was uncanny; perhaps their murderous gods really did speak to them.

‘As I said, it doesn’t work that way,’ he snapped. ‘Now, piss off and leave me be.’

He was nearly at the headquarters yard when the acrobat cut him off. The fell light in his face made Martinus flinch. ‘Commander,’ he said, his low voice betraying a dark passion, ‘I want to kill Albans more than I want to breathe. Sign me up – but don’t pay me until you’ve seen me ride. I brought my own mount, and he’s a beauty, bred for these hills.’ As Martinus hesitated, he broke in, ‘I know you need men. I’ve seen the graves along the road, and many of them are fresh.’

The decurion glared, but what he said was true. He’d lost many men this winter, and the administration in the south spent too long scratching its arse so he wouldn’t get replacements for months, and his men would be in more danger every time they left the fort … oh, blast it. Let the boy throw himself on an enemy spear and be done with it.

One less of his own men dead.

*

The cold bored deep into Minna’s bones at night, and on stormy days the mountains were now glowering, angry gods wrapped in cloud. Their progress slowed to a crawl as they penetrated deeper into Pictish territory, and she began to feel that the hills had eyes. After two weeks they saw their first trails of smoke against the sky.

‘This is a remote place,’ Cahir said, as they huddled about their packs in a rock shelter. ‘It is likely to be no more than a herder and his family.’

‘We can’t know that.’ Brogan’s sharp face was sullen in the fading light.

Donal sent him a keen look from under bushy brows. ‘And there you were in the king’s hall yipping at how you never get adventure, lad. What are you complaining about?’

Squatting with his hands on the ground, Ardal began, ‘We’re just saying—’

‘Saying what?’ Góban crossed his arms. ‘It’s no use dreaming every night of a sword in your hand and a Pictish neck before you only to balk now.’

‘We’re not balking,’ Ruarc said. He was honing his sword with intent strokes of the whetstone, his golden head down. ‘We just wonder what we are putting our names to.’

Cahir was standing by the entrance to the overhang, looking out. ‘I understand,’ he said quietly. All the heads swivelled towards him. ‘I am claiming this deed, giving my name to it, and even I don’t know where it will lead.’ He turned, his eyes luminous. ‘But it’s better than lying under the heels of the Romans until my very breath is squeezed from my body!’

The young men stared in surprise at that passionate voice echoing off the rock. Minna could see their thoughts groping for understanding of this new lord before them. At last black-haired Ardal said defiantly, ‘It’s better than waiting at home.’

‘Anything is better than that,’ Mellan agreed.

‘I promise you,’ Cahir said then, meeting their eyes one by one, ‘that you will share my thoughts, that you will know my heart at the moment I do myself. I promise you that for the life you have risked.’ A silence fell after that, heavy with thought.

They had been caught in a flurry of sleet on the way to the shelter, and as the men set about eating, Cahir brought his own wolf cloak to wrap around Minna, who could not stop shivering.

She glanced up. ‘You … you will freeze.’ Her hair hung damply about her face.

‘No, I won’t.’ He tugged the cloak around her throat until she was nestled in wolf-fur, his eyes intent on his hands. ‘You have much to learn of warriors: danger heats our blood. We do not go cold.’

Minna’s breath stirred the fur ruff. He was right: he radiated heat. She sensed his swift heartbeat and fast breathing. ‘And … you are not afraid?’ She was – it pressed on her every time she looked up to the peaks ahead and wondered if Picts lurked there, arrows nocked on bows. She almost felt the sharpness of their points as a tingling in the hollow of her throat.

‘Afraid?’ Cahir smiled, his eyes creasing at the corners. ‘I forget you are Roman born. Your tales of the Christos say that death is the end. But when slain, we believe we are drawn into the bliss of the Otherworld through the gateway, and in time, once we have feasted with the gods, we are returned to our kin as new babes. We are the many-born, and so we are not afraid.’

Pride had kindled in his gaze, and Minna could not look away. Her beliefs were a mishmash of Parisii, with its longing for lost gods; the old Roman fear of Pluto’s dark halls, from where no spirit returned; and the Christian heaven. Mamo felt that spirits came back to earth, too, though until Minna lost her she had never had cause to believe in such fiery hope. Keeva had told her that the tribes knew this truth, but it was only now, drowning in Cahir’s eyes, that she fervently believed it.

‘I do not want you to concern yourself with me,’ she murmured. ‘You have too many others to think of.’

His black brow arched. ‘But I came to salute your bravery. The men are all impressed by how you keep up with us with no word of complaint – even Ruarc, grudging as he is.’ Minna blinked, for the warriors hardly ever met her eyes. ‘But if you’d rather not hear that …’

A tide of heat rose up her cheeks. ‘I don’t think I’m brave, just stubborn. It doesn’t take much to hold to a pony.’

Almost unnoticed, Cahir’s hand still rested around the back of her neck, holding the fur against the freezing air. ‘You’d be surprised.’ His smile glowed, as ever, with a smouldering excitement. ‘You have a warrior’s heart – take comfort from it.’

‘Said like a king,’ she replied, shivering a little less.

At her words his face fell, the warmth in his eyes withdrawing. ‘Not like a king, no.’ His hand dropped away. ‘I knew you would worry about being a burden, that is all, and you are not.’

Entirely bewildered, she watched him return to his men.

Chapter 29

M
inna stood on the high pass looking north, the wind shrieking around her, stretching the hides against her icy skin. The men hastened ahead to the shelter of the glen below but she could not move.

‘Minna!’ Cahir came scrabbling back up the defile, sliding on the wet stones. ‘What is it?’

She could not answer, holding to the rock, eyes closed, her body battered by gusts. In her mind, the eagle flew again through her blazing vision. Breathing slowly, she replayed its swoops and lifts, its turns and glides.
She was so close now.

Over the past days a pressure had been building in her chest like a coming storm. Step by step, the immense, brooding land had scoured away all her human feelings. Step by step, her spirit had broken free of its shell to fly above her, tethered only by the winds.

As her bodily feet twisted on rocks and scree, her soul was swooping through the cloud-tops. Labouring in bulky furs, mittens and boots, she began to sense feathers splayed at the ends of her hands. Now, as she topped this pass, the hairs were raised on her skin.
Come
, the land called again, but with a swifter pulse of expectation.

‘Come down before you freeze!’ Cahir shouted.

‘In a moment,’ she whispered to herself. Her cheeks were going numb, but she was reliving the dream of the night before; the same voice hovering around her.
Your sight brought you, your courage held you. So hearken to me. At every step you must draw the Source up from the land, the air, the winds, the deep waters. It is a light that will illuminate all darkness. The Source will break the boundaries of your mind.

Minna opened her eyes. The path ahead was hidden by swirling clouds but, as she watched, the veils of mist were drawn back for a moment, and there on the far side of a long valley reared the triple-headed peak she had seen in her vision.

‘There,’ she said, and the storm inside her broke, rolling with thunder. ‘There!’ she cried. Cahir leaned in to her, his shoulders hunched in his cloak. ‘That left-hand peak,’ she said breathlessly. ‘We must find a path up the west slope.’

Cahir caught her arm, his eyes shadowed with concern. ‘It is late, and there is sleet about the peaks. We will shelter and go up tomorrow.’

No, now. Now.
Minna tore free of him … and suddenly realized she was not looking
at
Cahir – but
through
him.

There he stood, solid as rock, and yet she could glimpse another world behind him: the sunlight warm, not icy, the slopes green under a clear sky. Her own world tilted, and despite the beckoning summer light of that other place she was felled by a surge of grief that took her legs out from under her so she had to catch at Cahir’s arms.

Around them the sleet gusted grey and white, the sky clouded, but behind Cahir sunlight and shadow chased themselves across an emerald slope. ‘We must go up now.
Please
. Only you and I.’

Cahir’s gaze raked her face, and, wonderingly, he touched the tears that ran down her cold cheeks.

Together they crossed the valley and began to climb the steep slopes of the far peak.

Though it became gradually colder, Minna was by now lost in the keening chant of grief, an echo of something ancient that was all around her and inside her. It drew her on, her feet moving of their own accord, her eyes open but unseeing.