The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (16 page)

Something is weighing on her
… With a shock, Rhiann suddenly realized that Nerida was regarding her with the same scrutiny, and no doubt coming to the same conclusion. Swallowing, Rhiann spread her hands to the fire, then tucked them under her skirts. ‘Setana told me of the Lugi king, Sister, and I confess I am driven back to these shores by the same winds that drove him.’

‘No doubt, daughter,’ Nerida said softly, and for a moment sorrow gleamed in her eyes. ‘The far, faint clamour of coming war, we will call it.’

The words hung there, as stark as the room around them, with its bare walls, earth floor, box bed and swept hearth. Taking a cup of honeysuckle tea from Setana, Rhiann fixed her eyes on her own fingers, stiff with cold. ‘Yes, war. Yet as you had no answer for him, perhaps you have none for me.’

Silence fell, as the hazel boughs in the fire cracked and settled, and Setana moved behind the chair to put her hand on Nerida’s shoulder. ‘First you must ask,’ Setana prodded Rhiann gently, and Rhiann drew a shaking breath, suddenly swept with the terror of so many things.

What would happen to Eremon if they would not help her?

What would happen if they agreed, but she failed them and him in the Stones, cut off from the Goddess as she was?

What would happen if they could draw no Source, and Eremon was left helpless, as the Roman wave broke over him?

With an effort, Rhiann steadied her mind and voice, and told her elders all the things that had so lately occurred. Then her eyes swept up to fix on Nerida. ‘I know the Sisterhood has always remained outside the squabbles of the tribes, but this is different.’ Her desperation was creeping into her words, and she forced herself to sit back, her palms slick with nervous sweat around the rowan cup.

‘Daughter,’ came Setana’s seer voice, lower and slower than her usual tone, her eyes unblinking as she stared into the fire, ‘do you think we do not know this is different? The Romans threaten all Alba; the Romans threaten our Mother, our Lady. They may be Her children, too, but they will throw down the Stones, and reshape the very land, and enslave our people.’ Her voice faltered, and then her eyes closed. ‘We know. Oh, we know, for though we can see nothing clearly, we hear the sound of battle, and the cries of children, and the mist is red with blood …’

Setana was the greatest of seers, and her voice had the power to draw the listener into trance. Rhiann carefully set down the cup, her skin pebbling. Setana’s message was the same as her own dream.

‘The kings and chiefs come,’ Nerida continued heavily, ‘and we look in the pool and the seeing bowl and the fire, ‘and we tell them what we just told you. And they are troubled, give their gold to the loch, and their grain and meat to the Sisters, and leave. But we do not know what lies in their hearts, or where it will lead.’

‘Eremon wants all the kings to join him and Calgacus in the alliance,’ Rhiann murmured. ‘Yet many will not, for they fear the shifts of power, and having their lands taken by the Caledonii or Epidii. They do not see it is the Romans they must fear!’

Nerida was thoughtful, her fingers twirling the empty ash spindle. ‘We cannot lie to convince them, child; we can only tell them what we see and don’t see. Their souls are darkened by their own greed and deceit and treachery, and that is what guides them. Yet … it is in my own mind that we must do more to protect the Mother, if indeed Her own warriors hesitate.’

‘Eremon does not hesitate!’ Rhiann burst out. ‘He has taken a force to defend the Novantae homes! If he can strike a blow there, perhaps he will weaken this northern advance, and save us.’

Setana’s gaze sharpened, returning to the room. ‘Her man was made the King Stag in the Stones, Sister,’ she murmured to Nerida, her grip tightening on her shoulder. ‘Perhaps they will still be alive to his call. For the power we draw here is not for female alone, but for male too – God
and
Goddess. For those who draw swords for truth, as well as those who draw forth life. Perhaps we can forge a blade of it and send it homing, to him. It has been done, long ago.’

Rhiann’s eyes darted from one to the other, hope daring to rise in her heart.

‘When?’ was all Nerida said, turning her face up to Setana, the line of her sagging throat blurred by firelight.

Setana paused, her head cocked to one side as if listening. The eve of the longest day is in two weeks. Let us do it then, for we offer to the sun, and the sun is the face of the God.’ Suddenly she looked directly at Rhiann, the light in her eyes seeming to pierce all the veils Rhiann had drawn around her heart. ‘Yet Rhiann must be the centre around which we circle, for it is her bond to her man that will direct what we call forth.’

Nerida paused, then bowed her head. ‘So shall it be.’

The warm rush of relief in Rhiann was doused with sharp, cold terror. The centre, all of them relying on her to be the pillar for the power they would call. Did she have the skill and strength to be that any more?

Slowly, Rhiann rose to thank them both, exchanging the priestess kiss on their spirit-eyes. The Goddess still came through Rhiann for the people; She had even come for Eremon once before, called by Rhiann’s love. Surely She would do so again, when the need was so great.

It was after Setana left, as Rhiann paused at the door on her way to her lodgings, that Nerida suddenly spoke once more. ‘You were right to seek us out, daughter.’ Looking back, Rhiann could see nothing in the fire shadows but two white ropes of hair across her breast. ‘Yet while you are in retreat here, I ask you to consider the other reasons you have come.’

Rhiann’s blood was suddenly beating hard against her throat. ‘I don’t understand, Sister. Why else would I come?’

With a sigh, Nerida took up the iron poker against the chair’s arm and swiped at a crumbling piece of burning wood. ‘Perhaps you are running from something also, child. Think on that.’

Rhiann stared at the back of Nerida’s head, and suddenly she remembered another time they had both been caught in these same poses: Rhiann flinging up the door-hide to stalk out, trembling with rage and grief; Nerida silent, her eyes sorrowed, letting Rhiann’s anguish about her dead family wash over her. For Nerida had understood then, as Rhiann did not, that her anger was not for the Sisters or even for the Goddess, but for Rhiann herself.

On impulse, Rhiann crossed the floor and knelt by Nerida’s side, afraid to see in her eyes any hint of that rift still remaining, wanting to tell Nerida what happened by Linnet’s pool, but constrained by the deep shame of it.

Yet Nerida turned and smiled at Rhiann with the old sweetness, and laid her hand in blessing on Rhiann’s bowed head. You are welcome home again, child, as you always were, as you always will be.
Sa!
Do not let an old woman scold you.’

Her palm curved around Rhiann’s head and rested there, stroking her hair.

*

In a hut buffeted by storm winds, Eremon squinted at a rough map scrawled on the earth floor, the lines of it wavering with the fire shadows. His Novantae hosts did not use or need maps, for they knew every expanse of sedge, stretch of bog and wind-blasted ridge-top as though it were their own dun. Yet things were changing, and if they asked for his help, they needed to accept his ways as well.

With his dagger-tip, Eremon had just drawn the line of Agricola’s forts across the narrow neck of land between the Forth and Clutha inlets. The Novantae lands were well south of this, but Eremon could see now why Agricola had left them alone. The great bulge of Novantae territory was cut off from the rest of Alba by broken ranges of high, lonely hills, and wide stretches of boggy wastes. Behind this natural barrier, the coastal lands afforded good grazing and harbours, but one could only get to them by sea. So these strange, isolated people had remained behind their hills and defensive bogs, quiet and complacent, until the Roman fort across the southern strait sent troops to collect taxes and supplies.

At first the Novantae gave in, too scared by what had happened to the Damnonii and Selgovae duns to their north and east, battered into submission by iron bolts from Roman war machines. But as the year dragged into another year, and they were afflicted with sunseason floods that ruined crops and rotted the grazing, so the Roman demands began to bite more deeply.

The Novantae king, accompanied by his chieftains, went to the nearest Roman fort to explain the situation, and to offer up, in desperation, their weapons and the skills of their best fighters. But they were laughed at. In anger the king did the only thing he could do to retain his honour: he called out the commander of the Roman fort for single combat.

In reply, the king was speared where he stood.

Afterwards, the king’s surviving son – the youth who now sat opposite Eremon – gathered more men and razed that fort to the ground, as well as raiding the civilian camp that had grown up around the larger fort over the strait. That was nearly two moons ago, and though the bulk of the people retreated to their fishing villages, the Novantae scouts had travelled far to glean that a large force of Romans on the Forth had been assembled and thoroughly provisioned, and was now on its way.

‘So what is it that you want to do?’ Eremon asked, swilling the murky brown ale in his cup, eyeing the king’s son over the fire.

The prince, a heavy youth with a florid, blunt face and bulbous nose, held out one arm, the fringe of his cloak frayed against his tattered tunic. ‘What you did for the Damnonii, prince of Erin! We need a great victory!’

Eremon pursed his lips, rubbing the stubble on his chin. ‘A great victory it was, at first, but the Romans came down upon the Damnonii in fire and fury.’ He shook his head. ‘Most of them were killed.’

The young man’s deep-set blue eyes raked over the men crouched around Eremon on the floor: Conaire silent by his shoulder; Rori and Fergus polishing their spear-tips; and Colum sharpening his meat-knife on a whetstone.

‘What?’ the Novantae youth cried. ‘Do you come here flashing your gold torcs of Erin, only to turn coward on us?’

Conaire hissed, and Rori and Fergus both straightened with alacrity. Calmly, Eremon stretched his legs to the fire. His trousers, bound with laces up to the knee, were damp from spray and rain, and his shoulders ached from rowing. ‘No,’ he replied, his voice cool. ‘But I won’t let hot blood cloud my mind. If you think that we can take these Romans now in some pitched battle, you are mistaken.’

The youth’s brows narrowed, and he struck the ground with his spear-butt. ‘Then why did you come?’

Eremon picked up a burnt twig from the edge of the hearth. ‘You have high ground, bogs and moors, thick forest. We must use them to our advantage.’ He pointed at the map with the blackened stick. ‘You tell us that an army comes from Agricola’s northern base, perhaps three thousand strong. We cannot meet it head on, but we
can
do something else – bite its hide, harry and weaken it.’

The young man’s mouth had by now dropped open. ‘You speak of dishonour, grubbing about in the woods like badgers! We must storm them as one, in a glorious charge—’

‘That glorious charge will get you all killed,’ Eremon interrupted dryly. He crossed his legs and leaned forward. ‘You asked for my help, and this is how it must be. Right now, we do not have the numbers to face the Romans on a battlefield. But we have other strengths, other ways to teach them a lesson. And if we drive these invaders out of your lands, we are also buying the rest of Alba another season.’

The prince’s frown deepened. ‘Another season for what?’

‘To convince more kings to join together – only an Alban alliance gives us any hope of real victory.’ Suddenly, Eremon grinned, brushing charcoal from his hands. ‘Of course, in the meantime we may frustrate these Romans so greatly that they think twice about the whole matter of Alba!’

Eremon’s grin was disarming when he wanted it to be, and he was pleased to see the frown melting from the Novantae prince’s face, to be replaced by a wary hope. ‘If what you say is true you have picked the right territory for that, prince. From our hill-tops we can see them coming from leagues away, for they must keep to the river valleys if they want to stay together.’

Eremon drained his ale cup and wiped his mouth. ‘What of your women and children?’

‘They will be safe in our coastal duns.’

Eremon tented his fingers and rested his chin on them, thinking, as the wind threw itself against the walls of the hut, screeching like some Otherworld spirit. ‘No,’ he said at last, straightening. ‘Remember the fate of the Damnonii? I have another suggestion.’

CHAPTER 12

‘W
hat do you mean, you cannot find them?’

Agricola stared along the churning line of white surf, whipped into froth by a strong wind. Higher up the beach behind grassy dunes squatted a collection of thatched roundhouses, but there was no trace of smoke in the air above them, and no sound beyond the shouts of his own men as they searched the buildings.

The centurion, holding his helmet, nervously ran one hand through his sweat-soaked hair. ‘They are gone, sir. Just like the last village. And the one before.’

Agricola bit down a curse and walked his horse a few steps along the beach, gazing out at the choppy, grey waves. Behind him his officers trailed closer, as silent as he.

Agricola was bone tired. The vigour that had flowed through his ageing limbs at the news of Domitian’s orders had been seeping away for weeks now, the further south they marched. The Novantae lands they crossed were part of it – exceedingly bleak, cold and damp. And somehow, deserted.

The information he had from his southern forts was that the Novantae scratched a living along the sandy fringes of their territory, so naturally Agricola had targeted this area. After coming down the river valleys from the north-east, he split his detachment of 3,000 men into two columns, sending one north around the hilly, difficult core of the terrain, and taking the other column south. The plan was for both to reach the coast, then work their way around, subduing the Novantae villages until the two columns met. This plan fitted well with what he knew and yet, something had changed. The people had abandoned their villages, taken everything of worth, little though that was.