The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (18 page)

And Rhiann could see it, because they all held her
.

Step by step she advanced to the centre of the circle, allowing the wave to sweep over and through her.

Then she was before Nerida, and all Rhiann could see was the firelight glittering in those aged eyes, deepening their power. ‘Is the Caller ready?’ Nerida’s voice echoed around the circle.

Ready?
Rhiann wondered. Yes, she was ready to try, for there behind Nerida rose the greatest Stone, and at its hallowed base Eremon had joined with Rhiann, and they had drawn the stars to earth. A pang of love arose in her, making her catch her breath, and she knew it was him she must feel, him she must call. As if in response to this thought, the threads of the Source swept around her, enveloping her in a whirl of light.

‘I am ready,’ she answered breathlessly.

At her words, the chanting of the priestesses abruptly changed. Now came the song Rhiann remembered from that rite with Eremon: a low, sibilant chant, panting and throbbing, a primal beat that surged up from Rhiann’s soul. And there it began to awaken old memories, of when people ran with the deer in the endless forests.

Nerida rested one hand on Rhiann’s forehead, and Rhiann breathed in the scent of the clay on her palm. ‘Reach down into yourself, Sister. Reach back through the years, through the lives. Tonight, with our song, we have opened the door of time, and now you must step through it!
Become
the Caller!
Become
the Mother of the Tribe, who calls the deer for sacrifice, so that people may live.
Become
She who calls the Stags, so that they make Her fruitful!’

Rhiann closed her eyes, swaying on the spot.

The beat of the skin drums, the priestess chanting and the
saor
all swept her somewhere away from this night, with its grey light and faint stars, away from this hilltop.
She tasted the sharp damp of the forest on her tongue, she chased flashes of torchlight with her eyes, dancing with lithe limbs, she heard the whoops and cries in a forgotten tongue
…

She let herself remember …

She was the Caller, and They would come.

CHAPTER 13

T
oo restless to stay by the tiny, shielded fire in the hollow, Eremon crept instead in the darkness to the ridge-top. Now he crouched with both hands on the ground between his legs, and listened to the haunting calls of wolves as they rose and fell far away under the moonlight.

A cracked stick betrayed a man’s step, and Eremon’s head went up, his nose scenting the air.

‘It’s me,’ Conaire said, his bulk blocking out the faint stars above, scattered over Eremon’s head like campfires on a battle plain. His foster-brother squatted beside him, and handed over a skewer of what smelled like mountain hare. ‘Get it out of your mind, and perhaps you’ll sleep.’

Eremon hooked hands over his knees, his mailshirt clanking. ‘There will be no sleep for me.’ He cocked his head up to the night sky. ‘Don’t you feel it? Don’t you feel them close?’

‘They are close,’ Conaire replied practically. ‘We know exactly where the Romans are. And I bet their commander isn’t sleeping either – he’ll be pissing in his little skirt at the prospect of traversing these valleys.’

Eremon sighed and dropped his shoulders, sniffing the meat. ‘I still wish we could face them in battle; throw all we have at them …’ He took a bite. ‘Listen to me. I am restless, that is all. I feel as though my bones are pushing through my skin!’ He snorted, scratching one leg. ‘I do not know what is infecting me.’

‘I do.’ Conaire gulped down the meat. ‘You’re as keen to shed Roman blood as I am.’

Eremon raked a greasy hand through his hair. ‘That is for certain, brother, although why it’s burning in my bones the way it is—’

‘Let it burn. It will be soon; this night, the next night. They are merely sheep for us to herd in those glens down there.’ Conaire paused, talking through his mouthful. ‘Perfect prey.’

The scouts had been keeping pace with the Roman advance up the long, river valleys for days, as the southern column drew closer to the warband’s hiding place. In the north, the Novantae had pinned the other column of Romans on the shores of a wide loch. Unless they swam for it, they were not moving, apparently, until their commander joined them with reinforcements –
rescued them
, Eremon amended, with a stab of satisfaction.

‘If we’re lucky, Agricola has sent a commander with no stomach for being stalked,’ Conaire added. ‘We might be home before Lugnasa.’

Eremon heard the faint note of anxiety, and reached up to Conaire’s shoulder. ‘This mission may take weeks or even moons, for we must harry these Romans from the high ground, the bogs and hills, until we drive them north once more. But brother, once we are closer, you and I can circle to Dunadd, if only briefly. You will see Caitlin long before the babe is due.’

‘That is what I need to do.’ Conaire let out his breath.

‘Don’t forget that she is in Linnet’s hands,’ Eremon offered. ‘And Rhiann will be home soon; she will never let anything happen to Caitlin.’

‘I know.’ Conaire rose, massaging the old scar in his groin, which bothered him when the ground was damp. You should give yourself some sleep.’

Eremon stared over the edge of the ridge, to the valleys falling away to north and south in long seams of black. ‘I will.’ When Conaire’s crunching steps had faded, Eremon tilted back his head to look up at the stars, kneading the earth with his hands once more.

Rhiann
. What was she feeling at this moment? Did she know that he rocked here, as restless as if his bones were on fire, alert to the very air? The wolves howled again, the eerie sound swelling and fading, and Eremon turned his head towards it. Did Rhiann know why his senses tugged at him, plucking at his heart until he couldn’t sleep? For some primal sense told him that nearby was one he must face.

Perhaps sooner than anyone thought.

*

With her back to the greatest Stone, Rhiann breathed, sinking deeper into the space between worlds, her arms outstretched. Cold night. Bright stars. Dark trees.

Come
.

High moon. Pale mist. Stream on stone.

Come
.

Skittering hooves. Pawing ground. Shuffling breath.

Come
.

Scent of lust. White of eye. Red of flank.

Come!

Clash of hearts! Crash of heads! Scream of rage!

Come!

At last, they heeded her Call.

When she felt the breach of the pulsing ring of power, Rhiann opened her eyes, her sight unfurling within Thisworld and the Otherworld at the same time. Her spirit-eye burned on her forehead, the
saor
blurring the edges of the swaying Sisters around her, the cold stone, the damp sea air.

On the fringes of the firelight, among the looming Stones, two pairs of glowing eyes bobbed. And from Rhiann’s outstretched fingers, threads of Source streamed, two rippling ropes. One reached away to the thick darkness on her left; the other to the shadows on her right.

Come!
she cried in her heart, and they stepped out of the shadows.

The starlight glimmered on their antlers, dipping as they sniffed the air and the ground. The flames gleamed on wet noses, and the green points of their eyes. Dimly, Rhiann was aware of the drumming around her, through her, in time with the rhythm of her heart. And then her senses swelled, and she felt the great, pulsing hearts of the two stags, beating as one, beating with her.

Around her, the priestesses hummed and swayed, tossed their painted heads and blew out warm breath. And the stags dipped their necks again and pawed the ground.

In the dark tent, Agricola’s eyes flickered open.

He had not slipped into deep sleep for days, for he couldn’t stop gnawing on this decision to cross the mountains, wary of being trapped in such narrow valleys. But the men of his northern column needed him, and the sooner he merged their forces once more, the better.

For these Novantae were not just mindless, leaderless raiders after all. There was a force – a significant force – loose in this bleak moorland. Agricola turned over on his side, the flimsy blanket in his camp bed rucking up around his hips.
We are here now. We must just get through these mountains, and quickly
.

He had said that to his men. Yet when he was alone, the sick dread in his gut would not let him sleep; the fear that even though he led his army the most direct way, getting tangled up among these valleys and brooding hills was a mistake. The coastal route would have been safer, with the sea at their back, but his northern force would have been all but decimated by the time he got there, leaving his army vulnerable and far from its bases.

Agricola turned over again. Curse it! There never was an easy answer, not in war. It was the best decision, he must trust in that and the Fates – and rush through these mountains as quickly as possible. He wriggled a hand up to scratch his side. The skin felt hot, and it itched, yet it was not the skin … he somehow itched from deeper inside, in his bones. And he felt unnaturally awake, his limbs thrumming with some tension that made them quiver. Damn it, had he eaten some strange plant that didn’t agree with him? Yet he didn’t feel sick.

Suddenly, he sat bolt upright. His muscles burned, as if flames were licking along each limb. The lamp next to his bed was sputtering, but still gave off a feeble light. Agricola swung his legs to the floor and groped for a robe. There were those letters from his eastern forts that he’d not opened yet … he’d read them, and keep his mind busy.

In another two days they’d be free of these hills and emerge onto the plain to the north. Two days. He would not give in to fear and superstition in the meantime.

Drawn by the shining ropes streaming from her hands, the stags danced closer to Rhiann, snorting and pawing the earth, lunging forward, then leaping back. Their breath was a merged cloud of mist glittering above their tossing antlers. She could feel the heat in their blood, sense the blind rage building in her own heart and gut. Yes … it was the irresistible, single-minded focus on the rival, which blotted out all else.

Now one stag reared up on his hind legs, bellowing; now the other.

I must choose
, Rhiann realized, with sudden clarity.
I must choose the King Stag
. Her consort. The one who would triumph.

She chose.

Eremon had given in at last to the twitching of his muscles, the impulse that tore at his mind as strongly as his heart. He could not deny this instinct that seemed to have arisen from the deepest corners of his being – and he had learned to listen to that along with his brain.

Now he crept among the hollows of wet bracken, rousing all the sword and spearmen. He had already sent Nectan’s archers to dispose of the Roman sentries, for they were masters of coming upon an enemy unawares.

‘Now, it is now,’ he murmured as he moved among the sleeping men, his face burning despite the cold air on his cheeks.

The Novantae prince’s hand was instantly on his sword, as he came fully awake. ‘In the dark?’

‘In the dark,’ came Eremon’s answer. ‘They had no room in their valley to build a camp ditch. They will not be expecting a night attack.’

‘Yet they have scouts,’ the man said.

‘No longer; the Caereni have done their work.’ Eremon was struggling to rein in a surge of uncharacteristic impatience. ‘It must be now.’

Agricola threw down the thin, wooden tablets and, wetting his finger, nipped out the sputtering lamp flame. Then he went to the tent flap, rubbing his eyes, straining his night vision to adjust to the faint grey sky. The mountain air bit at his fingers and nose. Around him, he could just discern the dark humps of the soldiers’ bed rolls, stretching far out into the darkness. The valley was so narrow that 1,500 men could only be wedged in along a considerable, yet thin, line.

He had allowed no fires, even though for days there had been no sign of any men in these barren, wind-swept hills, and chosen a defensible position among the half-rotted stone dykes of an old farmstead.

But something still wasn’t right.

The tugging and twitching in his bones was only growing greater, until at last he cursed, giving up on sleep altogether, and reached for his cloak and sword belt, squatting to lace his boots. Outside, Agricola strained cold air through his teeth, checking first on the handful of officers’ horses at the centre of the camp, patting the snuffling nose of his own mount.

Then he made his way to the edge of the men, where a scree slope reared steeply from the valley to a ridge above. On the way he cocked his head as, far away, a wolf howled and was answered by another.

The guard posted on inner watch had come smartly to attention, and now he turned his back as Agricola passed his water against the scree slope, noting, in the starlight, the thin layer of frost on the tumbled stones. He raised his eyes higher, to the looming heights that seemed to frown down at them all like a dark fortress. ‘Frost,’ he muttered to it defiantly. ‘In summer!’

Then he shook himself dry, dropped his tunic and stepped back, his boots crunching on a stray patch of frozen grass.

It was then that his head went up, sensing the air.

Rhiann let one hand fall, and that twisting, shining rope of light was instantly extinguished.

The other hand pointed now at the chosen stag, larger and more fiery than the other, his chest deep and proud, his eyes rolling at her. From the fingers of that one hand the Source surged even brighter, all of it focused now, no longer split. It entwined with his antlers, and rimed them with silver, like starlight on frost. It danced between the tines, glittering on his brow. It clothed his bunching flanks in pale light. It was power and rage and strength, glorious at its peak, but then a warm tide of love swept through Rhiann from her heart, and tinged the silver with red-gold.