The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (37 page)

A jolt of excitement shot up Eremon’s spine, and instantly every muscle was tense, poised for action. ‘I suppose that Lorn and Calgacus can both count,’ he remarked to Conaire, drawing his sword and, heedless now of the need to be silent, leaping up the few steps to the top of the outcrop.

There, his boar-crest helmet was outlined against the lightening sky, as a signal for his archers. In a moment a scattering of tiny flames sprang up further down the glen, and he raised his sword as the warriors near him shook themselves free of the leaves and the ferns, unsheathing blades, hefting spears. The rustling and murmuring grew louder, spreading up the glen as swiftly as fire up a heather slope. This was Eremon’s power and his role – men waiting to kill at his signal.

He paused to summon Rhiann’s image to his mind, his fingers pressing the stag amulet to the hollow of his throat. And as he slashed his sword down and the sky burst into a flaming rain of fire arrows, he sent another prayer to his gods:
Bring us soon to peace, so I am never sundered from her again
.

Leaf-bud was the time for herbs, so after another long day of collecting, sorting and drying, Rhiann should not have been surprised to find herself dreaming that night about plants.

In this dream she was holding up the tiny, clustered blooms of a plant whose name, in the usual dream-way, kept slipping from her mind. Arrayed around her were a crescent of girls, the novices and young initiates, their eyes fixed on her, as she described the plant’s properties.

She hardly registered shock at first, when something appeared in the distance beyond the girls’ heads, even though it made Rhiann’s speech falter. Then, suddenly, she found she was trying to scream, but no sound was coming out. And she was tossing and writhing and trying to move, but she could not, and the white petals were crushed, and fell to the ground …

Peace
. A calm voice flowed into Rhiann’s dreaming mind, soothing and cradling, and abruptly the panic began to recede. After a moment, only a dark mist remained.
It is not now … not now …
Each word fell down through the darkness like notes on a harp, soothing her, and soft fingers brushed her hair back, trailing down her cheeks, melting the frightened tears. Her heart was still racing, but something was penetrating her mind; the knowledge it was only a dream. Rhiann began to struggle upwards to full consciousness.
Hush, daughter
.

Now there was a light, a soft sheen of moonlight seen through half-closed lashes. Yet still Rhiann could not open her eyes, and all her limbs felt heavy, the edges indistinct, as if she only barely held on to her body. A wisp of conscious thought floated past, that she had taken no
saor
, or indeed any draught of herbs, so what was wrong with her? The feeling was like
saor
and yet not like it, and now she tasted, with a faint awareness, a bitterness on her tongue.

Other voices were calling Rhiann now: fey, silver voices she knew from the times she had left her body before. It was the Otherworld spirits calling her to join them, stretching out their shining fingers to draw her away from her body for ever. The candle of her soul flickered, yearning to go. It stretched out its flame …

No, Rhiann
. The musical voice forbade it, and the fingers on her brow pressed into both temples.
Do not listen to them, listen only to me, to us. Hold to your body, Rhiann
.

Her name. The word called her back, and she let it, gradually realizing that though she could not open her eyes or move her limbs, she could feel a definite sensation of ground under her buttocks, the pressure of one shin on another as she sat with crossed legs. Her arms were out, resting on her knees, her palms turned upwards. A cool drop of water fell into one hand now, and a warm stone was pressed into the other. And she sensed the faint shuffle of feet tracing a spiral dance around her.

Why am I here?

Two voices answered, one low, one high.
Because we called you. Why?

You must become One, when there is no longer Many. An empty ship on the waves you must be; a mare with her saddle; a cup to hold all. We must fill you
.

Rhiann’s brain rolled slowly over, grasping for sense, and finding nothing. She struggled to open her eyes again, but those trailing fingers came down on her eyelids, pressing them closed.
Feel. You do not need to see
.

The singing began then, one voice, rising and falling in a primal, wordless tune; an old woman’s voice … no, an ancient voice … and though no music accompanied it, its deeper ranges suggested the boom of a drum.

Earth
. The thought dropped into Rhiann’s mind and, as if the word opened some doorway within her, in flooded a host of images: dark caves in the ground; walls carved with spirals; bones of rock rising from green turf. She saw her open hands, the crushed white blooms on her palm, and then all around her, stalks were suddenly bursting up through the soil, seedlings of every kind of plant and root and tree, their names and natures a whispering tide in her mind.

Rhiann gasped, and a great breath rushed in, filling her to overflowing as the plants all around her unfurled. She struggled not to drown in that tide, and when she could breathe through it, she realized that a second voice had taken over from the first. It rose and fell in cool ripples of sound, and Rhiann felt rain on her face, running over her tongue.
Water
, came the thought, and a wind brought her the salt of the sea, streams fell down from high mountains above, and a woman dropped an offering into a sacred pool, as tears fell from her eyes. The grief of this pierced Rhiann so sharply she cried out and, as she opened her mouth, the second great breath rushed in. She felt herself swell with ideas and thoughts and snatches of words that swirled by so quickly she could grasp none.

The first voice returned now, leaving the low drumming chant behind to soar in flares of sound that leaped and danced.
Fire
.

And Rhiann saw burning rock flowing over the ground like a river, and pools bubbling up as steam. Lightning struck a lone tree, and it burst into a crown of flame. And in the centre of a dark forest, people danced around a glowing firepit, which kept the wild things at bay. Rhiann’s third breath pushed inwards of its own accord, searing her nostrils and lungs. It roared like a burning wind, and when at last it eased, the heat rose in a column in her body, bearing on its warm drafts a sparkling multitude of feelings and bright images.

Her attention was claimed then by the return of the second voice. It had changed again; no longer cool and rippling but hoarse and reedy, like wind in a sea-cave.
Air
. Rhiann saw clouds racing across a bright moon, and there were ice winds screaming over a high moor, before they sank down into the warm gusts that bring leaves to bare trees. Then Rhiann saw an image of a babe, its first breath flooding its tiny chest, and Rhiann breathed with it, and the entire tide of knowledge that had rushed in with earth and water and fire gathered itself and crashed over her as a wave, human faces and feelings and memories all tumbling by so fast that she could catch none of them, name none of them, own none of them.

Rhiann’s body was drowning, and she was crushed backwards on the earth, clutching the warm stone to her as an anchor. Dizzy, she clung on and on, until at last the wave receded, leaving only wisps of sense and thought cast up on the shores of her mind.

So Rhiann lay, gasping with her own breath now, and the two voices came as one again.
It is well. The One Who Carries has been filled. The ship has its burden, the mare her rider, the cup its draught
.

She slept.

It was far into the day when Rhiann surfaced slowly from sleep, the scrape of Didius’s knife on wood and his soft whistling the only sounds in the otherwise empty hut. Blinking to clear her eyes, Rhiann rolled slowly onto her side, noticing a strange tightness in her muscles.

She recalled little of the night before, beyond the strange dreams that had troubled her. A sudden yawn split her face, and she covered her mouth with one hand. Her spirit must have travelled far indeed in her dreams to mimic the fatigue and lethargy of
saor
. It happened sometimes, that the spirit flew such great distances it was slow to return to the confines of the body.

Abruptly, Rhiann blinked again, her gaze sliding down her outflung arm to her hand, which she suddenly realized was clutching something. Hardly daring to breathe, she slowly uncurled her fingers. Lying there was a small, white stone, warm from the heat of her palm.

CHAPTER 34

C
onaire coughed as an acrid belch of smoke from the burning fort gate billowed over him. His sword out and balanced in his grip, he blinked his streaming eyes and peered through the swirls of ash and cinders.

He had just completed his circuit of the fort walls, fighting his way around the narrow walkway that ran inside the timber battlements. Now he was back on top of the gatetower, swiftly realizing that he must abandon it before the fire streaming away above his head claimed him, too. He kicked his way through a tangle of Roman soldiers, their bodies flaccid and heavy in death. Then, sheathing his sword, Conaire threw himself over the side of the gate platform, holding on by his hands for a moment before dropping to his feet before Eremon.

His foster-brother had tugged off his boar helmet and was wiping all the soot and blood from his face through his damp hair, in an effort to stop it running into his eyes.

‘Fine cut there,’ Conaire remarked breathlessly, squinting at the shallow slash under Eremon’s right eye.

Eremon shrugged. ‘Doesn’t need binding.’

‘Rhiann will have another scar to admire, then.’

Eremon’s exhausted grin was lost in a cough. ‘She is not a woman to admire scars.’ He gestured sharply at Rori, Colum and Fergus, who were raiding the Roman bodies inside the gate for weapons, to be offered to the pools around Dunadd.

Conaire glanced at the bodies piled in the gateway, including those which had fallen from the battlements above, and others who had been cut down as they ran from the burning barracks. Swaying arrow-shafts sprouted from eyes, mouths, groins, and the soft places between the segmented armour plates. The long sword rents in guts and flanks were obscured by blood and trampled mud, but where throats were thrown back in death, the gaping wounds lay open to the sky. ‘She may not love killing, but even she would admire the work of this day, brother.’

Eremon shrugged again, his mouth tight as he scanned their handiwork. ‘How many dead?’

‘Nearly two hundred – and eighty of our own.’

‘And how many Roman survivors?’

‘Twenty-three.’

Eremon leaned down to pull a spear free of one of the bodies, then turned it over in his bloodied hands. ‘Call our men together, and line the prisoners up here. I want them kneeling.’ His eyes blazed for a moment into Conaire’s. ‘We will execute them, one by one, except for he who will carry this tale to Agricola.’

‘Execute them?’ His chest heaving, Conaire swirled saliva and ash on his tongue before spitting it out.

‘That’s what I said,’ Eremon muttered, gazing at the bodies.

Conaire looked down at his own huge hands: dirt-grimed, callused, the nails broken and crusted with drying blood. These hands had stroked his wife’s back as she tried not to cry into his shoulder. These hands had cradled his babe, his son, as gently as an egg in a nest. They were honourable hands, and killing men in cold blood was not their purpose. His belly burned sick with it, as he had not felt sick at anything else on this gut-churning day. Conaire fixed his gaze on the scorched, splintered gate. ‘We are not like them, brother. We must stay true.’

‘And leave more of them to slaughter our women and babes?’ Eremon snapped.

Glancing up, Conaire caught a flash of the same guilt in his brother’s face. Slowly, he let his breath out, as all the tales of the invaders tumbled through his mind: stories of Roman pillage, rapine and slaughter that had been visited on the southern duns. And he’d seen with his own eyes what they had done to the people of Crinan when they burned it. These men would take his baby son and dash his brains out on the walls of Dunadd.

Conaire’s hands clenched slowly into fists, as the churning sickness drained away. Raising his head, he met Eremon’s eyes, and saw that his brother’s guilt had been pierced now by a cold determination, a ruthlessness, that Conaire also must find in himself.

‘Then we will do it, my brother,’ he said.

Agricola strode up the timber pier beside the Forth, still glowing with satisfaction from his flying visit to the camps on the Tay estuary. His heart had swelled upon seeing for himself how well the rich territory – formerly Venicones land – had already been turned over so completely into a storehouse for Roman supplies.

In the valleys, the pines, elms and oaks were falling under Roman axes, the timber to be carried along the new frontier for the construction of watchtowers and fortlets. The grain was already shooting up in the fields, the cattle were being readied for summer pasture, and virtually all of this fine food would be going straight into Roman bellies. It was as if the whole peninsula between Tay and Forth was one great larder for his men. Surrounded by sea on three sides, the area was easy to defend and well protected by his line of forts on the fourth side. It was a fine foothold for his northern conquest, as he always knew it would be.

Agricola smiled to himself now as he left his ship behind, drawing in a great lungful of sea air. His swift, energetic steps soon outdistanced his tribunes, and he was alone when he reached his horse, held by a cavalry officer at the end of the pier.

Agricola’s grin was a rare sight to his men, and the soldier holding the horse was still recovering from it even as his commander mounted the block and began to lever himself into the saddle. Yet Agricola only had one leg over his stallion’s back when he saw another horseman come flying into the outskirts of the port camp. As the soldier on it galloped recklessly down the main path through the tents, heedless of the scattering men, Agricola’s smile froze.