The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (78 page)

Yet the smile that then curved the Orcadian king’s face, drawing the scar down, was fuel to Eremon’s fire and, pushing himself past the pain, he grasped his hilt with both hands and began to rain blows down on Maelchon’s sword just as he had trained to do with the equally large Conaire – hard and fast and unrelenting.

Eremon had a fleeting impression of space around them both, as Maelchon’s guards were either cut down, or fled. The sun was high enough now to flood the valley with light, yet all brightness was sucked into the void that was the Orcadian king’s remaining eye, framed by the greasy hanks of his hair and beard. The hatred that lay there seemed to reach grasping hands around Eremon’s throat, throttling the life from him.

Yet slowly, agonizingly, youth and vigour began to outweigh size and weight. Eremon sensed Maelchon weakening, in the rasping sound of his breath, and the slight slowing of his reflexes. It was then, when he was tiring, that Eremon decided to target the king’s right side, for he surmised that the damaged eye would affect Maelchon’s depth perception.

Without warning, Eremon suddenly leaped far into the king’s right-hand field of vision, twisting as he went. The matted black head shot around, but Eremon had already drawn his blade across Maelchon’s flank, under the edge of his mailshirt.

The cut was deep enough to take Maelchon’s breath from him, and the king stumbled, bellowing. Recovering his balance, Eremon brought his foot around in a circle and kicked Maelchon’s feet out from under him. The king went down, and Eremon jumped on to both wrists, pinning the sword arm while the tip of his own blade pressed into the hollow of Maelchon’s throat. Abruptly, all sound of the fighting around them receded.

Maelchon hissed, attempting to speak, but Eremon flicked the tip of his sword, nicking Maelchon’s throat. A line of blood beaded the furred hollow, and the Orcadian king made a swallowed gargle of fury far back in his throat. Swiftly, Eremon’s blade moved lower, slicing the thongs that bound the mailshirt and tunic beneath. Then, panting, Eremon stopped and stared down at the naked bloated belly and chest. This beast had done this to
her
, for she had once told Eremon, and wept as she spoke of it.

Eremon rested the edge of his blade on that heaving mound of fat and muscle. ‘No mercy did you show her, and no mercy will you be given,’ Eremon forced out, turning his head only to spit blood from a cut lip.

‘Whelp …’ Maelchon tried to wrench his arms free, and without hesitation Eremon flicked up the blade and pressed it home with all his weight, skewering Maelchon to the ground above his collarbone. This was not the killing blow either; the king gasped and writhed, his eye flaming in agony.

Yet Eremon did not wish to look upon his face; instead he raised his head to meet Conaire’s gaze. His brother was panting, his helmet under one arm, his blond hair stuck down with sweat, dirt and blood. But in his eyes was understanding, and from that look Eremon took the strength he needed.

Tilting his head, Eremon deliberately met the hatred in Maelchon’s face. ‘I will allow you to speak once more,’ he ground out, pulling the sword free. ‘To beg me for a swift death. Yet know that whatever comes out of your mouth is your last farewell.’

CHAPTER 69

A
gricola took a deep, satisfied breath of the northern air; the scent of sun-warmed bracken and heather mingled with damp earth churned to mud by hooves. The sky was hazy with moisture and heat, but his own mind could not be clearer. The Albans appeared to have taken his bait.

His army had moved slowly these last weeks, to give them time to gather, and to ensure the destruction of everything that would shelter them afterwards. He wanted these savages to know there was nothing waiting, no safety or succour, so they would throw their all into this fight. He wanted them to succumb to the usual folly of barbarian tribes: a single charge of mindless ferocity. Their wave would rise up, then break harmlessly over the rock of his own disciplined troops.

For two weeks Agricola had known they were massing somewhere in the north, though not exactly where or when they would make a stand. Yet two days ago his scouts had finally returned. Now he knew their numbers, and the alliances that this implied.

Since then, Agricola had brought his army swiftly to the southern edge of the tribes’ chosen ground: a plain of rolling country, rippled with rises and dips, scattered with hazel and oak woods. On one side it was backed by the higher ground leading into the central mountains, and on the other, by the coast.

‘Sir,’ Lucius said now, turning in his saddle, ‘they have already mustered on the other side of that.’ Agricola followed Lucius’s outstretched hand to gaze northwards at the enormous forested ridge that reared from the plain, its peaks crowned by bare granite outcrops. He had good eyesight, and could just make out movement along its crest.

From the far side of the hill, a haze of smoke drifted in an acrid fog, smearing the blue sky. There were campfires, many of them, out of sight to the north.

‘I want to swing around to the north-east and camp there, so we are facing them. We cannot chance them outflanking us, or getting between us and the sea.’

‘Yet they have already taken the advantageous ground on the slope,’ the tribune Marcus remarked.

For a long moment, Agricola squinted eastwards into the sun. Then he turned back to the columns of soldiers still feeding into the far end of the long, broad valley behind them, and said in a flat voice, ‘It will not save them.’

Night had fallen over the sprawling Alban camp, the last night before battle. Sleepless but exhausted, her whole body trembling with frustration and fear, Rhiann paced the crest of a low hillock crowned with oak trees, a short way from the nearest bed rolls.

The leaves whispered all around her, as restless as the child in her belly, and she stopped her nervous steps. Staring out over the camp, she paused with her hand flat against a gnarled trunk, as if to draw some peace from its solidity.

It was late, yet the campfires scattered all over the dark plain still flickered with the shadows of men, thousands of men, and the sounds of drunken singing and shouted laughter floated up to her. The warriors were working themselves into the battle frenzy already: challenging each other to wrestling and sword duels; showing off their weapons; boasting of their prowess before the fires.

They were excited, eager, straining. And yet the outcome of what they yearned for had woken Rhiann in a cold sweat. For from the sea of Otherworld dreams two terrible visions had arisen, more vivid than the rest, and she had been
in
them.

First there were women and men in white druid robes, whirling around a string of bonfires on a beach, hurling curses across a stretch of dark, gleaming water. And bloodied by the firelight, huge armoured men with Roman helmets swam horses towards the shore …

Then a woman was fleeing in blind panic, a boy held to her chest as bolts of fire and iron rained down around her, setting fire to thatch roofs, spearing the men who rushed past to defend the walls. And the woman had no breath left to scream, but threw the child down beneath an overturned cart, covering him with her body …

Still shuddering from these nightmares, her skin chilled by dried sweat, Rhiann’s fingers now clenched on the rough bark of the tree. As she stared up at the dark Hill of a Thousand Spears, which loomed above them, blotting out the stars, she knew somewhere that the visions were actually memories – memories involving Romans. And this is what had dragged her fear for Eremon up into her heart and throat. Where was he? Was he even alive? Had the destruction of her visions also swept over him?

Rhiann had heard from Calgacus himself that the Romans had been sighted making their way around to the north and east, delving a camp on the far side of a stream and wooded ridge. She didn’t understand why Calgacus would stand back and let them do this, and not attack as the columns were on the move. Yet Calgacus had explained to her that he had already taken the higher ground on the slope of the hill, the strongest position, and to retain that advantage he would let the Romans camp where they would.

‘We came here to challenge them in open battle, lady,’ Calgacus had reminded her gravely. ‘This is exactly what we planned, your prince and I.’

Rhiann now buried her face in her shaking hands. Perhaps she was just going mad after all. She felt as if she were overflowing, her body straining to contain her love and fear for the baby, her terror for Eremon and the constant whispering of this other world.

Soon, she gave up all pretence of sleep. For the remainder of that endless night she held a wakeful Caitlin and sang under her breath to the baby, using her voice and her sense of the child to anchor her in Thisworld, to keep her fear for Eremon at bay. At the first hint of dawn, she and Caitlin said their farewells to Calgacus and were led by two of his warriors to the hill on the western side of the battleground, where they found a place to gaze out on the sea of pearl-grey mist below.

Rearing from it to the south was the Hill of a Thousand Spears. In reality it was not one hill, but a long ridge with many peaks that ran east-west, the eastern peak a pointed outcrop surrounded by an old hill fort. Rhiann stared hard at the ridge, searching for some kinship, yet its granite tors remained impassive.

‘Sister.’ Caitlin was by her side, holding out a wooden cup of steaming broth. ‘This will warm you.’

In the centre of the summit of their hill was a cleared space beneath a leaning rock, and there the two guards had made a small fire, propping over it a skin bag of water, barley and beef bone.

‘It will be hot today,’ Caitlin observed, looking likewise to the north for Eremon and Conaire.

Rhiann nodded, and sighed. Heat was tiring; it tormented with thirst, drew sweat into eyes, made sword-grips slippery. Still, no day was a good day for battle. Not to a woman.

One of her sister’s cheeks was smudged with dirt, and she had donned the old battered helmet she had been wearing the first day Rhiann saw her. That helmet and the quiver of arrows across her back had helped Caitlin to throw off her outer mantle of fear, yet the tight lines of her mouth and shadowed eyes could not be so easily hidden. Rhiann instinctively searched her mind for some comforting words, and realized all of them had been said.

Yet suddenly a change came over Caitlin. Following her sister’s gaze, Rhiann narrowed her eyes into the rising sun. It seemed that something glittered once on the far edge of the plain.

With a yelp, Caitlin threw her arms around Rhiann and kissed her soundly on the head. ‘There are horses, and men on their backs with many spears.’

Rhiann’s blood drained from her face, then rushed back in a wave. Disentangling her limbs, she pulled herself awkwardly up the rock to balance there.

‘I am going!’ Caitlin called over her shoulder, already leaping from boulder to boulder towards the tethered horses. ‘But I will come back soon!’

Breathless, her fingers twisting into knots, Rhiann watched her sister disappear. Then she swung back to the plain, craning to see more without overbalancing. Among the stirring masses of men revealed by the lifting mist, she could discern nothing clearly, and eventually she gave up, and carefully levered herself back down on the rock. She must wait for him to come to her.

The sun was falling full on the rocks below when Eremon at last arrived, Dòrn picking his way up the steep path. Rhiann wondered why he did not look up to her, and then suddenly her heart was chilled with an odd sensation; that somehow she did not know this man who approached her.

When the horse lurched up the last rise, Rhiann rose to her feet, and only then could she see what the shadows had hidden before. Eremon was naked from the waist up, and though he seemed to have made some token effort to wash, his skin was still smeared with dirt in places, and the tint of blood, dulling his blue tattoos. Streaks had spattered his fine helmet, and there were cracked remnants of dried blood in the creases of his knuckles where they rested across his reins. Yet it was on looking into his eyes that Rhiann finally understood what Eremon had meant, that last morning in camp, about what he would need to call forth, and how it would take him over until its job was done.

Dòrn came to a stop a few paces from Rhiann, shaking his head and pawing the earth. Without a word, Eremon freed a bag that was tied to his saddle, a rough pouch of hide, soaked through with blood as if it had been dipped in a pool of it. Then he threw that bag at Rhiann’s feet.

When he spoke at last, he didn’t seem to want to meet her gaze. ‘In my eyes,’ he whispered, ‘a man could as soon take your honour as take the moon from the sky. But I do not understand how women reckon these things.’ He pointed his chin at the bag. ‘There, I bring the man parts of him, in exchange for what was taken from you. Burn them, or bury them as you will.’

Rhiann stared down at the bag in dawning horror, the full realization arriving as a blow to her belly. Then she glanced back at Eremon, and it was the hard light in those familiar eyes, burning in a pale face, that finally brought home to her that war had reached them. It wasn’t the sight of tens of thousands of men, or the sun rising on a battlefield, or the trumpets, or flashing weapons. It was the look of a man she loved, who had gone somewhere she could never follow.

Something of this must have been revealed in Rhiann’s expression, for without another word Eremon turned Dòrn and started back down the hill. ‘Eremon!’ His name sprang to Rhiann’s lips as only a faint cry, yet abruptly the horse halted. For a moment they were both still, until with a sharp yank of the reins Eremon urged the stallion back up the hill.

Rhiann rushed forward then when he drew rein, and pressed her lips desperately to his hand, heedless of the taste of dried blood. She squeezed her eyes shut, determined not to weep.

At first Eremon’s touch on her hair was uncertain, awkward, but then his fingers grew more sure, more tender, as he traced the line of her jaw, her cheek. Finally he lifted her chin, and now Rhiann couldn’t see the savagery, only the straight line of his shoulders, the tilt of his head and the calm strength in his eyes.