Shattered Dance

by Caitlin Brennan

  At first Euan did not see the stag. Then he emerged from behind a moss-covered heap of stone.

  Euan’s heart stopped. The rest of the deer were red or dappled as they should be. The stag was marked like one of the people’s cattle. His coat was as dark a red as Euan had seen in a deer, seeming almost black at that distance, but all through it were spots and splashes of white.

  The spotted stag, Conor had said. And there he was, as big as Euan had imagined, with antlers spreading wider than Euan’s arms could stretch. He had seen them first above the stone like the branches of a leafless tree.

  One by one, with all the stealth that hunters of the people could manage, the Caletanni made their way down into the valley. There was precious little cover there, but dun leather trews and bodies smeared with mud and ocher made them invisible to passing glances. The wind favored them, blowing in their faces, bringing them the heavy green scent of the valley and, strong beneath it, the musk of the stag.

  The men nocked arrows to the strings of their hunting bows. Euan left his bow slung behind him and firmed his grip on his spear. It was a less reliable weapon than a bow, but heavier. He felt in his belly that with this stag, he would need it.

  They crept in file down off the ridge and through the valley, picking their way around the springs and the marshy hollows. The deer were calm enough, engrossed in the deep green grass.

  Euan kept his eye on the stag. The great beast had moved toward the end of the valley, where the grass was thinner and the springs had stopped coming up through the earth. He cropped the lesser forage warily, lifting his great crowned head often and drinking deep of the air.

  The hunters had come within bowshot of the herd. They advanced a little closer, then bows came up and arrows aimed. The first one flew from Cieran’s bow, straight to the heart of a fat doe.

  She fell so quietly the rest of the herd barely noticed. Then another fell, and a third.

  The stag loosed an explosive snort. Those of the herd who survived leaped into motion, springing high and wide and away from the hunters.

  Euan left his men to deal with the three they had shot, rising to his feet but crouching low. The stag alone was still, guarding the herd’s escape.

  Euan aimed along the shaft of his spear. There was a winding stream of white on the shoulder like a river on a map, marking the path to the heart.

  He cast the spear. The stag leaped in the air. The spearhead clipped its shoulder, opening a long bloody track, and dropped away.

  Euan abandoned stealth. He strung his bow at the run, nocked an arrow and aimed and shot. The bolt flew wide.

  A wise man would have given up. They had three fat does to bring back to camp. He could find the stag again, this time with horses and better strategy.

  That was imperial thinking. Euan was not—refused to be—an imperial.

  The stag was wounded. It was not a deep wound but it was bleeding freely. Loss of blood would weaken him, then Euan would take him.

  Euan paused to drink from the last of the springs. The cold clear water made him dizzy with its purity. Behind him the rest of his men were butchering deer.

  Conory looked up and met Euan’s eye, and nodded as if words had passed between them. He spoke briefly to Cyllan who was nearest, won a nod from him in return, washed the blood off his hands and picked up his weapons and trotted toward Euan.

  They went on together, still without a word spoken. The stag’s blood trail was clear, first in grass and then in heather. The pied splendor of him bounded strongly still, leading them away from the remains of the herd.

  They settled into the wolf’s pace, the long loping stride that could cover long leagues without tiring. It would take as long as it took—that was tribesmen’s thinking. Euan would still be Ard Ri when he came back. When he brought the spotted hide with him, he would prove yet again that he was fit for the office.

  Part of him was aware of the distance he traversed, marking the lie of the land and taking note of where he was in this country that he knew better than the inside of his new and royal tent. The stag had turned from north to west, then south toward the hunting runs of the Dun Cow. It was slowing a little, though its strength was still remarkable.

  It never quite let him get within bowshot. That was a clever coincidence. He would not allow himself to wonder if it was more.

  By the One, he hated magic. This was a perfectly ordinary if large and oddly marked stag. The fact Conor had spoken of it…his mind would not go there. Nor would it go where Conor had gone, foretelling what would happen after he had chased this particular stag.

  If Euan was not careful, he would see a rider on the stag, a tall and slim child with fiery hair. Of course Conor was not riding the beast. That was absurd. Conor was in camp with the other menchildren, learning to hunt and fight.

  Euan shook the vision out of his eyes and quickened his pace. Conory matched his stride as easily as ever. They were closing in—at last, if slowly. It would only be a little longer before they could bring the stag down.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  By noon of the day they left the Dun Cow, the embassy was deep in country so barren and deserted that one might think it was the edge of the world. Mile after mile of stony heath and purple heather stretched away into the blue distance. Every now and then, as if to mock the travelers with memory of gentler places, a copse grew in the wasteland.

  Those marked water, Pretorius said, though it might be far beneath the ground. The trees were low and stunted, and most were evergreens, dark and fragrant. Beasts and birds lived there in surprising abundance.

  “This is rich country,” Pretorius said, “though it looks so bleak. There’s more than enough forage for deer and boar and the wolves and cats that prey on them, and there are more shapes and races of birds than anywhere else we know of. The land feeds the tribes’ cattle well enough, and their sheep and goats and pigs, too.”

  “Where are they?” Valeria asked.

  “Camped in hidden valleys,” he answered, “or secure in duns on hills and ridges. They need a great deal of space, do the tribes. As empty as this land looks, in their minds it’s growing unbearably crowded.”

  “So they keep trying to cross the river and conquer us,” Valeria said. “But if this is crowded, our empire must be impossible even to contemplate.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but we’re not human people. We’re quarry—not nearly as noble as deer. We’re rabbits, rather, infesting the grass. We’ll feed and serve them, and they’ll live off our lands.”

  “Do you think we can ever learn to live together?”

  Pretorius’s eyes narrowed as he pondered that. After a while he said, “Not as we are now. Either or both of us would need to change profoundly.”

  “Artorius tried to do that,” she said. “He took hostages and made them learn our ways. Some he even sent to the School of War.”

  She stopped abruptly. Some indeed he had, and she had known them. She had more than known one—and done her best ever since to forget him.

  Pretorius seemed unaware that she had meant to say more. He nodded slowly. “Most say he failed, since those princes took the opportunity to turn our own powers against us. Still, I wonder. They learned our language, our customs, and some of our ways of peace as well as war. That has to have left a mark. Maybe they hate us—but our words are inside their heads. They don’t think purely as tribesmen. Not any longer.”

  “You think so?” Valeria asked.

  “How can it be otherwise? Words are power, lady.”

  “The white gods think words are beneath them.”

  “Ah,” he said, “but they are gods.”

  Valeria smoothed Marina’s mane on his neck. He was taking his turn carrying her while the others ranged where they pleased. At the moment that was just behind her, matching Marina’s pace as if they had been in a quadrille.

  It kept them amused. Marina was the softest-gaited of the three, which made for a pleasant day’s ride. The land for all its bleakne
ss had its own beauty, which she could learn to grow fond of.

  The magic was less jarringly wild here, or else she was growing accustomed to the randomness of its patterns. It was beginning to make sense to her.

  Was this what it had been like in Aurelia before the orders of mages imposed their own patterns on it? That was how it felt—raw and unformed. Here and there she could sense the beginnings of order, places where magic had begun to take coherent shape.

  There were more than she might have expected. Some were close to this place, and one or two were like beacons in the dark.

  The embassy had been following what might be a sheep track, but Pretorius insisted it was a road. Mostly it kept below the summits of ridges, and it seemed to cross every brook and rill in this country. A number of those came together at the foot of a crag, where swans swam in a dark and bottomless lake.

  The unexpected beauty of the place brought her up short. Marina halted obligingly and dropped his head to crop the grass that grew on the shore.

  Oda did the same—wise beast. Sabata waded knee-deep into the lake and drank in long luxurious gulps. Valeria smiled as with each gulp his ears ratcheted back and then forward. It was one of the small and silly things that made horses so endlessly fascinating.

  The lake from which he drank was so still that it reflected each swan and every crack and fold of the cliff. A second Sabata glimmered in it.

  On the far side around the foot of the crag, a pied shape appeared, running swiftly. At first she took it for a long-legged horse, but then she saw the crown of antlers. It was a stag, and he was wounded. Blood ran from a long slash in his shoulder.

  There was magic in him, drawn up from the earth itself and bleeding out again as he ran. The stallions raised their heads to watch him. They were more than magical—they were magic. They recognized the kinship.

  Someone was riding the stag, a child with long red hair and wild golden eyes. He flickered in and out of sight, as if he were only half there. The magic in him was even stronger than that in the stag.

  She heard Pretorius breathing beside her. He was watching, too, though she could not tell what he saw.

  Two men ran in pursuit of the stag. They were redheaded like the child, dressed in breeches the color of the heath. Their faces and bodies were painted all over with dun and ocher. Both carried bows in their hands, and the straps of quivers crossed their broad bare chests.

  Valeria blinked. Surely there was only one of them—not two who looked exactly alike.

  Her eyes persisted in showing her a pair of tribesmen. There were differences after all, she saw as they drew nearer. One was slightly taller and the other was slightly narrower. The one in front, the taller one, wore a golden torque as thick as a child’s wrist. The other’s torque was silver and set with dark red stones.

  The smaller man’s eyes were green. His companion’s were as yellow as a wolf’s.

  She would know those eyes anywhere. The face under the paint was older, broader, stronger, but it was still the face she knew. Her eye looked for and found the scar on his shoulder where a boar had tusked him when he was a boy.

  The stag plunged into the lake and began to swim, trailing a ribbon of blood. Without knowing what she did or why, Valeria reached from inside herself and laid healing on the wound. She felt the strength pouring out of her, but she was not alarmed. Marina’s own strength poured in, restoring everything she had lost.

  Euan Rohe stopped a short bowshot from Valeria. His eyes were wide with shock. She supposed hers were the same.

  The stag was halfway across the lake. The man with Euan—it was Conory, Euan’s kinsman who could have been his twin—raised his bow and aimed.

  The arrow flew, but it dissolved into air. Conory let the bow fall and spread his hands. His expression was wry.

  Euan wore no expression at all. The last Valeria had seen of him, he was escaping from the slaughter at Oxos Ford. He must hate her beyond measure for being the cause of that bitter defeat.

  She did not want him to hate her. She wanted…what?

  Not love. That was not possible. He was Aurelia’s enemy and therefore hers. She had made her choice.

  Had she not?

  Pretorius spoke from beside her. “A good day to you, clansmen,” he said civilly in the language of the tribes.

  She understood it better than she wanted to. Euan Rohe had taught her.

  Euan did not speak—probably words were beyond him. It was Conory who said, “A good day to you, man of the empire. Where would you be traveling?”

  It was a proper question, politely expressed, but there was no mistaking the edge with which he asked it.

  Pretorius’ response was perfectly smooth. “We’re riding to Dun Mor, unless the Ard Ri happens to be elsewhere.”

  Conory glanced at Euan. Euan had stiffened almost invisibly. Again it was Conory who said, “He’s hunting around Glen Mor.”

  “I thank you for that, clansman,” Pretorius said.

  Conory saluted him with a touch of hand to forehead. “You’ll find the road takes you there, man of the empire, if you follow it north and east.”

  That happened to be back the way he had come. He did not offer to guide them there.

  Valeria was glad of that. When the embassy rode on, she refused to look back, still less to look at Euan. She could feel him refusing to look at her.

  That hurt, though she had wished for it. She almost stopped, turned back, spoke—though what she could say, she did not know.

  She left him by the lake with his kinsman. The stag was long gone, for which she was glad. They could find something else to hunt, something less alive with magic.

  Euan stood long after Valeria was gone, eyes fixed on the place where she had been.

  Finally Conory took it on himself to speak. “Well? Are you going to try to get back to camp before they get there?”

  Euan shook himself out of his trance of shock. “Three gods from the Mountain. Three. Here. In our country.”

  “So I noticed,” Conory said. “You think they’ve come to enslave us to their religion?”

  Euan had not even thought of that. “I think they’ve been lured here. Have you seen Gothard lately? He’s been smiling.”

  “He brought them?”

  Euan could understand Conory’s incredulity. Gothard had failed twice because of those fat white horses. And yet the sorcerer had come back stronger each time. This time maybe he was strong enough to bring them down.

  Now there was a dream befitting a high king. So was the woman who rode them.

  Euan had had women flung at him by the dozen since he won the high kingship. A few he had taken out of courtesy or because they had belonged to the Ard Ri before him. Most he had managed to elude. None had caught his fancy enough to hold him for more than a night.

  He had to take a queen soon. Every Ard Ri had that duty. The Ard Ri’s chief wife ruled the women of the tribes as he ruled the men. For that reason he had to find a woman who could stand beside him in everything he did, who was a match for his heart and spirit.

  There must be such a woman among the tribes. But now Euan had seen that face again and looked into those green-gold eyes, he could not get them out of his head.

  He should hate her with all his heart. She was the reason for his defeat in Aurelia and again at Oxos. She had loved and then abandoned him, running into the arms of her stiff-necked rider-prince.

  She was still Valeria. Every blessed inch of her was burned in his memory. He could still taste the honey and spice of her lips and smell the perfume of her body, musk and clean herbs and the pungency of horses.

  Only on her could he bear that smell. It was as much a part of her as her slim strong hands and her high round breasts.

  He was growing hot, here by Craig-y-Danu, where the waters swelled up from the earth’s cold heart. He turned abruptly. With Conory silent at his back, he set off by another way than the imperials had gone—the short way rather than the long.

  He would
be in camp hours before them. Then let them see who was the Ard Ri. He hoped Valeria would be suitably impressed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The high king’s hunting camp was smaller than Valeria had expected. It was large enough, she granted that, but if all the tribes were there, they must be taking turns pitching tents along the little river. Dun Cow’s camp had been no less than a third the size, and that was only one clan.

  This was a new king in the aftermath of a strong defeat. Probably he had a great deal to do before the tribes would follow him wholeheartedly.

  Unlike the camps and duns she had seen in the past month and more, this one had guards clearly in evidence, barring the way into the camp. They were polite, but their spears were long and their shields substantial, and they made a wall across the track.

  One of them spoke Aurelian rather well. He must have been a hostage like Euan, although she did not recognize him. “Sirs,” he said politely. “Your names, please.”

  “My name is Pretorius,” the mage said, “and I come with gifts for the high king from the Empress of Aurelia.”

  The tribesman took them all in with a sweep of the glance that managed to suggest the small size, negligible estate and generally unimpressive character of their so-called embassy. “Indeed,” he said. “She weighs our high king light.”

  “On the contrary,” Pretorius said, “she shows her trust and respect for his office. If she had lacked either of those, she would have sent a legion with a general to lead it. Now mind,” he added sweetly, “if that is what your high king feels is due his rank and station, we would be happy to oblige.”

  Valeria held her breath. The high king’s guards were looking distinctly unfriendly. Pretorius sat at ease on his plain brown horse, smiling as if he had no care in the world.

  She did not try to imitate him. Sabata, who had taken Marina’s place an hour or two ago, was a coiled spring under her. She knew better than to tighten rein or leg, but if he exploded, she would be ready.