by Manda Scott
Hail nudged at her hand, shoving his head against her palm. Alone of all of them, he did not harbour doubt or fear the dreamers, did not distinguish between the good and bad of a battle. He lived only to hunt and kill, to fight and win. Crouching, she dug her fingers in the harsh hair of his neck. Eburovic might be denied her but none could rob her of the memory of the hound’s birth, of the sight of Bán in the doorway of the women’s place, fresh from the dream, wild-eyed and lost, aching for a soul he barely knew, but already loved; her little brother who had yearned to be a warrior when everyone else had clearly seen that he was destined to be the greatest dreamer the tribes had ever known, until a single act of treachery cut him short. From Bán, it was a short step to anger, to fury, to a consuming rage. Two years of Mona’s teaching had schooled her to prevent passion from overriding reason, but Mona had brought her to this and her teachers had known of it and said nothing. In defiance, she nurtured the spark that burned in her core and could be fed so very easily: by her loathing of Amminios, by the memory of their first meeting, of his sacrifice of the dun filly, of his final act of desecration, by the sound of his laughter ringing in her ears, until there blazed within a fire that could destroy anything that stood in her way.
Shaking, she stood and looked round with a clarity that made nonsense of the indecision just past. The mist burned away, a phantom of her fear. The remains of the thirty watched her, warily, as if she, too, might be unreal. She smiled and saw those closest flinch. Choosing her words with care, she said, “If this is the dreamers’ work, then it is part of the test. We are the warriors of Mona. They have spent years training us for battle. If we are to die, then it should be with honour and in action, not standing like bulls in a pen awaiting slaughter.” She lifted her spear with the point upright, for battle. “I will fight the dream-spears alone if necessary, but it would go better in company. Who will fight them with me?”
The pause could be counted by the hammer of her heart and might have been eternity. At the end of it, a voice behind her said, “I will,” and Caradoc stepped forward to her side, closing a door too long left open. She smiled at him, light-headed, and he returned it, and she was reminded of a moment in a river when death had held them and had chosen to let them go. With commendable practicality, he said, “We’ll need other weapons. Spear against spear is no way to win a fight. We need blades and shields to do it properly.”
“The armoury is on this side of the compound. We are twenty-nine, less the wounded. Ten will be enough to carry what we need.” Braint stood not far away. Breaca put a hand on her shoulder. “Will you risk your life to retrieve your blade?”
The girl was vividly alert. Her grief at her cousin’s death had turned readily to anger and the need for action. She grinned, savagely. “Anything.”
“Good. That’s three. We need seven more. Not the wounded.”
Braint was youngest of them. The others would not allow her courage to be greater than theirs. None refused to join her.
Gwyddhien recovered her composure and her ability to plan ahead. She said, “The armoury is too exposed. If they are waiting, you will need a diversion to keep their attention elsewhere.” She pointed through the gloom. “There’s a stand of willow that leads to the edge of the second stream. You take your ten to the armoury. I’ll take the rest and we’ll make as if to cross there. You can break in while we do it.”
Breaca felt herself balanced, as if on a high wall, with a clear view of those gathered below. Without conscious effort, she could place each of the twenty-five warriors that remained uninjured of the chosen, and sense the quality of their courage. Ardacos lay in the lee of the hawthorns. His dark eyes met hers with no hint of fear. She said, “Someone must stay with Ardacos. We have not brought him so far to lose him.”
“I’ll stay. If you help me move him behind the rocks and give me six others, we can keep him safe for as long as you will need.” It was Caradoc. Even as she regretted the loss of him, she knew he was the only one she could rely on to protect the wounded man. She nodded. “We’ll leave our spears with you. We’ll have enough to carry coming back and you’ll use them better here.”
They moved Ardacos without difficulty. As the groups began to part, Gwyddhien raised her hand to hold her group. “We need a signal to time the diversion right.”
“Wait here.”
Nine spears fell as Breaca sprinted the breadth of the river stones and another dozen as she returned. Each, to her, had the stench and style of the Coritani, remembered from her youth. She flung herself into the lee of the rock and held her prize aloft for all to see.
“The Warrior’s horn.” It was the length of her arm and gently curved. The two ends were bound with plain, unadorned silver and the horn itself had been polished over the generations to a warm translucency that caught the first cold glimmer of dawn and made of it a fire that joined her own. Looping the thong about her neck, she said, “I’ll blow the call to war when we have the blades. Meet us back here to collect them. Then we will see who throws spears that change in the dark.”
“And before that?” asked Gwyddhien. “You can’t blow the horn when you reach the armoury. You’ll call trouble on yourselves too early.”
Breaca grinned. The promise of battle coursed through her, burning clear the threat of betrayal. “Has Airmid taught you the call of the croaking frog?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then use it. Three times and three again. When the last one calls, we’ll break in. Pray for us and we’ll bring you weapons.”
A brown-skinned frog croaked in an eastern marsh and was answered by its mate. In the colourless predawn light, a hand was raised in long grass and swung forward. Ten warriors and a hound slid, belly-down, like lizards, across dew-sodden turf.
The compound was quiet. Smoke rose thinly from night fires. Hounds and cockerels slept. A small, stone-built hut, slate-roofed for protection from fire, stood midway between one great-house and the next. The door was wooden and hinged and prone to squeal whenever it moved—except this time, when a young, black-haired warrior of the Brigantes clamped fat from a hunted boar to the openings and silenced them. Three warriors entered, one wiping boar-fat from her hands. The interior was blacker than the night had been but they had practised many times finding their weapons blindfolded for an occasion not unlike this. They sought out blades and passed them, hilt first, to those waiting outside, knowing each by the shape of the pommel. Shields were harder to name. Each bore the Warrior’s mark of the leaping salmon on the face, blue against grey, with personal marks etched only lightly on boss or handle, too faintly to be seen. In the absence of better direction, twenty-nine shields were picked at random and handed out, and the one found that was different and special. Bearing three blades and three shields each and with the hound leaping ahead to warn of danger, they ran back to the rock whence they had come. Those protecting Ardacos had been attacked. Two of the defenders lay wounded but not dead and were left on guard with those three already injured. With the blades and shields passed to those who could use them, Breaca raised the Warrior’s horn to her lips, filled her lungs and blew the call to battle.
Breaca ordered her half of the line. They walked forward, shields overlapping, blades raised and ready. For the last time, they bore the leaping salmon in blue that was the mark of Venutios, who had been Warrior and was dead. His shield alone had been different from theirs: The salmon was etched deeply on the boss and inlaid with blue stones. Breaca had wanted to take it to him but had been overruled by Gwyd-dhien and Caradoc together; it was too close to dawn for her to do it unseen and the horn had been blown with a force that could be heard across the island; they were at war and the time for the dead was later, if there were any left alive to tend them. The shield had been left instead with Ardacos, who had been given his own blade and helped to sit. At his own request, they had strapped the shield to his side so that his wounded arm would not be the death of him. He had grinned as they left and pledged his life to theirs, as a
warrior should.
The remains of the thirty made a steep-sided crescent, like the hunting but steeper, a formation that gave each protection by a neighbour but offered the chance to win honour alone with a single charge. Gwyddhien took the centre as was her right. Breaca, by virtue of her actions, had won the right flank, the place of next greatest honour. Caradoc had been given the left and had tried to take Braint as his shield-mate but had resigned her to Breaca and taken instead Cumal, the Cornovian who had spat at his feet.
He and Breaca had parted at the edge of the trees, just before the first steps out into open ground. Caradoc had stood with his back to the dawn. The remains of the mist had scattered a fine spray on his hair and across his shoulders and the cold morning light made of each drop molten metal, to match his eyes. He was troubled. Breaca could see it in him, but not the cause. For the first time in two years, she found she welcomed his presence. Reaching forward, she had touched a fingertip to the hilt of his blade, returning the warrior’s oath as she had never done before. She had not spoken. She was not sure if, in that moment, she could have spoken, but they were interrupted in any case by Brock of the Dumnonii who was unsure of his place in the line and when he had been reassured and was settled, the moment, and the queer trick of light that had cast Caradoc in silver, had passed.
They parted, each to take either end of the line. In the last instant, he had stopped her, saying, “Don’t think about who is in front of you. If we are truly facing the dreamers, what you see may not be real.”
She had said, “I will know Airmid.”
“Be sure that you do.”
The group walked uphill out of the valley, moving slowly not to break the line. All around them, night was giving way to morning, greys and blacks to the pastel colours of the dawn. A blackbird followed them beyond the last hazel, chucking a warning. In the paddocks beyond the great-houses, grunting sows roused themselves and ewes called to their lambs. High in the upper fields, a colt squealed in irritation and raced the length of a wall. The hammer of his feet rolled from the hills.
Braint said, “We should have got the horses. I would have rather died on horseback.”
“It was too far and dawn too close. We would have been seen before we got there.” Breaca looked east. A gap in the clouds showed a lining of molten gold, awaiting the first real rays of the sun. She thought of Venutios, dead, and the peace he had brought and was glad that it was gone and not dampening the wild, clear fire that burned in her, quite different from the battle fever that had gripped them all in the great-house when the choosing of the thirty had begun. The field was sharp in her mind and the ordering of the warriors. The weave that bound them was sound, and each shone with a defiance and certainty that made the whole stronger than if each were fighting alone. Braint was her only worry; the girl blazed with enthusiasm, but lacked the training of Mona.
Breaca said, “Be careful when the sun rises. If they are good, they may use it to blind you. Don’t look to your left without raising your shield hand for shade.”
“I won’t.”
They skirted a patch of gorse, shield locked to shield. The land lay open to the first ditch and wall of the dreamers’ compound. The warriors’ school had practised here often. Breaca had once held off an attacking party of ten with only Cumal for company. To Braint, she said, “If we are split from the rest and there are more than four against us, turn your back to mine and—What is it?”
“Warriors! Look! A whole line of them!”
They rose from the ditch, fully armed and decorated for war. Kill-feathers hung from the ends of their torcs in the manner of the ancestors. They wore the tokens of their dreams about their necks and in their hair. Their shields were solidly grey, denying allegiance to the Warrior. Their blades were steady.
Breaca swallowed the bile that scalded her throat. “It’s the honour guard. They have sent against us those who survived the last choosing. They are too many. We can’t meet them in a line like this.”
It was the worst she could have imagined. Caradoc was far to her left, Gwyddhien ten paces back, deep in the arc of the crescent. Breaca could see him but not her. They should have planned for this and had not. It was too late to make a new signal that the honour guard would not know. Cursing, she raised the Warrior’s horn to her lips and blew the call for a spear-head. Pausing to make sure Braint had understood, she began to run.
They were twenty-three, one untrained. They made the transition from the crescent to the spear-head as fast as any might have done it, coming together in a wedge focused on the horn-bearer. Breaca would die now, that was certain; none lived from the first rows of a spear. She felt sorry for Braint, who was behind her right shoulder in the second rank. Caradoc had stepped into the shield space on her left and once again the door closed that had been open. She had no need for the Warrior’s horn now, except to show defiance, which was reason enough. Raising the serpent-blade that had been the gift of her father, she put the horn to her lips and blew so that the sound gathered them and hurled them forward, like a pack of hounds loosed for the hunt or horses given free rein to race. Her only regret, as the mass of the wedge built speed behind her, was that she had not had time to engrave her own mark on the boss of the borrowed shield.
A contrasting horn sounded in the dreamers’ compound, with higher notes and more delicate than the one just blown. The sun broke through the gap in the clouds, streaming light onto the field of battle. The morning came alive with colour and sound. The warriors of the honour guard threw down their shields and sheathed their blades. Those at the edges dropped to one knee. Those in the centre moved aside smoothly as a well-greased gate and they, too, knelt. Behind them, the gates to the compound stood open and the ranks of dreamers waited, dressed for ceremony. At the front, alive and whole, stood Venutios. His shield was iron grey marked with red, the colour of freshly spilled blood. The symbol painted on it, still wet so that the edges blurred, was the serpent-spear.
Talla stepped forward to meet the charge of the warrior’s wedge—which halted, quivering, as a spear might when thrown into oak.
“Welcome, Warrior of Mona.”
The Elder’s voice was thin and dry as an autumn leaf. Her eyes and smile were those of the elder grandmother so that one might weep, unguarded, on the field of battle, which would be unforgivable but might be unavoidable if the driving fire inside could not be quenched, or stilled, at least.
Shaking, Breaca sheathed the serpent-blade and noticed, late, that her hand had not throbbed with the promise of combat. The warriors of the wedge crowded round her, swearing their lives for hers. Caradoc was there, who was already oath-sworn. Braint and Cumal joined him. Gwyddhien stepped out from the third rank of the spear. She spread her palms wide, as a gambler might on losing a close-fought game. Her smile showed no resentment. “You took the horn and blew it when no-one else did,” she said. “I would have died for you then, willingly.”
Talla nodded. Breaca looked past her. Airmid stood just behind with Venutios and there was no question of betrayal, of anything but care and an overwhelming love. She wore the silver brooch with the coral inlay she had just won in a bet and she wept, which was heartbreaking, but not badly so; a dreamer could be forgiven tears on the battlefield where a warrior could not. Because speech was unsafe and the questions too difficult, Breaca asked only, “Ardacos?”
Airmid said, “He lives. He is being tended, as are the others. He says to tell you that it is only now beginning. He will join your honour guard when he is fit, if you have need of him.”
“I will always have need of him. He carries the soul of the ancestors.” A flash of yellow caught her eye as a cloak lifted in the breeze. Among all the clamour and the movement, Gunovic stood waiting with Lanis, whose very presence was a reminder of the Sun Hound’s death.
Without turning, Breaca knew that Caradoc had seen it and made his decision. She felt the rightness of it settle on them both. To him and to Airmid, to Braint and to Gwyddhien, to any who listened,
she said, “With what is to come, we will have need of you all, however you choose to serve.”
The ferry bumped against the oak pilings of the jetty, pulling against its tether with a gentle insistency. Two horses stood ready, held by the white-cloaked warrior of the Ordovices who had taken the last ferry of the evening to bring a private, urgent message. Breaca sat on a rock a spear’s throw away, not quite out of sight. In all the havoc of the Warrior’s naming and the swearing-in of the honour guard and the preparations for the delegation to the Sun Hound’s funeral, it was good to take Hail away and spend some time alone. The late sun warmed her back and the berries hung ripe from the rowan. The water of the strait furled against the rock at her feet. Straggling willowherb dusted seeds on the surface. If she narrowed her eyes and glanced at the water—just so—the flow of the current against the rock and the scatter of seeds and the reflection of the berries made the shape of a spear, thrown against—“Am I interrupting?”
“No. I was waiting for you.” She opened her eyes. Caradoc stood a short distance away, dressed for travel. His cloak was the white of the Ordovices, like that of the messenger waiting on the jetty. He was strained, as Venutios had been, a man carrying a new weight. No word had spread of the nature of the message that called him away, but she could guess.
“You are setting out for your father’s funeral?” she asked. “Do the Ordovices want you to lead their delegation?”
He nodded. “They do, but not immediately. There is something else I must attend to first.” On the jetty, the messenger turned his back to them, giving privacy. The urgency still showed in the way he stood. The horses moved, restlessly, flashing their harness in the sun. Caradoc squinted against the sudden brightness. “Breaca, I—”
“You have to go. I know. We seem always to be parting on riverbanks.” She smiled. In the chaos, some things were simple, and very wonderful. “Sometime, perhaps, we might correct that.”