by Manda Scott
He was wise beyond his years and cared deeply for Cunomar. Once, a long time ago, in another context, the elder grandmother had said, “It is the care of others that makes a man.” If anyone could achieve that, Eneit could. Breaca prayed for them both.
Cunomar had already set his feet for the throw and found the balance point of the spear. Every bone-hard angle of his body said that he wanted no help from his mother. Nodding for Eneit to follow her, Breaca backed out of the clearing, leaving her son to seek the quiet at the centre of his soul.
He was no less rigid a thousand heartbeats later when she returned. His face was set hard, the lines of his nostrils white with tension. His eyes were narrowed as if the sun pierced the mind behind them. When Eneit trod on a dried leaf, crinkling it underfoot, Cunomar twitched as if stung by a wasp.
There was no point in waiting further. As she had for Eneit, Breaca stood a spear’s length behind and said, “Throw,” and knew before she spoke that it was too soon, or too late, or that the time would never have been right.
Cunomar threw as if his life depended on it. The spear hurtled forward, in a long, flat line, screaming a little in the wind of its own flight, as a sword may, if swung fast. The tip tilted slightly up so that from the first it was clear that it was not going to hit the straw, but it flew straight and hard and glanced off the rawhide rope by which the straw sack was suspended, so that the target spun dizzily on its own axis.
“Yes!” Jubilant, Cunomar punched the air. “I aimed for the rope, truly I did, mother. The sack was too easy, but the rope was a warrior’s—”
He stopped. Breaca was the smith and she could hear the death-song of her spears as they died; long before her son had turned, her face was schooled into something close to approval and warmth.
Eneit was less practised in hiding the river that ran beneath the surface of his being. Looking at him, Breaca’s son met a barely suppressed horror where there should have been congratulation and joy, and his own face fell.
“Eneit, it’s all right. I’ve practised with the spear for years. I can teach you as well as mother can. If we try every day for a month we’ll teach you how.”
Numbly, Eneit said, “It’s broken.”
“Is it? That’s good. I thought it only touched as it flew past. But we can get more rope. We’ll need another anyway if we’re both going to try. Pick up your spear and we’ll both try again.”
“No. Cunomar. You can’t try again. Your spear is broken.”
Eneit was the son of a dreamer. He had been raised in a land in which dreaming was forbidden on pain of crucifixion, but still he knew the pathways of the dream and the inner core of the ancestors’ teachings in ways most youths of his age did not. “The spear is your soul,” he said gently. “We need to take the pieces and heal them, else your own heart will break.”
A year—half a year—before, faced with this, Cunomar would have turned his own pain into anger, guilt into recrimination, disappointment and damaged pride into the acid, biting sarcasm that drove others from his company.
Breaca watched the first waves of that rise in him; he stared past Eneit to his mother and the blame was hard in his eyes, all of it hers. “Cunomar—”
There was no need to say anything more. Of his own accord, her son had lowered his gaze. He stared a while at the forest floor, frowning. When he looked up, for the first time the man who might one day hear the soul-song of his spear shone clearly through the child who never could. He lifted the two parts of the broken blade and held them out. “Can it be mended?” he asked.
Thank you! Breaca said it silently to the soul of her son, to the listening mind of the ancestor-dreamer, to Nemain, to Briga, to whomsoever watched and listened and understood the magnitude of what had happened.
Aloud she said, “Of course. It may take me two days, but I can remake the blade. I’ll make it stronger next time, so that it can break open a rock.”
He nodded, still unsure of his ground. Where Graine or Cygfa might have lost themselves in the broken blade and its meaning, Cunomar’s attention had already passed on to the promised goal.
“What will we do while we wait?” he asked. “If we’re to sit our long-nights by midsummer, we can’t waste the time now.”
He was her son. What she had made, she could not change, only help him to build on the foundations he was given.
Nodding, Breaca said, “You are of the she-bear. You could teach Eneit the ways of tracking. And you could continue to practise with the wooden blades. Keep in the forest and be sure you’re not watched. Lanis will have your hides if she finds you and she is a better tracker than most Romans. If you can keep clear of her, you’ll be safe.”
The crack of striking blades splintered back and forth across the clearing, rousing the roosting ravens. The power of the impact shivered up Cunomar’s arm, numbing it. He dropped his guard, dragging a breath pointedly through his teeth.
“Eneit, wake up. You need to raise your blade higher and hold it directly across the line of the cut. If I had a real blade, you’d be dead.”
“Not if I had a real one too.” Eneit grinned blithely. “Then I’d have blocked you—here—and you’d have been off-balance and I’d have come in like this—” He thrust forward and flicked the tip of his blade deftly upward under the rib cage. Cunomar doubled over, choking.
Eneit stepped back out of range, his brown eyes alight. “See? That’s a kill.”
He stood with his hands on his hips, grinning. Two days had passed since the ill-fated spear-cast and they were young. If the shadows of fate worried Eneit, he kept it well hidden. In the heart of the forest, facing his friend, he balanced evenly on his feet, his eyes bright with the promise of victory.
Cunomar drew his first full breath since the strike. On the second, he stood up and let his hands fall from his belly.
Eneit blazed a smile. “Good. I thought you really were dead there. Come on. we’ve hardly started. That’s one kill each and mine was a real one; yours was only pretend. I challenge you to the best of five strikes—real fighting this time, not half-baked training.” He raised his wooden blade in salute.
It was a good offer. Three days ago, Cunomar might have accepted but the first lessons of the spear-cast were growing within him, showing that place within himself where rash foolishness took the place of true courage. It was a fine line, and not always certain, but he felt it now. He shook his head. “No, we should stop. It’s past dawn; someone will hear us.”
“You mean, my mother will hear us and you’re afraid of her.”
“Eneit, any sane man would be afraid of your mother. Ardacos is afraid of your mother and he faced down a she-bear defending her cubs. You and I are not yet bear-dancers and even when we are, I think we will tread carefully in the presence of the raven-dreamer who gave you birth.”
Cunomar stooped and slid his wooden sword into an oiled cloth roll at the side of the clearing. He had spent half the winter carving it and was proud of the result. For length and balance, it mirrored his mother’s serpent-blade but for the blank space at the hilt which would be filled when he had sat his long-nights and found his dream. Eneit’s blade, which had been made first, as a gift, was slimmer and had a crack already along one edge of the blade. It, too, awaited a mark on the pommel.
Eneit was not ready for the morning to end. “Did you ever hear of Sinochos, the warrior who was Dubornos’ father?” he asked.
“How could I not? He fought with mother at the invasion battle, and then won honour a second time at the battle of the Salmon Trap when the Eceni defeated a whole century of Romans and two wings of their Gaulish cavalry. I could sing the songs of his battles in my sleep. I probably do.”
“Not that I’d noticed.” Eneit found a green twig and chewed on it, cleaning his teeth with the frayed ends. “Did you hear how he died?”
“Sinochos? I didn’t know he was dead.” The wrapped blades lay snug in a pit at the side of the clearing. Cunomar crouched and began to back-fill the hole with th
e sand that made the forest floor and the black, friable loam that topped it.
Eneit chose his words with care. “It was after the battle of the Salmon Trap. Sinochos and his honour guard came home and found that the Romans were breaking everyone’s swords to stop them from being warriors. Sinochos saw the beginnings of slavery and swore not to live under it. He took his three best warriors with him and hid the blades that had been in their families for seven generations. Then he went back to the village and fought the Romans with his bare hands. He killed three before they hanged him.”
Cunomar rocked back on his heels, staring. “Sinochos hid the blade of his ancestors before the Romans could break it?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And you are telling me that you know where it is?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. Cunomar felt the colour wash up from his throat. Ardacos always said he showed passion too readily to the world. In Eneit’s presence, he did not care. Eneit was the one person in the world who knew all of his heart and his longings; which was, of course, why he had said what he had said.
More than anything else, more than passing the spear-test, or learning to lie immobile for a morning’s ambush, Cunomar dreamed of wielding the sword of his ancestors in battle—and could not, because the ghost of his grandfather had made himself visible in the grave mound where the blades were hidden and had forbidden it.
Hanging between them were the words that did not need to be spoken. I offer you a blade with a history that has not been cursed by the ghost of your grandfather. With that as your prize, you could sit your long-nights when the dreamers give the word and come home a true warrior.
The birds roused for a second time as Cunomar whooped and threw a handful of damp loam at his friend. “Eneit nic Lanis, you call yourself my friend and yet you have waited seven months to tell me this? Are you so tired of life?”
“No.” Eneit’s slow, wide smile spread across his face. “But I didn’t find out how much it mattered to you until the snow was too deep for us to go looking for them. I promise you, this is one place where we don’t want anyone to follow our tracks.”
He was grave and there was an unaccustomed wariness in his eyes. Seeing it, Cunomar said, “Are the swords in a grave mound of the ancestors? Made of stone, with grass over, so that it looks like a long hill?”
Eneit’s grin died. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve been in one like it.” With his foot Cunomar swept dried leaves and some muddied ones over the place where the wooden blades were concealed. Cygfa or Dubornos could probably find them, Ardacos or the Boudica certainly, but no Roman would know where to look. He squinted at the sun, weighing fear against passion, and finding the balance wholly uneven. Ardacos had always said that the mark of a true she-bear was the ability to seize the gift of the gods as it was given, not mourn its passing afterwards when it had been missed.
Slowly, feeling the moment grow within him, he said, “The snow’s gone; no-one will track us now that way. We’ll go as she-bears and if we meet anyone else on the way, we’ll stop and come back. We must treat this as war. If the Romans find us with weapons, ’Tagos won’t be able to stop them from hanging us.”
“I know.” Eneit laughed. “And if my mother finds us first, they’ll be lucky to have anything to hang.” He spat on his palm and held it out. “We’ll go as she-bears and that way no-one but Ardacos, and maybe Cygfa, could find us. I know the way so I’ll have to lead. You follow my tracks. Close your eyes and sing the lay of the fallen warrior. When it’s done, I’ll be gone. I bet you a new sword belt that you can’t touch me before we reach the grave mound.”
Eneit had learned well. He left no trail that an untrained eye could have followed and the one he did leave was so faint that Cunomar was grateful for the intermittent markers, the newly broken twigs and scuffles of stones and, once, a dead branch planted in the earth, that had been deliberately placed to point the way.
Hunter and hunted left the forest and moved out across the open fen. Eneit knew this land from birth. He was at home in the flatness, where only the early flowering gorse broke the straight line of the horizon, and solid ground gave way to marsh with no warning so that a man could drown if not wary.
Cunomar lay flat behind a clump of reeds on the edge of still water and watched for signs of movement. A stone’s throw away, a band of mares nursed their foals, grazing. A skein of ducks made an arrowhead against the almost-white sky. A hawk skimmed low over the marsh and twisted sideways for a kill. Feathers plumed upwards where it had been and it rose a while later carrying a pigeon.
If he had not been watching that, Cunomar would not have seen the smooth, rolling movement that was a body sliding over flat ground and into a dip. The land was not, apparently, as flat as he had thought. With a small flame of satisfaction leaping in his chest, he studied the ways he might approach the dip without attracting attention—and could see none. Ardacos’ teaching for these circumstances was clear; when there is no way to move without being seen, everything must move to cover the one thing that matters.
Cunomar carried a handful of pebbles in a pouch at his belt for exactly this reason. Squirming down behind the clump of grass to gain room, he drew his arm back and flung a round river stone in a high arc, aiming for a bay roan mare whose foal was the newest and most vulnerable of the band grazing nearby. He counted to five before the stone landed, hitting her squarely on the flank, and another two before all eight mares were at a full gallop, spread out across the fen with their foals at their sides. The drumming of hooves roused roosting birds from the sedge and sent them spiralling for the sky.
The movement had come from his right. He ran left, therefore, and doubled back on himself like a hare, diving into the shallow dip in the ground in which Eneit lay, looking out towards the horses. He landed just short of it, but struck with his fist as if armed, and on the aching end of a breath shouted, “I have you!”
The strike that caught him came from behind. A stick hammered hard and squarely under the ribs, bruising his kidneys and knocking the wind from him for the second time in one morning. His vision blurred, shading to deepest red with orange flares at the centre. For a moment, he thought he might be sick. Floating over his head, he heard a joyous, joyful voice say, “I don’t think so, bear-man. I have you.”
He rolled over, choking. Eneit, naked and grinning, stood near his ankles, a length of knotted gorse root in his hand. Eneit’s tunic, stuffed with pulled reeds, lay in front of him, a clod of overturned mud near the neck for a head, the roots artistically tangled to simulate Eneit’s hair.
“I’m distraught,” said his friend solemnly. “I had no idea you thought my hair looked like a handful of marsh grass.”
The words spread out in the air and their meaning drifted down piecemeal to Cunomar who, frowning, fitted them back together. Slowly, still gasping for breath, he began to laugh. It was a long time since he had laughed and meant it. A tight, unpractised bark of amusement grew, achingly, to something uncontrolled that hurt with each breath, that rolled out across the fen, louder than the steadying horses, lower-pitched than the fluting cries of the birds, and left him, in the end, lying flat on his back, helpless as a kitten, giggling weakly while Eneit looked on, feigning quizzical bemusement.
The sky was no longer the pale grey it had been, but showed the first shimmer of blue. The circling birds had begun to settle, but for a duet of jackdaws that flew over, cawing. The turf beneath Cunomar’s back was warm and springy and ripe with the scents of sand and sedge and standing water. His chest ached and his kidneys were bruised but there was a warmth spreading out in his belly that he had not felt since early childhood and possibly not even then. It dawned on him slowly that, for the first time he could remember, he was genuinely happy. It was a sensation to savour, not to destroy. Quite consciously, he chose not to examine the causes of it.
The world grew calmer and more mellow. Taking a deep breath, Cunomar levered himself up onto one el
bow. Eneit, dressed again, sat on the top of the bank, an elbow propped on one knee. He had stopped grinning some time ago and simply watched. His wide, open face was intelligent in ways he often took pains to conceal.
Cunomar sat up. “Thank you,” he said.
Eneit shrugged. “You don’t have to say that. I couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t taught me.”
“I didn’t teach you to make me laugh.”
“No. But then I didn’t make you laugh. You did that all by yourself.” The youth drew a stalk of old grass, examined the end and then chewed on it, neatly stripping the core of fresh green and leaving a hollow husk. “It was good to see, though. It’s been a long time coming.”
“Yes.”
They were an arm’s reach apart, and a little more. Neither moved to bridge the gap. They sat in a silence that had more weight to it than before while the morning settled and tranquillity spread over the broad fen. A spear’s throw away, the mares dropped their heads and their foals nursed, then drifted away to play with their peers. When he had watched them for too long and his mind would not settle, Cunomar looked up and found that the air above him had cleared until all he could see was a hawk making lazy circles in the blue.
Needing to talk and not knowing what to say, he asked, “Would you want that as your dream if it came to you in your long-nights?”
“What?” Eneit’s voice was distant, as if returning from far away.
“The hawk. Would you want it as your dream on your long-nights?”
“Why? So I can carve it on the pommel of a cracked wooden sword?”
Eneit was not grinning. His eyes were lazily lidded and, for once, impossible to read. When Cunomar did not respond, he rolled over and propped himself up on his elbows.
Not once through the whole winter had he questioned Cunomar’s obsession with the warrior’s rites and the passage to adulthood. Now, he said quietly, “Your mother has taught me to hear the soul-song of a spear and you have taught me to wield a blade like a man and I have found a new life through both of these. If the time comes—when it comes—I will kill as many Romans as I can before they kill me, knowing that, in the end, they will kill me because however much I still the voice in my head, however hard I train with my wooden blade in the forest before dawn, I will never become as practised in true battle as they. Why, then, do I need a dream, Cunomar mac Caradoc, son of the Boudica? Will it bring me closer to what I want?”