by Manda Scott
The air was dense with man-sweat and woman-sweat and horse-sweat and spittle and soon with an ocean of blood and sliding guts that made the footing unsafe and required a new dimension of watchfulness. Valerius chose his man: a stranger with one blue eye and one brown who rode a bay mare that was trained to strike. It aimed for Valerius’ roan, who jinked sideways, leaving the mare off balance and the rider with it, so that Valerius could strike for the gap beneath the rim of his helmet and cleave open a living brow to the dying brain beneath. He had time to wrench his blade clear of the toppling body, and the roan horse clear of the mare’s next strike, before the battle moved on.
On his right, Madb wounded a Thracian whom Valerius thought he recognized. To his left, the shield side, a woman of the Coritani with the kill-feathers bunched heavy in her hair missed her stroke and was nearly beheaded by a man Valerius did know. She fell from her horse, dead before she could scream. Priscus, keeper of mirrors, grinned savagely and turned on Valerius and was, in turn, slain by the woman’s lover, who, howling, drove his horse broadside into the cavalryman’s gelding, crushing its ribs. His blade shattered Priscus’ helmet with the force of his strike.
Valerius felt his horse rise under him and made it come down because the cavalry were trained to gut horses that rose high to strike and it was not a time to lose his mount. He struck backhanded at the man who was already leaning down to cut at the blue roan’s belly. He felt the blow land unevenly and then his hand became weightless as his borrowed sword broke. Cursing, he dragged his horse back.
“Here!”
The lover of the dead Coritani dipped down from his saddle, grasped her blade and threw it in one movement. Yesterday, he would have gutted Valerius with it, tomorrow he might do so again; today, they fought together against a greater enemy. Valerius caught the hilt and saluted and took a swipe under his arm for his inattention so that only his horse’s jink to the left kept him alive and let Madb kill his attacker.
“We should strike down their standard!”
The Hibernian woman howled it over the tumult of battle. As much as Valerius, she was enjoying herself. She grinned and struck and forced her mount into the place where the fallen man had been.
Ahead, in the heart of the maelstrom, the red bull standard of the Ala Prima Thracum lolled on an idle breeze. Longinus fought nearby, riding tall on the Crow-horse, safe in the god-haven where mount and rider have long since become one. If he died now, he would count himself blessed. Valerius, who had been in his place, knew it.
“Come on!”
The gap was closing and Valerius not yet through. Madb drove for the fluttering standard. She was his shield-mate; honour demanded Valerius follow. He sent his horse forward half-heartedly.
In battle, the half-hearted are soon dead. Three men, seeing his inattention, struck for Valerius’ unwary guard so that only a lifetime of reflexes saved him—and Braint, freed from her fetters and riding a rip tide of battle rage that scattered all before her.
With Nydd at her side, she burst through on Valerius’ right, killing with the recklessness of one who no longer cares for life or love. Her aim, very plainly, was Longinus; the man who had taken her captive. She wanted his life above all others.
There was no way to stop them. Valerius had only time to lift a hand to his mouth and shout, “Longinus!” so that at least the man would see whence came his death, and then they were on him, one from either side, freshly mounted and freshly armed, fighting a man who was neither of these and bound to be slower because of it, however great his skill and his horse.
The Crow-horse believed itself immortal, and may have been right. Valerius was not the only one to pause and watch as it rose, screaming, to meet Braint’s mount. The mind-splitting noise of its cry, the sheer undiluted hatred, stopped men and women in their own private battles.
For a moment, there was quiet in the carnage, long enough for Valerius to see the Crow-horse rear and swing and strike and Longinus to follow the flow of it with a beauty to awe the gods; for him to see Braint evade the strike with heart-breaking ease and then to see her strike in return, and to hear the unmistakable clash of iron on mail with the crush of bone beneath.
“Longinus!” Valerius screamed it alone as the battle was re-joined around him. The sound was lost; one more note in a tumult of shouting, screaming beasts and warriors, and Valerius did not know he had uttered it until Madb threw him a fresh shield, taken from a dying warrior, and shouted, “You’ll have him yet! They can’t get to his body. Your mad bloody horse won’t let them near.”
It might have been true. Valerius neither knew nor had the energy to care. He fought because he must, because it was what he was born for, because his gods, both Nemain and Mithras, demanded it of him and he was not yet ready to face them having failed to honour their requests, but the day had become dust-driven and shrunken and he killed without joy, heartlessly, and hated it.
The warriors of Mona outnumbered the cavalrymen of the Prima Thracum by one hundred horse and they were buoyed by Braint’s return in exactly the same measure as the Thracians were demoralized by Longinus’ fall. The battle was brutal and short and forty-eight living Thracians surrendered their weapons at the end.
Valerius took no part in the securing of the prisoners or the stripping of the dead. Before the battle ended, he had dismounted and stood ankle deep in heather just beyond range of the Crow-horse. White with sweat and bleeding from half a dozen shallow wounds, the pied horse still stood over Longinus’ prostrate form as a hound stands over a fallen warrior, and would let no-one near.
“You’ll have to kill the beast if you want your man’s body.”
Madb sat her horse nearby, keeping watch on Valerius’ back. She had saved him twice towards the end of the battle and he had not yet thanked her. A part of him knew that time was passing and it would soon be too late to do so with any integrity. The greater part of him had eyes only for the pied horse standing opposite, and the man lying half prone beneath its feet.
He had seen a movement of Longinus’ chest; only once and not recently, but enough to hang hope on. He found himself praying to Briga, to whom he was not and had never been given, but who ruled the deaths of battle. Crows took his words and carried them and he felt himself heard.
Madb was still watching him. She said, “Valerius, did you hear me? The horse is mad, or inspired by the gods. you’re going to have to cut its throat if you want to get close to your friend.”
“If you think you can get near enough to kill it, you’re welcome.”
The woman barked a laugh. Her voice was deep and rich and resonant and the sound was strange in all the death and wounding. She said, “Do I look as if I want to die? I was thinking you could ask Huw to use his sling. He’s strangely in awe of you; he’d probably do it.”
“Would a stone kill him?” Valerius stooped for a pebble and tossed it close to Longinus. The Crow-horse snaked its head at him, ears flat and mouth wide. It ignored the pebble. Stepping a half-stride closer, Valerius said, “It might work, but Huw’s too soft to do it. he’d spend the rest of his life reliving the day he killed the greatest war mount ever to set foot on the earth. I wouldn’t ask that of any man. They sing of this horse as they sing of Hail. I know. I’ve heard the songs.”
Madb said, “So have I. They say it’s evil.”
She was testing him, as she had tested him in the battle. Her jackdaw’s eyes watched him, brightly. Valerius shook his head. “No. They say the man who rode it is evil.”
“Are they right?”
“I don’t know. You spent the afternoon’s battle saving his life.” Valerius dragged his gaze from the horse. “Did you know who I was?”
He had not looked at her properly since the end of battle. She was bruised down one side of her face where the edge of a shield had caught her. It would blacken overnight and leave her half dark for a month. Her left wrist was swollen enough to be sprained and would need binding soon if it were not to stiffen. She sat her horse as if each
of these was normal for her, and looked down at him pensively.
“Of course I knew. How could I not? You don’t need a red hound painted on grey to show who you are, it’s stamped on every part of you. ‘Valerius of the Eceni.’ The man who fights for both sides and loves neither. Except it seems he does love one part of one side after all. Did he know?”
“Longinus? Possibly once. Not now.”
“Then you’d best get to him to tell him before Braint decides four dozen live Thracians are not enough of a prize and she wants a head on a stake to show Rome what fate awaits it.” Madb pursed her lips, appraising. “I saw you show off your skill at the warrior’s mount very prettily this afternoon. It’s easy on a willing horse, harder on one trying to kill you. Could you do it now, do you think, if I had the beast’s attention?”
“We could find out.”
It was the only real chance and Valerius had been working towards exactly that since the battle ended. Spoken openly, it became harder to think of. His palms were wet. He rubbed them dry on his tunic.
The Crow-horse felt the sharpening of his attention and spun fully to face him. Its flanks heaved and its nostrils flared scarlet, dragging in air. Its tail slashed, violent as a wildcat’s. Its eyes were red-rimmed with dust and rage and the loathing of being surrounded. More than any other living beast, it understood the ebb and flow of battle. Never while Valerius rode it had it been on the losing side in more than a skirmish and never in all of its life had it been taken captive.
Valerius would not believe that it was evil, only that it hated him. He wanted to believe that it had hated Longinus as deeply and, by the same token, that it would have protected Valerius as savagely if he had ever fallen in battle. He began to speak to it in the language of the ancestors, that he had used in the beginning when he and the beast had newly met, when he had first made the warrior’s mount in front of a blood-hungry circus crowd, with it the freshly broken colt brought in for barter and he the slave-boy trying to escape. He had loved the beast then, and had thought it could come to love him. Half his life had passed waiting for that to happen.
He tossed another pebble and the horse ignored it entirely. He cast a handful towards Longinus’ fallen body and was sure he saw a shudder. Valerius wrapped the thread of his hope around that certainty and, with every fraction of his attention on the beast that sought his life, he edged inwards, speaking lullabies in the tongue of the ancestors. Halfway through, in Hibernian, he said, “I need it to turn to my right and take a step forward.”
Madb was a moving thing on the edge of his vision. Her voice was a rolling wave on the sea. She said, “Does it know what a spear is?”
“It did when I rode it.”
“Good. Here then, horse of all hate, shall we see now, are you all that they say?”
The blur of her movement wove into the screaming spin of the Crow-horse as it flung itself towards the new danger—and drew Valerius with it, as a wind draws leaves. Sucked by its power, pulled by the lock of his attention, he leaped forward and up for the saddle horn, throwing himself up on the rise of its rise, swinging up and over and down to land square in the saddle, his hands already reaching for the reins.
The Crow-horse felt him and knew itself cheated. Forgetting Madb, it threw itself into a screaming, rearing, bucking frenzy. On the first day he rode it, Valerius had watched a man nearly lose his life to its rage. It was older now and fitter and more practised in dislodging its riders. He felt the bunched muscle beneath him explode into action, felt his body wrenched and his teeth clash and blood gush from his tongue and knew that if it really tried, the beast could crush him to pulp.
The horse felt the same, and knew how. It came back to earth and there was a moment’s stillness as it gathered itself inwards. Valerius thought it might buck and grabbed a handful of mane to hold himself by. Then he felt the hindquarters gather and thought it might bolt and then the ground fell away and the sky tilted and it was rearing high enough to touch the clouds, high enough to throw itself backwards and crush the man on its back even if it broke its own spine in the attempt.
It screamed as it had screamed at Braint so that the sound shattered the sky and Valerius, knowing himself about to die, screamed with it, giving vent to all a lifetime’s pain and frustration and exhilaration and devastation that no amount of killing in battle, no depth of dreaming to the gods, would ever drain dry.
The sky did not fall. The horse did not topple and kill them both. The birds of Briga, circling, cawed thrice and flew west and did not take the souls of either man or horse.
The Crow-horse came back down to stand still on the earth, shaking its head, and Valerius, deafened, sat on it drawing breath after breath of sharp mountain air with tears scalding his face and pooling in the crook of his collarbone and no idea why he shed them.
He became aware, slowly, that others were close. Madb was in front of him, her spear held in a clear salute. Braint was with her, fierce-eyed and silent, and Nydd and Huw and the smith and others whose names he had once known and might know again, but for now could not begin to remember.
To Madb, he said, “Is Longinus still alive?”
“Of course. Would you not know if he were dead?”
“I thought perhaps I wept for him.”
“Did you so? Then you are more of a fool than I took you for. He is alive and awake and his eyes are open. Get off your god-riven horse and talk to him. And when you are finished, you can talk to those who fought for you, not against you. You were right; this was a diversion. Mona is under attack and Tethis holds the straits with three thousand against four times that number. Only the water and the good will of the gods keep Rome from the island. Neither will last for ever.”
Some time later, Longinus Sdapeze, former decurion of the Ala Prima Thracum, woke with a crashing headache.
Presently, when it became clear he was not about to die, he felt about him and then opened his eyes. The covered top of a wagon swayed pleasingly above his head, lit by a dawn sky. A brindled war hound lay at his side, peaceably watchful. A lean, dark-haired man sat on the sprung seat of the wagon, blocking most of the light.
Longinus lay a while, studying the familiar, stubborn set of the back so that he knew the moment when his scrutiny had been felt. He considered sitting up to ask at least one of the several pressing questions rocking against the walls of his head, but the hound stared at him until he thought better of it.
He slept a while and ate and was sick and drank water and slept again. When he woke, it was dusk and the hound had gone. The sway of the wagon was the sway of the cradle and it was hard to stay awake. Forcing himself to sit, Longinus reached up to touch the shoulder of the man who had saved his life. “Where are we going?”
“East.”
“Why?”
“Because your brains are turned to milk in your head and you won’t be fit to sit on a horse until they curdle again to the broth you were born with.”
His brains had turned to milk and they made him sleep again, unquestioning, so that it was halfway through the night before he realized he had not been given an answer. The hound lay with him then, keeping him warm.
At dawn, when they had not stopped, he asked, “Valerius, where’s your horse?”
“What do you think is taking you forward?”
Longinus laughed and it hurt so he stopped. “You’re making the Crow-horse pull a wagon? Valerius! Are you entirely mad?”
“He’s good at it. And I have the roan and your mare as well. Two pull at any one time and one walks behind. In any case, I couldn’t leave him. Braint would have tried to ride him and he’d have killed her, which would not have been good. She’s needed to lead the warriors in the defence of Mona.”
Sobered, Longinus said, “They can’t win, your warriors. Suetonius Paulinus may be an appalling governor, but he’s an excellent general. He wouldn’t have attacked if there were the slightest chance he would lose.”
“He will gain Mona eventually,” agreed Valerius.
“It won’t be this month, or possibly even next; the Silures and Ordovices have rallied and are attacking him from the rear, so that he can’t throw his weight at the straits, but still, I think you are right. He will have the island by midsummer at the latest. He will not, however, walk to it on the blood and flesh of those who have lived there. It’s the people that matter; the elders to hold the wisdom and the children to hear it. Where they are, so is Mona, and they can be saved. All we need is time. Braint and her warriors are buying that time with their flesh and blood.”
Longinus was watching the planes of his face. He knew Valerius as well as any man, possibly better than Valerius himself. At length, with compassion, he said, “And do you not want to be with the warriors of Mona as they mount their defence?”
Valerius stared at his hound a while, and then at the horses pulling the wagon and the path ahead. The soft rhythm of footfalls might have lulled Longinus into sleep, but that the answer mattered too much to both of them for that. Eventually, “I want to be with them more than I can possibly express,” Valerius said.
Longinus pushed himself forward, against nausea and the resistance of his friend, to sit on the bench where the hound had been. The Crow-horse was, indeed, pulling the wagon, which was, if nothing else, a sign of its rider’s desperate need to be moving. “So let me ask again. Why are we going east?”
Valerius sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in the way Corvus used to do when pressed beyond endurance. Without looking to the side, he said, “I am going because Luain mac Calma, the man who claims to be my father and is Elder of Mona, has ordered that I take word to my sister that it would be to the great benefit of the gods and their people if the eastern tribes were to rise in revolt while the assault on Mona is under way. I am sworn to follow his wishes, or die in the attempt. You are going because I am going and I was not prepared to leave you behind.”
They were close enough to feel each other’s warmth and each became aware of it. The wagon faltered and moved on again; the Crow-horse had been ridden by both, and knew what moved them. After a long while, Longinus said, “And will we die in the attempt?”