by P. C. Cast
One of his brows went up. “I have never before been compared to a wolf.”
“So you don’t make a practice of ravaging and then insulting women?”
He looked away from her. “No. I do not.” The silence built between them, and Alex was considering retracing her steps and maybe hurling herself off a cliff so that the act of falling might jolt her awake, when his gaze found hers again. “I owe you another apology. This time my mother did not have to prompt it from me. You had already given your word that you would speak only the truth to me, and with that truth you assured me you wished Boudica no harm. It was dishonorable of me to question your veracity. I am sorry.”
Alex’s history with men hadn’t prepared her for Caradoc’s honest apology. She’d dated players, geeks, boy-next-door types and your average run-of-the-mill jerks. She’d never dated a man who bared his soul to her.
“What is that about?” she blurted. “You act like I’m your enemy. Then you come on to me. Then you insult me. Now you apologize. Which Caradoc is the real one? Which one do I believe?”
He shook his head sadly. “All of this is me. I am not the man I used to be. The attack on my home, and this war, have changed me. I haven’t been able to reground myself and find my center.” Caradoc paused and ran his hand through his hair. “Today, with you in my arms, was the first time in days I have felt anything more than anger and despair, and I ruined that.”
Alex stared into his amber eyes. There was only one thing she wanted to say to him, and this was, after all, just a dream. Wasn’t it? She could say anything she wanted. Couldn’t she?
“You didn’t ruin it,” she stated.
“Truly?” Hope lightened Caradoc’s pain-darkened eyes.
“Truly,” she answered.
“Truly! Priestess! You must arise. Our mother is calling for you to bless the army before it attacks. Wake up!”
Alex’s eyes opened, and she looked up into Mirain’s troubled face.
“Where am I? Wha—” she began, and then knew she wasn’t dreaming anymore. She sat up abruptly, brushing her mass of hair back from her face.
“Finally! I have been calling and calling you. When you didn’t awaken I thought perhaps you were ill, or your spirit had been carried off to the Otherworld by Andraste,” Mirain said.
“I’m fine. I was just…just dreaming, that’s all.”
“A sacred dream?” Una spoke up from behind her sister.
Alex pulled herself together and smiled at the girl. “I’m not really sure.”
Una shot her a wary look. “I thought priestesses were supposed to know whether dreams were sacred or not.”
“Priestesses are regular people. We don’t know everything. We just do our best to do the right thing.” Alex paused, thinking about Caradoc and her dream, and then she let what she was feeling deep inside her answer the girl truthfully. “I think the dream might have been important, maybe even sacred, but only to me. It’s private.”
“You sound like Mother,” Una grumbled.
“Well, that sounds like a compliment,” Alex said, climbing out of her pallet and running her fingers through her hair.
“Don’t fix it,” Mirain said, grabbing Alex’s hand. “You look mysterious and a little crazed with all that hair sticking up around you in those big curls. The army will remember you as Andraste’s wild priestess who sent them to battle with passion and a great blessing.”
Alex grinned at the teenager. Then she bent over at the waist and, upside down, shook her head, letting her long hair get even more tangled and unmanageable. When she snapped upright again, she was rewarded by Mirain’s satisfied nod.
“All right. Lead me to your mother.”
As they left the tent she heard Una say softly, “Just like everything with priestesses and the goddess—it’s all make-believe. None of it’s real.”
Alex wanted to correct the girl, wanted to explain that her wild hair and passion were harmless theatrics, meant only to buoy the spirits of the people, not to deceive them. But Mirain hurried her forward, so she wasn’t able to speak to Una. And then, on second thought, Alex realized she couldn’t correct the damaged girl for her comment. “Blonwen” was, after all, playing a part here in the ancient past. She was a sham.
Mirain led her quickly to two horses that were saddled and waiting for them. Alex mounted one, and the girls rode double on the other. In the misty predawn light, Alex had to concentrate hard to gallop close behind them, afraid if she fell back she’d be hopelessly lost in the shrouded, silent woods.
And then they were at the forest edge, breaking through the silently waiting army to the little rise on which Boudica waited, at the head of her people. The queen stood in a chariot pulled by two white horses. She was wearing a beaten gold breastplate polished to such a sheen that even in the gray world that waited for the sun to rise, she shone.
Alex saw Caradoc standing with the queen’s inner circle of warriors, and then Boudica was speaking to her in a voice tight with excitement. “Bless our army, Priestess of Andraste, and then I will lead them to victory.”
There was no time for Alex to panic. No time for her to think—no time for her to plan. At Boudica’s command she turned her horse to face the huge army of the Celts, and got her first view of the Iceni poised for battle. Those who were not tattooed, as was Caradoc, had painted woad on their faces and bodies. The sapphire blue of the designs was a stark contrast to the fairness of their skin. Men and women filled the ranks of the army. Many had bared their chests, choosing to cover themselves only in the sacred woad. Their long hair was worn free and decorated with feathers and cloth, and even bells and shells, so that the front lines seemed to ripple with energy, and the wind carry sounds of ancient magic.
They were frightening and awe-inspiring and absolutely breathtaking. At that moment Alex wanted nothing as much as to be a part of their magnificence. She drew a deep breath. In a voice magnified by the energy that lifted in waves from the Celts, Alexandra Patton, a woman from the twenty-first century who had never fit in, never really belonged, spoke ancient words that seemed to rise from her very soul.
“At Londinium today in this fateful hour
I place all of you within Andraste’s power.
The sun with its brightness,
The rowan flowers with their brightness,
Fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
Winds with their swiftness along the path,
The rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its deepness,
All these I place
With the goddess’s might and grace
Between you and darkness—to protect our home
Against the defiling power of Rome!”
The roar that came from the thousands of warrior throats lifted the hair on the back of Alex’s neck.
Boudica drove her chariot forward and Alex backed her horse away so that the queen took over the center of the field. Mirain and Una had joined their mother in the chariot, and Alex thought Boudica looked like an avenging angel standing between her lovely young daughters. She rested a hand on each of the girls’ shoulders and addressed her people.
“We do not attack this place because we lust for riches or land or that which is not ours. We attack this place and these people because they have wronged us so severely that the goddess herself has risen and in a loud cry demanded vengeance!”
“Vengeance!” The cry was taken up by the army.
Boudica motioned to Alex and Caradoc to join her. Both hurried to the queen’s side.
“Fulfill your promise. Keep my daughters safe,” said the queen.
Caradoc lifted the girls from the chariot and, yelling for Alex to follow them, rushed to where their horses were nervously waiting. Practically throwing the girls on their horse, he mounted his own, and then smacked the rump of the children’s animal, driving it from the field that stretched before the army. As Alex raced after them, she looked back
at Boudica, who had wheeled her chariot around to face Londinium.
“Vengeance!” the queen of the Celts cried again, and this time when her army responded, it was with a shout so frighteningly fierce that it chilled Alex’s blood with fear.
Then Boudica cracked her whip and her chariot lunged forward, followed by her army, shrieking for vengeance and blood and retribution as the sun rose at their backs.
Within moments, Londinium was under attack.
Chapter 12
T he battle didn’t even last through midmorning, though to Alex it seemed those few hours took days to pass. She’d expected the waiting to be terrible. She hadn’t expected to be asked to tend the wounded. Not that the Celts thought she was some kind of healer—no, they didn’t want her to doctor or even nurse those being pulled from the battle. But they did expect Alex, or rather Blonwen, Priestess of Andraste, to offer the comfort of the goddess to those who were injured—or worse, those who were dying.
When she first learned that she was expected to comfort the wounded, Alex’s response was to gape at the message bearer, in this case Caradoc, in disbelief. Luckily, the druid had called for her—said she and Boudica’s daughters were to follow him to the hospital tent to tend the wounded, which were already beginning to stream in—and then hurried away, sure that they were following him. He didn’t see her mouth drop open as she stared after him, unmoving.
Sadly, girls are more observant than stressed-out druid warriors.
“Why does your face look so white?” Una asked her.
“I—uh—does it?” she stuttered.
“Actually, you look more green than white. You must not like the sight of blood,” Una decided, with a preteen certitude so universal that Alex almost smiled.
“Let’s go. At least we’ll be doing some good there. Plus, anything is better than being stuck here, especially when we should be out there!” Mirain jabbed a finger toward Londinium.
Alex wasn’t surprised by the older girl’s attitude. She’d watched Mirain become more and more sullen as the morning progressed. Clearly she wanted to be with her mom, exacting retribution from the Romans. And Alex didn’t blame her.
“Blonwen? Are you really not coming with us?” Una stood at the tent entrance, holding the flap open and peering back at her, with Mirain waiting impatiently behind her.
“I’m coming.” Alex hurried forward, and the three of them followed Caradoc’s rapidly disappearing back toward the edge of the camp.
“So, blood makes you sick?” Mirain asked, with a look on her face that said she held anyone so squeamish in obvious disdain.
“It doesn’t make me sick, or at least it hasn’t so far, but I haven’t ever been around a lot of people who have been badly hurt,” Alex said honestly.
“It is better to be in the battle,” Mirain stated resolutely. “Mother should have let me fight with her!”
“She didn’t want you to get hurt,” Alex explained.
The girl snorted. “There are a lot worse ways to be hurt than in battle.”
Again, a kid left Alex speechless. Who knew that Carswell should have briefed her in child psychology along with Celtic history before shooting her back in time?
“Blonwen! You are needed here,” Caradoc snapped.
Alex didn’t seem to have any choice. She hurried over to where the druid was standing in a tent under a huge oak, very near the place Alex had blessed the army. Caradoc was bent over a figure lying on a litter at his feet. Alex steeled herself to see a badly wounded warrior. She could make herself handle blood and such—she had to! She drew a deep, steadying breath, joined Caradoc and peered down at the first casualty of the battle for Londinium.
It was a young woman.
She was splattered with blood and dirt and other stuff Alex didn’t want to even begin to name. The bottom half of her body, from her waist down, was completely smashed—flattened as if she were a bizarre cartoon character. Blood seeped everywhere, and Alex knew with a certainty that made her sick that even twenty-first century emergency room doctors couldn’t have saved her.
Caradoc straightened, turned to Alex and said softly, “Stay with her. The end is near.” He squeezed Alex’s shoulder and then he was gone.
Acting on autopilot, Alex moved to take the druid’s place, only instead of bending down, she knelt beside the young woman’s litter.
“Priestess, you came.”
The woman’s voice was surprisingly clear and childlike. Her eyes were bright and lucid, and except for the utter lack of color in her face and the shortness of her breath, from her waist up she looked almost normal.
Alex took her hand. “What’s your name?”
“Geneth,” she said. “Have you seen my betrothed? Have you seen Bran? He will be angry when he finds out how careless I was. I didn’t even see the wagon. The horses plunged—it rolled—I was there.” She paused, panting and looking around wildly. “Tell him not to be mad at me!”
“Geneth, shh, Bran won’t be angry. It was just an accident. It’s okay.” Alex gripped her hand and smoothed her blond hair back from her wet, clammy forehead.
“Will you find him for me?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything,” Alex soothed.
“Good…good…” Geneth’s breath was coming in little pants. “I’m so cold….” she murmured. Her eyes began to roll back and flutter closed. Then, suddenly, she drew a deep breath. Fully alert again, she looked up at Alex. “I’m afraid, Priestess!”
“Don’t be,” Alex said firmly. “You have nothing to fear.”
Geneth’s gaze locked with hers. “I’m dying,” she said simply.
Alex’s stomach clenched so hard she feared she might be ill, but she forced herself to return the girl’s gaze calmly. Speak the truth. There is power in the truth. The thoughts drifted through her mind, surprising Alex with the peace they brought with them.
“Yes, you are dying,” she told her gently.
Geneth nodded. “Would you tell the goddess I’m coming? Ask her to look for me?”
“I will,” Alex said. Acting on instinct and gut feeling, she kept holding Geneth’s hand, but raised her free hand over her head. This wasn’t a time to bow and mutter platitudes. It was a time for truth and the honesty of a soul barred to the universe. “Andraste, your daughter Geneth asks that I tell you she is getting ready to come to you. I ask you to please look for her, to hold your arms out so that when you see her, Geneth will be embraced by you as a beloved child returning to her mother.”
Alex added a silent amen to the prayer, and then gazed down at the wounded girl. Her lips were tilted up in the beginnings of a smile and her eyes were open and staring at a spot over Alex’s shoulder. Geneth was dead.
And then, as Alex crouched there, trying to sort through the horror and sadness this young person’s death filled her with, she saw the body begin to glow, quiver, and Geneth’s soul lifted from her corpse. The girl stood there for a moment gazing down at what had been her mortal self, and then she grinned at Alex.
Thank you, she whispered, before stepping forward and disappearing into the air beside Alex.
“Priestess! You are needed over here!”
Numbly, Alex looked up from Geneth’s body to see someone she didn’t recognize calling her over to another litter, which was filled with what looked like pieces of rubble attached to a head.
No! Alex screamed silently. I can’t do this! I’m not who they think I am!
She dropped the dead girl’s hand and took two stumbling steps backward, thinking only that she needed to get out of there. And ran smack into Caradoc. She knew it was him without turning around. She already knew his scent and the feel of his strong hands as they gripped her shoulders.
“They need you,” he murmured into her ear. “Boudica told me how you appeared suddenly. Whatever else might be the truth, it is obvious Andraste brought you here for a reason. Let that reason be to ease the suffering of her people.” He squeezed her shoulders once, and then
let go.
Alex didn’t have to look behind her. She could feel his absence as clearly as she felt the sun on her face. Andraste brought you here for a reason…to ease the suffering of her people. Clinging to his words, desperately wanting to believe them, Alex walked across the tent to tend to the next mortally wounded Celt.
When it was finally over, twenty-three people were dead, and Alex had eased the passing of nineteen of them. The others had either been unconscious or already dead when they entered the hospital tent.
A rider had thundered up moments after the twenty-third warrior died, proclaiming Boudica’s victory over the scanty Ninth Legion that was supposed to be all the protection Londinium needed against an attack led by a “mere woman.” Cheers sounded from all around them as the news spread. Alex took a clean linen bandage from a pile near the surgical table, which was awash in blood from limbs that had been severed. She wiped her face and her hands and then, without speaking to anyone, walked out of the tent and into the forest.
She wasn’t sure where she was going. Alex just needed to get away. Later, all she remembered from those first moments after the end of the battle was that she had to fight with herself to keep from pressing the crystal in the middle of her ESC bracelet so that she could escape back to the future.
Unerringly, she went straight to the stream that tumbled musically through the forest not far from Boudica’s tent.
Cleanse yourself….
Alex automatically obeyed the words that drifted through her mind. Without worrying about modesty, she stripped off her blood spattered tunic and soft underchemise and then pulled off her leather shoes. In a spot where the stream pooled to form an almost bathtub-size basin, Alex sat. Ignoring the cold temperature of the water, she began scrubbing the blood and gore from her hands and face, arms and hair.
She cleaned death from herself, and as her body was washed, Alex’s mind settled. Her thoughts became clear again, and she realized that what had shocked her most about the day was the undeniable fact that she had actually helped the dying people. Priestess or no priestess, she’d eased their deaths. And none of the spirits had stayed around after they’d been released from their bodies, not one of them. They’d all thanked her, looked beyond her and joyfully disappeared.