were being sent to Durovernon to support Caratac with battle-magic if
this ritual should fail.
Boudica jerked back to attention as the murmur of invocation
ceased, a shiver of mingled anticipation and apprehension chilling her
spine. At the equinox the world hung balanced between the old season
and the new. What was done at this moment would push the luck of the
new season in one direction or another. But did they really want to in-
volve the gods? It was one thing to discuss the Lady of Ravens in a
teaching circle at noon, and something else entirely to call on her as
darkness swept across the land.
The Arch-Druid touched one of the torches to the seasoned wood
laid ready on the altar and it exploded into flame.
“Raven of Battle . . .” the High Priestess cried, and like a sigh the
priestesses echoed her. “Hear us!”
56
D i ana L . Pax s on
“Virgin, hag, and lover—
Lady of the twisted mouth—
Lady of the open thighs—
Bone- witch, bride of shadow—
Truth-teller, Nightmare rider—
Great queen who gives victory—
Great queen who gives death—”
“Cathubodva! Great Queen! Hear us!” The response grew ever
louder, male and female choruses clashing as they drove each other to
greater intensity. “Your meat is death, your drink, life’s blood! Here is
food for your ravens, Lady—receive our off ering!”
Two of the younger Druids came forward, carrying some small
furred creature that jerked and struggled in their hands—a hare. Boudica
suppressed a pulse of superstitious terror. The hare that rose reborn from
beneath the scythe was sacred. It was never eaten—this sacrifi ce would
not be shared, but taken to some lonely spot and given to the Goddess
entire.
One man grasped the creature by its long ears, holding it stretched.
Steel flashed red in the firelight as Helve slashed the hare’s throat. A
deeper crimson stained her hands as its blood spurted sizzling into the
fire. The air above the flames shimmered—with smoke, or was she see-
ing the life energy of the animal? Boudica’s nostrils flared at the burnt
meat smell as the emptied carcass was set aside.
“You shall take from our foes the blood of their hearts and the kid-
neys of their valor!” More pungent clouds billowed upward as the High
Priestess cast a handful of herbs onto the fire. “Upon our foes you shall
cast the shadow of fear and loathing, the shadow in the ocean, the shadow
in the forest, the shadow in the spirit . . . When they turn toward Britan-
nia, every night terror, every noonday fear their hearts hold shall rise up
to haunt them!”
Helve turned, arms outstretched, but no one moved. It was not their
bodies she was calling, but their souls. From two dozen throats came a
cry, bearing with it the power of those who shouted, and the priestess
bound it into the roil of energy above the fi re.
Above the circle the smoke was forming itself into a shape alternately
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seductive and monstrous. One of the priestesses had fainted, and Boudica
saw a white huddle where a priest clutched the grass in fear, but the others,
pale as she knew that she herself must be, continued to sing. Helve’s eyes
were white-rimmed, teeth drawn back over lips in an ecstatic smile.
“It is I, Helve, who conjure you, I who command you! Hearken to
my will!”
Should she be saying that? Surely the place of a mortal was to en-
treat, not to command . . . For a moment Boudica felt a diff erent kind
of fear.
“Cry out upon the Romans that they shall not come against us!
Crush their courage! They shall not come!”
Once more her arms swept upward, and she screamed. Boudica
cowered beneath the gaze of eyes black as a night without stars.
I am fury . . . said a voice in her soul. I am fear . . . Which will you
choose? An oak tree split asunder as power descended, and sleeping birds
exploded in screeching flocks from the grove. With blood you have called
me, and blood will flow until I am satisfied!
Boudica screamed—they were all screaming as the shadow swept
over them and was borne south and east upon a wave of sound.
Across Britannia it blew, a nightmare wind that set dogs to bark-
ing and babies to crying as it galloped through men’s dreams, over Bri-
tannia, and across the heaving gray waves of the narrow sea to a place
called Gesoriacum on the coast of Gallia. It struck the close-ranked
leather tents like a thousand furies, snapping guy ropes and flinging
poles through the air. And the men of the legions woke gibbering with
fear.
And in the morning they looked upon the sea and saw in each wave
a face of terror, and they turned in their ranks to face their offi
cers and
said, “We will not go . . .”
F I V E
L hiannon twitched as the smith’s hammer clanged on the glowing
bar. After a month in Durovernon she should have grown accustomed
to the clamor, but each stroke jarred all the way up her spine. She looked
at the piles of iron swords and spear points, bronze harness fi ttings and
helms and shield bosses and remembered the offerings the princes had
given to the sacred pool. How many of the weapons the smiths were
beating out now would end up in the water, and who would throw
them there?
Since the equinox three weeks had passed. The Romans had not
come, but clearly the narrow sea that had once made Caesar’s landings
so hazardous was kinder to the traders who fared back and forth be-
tween the Celtic tribes of Gallia and Britannia, for through the gate of
the dun a wagon driven by a swarthy Greek was creaking, full of south-
ern luxuries. As the trader began to unload, men gathered around him.
Lhiannon drew closer, followed by the other Druids, with Bendeigid
close behind. A few moments later they were joined by Caratac and
some of his chieftains.
“You warriors go home now.” White teeth gleamed in a black beard
as the trader grinned. “Those Romans, they all afraid! They call the
Middle Sea ‘Our Sea,’ but these waves—” he gestured eastward, “—that’s
Ocean—full of monsters to eat ’em if they go that way. And here—” he
waved vaguely around him, “—this be the end of the world.”
“They mutinied?” snapped Caratac.
“That they did—just after the equinox!” the trader grinned again.
“All of ’em woke up screaming. When the offi
cers lined ’em up they say
Britannia no place for civilized men an’ they won’t go!”
There was a whoop of triumph from one of the men, and another
went dashing off to spread the news.
“The Turning of Spring . . .” echoed Ardanos. “They did it, then—
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the Calling . . .” Before he and Lhiannon and the others left Mona there
had been a great deal of
discussion regarding what role Druid magic
might play in the struggle to come and what form of magic might best
serve their cause. The glance he exchanged with Lhiannon communi-
cated what he could not in this company say aloud— So Helve is good for
something after all . . .
“But we knew that already,” Lhiannon said softly. “The night of the
equinox we felt the power pass.”
“And now we know it worked!” said Cunitor. “May it work accord-
ing to our will!”
Caratac raised one eyebrow. “That night of terror was the work of
the Druids? I wish you had told us at the time.”
Cunitor had the grace to look ashamed, but in truth it had not oc-
curred to any of them to share what they knew with those who were
not Druid oathed and trained.
“That was the Lady of Ravens who screamed through our dreams,”
explained Ardanos.
And she is a force that once invoked may be hard to banish, thought Lhi-
annon, but that was not something that Caratac needed to know.
Belina bent to murmur in Lhiannon’s ear, “Did you really think
Helve would choose any lesser working when she could call on so spec-
tacular a power?” Lhiannon nodded, but said nothing. Belina, who had
never been in the running for High Priestess, could afford to express
herself without being suspected of jealousy.
“Well, whatever you accomplished, my warriors seem to be con-
vinced you worked a miracle. Good for your reputation, not so good if
I want to keep an army.” Caratac pointed toward the encampment that
had sprung up outside the dun, buzzing now like an overturned hive.
Already some were packing up their gear.
Bendeigid watched them wistfully. In the last year he had grown
gangly with the approach of manhood. Since they arrived at Durover-
non he had spent most of his time badgering the warriors to teach him
sword and shield. There had been times when the hardships of the jour-
ney had made Lhiannon painfully aware of just how easy her life at Lys
Deru had been. But bruised feet and aching muscles were a small price
to pay to be with Ardanos instead of wondering how he fared.
60 D i ana L . Pax s on
“How many do you think will stay?” Ardanos was asking now.
“Half of Britannia already believes that this gathering is a ploy to
make Togodumnos High King over all the tribes,” Caratac said bitterly.
“And those who did answer my call will be wanting to get home to sow
their fi elds.”
The Druids nodded. All men knew that the time for fi ghting was
summer, between planting and harvest. It was only the Romans who
had made war a way of life and could field an army at any time of the
year.
“The question is whether the Romans are truly discouraged, or
only waiting,” observed Cunitor. “They will not have forgotten how
Caesar’s ships were savaged by our storms. Surely they will not board
ship before summer, if indeed they come.”
“I would just as soon they came now, while I still have an army,”
muttered Caratac. Frowning, he turned to Lhiannon. “I know that some
among your order are trained as oracles. Lady, if you are such a one, will
you seek to see what is going on? Surely you understand why I wish to
know!”
“So do we all . . .” murmured Lhiannon.
“She will try, but not until the eve of Beltane.” Ardanos’s words cut
across her own. “In three weeks, the energies will be stronger, and she
must have time to prepare.”
There was an edge to his words that only Lhiannon could under-
stand. Helve’s accession as High Priestess had changed many things
about Lhiannon’s relationship to the community at Mona. It was not yet
clear whether her relationship to Ardanos had been among them. At
night, on their journey here, she had been acutely aware that he was
sleeping on the other side of the fi re. What would it be like to sleep be-
side him, with the length of his body curled against hers, the little snort-
ing sounds he made as he slept tickling her ear? Sometimes he would
wake, and she would feel his gaze like a touch upon her soul, and know
that he was wondering, too.
But their journey, which might have offered so many opportunities,
had been quite lacking in the privacy to take advantage of them. And if
she was needed to serve Caratac as a seeress, there was a reason to pre-
serve her virginity after all. Helve would probably prefer that she be the
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61
only one to serve as Oracle, but was not this one of the Druidic skills
that they had been sent to Caratac to provide?
Now Ardanos was looking at her, and she understood both the pain
and the resolve in his eyes. He knows that this means that he will not lie with
me this Beltane . . . and we would make the same decision again. She felt an
odd pain somewhere near her heart at she realized that they would al-
ways choose duty above their desires.
In the days that followed Beltane, it occurred to Lhiannon that
when most people thought about oracles, they had it the wrong way
around. Seeing visions was easy. The hard part was understanding what
you had seen. They had gone to one of the mounds the ancient ones had
raised for their dead for the ritual. She had seen an eagle fight with a
raven, and a white narcissuss blossom that towered over all. And the ea-
gle had become three flocks that flew toward Britannia.
But they were not left long to wonder what the vision might mean.
Before a week had passed, a light craft came skimming over the waves
from Gallia with news. The mutiny was over. One of the emperor’s
secretaries, a freedman named Narcissus, had halted it, haranguing the
soldiers from the general’s podium, and after the fi rst shock, appealing
to a sense of humor one would not have suspected the legionnaries had.
And now the fleet that had waited for so long was being loaded with
supplies and men. Three fl eets there were, as Lhiannon had seen—one
to return Veric to his country and the two others to seek Caesar’s route
to the Cantiaci lands.
The Druids joined their energies to send out a psychic warning to
any who could hear. Those of their order who served as priests in the
villages would alert their
warriors—if anyone believed them. And
Caratac had sent runners to summon those who had so recently re-
turned to their homes and who were now in the midst of work in the
fields. They came, but slowly, and the king had gathered scarcely half
his force by the time the Roman general Aulus Plautius beached his
prows on Britannic soil.
The Romans had made their landing on the coast to the east of Du-
rovernon where the river flowed into the sea. Black ships in the hundreds
62 D i ana L . Pax s on
lay in rows on the shelving sands like some unseasonable migration of
waterfowl. The scouts Caratac had sent to observe them reported that
they had marched a short way inland and raised some simple defenses on
a low hill. They must have wondered why no one was there to meet
them, but the king’s orders had sent even the farmers fleeing from their
path.
Soon the Roman horde was marching westward, harried by anyone
who could throw a spear or shoot a bow. And still Caratac waited, as in
ones and twos and tens the men of the Cantiaci and Trinovante warriors
from across the Tamesa came in, until in the final days of Beltane month
the Romans neared Durovernon, and Caratac must choose whether to
surrender his dun or make a stand.
F eel the earth tremble,” said Cunitor. “I felt such a quake once in
the mountains when I was a boy.”
Lhiannon set her palm to the soil. From the wood at the top of the
hill where the Druids had been stationed they could see little, but a
faint, regular tremor vibrated beneath her hand. To create such a rhythm
how many feet must be striking the earth, and what kind of discipline
kept them in such unison? For the first time she had a sense of the mag-
nitude of the force that had come against them.
“It’s a drumbeat, not a quake,” said Belina quietly. “The drum of
war.” A flicker of sunlight gleamed on new threads of silver in her brown
hair.
“Are they coming?” asked Ambios. He was Caratac’s Druid, an older
man grown portly with soft living, and until now, undecided whether
to welcome or to resent the reinforcements who had come from the
Druids’ Isle. With the enemy approaching, he seemed relieved to have
their company.
Lhiannon got to her feet and lifted a branch to see. The slope fell
away in a tangle of wood and meadow until it reached the river’s mean-
dering blue gleam. Upriver at the ford, the thatched roofs of the dun
shone in the sun. Below, Caratac’s forces were a patchwork of plaid,
highlighted by a gleam of iron and bronze and gold. But to the east a
dust cloud was rising, broken by the vicious sparkle of steel. She felt a
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63
warmth that was as much of the spirit as the flesh as Ardanos rose to
stand beside her.
“They are coming . . .” she whispered. Instinctively she reached out
and he took her hand.
As they watched, the dust began to resolve into four divisions of
marching men divided into dozens of smaller squares, following the same
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