The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  ‘You can tell your man that the sea lanes have been quiet,’ Brethan muttered through gritted teeth, as Rhiann began to bind the arm.

  Rhiann’s face, however, remained averted as she finished her task, for the beach was out of sight down a tiny glen to the north. Her family had fallen there on a clear day just like this, when the gulls cried and wheeled overhead.

  ‘And yet,’ she murmured, clearing her throat, ‘I assume you guard the sea approaches, nevertheless …?’ If she glanced over her shoulder and the low wall on which Didius sat, she would be able to glimpse the little bay that sliced into the hills further north, where the lapping waves had run red.

  Brethan gasped at a shooting pain, his forehead sheened with sweat. ‘The raiders who killed your family were from Erin: everyone knows that.’ He tried to smile at her, the fingers of one hand clenched in his sealskin cape. ‘We watch the south and west as well as we can, lady, but it was only bad chance the Erin ships were so far north, and it has never happened before or since.’

  Rhiann opened her mouth to argue, and then wearily shut it again. It was true such a raid had never happened before, and this place was Brethan’s to rule, not hers. Yet from Erin, truly? She did not know. A servant came outside with horn cups of heather ale, distracting Brethan, and as Rhiann politely refused hers she found her eyes roaming over the hill behind the broch, patched with bright green moss and dark heather, the protruding rocks still glistening from recent rains. She remembered that brown, peaty water, for it had stained her hands and face when the men threw her down. She swallowed hard and looked at her fingers, green now with herb residues, and suddenly nodded to herself, coming to a decision. Slowly she rose, packed her medicines and took her leave of Brethan.

  Courageous, Nerida had called her. Well, she thought, slinging her pack over her shoulder and striding down the glen with brittle defiance, Didius following behind, we will see.

  Soon the beach shingle was crunching beneath her boots, which she had laced high to keep her feet dry on the journey over the hills. At first she focused hard on that sound – the faint squeak of coarse sand at each step, the jingle of buried shells. Then she heard Didius pause halfway along the little crescent of tidal sand, sensing that she needed to be alone, and she ploughed on to the end of the strand, her head down.

  When she stopped on the edge of the waves, Rhiann realized that she was trembling, despite the warmth on her hair, and the high, clean cries of the gulls. So she closed her eyes and raised her face to the sun, summoning instead the feel of Eremon’s arms around her, for that was truly the last memory of this beach. Here, he said he would keep all dark things at bay, and she had replied that she must also deal with it herself.

  ‘Lady.’ The whisper was tentative, close behind, and she opened her eyes and turned to see Didius shuffling from one foot to the other, peering up from under his helmet as if feared she would be angry. ‘Are you cold? You can have my cloak.’

  A smile curved Rhiann’s stiff cheeks. ‘No, not cold. Just sad.’ She turned back to the bay, its waves glittering in a ripple of wind. ‘Is it not strange, Didius, that though we say our enemy is Rome, the truth is that we are our own greatest enemies – Alba, Erin, Britannia. Warlike, your people call us, and it is true.’ She sighed.

  There was a long silence. Then Didius said, ‘Warlike you may be, lady, but that is not what I will remember.’ She saw him gaze out to sea. ‘For the Albans have many riches beyond their swords. Beauty and music and tales to break your heart … Many treasures, this land has birthed.’ He broke off abruptly, a flush creeping up his neck. ‘That is what I will tell my people, if I ever go home,’ he finished.

  And suddenly, the knowledge came to Rhiann, like the taint of smoke on the air, that Didius would not see his homeland again.

  Her eyes blurring, she made a warding movement with her hand, pushing the spirit sense away. Many things might prevent Didius from leaving Alba – perhaps the great battle she had once glimpsed in his future, between her people and Rome. Or perhaps, Rhiann suddenly and resolutely decided to believe, that when this was all over Didius would choose to stay, for the sake of the tales he loved so much.

  ‘Come, my friend,’ she murmured, turning her back firmly on the glittering bay. Here, Eremon had clasped her to his heart, and from now on it would be his smile she summoned when the scent of the sea-pinks on the cliffs drifted to her in dreams. She would make it so.

  It was as the strip of sand fell out of sight behind the headland, that Rhiann suddenly knew she need never come here again.

  CHAPTER 33

  Samana returned to the north on horseback, after a dreadful trip by sea from Eboracum and a frustrating moon lingering in her own dun, waiting for Agricola. Now he too had returned and, on the way back to the main camp, they were staying overnight in the small port on the Forth inlet.

  Samana had taken Agricola’s summons back to his side as a good omen – that he was pleased with her information – and the subsequent return of his desire had offered final proof of this. Or perhaps it was just that he had worked his anger at last year’s defeat out on her body now, and was feeling flushed with renewed anticipation of a better season.

  This morning was fine, though cool, and Samana yawned and stretched with pleasure, for her tiredness and the ache between her thighs, were both products of Agricola’s renewed attentions. The tiny crescent of muddy bank on which she squatted was screened from the soldiers’ tents by a fringe of alders and scrubby willows, their buds still unfurling, the hairy willow catkins providing some shelter from prying eyes. Now she bent to rinse the sodden undergarment in the shallow water on the edge of the estuary, steeling herself against the icy bite of the water.

  She could no doubt have ordered a slave to clean her underclothes, or done it herself inside, but her moon courses had come unexpectedly, and she was wary of Agricola’s anger at too much female intrusion into military life. Of course, she was still pleased that the herb brew and dried moss continued to prevent a baby.

  Now she slapped the cloth on a stone, wrinkling her nose. The sheets were one hard job she would leave to that insolent body slave of his, though. Agricola had been up so early since they arrived, dictating a flood of letters to be carried by the ships at anchor in the bay, that she knew he hadn’t noticed such trifling matters as sheets.

  In fact, he’d been so excited by his plans that he had for once told her about them unguardedly. He was asking his son-in-law Tacitus to speak for him in Rome, to contain the damage to Agricola’s reputation that the Novantae disaster had wrought, and to beseech the Emperor Domitian to return the men he had taken to fight on the German frontier.

  Samana still marvelled that though Agricola was all-powerful in Britannia and Alba, ridiculously, he must also dance to the tune of another man far away in Rome; a man known to be capricious and lacking in the foresight of his dead elder brother and father, whom Agricola had loved well.

  Agricola did not trust Domitian, and although the commander had always been a ruthless man of little emotion, Samana was beginning to glimpse the real toll of this constant worry over the emperor’s motives, which gnawed at Agricola ceaselessly. And this is what they meant by the glories of Empire! Privately, Samana thought little of an empire where a local king could not do what he wanted to do. Where was the power in that?

  She wrung out her shift and laid it next to the cloth strips for her moon bleeding. Then, rolling up the damp bundle, she set off back along the shore. As she rounded a wooded point, the cold sea breeze hit her, and she looked up and came to an abrupt halt, the balls of her feet sinking into the muddy shore. Samana narrowed her eyes, counting.

  She was sure that two of the sleek-prowed Roman warships anchored in the estuary had disappeared since yesterday. She counted again, but there were only thirteen, lying there meekly as if asleep, their long oars shipped, their sails folded, their decks all but deserted. From the taut anchor ropes, streamers of dark weed flapped in the sea-wind, and the timbers creaked
as they drifted a little in the current.

  For a moment, Samana’s heart pounded crazily. Agricola would not weaken his numbers for the new campaign season by sending men back south, and in any case, all the southern peoples had fallen quiet. Even the Novantae remained hidden, after the Romans, in what seemed to her a fit of pique, sealed them off behind their hills with forts and all but forgot them. So the missing ships must have sailed north.

  And he didn’t consult with me exactly where or when to go, she realized, her mouth drying.

  Fear crawled up her spine, echoing the damp of the clothes pressed to her chest. Agricola had often hinted at his other sources of information, sources he would not reveal to her. Perhaps this was where the ships had gone.

  Samana strode for the end of the path, ignoring the soldiers, carters and natives who leered at her. Whomever Agricola had won over in the north mattered little to her. That person didn’t share Agricola’s bed, and thereby a large part of his thoughts, or know the secret places of the body that made him cry out to all his gods.

  No one else could do these things to him but her. And she would make sure it stayed that way.

  The boar tusk held loosely in Eremon’s hands gradually turned from moonlit white to dawn grey, along with the sky above the narrow glen.

  Here in the centre of eastern Alba, another Roman frontier crossed the wide peninsula between the Tay and Forth rivers. The frontier consisted of a chain of forts on a low ridge overlooking the Earn plain, yet the links were not yet complete, the chain still weak at many points and the defences untested.

  Hawen, my lord, Eremon prayed silently now. Give me the strength of the boar this day. Without opening his eyes, he drew in a breath. Dawn was his favourite time, and he was never so confident to forget it might be his last. The faint breeze carried the smells of damp moss, rich, turned earth and the metallic tang of rock from the hills above. There was no smoke, for the Roman fort sat at the end of the glen, and Eremon had allowed no fires. There was only the smell of the earth and its growth – the scent of life.

  Crouched next to Eremon in the lee of a fern-covered rock, Conaire blew on his hands and flexed them. ‘Do you think our friend Lorn can count the days?’ he grumbled. ‘He might have attacked yesterday, and got the Romans signalling up and down this entire ridge.’

  Ignoring the steady rumble of nerves in his belly, Eremon tied the thong of the tusk around his neck, where it sat against the carved boar stone and Rhiann’s stag amulet. Conaire wore the twin of the tusk around his own arm, won in the boar hunt that gave him his scar. Eremon normally wore the tusk and the amulet around his upper arms, but not today. Today those muscles would flex and bunch with every sword thrust, and he did not wish to break the thongs.

  After knotting the leather, Eremon took up his sword from where it lay at his feet. ‘Lorn has followed our plan without complaint,’ he remarked mildly, and when Conaire snorted, Eremon smiled. ‘Almost without complaint.’

  Conaire rose to his feet now, taking care to stay in the shadow of the rock. Eremon heard the faint jingle of his sword-chain as he belted on his blade, and then Eremon joined him, his back against the rough, cold surface as he inched his own belt around his waist.

  Around them, the stealthy movements of their men came as a faint rustling in the carpet of thick bracken. The raiding party had sensed their rising, and all were watching for sunrise.

  ‘Perhaps Lorn is quiet under your beady eye, brother,’ Conaire continued, adjusting the straps of his mailshirt, ‘but why you gave a third of our men over to him, and sent him off out of sight days ago, I’ll never know!’

  Eremon tightened the buckle holding his scabbard. ‘Formation fighting is not his strength, but raids like this are close to Lorn’s heart. And he’s good – it surely isn’t impossible for you to admit that.’

  Yet Conaire only snorted again, settling his war helmet on his head. His relationship with Lorn was still strained, though both treated each other with a wary acceptance, for the sake of peace.

  The end of the glen opened directly to the east, and the horizon was fast lighting up with flame now, the feathered clouds flinging great gouts of scarlet across the silver bowl of sky. Just to the south, high on a farther ridge, the angry glow drew in the outlines of the small Roman fort, crowning the low rise. The dark scar of its encircling ditch was topped by a tall row of timber stakes, and from behind this palisade a trumpet call floated high in the clear, chilled air. It didn’t seem to have the urgency of an alarm, or so Eremon hoped.

  His men had managed to crawl into position over five nights, lying low in the day and then creeping through the undergrowth in the dark, using the hidden paths that could bring them right to the Roman frontier undetected by scouting parties. Now the still air beneath the bracken was reeking with urine and sweat and churned mud, but it couldn’t smell any sweeter to Eremon. I have done this before, he reminded his churning belly, bending to lace his boots more securely over his knees. One fort attack; one fort imprisonment. He should know better than anyone else what they faced.

  Metal scraped across a rock high above them, and Eremon whirled to face the mouth of the sheep trail that wound down into the glen from the hill peaks. One hand reached for the cold, wet rock, to propel him forward, the other went to his sword hilt.

  ‘My lord,’ came a murmur in his own dialect.

  Eremon forced himself to relax, though his heart was now thudding so loud he could hardly hear. ‘Rori.’

  Rori was breathless, his thin shoulders heaving as he swiped at his sweaty lip with his sleeve. ‘I have seen the fire arrows, my lord, to the south, and to the north along this ridge. The other two forts are now alight.’

  A jolt of excitement shot up Eremon’s spine, and instantly every muscle was tense, poised for action. ‘I suppose that Lorn and Calgacus can both count,’ he remarked to Conaire, drawing his sword and, heedless now of the need to be silent, leaping up the few steps to the top of the outcrop.

  There, his boar-crest helmet was outlined against the lightening sky, as a signal for his archers. In a moment a scattering of tiny flames sprang up further down the glen, and he raised his sword as the warriors near him shook themselves free of the leaves and the ferns, unsheathing blades, hefting spears. The rustling and murmuring grew louder, spreading up the glen as swiftly as fire up a heather slope. This was Eremon’s power and his role – men waiting to kill at his signal.

  He paused to summon Rhiann’s image to his mind, his fingers pressing the stag amulet to the hollow of his throat. And as he slashed his sword down and the sky burst into a flaming rain of fire arrows, he sent another prayer to his gods: Bring us soon to peace, so I am never sundered from her again.

  Leaf-bud was the time for herbs, so after another long day of collecting, sorting and drying, Rhiann should not have been surprised to find herself dreaming that night about plants.

  In this dream she was holding up the tiny, clustered blooms of a plant whose name, in the usual dream-way, kept slipping from her mind. Arrayed around her were a crescent of girls, the novices and young initiates, their eyes fixed on her, as she described the plant’s properties.

  She hardly registered shock at first, when something appeared in the distance beyond the girls’ heads, even though it made Rhiann’s speech falter. Then, suddenly, she found she was trying to scream, but no sound was coming out. And she was tossing and writhing and trying to move, but she could not, and the white petals were crushed, and fell to the ground …

  Peace. A calm voice flowed into Rhiann’s dreaming mind, soothing and cradling, and abruptly the panic began to recede. After a moment, only a dark mist remained. It is not now … not now … Each word fell down through the darkness like notes on a harp, soothing her, and soft fingers brushed her hair back, trailing down her cheeks, melting the frightened tears. Her heart was still racing, but something was penetrating her mind; the knowledge it was only a dream. Rhiann began to struggle upwards to full consciousness. Hush, daughter.

>   Now there was a light, a soft sheen of moonlight seen through half-closed lashes. Yet still Rhiann could not open her eyes, and all her limbs felt heavy, the edges indistinct, as if she only barely held on to her body. A wisp of conscious thought floated past, that she had taken no saor, or indeed any draught of herbs, so what was wrong with her? The feeling was like saor and yet not like it, and now she tasted, with a faint awareness, a bitterness on her tongue.

  Other voices were calling Rhiann now: fey, silver voices she knew from the times she had left her body before. It was the Otherworld spirits calling her to join them, stretching out their shining fingers to draw her away from her body for ever. The candle of her soul flickered, yearning to go. It stretched out its flame …

  No, Rhiann. The musical voice forbade it, and the fingers on her brow pressed into both temples. Do not listen to them, listen only to me, to us. Hold to your body, Rhiann.

  Her name. The word called her back, and she let it, gradually realizing that though she could not open her eyes or move her limbs, she could feel a definite sensation of ground under her buttocks, the pressure of one shin on another as she sat with crossed legs. Her arms were out, resting on her knees, her palms turned upwards. A cool drop of water fell into one hand now, and a warm stone was pressed into the other. And she sensed the faint shuffle of feet tracing a spiral dance around her.

  Why am I here?

  Two voices answered, one low, one high. Because we called you. Why?

  You must become One, when there is no longer Many. An empty ship on the waves you must be; a mare with her saddle; a cup to hold all. We must fill you.

  Rhiann’s brain rolled slowly over, grasping for sense, and finding nothing. She struggled to open her eyes again, but those trailing fingers came down on her eyelids, pressing them closed. Feel. You do not need to see.