The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  Didius’s breath, rasping unevenly in her ear.

  Fola’s sobs, harsh and keening, tearing at her heart with terrible claws.

  The sobs of Rhiann’s foster-mother, watching her son being gutted where he stood.

  The sobs of her foster-sister as men tore her insides to pieces with their thrusts.

  With a flood of enervating rage, Rhiann tore herself free of Didius and gripped Fola’s arms instead, digging her nails in until her friend’s eyes fixed on her with some agonized awareness. ‘Get back to those girls and hide them until you know it is safe!’ Rhiann cried. ‘Do it for Nerida, for Setana! Do it! ‘

  Fola gulped and shook her head, tears spraying from her eyes. ‘Both … we both go.’

  ‘No!’ Rhiann held her gaze. ‘I cannot leave them again. I failed once before, I didn’t come in time, but I will now!’ She swiped at her wet cheeks fiercely. ‘Don’t you see?’ Her voice broke, and she turned Fola and gave her a great shove forward, so her friend fell down the other side of the slope towards the mire, rolling on the springy turf. ‘Run!’ Rhiann screamed at her and then, sparing no glance for Didius, she plunged down the path towards the Stones, into the smoke.

  ‘Didius!’ Fola cried, but then all sound and sight was lost in Rhiann’s wheezing breath, and the acrid smoke that clawed at her throat and eyes. Blinded, stumbling, she started to circle north away from the pier and the soldiers, around the Stones hill to where a hidden path would lead her back up the ridge-top to the Sisters, a path where brambles had grown, long ago.

  Didius sucked air into his lungs with great heaves, pumping his short legs as fast as he could. He kept his gaze fixed on the flame of Rhiann’s hair that flickered in and out of the billows of smoke, giving no thought to his stubbed feet or aching sides, and certainly, never for one moment, about surrendering to his own people.

  After all, he was bearded and ragged now after years spent with Rhiann’s tribe. He wore their clothes and smelled like their food and skins and soap and ale. The soldiers would run him through before he could ever make them see he was one of them.

  ‘Afterwards,’ he found himself gasping, chasing Rhiann as she ran ahead. Afterwards, when she is safe. Then I may go to them. I may.

  He skirted another shallow mire, the thin reeds bristling the surface of the pool, the reflection of the sky in it sick and yellowed from smoke. His ears strained for the sounds of battle nearby, and although he heard faint shouts, he didn’t think they were coming this way. Not yet, anyway.

  Abruptly, he yelped as a figure lunged out of the murk at him. It was an Alban savage, all blue tattoos and dripping hair and clothes, as if he’d swum to shore. For one frozen moment Didius read desperation in those rolling eyes, a lust to kill and rend, before Didius flung himself to one side, tumbling down into the mud that fringed the mire. The Alban let out a strangled yell, casting about in the gloom for him, but Didius was already up again, and the savage howls were lost in the ragged billows of smoke that immediately hid him from sight.

  Coughing, Didius propelled himself along the rear of the worksheds and granaries, his mind racing to remember what he had seen that could give shelter. At last the ground began to rise, the soft, boggy turf growing drier with earth and gravel, and as Didius cleared the smoke he threw himself to his knees on the faint path that led to the Stones from the west.

  Raking the scene with desperate eyes, Didius saw the looming Stones first, and soldiers approaching them, and towards the end of the headland, old women standing all in a row. Then Didius’s gaze came to rest much closer, on Rhiann’s back where she lay at the lip of the ridge, hidden from the soldiers by distance and tufts of sedge.

  ‘My lady!’ he whispered painfully, crawling closer. ‘My lady, come back! Come back!’

  The young soldier had burst into the circle of Stones at a trot, bracing himself for a bolt of lightning to hit him from above, for hordes of screaming, black-clad harpies to throw their lustful bodies and their curses and their charmed spittle at him, clawing his heart with yellow nails.

  And there were women here, perhaps forty of them, blue-hooded, straight-backed. The standing ones were unnaturally still and silent, but a sibilant chanting emanated from others seated at the base of those barbaric stones, which reared over the soldier like the evil titans of old tales.

  To his horror, his hands trembled with fear, and defiantly he raised his javelin to train it on the two women who stood forward from the rest, holding hands.

  One of them, a slight, white-haired crone, said something in an old but strong voice, and the men near him instinctively recoiled. It was a spell perhaps, a curse. The young soldier hefted his spear again, feeling safer with its grip in his hand, and with his other hand he sought for his sheathed sword.

  Rhiann buried her choking, furious sob in the sodden grass before her nose, her fingers digging into the damp earth.

  ‘Come in peace,’ Nerida had said to the soldiers, her voice ringing out as Rhiann had heard it reverberate so many times among these Stones. ‘We are all beloved of the Mother. Put down your weapons and take what She gives you here this day.’ Yet the tide of men clothed in hard, bright iron still advanced, step by step, as if terrified that the Sisters would suddenly strike them down where they stood.

  ‘They have no blades!’ Rhiann whispered in torment. ‘They have no blades, so let them be!’

  Setana and Nerida stood straight and calm before the inner circle, no longer hunched, no longer leaning on staffs, but on each other. And the glow that Rhiann had seen when she last walked with them was in their faces, though now it came from no earthly sun.

  Suddenly, she felt a voice rather than heard it, as a touch, a thought, inside her. It was the silent mind-speech that she and Nerida had only once shared, a year ago. Go now, child, it said. For if you are harmed, then we are truly lost.

  Rhiann gasped and raised her face, rubbing her eyes so she could see. Yet Nerida had not moved, was not looking at her, but at the soldiers that walked towards her.

  I cannot! Rhiann wailed inside. I let them die, but not you!

  A smile came to her as a caress. It is our time, and we are ready. But heed me and go, for in you lies our hope.

  No! Every muscle in Rhiann’s body went rigid, as she prepared to fly across the space between them, to throw herself on a Roman blade alongside Nerida.

  The Otherworld lies close, daughter, as we will lie close to you. But you have more to do. Heed me now – your duty is to live!

  Rhiann struggled to breathe through the agony of her chest, straining to keep her sight on Nerida and Setana as her line of vision was obscured by shining armour, helmets and a forest of spears.

  Yet at the last, Setana looked somehow through the approaching soldiers, and her eyes found Rhiann. In that look was love, and a command.

  To obey. To live. To remember.

  A river of warmth ran up Nerida’s arm from Setana’s fingers, curling around her pained heart, soothing and rocking as she herself had soothed so many babes with her own hands.

  Then Setana turned to her and, leaning forward, gave her the priestess kiss on her spirit-eye. ‘Fear not,’ she murmured.

  On the edge of Nerida’s vision, a young soldier drew his sword.

  ‘I will not,’ Nerida whispered and, dropping Setana’s fingers, she stepped towards the soldier, her hands outstretched, the blade shining in the sun before her face. Despite the steady billows of smoke hanging over the houses below, the clouds had not reached the summit, and the Stones remained free under a blue sky. For that, Nerida was glad.

  She smiled at the soldier’s young, beardless face now, and surrendered all, as the Goddess had asked her to do. And love for him burst into her heart like a white flame, banishing all the fears and the grief to a darker place that would only be memory to her now.

  ‘Come,’ she said. ‘I forgive you.’ His chest heaving, the young soldier hardly realized he had stepped out from his line, drawn to the old woman before him by her cursed p
owers, by the hands that reached for him, the spell she wove around him.

  Now her eyes caught and held him, too, reaching deep into his heart and ensnaring it in the vilest of evils, for they were soft and blue and deep, those eyes, and in them he saw his own mother, and a promise and a gift he could not name.

  ‘Sorceress!’ The scream wrenched itself from his throat, and with it a fierce tide of rage swept over him, denying all that he saw there in those eyes. His sword was up before he could stop it, but even as he stabbed down, desperate tears came to him, and he knew not why he wept.

  The sun flashing on the blade pierced Rhiann where she lay, and as an anguished cry flew free of the rent in her heart, something hard hit her across the back of her head.

  She fell down into darkness, as the last crushed blossoms dropped from her fingers.

  CHAPTER 38

  Forgive me,’ Didius whispered, repeating it with every stumbling step he took among the half-buried rocks and reeds of the mire’s edge. Rhiann was tall, but not heavy; he was short, but with strength in his stocky limbs. Once she was flung over his shoulder, it wasn’t so bad.

  Her head lolled against his waist. Didius had never struck a woman before, and didn’t know if she would ever wake from the blow of the dagger hilt – or if she did, whether her mind would still be sound. But what choice did he have? He’d vowed to protect her, and protect her he would. He couldn’t let her scream reach the ears of the soldiers, or allow her to run out before them, as she had tensed to do.

  Even though his head was bent over, his eyes on his dragging feet, Didius could smell that the smoke was growing lighter. He stopped, turning slowly, peering up and around him, desperate for somewhere they could shelter and he could defend. Ahead, over the hills to the north, more smoke was trailing into the sky. That way lay the broch village; he and Rhiann had gone there only days ago. There would be no safety there, then.

  Now he heard more shouts behind him, in the barbarian language, and he knew that the Alban men must have poured ashore at last, seeking their own prey. Didius racked his brains again, reliving all the walks he had taken with Rhiann here in these hills, sifting his memories for a place of shelter. And then he had it.

  On the other side of the mire a shallow vale led into the hills, and on the far spur of one ridge a ruined tower stood – some old house or defensive building. The stones were sagging, the thatch roof long gone, but taking him there one day Rhiann had run up the narrow rock staircase within its walls. At the top of the staircase, half the timber of the upper floor still survived, and though Didius had stepped across the rotting beams gingerly, Rhiann had danced over to the gaping wall that once supported the roof and now provided a view to the sea.

  Taking a deep breath, Didius grasped Rhiann’s legs more firmly and skirted the mire by balancing precariously on the half-submerged stones, praying to all his gods that they still had enough smoke cover to avoid detection. His mind was so intent on his task that he barely registered the pulse of pain and regret in his heart, that the old women who had smiled at him had been cut down by his own people as if they were cattle. And perhaps something slipped then, a tiny shift that sundered him from Rome for ever, because all that came to him, as he blinked stinging tears away, was a yearning to be by the bonfire again, with Aedan’s harp singing to the stars.

  The path around the muddy pond had provided good cover, but now Didius reached the drier ground on the other side, and as he looked up to the tower he realized that the hill slope rose bare to its door. There was nothing for it but to cross that ground in the open, as quickly as he could.

  Unfortunately, Rhiann’s hair blazed in the sun that reached from the clearing edges of the smoke, and she wore her priestess cloak, a blue that was bright against green turf and grey stones. Gasping for air, Didius stumbled across the bare slope, but just as he slipped around the spur of the hill, two shouts came from behind, like the baying of hounds sighting game. Men were coming, and they were Albans, by the muffled inflections of their voices. He was not sure if that was better or worse than Romans.

  Didius plunged through the door of the tower, and instantly the cold darkness of the staircase swallowed them. Desperately, he lurched halfway up and lay Rhiann’s still body across the stone steps. Now he could clearly hear voices coming closer. He looked down at the small square of bright sun that was the doorway.

  A narrow stair; one door. Rhiann had shown him a place that could be defended by one swordsman, for a time. Clever, his lady.

  He drew his sword and kissed the barbarian blade, murmuring prayers to Jupiter and Mars and, remembering Aedan’s tales, to Manannán of the waves. Last of all, he sent a plea to Rhiann’s Mother Goddess, thinking, with a certain bleakness, that he might be meeting her soon enough to speak the words in person.

  Didius took one step down, then another and, as the square of sunlight grew larger, so he was taken by a sudden flash of memory – the first time he met a barbarian warrior. It was when he sat in his saddle in a freezing dawn as the prince of Erin looked up and made ready to steal Didius’s horse. Then, Didius’s bowels had turned to liquid at the sight of those blazing green eyes and that sword. His heart had pounded and his legs had shaken so much that the horse almost bolted. Strange how weak he had been then, and how he didn’t feel weak at all right now.

  He glanced up the staircase. Now he had something to guard; perhaps that was it. He had to protect her.

  Outside, heavy feet pounded on the path up to the door, and there was the ringing of drawn blades from their scabbards. Didius took a deep breath, and went down to meet them.

  It was the cold that woke Rhiann, the burning cold of stone that had never felt the sun. She struggled to open her eyes, yet even that sent a shaft of pain through her head.

  Her eyes clamped shut again, and she reached out with her hand instead, her nails scraping on the moss of a damp wall. She could feel steps beneath her – it was a staircase. Gingerly, she pulled herself to the wall, leaning her forehead on it, gathering her legs under her so that she was on all fours. Goddess, but the back of her head hurt, aching all the way through her skull.

  Suddenly a lurch of nausea took her, and she sank back on her side, half opening her eyes so she could look down the stairway, to where the brightness forced its way through her lashes. And that was when she heard the grunt nearby, and curses spat in her own language in the jeering tone she knew well – warriors at sport.

  ‘Didius?’ Rhiann’s voice leaked out in a hoarse whisper, and when she got no answer she began to edge her way down the staircase, legs first, crabwise, step by painful step. The staircase curved, so it was some moments before she got low enough to see the doorway itself. By then, her brain was beating on the inside of her skull with steady, agonizing blows. Every now and then one came that nearly made her faint, but she clung to consciousness as she clung to the sharp edge of each step.

  She squinted at the sudden brightness of the door, the light lancing her with new pain. Didius was outlined there in a protective crouch, his sword held before him. Just beyond, on a tiny patch of packed sand, she could see the still legs of an Alban body at length on the ground.

  ‘Didius?’ she whispered. The Roman’s shoulders quivered, but he did not look around, or take his eyes off what awaited him outside. Just then there was a quick flurry of feet, a flash of blade and a dark shape that blocked the light for a moment. Didius grunted again and twisted as metal clashed, and Rhiann saw his assailant fall back. From outside, the jeers began again, along with the sound of dragging as the legs of the dead body disappeared.

  ‘He nearly got you there, Kinoth – little fox nearly got you!’

  Someone hawked and spat on the ground. ‘Got him back, didn’t I? If you think you can do better, you get in there.’

  ‘No need. He’s bleeding like a pig.’

  Rhiann’s breath tripped as another wave of pain and nausea broke over her. When it cleared, she was only five steps above Didius.

  ‘Lady,�
�� Didius’s voice was faint, ‘please stay there. They will not get past me.’

  Looking down at him, Rhiann noticed through her haze the way he hunched over to one side, clutching his sword arm. ‘You’re hurt,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t hurt yourself for me; tell them who you are. They came with the Romans – tell them.’

  Didius’s breathing was hoarse, and each halting word scraped against the cold stone. ‘I … do not think … that you will be safe … if I do that.’

  Rhiann’s eyes clenched shut, as suddenly the full memory of what had happened swept over her.

  The sword falling on Nerida.

  The blood that sprayed across the Stones.

  ‘I don’t want to live,’ she heard herself saying in a strained, high voice. ‘I don’t want to live anyway.’

  Didius gasped and clutched at his belly as some spasm of pain took him. ‘Your man … has been no friend of mine … but … you love him well. He waits for you.’

  A sob rose in Rhiann’s rigid throat. ‘And you, dear friend,’ she choked out, ‘make sure you wait for me, too.’

  Yet the men outside were not going to give them time for such words. Another shape blocked the light, and another behind him, and together they ran at the door. Didius half rose, clutching at the wall, and involuntarily Rhiann reared back, losing sight of him. Yet his grunt at the collision was unmistakable: pain so strong it was only shock; pain that could make no sound.

  The first voice Rhiann heard then was one of the attackers, hissing the other man’s name, and for some reason both retreated again. As sun flooded the stairway, Rhiann ignored the pounding ache in her head and scrabbled down to Didius, but when she took him in her arms his weight was more than she’d braced for, and she couldn’t hold him. Clutching him close, they both slid down the last two steps, coming to rest across the doorway, Didius’s legs splayed out on the blood-stained path.