The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  Eremon raised his face. ‘I am truly grieved that supporting me in this makes your tribe a target when it was perhaps not before.’

  Calgacus merely smiled, turning his dagger in his hands. The flames flickered on the pockmarked wall behind him, glistening with moisture. ‘We were already known to the Romans. And now I would rather ride out to meet a threat than cower in my Hall, as I’m sure you will feel when you reach my age.’ His eyes glinted. ‘Save your guilt, my noble prince. You have better things on which to spend your energy.’

  Suddenly they were interrupted by the hail of an Epidii scout, hastening up the path that led from the valley below.

  ‘My lord, a messenger has come for you, from the Caereni people.’

  Eremon remained at length on the ground. ‘The Caereni?’ he repeated, puzzled.

  ‘Yes, my lord. A man of Nectan, son of Gede. He has tracked us hard over many leagues, and his message is therefore two weeks old.’ The man paused, pressing his lips together, his hand going unconsciously to his sword hilt. ‘He … has news of your wife, the Lady Rhiann. Ill news.’

  Eremon was on his feet in one abrupt movement, the cup spilling to the ground. ‘Where is he?’ he barked, the hoarse sound slicing through the men’s laughter. They all fell silent, and Conaire slowly rose to stand by Eremon’s side, where the frozen path fell away into darkness.

  The Caereni messenger took shape from the night around him, a short man in the forest garb of Nectan’s people, his black eyes showing nothing but the reflection of the flames. ‘Lord.’ He went down on one knee before Eremon, the fletching of his arrows in their quiver a pale ruff against his dark nape. ‘At Beltaine, Maelchon of the Orcades and two Roman ships attacked the Sacred Isle.’

  Eremon’s breath hissed out through his teeth. In the utter silence, it was as if water had doused the fire.

  ‘Your lady lives,’ the man added hastily, after a quick glance up at Eremon’s face. ‘But the elder Sisters were slaughtered in the Stones, the Goddess keep them. My own lord has taken your wife and the others to Dunadd.’

  Eremon’s wide eyes met Calgacus’s sorrowing gaze, yet Eremon saw nothing but Rhiann’s face, her fine bones distorted with terror.

  ‘I must go home,’ he muttered, his voice faint, and he stumbled for the path, seeking his horse.

  Conaire caught him before he had gone but five paces out into the darkness. ‘I will come with you, brother.’

  A shudder ran over Eremon’s shoulders, and he hid it by wrapping his cloak around his neck. ‘No. I do not know how long I will be.’

  ‘You need me by your side.’ Conaire grasped his elbows, his voice urgent.

  ‘I need you here. You must act as me, in my stead, if there are any more attacks.’ Eremon peeled Conaire’s fingers from his arm. ‘Only you fully know my mind. Please.’ His control was beginning to break, as images of Rhiann’s face thrust their way again and again into his mind. Yet he didn’t want to order Conaire; he couldn’t bear it right now.

  At last Conaire sensed this and dropped his hand. ‘Then may Hawen speed your way, brother, and … take pity on your lady’s heart.’

  For Conaire had always loved Rhiann well.

  It was Linnet who met Eremon at Dunadd’s stables, seven days of maddened riding later. Here on the sea plain the warm season had come, and sweat was running down Eremon’s sunburned face, sticking his hair to his skull. Yet he hadn’t noticed the green grass or the spreading trees or the birds, for he rode as one possessed, carrying the cold of the mountains in his heart.

  ‘Let me go to her!’ he demanded, as Rhiann’s aunt stopped before him in the doorway of the stall.

  ‘First you must hear what I have to tell you,’ Linnet returned, implacability hardening her wavering voice. ‘Please, for Rhiann’s sake.’

  Eremon stared at Linnet as if he did not know her, his chest rising and falling. Then, for the first time, he noticed the scores of grief on Linnet’s face, the tightness of eyes that would not weep, and he remembered that Linnet, too, had grown up on the Sacred Isle.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he croaked, all his breath rushing out. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  So Linnet told him. And with every word, so the clear sky above Eremon seemed to darken, and the weight that had lifted from his shoulders with the successful raid settled around him again, like a collar of cold, biting iron.

  ‘Maelchon … abducted her?’ He forced a swallow past his dry tongue. ‘What did he do to her?’ His voice sounded foreign to his ears.

  Unconsciously, Linnet’s hand splayed out as if to ward away the idea. ‘I don’t know … she won’t say. She demanded to burn the dead on the island, and since their return a week ago she has not woken again from the shock. Caitlin and I,’ she drew a shaky breath, ‘we cannot reach her. She only wants Fola near, and the other girls – all that remain of the Sisterhood.’ The pain in her eyes hit Eremon in the belly.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In her house. She has as many of the girls staying there as she can; the rest are living with the women of the village.’ His eyes strayed up the path towards the crag, and he made as if to go.

  ‘Eremon.’ Linnet’s hand found his arm. She had never called him by his own name. ‘You will find her changed. She may not wish to see you.’

  Eremon stared at her, uncomprehending. ‘Why wouldn’t she? She needs me more than anyone else.’ He said it defiantly, for a great fear had begun to hammer on his heart.

  Linnet’s eyes were swimming with tears. ‘I know you love her. But … you are a man. She saw the Sisters murdered by men. Didius was killed defending her, by Maelchon’s men. And Maelchon himself … she will not speak of him. But it has brought it all back, the first raid … what she suffered.’

  Eremon’s chest constricted with the memory of what had been in Rhiann’s eyes the day she revealed her pain to him. And what it would mean, if it was there when she looked at him now. ‘Still, I must see her.’

  Linnet wrapped her arms around her chest, just as Rhiann often did. The familiar gesture pierced him. As you will, prince,’ she said, stepping back, and though Eremon would not run before the people, his feet had never carried him through Dunadd so swiftly.

  At the door of Rhiann’s house, the chanting stopped him cold and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. The door-hide was tied back, and there were girls lined up on the bench outside Rhiann’s door, and more young women kneeling in a circle around her hearth-fire. They were the chanters, and though they glanced up at him with surprise, they did not falter in their singing.

  Eremon caught a glimpse of Rhiann’s goddess figurines all laid out on the hearth-stones, as well as flowers, shells and other talismans that he did not recognize.

  Then a soft cry of surprise claimed his attention, and he saw Caitlin in Rhiann’s rush-backed chair, Gabran nursing at her breast, her face blanched with strain. Behind her, Eithne paused from grinding something pungent in a bronze bowl at Rhiann’s workbench, the pestle hovering in her hand. Eremon paused to clasp Caitlin’s outstretched fingers, but his gaze had already swept to the bedscreen, partly folded back to the room. Someone was sitting by the bed, though it wasn’t Rhiann, and he approached slowly, mindful of Linnet’s warning.

  It was then that the floor dropped out from under him.

  For Rhiann lay against the pillow, her face white and mottled with green bruises along her jaw, slashed by the scarlet of her swollen, cut mouth. Her lustrous hair was limp from sweat, and tangled around her shoulders.

  Fola stifled a noise when she saw Eremon, and went to rise, but Rhiann’s hand shot out and clamped on her wrist, holding her there. The ends of her fingers were bandaged. ‘No,’ Rhiann whispered to Fola, staring at her friend with a dazed desperation that tore Eremon’s heart. With an uncertain glance at him, Fola sank back on the stool.

  Swallowing the lump in his throat, Eremon approached the bed. ‘I have come, a stór,’ he murmured and groped for her hand. Yet she jerked it away with a soft cry a
nd buried her face in the bedsheets. ‘Rhiann, speak to me,’ Eremon begged. ‘I am here with you; I have come—’

  ‘No!’ Rhiann’s voice was muffled. Fola met Eremon’s gaze, and there was great pity in her dark eyes, even as she shook her head with gentle warning.

  Rhiann’s shoulders had begun to tremble now, and she pressed her face deeper into the bed. ‘No soft words for me, no more, never!’

  Eremon stared down at her, burning with a sudden terror as great as his grief. ‘Rhiann … did Maelchon hurt …’ But there he broke off, for Rhiann’s whole body clenched at Maelchon’s name, and Eremon realized he had struck unthinkingly, and wished to yank the words back as they flew from his lips.

  ‘Get him away from me!’ Rhiann cried brokenly, whether about the man in her nightmare or her own husband, Eremon could not tell. Yet instinctively he fell back a step. You are a man, Linnet had said. And him being here was causing Rhiann pain.

  Eremon had never faced such raw grief before, and he stood helplessly, as Rhiann’s hand crept out to clasp Fola’s fingers. Then he suddenly became aware again of the chanting women, as Linnet appeared silently by the bedscreen. He didn’t belong here, that was clear.

  ‘I will come back later, love.’ Unconsciously, Eremon’s hand reached out to stroke Rhiann’s hair, but he let it fall before touching her.

  As he slowly took the path from the house, Fola came behind, calling him to stop.

  ‘Prince,’ she said nervously, when he turned back, ‘she is still in deep shock; she doesn’t know what she says.’

  Eremon stared at Fola, eyes tight with pain, at last biting out what frightened him most. ‘Has she gone mad?’

  Fola shook her head sadly. Eremon remembered her face as being plain, round and solid, yet alive with humour. He didn’t recognize that memory in the drawn features of the young woman before him, sunken with grief. ‘She is the strongest woman I know,’ Fola whispered, ‘yet what happened has broken even her. I think if it had not been for the first raid she would perhaps not have gone so far …’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘You may know little of healing, prince.’ Fola twisted her fingers in her blue robe, the edge of her wide mouth trembling. ‘Sometimes when the soul has been badly hurt, it doesn’t want to come back to the body. That’s what shock is – the soul doesn’t wish to stay in Thisworld; it wishes to flee. Usually it is only temporary, until the mind is strong enough to endure the knowledge of what has happened. The Lady Linnet has told me that she nursed Rhiann through such shock four years ago, when her family was killed. But the blow is that much greater now, for it is the loss of the Sisterhood …’ Her voice faltered, and she covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

  ‘Are you telling me she won’t come back?’ Eremon spoke more harshly than he intended, for he couldn’t breathe properly.

  Again Fola shook her head, before glancing down. ‘I think she has more to come back for, now,’ she murmured hoarsely. ‘This is important for healing, so take heart.’

  Yet Eremon could accept little comfort from that, as he took his leave of Fola and strode blindly towards the King’s Hall. For the young priestess’s words had summoned the fear that perhaps Rhiann’s love for him was not enough to call her back from the shadowlands. After all, what could he offer her but more blood and slaughter?

  Outside the Hall, he paced fiercely in the churned mud, trying to take his emotions in a stern hand. A few servants crept by, but he ignored them, until Cù himself came bounding out, tail thumping against Eremon’s shins. It was only when Eremon gave him no more than a cursory pat, his eyes fixed unseeing on the great oak doors, that the hound sensed his distress and sat down with a single whine.

  It was then that Eremon took a breath, and went inside to seek Nectan.

  He and the little dark Caereni chief had not seen each other in a year, and though there was much news to exchange, Eremon was interested in only one thing: the completion of the tale that Linnet had left unfinished in her haste.

  Nectan had brought twenty men with him, sprawled about the hearth eating mutton porridge, but at Eremon’s appearance Nectan gently steered him away to the quiet, dark reaches of the Hall, and there sat him on a stool.

  After pressing a cup of ale into his hands, Nectan began to speak in a soft tone that somehow managed to reach around Eremon’s heart. Nectan’s eyes, as dark and fathomless as those of a seal, never wavered from Eremon’s face, and without touching him his steady presence soothed Eremon enough to enable him to concentrate.

  A week after Rhiann left for the Sacred Isle, Nectan said, Linnet’s fears had grown to an unbearable pitch. She undertook another seeing in the sacred pool, this time with the help of saor, and what she saw there confirmed her worst forebodings: Rhiann was in real danger.

  With Eremon far to the east, she despatched the swiftest trading ship she could find to Nectan’s settlement, begging him to gather his men and make all speed for the Stones and the Sisters. His boats came upon the coast of the island when the smoke was already rising into the sky.

  ‘We saw no trace of any Roman ship,’ Nectan said, chewing on a birch twig with a deliberate pressure that spoke of his pain. ‘The red invaders seemed to have only one target – the priestesses themselves. Yet Maelchon’s boats were still at the broch, plundering the village.’ He paused, furrowing his sun-browned forehead. ‘My orders were to seek out the Sisters, though it was too late, even though we rowed with no break. Then, as we landed, some of Maelchon’s band were returning from over the hills, and your lady was running to the shore. She would have been trapped there against the water.’

  Eremon’s eyes briefly closed. ‘And then?’

  ‘It was too dangerous to engage them all, though by the Goddess, I wished to. We took your lady and pushed off, but the Orcadians did not stay long once their work was done. When we judged it safe we found a new landing and sought the other Sisters the Lady Rhiann had left in the hills.’

  Eremon raised his cup, let the ale run slowly down his throat. ‘What of Maelchon?’

  Nectan’s head dropped. ‘I glimpsed him among his men. There was much blood on his face, and he roared like a bear and pressed forwards. But our arrows drove him back.’ His breath quickened, as anger deepened the web of lines around his eyes. ‘There was blood on your lady’s hands and face and arms, and her fingers were cut. Yet beyond that, I do not know what happened to her. The Roman died defending her, and she held him, so some of the blood was certainly his.’

  Eremon nodded, then his hand came out slowly to clasp Nectan’s wrist, and he met that dark gaze. ‘I owe you my life, my friend, for if she had died, it would be as if my own heart ceased beating. This is what you have done for us.’

  Nectan nodded gravely when Eremon released him, for his own people spoke with such words. ‘I wish, by the Mother, we had come soon enough for them all.’ Fury sparked in his eyes, and he fingered the broken point of the stick as if it was one of his arrows. ‘They committed sacrilege, and for that, they will pay. The Mother will make them pay.’

  Every morning for a week, Eremon went faithfully to Rhiann’s house, only for Linnet to report that the shock still had not lifted, and that she feared his presence might unbalance Rhiann further. He agreed, for although he was desperate to see his wife, he did not think he could bear either that blank, distant stare or the way she flinched from him.

  Just what had that black Orcadian bastard done to her? Eremon shied away from completing that thought, yet continued to pace outside Rhiann’s house, scoring a furrow in the ground. Eventually Linnet came out, sensing with one look exactly what tormented him so thoroughly, and immediately dealt with it. There were bruises on Rhiann’s upper arms, she told him brutally, but nowhere else. Fola had been the first to tend her, and she believed, as did Linnet, that no outrage had been committed on Rhiann’s body beyond the blows on her face. It would be well to seek some rest, she added, for he was upsetting the other girls.

  Chastened, Eremon transferred his
pacing to the outcrop of rock outside the Horse Gate, yet the relief about what Rhiann had escaped was soon eclipsed by his knowledge of what she had not escaped. Rape or no, Maelchon had terrorized Rhiann to the point that she would flinch away from her own husband, who had only ever treated her with tenderness.

  Maelchon had driven this wedge between them.

  It was this realization that forced Eremon’s outward rage to settle into a simmering in his gut that he knew would never leave him. One day he would take his revenge, and Maelchon’s death would not be quick or painless.

  The rage carried Eremon for many more days, and kept him from despair.

  CHAPTER 41

  The fog around Rhiann was beginning to thin, though she tried to draw its dank folds closer, hiding her away. All she remembered was a dim glimpse of sun on sea, and the sound of voices, followed by a dark house and Fola’s face looming over her while girls sang. Then came nothing but a soft, muffling haze, and the instinct that she did not ever want to face what lay beyond it.

  Over time, though, the singing began to grow louder and more distinct, and the pressure of hands bathing her brow grew gradually more clear. Then came the time Rhiann knew she had eyelids, and they were pressed tight against her cheeks; and she had fingers, and they dug into what felt like sheets, trying to stop the spinning of the bed around her.

  Smells slipped in then: herbs and roots; earth clinging to shoes and digging sticks; the mingled Rhiann-smell of wild mint, soap and honey; beeswax, onion dye and smoke-tanned skins.

  She was in her house, and suddenly, terrifyingly, she was awake.

  For one moment, she hung suspended in time long enough to sense the heat of damp sheets against her skin, and the dryness of her mouth. But then, in the act of swallowing, her tongue slid across the sweet-salt cut on her lip, and with that she was pinned to the bed, for she could hide no longer. The memories rushed at her, vague and formless, bathed in nameless terror. And behind them a black wave of emotion reared, attached to the memories and yet separate. Then she knew she had nowhere to run.