The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  ‘Aunt,’ she said, the words unfurling naturally after all, drawn by Linnet’s shadowed eyes, ‘I think I am with child.’

  For a long moment, Linnet did not move nor speak, then she, always the most elegant and constrained of women, buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh!’ Her voice was muffled, queerly breathless. ‘I knew, but I couldn’t be sure.’ She dropped her hands, her face now a hot rose from cheek to cheek. ‘It is three moons now, child, is it not?’

  Rhiann smiled shakily. ‘Nearly. I should have known I could not keep it from you.’

  ‘I thought perhaps it was the illness but …’ Linnet shook her head, as a smile of relief broke through. ‘But I have had dreams of a child, a coming child.’

  ‘I have had no dreams,’ Rhiann replied, suddenly realizing that it was true. No dreams at all.

  Linnet’s delighted smile faded. ‘Are you not pleased, daughter? I understand the difficulties you had before, and I never judged you for them, you must know that.’

  Rhiann’s eye fell on Caitlin, who was bent over once more scrabbling for arrows, the weak sun bright on her fair hair. ‘When Caitlin first had Gabran, she chafed at being left behind, at not being able to ride by Conaire’s side. She could not travel, or even practise, as you see. She could only be a mother.’ Rhiann stared down at her spread hands. ‘I was terrified of the same thing, and that’s why I took the brew. My dream has carried Eremon and I across Alba – what if I could not be Ban Cré and mother both?’

  Linnet’s reply was low. ‘A Ban Cré is often a mother, my love. It is fitting.’

  ‘I know!’ Rhiann replied with some desperation. ‘But no Ban Cré has ever faced what we face now, aunt. I feared becoming useless to Eremon, to my people. You must think what I did terrible, but I …’ She broke off, for the taste of the glory and the power of the dream was sharp on her tongue, and she knew, suddenly, that wanting it was an indelible part of her. She needed it to be complete.

  Linnet took Rhiann’s hand and turned it upwards, tracing the lines on her palm. ‘You walk a path like no other. It is not for me to say what you should do, only love you for all you do.’

  Rhiann bit her lip, her eyes stinging. ‘I never told you this, but two years ago, on the Sacred Isle, Nerida and Setana told me to root myself in this world, by being wife and mother as well as priestess. They asked me again, just before they died. And aunt, as skilled and clever as you may think me, it has taken me these years to find that, with Eremon.’ Rhiann looked up into Linnet’s calm eyes. ‘In that Otherworld place, I pledged myself to him by surrendering all, and after that could no more stop our child growing in me as leave him altogether.’

  Rhiann’s pulse was beating erratically now, fluttering within her as if it did not know which way to fly, and Linnet folded her fingers around her hand. ‘Then let me ask you this, daughter. Now it is done, how do you really feel?’

  Rhiann stared at her aunt, as tears welled up with every thump of her breast, laying bare all that confused her. ‘That’s just it,’ she whispered. ‘I feel so happy and I don’t know why!’

  Linnet smiled her broadest, and pulled an unresisting Rhiann into her arms.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Caitlin was standing there now, nervously twisting the stone guard on her bow wrist.

  As Rhiann struggled to speak, Linnet answered for her. ‘Rhiann is to have a baby.’

  And following those simple words, a cry of joy rang out over the green, sunlit slopes, echoing off the ancient, grey stones and up into the sky.

  If Rhiann had felt coddled when she was ill, it was nothing to what was lavished upon her by Caitlin, Fola and Eithne on their return from the valley. Against all protests, Rhiann was tucked up in her chair by the fire, a blanket wrapped around her despite the fairness of the day. Eithne disappeared to appropriate eggs and milk for a pudding, while Fola repaired to Rhiann’s workbench and began opening and sniffing every jar she could reach on the shelves. As if to affirm the whole business, Caitlin plucked a sleepy Gabran from the bed and swung him into Rhiann’s lap. Gazing down at his slow-blinking eyes, Rhiann allowed herself to imagine, for the first time, what the weight of her own child would feel like in her arms. The sharp tug under her ribs caught her by surprise.

  ‘Muh,’ Gabran grunted, his hand grasping for her hair.

  In passing, Linnet’s touch rested on Rhiann’s shoulder. ‘These tears will not be the last,’ her aunt murmured, ‘for the changes that come with the babe make one’s heart …’ She flicked her fingers, casting about for words, but it was Caitlin who answered as she bounded back with another blanket.

  ‘They make you leak like an old, rusty pot, Rhiann!’ Caitlin smiled indulgently. ‘But they are the best kind of tears, I promise.’

  Rhiann returned her smile uneasily, holding up her hands to prevent a near-drowning in bed coverings. ‘You all have to stop doing this, much as I love you for it. You see, I have not told Eremon yet.’

  ‘Oh!’ Caitlin’s brow furrowed. ‘Well, go and tell him, then.’

  ‘He’s watching the training,’ Rhiann observed dryly, ‘and I really don’t wish all those hairy men to know the inner workings of my body.’

  ‘Rhiann.’ Fola grinned over a basin of ground roots, rubbing a smear of dark powder over her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘I think you’d better tell him soon. You cannot expect us to keep such a secret from him for long!’

  Rhiann glanced around at each glowing face in turn. ‘No,’ she agreed, with a smile. ‘I don’t suppose so.’

  In theory, it should have been a simple matter to get Eremon to herself over the next few days, and yet it proved difficult. The two messengers had lit such a fire in him that although Rhiann had forbidden him from wielding his weapons, he soon threw off any lingering exhaustion from his illness and began scorning not only bed rest, but indoor activity of any kind. With ill grace he had delegated the training to Conaire, yet still managed to spend all of his time knee-deep in frozen mud, shouting at the Epidii warriors over the shriek of the sleet winds.

  Rhiann was finding it increasingly difficult to stomach the heat and stench of the King’s Hall, and eventually had to stop taking her meals there. And as Eremon laid plans with Conaire and Lorn late into each night, she was invariably asleep when he did come to bed.

  Another fine day drove back the wet winds, and Rhiann, finding herself irrationally short of temper, decided to seek some sea air. Wrapping up well in wool underclothes and sheepskin tunic and riding breeches, she crossed the causeway on Liath, glancing at the men drilling on the river meadow. Peering hard, she could not discern Eremon among them, and she shrugged and glanced up at the clear sky, nudging Liath towards the Trade Path. She had strapped baskets to both sides of her saddle to collect the seaweed thrown up by the leaf-bud storms, for it made a fine red-purple dye.

  At the Bay of the Otters, Rhiann wandered over the dark weedy rocks in peace, enjoying the sun and salt-tanged air, however cold. Then she wedged her second basket in a crevice and stepped down onto a sliver of sand, pausing to watch a curlew glide in low over the muddy shore. Its lonely, plaintive cry always took Rhiann’s soul with it up into the sky, and she was still shading her eyes to follow it when a voice boomed out from the screen of gorse bushes behind her. ‘Ah, what is this? A pretty seal maid come ashore?’

  Jolted out of her sun-warmed reverie, Rhiann smiled up at Eremon as he leaped from rock to rock towards her. Yet when he reached the shingle he gave her no chance to greet him, only swept her up boisterously and then, with great efficiency, tripped her in order to tumble her to the sand.

  ‘Eremon!’ Gasping, Rhiann fell awkwardly, instinct taking over as she twisted to protect her belly and at the same time lashed out with one foot. Her heel gained contact with Eremon’s groin, yet although he grunted, his hands immediately grasped her wrists, his eyes laughing down at her. ‘Feisty,’ he murmured, trying to kiss her. ‘Just as I like it.’

  Rhiann hardly heard him, for she was terrified that her fall had hur
t the child. ‘Get off me!’ she croaked, wriggling and tugging on her hands.

  Eremon’s grin faltered. ‘Well, that’s not a warm welcome, is it?’

  ‘No!’ Rhiann struggled harder, fear surging into sudden fury. ‘I said, get off me, you oaf !’

  Eremon sat up and released her, brushing sand from his hands. The edge of his mouth turned down. ‘It’s been so long; I thought you missed me.’

  Rhiann raised herself gingerly to her haunches. ‘So you had to attack me to get me alone?’ She was breathless, desperately focusing inwards to see if she could feel anything amiss, confused at the anger. This was not how it was supposed to be.

  ‘As it happens, yes,’ Eremon retorted. His eyes were green slits, his cheekbones flushing dusky red. ‘Though it seems to me I could have saved myself the trouble.’ He sat back on his knees. ‘Obviously my attentions aren’t welcome.’

  ‘Goddess!’ Rhiann pressed her fingers to her eyes with frustration. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘And don’t speak to me like a child.’

  ‘Don’t act like one then!’

  Eremon’s head dipped, the tips of his ears reddening as he stared at his bent legs. ‘Every night you leave the Hall early, and then when I do come you curl yourself away from me in sleep.’

  ‘Yes, well.’ Even angrier, because they were arguing, Rhiann levered herself upright and wrapped her arms around her chest. ‘There is a reason for that, as it happens.’

  Eremon rose too, his eyes deliberately cool. ‘Then perhaps you’ll share that with me.’

  Suddenly, a wave of disappointment swept over Rhiann, and she blinked back tears. Curse that stupid, leaky pot! Struggling to contain them, her face screwed up into what must have been an alarming expression, for Eremon took her by the shoulders, his concern naked. ‘A stór?’ He peered down at her. ‘Are you really hurt?’

  ‘No!’ Rhiann snorted wetly, sniffed once, then looked him full in the face. And when she saw him chewing his lip, for all the world like a guilty boy, her anger dissolved. ‘Nothing is wrong,’ she whispered at last. ‘I was scared, that is all. Because … because you pushed me onto my belly, and I feared … that it would come to harm …’

  ‘It?’ Eremon repeated blankly.

  Rhiann merely nodded. She’d said it now; let him make the connection.

  And so he did. She watched it dawning over him, like the sky as the sun nears the horizon. ‘A babe?’ Eremon murmured, searching her eyes with disbelief.

  Rhiann nodded again, and so the sun broke free in Eremon’s face, and he swept her up in an embrace that was both fierce and tender. ‘A child … ha!’ He lifted her high in his arms and spun in the sand, whooping with such delight that she laughed, the tears spilling now onto his upturned cheeks.

  ‘When?’ was all he said as he put her down, clasping her close.

  She smiled. ‘The longest night, cariad.’

  Slowly, the memory of that joining flooded Eremon’s eyes. ‘I knew that I could never forget that night, and now I will never forget, ever!’ He laughed exultantly, with a glance at the sky. ‘Praise be to Hawen and Manannán both, for they have blessed me more than I could ever ask!’

  ‘Perhaps the Mother had something to do with it as well,’ Rhiann observed, her sense of humour restored by her relief.

  Eremon laughed again, and kissed her forehead. ‘The Mother, too. All the gods, for they have blessed our love now with the greatest of gifts.’

  Rhiann brushed sand from his cheek with the back of her hand. ‘This always meant so much to you, didn’t it?’

  ‘More than you will ever know, wife.’ Eremon’s eyes glowed. ‘Now I have a family, a real family of my own. A belonging no one can ever take from me.’

  Rhiann’s breath caught somewhere in her breast. That was why he had felt so betrayed by her, after all. ‘And I,’ she whispered, half to herself. She held his face with both hands. ‘But I never understood. Nerida and Setana knew, they tried to tell me.’ She leaned up and kissed his lips, then his cheeks, his chin, anywhere that came within reach. ‘I am sorry for what I did before, so sorry.’

  ‘Rhiann.’ Eremon stopped her words and frantic kisses with his fingers, salty against her mouth. ‘None of that matters now. So long as you love me, that is all I care about.’

  Rhiann nodded, her breath catching somewhere between a sob and a laugh. ‘Loving you is the easiest of promises, I have found, for I have no choice in it!’

  ‘There is always choice.’ Eremon was suddenly serious. ‘I know well how little you have wanted to be in Thisworld at times. Yet in the end you did choose me, as I chose you.’ He rested his hand gently on her belly. Rhiann had to close her eyes at the sudden sweetness of it. ‘And perhaps,’ he said, ‘this little one has chosen us, too, because he knows what wonderful parents we will be.’

  Rhiann grinned. ‘I’m sure she does know that, indeed.’

  In the late afternoon, Eremon galloped his horse along the riverbank to where Conaire was training a group of young, new-blooded warriors recently come from the mountain duns. Leaping to the ground and flinging Dòrn’s reins over an alder branch, Eremon approached Conaire from behind, trying to walk with some dignity.

  ‘That’s not a line!’ Conaire was roaring, pointing with his practice sword. ‘Crus, get your legs in close to Urven and raise your shield the way I showed you, man!’ The youths shuffled closer, elbowing each other with their sword arms and shoving with their shields, laughing, until Conaire’s glower wiped the smiles from their faces.

  ‘Brother,’ Eremon murmured, stepping close by Conaire’s side. ‘What?’ Conaire threw him a distracted glance. ‘Oh … Crus! Urven! Do it now or I will crack your heads together!’

  ‘Rhiann is to have a child,’ Eremon blurted, rocking on his heels, a smile breaking over his face. ‘I am … to have a child.’

  Conaire’s head snapped around. ‘Hawen’s balls!’ With a delighted grin, he threw his arms around Eremon, nearly lifting him off his feet. ‘That is fine news!’

  Eremon gasped with pain as Conaire crushed his injured side, and his foster-brother immediately set him down, contenting himself with a hand on Eremon’s shoulder. ‘Our sons will grow together now, brother, as we did!’ Conaire’s face was bright. ‘While we sit and drool into our ale, eh!’

  Eremon grinned, his chest feeling as though it could burst with pride. ‘While we thrash them at sword-fights, you mean! I have no intention of drooling.’

  Yet now Conaire was staring thoughtfully through the trees, over the gleaming, brown rush of the sunlit river, his hands on his hips. ‘It is the finest of things, Eremon, as you will discover,’ he added, more sombrely. ‘Someone to carry your name.’ He swung back, rubbing the stubble on his jaw. ‘Someone to fight for, aye? It changes things. It makes you more …’

  As he cast about for words, the young warriors resumed their shoving and elbowing in earnest, and suddenly, with a yell, the loosely knitted formation broke apart into a series of muddy scuffles.

  Eremon never got to hear the rest, as Conaire shouted a curse and waded into the fray, applying the broad palm of his hand to restore order.

  Rhiann, perhaps naively, expected that all would return to normal, yet she had not reckoned on Eremon. He urged a cloak on her whenever she stepped outside the house, despite the strengthening sun and lighter winds. He watched over every bite that passed her lips, which made for uncomfortable digestion, and interrupted almost every activity that kept her busy, from sewing to weaving to grinding roots, entreating her to sit by the fire or rest on the bed.

  In this mission, he was aided by Eithne and Fola and even Caitlin, though she had fought against such attentions just the same when she was breeding.

  Eremon’s concern was real, yet Rhiann knew that his over-attention stemmed from boredom, for he still could wield no weapon, and must remain an onlooker as Conaire supervised the men’s training.

  Occasionally, Rhiann managed to evade his notice, and one day was trudging happil
y through the boggy marsh, her calves black with mud, her herb-knife on guard for early stands of creamy meadowsweet. Suddenly, away to her right there was a snuffling, and the tips of the head-high grasses swayed and trembled as something bore down towards her. A moment later, Cù burst out into the open and bounded up to her, pausing only to emit a triumphant howl that was no doubt intended for the larger object thrashing through the marsh behind him.

  Rhiann turned to face the intruder. ‘You tracked me?’ she all but yelped, when Eremon broke through to the path, breathing heavily. ‘With a dog? Like a … a pig?’

  He had the grace to blush, looking down at his feet.

  ‘Eremon, by the Mother, I am not ailing!’

  His head snapped up, indignant. ‘I just want you to be careful!’

  Rhiann waved her knife, gritting her teeth. ‘Cariad, I feel wonderful. Even the sickness has gone. But if you coddle me like this, you will make me ill, I swear it!’

  They glared at each other, Cù glancing from one to the other, his feathery tail waving uncertainly.

  Suddenly Rhiann dropped her hands with frustration. ‘Aargh!’

  At that, the edge of Eremon’s mouth twitched, and Rhiann pursed her own lips, squashing the grin that threatened to break out. ‘Now,’ she said more calmly, ‘if you let me be, as your healer, I’ll allow you to begin proper training again – gently – in two more weeks.’

  ‘Two weeks!’ he protested, stretching his arms above his head and waving them in wild sweeps. ‘Hawen’s balls, I’ve been exercising it. I’m ready now!’

  She raised one eyebrow, striding forward to draw up the edge of his tunic and touch the soft skin at his waist. The wound had left a jagged scar that would be with him for life, and though the line was still dark red, the comfrey had done its job and knitted the skin well. Rhiann prodded the muscles underneath with deliberate pressure, watching Eremon’s face. There was a distinct flinch in his eyes.

  ‘Two weeks,’ she pronounced, ‘and go gently then. If I see you whirling that blade of yours around your head, I’ll give you another reason to suffer, I promise you.’