The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy

by Jules Watson

  His tender fingers drifted to the soft skin behind Rhiann’s ear, and suddenly a column of heat swept through her, tingling along her thighs. She gazed down at him, frozen, her breath so shallow that he could not fail to sense it. And indeed, by the faint stirring of the sheet between his legs, she knew he was quite aware.

  Yet Eremon didn’t meet Rhiann’s eyes, and when her fingers played over his mouth he did not suckle them, but pressed his lips together into one of those annoying, firm kisses that he kept dropping on her head. Rhiann reared back as if stung, pounded her pillow and flung herself down onto it, her face turned away so he would not see her trying to stop her tears. Curse these breeding emotions! And curse him for making her feel so close to him, making her forget her anger.

  ‘A stór?’ Eremon leaned over her, awkwardly patting her shoulder. ‘Do not cry, love. I’ve said I will keep you safe.’

  With a splutter, Rhiann rolled over and glared up at Eremon, her brows drawing together as if that might firm her trembling lips. ‘You’ve changed,’ she suddenly blurted. ‘You don’t want me any more. I don’t know why but ever since the baby.’ She blinked suddenly, defiant with hurt. ‘Is it that you find me ugly?’

  Eremon was as surprised as if she’d slapped him. ‘Ugly? Don’t be … I only thought … the baby would be hurt.’

  Rhiann frowned, swallowing hard. ‘Eremon, I am not sick. I need your comfort, I need your life, to know we are alive.’ Tears welled in her eyes, and she didn’t force them away. But you won’t touch me and you leave me feeling so alone.’

  With one sweep, Eremon caught her to his chest. Hawen’s balls,’ he muttered, and then laughed, an explosive sound in Rhiann’s ear.

  Enraged, Rhiann pushed at his chest, her mouth muffled in his shoulder. ‘Don’t you dare laugh at me now, Eremon of Erin! If you find me so repellent, there are other women no doubt waiting for the attentions you are determined to deny me!’

  Eremon drew back and looked down at Rhiann, his eyes sparkling for the first time in days. ‘Hmm.’ He put one finger to his chin, tapping it in consideration. ‘Well, you are enough, at times, to drive any man away.’

  Rhiann gasped and furiously tried to wriggle free, but Eremon only smiled and held her there, his hands firm on her shoulders. ‘That’s enough misunderstanding for one week. I thought breeding women did not want … oh, never mind.’ And his mouth came down on hers, hard and bruising, as his hand cupped one swelling, tender breast.

  So among the shadows of their bed Eremon set about showing Rhiann, with demanding hands, that his reluctance had nothing at all to do with waning attraction. And he took her gasps from her with his open mouth, as she rode above him, his hands cradling her buttocks as he had cradled her belly.

  Rhiann slept, her breaths deeper and more even than they had been before, every now and then punctuated with a little sigh. In the last flickering of the stone lamp, Eremon touched his finger to the tears still wet on her cheeks.

  This wife of his had often been able to lead him where he did not wish to go, and now she wielded a weapon more potent than any she had possessed before. For while it was true he had avoided her for the baby’s sake, if he was brutally honest, there was more to it than that.

  Eremon lay back now, one arm behind his head, the other curving around her, their thighs touching. The truth was that in his own dreams something was calling him. It would, he knew, draw him to a battlefield, where a great hill reared behind him, and an army larger than any he could imagine spread before him.

  Eremon turned his head slightly, his gaze sliding over the line of Rhiann’s throat, the amber hair framing her shoulders, the pale tips of her outflung fingers. Below, he could just make out the swell of her belly beneath the sheets. He sighed, a drawn, pained sound.

  He had avoided her, because in their joining he lost the separateness of himself. And he feared now the twining of that uncontainable bond with a baby, for in that summons to the battlefield he had also sensed a severing.

  So he had tried, like a fool, to carve a tiny gulf between them, a way to make the severing less painful, if that was what the gods decreed. Yet Rhiann, with her honey scent and the fire in her lips, and her emotions flickering from dark to light, had pulled Eremon back. She had tempted him once more to surrender his heart, and he had gone and done it, and so lost himself in her again.

  Now, tonight, Eremon knew he was doomed. For as he abandoned the edges of himself, and gave it all to her, he had heard the song of the child around them both, the three heartbeats wound together. Now he understood that there was no drawing back from that marriage of souls, that unending vow.

  Alea iacta est.

  CHAPTER 61

  At Beltaine, Rhiann’s visions began, more vivid and more disturbing than anything she had felt before.

  As she stood on the tomb mound, the night was so calm she could clearly hear the crackling of the two great bonfires beneath her, and beyond, further down the ancestor valley, the faint lowing of the cattle that would soon be driven between them for blessing. The stars were faint, outshone by a great bronze moon that had risen over the eastern hills. It hung above the dark slopes, spilling light over the oak woods and leaching the bright colours from the people’s robes, jewels and crowns of hawthorn blossoms.

  As Rhiann stood with her arms out, willing herself to open to the Source, the breath of the crowd spread out below seemed to her like the soft lapping of a wave on a shore. She used its ebb and flow to anchor herself, to seek for and find a thread of the Source, running as a vibration beneath her feet.

  As she did when she searched for Eremon, Rhiann closed her eyes, feeling the love she had for her people, the strength of her need to protect them. And in answer to her summons, a golden glow surged up from the ground, brighter than the moon, and sparkling light streamed up from each person’s heart to meet it. It was their own love, for their land and for each other, made visible to her by the saor.

  The people did not yet know of Eremon’s acceptance of the inevitable Roman return. They knew only that their war lords had brought them great victories, and beaten back the shadows, just as, day by day, the sun beat back the cold of the long dark. They knew only that soon they would lie with each other in the darkness of the valley, and so honour the gods many times in the long nights to come. The fields were sprouting, the boats hauling in silver fish, and the woods fruiting with good eating.

  Eventually, Rhiann was able to give herself up to the song that swirled from her mouth, bestowing the Mother’s promise of a season of soft air on bare skin, the tart taste of strawberries, and long twilights that melted into warm, starlit nights.

  It was as Rhiann stood entranced, enveloped by the wings of the people’s joy, that it happened. The world around her abruptly darkened.

  And she was in a wind-whipped, shadowed place with the salt of a wild sea stinging her face, her arms still outstretched, the insistent tug of wind on her sleeves. The golden wave of light was now made of night and freezing water, rearing above her in white-capped, whirling fury, an ocean wave higher than a cliff, which would bring death in moments.

  Someone called her name, a name to which she once had answered, though no longer. The voice was urgent, yet also sought to imbue her with calm, so that her growing despair did not claim her. And Rhiann knew the voice as she knew her name, and the strange, familiar shadow of the woman’s headdress outlined against the lightning. Her robes, pulled against her body by the screaming wind, were of a curious, shimmering cloth, the jewels on her rings unlike anything she had seen, and yet she knew them.

  The imperious voice came again. ‘Hold this in your soul!’ it cried. ‘Do not forget!’

  And then Rhiann was tumbling, her mouth and nose filling with salt water. Desperate to clear her lungs she cried out, and suddenly found herself returned to the Beltaine rite, stumbling to the bench on the mound. She sank on to it, gripping the edges of the seat, head forced down to her knees. Immediately, Linnet was there.

  ‘Did
you see it?’ Rhiann gasped, her hands fluttering over her chest, for she couldn’t breathe.

  Linnet squatted beside her, her anxious eyes swimming in and out of Rhiann’s wavering sight. ‘See what? What ails you?’

  Rhiann sucked desperately at the air, clung to every wisp of it. Abruptly, the dizziness that had risen up ebbed away, and the night leaped into focus: firelight flickering on Linnet’s face; the ragged music of pipe, flute and drum; the raucous cries of the people. Even the cloying scent of the roast boar was welcome to Rhiann, for it meant fire and warmth, that the sucking, freezing sea had been no more than a vision.

  Rhiann shook her head as she coughed, the hawthorn crown on her brow scattering its pale blossoms. Then she forced herself straight. ‘I am well, aunt. A moment of dizziness, that is all. The saor …’

  Linnet turned to take a cup of mead from Eithne, and pressed it into Rhiann’s cold hands. ‘Drink this,’ she ordered. ‘It will draw you back to your body.’

  Rhiann sipped, the warmed mead trailing down her throat.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Eremon’s solid presence was behind her now.

  Rhiann took another deep breath, clutching the pottery cup in both hands. ‘I am well,’ she said, steadying her voice. ‘The Source was strong this night, that is all.’ She closed her eyes, concentrating on the glow of warmth between her fingers. ‘Please do not worry.’

  Eremon’s hand stroked the hair back from Rhiann’s temples. ‘A fine sentiment, but quite beyond me.’ He addressed Linnet now. ‘I will take her back to the dun. She shouldn’t be doing this when she carries the child.’

  ‘Eremon!’ Rhiann struggled to rise, her hands on her belly, which was still only a subtle swelling beneath her robes. ‘I am the Ban Cré, and it is my duty to hold the Mother’s light for the people. The saor does no harm to the child; we are both well.’ She said it emphatically, holding Linnet’s eyes now. This Beltaine might be their last together. She must be with her people, all of them. ‘I will sit a while, and warm myself, and watch the dancing.’ She turned to Eremon. ‘I won’t miss this Beltaine.’

  Eremon nodded slowly, with resignation, but kept close to her for the remainder of the night, fetching her moon cakes and mead, and seating her between his legs on the valley slopes, so he could wrap his cloak around them both.

  In contrast to the wild antics of the Epidii, Conaire and Caitlin and the rest of Eremon’s men were subdued. They knew why Eremon had instructed Conaire to push the warriors so hard all through the long dark, why he quizzed the Epidii scouts every night, and scratched out endless new versions of his charcoal maps, poring over the lay of Alba’s land.

  ‘What do you think the Romans will do, my lord?’ Rori asked later, in a low voice, tossing a dagger restlessly in his hands as he watched Eithne by the fires.

  ‘Agricola will try to force us to face him,’ Eremon answered. Rhiann was conscious of his heartbeat against her ear, the stirring of his muscles when he picked up his mead cup, the rumble of his voice. ‘He knows, as I do, that neither side can ultimately win through these raids and counter raids.’

  There was a long pause before Aedan said, ‘How will he force us?’

  From the corner of her eye, Rhiann saw the swift glance that Conaire sent Eremon.

  ‘We don’t know,’ was Eremon’s simple reply.

  Rhiann was only half listening, for her heart had not resumed its normal beat.

  The vision she had received bore no relation to anything she had experienced before: neither the seeings on the Sacred Isle when she was younger, nor the deep connection to the Mother and the Source that she yearned for; neither the haziness of saor, nor the journeys to the Otherworld.

  It was as if she had been there. Was it some aberration, someone else’s stray memory that had darted between Thisworld and the Otherworld? She dismissed that. It had felt, in truth, like her memory, of another, lost life. And why would she receive her dream of the eagles no longer, yet suddenly receive this? If it was a message, she could see no meaning in it. If it meant she was regaining some power, she did not know why, for she had not yet fulfilled her task. In fact, only two things had changed in recent moons. One was her surrender in the Otherworld; the other was the child.

  And as if in answer, Rhiann suddenly felt a delicate, queer feeling in her womb, a fluttering, like butterfly wings beating against her insides. She gasped, all her racing thoughts forgotten, and her hand cupped the swelling under her cloak.

  The gasp was so faint that Eremon and Conaire remained oblivious. Only Caitlin heard, her small face rosy in the firelight, peeping out from the circle of Conaire’s arms. And when Caitlin met Rhiann’s gaze, her eyes were shining.

  Eremon waited only long enough for the worst effects of the Beltaine mead to wear off, before he dragged all the warriors back to the training field the day after the festival.

  Yet as Rhiann returned from the riverbank that afternoon, a damp bag of lily tubers and comfrey leaves looped across her chest, she glanced up to the inner palisade in case he was there. Eremon had resumed his own training, and command of the warriors with Conaire and Lorn, but he often broke away to climb the crag, and there observe the war games from above.

  Coming through the Moon Gate, Rhiann carefully climbed the stairs to the staked wall built on the rock. ‘Cariad.’ Nestling up behind Eremon, she rubbed the back of his neck, and reached around to kiss his jaw. ‘I see you thinking much, but resting little.’

  Eremon kept his eyes fixed on the men below. ‘There will be little rest from now on. I cannot afford it, at least.’ The day was overcast, with a threatening dark bank of clouds rolling in from the sea, which is what had driven Rhiann back inside. The cold, gusting wind was now drying the sweat on Eremon’s sleeveless tunic and bare arms. He had obviously been training hard, making up for lost time.

  ‘You cannot afford to become ill, either, from pushing yourself too much.’ Rhiann followed Eremon’s gaze, because he didn’t seem to be listening to her. Across the river meadow, Conaire and Lorn were now gesturing angrily at each other, Lorn from his chariot, Conaire on foot.

  Yet while in the past Conaire would have probably put an end to the argument with his fists – and laughed while he did it – now he reacted as only Eremon would, folding his arms and planting his feet, calm authority written into the line of his shoulders. At last Lorn threw up his hands, spun the chariot with an expert flick of the reins, and tore back up the field to rejoin his men, mud flying grandly from his wheels. Without another glance, Conaire turned back to his foot warriors, directing them in another tight, wheeling formation.

  Rhiann sighed and leaned her arms on the palisade, stretching her aching back. ‘I don’t understand why Lorn still acts this way, after all that has happened.’

  ‘Do you not? He has his eye on the aftermath of this war, wife, that is all. He gave me his oath, but he must be seen to challenge me as well, or be thought weak by those he rules.’

  Rhiann threw her hands up. ‘Men! I cannot see women getting themselves into such a muddle.’

  Yet Eremon did not respond to her teasing, and there was a frown between his brows now, as his agitated fingers tapped the oak stakes. Rhiann placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. ‘Tell me,’ she said.

  ‘You have enough to carry,’ Eremon replied grimly.

  Rhiann shifted the bag across her, and patted the swelling. ‘We are your family, babe and I. All fears must be faced together now.’

  Eremon kissed her fingers, his eyes still veiled. ‘You know them well. Agricola will come, he must come, this season. I feel it. We will, the gods willing, have an army to match his. All I need to know, and decide, is how the pieces will be moved across the board.’

  ‘Yet there is still something else,’ Rhiann said quietly.

  Eremon sighed, his eyelids flickering shut for a moment. ‘Where is the quiet, plump little cow-herder’s daughter when I need her?’

  ‘You mean the one who never asks you anything? The one who bores you sill
y?’

  ‘Aye, that one.’ Amusement warmed Eremon’s eyes.

  Rhiann smiled sweetly. ‘This is not very informative, Eremon.’

  Eremon grunted in exasperation, and gripped the palisade. ‘Saying it aloud seems some kind of defeat …’

  ‘What is it?’ Rhiann demanded, her patience wearing thin, the wind cold on her drying dress.

  Eremon raised his chin; Rhiann saw the resignation clearly in his eyes. ‘I think we must abandon Dunadd.’ As Rhiann drew in her breath, he added hastily, ‘Only for this season, not for ever. I know Agricola will take a stand, but not where. If our fighting force was mobile, we could react much quicker.’

  Closing her eyes, Rhiann saw a flash of Dunadd as she had once seen it in a vision: an empty, grass-smooth mound. Her throat suddenly ached.

  ‘Dunadd is a target,’ Eremon continued. ‘Our men would move more freely and fight more wholeheartedly if they knew their loved ones were safe, and it means we will not have to leave warriors to guard it, either.’ At last he glanced sidelong at Rhiann, plainly apprehensive. She took a deep breath. ‘I agree.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. Agricola has struck at Dunadd twice now, and you cannot afford to be concerned for us when you are so far away.’ She looked directly at Eremon, his relieved smile going some way to easing the barb lodged in her chest. ‘It makes sense, Eremon. Calgacus’s people took to the mountains last year. We can, too.’

  He was watching her closely now. ‘Can we?’

  Rhiann clasped his hand, for her own fingers felt so cold. ‘Yes. We can survive in the warm season; survive and be safe. After all, you say this war will not be fought in the hills, but in the open.’ Rhiann bit her lip, her eyes fixed on the village below, its pall of cooking smoke blown into long streamers by the wind. ‘It is just … as my dream comes no more, there is no guidance there from the Mother.’ She shivered, and leaned into his side. ‘I will follow what you say.’

  Eremon drew back to look down at her, squeezing her fingers. ‘Rhiann. The abandonment of Dunadd I must leave to you.’