Dreaming the Eagle (47 page)

Another new hand reached into the horse-skin and her mind said to her, ‘Black.’

‘Cerin of the Votadini is twenty-fifth of the thirty.’

Five black pebbles lay among two hundred and fifty-four white. Three warriors of the second year remained to take the call.

Two.

The whine in her ears grew louder and reached a higher pitch. The pulse rushed in her head, lifting her clear of the ground. The tension could be tasted, metallic on the tongue. Her heart slowed, and each beat crashed against the cage of her ribs. Venutios’ mouth made a shape and the name floated towards her, slow as a leaf on a pond. She stepped forward to meet it.

‘Breaca of the Eceni.’

There was warmth in his voice and a recognition of the battles she had fought, the one against Amminios that had changed her life and those others, smaller, staged as tests in the school. In the silence after was a smile and a reminder of a sword fight, one on one, when she had broken Venutios’ blade on her own.

Three steps to the fireside and three more to the slate. The elder grandmother waited on one side, as real as the heat. Eburovic was less real, less solid, but she remembered the smell of him, fresh from the forge. Both of these were a part of her; on Mona, she could find them with ease. She set both feet on the slate and gazed across the fire pit and her heart cried out for the one she had never seen, for the one she sought in the quiet of every night and had not yet found. In the last moments before stretching across the fire, she could have prayed to Briga to give her a black stone and did not; she prayed for Ban.

Who was not there.

Airmid was there, surprisingly close, and one other, not clearly seen, and then her arm was bathed in melting heat and her hand was slipping through a drum-tight hide and if the vessel held dozens on dozens of stones she did not feel them, just the one that came to her hand as if made for it. She closed her fingers and drew out her arm and her mind said to her, ‘Black.’

‘Breaca of the Eceni is twenty-sixth of the thirty.’

She turned left and walked to the waiting group. Twenty-five pairs of eyes watched her, weighing her worth and her chances of success. The stone burned like red iron in her hand. Her soul wept.

A warrior of the Cornovii joined her shortly afterwards and there were three stones left. Those still to choose had been on Mona a year or less. In a while, all that remained were the dozen who had come across in a single group at the equinox. They clustered together like sheep, raw from the crossing and the change in life that was Mona. In their own tribes, they had been the best of their age, possibly the best in living memory. Now, each was simply one amongst many, all equally good, all still unproven.

‘Braint of the Brigantes is twenty-eighth of the thirty.’ A lean, blackhaired girl took her place on Breaca’s left, her face stiffly white. She was one of the northern Brigantes, distant kin to Venutios, and her name was that of the goddess in the far northern tongue of her people. Breaca knew nothing else of her history or skills. In a moment, the girl’s cousin joined her, a broad-shouldered boy with red hair and fair skin: twenty-ninth.

Those left dispersed, one by one, white after white until only one warrior remained. He was the youngest and the newest to Mona and he approached the fire with the smile of one who sees his destiny clear before him. Breaca watched him stretch across the fire and knew herself split. The part of her that reasoned said that if there had been two thousand pebbles and only one was left, then that one must be black. The other part, which saw the greater pattern of things, said, quite clearly, ‘White’ - and was correct.

The boy stared at his palm in horror. There was no doubting the colour. He had drawn white and must leave. Close to weeping, he stepped back from the fire and began the long walk round to the dreamers’ side and the way out.

Numbly, Breaca watched him go. She had no foreknowledge of the testing but her life’s experience had taught her that, if the gods required thirty warriors to set out together, they should be given exactly that. She saw Maroc share a look with Talla, who nodded. A pile of white pebbles lay at Maroc’s feet where the departing warriors had placed them. Bending, he scooped them up and counted them in handfuls through the cut in the hide so they landed, ringing, against the copper floor of the vessel. As the last few fell to silence, Venutios raised his head and said, ‘Caradoc of the Ordovices.’

He was not there. He could not be there. Breaca had seen his face and felt his presence when she had picked her own stone and had known him a ghost of her past, not her present. When the movement began far back in the still ranks of the dreamers, she was certain it was someone else coming forward to explain to Venutios his mistake. It was well known that Caradoc had spent the autumn in the land of the Ordovices; he could not be in the greathouse.

She had forgotten that Venutios was Warrior, and did not make mistakes. The front row of dreamers split and swayed and when it came together Caradoc stood on the dreamers’ side of the fire pit, his face calm, his hair dulled to straw by the torchlight and his eyes bright as ice. She felt his presence as a mule kick to the chest.

She was not alone. Surprise hissed through the ranks of dreamers. Far back, a woman said, ‘He is not of the warriors’ school. He cannot take part in the choosing.’

‘That is not so.’ Talla’s voice cut through the rest. ‘The laws are clear on this. Those who train with the Warrior are of the school for that day if for no other. Venutios.’ She turned, raising an arm. ‘Have you trained today with Caradoc of the Ordovices?’

‘I have. He came to me this morning and we practised with sword and spear before the work of the school began.’ Venutios was Warrior. None doubted his word.

‘Then it is so.’ Talla turned back. ‘Caradoc of the Ordovices -had all thirty been chosen, your name would not have been called. As it is, there remains one black pebble between the bull’s horns. Sufficient white have been added to make one hundred in all. Your test will be no less great than the others’. You may approach the slate.’

He had a long way to walk round the edge of the fire pit. Breaca watched him, feeling sick with a dread that had nothing to do with the choosing of pebbles. She did not doubt that he would pick the black stone; the gods had spoken merely by his presence and they would want him of all people among the thirty taking the tests. The sickness came rather from his presence as it had done each of the few times they had met since the death of her father and the theft of Ban’s body.

Caradoc had not come to see her in the long summer months immediately after Amminios’ attack as Breaca had thought he might. She had spent the time helping Airmid with the wounded or working out in the fields, trying to plant and weed and gather the same harvest as they might have done before losing so many people in the battle. The work left her exhausted and irritable and she would have made poor company, but the thought of him gave colour to days that might otherwise have passed in shades of grey and she was grateful for it.

In the space of his absence, the elder council of the Eceni had met, absolving him of bloodguilt, together with his father and Togodubnos. Maroc had crossed the country from Mona to attend, to ensure that this was so. The dreamer’s word had not swung the council - no-one with sense wished to declare war on the Trinovantes - but his presence had spoken strongly for the need to maintain an amicable peace. Cunobelin had sent blood-gifts of untold worth and had declared in public, before a gathering of elders, that his middle son was no longer welcome in his presence and that the lands and ports south of the sea-river which had formerly been granted to Amminios were to be given instead to Cunomar, son of Togodubnos, to be held by the latter until the child came of age. Togodubnos himself had ridden up alone to offer his own heartfelt regrets and to restate his wish for continued friendship with the Eceni. Caradoc alone had neither visited nor sent word.

When he came, finally, it was with a shipload of yearlings on the back of a summer’s trading in Hibernia and the west coast of Gaul. He rode in through the gates with the dawn on the day of the equinox with Segoventos for company. Breaca had been awake through the night, sitting watch over Airmid, who had been seeking Ban’s soul in the grey lands of the unsettled dead. The attempt had failed, as it had done nightly since the attack, and Airmid had fallen into an exhausted sleep from which it was not safe to wake her. Breaca had called Hail to heel and, without waiting for the hound to join her, had walked down to the river to wash away the dust and disappointment of another night. She met Caradoc outside the men’s house. He was wearing her brooch with red horsehair dangling from the loops and grinning like a child and playing with Hail and looking around for Ban, or for signs of his longnights. His first words, thrown out in play, were, ‘I thought the Eceni honoured the men returning from their longnights with greater ceremony than this?’

He had been trading with strangers for three months and had travelled without pause from the coast; it was not reasonable to expect that he would have heard the news. She knew that, even as she drew her blade and laid the edge of it against his neck, pressing into the skin so that the great vein beneath stood out blue. He stopped smiling before the iron touched him, but did not move. He had sailed for days without break and ridden through the night and was pushed to the edge of exhaustion and he still thought faster than any man she knew. While Segoventos blustered, he raised a hand, his eyes wide and fixed, his mouth set, saying only, ‘Ban is dead?’ and then, when she nodded, not trusting herself to speak, he said, ‘Amminios. I’m so sorry. I should have known. Tell me what happened.’

The tale of the battle took far less time to tell than it had to fight. At the end of it, he had borrowed a fresh horse and ridden south, giving no reason but promising to return before the moon was out. He did so, within a time that meant he had ridden without rest. The horse was ruined, but he brought back others and, more important, details of the ceremony Amminios had used when he had sacrificed the dun filly to the Roman gods.

Of all the blood-gifts from his family, it was the only one of worth. Luain came shortly after to join Airmid and the recovering Macha in the search for Ban’s soul. When it was clear they could do nothing alone, they called in all the dreamers of the Eceni, from the northern coast to the far southern border, and together they spent three nights without break hunting between the worlds to find a boy and his horse. They succeeded in the smaller part; the dun filly was found and guided to rest in Briga’s care, but Ban was beyond them and they stopped their search in the end, fearing to lose dreamers in a place whence they might not return.

The warriors sat vigil throughout and Caradoc with them, eating nothing and drinking only water for three nights and three days while the dreamers worked. When news came of their failure, Caradoc wept as if Ban had been his own brother, or son. Breaca was beyond weeping. The loss was too great; it burned a wasteland in her soul that no amount of tears would heal. She left the vigil grounds and went hunting with Hail and when she came back she spoke to no-one.

Airmid took nine days to recover from the search. At the end of that time, Breaca gathered the horses and Hail, ready for the journey to Mona. Caradoc stayed to see them go. On the morning of their leaving, he sought her out alone near the paddocks. It was the first time she felt the aching dread at his presence although she was not clear, then, why it should be so. She would have walked past him if she could, but he stood in the gateway and reached to take the bridle of Airmid’s colt so she had to stop. His eyes were too bright for the morning and his colour high. His hair, bleached to white gold by a summer’s sailing, was darkly damp from the stream and recently cut. The wind twisted it across his face, sticking it to his cheek. He held out a small offering wrapped in deer-skin and said, ‘This is yours.’

She met his gaze evenly. It was the most she could do. ‘There is no need. You brought the only gift you could. What happened was not your fault.’

‘I know. This is not a gift.’ He offered it again. ‘Take it. See what it is.’

She did as he asked. Courtesy and the guest-laws required it. Inside the wrap lay the serpent-spear brooch with the tokens of red horsehair still hanging free from the lower loops. He had polished it and replaced the pin but it was the same otherwise as when she had given it - an impulse born of a moment that had come to have meaning only afterwards, and had held it, until now.

He was waiting for her to speak. Baldly, she said, ‘Don’t you want it?’

‘Of course. What I want is not at issue …’ He stopped and began again on a new breath. ‘If I kept it, would it have meaning, as it once did?’

Comprehension came on her slowly, with visceral force. Since the battle, she had not known the loss of him, only the pain of Eburovic’s absence and the crippling desolation that came from the theft of Ban. Throughout the long summer, his promise, and her certainty that, whatever had happened, he would keep it, had nurtured a spark of life in her soul when everything else was dead. Now, in his presence, standing close enough to touch, a physical sickness gripped her. It was impossible to be with him alone without the intervention of the dead; he smiled and she saw Ban smile; he tilted his head to the side with his hair stuck to his cheek and it was black hair, not gold, and she wanted to stretch forward and smooth it away as she would have done for Ban; he wept and she saw Ban, grieving for the dun filly; and because she saw Ban in him, she saw also Amminios commit the ultimate act of desecration and take from the battlefield a body not offered to Briga. Even here, with Caradoc so close that she could feel the warmth from his skin, could smell the sheep’s oil on his tunic and the smoke from last night’s fires, he bore a shadow that was not his own.

The morning grew cold around her, pinching the flesh of her face. When she needed it most, her voice failed.

‘Thank you.’ Caradoc nodded as if she had spoken. His brief smile was polite, the product of years at his father’s court. ‘It is best to be clear.’ He let go of the colt and reached instead to touch the hilt of her blade as he had done once before when life was quite different. ‘The blade-oath’