Dreaming the Eagle (48 page)

‘Is void.’ She recoiled from his touch. Her voice, renewed, came too fast and harshly. ‘The blood-debt makes it so. Even did it not, I would absolve you of it.’

‘Then I would renew it.’ One finger remained on her blade and would not let go. His voice matched hers, but was slower.

‘Why?’

‘Because the world contains more people than just us two and some day it may matter that the Eceni are bound to the Ordovices. We do Ban’s memory no honour if we forgo those things that bind us before the gods.’ His eyes were level with hers. His face was raw, stripped of the irony and the striking intelligence that were his defences, leaving him open to see and be seen for what he was: a warrior on the cusp of adulthood, struggling to make himself understood in a field that was new to them both. Only once before, fresh from the sea, had she seen him so unguarded and that had not been within his control as this was now. The exposure unnerved her, and the strength of purpose that drove it. She had experienced his courage in the river-rescue of Dubornos and again facing his father in the forge; she had never thought to face it from the other side. Stricken, she said, ‘I would never dishonour Ban’s memory.’

‘I know.’ His eyes were the colour of stone and as unyielding.

‘Then will you let the oath be renewed?’

‘Yes.’ At the end of a long, stifled impulse to touch him, she folded the deer-skin back over the brooch and pressed it into his palm. ‘And keep this also. If it comes to mean what it did, I will tell you.’

‘Thank you.’ Surprise and pleasure lit his smile. ‘If the time ever comes, you will know where to find me.’

She had always known where to find him, or had thought so. He came and went from Mona as the dreamers did, as if the greater part of him resided there. In the spaces between, he was in the land of the Ordovices, or sailing with Segoventos, visiting tribes from the Brigantes and Caledonii in the north to the Dumnonii in the far south-west, trading and gathering information and finding who favoured Rome and who did not. Always, the ultimate enemy was Rome; his hatred had never waned.

On Mona, he had taken a regular place at the warriors’ school and whereas it had been impossible to avoid him completely, she had always been given warning of his coming. They had met sparingly and always with cause and the pattern had been the same each time: a brief exchange of courtesies and small fragments of news but nothing more. The ghosts of their past stood between them and nothing could be as it had been.

Until now, when he was about to become one of a handful sent on the greatest of warrior’s tests: Caradoc, son of Cunobelin, who had won his spear with three different tribes by the age of twelve; who had never yet failed any test of man or gods; who was bound to Breaca of the Eceni by an oath that prevented each from competing directly against the other.

Venutios’ voice came distantly and with a different tone from all the names he had called before.

‘Caradoc of the Ordovices is thirtieth of the thirty.’

‘We will hold a feast in honour of Venutios. You will hunt for the table. A boar would be good, or a deer.’

‘Is that all?’

‘It is enough. Venutios will guide you. He remains Warrior until a successor is chosen.’

Talla had said it, speaking to the thirty in the grey light before dawn. It was the boy-cousin of the Brigantes who had asked the question - a forward youth, unused to Mona’s ways. No-one else had spoken. To hunt was enough, and whatever came after. At Talla’s command, they had run to collect their hunting spears and knives and whatever dream-tokens would bring them closer to the gods. They were forbidden kill-feathers or any other tokens of war. Breaca, with two others, had been permitted to bring a hound.

Maroc had spoken to them as they gathered again at the gates but he had been no more explicit than the Elder. ‘You can hunt alone or together; the choice lies with each of you. Only know that you must stay together. Venutios will ensure that you do.’

They had filed out through the gates in the order in which they had been named. Maroc had made a mark on each as they passed - a thumb-sweep along the brow of woad thinned with water and egg white, naming them for the older gods of the ancestors. The mark was too pale to be seen but Breaca had felt it dry as she ran, tightening so that the pressure was a constant reminder of his words.

You can hunt alone or together; the choice lies with each of you.

It paid to listen to Maroc. In two years, she had never known him speak without reason and his words rarely had only one meaning. There were no boar near the settlement, that was well known. It gave them time to make decisions. Venutios had led them westwards, setting a fast pace, and the others had settled behind, moving into the wide crescent favoured of harehunters, close enough for each to see and be seen, but not so close that they had any cause to speak.

Breaca was grateful for the chance to run and not to talk. In normal circumstances, she would have hunted alone. She had Hail, who had been taught from the first to hunt in a team of two; the hound was her last living remnant of Ban and his joy in the hunt made it hard to share him. And yet she was one of thirty and even as they gathered before the gates she had felt the threads of them weaving together: the dark, silent knot that was Ardacos with his soul rooted in the ways of the ancestors; the focused vitality of Gwyddhien, shining like polished jet amongst river pebbles; the sharpness of Braint, the blackhaired girl-cousin of the Brigantes, and the obduracy of her redheaded kinsman. Strung out in a line in the heather, they made jewels on a thread, each of them a different colour, each necessary to the whole. Even the dullard of the Dumnonii, who was named in his own tongue for the badger, was revealed, running out in the open, as solidly dependable. Only Caradoc was different, the one not truly of Mona, who, without asking, had put himself on the far left, the place of the shield, the most vulnerable to any attack. He was not part of the weaving, any more than the ghosts who ran in his shadow. She thought that Caradoc, of them all, might choose to hunt alone and waited to see if he did so.

By any standards, it was not a successful hunt. The thirty quartered the island together through the morning and into the late afternoon and found nothing. None of them, in ten years’ experience, had ever known the land so barren but the very fact of frustration knitted them closer, so that, when the cry finally did go up for quarry, they responded as one.

They were near an outcrop within sight of the sea, on the westerly tip of the island, when it happened. The curve of the rocks faced east and was backed by a small hill, from the top of which Gwyddhien called down to say she could see Hibernia, that island on the far western edge of the world that was made visible only on days blessed by the gods. Venutios took it as a sign from the gods and called to Breaca and the others to loose the hounds. They were good hounds, all keen and well tested in the hunt, and in defiance of the empty morning each found a different trail, running forward with a single-minded determination that spoke of deer at least, if not boar. Venutios whooped, or possibly Gwyddhien, and the hunt began in earnest.

The thirty were spread wide and Breaca sprinted down through scrub in Hail’s wake with few others for company. Caradoc ran with her, keeping level with her left shoulder as he had done since morning. His presence marred the sudden exhilaration of the chase, but not so greatly that she could not ignore it; too much was at stake.

‘To the south! Down there in the thorns!’

Gwyddhien called from the top of the outcrop, pointing down into the trees. It was late in the afternoon and the low sun cast her in silhouette, sharply. Her hair had come free of its bindings and flew wild in the wind, black as a crow, the bird of Briga. In this hunt more than any other, the marks of the gods were omens. Calling Hail, Breaca altered the line of her run and plunged into the broad straggle of wildwood that spread out round the base of the crag. Brambles snagged her skin and beech-brush whipped at her eyes. Caradoc left her. She felt a nakedness at her side where he had been. His loss, her gain if she made the kill without him. Still running, she ducked under the low branches of an ash and saw Hail ahead of her, stock still and snarling. Slowing, she crept to him, her spear tight to her shoulder, and looked where he looked, into the depths of the blackthorn.

Tiny, flesh-folded eyes glared red with loathing. Heat and boar-stench filled the space. A tusk glanced white. A grunt gave warning of certain death.

Danger consumed her, perfectly. A full-grown boar could kill a bear, ripping it open from gullet to guts. Songs were sung of lone hunters who had faced one with a spear and made the kill unaided, becoming heroes as they did so, but none knew of it happening in truth. Breaca had heard more honestly, from a singer she trusted, of two hunters who had taken one between them, killing it cleanly with the first cast of each spear. She looked about for Gwyddhien and found instead Ardacos, crouched to her right, still as a stone. His spear was clasped straight at his shoulder and the hunting knife in his left hand was smeared with mud, not to shine in the sun. He was naked but for a loin-kilt of fox pelts and his skin was so brown, he could have been part of the shadow. This was how the ancestors hunted, she could feel it.

She had no idea how long he had been there but it was long enough, and he was the second best choice for Warrior. She opened a palm, asking direction. He put his finger to his lips for silence and made a curve of his arm, showing where she and Hail should go. She nodded and was gone, Hail at her heel.

The sounds of others hunting crashed through the woods. The boar grunted a second warning. A stoat chittered - the sign of Ardacos. She loosed Hail at the thicket and stepped in with her spear - and stepped back, shouting, ‘No! It’s a sow with young. Leave it!’ and was in time to stop Hail but not Ardacos, who was fast as his dream and had already made his cast.

The gods smiled on them. The dark man’s spear struck but did not kill. The sow, enraged, charged in defence of her young. Breaca found she could perform miracles and climbed the blank face of the outcrop, spear in hand, pulling Hail up behind her. She heard Ardacos’ grunt of pain.

They were hunting in the gods’ wood on the gods’ isle and the gods exacted their penance for a mothering beast injured in defiance of their laws. Breaca’s spear had made no wound and so she was not wounded. Ardacos’ had scored along the sow’s shoulder and he was scored as deeply and in the same place, but he had not killed and so he did not die. He rolled away from the strike as a hedgehog.rolls and leaped up to catch the lower limbs of an oak before the beast could turn. An adult male would have circled the tree, waiting three moons if necessary for its quarry to come down, but the sow had young to feed and the scent of hounds fresh in her nostrils and she left him, grumbling, to return to the thorns.

In time, when the beast showed no sign of returning, Breaca climbed down and found a different path out of the wood, skirting wide of the sow’s den. The after-thrill of danger pulsed through her, powerful as winter ale. Hail ran at her side, desperate to hunt again. Ardacos had found a different path, quicker. She met him at the place where the woods stopped and the outcrop began. He was crouched on the heather peeling moss from a rock to seal over his wound. She held the moss for him and cut a strip from the hem of her tunic to bind it on. He took his time, as if the day were young and the outcome still uncertain.

‘You have lost your spear,’ she said. ‘I could go back and get it.’

‘No. It’s not safe to go back. I can make another.’

It was the most she had ever heard him speak. He was ten years her senior and as distant as the most taciturn of elders. She had been on Mona twelve months before he had acknowledged her existence and then it was only to push his blade past a weakness in her guard and land a strike on her wrist that would have severed her hand had it been meant. His face was leathered and closed, like a bat’s. She had never seen him smile. He did so now, disarmingly, pointing back towards the southern end of the outcrop.

‘We lost,’ he said. ‘They’ve taken a different beast.’

‘I know.’ She had heard the death-squeal as the sow attacked. Now she heard Venutios sound the Warrior’s horn in the signal for the rest to gather. ‘Caradoc and Gwyddhien have made the kill.’ She felt it as a change in colour of the weave, a brightening of two threads and a dulling of the rest. She tied off the frayed end of her tunic and picked up her spear. Ardacos was slower, taking time to stretch his shoulder and test the feel of the wound. He caught her arm as she passed.

‘No hurry. They’ll gut the boar and clean it before we move on. It’ll take no more than three of them to manage the beast and the same again to cut a tree to carry it. The rest of us will only sit and watch. We may as well take it easy.’

He was right. The beast was a young male of last season’s brood. They were known sometimes to return to their birth-den for wintering and if the sow was farrowing she did not always take the time to drive them away. It was a good size, big enough to justify two for the kill, not so big as to need three; more than enough to grace the leaving feast of Venutios. The Warrior, who was soon to be merely a warrior, stood back and let Gwyddhien organize the gutting and preparation of the kill while Caradoc led a party to select a tree for the carrying pole.

In the distribution of work, Breaca saw the beginnings of the new Warrior’s retinue. Always there was an inner core of those to whom the most needful tasks were entrusted. With no reason to join them, she sat on the margins and watched others take on new roles. Ardacos, unconcerned, went about his own business. He roamed the outcrop seeking a stave to make a spear haft and, having found one, lit a tiny stick-and-heather fire to harden the point. By the time the two cousins of the Brigantes had lashed the boar to the carrying pole and hefted it onto their shoulders, he was armed again. He smiled again at Breaca as they set out, and said, ‘Don’t let your guard down now, lass. This is more than a boar hunt. It’s not over yet.’