Dreaming the Hound (2 page)

He shouted as much to his armourer, slurring only slightly.

The last word had barely crossed to the fires when a hand caught his chin and dragged his head back and up. He did not feel the slice of the knife across his throat, the blade was too sharp to create pain, but it cut down to the bones of his spine, severing the soft tissues in its path. The tidal wave of his life surged out to earth.

The standard-bearer died surprised, and his ghost, surprised, did not know itself dead, only that the night grew suddenly bright, as if noon had come, and that, impossibly, where once had been fire warped shadows, now one of the native warriors knelt in plain

view by the fallen body of a man carving a curse mark on the forehead.

Vindex had lived through too many battles to waste time in questioning the impossible. His sword had already stabbed at the exposed neck of the enemy before he had thought to question the identity of the corpse lying so close to his feet. As his body lunged after, he gave all his breath to a shout that would rouse the entire camp.

His sword, his arm, and the full weight of his weightless body passed through the crouching warrior. His shout, which could cross a battlefield, raised no armoured men to his aid although a decurion of the cavalry, drinking wine by the fire, pulled his cloak tighter and stamped his feet, cursing the sudden cold.

Vindex opened his mouth to shout again and then stopped as the part of him that reasoned realized at last that the men of his watch had not noticed him at all.

‘They can’t hear you. Your people choose not to hear the cries of the slain. It’s your strength and your greatest weakness. You’ll never live safely until you learn to listen to your ancestors and your newly dead.’

The voice that filled Vindex’ head had a different quality from those of the men he had left at the fire; it spoke to his soul, not his ears. The enemy warrior finished carving the curse mark and, rising, turned round.

Thus, for the first time, in the darkest part of the night, with no sun and rain clouds covering the moon, the standard-bearer of the XXth saw the face of his enemy. He saw rain-damp hair the colour of a fox in winter with the warrior’s braids left loose in mourning and the quill of the single crow’s pinion woven in at the left dyed entirely black, for one who has severed all connections to family and tribe to hunt alone; and thereby perhaps to die alone. He saw the blood-wet knife, recently used, saw the sling hanging at the belt beside the pouch of river pebbles and knew with a soul-knowing beyond vision that each stone was painted black, that it might more surely kill those against whom it was sent. He saw the sign of the serpent-spear carved on the brow of the body - his body and, because he had seen the same mark on the brows of other men eight times in the last three days, its meaning was already carved on his liver.

By the cumulation of these, finally, Marcus Publius Vindex, son of Gaius Publius Vindex, knew the identity of the woman who had killed him and thus came to understand that he was dead.

Feeling foolish, he lowered his sword. From the fireside, the armourer shouted a new question with an edge of concern in his voice. The silence which, living, the standard-bearer should have filled stretched too long.

The Boudica rose slowly, sheathing her belt-knife. ‘Whom do you worship?’ she asked. Her mouth did not move but the words became part of the night.

In the same way, Vindex answered, ‘Jupiter, god of the legions, and Mars Ultor, for victory.’ Then, appraising, ‘You should leave. They’ll come soon to look for me. You cannot stand against so many and live.’ The quality of his care surprised him. Dead, he discovered that he harboured neither the hatred nor the terror he had in life.

‘Thank you. I’ll go when I have to. Your men have not yet lit a torch and I have never yet met a Roman who could see well in the rain.’

She grinned and Vindex read no fear in her eyes, only the exhilaration of battle, beginning to wane. He had known that feeling, and the boundless peace that followed it, and knew that it was for these he had fought, far more than the silver he had been paid, and that he was not alone.

Moved by his new compassion, he said, ‘You will never win, fighting as one against many.’

Amused, the Boudica raised a brow. ‘I have heard that before. Not everyone who says it is Roman, but most have been, and all of those were dead.’

‘Then you should listen to us. We bear you no ill will, but can see some things more clearly.’ It was true; the concerns of his life were melting away leaving behind a clarity Vindex had sought throughout his life and never found. ‘I offer you this as a gift, from death to life: if you do not rouse the east of the province to battle, the legions will win and Rome will bleed your people dry.’

The Boudica finished wiping her hands on the turf. She nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Thank you. I will consider your gift in the morning, if I am alive to do so.’ She was no longer smiling, but she did not hate him, either. ‘You should go home,’ she said. ‘Your gods will know you in Rome. They cannot reach you here.’

The armourer shouted a second time, and was not answered. A legionary emerged from the safety of the tent lines and his terror at the sight of the body was far greater than Vindex’ had been. His cry brought the armourer and he, finally, called for torches. Men

ran as they had been trained and if the light behind the tents did not blaze for them as bright as noon, it was enough for the fox-haired warrior to be seen.

She did run then, fluidly and with no great urgency, like a deer that has not yet heard the hounds. The armourer of the second century was a clear-thinking man who abstained entirely from wine. He had also, for three years, been his cohort’s champion spear-thrower, honoured for the speed and accuracy of his casts. He called afresh and five men ran to bring him spears, passing each one new to his palm as the last took flight. Ten were thrown in the space of a dozen strides. The foremost of the torch-bearers saw the eighth one strike and shouted to the armourer and to Mars Ultor, claiming a kill. Vindex, seeing with different eyes, knew that the Boudica was wounded, but had not joined him in death.

From beyond the margins of the camp, her voice filled his head. She sounded breathless and disjointed and he was unable to tell if it was pain that afflicted her, or an overwhelming need to laugh.

‘Go home,’ she said again. ‘The journey to Rome is faster in death, I promise you, and the land is warmer. Why stay here in the rain where you’re not welcome? The legion no longer owns you when you’re dead. You can go where you want.’

The thought had occurred to Vindex more than once in life. In death, joyfully, he understood himself free. Passing through the walls of the officers’ tent and the insubstantial matter of his centurion, he began the not-so-long journey back to Rome.

At the place where he had been, three more men of his watch died in a hail of black-painted river pebbles. The armourer was the last of them.

I AUTUMN AD 57.

I.

THE WATER WAS COLD, AND MADE BROWN BY PEAT AND RECENT rain.

Breaca of Mona, known to all but her family and closest friends as the Boudica, leader of armies and bringer of victory, knelt alone at the side of a mountain stream and washed her face, hands and the bleeding wound on her upper arm in the torrent. The water ran briefly pink where she had been. She cupped clean water in both palms, rinsed her mouth and spat out the iron aftertaste of blood.

A blue roan mare dozed in the shelter of a nearby beech thicket, the end result of a lifetime’s breeding and better than anything

Rome could offer. She was haltered but not tethered and came to call, her feet bound in soft leather to dampen the sound of her progress. Mounted, Breaca travelled north and a little east, moving up into the mountains, keeping to rocky trails where Coritani trackers, paid by Rome, would be least likely to find signs of her passing.

If she had scaled the peaks, she could have looked west past further mountains and across the straits to Mona, but she did not. The standard-bearer’s warning echoed, disturbingly, with the muted footfalls of her mare and would not be made silent. You will never win, fighting as one against many. Vindex was not the first to have warned her of the dangers and futility of fighting alone, or even the second, but he was the enemy and she did not have to trust his opinion.

It was harder to ignore the warnings of those who cared for her; the elders and dreamers of Mona, who watched over her children through her long winter absences, and could not tell them where their mother was or if she had died yet, at the hand of a standard bearer who was not quite as drunk as he might have looked.

Luain mac Calma, the Elder of Mona, had been first, quietly, to say that the Boudica’s life was worth more, and vengeance for one man’s life worth less, and he had been followed by a succession of others who claimed to love her and hold her best interests at heart. Only Airmid, dreamer and soul-friend, had always understood why Breaca needed to hunt alone as she did and had never spoken out, openly or in private, against the black feather braided into the Boudica’s hair and the winter killings that it foreshadowed.

Airmid was on Mona and Mona was another world and Breaca chose not to look at it and thereby not to think about it, or its people.

She passed upwards, and the track became rockier. Grey stone lined either side of the tracks, marbled by swirling lichens. She dismounted after a while and unbound the mare’s feet, that they might grip better on the wet stones. The rain became less; it had belonged to the night. Clouds on the eastern horizon parted to show the first knife lines of light. Lacking any binding, the wound in her arm slowly ceased to bleed and ached only a little. The officer whose spear had caught her had kept his weapons scrupulously clean, for which she was grateful.

Half a day’s ride to the south, at the overnight campsite where a standard-bearer, an armourer and two junior officers of the XXth legion had died, a wisp of greased smoke rose at an angle to the sky. Crows roused and called and began to drift towards the scent of burning men.

The thick-set, grey-haired man stooped over the neck of his horse with his attention fixed on the trail did not appear to notice either of the two slingstones that cracked on the rocks near his head. His horse, noticing both, shied a little, throwing him off balance, and he clutched ineffectually at the saddle. The care of his gods kept his head from cracking on the stones of the path as he fell and a cushion of heather gave him safe landing but he did not rise afterwards, even as Breaca knelt at his side.

‘Where are you hurt?’

He flicked dry, cracked lips. ‘I have the flux. You shouldn’t touch me; you’ll be tainted.’

‘Maybe, but the harm is done now.’ Breaca pushed her good arm under his shoulders and levered him to his feet. She would have given him water but carried none. In its absence, she used the sick man’s horse for support, wedging his shoulder against the saddle. He swayed and made himself stand.

His accent, his horse and the weave on his tunic were all of the northern Eceni. A mark worked in ink in the skin below his collarbone showed the falcon and running horse linked. Breaca ran her forefinger along from horse to falcon and felt the small nodule of amber buried under the skin beyond the falcon’s wingtip that verified the mark’s authenticity.

‘Are you from Efnis?’ she asked, and when he nodded, ‘Why were you following me?’

‘I wasn’t. The mountains are alive with Romans and I would deliver my message from a living mouth to living ears if the flux does not kill me first. I was trying to reach the forests near the coast to take shelter there before crossing to Mona.’

Breaca shook her head. ‘You won’t reach them in time. The men of the fifth cohort are stationed near the coast. The third cohort lost four men last night: the signal fires have been lit since dawn, waking every other legionary into action; they will have ringed the forests long since. I know of somewhere closer that may be safe if we are permitted to enter. Can you ride another two dozen spear throws?’

‘If there’s shelter at the end of it, yes.’

The cave mouth was a vertical crease in the cliff face set by the gods at such an angle that it was invisible unless approached exactly from the south-east. The hound-sized rock placed by the ancestors to guard the entrance was patched with damp moss and hidden by the grasses that had grown up around it. In years past,

it would have been scoured clean when the ancestors were honoured at each old moon and the carved marks swirling on its surface would have been made bold again with red ochre and white lime and ash. In the bleak new world of Roman occupation, those who should have done so were either dead or had taken refuge on Mona and the rock and the cave mouth behind it were blurred with neglect.

Breaca had only passed the cave once, and that the previous winter, but had seen then what others might not, committing its location to memory without any real intention to use it. She probably would not have attempted it now, had not her need driven her to it; the risks of entering such a place without a dreamer were far greater than the risks of death or capture by Rome.

Standing alone before the hound stone, Breaca said, ‘I offer greetings to the oldest and greatest of the ancestor-dreamers. I will clear your dwelling place as I leave, I swear it. For now, the weeds are my protection as they have been yours. Will you permit me to enter and to bring one other with me?’

A voice beyond the range of hearing said, Who asks?

‘I ask, Breaca nic Graine mac Eburovic, once of the Eceni, once Warrior of Mona, hunting now under the black feather of no-tribe. My mark is the serpent-spear which was yours before me and will be yours again when I have gone.’

The ancestor-dreamer said, So. I endure and you may not. It is good you remember that. Have you come to ask my aid in your vengeance, as you did before?

‘No.’

She was the Boudica, who led thousands into battle, and her palms were sweating. She wiped them on her tunic. It was far easier to face the legions in the rain and the dark armed with nothing more than a knife and a pouch of river pebbles than to speak to an empty cave mouth in daylight. She remembered Airmid, and the fear in her voice when she had last faced the ancestor-dreamer: Airmid, who feared nothing and no-one.