Dreaming the Hound (48 page)

The last kiss landed carefully, placed in the hollow of her neck, where the two ends of the torc stood apart. ‘Whatever happens, I will love you. For today, for now, can we let that be enough?’

XXVIII.

‘I bring gifts, gifts for the boudica’s army, let me in!‘The hammering on the gates matched the hammering in the forge and it was only by chance that Graine passed the knot hole and saw the shape silhouetted against the snow outside. She hauled the oak bar from its sockets and stood back as a broad, grey-haired woman drove a team of five broad horses through the gates. Allowed to stop, the beasts stood buckle-kneed and steaming in the falling snow. The wagon they had drawn rolled half a hand forward and then sank to its axles in ground that was not overly soft.

‘Thank you. I was beginning to think the Eceni had abandoned the guest laws in their quest to be free of Rome.’

The broad wagonwoman leered her thanks. Her face twisted unpleasantly and she swayed as she sat. When she threw the reins at the head of her lead horse and jumped down, she stumbled as she landed.

Not since the worst of ‘Tagos’ winters had Graine seen anyone walk abroad the worse for drink. The guest laws made no provision for a drunken woman driving her horses into the steading.

Chewing her lip, Graine looked at the ground, and then to the forge, but her mother was hammering sword blades and was too far away to reach. In any case, she was too busy to be disturbed by the minor difficulty of a drunken guest; they were two months from spring and the gathering of the war host and there was the limited stock of iron to be made into blades and the Boudica the only smith in the steading. She could not be called from the forge for anything less than the sight of a legion marching up the trackways.

The problem must be dealt with by other means, therefore. Looking again, Graine saw that the woman did not smell of either ale or wine, but of wet wool and wetter leather and spent, sweating horses. She leaned against the side of the wagon for support, holding it with her left hand. Her right hand, shoulder and hip were all crooked, as if they had once been broken and then set later, badly. Her hair was not entirely grey; threads ran through that were as richly red as the Boudica’s.

Without the leer, her face would have been handsome. On the shoulder of her cloak, hidden in folds of sodden wool, was a brooch in the shape of the boar, the sign of the Dumnonii, who fought Rome in the far southwest with all the tenacity and savagery of the beast from which they took their mark.

Put together, all these things gave a name as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. Graine felt herself flush. Shamefully late, she gave the salute of an apprentice to an elder dreamer of great power and said, ‘Welcome to Gunovar, daughter to Gunovic, who gave his life for Macha at the invasion battles.’

The rest of what she knew ran silently in her mind, and doubtless could be read on her face: ‘You were one of the foremost dreamers of your people until you spent four days under the care of the legions’ inquisitors. Your warriors stormed the fortress to free you, losing half their number in the battle. The songs of that have reached us, but not the tales of how the legions acted afterwards, or of how you dream now, with your body broken.’

‘Indeed.’

The woman’s leer was weighted now with irony, all turned inward, none of it for Graine. It was not clear if she answered the salute, the welcome, or all that had not been said.

It was hard to look at her face, knowing how it might have been before the burns; easier to watch her eyes, where the pain and the humour met and each became more mellow. There was a great deal of humour. It occurred to Graine that Ardacos would like this woman, and not for the dryness of her humour alone.

Gunovar returned the dreamers’ salute with some elegance, managing in a single movement to acknowledge Graine’s relative youth, while implying a depth of dreaming equal to her own.

She said, ‘And you are Graine, hare-dreamer and daughter to the Boudica. I am honoured to meet you. Could you see to my horses while I talk to your mother? They’ve drawn me bravely for nearly a month and I would not have them die for lack of care now that— Ah, you’re here, finally. I wondered how long it would take for you to notice you had company.’

Very few people spoke to the Boudica in that tone of voice. Fewer, since she had taken the torc after ‘Tagos’ death. Airmid might have done so still when they were alone, but nobody else that Graine knew of. She looked to her mother, and saw that she was grinning, and that the incomer, therefore, was that rarity to be treasured: a genuine friend.

‘Did you? That would be why you announced yourself so fulsomely.’ Breaca had reached the cart horses and was rubbing them behind the ears where the harness had chafed. Stooping, she ran her hand down the legs of the sweat-riven bay that was closest.

‘I thought my daughter was greeting you admirably. She’s too well mannered to tell you that you’ve ruined a good horse and it will take us until halfway through summer to heal it.’

‘And you’re not.’

Breaca hoisted herself up on the spoke of a wheel, reaching into the wagon. ‘No. The draught horses of the Dumnonii are legend. What have you brought that makes it worth harming one of your greatest— Ah. Did the gods whisper in your ear or has news of our need reached the southwest?’

The sides of the cart were too tall for Graine to look inside directly. All she could see in those first moments after the oiled cover slid away was the wash of dull blue-grey reflected in her mother’s eyes and the gratitude and reverent joy, as of a lifetime’s prayers answered, in her voice. She did not have to be a dreamer to know what was inside.

Gunovar waved a hand lightly, as if driving a year’s worth of iron across the land past two legions in the dead of winter were nothing of note. ‘I’m not so closed to the dreaming as you might think. Airmid sent whisperings and I heard them, but in any case,

word of war travels on the wind and the wind has been strong this winter. News of the Boudica’s army has reached those who would support it. To fight Rome and win, you need iron; so much is obvious even had Nemain not walked through my nights. This is all we have. The rest we need for our own battles. Will it be enough?’

‘I’ll make it enough.’ Breaca jumped down to stand in the wagon, ankle deep in iron. She lifted a bar and held it up to the wind and the snow, sighting along its length as if it were already a blade.

Gunovar stood by, watching, and was watched in her turn by Graine. The broad woman was broken and not fully mended, but she had the strength of mind and flesh to drive a wagon train through mud and ice alone. She had, in fact, the build of a smith.

Breaca already knew it. She crouched at the edge of the wagon and held the raw iron across her hands, like a blade. Passing it down to the woman below, she said, ‘Gunovar, your father was one of the greatest smiths of his day. I have seen your work and you have his skill, if not more so. Will you stay and help me in the making? As much as iron, I need another smith. The legions slaughtered ours when they broke the blades in Scapula’s time. I can’t make all this into swords and spears before the fighting begins in spring.’

Gunovar smiled, and her face was almost even. ‘If you listen to the hero tales, you could fashion an army of blades in one day from the fires of your forge and then fight Rome singlehanded. Fortunately, I don’t believe all of the tales, only those parts I hear first hand. Of course you can’t arm your war host on your own. Why else do you think I have come?’

With Gunovar’s help, the production of weapons resumed faster than before, although with pauses now to train the she-bears in their use. Graine had been right: Ardacos did like the broad woman with the broken body, and not only for the dryness of her wit. Together, these two took Cunomar’s honour guard and began to fashion them into the core of an army.

Two months after the midwinter night of the all-dark, Breaca took a break from her hammering and called the honour guard into council. Forty-nine youths gathered in the great-house where they had taken their spear-trials, flushed with the promise of action. They were not disappointed when each was given an arm band, made precisely to fit, with the she-bear stamped on one side and the serpent-spear that was the mark of the Boudica on the other. With this as their sign of surety, she sent each back to the village, steading or settlement that had once been home, and thence

on to all those neighbouring.

Each bore the same message: ‘Breaca nic Graine, first born of the royal line, summons the warriors of the Eceni nation to gather at the site of the horse fair by the first new moon after the spring equinox. The she-bears will guide those who do not know the way, or are wary of winter travel. Snow is your best protection. Travel early and in small numbers and pray that the winter holds and the legions do not move early from their forts.’

Thus was called into being the first war host of the Eceni to gather since the Roman invasion.

XXIX.

IN THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS, CLOSE TO THE DREAMERS’ ISLE OF Mona, the fighting began before the end of winter.

Snow lay knee deep; thicker in the valleys and thinner on the shoulders of the mountains where the wind carved it close. The peaks were frozen ice caps, inaccessible to man and beast. None of these prevented Rome’s auxiliary cavalry from making increasingly wide-ranging forays into the mountain ranges west of their fortress base, or the warriors of Mona from attacking them whenever and wherever possible.

Wrapped in an oiled cloak for warmth, Valerius lay face down on packed ice under the notional cover of a wind-stripped hawthorn and looked down on the valley below where a Gaulish cavalry wing had made camp the night before. Dawn was breaking, bright and cold, so that the light was silver, with tints of blue and gold as the sun burned the horizon. A late mist rose and thinned and what had been a sea of grey became, slowly, lines of tents in perfect order, with two larger ones for the officers at one end.

At the end opposite these, nearer the neck of the valley, fifty riderless horses milled restlessly in a makeshift enclosure. To either side, small moments of violence made flurries in the mist and presently, when Valerius looked, two sentries of the Gaulish cavalry lay supine in the snow, leaking redly from throat and groin. A white cloth flapped once near the tents behind the enclosure. To Valerius’ left, a figure edged out from the lee of a boulder and lifted a knife blade high. There was barely light enough to see by; the polished iron flickered, greyly, but enough, signalling safety, and permission to proceed.

At the signal, two shapes darted forward from the tumble of rocks on the other side of the valley. The ropes of the makeshift corral sagged and separated where they had been cut. When a

bundle of rotting wolf skin and fat was hurled into their midst, the entire herd had a clear route of escape. The panicked drum of their hooves filled the length of the valley and the mountains beyond.

No man could sleep through that, and the Gauls, if they had any sense, had been sleeping lightly and were not drunk. Within moments, the tents began to empty. On the hillside opposite, three warriors ran lightly up away from the enclosure and the bodies on either side. They were out of range long before the first javelins were hurled at them.

There was no need any longer for secrecy. The figure on Valerius’ left was Braint of the Brigantes, in the Boudica’s absence Warrior of Mona, leader of this raid and the half-dozen that had gone before.

She spat on the ground in thanks to the gods and squirmed backwards and out over the crest of the hill to where three other warriors waited at a small, smouldering fire. They left on her signal, skidding light-footed down the scree, bearing ropes of woven rawhide and pouches of winter stored corn and twists of salt with which to catch up the panicked cavalry horses when they tired and came to rest beyond the mouth of the valley.

None of them, neither Braint nor those who followed her, acknowledged Valerius’ presence, nor did he expect them to. He stood up, shaking the snow from his cloak, and stretched, tentatively, easing cold joints.

His shoulders no longer hurt, which still amazed him. From the moment at the end of autumn when Longinus had sent him, broken and beaten, back to Mona, every part of him had screamed in pain. Bellos had taken charge of his healing, under instruction from Luain mac Calma. Through the slow months of foul infusions, sipped day and night, of poultices and bindings and the indignities of nursing, there had been a perverse satisfaction in finding first hand that he had been right and that, even blind, the Belgic youth made an exceptionally good healer.

Until midwinter, Valerius’ bones had been so bruised and his muscles so torn that simply to sleep through the first part of the night without waking, weeping, had been an achievement. After the solstice, with the gradual lightening of the days, the breaks and the ripped ligaments had begun to heal so that if his sleep was broken, it was not by pain.

Even so, standing on the mountainside, the memory of the inquisitors’ chamber sprang too readily to the surface of his mind. It was hard to look down on the gradually diminishing chaos among the cavalrymen in the valley, to hear the orders shouted in Latin and watch the men form a line and march forward, without feeling again the cringing concussion of fists and feet and staves

that made him want to curl into a ball and hide.

He made himself stand and watch, and not flinch as the Gaulish cavalrymen, deprived of their horses, walked towards but not into the ambush set at the narrow neck of the valley where the wide plain became a gully. They stopped in a huddle, waiting. They were not stupid; the question was not whether an ambush had been laid, only by how many they were outnumbered and whether the natives had confined themselves to spears and boulders, or whether they kept slingers among them, against whom there was no real defence except distance.

There were slingers; Valerius had watched them leave Mona and had a fair idea of where they were stationed in the snowy scrub of the gully’s walls. Even as the officers conferred, the first slingstone cracked down from the high ground and the first of the auxiliaries died. The sound came after the sight, blustered by the wind, so that the man had already fallen and his ghost walked loose before the sharp peal of his cry floated up to the high ground above.