Dreaming the Hound (52 page)

‘Hold!’ Longinus, too, threw up his arm and the singularius who had hurled the spear lowered his second weapon, slowly.

‘Valerius! I wasn’t sure you’d come.’ Longinus clicked his tongue and the Crow-horse trotted forward, as if on parade. It had always loathed parades. Brought neatly to a halt, it stood squarely between the cavalry and the warriors of Mona, facing Valerius. Foam dripped from its bit and its white-rimmed eyes were full of hate, but they had been like that since it was a weanling. Valerius had no idea if it knew who he was.

Longinus, of all men, knew exactly who he was, all the many layers that made him. He himself was unchanged; still the reckless, god-blessed officer who had risked his life to free his soul-friend from the inquisitors, the man who had ridden alongside Valerius in battle for ten years, the man with whom he had bet and won and lost too often to count, the man who rode helmetless into battle with his tawny hair flying free to his shoulders, russet as a rutting stag. His eyes were the striking amber of a hawk and as piercing. There was warmth in them still, amongst the disappointment and impending loss.

Once, when their friendship was new, Valerius had bet this man that he could not stand on rotting ice for fifty heartbeats. They had counted by Longinus’ heart, which had beat faster, and so he had won. Valerius’ heart beat the faster now. His borrowed horse, quivering, felt it and was ready.

Sixty heartbeats had passed since Nydd had reached the summit of the ridge and dipped the standard towards the setting sun. Nothing had come of it yet, and may never do.

‘Congratulations. I never thought you’d find the courage to ride my horse. Has he ever bitten your shoulder?’ Valerius eased his own mount forward, close enough almost to touch. On either side, eight auxiliaries unsheathed their blades and made it clear that a further

step towards their decurion would be Valerius’ last on this earth.

The remaining warriors of Mona grouped together, except for Madb who kept at Valerius’ side, grinning. He felt safe in her presence. She had an instinct for danger that kept more than just herself alive in battle.

She pressed close to Valerius’ left shoulder and, as his heart beat for the hundredth time since Nydd had spun the standard, he felt her stiffen and turn her head a fraction to the left. Too low for anyone else to hear, she said, ‘They’re here. Well done. I thought they’d leave you.’

‘They might yet. Don’t look up.’ Valerius took care not to raise his eyes. Louder, to Longinus, he said, ‘You are about to ask for our surrender?’

‘I would if I didn’t think I’d be wasting my breath. Would you give it?’

‘Six of us against five hundred is not encouraging odds, but then certain death in battle might be preferable to imprisonment at the hands of Rome, particularly for a traitor who is known to have spent the winter on Mona.’

‘It certainly would. You should have escaped with the woman you freed.’

‘Possibly, but then I would not have seen you ride the Crow horse and my life would be the poorer for it. What would you do in my place?’

Longinus grinned. Always, in his smile, there had been challenge and invitation. He reached for his sword and held it out flat. The weapon was Gaulish, made for his reach and his weight, with the crescent moon of the Thracian god embedded in silver in the hilt and the blade worked in the old style, with sinuous lines of blued iron weaving down its length. In the haze of the evening, it glimmered like flat water under moonlight.

Raising his brows, Longinus said, ‘I would fight - what else are we for?’ His blade was his invitation. ‘We have never truly tested each other and it seems to me that you are no longer the mess I believed you to be last summer. My men won’t interfere if you want to test your blade against mine this one last time. You never know, you might win.’

Valerius made a half-salute. ‘I would accept, but if you lift your blade further, you will die, which would be a pity. The warriors behind you on the mountain are the best slingers of Mona and you are easily within range. I’m sorry; their orders were clear and I have

no way to change them from here. If you surrender now, you will not be harmed. Otherwise they will target the first to raise a blade against us.’

He spoke in Latin, loud enough for at least the front ranks of the cavalry to hear. Men who had been relaxed, awaiting the ritual of single combat, looked up and to both sides. Coarse curses in Latin and Thracian scattered through the first ranks and then those behind until, abandoning discipline, the whole wing had spun to face the valley walls.

Valerius raised his arm in one final signal and a glittering wave of sunlit armour appeared on either side as warrior after warrior moved their mounts to the crests of the mountains. They were the greater mass of Valerius’ warriors, less only those who had died in the first clash at the valley’s mouth. Melting back from the battle, they had taken new positions, awaiting the small signal of a slung Pebble to say that Braint was free. Receiving it, they followed the last of their orders so that, like crows on a tree, silently, they lined the ridges from north to south on both sides of the valley without a break. Across the valley’s mouth, ranks of waiting warriors made a wall as solid as any rock.

Longinus alone did not look up. The yellow hawk’s eyes fixed pensively on Valerius. ‘How many?’ he asked.

‘Six hundred. We outnumber you by one hundred horse. I thought it enough. They command the valley; there is no way out. You’re surrounded and outnumbered. In such circumstances, there’s no dishonour in surrender and we have no inquisitors on Mona. You will be given the option to fight for us if you wish. Already, we have a handful of Batavians and a Gaul who ride at our side. If you do not wish to join them, your deaths will be clean and fast.’

Longinus had never lacked courage. Grinning, he said, ‘So you are really not the mess we both thought. I’m glad.’

‘Longinus, that’s not the point, you have to choose. Your men will do as you do, you know that. If you— No!’

Lightning fast, the moon-marked blade struck for Valerius’ head. By instinct alone, he blocked it, and felt the shock run through him to his horse. Iron sang on iron as he ripped his own blade sideways Sparks flew, lighting the air. A dozen slingstones showered around him and two auxiliaries fell. ‘Longinus! Don’t be a fool. You can’t run from a sling— Ah, gods, why did I ever leave you my horse? Let’s go.’

He spoke above a hammering of running horses. The Crow-horse had never allowed its rider to be bested in battle. With or

without Longinus’ command, it had spun on its hocks, high out of danger, and sprung away, heading south. True to their training, the men and mounts of the Ala Prima Thracum followed it.

Valerius followed, on a horse that was slower and already wounded, but still gave him its heart. Madb urged her mount alongside his, making of herself the shield at his shoulder, and together they hurtled south, following the fleeing Longinus who was heading directly for a solid wall of Mona’s warriors, led by Nydd, who had remembered everything he had been told.

XXXI.

THE CLASH OF IRON AND HORSEFLESH AND HUMAN BLOOD AND bone shook the earth to the nape of the valley.

Valerius of the Eceni, once decurion of the Ala Prima Thracum, had lived through many nightmares and found each to be less than the fear he had built. Fighting hand to hand, blade to blade, against men he had led and for whom he had cared, was not the least of these, but also not the greatest. As ever, the exhilaration of battle fired him; the power of the moment and the overwhelming need to survive did not allow time for regret. As never before, he rode understanding the gods who filled him; Nemain’s clarity joined with Mithras’ savage power and he loved them both and his life within them and knew that if he died now, he could be at peace.

He fought, too, with Madb, a shield-mate who kept him safe and for whose life he cared and that was something he had missed for so long he had forgotten how it felt. He raised his borrowed blade and pushed his borrowed horse forward and the war hound ran at his side as it was born to do and he remembered that he, who would be a dreamer, was nevertheless a warrior and that life would not be complete without both.

The air was dense with man-sweat and woman-sweat and horse sweat and spittle and soon with an ocean of blood and sliding guts that made the footing unsafe and required a new dimension of watchfulness. Valerius chose his man: a stranger with one blue eye and one brown who rode a bay mare that was trained to strike. It aimed for Valerius’ roan, who jinked sideways, leaving the mare off balance and the rider with it, so that Valerius could strike for the gap beneath the rim of his helmet and cleave open a living brow to the dying brain beneath. He had time to wrench his blade clear of the toppling body, and the roan horse clear of the mare’s next strike, before the battle moved on.

On his right, Madb wounded a Thracian whom Valerius thought he recognized. To his left, the shield side, a woman of the Coritani with the kill-feathers bunched heavy in her hair missed her stroke

and was nearly beheaded by a man Valerius did know. She fell from her horse, dead before she could scream. Priscus, keeper of mirrors, grinned savagely and turned on Valerius and was, in turn, slain by the woman’s lover, who, howling, drove his horse broadside into the cavalryman’s gelding, crushing its ribs. His blade shattered Priscus’ helmet with the force of his strike.

Valerius felt his horse rise under him and made it come down because the cavalry were trained to gut horses that rose high to strike and it was not a time to lose his mount. He struck back handed at the man who was already leaning down to cut at the blue roan’s belly. He felt the blow land unevenly and then his hand became weightless as his borrowed sword broke. Cursing, he dragged his horse back.

‘Here!’

The lover of the dead Coritani dipped down from his saddle, grasped her blade and threw it in one movement. Yesterday, he would have gutted Valerius with it, tomorrow he might do so again; today, they fought together against a greater enemy. Valerius caught the hilt and saluted and took a swipe under his arm for his inattention so that only his horse’s jink to the left kept him alive and let Madb kill his attacker.

‘We should strike down their standard!’

The Hibernian woman howled it over the tumult of battle. As much as Valerius, she was enjoying herself. She grinned and struc and forced her mount into the place where the fallen man had been.

Ahead, in the heart of the maelstrom, the red bull standard of the Ala Prima Thracum lolled on an idle breeze. Longinus fought nearby, riding tall on the Crow-horse, safe in the god-haven where mount and rider have long since become one. If he died now, he would count himself blessed. Valerius, who had been in his place, knew it.

‘Come on!’

The gap was closing and Valerius not yet through. Madb drove for the fluttering standard. She was his shield-mate; honour demanded Valerius follow. He sent his horse forward halfheartedly.

In battle, the halfhearted are soon dead. Three men, seeing his inattention, struck for Valerius’ unwary guard so that only a lifetime of reflexes saved him - and Braint, freed from her fetters and riding a rip tide of battle rage that scattered all before her.

With Nydd at her side, she burst through on Valerius’ right, killing with the recklessness of one who no longer cares for life or love. Her aim, very plainly, was Longinus; the man who had taken her captive. She wanted his life above all others.

There was no way to stop them. Valerius had only time to lift a hand to his mouth and shout, ‘Longinus!’ so that at least the man would see whence came his death, and then they were on him, one from either side, freshly mounted and freshly armed, fighting a man who was neither of these and bound to be slower because of it, however great his skill and his horse.

The Crow-horse believed itself immortal, and may have been right. Valerius was not the only one to pause and watch as it rose, screaming, to meet Braint’s mount. The mind-splitting noise of its cry, the sheer undiluted hatred, stopped men and women in their own private battles.

For a moment, there was quiet in the carnage, long enough for Valerius to see the Crow-horse rear and swing and strike and Longinus to follow the flow of it with a beauty to awe the gods; for him to see Braint evade the strike with heartbreaking ease and then to see her strike in return, and to hear the unmistakable clash of iron on mail with the crush of bone beneath.

‘Longinus!’ Valerius screamed it alone as the battle was rejoined around him. The sound was lost; one more note in a tumult of shouting, screaming beasts and warriors, and Valerius did not know he had uttered it until Madb threw him a fresh shield, taken from a dying warrior, and shouted, ‘You’ll have him yet! They can’t get to his body. Your mad bloody horse won’t let them near.’ It might have been true. Valerius neither knew nor had the energy to care. He fought because he must, because it was what he was born for, because his gods, both Nemain and Mithras, demanded it of him and he was not yet ready to face them having failed to honour their requests, but the day had become dust-driven and shrunken and he killed without joy, heartlessly, and hated it.

The warriors of Mona outnumbered the cavalrymen of the Prima Thracum by one hundred horse and they were buoyed by Braint’s return in exactly the same measure as the Thracians wer demoralized by Longinus’ fall. The battle was brutal and short and forty-eight living Thracians surrendered their weapons at the end.

Valerius took no part in the securing of the prisoners or the stripping of the dead. Before the battle ended, he had dismounted and stood ankle deep in heather just beyond range of the Crow-horse. White with sweat and bleeding from half a dozen shallow wounds, the pied horse still stood over Longinus’ prostrate form as a hound stands over a fallen warrior, and would let no-one near.

‘You’ll have to kill the beast if you want your man’s body.’

Madb sat her horse nearby, keeping watch on Valerius’ back. She had saved him twice towards the end of the battle and he had not yet thanked her. A part of him knew that time was passing and it would soon be too late to do so with any integrity. The greater part of him had eyes only for the pied horse standing opposite, and the man lying half prone beneath its feet.