Dreaming the Serpent Spear (20 page)

Their comrades continued to race on down the track, and so did not see the half-wing of Civilis’ Batavians, their former comrades, who stood silent in the tangled forest, their hands over the soft muzzles of their mounts lest one of them call a greeting and give them away.

The sound of the cavalry’s passing faded to silence. The forest caught the hum of the camp and reflected it inwards so that the dell became an echo of men’s voices, staccato shouts rendered musical in their repeats.

Cunomar eased himself to his feet and drew his knife. “Not yet.” He said it to himself and then, in a whisper that passed down the line, “
Not yet
.”

In the dell, a column of infantry formed within the ring of the palisades and prepared to march, even as the men of the rearmost cohort were filling in ditches and taking down the last of the staves. A lone horn sounded. A blade hilt clashed on a shield boss, sharply. The column of men started forward, heading north, following their legate in case he had need of them in the fight against the Eceni. The rescue of Camulodunum was abandoned, temporarily, for the greater need of the IXth legion.

Like ants on a trail they passed in fours, fresh and eager as the horses had been, and as ready to fight. Their nailed boots struck equally the dewy turf and sharp on the stones of the trackway. The marching song was the same as they had used the day before, with a new verse, made in the night, that praised Civilis and a lone Thracian cavalryman for their courage.

Cunomar watched them greet Civilis and Longinus as the two men led their lame horses back towards the camp.

“
Not yet.”

The full count of men had marched into the forest when the first of them died.

The Batavian cavalry surged in from the trees, blaring false horn calls that left the marching men confused for the few heartbeats it took to annihilate their formation and prevent them from forming defensive rings. The Eceni war host surrounded the remains of the camp, with its ditches filled in and the palisades packed and the struck tents lying like stunned moths on the floor of the dell.

“Now!
”

Cunomar’s she-bears, as had been promised in the night, took the first, and so the greatest, part. At his word, they hurled themselves through the part-dismantled gates of the night camp, falling on the remaining century of legionaries who had not yet begun to pack, but stood with shovels and staves in their hands, and used them as weapons.

The fighting was bloody and brief and when it was over, the men of the first and second cohorts of the IXth legion lay dead and there were more of them than there were dead Eceni by five or six to one. None of the Batavians, and only two of the she-bear, had died.

The longer process of stripping the bodies of their armour and weapons, of emptying the packs of food and clothing and scraps of iron that might be melted for sword blades, extended far into the day.

Near midday, Cygfa came to sit beside Cunomar as he stripped the body of the last centurion to die. The man’s blade had broken, so hard had he used it, and his shield boss was crushed beyond mending. A scatter of dead warriors lay round him, all with wounds to the head or chest. Blood leaked from beneath his armour, and from the killing gape in his throat where a blade had finally won under his helmet.

“He fought well.” Cygfa sat on an upturned shield and watched her brother unbuckle the man’s greaves. She, too, was bleeding. A shallow cut on one thigh leaked dark blood; two on her sword arm more brightly.

Cunomar said, “I saw you kill him.” He loved Cygfa. On the day they had been released from the procurator’s execution, he had sworn in front of Ardacos that he would protect both of his sisters for the rest of their lives and his against the ravages of Rome. Cygfa had never needed his protection, but it had helped him believe she would recover. The needling pain in his chest was not worthy of her or of him. Graciously, he said, “He would have killed a dozen more if you hadn’t come in so fast.”

Cygfa shrugged. “He was tiring, and Dubornos was keeping his attention. I didn’t come to talk to you about that.”

The elders had taught him to face his pain directly. “About Valerius, then? Did he give you the white-legged colt?”

Of all those on the battlefield that day, two had stood out: Valerius on his Crow-horse, the half-Roman who
fought for the Eceni with the carelessness for his own life that marked the truly great and set them apart from the rest; and Cygfa, soul-daughter to the Boudica, bright-haired daughter of Caradoc, who fought at the other side of the field on a white-legged black colt that was clearly cut from the same stamp as Valerius’ notorious pied mount.

It was not as savage as the Crow, but it answered Cygfa’s thought more readily than any horse had ever done so that the two were welded to one, and drew eyes from all quarters, the bright flame of her hair rising high over the black-on-white of her new mount. Cunomar had seen it, and had tried not to see the horse as payment for her earlier actions; he did not wish to be a man who begrudged others their good fortune, least of all his sister.

Cygfa grinned, a sight so rare that in itself it gladdened Cunomar’s heart. She said, “Valerius heard a rumour that I was going to fight him for it and made me a gift of it before I could make the challenge.” She ran a hand through her hair, sobering. “I didn’t come to talk about that, either. It’s Valerius. I—”

“You support him as leader of the war host. I know. Everyone knows. You made it plain at the gathering.” It had hurt at the time. Now, with the success of battle behind him, Cunomar was glad only that they were both alive to talk about it.

“Everyone else can know what they want.” Cygfa wiped grime from her face, replacing it with more. “You can know that I support the man the gods have fashioned for us who is, just now, the best we have if Breaca cannot lead.”

Her eyes were on him. Cunomar laid the pair of greaves carefully on the pile. With similar care, he said, “Just now?”

They knew each other well, these two children of Caradoc; they had faced death in Rome together, and two years in exile after their pardon by the emperor Claudius. They had shared the chaotic escape through Gaul and the stark, stripped moment on a beachhead when it became clear that their father was too broken to return. They had come back to Mona and made it their home and left it again to travel east with the Boudica. Only they two knew what these things had cost, or what it was to fight as the child of a warrior the whole world revered, to have to carve a name that was not always spoken in comparison to what had gone before.

Through the full weight of that, Cygfa said, “Leadership is not only about courage. No-one doubts you have that, and these past two days you showed it to any who might not have seen. But a leader sees the greater picture and knows that lives matter more than glory. A leader would not have brought three dozen warriors to assault a night camp alone, leaving behind the three thousand who needed experience in battle. There is time yet. Breaca’s still healing. She couldn’t be here, but she’ll lead us against Camulodunum. Sometime after that, we will see who leads beyond it. I will support you then if I can believe you will not lead us into heroic disaster.”

Cygfa was smiling as she said it, and gripped his arm. Her hair was a chaos of bright gold and battle filth, her face the same. She was his sister, which mattered above all else.

She stood and gave the salute of one warrior to another. “The Ninth is gone. We have a clear path now to Camulodunum. Make best use of it, little brother, and you might yet lead the war host in the final assault on the legions.”

T
HE IXTH LEGION IS DESTROYED. THE SERPENT-SPEAR IS
awakened in the east. The Boudica battles Rome and the gods guide her hand. Freedom is there to be taken. Join us and be part of the taking…

Word spread fast as fire, carried by traders who pushed their dray horses hard to be first at each steading with the news, and by youthful warriors with red-quilled war feathers newly woven into their hair who ran barefoot for home with tales of their own successes and of the deaths in battle — always with honour — of their shield-mates, lovers, cousins and siblings.

The traders returned early from shorter journeys than they had planned, with goods in which they did not normally deal. They drove into the site of the horse fair with iron and salt and wool and hides and more iron, and took less than half their worth in gold or silver or all of it in promises of corn to be paid when the battles were over.

Not to be outdone, the youths returned in their hundreds with other siblings, lovers, cousins, parents and friends and promises of yet more to come when the spring planting was
over, or perhaps before then; after all, who needed to plant corn when the granaries of Camulodunum, Caesaromagus, Canonium and Verulamium would soon be broken open and the grain they held returned to those who had worked to harvest it and yet starved for its lack through the cold winters under the heel of Rome?

Others began to gather who were not of the Eceni: Coritani and Votadini from the west and north, Silures and Ordovices from the west, Dumnonii and Durotriges from the far southwestern toe of the land.

Warriors came whose tribes had been enemies for generations, and learned in days not only to share each other’s fires, but to share food and exercise and the teachings of war with a half-wing of Batavian cavalry.

A few shared all these things with the Boudica’s half-Roman brother. Those who could not stomach it chose to train only with her bright-haired son. Efforts were made by those whose business it was to oversee such things to ensure that the war host did not become divided so early in the conflict. They were not wholly successful.

Other matters arose, of greater moment. Rumours began of a second assault by the IXth legion. Very quickly, those who were most competent were despatched to guard the trackways north and west. These killed eight messengers within two days, all of whom bore pleas for urgent help from Petillius Cerialis to the governor of all Britannia. After the head of the eighth man to die was returned in the saddle packs of his horse, no others were sent.

No avenging cohorts marched south, either. Once, it seemed as if a war party of Batavians was going to assault the war host, but the latter’s luck held and there were
Batavians guarding the road that day who recognized their former comrades and persuaded them to listen to their petition and so the host gained another one hundred cavalry, who preferred to fight for Civilis against Rome than for Henghes in the name of the emperor.

The rumours changed and said that Petillius Cerialis, legate of the IXth, had withdrawn to his winter quarters and sat watching the sea rise and fall with the tides. In time, they said that he had dismissed the Iberian stonemason, but not until the foundations of the baths had been thoroughly waterlogged.

Five or six days after the burning of the watchtowers, a trickle of incomers began to arrive from the south, from the city of Camulodunum. First in ones and twos and then in handfuls, poorly armed and nervous, men and women of the Trinovante walked and rode up to the site of the Eceni horse fair where the war host was massing.

They came first as refugees, fearing the attack that was so plainly coming, driving wagons, carrying sacks with live chickens, herding cattle. Only later did they dare to offer themselves in war. When they did, there were two thousand of them, and they took to battle training faster than those who had not lived as closely in the shadow of Rome.

Before the month’s end, all those who had fallen had been replaced and the number of the war host was once more at five thousand. By the first quarter of the next moon, it had grown by half as much again. Not one of those who arrived bore any news of the Boudica’s younger daughter, although all had heard of her journey to Mona. A child and three warriors, it seemed, had passed through the land unseen. The Coritani were ready to praise the scouting skills of Hawk,
who could hide himself in a black cloak on a snowfield and could easily conceal three adults and a child. Others noted that Dubornos and Gunovar had both trained on Mona and that either was completely capable of remaining hidden if they did not choose to be seen. No-one spoke openly or in quiet of the other alternative, which is that all four were dead.

The war host was divided by those who had responsibility for their training. Two thousand of the most able warriors were left with Civilis and his Batavians to keep watch on the routes by which the IXth legion might yet decide to attack. The Boudica, mounted on a bay colt that was a gift from her daughter, led the remaining host south towards the place once named sacred to the war god Camul, later Cunobelin’s dun and most lately Camulodunum, Rome’s capital city in the province of Britannia.

Over five thousand warriors made camp in the valley of the Heron’s Foot, at the place where three rivers joined to become one; where, in the days before Rome’s invasion, the boundaries of Eceni, Trinovante and Catuvellauni lands had joined, leaving the valley owned equally by all three tribes and thus by none, which made it the province of the gods; where, nevertheless, a party of Eceni had been attacked on the valley’s sacred soil and seen nearly half their number slain, including Eburovic, father to the Boudica, who was cut down defending his daughter, including also Bán, her younger brother, whose body was stolen from the battlefield so that she believed him dead and mourned him as such for nearly twenty years.