Dreaming the Serpent Spear (26 page)

Caught in the need of it, she had spent each moment of daylight, and a good half of the torch-lit nights, on the foredeck of the
Cormorant
, clinging to the prow rails, howling into the maw of the gale that Manannan had roused to protect the gods’ island from Rome, with the sea lashing her face and hands until the skin grew red and peeled from
her flesh and her ox-blood hair lost its shine and became brittle and greyed with salt.

Hawk and Dubornos had wanted to bring her below deck to safety, but Segoventos, the elderly Gaul who had put his ship to sea on her account at least half a month earlier than anyone else would have dared to, had promised to care for her life with his own. Then Gunovar had made a harness that tied to the prow rail so that even if she lost her grip she would not be swept overboard and the two men had given up their persuadings, and only brought her meals and asked her to come below to sleep when the night was darkest. On the last night, seeing the storm about to blow itself out, they had not done even that.

The wind had been dying as they had put down the small-boat and rowed for Mona’s shore, so that the white manes cresting the waves had shrunk and shrunk again until they became just more green water slopping lazily up to kiss the rocks of the headland.

The disappointment of that was a blessing of sorts; if Graine had come straight from that wild joy to the desolation of the abandoned great-house and the hollow emptiness of the evacuated steading, the loss of all that was Mona would have been much harder to bear.

As it was, the five hundred warriors who had been chosen to remain had made an honour guard for her, and it had been necessary to greet them and to learn their names and to hear their stories and see the place set apart from the rest where their dream marks had been carved on the roof beams of the great-house, so that it was almost dusk before she had time alone to look for Bellos of the corn-gold hair and the godlike eyes whose dream had called her back home. Unlike the
others, he had neither remarked on her bruising, nor pretended not to see it; he had met her in the dream and knew what she was. The relief of his easy presence had held her with him through the remainder of the evening.

She had been sitting by the fire with him, sharing malted barley and ewe’s milk cream from the first lambings, before she had found that he was blind. She had been lying in the dark, halfway to sleep, before she realized that Valerius must have known of the blindness, and had not thought to tell her, but had left her to find out on her own.

She had fallen asleep thinking of that, and wondering why, and had dreamed of something, but had lost the shape of the dream on waking. The frustration of the loss, and the aching emptiness of the once-vibrant steading, had been enough to rouse her from her bed and send her down the path to the jetty to find a place where she could lie unseen and find out for herself if everything she had been told about the coming invasion was true.

It was not yet light enough to see anything. Alone in a kind of peace, she lay on her belly in the coarse grass, listening to the soft out-breath of the waves and breathing in the ocean’s leavings while the dawn leached colour back to the world.

Shapes grew from the greys. Presently, she was able to see the barnacled wood of the island’s jetty, a spear’s throw to her right. For a little longer, there was only mist and the iron sea beyond it and she could hold on to the memory of Mona as it had been through all of her childhood; not at peace, because the warriors who made it home had conducted a war against Rome without cease and she had never
known true peace, but the island had always been a place of sanctuary, secure against any threat.

It was secure no longer.

The sea became an ocean of muted mirrors, catching the early light and spinning it high, again and again, to the sky. A pair of oystercatchers sliced across the wavetops towards her and then turned at an angle and fled north to open water, piping alarm. Beyond the line of their flight, it became possible to see that the jetty’s opposite partner, which should have reached back to offer a landing place on the mainland, had gone. Where it had been, the rock was scorched black and fragments of charred wood still dabbled in the waves.

There was tranquillity of a kind in the burned remains, couched in mist and rock, but straight lines were already taking shape amongst the curving stones. Right angles grew at their ends and, too fast, the burgeoning light showed the outlines of gunwales and prows of boats and soon she could see what Bellos had described: that dozens of flat-bottomed barges were strung end to end, bobbing in the quiet water like beads on a string hung for a child to play with, and beyond those, spread thickly along the shore and back into the purpled heather and bracken of the lower slopes, were the tents and pavilions and mules and horses and latrine ditches and quartermaster’s piles, set about with chained hounds to keep off rats, of two legions of the Roman army and their four wings of attendant cavalry. Closer than those, two smaller clusters of tents sat about the burned heel of the mainland jetty, with horses in two separate corrals and two different cavalry banners cracking in the breeze above them.

Graine had no need to count them; she had grown in a world where she knew the standards and banners of Rome, and the numbers of men they commanded, as well as she knew the dream marks of her own kin. Taken all together, there gathered on the mainland eight thousand men trained for war. A stretch of water was all that kept them from Mona and it was not enough.

“They have their boats ready. Why did they not attack yesterday, when the storm first died?”

Graine asked it aloud, into the silent morning. After a moment, Bellos God-eyes, whom everyone else knew as Bellos the Blind, said, “Did I make a noise, that you knew I was here?” He sounded amused and exasperated and had not answered her question.

“No. The oystercatchers took fright at you and turned away. You might have been Hawk; he can walk as quietly, but your tunic smells of applewood smoke and his still smells of the sea.” Graine rolled on her side to look back at him over her shoulder. “Does anyone know why the governor hasn’t attacked yet?”

“We were lucky; or perhaps we could say that Manannan extended his grace one more day. The west side of the island, where you landed yesterday, was clear, but here, on this side, a sea mist held both sides of the straits all through the day, so that it was impossible to see your hand in front of your face. That might not be a handicap to me, or perhaps to you, but it was enough to halt the legions, for which we may be grateful.”

Bellos had not mentioned his blindness before. Graine searched for bitterness in his face and found none, but only a closing of something that had not been truly open, as if
he felt her scrutiny and was not yet ready to bare himself to it.

She said, “Would that not have been a good time for them to attack, while the mist hid their true numbers from us? They did not need to see much, only enough to know that they were not killing each other.”

“The officers might think so, I suspect the governor will have done, but the men are too afraid of the nightmare beasts and the walking dead that stalk Mona’s shores. They won’t attack in anything except perfect daylight.”

She was learning to read him; to hear the faint lilt in his voice that was satisfaction, and the barest shavings of pride, even while he kept them from his face. Guessing, she asked, “Are the nightmares of your making?”

“No, but I made them greater than they might have been.” He did smile at that, cheerfully, and came to sit beside her, stretching his bare feet down the stones until his heels met the gelatinous weed.

He was slim, almost bony, and more of a youth than he had seemed in the dream, or even at the night fires; perhaps three or four years older than Hawk but no more. His hair was fine as combed wool and a lighter, more brilliant shade of gold than Cunomar’s, or Cygfa’s. His eyes were a startling, noon-sky blue and they stared out over the water at nothing. Even so, he had walked alone from the great-house to find her and made his way down the beach without any hesitation.

She said, “How well do you know the island?”

“Well enough to know my way around.”

“Is that why you haven’t left? Because Hibernia would be a new place and it would be hard to come to know it as
well as you know here?” It was not a delicate question, but then it was not intended to be; on the day she had discovered how frustrating it was to have others step around her own wounding, Graine had stopped doing so for anyone else. Still, she held her breath, waiting to see if she had overstepped a mark that neither of them could see.

Bellos smiled, peacefully. Everything about him was peaceful. Reflectively, he said, “I lived on Hibernia for two years with Valerius after he freed me from slavery in Gaul so it wouldn’t be entirely new, but yes, there’s a bit of that. Then again, every sighted warrior would have stayed behind to see to the defence of Mona if they had been allowed to. In the event, only five hundred were given leave; the rest are better used elsewhere. Luain mac Calma is Elder; he decides who comes and who leaves and if he is in conference with Nemain and others of the gods as to his decisions, we are not privy to that. He has asked me to stay. If he had asked me to be in Hibernia, I would have taken ship with the others a long time ago, however unwillingly.”

“Did he ask you to call us to Mona?”

“You. I only called you. The rest are here of their own accord, and may be sent away for their own safety. Don’t tut at me like that; I’m going to answer your question. No, mac Calma didn’t ask me to call you, but when it had happened he did not ask me to stop it either. He has no dreaming of you.”

He has no dreaming
… Once, Airmid had dreamed of Graine’s birth, and Luain mac Calma had dreamed a place for her amongst the elders. As close as last night, even in the quiet grief and release of the morning, there had still been hope that Mona might have reawakened the promise of that.

The oystercatchers piped a long way off. A seventh wave hushed closer to the tide-wrack than the rest. In the cavalry camp on the opposite shore, a lean, bare-chested man with black hair growing thin on his head and thick on his pectorals stooped out of his tent and, yawning, stretched both arms up to greet the grey morning.

It was no easier to look at him than at Bellos. Dropping her gaze to the shingle, Graine said, “Perhaps that’s because there is nothing any longer to dream?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s because even the gods don’t yet know what will become of you, what you may be or may not be. We have it in mind that you are the wild piece on the board of Warrior’s Dance, the one that can move from one end to the other unhindered and unseen and so win the game. If we are right, then between us we may save Mona.”

The dawn wind was too cold, suddenly, and the sea spray on her face too painful. Graine sat up, hugging her knees. She felt sick. “And if you are wrong?”

Bellos was still peaceful, still smiling, still staring out across water he could not see towards the growing activity in the Roman camp on the far side of the straits. He pursed his lips, considering. “Then we have two thousand dreamers who can help to cloud their dreaming. If they, too, fail, then of course we’ll have to fight them. Which is what the five hundred warriors are here for.”

“Against eight thousand legionaries and enough barges to circle the whole of Mona? That’s madness.”

“Perhaps, but I prefer to think it’s practical. We know the island and are not afraid of nightmares. Eight thousand frightened men could become lost here very easily, and even before that, boats have to find a place to land and be filled
with men prepared to step off them.” He answered absently. He was no longer thinking of her. “I suspect we shall find out soon, and if I am wrong you may have time to tell me so. Would you say they are getting ready to march to the barges?”

He was still staring blindly out across the water, only that the tilt of his head was different. Graine looked along the line of his no-sight, and found that the random movements of morning were becoming more ordered and linear in the legionary camp at the foot of the mountains. Even as she opened her mouth to speak, a trumpet brayed the call to muster. The sound drifted patchily across the straits.

Bellos pursed his lips and blew a small huff through his teeth. “Mac Calma was right, then; it will be today.” He got to his feet and held out both hands towards her. His blue eyes smiled to somewhere just above her head. “If I offer to help you stand up, will you offer to lead me back to the great-house? I could find my way alone, but it’s far faster with help and today, I think, we don’t have the luxury of time to spend feeling the lie of the birch bark and lichen on stones to find a sense of direction.”

As at the Roman camp, the five hundred warriors and as many dreamers who had slept in and around the great-house of Mona were rousing to a slow, grey dawn that might be their last. New fires scattered at intervals across the clearing flickered pale flame and blue smoke against the backdrop of new-leaved oaks.

Half-dressed men and women were washing or using the middens or standing quiet-eyed, speaking to the gods of their dreams. At the fringes, ewes were being milked and hens tracked down to their night roosts to find the eggs and
corn was being ground and baked into bannocks for the morning meal.

Near the stream, a mare newly in season was being held to be served by Hawk’s horse, a flashy blue roan with a white forehead, which had been the gift of a cavalry commander.

The horse was Thessalian and bred for chariot racing until it fought too much in the stables and was sent off to be trained for war. At loading time on Segoventos’ ship, they had thought it was too hot-blooded to stand a voyage without destroying itself, the ship and everyone on board and would have to be left behind. In the event, it had taken to the sea crossing without demur and it had been Gunovar’s solid black wagon horse that had panicked on the gangway so that a man had to be with it for most of the voyage to keep it from kicking the ship apart.