Dreaming the Serpent Spear (34 page)

They were not in the legions; he could not give orders, only ever advice, as of one equal to another, that might or might not be heeded. With what authority he could find, he said, “Snail, go back beyond the barriers. I need you alive for other days.”

There was no time to make the boy listen. They were fighting against professional men who could read a battlefield as they read the roll of their dice. Valerius had been seen to give orders. Snail had been marked from the beginning as his standard-bearer — and the veterans knew that standard.

“Valerius!” His name was shouted in Latin, by a voice he did not know, and then a moment after, in Thracian, by Longinus.

“Valerius! Javelins!”

He was still holding the standard. Clutching it, he bent double, his face buried in black mane and scalding horse sweat. His free hand held Snail by the scruff, forcing the boy hard down onto the neck of his mount.

He felt a finger’s touch of cold air and heard the breath of flying iron, marred in its purity by the ugliness of tearing flesh, and there was blood lacing the sweat that ran down by his face. The Crow-horse stood as if carved. Only the
juddering of its neck under his hand gave away the presence of the wound midway down its crest.

Valerius had not lost so many horses that he had become hardened to the prospect of their dying; he knew exactly how much he loved this horse. A wave of panic loosened his bowels and another after it at the thought of what it would do to his reputation if he were to lose control on the field of battle. He sat up, cautiously, and released his hold on the youth.

“Snail, you have to go back. We can mourn— Get
down
!”

He dropped the standard in the mud. The blade missed them both, but only by luck. The gods had not warned him, neither Nemain’s whisper nor the bellow of Mithras’ bull. A part of Valerius railed at that, even as the rest wrenched his sword free and spun the Crow-horse and made space to swing a cut, to fight, to keep the centurion and the four men who protected him — how in Mithras’ name were they all still alive? — away from Snail who was almost certainly about to die for nothing more than the crime of being young and grief-stricken and afraid.

All of that notwithstanding, for the next few moments there was no time to care about anything but staying mounted, and thus staying alive. Released at last into proper combat, the Crow-horse exploded in a frenzy of killing.

It was years since it had been wounded in battle; Valerius had forgotten what it was to sit the full heat of its battle rage. It was like riding the riptide of a mid-ocean storm, like bestriding lightning and the havoc of thunder. The beast reared and struck and slewed and bit and the veterans who had known it when it had fought on their side had no inclination to fight against it now.

A veteran lost his footing and slipped headlong in the bloodied mud and died for it. The centurion lifted a spent javelin and hurled it. Snail screamed, high-pitched like a wounded hind, and Valerius lost a heartbeat’s attention in making himself not turn to look. A sword came at his shoulder and only the Crow-horse, swivelling without any command, kept it away. Valerius blocked the back-handed cut that followed and returned it. The force of that made his fingers numb.

Someone else killed the man he was fighting; he thought it was Knife but could not be sure. The Crow-horse had already turned to face a new foe, the centurion, who was not, evidently, afraid of the horse.

He grinned and stepped past it and lanced up with a new javelin at Valerius’ thigh. “You should have stayed with us, twice-traitor. We might have kept you alive.”

Valerius and his mount were welded now; the thoughts of one were the actions of the other. They spun to face their enemy. The Crow-horse reared. The centurion stepped back out of range, raised his shield high and, stepping in, brought the edge slamming down on the beast’s forelegs as it dropped back to the ground.

The hammer of wood on flesh was sickening. Valerius felt it as if his own arms had been crushed. The Crow-horse grunted and staggered but did not fall. It screamed rage and pain, spewing great gobbets of white spittle across them all. Valerius felt the red haze of true battle fury begin to mist his vision and fought for calm; too much rage killed men as easily as too little. The centurion laughed, and threw another javelin, goading him on.

There was no time for finesse. Valerius would have sent the Crow forward, trusting it to run the man down, but that
the battlefield became suddenly overcrowded and the beast skittered sideways, shoved from behind. Horses milled about him, where there had been none before.

Longinus was there; still alive, still safe. He shouted, “Slingers, here!” which made no sense because the slingers were all with Breaca on the other side of the city.

The impossible happened twice over. A slingstone whistled in front of Valerius’ face and killed the centurion, striking clean at the bridge of his nose so that bone and cartilage pulped one into the other and his eyes were broken open. A second took the man who had held his left. Valerius did let the Crow-horse surge forward then and the third of the centurion’s men died to a striking forefoot.

Longinus took the fourth man in the back, shaking his head at the shame of it, and then there was a rout: a swift pursuit of fleeing men by seasoned warriors who killed efficiently with spear and sling and blade who had long since lost count of their dead and did not care if they saw a man face-on before they killed him.

Then it was over, with only a wounded boy to be tended if he was alive, and a horse, first to be brought back into some semblance of control, and then to have its wounds, too, tended, if it would allow.

Slowly, the Crow-horse began to settle. Valerius fitted his sword back into its sheath. His hands were shaking so that he fumbled and took longer than he should. He drew a steadying breath and dared to look around.

Longinus was with Snail, who must therefore be alive. Between him and them waited a short, wiry warrior with a broad, flat burn scar across his face that joined nose to ear and a single gold-banded kill-feather fluttering in his hair.

Catching Valerius’ gaze, the newcomer cocked one eyebrow upwards. “In the west, we still thank men for saving our lives,” he said, and then, “Madb is here. If you remember who I am, I will show you where she waits.”

His voice was full of the music of the western tribes. He carried himself with the pride of kills unnumbered so that it was hard, but not impossible, to remember the boy he had been when, like Snail, he had carried a standard for a man he did not fully trust. Unlike Snail, he had fought with unimpeachable courage and had found a taste for battle. Which made it even more strange that he was here.

“You are Huw of the Silures. Fifth cousin on his mother’s side to Caradoc. How could I forget the best slinger on Mona?” Valerius found his mouth dry and swallowed. “Why are you here in the east when Suetonius Paullinus has two legions and four wings of cavalry bent on the destruction of Mona? Has the island fallen? Are we too late to stop its destruction?”

“We may be, but I doubt it. Luain mac Calma sent us. He said you would need some warriors who knew how to fight to balance the youth of the Boudica’s war host.”

“And you’ll have seen by now that he couldn’t be more right. But what’s happening on Mona? Is Paullinus’ assault not going to happen?”

“The assault was all but started when we left. Mac Calma has the dreamers and the gods on his side. What need has he of warriors when we could be killing Romans to better effect in Camulodunum?” Huw looked to the scattered bodies and back. “Although we were perhaps later than we could have been. Your mad horse is bleeding from its neck and the blow to its forelegs has crushed the
flesh. I like my head in one piece so I’ll not offer help, but Nydd is here and while he still hates you, he has always loved your horse. He has some skill with healing. If you ask, he may give it.”

“Thank you. I’ll ask him if I need it.”

Valerius said it abstractedly, looking past him to where Longinus was helping Snail down from the skewbald mare and then right a little, to where a woman with slate grey hair and the bright eyes of a jackdaw leaned on the neck of a roan gelding, staring back.

Hoarsely, Valerius said, “Madb?” and saw her nod.

The Crow-horse was calmer. It was as safe as it ever was to take it among other horses. Together, horse and man wove a path through the throng.

The jackdaw-woman had a strong face and broad, peglike teeth. She bared them, grinning. “It was good to see your beast fighting again. I thought he might be too old, that you might have retired him to the stud paddocks.”

“He would kill himself running at the hedges before he would let a war past and him not in it.”

Reaching over, Valerius grasped the woman forearm to forearm, as the Hibernians did. He felt uncommonly pleased. He said, “Madb of Hibernia, it warms the strings of my heart to see you again, even if you are fighting again in a war that is mine and not yours. Are you here at Luain mac Calma’s command, or do you follow your own path?”

She eyed him askance. “I take commands from no man, as you well know. But I heard Braint was coming east and thought it would be good to see you again. It’s a while since I saw a man fight and heard music in my head while he did it.”

“I’m glad it was music to you. I was hearing the voice of all the men I respect swearing at my care of a wounded boy. He seems to be alive, which is good.”

“The lad on the brown patched mare?” She looked beyond his left shoulder and nodded. “He won’t fight for a while, but that’s maybe as well. He’s not made for fighting, that one. Not like your Thracian cavalry friend. I hadn’t thought to see him fit to ride yet, still less fight, but he, too, was good to watch.”

“Thank you.” Longinus had heard her as he was intended to. He was alive, unhurt, only dirty with the spillage of other men’s guts and the blood of a wounded boy. He finished tying a sling of torn woollen cloak round Snail’s neck and helped the boy to stand. His eyes roved the length of the Crow-horse and then Valerius. He said, “We’re both out of practice.”

“Of course. But better with each battle. We should move before the fires reach us. The wounded can go back beyond the outer ditch. The rest can come forward with us and our new cavalry troop.”

He used the Latin again,
turma;
he was never going to cure himself of it. Longinus grinned at him, rolling his eyes.

Madb spat to one side. She said, “If Braint hears that, she’ll have your skin for a horse blanket.”

“She may have it anyway. Does she still pray nightly to see me dead?”

“She might do, I don’t ask of her nights, but she prays daily, aloud and in company, to be able to fight with the Boudica and Cygfa, the bright-haired daughter who fights as if the gods directed her blade. If the Elder of Mona had asked, she would have stayed to give her life for the gods’ isle,
but she is more than happy to be here. She joined your sister in the west side of the city, where the fire is strongest. She leads five hundred horse.”

“Five hundred?” Joy leaped like a summer fish in Valerius’ breast. “So then we have more than a wing and that equal to five of the enemy.”

It was almost true. The warriors who fought for Mona were the best that the tribes could garner, raised and trained on the island, where the legions had not yet set foot.

Valerius edged the Crow-horse sideways to make room for Longinus to mount and turned to look about him. Known faces, scarred and aged with battle, wise-eyed and steady, stared back. Not all of them smiled any kind of greeting — very few, in fact — but none made the sign to ward against evil or spat in the wind to avert his gaze.

Most of them looked west, to where the city was burning. Breaca’s fire was vast now: a great long line of flame spewing smoke that veiled the entire western quarter of the city.

Raising his voice to reach the back of his troop, Valerius said, “The veterans cut a fire break to protect the hospital, the theatre and the temple. Those that are left will be within the ring of it now, safe from the fire if not from us. The Boudica will meet us there, and Ardacos, who brought the she-bear to Mona and to the Eceni. Together, we will destroy what is left of Rome’s capital.”

There was a murmur of something close to approval. Valerius sent the Crow-horse forward. It was sound, and no longer bleeding. Longinus rode to his left, laughing with Nydd as if the pair of them had not last met on opposing sides of a battlefield. To his right, Madb sang a battle song in rolling Hibernian, making her horse jog to the rhythm.

A little behind his left shoulder, Huw of the Silures, the best slinger on Mona, had retrieved the standard of the red bull from the mud and carried it as he had done once before, in the mountains, under a wilder wind than this. Knife of the Eceni, who had fought well and must be congratulated later, marshalled the foot warriors and brought them in good order behind.

They rode unopposed along the blooded street that led to the centre of Camulodunum. Leading them in the bleak morning sun, with Mithras’ bull fluttering on Mona’s grey above his head, Valerius found that a weight had been lifted from his shoulders that he had not known he carried. He felt lighter and — astonishingly — younger.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was genuinely happy.

T
HE TEMPLE TO THE GOD CLAUDIUS, ONCE EMPEROR OF ROME
and all its provinces, sat vast and white in the sea of ash and burned wattle that was Camulodunum.

Late afternoon light made the shadows less stark, and the remaining fires more brilliant. The skyline was gap-toothed and angular and dotted with red and orange blooms of flame that flowed together in places to make walls of fire.

Smaller, more contained fires warmed warriors and cooked food and heated water for the washing of wounds. Reed torches had been scavenged from unburned houses to the east of the temple and were strung along the streets so that rows of pinpoint light showed where unburned houses arced out from the eastern margins of the city.