Ravens of Avalon (12 page)

Men began to draw aside as the swirl of movement resolved into rank upon rank of warriors. Above, the clouds were parting as if to flee from the clamor below. Sunlight blazed suddenly on golden torques and bracelets, on manes of stiffened hair bleached brighter than its normal red or gold, on the milky skin of sleekly muscled bodies that were bared only to make love or war.

Heedless of the turmoil around her, Lhiannon stared. Surely this was how the war band of the gods must have looked when they marched out with Lugos of the shining spear to confront the armies of darkness. Above their heads she could see the king himself, balancing easily on the tenuous wicker platform of his war chariot with his driver squatting at his feet, heels braced against the curving sides.

As the champions spread out to either side Togodumnos came fully into view. The cloak that flowed from his shoulders was woven in the Catuvellauni’s favorite blues and greens. Golden plates glittered from his belt and the leather corselet that covered his broad torso, his neck was circled by a torque of twisted gold cords as thick as a spear shaft, and his thinning hair covered by a helm of gilded and enameled bronze surmounted by the image of a bird with hinged wings.

Caratac came close behind him, his battered gear an ominous contrast to his brother’s majesty. But any deficiencies in his outfit were more than compensated by the fury that shimmered around him. Other chariots followed, and if none bore so much splendor, still the eye was dazzled by cloaks striped and checkered in red and purple and green and gold.

More warriors thronged to either side, stripped down for ease in movement to their trews or no clothing at all, woad-painted sigils spi-raling across the fair skin of torso and back. By tribe and clan the warriors of the Trinovantes and the Catuvellauni, with the surviving Cantiaci scattered among them, hurried past on their way to death or glory. The Iceni contingent trotted by with Prasutagos’s older brother Cunomaglos in the lead. Like a spear to the heart came the certainty that win or lose, the world Lhiannon had known was changing. They would never see such a riding again.

Like a herd of wild ponies stampeding toward the water the warriors swept past; she heard the roar as they met the Roman line. Now all she could see was a confusion of tossing spears. Presently the chariots forced their way back to the rear. It would be foot fighting now in the mud and the blood by the waterside. Sound beat against her hearing as the emotions of the fighters buffeted her spirit; the clangor of blade on blade beat out a rhythm for the dreadful music of battle cries and screams.

Now the wounded began to come to them, carried by their comrades or leaning on broken spears. The Druids were kept busy sewing and binding wounds. Some stayed only long enough to drink a little water, and then limped back into the fray. Some they laid in the wagon or sent off the field. For others, the most they could do was to numb the pain as lifeblood soaked the soil.

Lhiannon had promised to keep her spirit tethered, but nothing could prevent her from drawing power from the earth and projecting it outward to support the fighting men. Presently she realized that the shape of the battle was changing, the eye of the sword-storm moving gradually up the hill. Stamping feet churned the drier ground to billowing clouds of dust through which flocks of screaming ravens flew. She wondered if Togodumnos had been wrong to catch the Romans between his army and the water. She had heard an old warrior say it was a mistake to leave an enemy nowhere to run to. Once disembarked, the Romans had no choice but to fight their way through their foe.

She was just turning to ask Ardanos if perhaps they ought to move the healers’ wagon when suddenly a knot of struggling men surged toward them. A javelin hurtled past and stuck quivering in the side of the wagon. Ardanos snatched up a handful of dust and cast it outward with a muttered spell. Suddenly the air was dark around them, the roar of the battle like the growling of a distant storm.

One man only crashed through the barrier. As the Roman rolled to his feet, sword waving, Lhiannon grabbed the javelin and batted wildly, knocking him off balance. One of the wounded whom she had thought on the point of death grabbed his ankle, and plunged a knife into his throat as he fell. The Roman gurgled horribly as blood spurted from the jugular, his eyes bulging with the same disbelief she had seen in the faces of their own as they died. The stink as his sphincter released mingled with the iron tang of blood. The Celt who had killed him was dead as well, but his lips were drawn back in a snarling smile.

“Leave them!” snapped Belina. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

Mute, she nodded, sweeping the supplies into her veil. They would be out of bandages soon. As Cunitor and Ardanos guarded the rear, Be-lina took the pony’s head and they creaked toward what they hoped was the new edge of the killing field. Men with horses and chariots cantered past them, ready in victory or defeat to carry their masters away.

Before them the ground fell away in a long slope to the east, where pastureland was broken by thickets, around which the battle swirled as floodwaters divide around snags in a stream. The healers set up their new station in the shade, and soon they were hard at work once more. They ran out of water, and when the local people who had come out to help came back with more, they said that the Roman boats lined the shore for a mile. A swath of piled and scattered bodies showed where the battle had rolled on. There were more Celts than Romans, they said. Lhiannon hugged her arms, feeling suddenly very cold.

The setting sun was beginning to cast long shadows across the field, and the Druids had lit a torch so that the wounded could find them, when the mass of struggling figures surged toward them once more. In another moment they realized that all the warriors coming toward them were Britons.

“They’re not fighting …” whispered Cunitor unbelievingly. “This is a rout. We’ve lost …” His face was smudged with dust and blood, his fair hair standing on end.

It can’t be true,
she thought numbly.
We tried so hard. We cannot lose now!
She started as Ardanos gripped her arm. Were the Romans coming? A chariot lurched toward them across the field with as much speed as its driver could coax from the tired horses. In another moment she recognized the gilded harness and the black ponies, though without them she would not have known the half-dozen weary men who stumbled along beside it for the splendid warriors who had followed their king into battle only a few hours ago.

Lhiannon recognized the driver—she had seen Caratac in this state two weeks before. Only now the emotion that contorted his features was not fury but despair.

“Caratac,” said Ardanos, “are you—?” The question died on his lips as Caratac pulled himself upright and they saw the body of Togodumnos sprawled beside him. Ardanos felt for a pulse at the king’s neck, then passed his hands over the body, seeking to sense the energy there. Slowly he straightened, hands dropping in defeat. “My lord,” he said more formally, “the High King is dead.”

One of the warriors fell to his knees. Belina tried to hush him as he began to wail.

“Let him be,” said Caratac tiredly. “No enemy will hear him. We gave them a good savaging, but the Romans hold the field. Why should they risk more men chasing us around in unfamiliar country in the dark?”

More men were gathering around them. One by one they began to kneel. “You are the oldest of Cunobelin’s sons now living,” said one of them. “We are your men now.”

“Where shall we bury him?”

“Will you make a stand at Camulodunon?” came another question from the dark.

“Take him home …” Caratac answered at last. “Build a mound for him where our father lies.”

“Do not mourn. Togodumnos feasts now with his fathers in the Blessed Isles,” said Ardanos, but his voice was thin with strain.

For a moment Caratac simply looked at him. “Did you think I was weeping for my brother?” he said grimly. “Today, the dead are the lucky ones. I weep for the living, for all of us who must still fight this war!”

He bent and kissed his brother’s brow, then gripped the heavy golden torque, twisted it, and eased it off the dead man’s neck. The torchlight flickered on the king’s face, and cutting through the blood and the dust Lhiannon saw the glistening track of tears.

“Camulodunon cannot be defended,” he said harshly. “Not from such as these.”

“You must go west,” Lhiannon heard herself saying, fatigue and sorrow leaving her suddenly vulnerable to vision. “In the land of the Du-rotriges there are fortified hills where you can take refuge. So long as the tribes fight the Romans one by one they will fall. Build an alliance. If we unite against them, the Romans cannot hold what they have won.”

Caratac nodded. He bent his head as if the heavy gold already weighed him down and settled the torque he had taken from the neck of Togodumnos around his own.

SIX

oudica, thank the gods you are back!” cried Brenna. “Coventa’s had another of her spells and we can’t wake her!”

Boudica dropped the bag of herbs she had gathered and ducked through the door of the House of Maidens. Coventa was writhing on her bed as Kea tried to hold her down.

“Coventa!” Boudica knelt by the bed and gripped the thin shoulders, feeling the fine bones flex like those of a captive bird beneath her hands. “Coventa, come back, my dear. It’s me, Boudica! I need you, Coventa, talk to me!” Lhiannon could have fared into the spirit world to find her; Boudica could only try to persuade her back to the world of humankind.

Coventa drew a shuddering breath. “Blood …” she whispered. “There’s so much blood …”

“Never mind that—it’s not yours.” Boudica tried to remember the words Lhiannon used to bring someone out of a trance. She took Coventa’s hand and rubbed it against the blanket. “Feel the bed beneath you, feel the rough wool. That’s reality!” She felt a spurt of hope as the girl’s fingers moved. What else might serve? Lhiannon said that smell was the oldest and deepest of the senses. She took a deep breath, seeking to identify the scents in the air.

“Now breathe, Coventa. Smell the woodsmoke from our fire. In the fields the hay is almost ready to cut. Breathe in … and out …” She pitched her voice low. “Smell the ripe grass, still warm from the sun. You’re here on Mona, you’re safe here with me!” she added as the girl’s breathing steadied. She could feel the tense muscles beginning to relax beneath her hands.

“And with me …” another voice cut in smoothly. Boudica looked up, eyes narrowing as she saw Helve’s tall figure in the doorway, silhouetted against the fading sky. One of her braids was still unpinned. The strands wreathed down her neck in serpentine coils, like the lady with snakes for hair in the tales told by Cunobelin’s Greek slave.

“You may go,” the priestess said in a lower voice. “I’ll take care of her now …”

“I’ve almost got her calmed down—” Boudica began, but the authority in Helve’s gesture had her on her feet before she could think of resisting it. She moved back as Helve knelt by the bed and laid a white hand on the girl’s brow.

“Coventa, daughter of Vindomor, I call you!”

Boudica took a step even though the priestess had not been speaking to her.

The girl on the bed took a shuddering breath. “Lady, I hear …”

“You hear my voice, you hear my words, you will go as I bid you and see as I say.”

“I hear and I obey,” came the faint answer.

Boudica stiffened. Was this how Helve had been training her acolyte?

“Seek to the west, where the Romans march. What do you see?”

What was she doing? Was she going to force Coventa to endure the horror all over again? Boudica bit her lip, gaining focus from the pain.

“Blood and fire!” Coventa’s breath caught. “Bodies—”

“Let her go!” Boudica broke in. “Can’t you see how she suffers? She—”

“Be still!” It was the same blast of power Lugovalos had used to silence Cloto, and like him, when she tried to protest Boudica found her powers of speech locked tight.

“I have noticed, Boudica, that you have a strong instinct to protect your friends. That is no bad thing, but you need to choose your fights wisely. There are some powers you cannot oppose, and you will only end up hurting yourself if you try. I am one of them.”

Helve glanced back at Coventa, rather, thought Boudica, as a farmer might consider a prize ewe.

“You must not meddle with what you cannot understand. When the vision is allowed to run its course it passes and leaves the seer in peace. But if you try to suppress it, the horror will remain in her soul and return to haunt her. The child will take no harm.” Helve lifted one exquisitely arched brow. “Indeed, has she ever complained to you about her work with me?”

Boudica shook her head. Now that she thought about it, she realized that when they were together, Coventa scarcely spoke of her teacher at all, but whether that was from respect, aversion, or because Helve had suppressed her memories, she could not tell.

Helve’s lips twitched in scorn. Then, so sure of her power that she did not even call to have Boudica removed, she turned to Coventa once more.

“Coventa, child, rise above the battlefield. You are a bird, soaring above a scene that has nothing to do with you. Fly higher, my dear one, and tell me what the bird sees …”

The girl on the bed gave a long, shuddering sigh. “Night falls. Women wander the field, looking for those they love. Men drag logs to build pyres and the ravens feast on the slain.”