Ravens of Avalon (35 page)

All eyes turned to Lhiannon as she stepped into the firelight, putting back her veil. “This was a dream—it is for you to interpret it, but this is what I saw. I was like a bird, looking down on the land of Britannia. Below me I saw eagles flying, following Caratac from ocean to river across the pastures and tilled lands. But when he took to the forest they struggled to follow, and when he took to the mountains they grew weary. My vision failed then and I could not see the battle’s end. But if you fight on a hill you have a chance. That is what I see.”

“The land itself will fight for us, you’ll see.” Caratac bent to his dirt map and began to point at the hills and rivers modeled there. “The Romans fight like lions on level ground, but our men are like wildcats on their native hills. We will tempt them with a little opposition at the river crossing and then pull back to this hill—” The stick he was using as a pointer stabbed down.

“The old hillfort?” asked a Durotrige warrior who had been with him since Vespasian’s campaign. “You’ll not be planning to trap us there!”

Lhiannon shuddered. There were still nights when she woke whimpering from memories of the fall of the Dun of Stones.

“No, though it may serve as a last defense if things go ill,” Caratac replied. “We’ll take up our positions on the slopes leading up to it, where the lie of the land will crowd them, and anywhere the climb is easy we can block with ramparts of stones.”

“Stones we have in plenty,” said one of the Ordovices, and everyone laughed.

Stones, and cold wind,
thought Lhiannon as the breeze that always blew strongest at sunset searched out every imperfection in the weave of her cloak of creamy wool. The sun had gone down behind the western mountains and dusk was drawing a veil of shadow across the lesser hills. The men were arguing over which tribes should stand where on the hill and had forgotten her.

Tomorrow they would be on the move again. Lhiannon made her way through the camp toward the tent she shared with Caratac’s wife and daughter and the few other women whose value as potential hostages was too great to leave them where they might risk capture. Now and again a man would look up as she passed his fire. She smiled in return. It cost her nothing to give that comfort.
But who,
she wondered,
will comfort me?

She thrust the thought away. In her first months with the army the day’s march would have left her too tired to think of anything but sleep when night fell. But after more than two years in the field she was as tough as any of the men. Sleep would come hard, with a battle in store. But she would have to try. If she was lucky, she would not dream.

ome men dreamed of wealth or glory. Prasutagos, his wife had come to realize, dreamed of buildings. When Boudica’s gaze followed the curling smoke upward she still had to blink in amazement at the added height that the second level of the new roundhouse gave. The area around the hearth was large enough to seat all the chieftains; roomy chambers for the household were created by the partitions that ran from the main supports to the outer wall. There was nothing like the king’s two-tiered hall anywhere in the Celtic lands.

They had only moved in a month before. Beneath the scents of woodsmoke and mutton stew there was still a hint of limewash and fresh straw. But for the children, to whom the whole world was made of wonders, their father’s new house had become an accustomed miracle. At the moment, putting off the inevitable banishment to their beds was their concern.

“A story, Mama!” Rigana begged. “Tell us one of the stories you learned on the magic island!” Little Tilla clapped her hands.

Boudica smiled to think that her main use for the lore the Druids had taught with such solemnity was as a source of children’s tales. And yet these stories were the wellspring of their religion. It was more important than ever that their children learn them now, when so many were turning to the victorious Roman gods.

“Well, now—since it is summer, I should tell you about one of the gods who make things grow. He plays the harp to order the seasons, and in His orchard there is always fruit on the trees. We call Him Dagdevos the Good God, or the Father of All, or the Red One All-Knowing, or the Good Striker, and He can do anything. He is one of the kings of the Shining Ones.”

“Like Papa,” said Tilla wisely.

“Just
like Papa,” Boudica agreed, keeping her face straight with an effort as her husband blushed. “When the monster-people attacked His land He had to survive the tests they set upon Him. He had to eat a porridge made from four-score gallons of milk, and He did it, though His belly was so full His tunic scarcely covered him.”

At this, the look the girls turned on their father was frankly speculative, and Temella and Bituitos both gave way to laughter.

“His belly’s not all that was dragging, I’ve heard,” whispered Eoc, and the laughter began once more.

“Oh, do you mean His club?” Boudica asked innocently. “When He strikes, it kills instantly, but if He touches you with the other end you come back to life once more.”

“That’s the end He uses on the Lady of Ravens,” Prasutagos retaliated. “Battle goddess though She may be, He has a weapon to win Her …”

“But His best possession is a magic cauldron,” said Boudica, though by now she was blushing as well. “Some say it is the same as the one into which you put dead warriors to bring them alive, but others say it can feed an army, and whatever food you like best it will serve.”

“Would it serve honey cakes?” asked Rigana.

“An’ bilberries in cream?” her sister echoed. “I want to go there!”

“Where you should be going now is your bed,” Prasutagos said with a comical frown. “You can feast with Dagdevos in your dreams …”

When both girls had been hugged and kissed and handed off to their nurses, he turned to Boudica. “You did not tell them the story of how Dagdevos makes love to the Morrigan each Samhain to still her rage and restore balance to the world,” he murmured with a glance that brought the blush back to her skin.

“I think that one can wait until the girls are older,” she said primly. “And I have never quite understood how even gods can manage to do it, straddling the stream …”

“Do you prefer a bed, then? For if so, I have one …”

As he took her hand Boudica smiled, knowing herself blessed by the gods.

ith the other Druids, Lhiannon had made the offerings to Le-nos, which was the name they gave the war god here, spilling the blood of a bull upon the ground and hanging the carcass from the branches of an ancient oak tree. Had it been accepted? There had been no roll of thunder, only the ravens, calling as they always did when an army was on the move. It took no Druid to interpret that omen—where humans fought, ravens would feed.

But that night, Lhiannon had dreamed again. Once more she soared above a battlefield, and this time the Romans, like armored insects, were advancing up the hill. The eagle god strode before them with a tread like thunder and the Britons fell before them, blood splattering the rocks like rain. She had been weeping when she woke, knowing it for a dream of doom. And she had known as well that there was nothing she could do. The Romans were already on their way. Any rumor of defeat would break the British army before they struck a blow. Caratac could have escaped with a small band into the wilderness, but a force so great had no choice but to stand. Even to tell the king what she had seen might deprive him of the hope that could prove her vision wrong. She could only watch, and pray, and hope the gods of Britannia were listening.

Or is it that we are praying for the wrong things?
she wondered suddenly.

The hill from which they watched the battle unfolding did not give her quite the vantage of her vision, but neither did she have the same detachment. After slowing the enemy’s crossing with slingstones and arrows, the British had retreated in good order to the slope of the hill, pulling in to meet the Roman advance in depth as it grew steeper, shooting and throwing spears from behind the drystone barricades that protected them from the ballista bolts of the enemy.

About midmorning, Caratac’s wife and daughter began to cheer, seeing the Roman auxiliaries driven back by the intensity of the defense. But the legions were forming up behind them. And now the blocks of marching men were covered by overlapping shields upon which the British missiles struck in vain. And despite the fury of the defenders, they kept on coming, foot by foot and yard by yard, until they reached the stone walls and threw them down, and then it was sword against sword and shield against shield, and the blood flowed down the hill.

“Morrigan, goddess of battles, be with them now!”
she prayed. The anguish she heard in the wailing of Caratac’s women as they watched the British line break and disappear was the same paean of pain she heard from the ravens that circled the hill.
The goddess
is
with them,
Lhiannon shuddered in appalled understanding.
To death and beyond. But she cannot, or will not, save.

Someone shouted that soldiers were coming. Too stunned to move, Lhiannon stood still in the midst of confusion as the others left her alone among the trees.

darkness like the wings of a thousand ravens had closed around the world. The Roman forces had passed on, pursuing a large band of Silure tribesmen who had managed to get off the hill, leaving the battlefield to those with the courage to seek for anyone left to save. Lhiannon walked like a ghost among them. A pitiful few were able to drink the water she carried. For others, a sure thrust of her dagger was the only possible mercy. Numbed by the horror of the shattered bodies around her, she offered both with equal calm.

And thus, wandering the battlefield in her pale gown, she came upon the king.

It was only by the twisted gold of the torque around his neck that she knew him. Caratac was covered with blood, his clothing mostly torn away. He was sitting with the body of a warrior in his arms. Lhian-non did not recognize the dead man. Perhaps that did not matter. He was all of them.

As she approached, Caratac lifted his head. “The White Lady …” he whispered. “Have you come to take me, too?”

“My lord,” shock broke through Lhiannon’s detachment. “You should not be here!”

“No … I should not. That is very true …” He gazed around him. “Oh, my warriors! See how still they lie … Why am I living? I fought hard … I did not flee … You know that, don’t you?” he addressed the dead man. “You will tell them, where they feast with the heroes, that I tried …” His head drooped once more.

“Caratac, get up! The Romans will return and they must not find you here.”

“Does it matter?”

It was a question that she had been trying hard not to ask. “It might matter to the ones who escaped this field,” she said carefully. “They will be wanting you to lead them again—”

“As I led these?” he asked bitterly. But he seemed at last to recognize that the man he was holding was past all listening. There was a long silence. Then, very gently, he laid the body down. “The Ordovices are broken,” he said in a more normal tone. “And the Roman swine will be putting all their attention on the mountains here. Our only hope is to seek support in a direction they will not be looking.” Once more he was silent, but he had begun to look like the man she knew. “The Brigantes were willing to rise against them before. What say you, White Lady?”

Lhiannon shook her head. “Don’t look to me for answers, my lord. I am empty. When I was at Mona two years ago, the Arch-Druid wanted me to go and study in Eriu. It is said they have knowledge we have lost. But I chose to come to you. I should have gone—I have been little use to you here …”

“We are a sad pair indeed,” Caratac said softly. “But you are wrong,

Lady. You have given me a reason to live. Go west to Eriu and find some wisdom for our future, and I will go east, to Cartimandua.”

ou are going to Cartimandua?” Boudica frowned at the man before her. “Are you certain that is wise?”

She had come upon him at the gates of Teutodunon, sitting hunched in a hooded cloak, anonymous as any other broken man washed up by the wars. When she paused to give him a bannock from the bag she carried for such eventualities, she glimpsed beneath the rag tied around his neck a glint of gold.

He pulled the scarf away. Her face paled as she recognized the torque, and then the fierce gaze of the king.

“My lord Caratac! Be welcome! Come in to the dun and let me give you a proper meal!”
And a bath … and dressings for those wounds …
she added silently.

“No.” strong fingers closed on the hand she held out to him. His glance flicked to the road, where a wagon carrying rolls of woolen cloth from their weaving sheds to Colonia was rumbling by.

“You have too many people here who are friends of Rome. For your sake and mine it is best if no one else knows that I have come.”

“But we must talk … We heard of the battle. Some said you were taken, others that you had been slain—” She halted at the pain that darkened his eyes.

“Perhaps I was, and it is only my ghost you see here. I have felt like a ghost these past weeks, making my way unseen across the land. Many— too many—of my men lie dead upon that hill.” He hesitated, then looked up at her. “Bracios was one of them. Your brother fell defending mine.”