The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (38 page)

The approaching horse was as wet as if it had swum a river, but the lather around its jaws and flanks left Agricola in no doubt that it was sweat that streaked its coat. It had been ridden hard, and fast. He swung back to the ground and held his own bridle, murmuring to calm his shying mount as the other horse thundered up.

And Agricola knew then, looking up into the messenger’s face, that he had left the Tay too soon. The snatch of sixth sense curdled in his belly before it became coherent in his mind.

‘Sir … an uprising … on the northern frontier,’ the soldier gasped out, his chest heaving, his face dripping with sweat. ‘Three forts were destroyed; four watchtowers. They also crossed the Gask line and took one supply train. Everything is gone, sir: the cattle, the grain, the mules, the armour.’ He gulped again, nearly gagging, for he was only young, and there was blood and ash on his face and streaking his armour. ‘Some left only naked bodies, sir. Naked bodies without … who weren’t men any more, sir.’

Agricola said nothing, and for three heartbeats did not move. ‘Survivors?’

‘Yes, sir, there are three, one from each fort. They are coming behind me, sir. Two days behind.’

‘Three survivors,’ Agricola repeated softly. Three, from 600 men.

And Agricola realized, in the midst of the red rage that blossomed behind his eyes, that the savages had taken a third again of the number that the emperor had already recalled from him to Rome. The shreds of his dispassionate mind turned over the certainty that the chances of those soldiers being returned were diminishing by the day, in direct proportion to these numbers falling to Alban arrows.

He’d thought he was the only one with a surprise brewing, but it seemed he had been wrong.

CHAPTER 35

R
hiann wound each end of her vervain wreath together, and stood back to see if the hawthorn base would grip the surface of the Stone securely. The other Stones were already dressed with their wreaths, one from each Ban Cré, but it was the last evening before Beltaine, and Rhiann had waited until she could be alone to add hers. Tomorrow morning, the chanters would claim the circle, to begin drawing the Source up from the land with their singing.

Just as she had when a child, Rhiann now walked with her hands outstretched, first one and then the other catching on the glittering surface of the Stones as she wheeled and turned, her steps those of the spiral dance. Dusk was fast fading into twilight, and the sweep of gilded loch and dark rocks and glowing bracken hills spun as she turned, like a jewelled cloth of many colours. The air was sharp with salt and seaweed, softened by the peat smoke which drifted up from the houses below.

Sometimes, when Rhiann danced these steps as a child, images had come of lives she’d lived before. Once she found herself singing a song older even than those remembered by the Sisters, and glimpsed herself walking down the avenue of Stones with a collar of jet heavy across her breast. Then, the Stones had been new, and she had woven words of magic into their roots as the holes were dug, and ropes creaked over timber sleds. Sometimes she had even caught glimpses of the ages before the Stones were raised, when she crouched with a deerskin fringe about her feet, cracking open mussels still hot from the coals. And even further back, when all she could remember was wind that cut her lungs with shards of ice, and the crunch of boots on endless snow.

Spinning to a breathless halt, Rhiann gazed out across the sea-loch. It was the time of day when the water and sky merged into one pool of liquid gold, and though the rim of the sun had already gone, there seemed to be so much more light in the sky, light diffusing from all directions, reflecting back as if inside a shell. The wind had dropped and all was silent, even the gulls.

‘It is very fine, is it not?’

Rhiann turned to see Nerida and Setana on the edge of the ridge, standing arm in arm. The dying light was in their faces, blurring their wrinkles so for a moment they appeared to her not old at all.

The dream of three nights ago had faded from Rhiann’s mind, becoming only a vague snatch of memory. And though she wondered if Nerida and Setana would be able to shed any light on her sore muscles and that white stone, something stopped her tongue. She had learned here that some mysteries were best left alone. Perhaps they’d sought to bless her, and give her strength for the rite – or perhaps she really had dreamed it.

‘You have grown this past year, daughter,’ Setana said abruptly, her bright eyes turned to Rhiann. ‘Did you listen to us after all?’

‘Listen?’

Nerida seemed to be breathing harder than normal, and as she turned from regarding the view, the corners of her mouth twisted with something Rhiann could not name. ‘We said to you,’ she murmured, ‘that we must show women how the Goddess lives in them, by sharing all their joys, their pains, their birth pangs.’

‘And you have shared such things, have you not?’ Setana asked softly.

Rhiann heard in her mind an echo of Caitlin’s screams, and Gabran’s triumphant wail. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

Nerida’s bony hand tightened on her staff. ‘What else did we say, child?’

Rhiann fixed her eyes on the ripples of the loch’s surface, yet her memory had been trained here along with her heart. ‘That I had to surrender to love, that it would root me in the land.’ Her fingers fluttered unconsciously across her flat belly, as she tasted the bitterness of her secret brew on her tongue.

‘And have you surrendered, daughter?’ Nerida’s voice wavered.

Rhiann dropped her hand, turning to face them. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘Not with everything that is in me, Goddess forgive me.’

She held her breath, yet Nerida’s blue eyes were only sorrowed. ‘It is yourself you must forgive,’ she sighed. ‘Yet the question only becomes more urgent each time, until you heed it.’

‘So it does,’ Setana agreed, looking at Nerida.

Abruptly, cold fear washed over Rhiann, sweeping away all the strange, blurred sensations. And she was just herself, in her own time, and chill was beginning to creep up from the ground as the light faded. ‘May I ask you, my sisters, what weighs so heavy on your hearts?’

Setana’s gaze shifted to Rhiann. ‘Yes, you can ask. But we cannot answer, child. We have our own path to walk.’

‘A path … away from me?’

Nerida shook her white head. ‘No, never away, never lost. Have you not trod the ice path with us? Have you not looked upon the Stones on their first day, as we stood beside you? Have you not run with the deer, as we ran with you?’

Rhiann’s throat closed over, and she nodded.

‘She was always stubborn,’ Setana remarked to Nerida, her eyes warm. ‘Though she usually listened in the end.’

‘Stubborn I may be,’ Rhiann said slowly, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. ‘Yet it seems you were often pleased with demonstrations of my will, even as you scolded me.’

‘Pleased!’ Nerida’s staff swept out, pointing. ‘Remember that bramble bush just down there? You nearly broke an ankle scampering after that hare, and then tore your hands and new cloak to pieces rather than give up the chase!’

‘Its leg was hurt; I wanted to save it,’ Rhiann protested. Yet her smile was no longer so forced.

‘Come!’ The staff thumped once into the ground. ‘There is enough light to go as far as the Golden Loch – perhaps the otters will be at play. We need such reminders of life, after the dark words shared this week.’

Troubled, Rhiann let herself be drawn down the slope in their wake, guarding their slow steps from behind, silent as they exclaimed over the view and the scent of the soft air. She did not wish to darken its beauty with her questions.

‘Rhiann!’ Fola was shaking her. ‘Rhiann, wake up!’

Sleep lay as heavy as lead in Rhiann’s limbs. She couldn’t understand why she was slumbering so deeply, and finding it hard to wake. She propped herself up on one elbow, but could see from the grey light seeping in under the door-hide that it was still very early.

‘I went to the waste pit,’ Fola was saying, kneeling by Rhiann’s pallet. ‘And on the way back I passed Nerida’s house. She told me that she wants you to take all the novices and young initiates out to gather may blossom today.’

‘Today?’ Rhiann covered a yawn with her hand.

‘It’s Beltaine, silly, or have you forgotten?’

That got Rhiann’s attention. With a jolt she remembered just what would happen tonight, and how important it was for Eremon. And the nagging fear reawakened, that perhaps it wouldn’t happen because of her. Rubbing her face, she struggled up. ‘But we have not even spoken about the rite tonight. I cannot leave—’

‘She said the rite will have greater power if you approach it with an open mind. And she also said she knew you would argue, but that the villagers have stripped the thorns nearby already, and the girls must go far into the hills for more, and she thought you could tell the ones who will be Ban Crés about politics and such, and the others about herbs.’

Rhiann frowned in the half-dark, then said, ‘I must go to her.’ She drew on the nearest dress, then, pulling on her cloak, tiptoed over the other girls wrapped in their blankets, and stepped out into the chill, wet dawn, ducking the dew drips coming off the eaves.

The sun was still below the horizon, but she could clearly hear the rumble of men’s voices – the villagers from the broch were already hauling wood for the bonfires to be lit at dusk. They sang and called out to each other as they worked, trailing up and down between the horse-drawn sledges and the Stones.

As she hurried along, Rhiann sniffed the familiar salt and seaweed, turning her face to the lightening east, where the last stars speckled a sky as blue as a duck egg. Eremon was waking to the same sky, clear and unclouded. Perhaps he stared at it right now, thinking of her. A pang of longing almost burned her throat in its intensity, as did the fear he could have already been harmed. Rhiann had asked him to avoid battle until Beltaine, but she had no way of knowing if circumstances had allowed him to keep to his promise. Hopping over a puddle, she breathed through her nose, calming herself. Nothing would keep the knowledge of Eremon’s death from her – the land would sense it, and bring the change to her on the wind, or through the soil. It hadn’t come. The King Stag still lived.

And with the Mother’s blessing he will be even stronger after this night
, Rhiann told herself, forcing confidence down into her cold chest. The stags had come before, when all the priestesses held their energy together. And the same would happen tonight. It would not all rest on her abilities alone.

As she hurried past the glow of the bakeovens, Rhiann nodded at the priestesses stoking the fires and preparing the sacred moon cakes, and reached Nerida’s door just as the sun broke over the hills. And there was Nerida herself watching it rise, wrapped in her cloak, her breath misting the air.

Swiftly, Rhiann gave her the priestess kiss. ‘Surely you cannot mean me to leave here this day!’ she burst out. ‘If you do not wish to meet with me, I must understand, but at the least I should stay inside and fast and meditate—’

Nerida’s tired smile stopped her, for in contrast to her own torrent of words, it spread over her face soft and slow. ‘Daughter, do not make me order you. You are young, and there is still a girl in you, though you try to believe otherwise. Just for today, be a child in your heart. That will do more to prepare you for the rite than any meditation. There is more than one way to honour the Goddess, after all.’

Rhiann tried to argue with her, yet though the soft smile never wavered, Nerida’s words were implacable. Rhiann must leave the other Ban Crés to decide on the rites, and take the girls to hunt for blossom.

‘As you wish, Sister,’ Rhiann said heavily at last, bowing her head. Unease burned in her chest, though she could not disobey the Eldest Sister. Yet as she turned to go, Nerida suddenly clasped her close in her fierce, bony arms.

‘Promise me
,’ the old woman murmured, looking up into Rhiann’s eyes, ‘that one day you will judge yourself by what you do and say, and not by what you believe yourself to be.’

Rhiann gazed down at the old woman’s lined face, still spare and elegant beneath the softening flesh. Despite Nerida’s smile, something unsure had wavered there for a moment. ‘I will try,’ Rhiann answered, her hand clasping Nerida’s, though the meaning of the words were obscured by the unreasoning fear that clutched at her. ‘If soon you promise to take tea with me around your fire.’

Nerida’s eyes flickered, and the mysterious world held there was again veiled. ‘As we have done so many times, child, so will we do so again.’

Rhiann left the settlement behind a group of chattering young women and girls laden with empty willow baskets and food for the day. The initiates of Rhiann’s own age were doing their best to be severe, led by Fola, whose own face could barely summon such gravity even when she tried.

Besides Rhiann strode Didius, fully armed despite the heat promised by the strengthening sun. His fine sword and dagger and helmet seemed to make him feel more secure in his self-appointed role of guard, but had no effect on the younger girls, who were now over their fright of him and had decorated his neck and wrists with a chain of sea-pinks.

As the girls streamed up the path into the nearest hills, Rhiann paused to glance back across the broad vale towards the Stones.

Among the chanters who sat within the circle, drawing the Source with their songs, other figures were now outlined against the sky: the elder priestesses, walking alone and in groups. Now the sun glowed bright on the white robes of one who detached herself from the rest and came to the edge of the ridge, looking across the vale at Rhiann. And as Rhiann raised her hand, so Setana raised hers. It was like the glimmer of a gull’s wing against a storm cloud.
But there were no clouds
. The sky was clear, and that was why she was leaving them for the day.

‘Rhiann,’ Fola was at her elbow, ‘
please
tell us a story as we walk. These girls squawk incessantly, like ravenous chicks, and it will be a long day indeed if my headache begins before we even leave! Tell them about your adventures – they will love that.’