The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (47 page)

Swept with pity, Caitlin took Linnet’s hand as Gabran paused in his whimpering to stare up at his grandmother, blue eyes swimming with tears. ‘You will not be alone, mother,’ Caitlin whispered. ‘I may not be a priestess, but Gabran and I can bring our own healing.’

As they moved into the sunlight spilling over the hut’s roof, Linnet took the child in her arms and held him close. The horses were already untied, and Rhiann was in the saddle, impatient for home.

CHAPTER 44

T
he reaction of the young initiates to Rhiann’s plan was instant and unanimous, and many faces that had been drawn by grief and bewilderment seemed to strengthen with a new resolve and boldness. No one showed any fear, and Rhiann felt great pride as she looked around at them on the hearth-benches of the King’s Hall. The Sisterhood was still strong, she told herself. The spirit of the elders lived in them all.

Nectan and his men had not yet returned north to his home, held at Dunadd by shared grief and his concern for the remaining Sisters. He immediately volunteered the services of his warriors, and Rhiann and her party had their escort.

The next day Linnet and Rhiann made one of the yearly offerings to the old spirits at the stone circle in the ancestor valley, laying meat and mead in a hollow at the base of the stones. There, they sang another chant to invoke the Source in that sacred place, to bless the Sisters for their journey.

‘Where do you intend to go?’ Linnet asked Rhiann as they packed their baskets and left, stepping carefully over the peat on piles of pebbles.

Rhiann moved her basket to her other hip and glanced back at Linnet. ‘We will go to the Creones land first.’ She remembered well how scornful the Creones king had been at Calgacus’s last council. ‘Once his chieftains are banging on his door, baying for blood, perhaps he won’t be so quick to dismiss the war leader of the Epidii again.’

When they reached the horses on the solid ground beside a stream, Rhiann began to strap her basket behind her saddle. ‘Aunt,’ she said then, for she had something most difficult to broach. Linnet paused from untying her stallion and Rhiann took a deep breath and ploughed on. ‘You have never said anything of what I revealed to Eremon that awful day. About babies … my decision.’ Rhiann fixed her eyes on her fumbling fingers, tying the leather thongs too tight.

Linnet said nothing at first, then she stepped forward and raised Rhiann’s chin with a gentle hand. Her eyes were paler in the direct light of the dawn sun, but the colour shifted with some strong emotion. ‘I sent Caitlin away for my own reasons,’ she whispered, ‘then nearly lost her for ever. I have tasted the bitter cup of guilt as priestess and mother both. Who am I to judge you?’

Rhiann swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘But Eremon,’ she said. ‘I never wanted to hurt anyone like that … as I have been hurt.’

Linnet’s hand dropped. ‘A large part of Eremon’s hurt was done to him long ago, and not by you. That is why his sense deserted him. He will find himself again, child, in time.’

Yet Linnet’s words did little to assuage Rhiann’s gnawing guilt on the ride back to Dunadd. And she pondered on time, and how much of it she and Eremon would be granted together. Perhaps when Eremon’s hurt had dulled, when she had a triumph to lay at his feet, then she could go to him and look him in the eye once more.

Samana and her escort, hugging the eastern coast, were only two days behind the Roman army now, judging by the vast, abandoned marching camps they came across on their way north. As nervous as she was, Samana could not help but marvel at the speed and efficiency of the Roman military machine, the vast ditches the army delved and high earth walls that were raised to camp for one night.

Yet even though her party was on horseback, Roman soldiers were trained to march twenty miles a day with a heavy pack, and so Samana pushed her own warriors hard, rousing them early and driving them late, barely stopping for food and drink. She had to get to Agricola’s side before he turned back south.

At last, though, the captain of her Votadini guard said the men must take a proper night’s sleep, if they were to be any good to her.

Samana chafed at the decision even as she accepted its wisdom, and grudgingly called a halt in a clearing by the Isla river, its banks wooded with scrubby alder and willow, the higher ground behind thick with spreading oaks.

‘Do not fret, lady,’ her captain said as he helped her to dismount beneath a tall elm tree, the shadows already cooling with approaching night. The man was irritatingly cheerful now he was closer to a full belly around a fire. ‘There’s been no hint of any trouble, none at all. The highlanders won’t come down so close to the Roman forts anyway.’

Samana whipped around. ‘Fool! They raided and burned some of those forts to the ground! And how? With magic?’

The warrior’s face fell as he sought for some other platitude, yet Samana only hissed impatiently and turned her back, stalking off to the gravel banks of the river. Far to the west the mountains reared, dark banks of cloud shrouding their peaks. The surface of the swift river at her feet was dark and opaque in the valley, breathing a mist that curled over her skin.

Agricola had always spoken of keeping to the coast, and Samana wanted nothing more than to stay as far from those mountains as possible. But she couldn’t. The swiftest route was along this broad valley, which funnelled them between the mountains and a range of heavily wooded hills closer to the sea. She didn’t like it, but the ease of the ground meant she would be out of danger and in Agricola’s arms all the sooner.

No one would attack
me, she blustered to herself.
Why would they?
The highlanders sought only Roman blood.

Samana had been repeating the same litany in her head for the past three days, though it did not shake the dread that kept sending cold tendrils up her spine. And she’d put herself in this situation for a man who had tossed her aside like some common whore. Well, when she gained his side once more she would not let go, and he could take her south with him, or … or … she would think up some threat significant enough to make him agree.

Anger was better than fear, and so strong was her ability to ignore what troubled her that when Samana was woken in the night by a scuffle outside her tent she did not at first register what it might be. Then her mind, scrambling for awareness, at last recognized the sounds: the grunts of men being stabbed by blades; the gasps of the dying.

By the time the flap of her tent was wrenched back and a brand thrust inside, Samana was crouching against the far wall, her meat-dagger clutched in her hand. As she held a fur across her shift, one thought sparked in her mind, appalling her: few women possessed her sensual beauty, she always gloated, few could catch a man’s eye like she could … Samana’s mouth went so dry her tongue stuck to its roof, but she faced down the four men who pushed their way into the tent, stinking of sweat and blood and Goddess knew what else. Their hair was straggling, their tunics filthy, but they were armoured, too, with helmets and hardened leather breastplates, and all bore swords.

Now the one with the brand held it higher, and that was when she saw the blue tattoos curling fiercely over their cheeks; some depicting bears and stags and wolves, but all bearing on one side the sharp outline of the great eagle.

The eagle.
Calgacus
.

For the first time in her life, Samana knew visceral, gut-loosening fear.

‘This is her,’ one of the men said, and spat onto the fine furs of otter, wolf and seal tumbled across her bed roll.

‘You know who I am?’ She tried to sound imperious, but sweat was trickling down under her breasts, and her palms were slippery on the knife.

The man who held the torch was studying her with appraising eyes that held little pity. ‘No,’ he replied curtly. ‘But we’ve been tracking you for days. And what would a beautiful Alban maid like you be doing marching in the wake of a Roman army?’ He stepped closer, then wrenched the fur cover away from her and dropped it. ‘Why would you show no fear of them? Why would you hurry to catch them?’

Samana backed up against the wall of the tent, the slope of the taut leather pressing down on her head. ‘I … I was a prisoner. I am of the Venicones, and the Romans took me because I am high born. He,’ she bit her lip, ‘
they
were sending me south, to be a slave in their camps.’ She forced a tremulous smile, reached out to him. ‘And thank the Goddess you saved me! My people will be grateful.’

The man shook away her touch as if he’d been scalded. ‘Prisoner? Do you think my lord gives fools his command?’ he demanded. ‘If you were a prisoner, you would be travelling under Roman escort, not your own. And you are going north, my lady.’ At last he smiled. ‘My
lowland
lady.’

One of the other men spoke up now, and his eyes were indeed roving over the curves of Samana’s body. ‘What do we do with her, then? I’ve got an itch here I haven’t scratched for weeks. Shall we throw dice for who’s first?’

Samana could not repress the cry of horror that burst from her, yet the leader’s flinty eyes darted warningly to his men. ‘No. She is a friend of the invaders, so we’ll take her back north. Our lord and the other chiefs can retrieve all the information she undoubtedly carries.’ A cruel smile curved his mouth. ‘She’ll be more use that way.’

‘But Gerat, she can buck under me as well as talk!’

‘I said no.’ The leader’s gaze met Samana’s own, and in it she saw contempt, not lust. ‘She’s high born all right; she told the truth there. Our lord would not allow it, as well you know. Now get back outside: take all their weapons, their food. Hurry!’

After letting her dress, Samana’s captors dragged her outside into the cold night air, and she stumbled, averting her eyes from the twisted bodies scattered around the campfire.

Beyond, the river ran black and swift under a shining half-moon, indifferent to her plight. Yet it was only after Samana was thrown into the saddle of her mare, her hands tied, that her dazed brain could begin to comprehend what had happened.

Our lord and the other chiefs
, the leader said. And who were they? Who were Calgacus’s allies? She was taken with a shudder of shock, and had to hunch her shoulders so her cloak did not fall.

Agricola hadn’t known for sure, but the recent fort attacks bore all the marks of the Erin prince, and snippets of other information had hinted that Calgacus and Eremon had grown close. Had that closeness now turned into true allegiance? It felt true … it must be true.

So that was where they were taking her.

To see Eremon again.

A font of hysteria bubbled up, and Samana began to snort with laughter, to shriek with a terrible, wild mirth that she could not contain. Then the leader turned his horse back and slapped her across the face with a hard hand, and she slumped into stunned silence and did not laugh again.

BOOK FOUR

Sunseason, AD 82

CHAPTER 45

T
he waiting time was over at last.

Eremon’s plans had been carefully laid with Calgacus; now they walked through the encampment on the night before those plans would be set in motion. Together, the king and the prince wended their way from campfire to campfire in the valley, speaking to their men, sharing ale and jests, giving reassurance and information as needed.

Yet Eremon had another subject to broach with his Caledonii ally, and had only been waiting for an opportunity to speak alone, which came rarely in a camp of 1,700 men. Perhaps, too, he had waited to gain some measure of control over his rage. In that, he feared he had failed.

He and Calgacus were making their way down a gully beside a swift, stone-tumbled stream bed, caught in the dark reaches between two campfires, when Eremon found himself blurting out what he had wished to raise calmly. ‘You have not yet given me your answer about the Orcadian king.’

Calgacus halted, and in the half-dark Eremon could sense the tension that tightened his shoulders as he sighed. ‘I think perhaps I was avoiding the discussion, in truth,’ the king replied. ‘For you won’t like what I have to say.’

Eremon’s held breath was expelled in a soft hiss, and Calgacus’s head reared in dark outline against the bloom of fire below.

‘You know I wish to exact revenge on him as much as you, prince – my mother was a priestess, after all. But we have an entire legion of Romans down there on the plain;
they
are our priority, and you know it. We don’t know how badly wounded Maelchon is, or how well fortified his dun, or how many men he has. No one has ever known. If you take your warriors and leave, you weaken us. Revenge is not worth that.’ The king’s stiff posture softened. ‘Rage can be a man’s undoing, Eremon. It can make him foolhardy, but I cannot afford one moment of foolhardiness. You are not my vassal, and can do as you wish. But I cannot give you men to aid you against Maelchon. I would counsel you to leave him alone. For now.’

Eremon’s blood pounded on his temples. He had known, somewhere, what the verdict would be, for he himself knew that the king’s reasoning was sound. ‘Yet Maelchon remains a danger at our rear,’ he argued gruffly.

‘I fear so. But the Decantae have allowed me to station scouts in their lands with their own, to watch for any movement from the Orcades.’ Calgacus’s hand squeezed his shoulder. ‘Let this thought comfort you, prince. Maelchon has shown where his true allegiance lies. I do not think another year will pass before you meet him on the end of your sword. Then you can have your revenge, and it will be all the sweeter for waiting.’

When Eremon rejoined his own men at a fire outside his shelter, Conaire glanced up at him, eyebrows arched in enquiry. Eremon replied with a tiny shake of his head, but as he seated himself on his folded cloak, Rori, oblivious, displayed far less tact.

‘My lord,’ he blurted eagerly, laying his bow across his knees, ‘when are we setting sail to challenge the Orcades traitor?’

At the expression on Eremon’s face, Colum winced and looked down at the sword he was sharpening and began to whistle, applying the stone with vigour. As the strained silence stretched out, Rori realized he had said something wrong, and shrank back, his eyes darting from Eremon’s face to Conaire’s set mouth.