The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (55 page)

For Rhiann was alive in her eyes as she had not been for moons. ‘Hold me,’ her friend said simply, and the grace of tears was the last given that day.

CHAPTER 50

L
ucius shook the rain from his cloak, unheeding of the close confines of his tent. As he handed it to his slave, he deliberately avoided the implacable eyes of his
primus pilus
, the highest-ranking centurion, who was standing with the tribunes and the camp prefect. They nearly filled the leather tent, pushing Lucius’s camp bed and tables and brazier to the edges of the woollen rug, ducking to avoid the hanging brass oil lamps.

‘Between you and me, Lucius,’ the
primus pilus
said grimly, ‘Agricola’s orders were given before we knew what we were facing. Over the last month these new raids have demoralized the men – we’ve lost five hundred already, and not one in a pitched battle. I hear soldiers talking: they speak of devils that change from trees to men, that fly at them in the night, spiriting men away in their sleep in order to feast on their flesh.’ He stepped before Lucius. ‘Something is eating their
souls
, not their flesh! We must get away from these hills, and now.’

Lucius wiped rain from his cheeks with his palm, then ran his fingers through his dark, clipped hair. ‘Our goal is the fort of this Caledonii chief.’

‘Our
goal
was to engage the enemy, raid the duns, weaken the tribes,’ said the soldier wearily. ‘Yet we have done none of these things. They are not in sight to
be
engaged; the duns are deserted. I strongly advise that we turn back now, and return our men to base in one piece.’

One of the tribunes, a young aristocrat with little battle experience, snorted and started forward. ‘We have already gone further north than any others of our kind! The commander charged us to seek for glory, to show these savages that we will not be cowed, that we will conquer!’

‘All we are showing them is that we seek death!’ the
primus pilus
burst out. His face was shadowed by the uncertain light of the swinging lamps, but Lucius read his frustration plainly.

This was no unfamiliar situation on campaign. The camp prefect and
primus pilus
had worked their way up from the common ranks. Yet legates – like Lucius – and tribunes were from the old families. They knew the mind of Agricola better, and must think of many things beyond this one campaign: namely, how Agricola’s movements were perceived in Rome. Lucius’s career depended on it, no less than his commander’s.

‘Sir,’ the
primus pilus
urged, ‘we must turn back, I beg you. They will not give us battle; they melt away like spring snows. It is madness to continue—’

‘All right!
’ Lucius put up his hand. ‘All right.’

In his secret heart, Lucius himself wanted nothing more than to turn back. Honour and glory – all that he needed to win wealth and influence – were to be found in battle. They were
not
found by having his men picked off by mud-covered savages.

The mules and oxen were gone, and they’d had to abandon many of their supply carts, so food was growing scarce. The foraging parties, forced further from camp, were easy prey for men who could move as part of the very land itself. And the unseasonable rain would not clear, leaving them imprisoned in a world of grey skies, clammy mud and ceaseless winds.

After much debate, and in the face of heated protests from his tribunes, Lucius at last gave the order to his exhausted men that they were to retreat. Spirits rose instantly that night and, despite the lack of horses and stores, the pace back along the coast the next day was faster than their advance had been.

All of them had become sensitized to the disturbing emptiness of the land, which made the news that Lucius received from his scouts four days later even more difficult to believe. ‘Are you sure?’ Lucius asked the excited messenger, who knelt before him in his tent.

The man nodded eagerly. ‘There are a thousand barbarian warriors drawn up for battle, in the open. Waiting for us.’

Lucius took one of the few horses left and rode to see for himself, but two hours later he confirmed it with his own eyes, peering down from a heavily wooded rise through sheets of rain, which swept out of a wide valley breaching the mountains. The barbarians had picked the ground where the valley opened on to the coastal plain, and were arrayed there in silent, unmoving rows, many squatting in clumped groups. Yet Lucius could see immediately that their numbers were no match for his. Perhaps they thought this sudden turnaround meant that his army’s will had been broken, that they at last had a chance. Well, they would soon discover their error.

Rising high in his saddle, knees braced, Lucius stretched his back with a grim excitement. For nigh on three months his men had been harassed and goaded until there wasn’t a single soldier not strung out on tension and lack of sleep, fear and frustration. Now all that turmoil could be assuaged as it should be – in blood.

After a double-pace march from camp, the Roman army scrambled into battle formation a few hours later on the plain outside the valley mouth. The trumpeters blasted out the officers’ commands as the centurions barked orders, and the legionaries drew swords and clanked up against each other’s armour, rectangular shields overlapping. The auxiliary cohorts were moved to the front with their mailshirts and long spears, with the legionaries behind. In the empty space between the enemy and auxiliary lines, the tribunes and remaining mounted cavalry officers trotted the surviving horses up and down, exhorting their men to stand firm.

From his command post on a knoll beneath a dripping ash tree, Lucius could see the barbarian commanders moving among their own men, ordering them up and whipping them into some vague order. Their cursing and screaming rose as a roar through the rain, and the thrashing of their swords on their shields echoed the steady drum of the drops as they beat the earth.

Yet Lucius had no intention of letting these savages indulge in the usual battle posturing for long. His men, tired and wet and worn, were like hounds held tightly on a leash. He had only to release them, and this he finally did, the horns blaring out his order to advance and engage.

Out moved the auxiliary infantry, pausing to throw their first barrage of spears. The cloud of barbs flew up in an arc and disappeared into the sheets of rain, and though Lucius had little hope they would find their targets, such a barrage always demoralized the enemy.

Lucius cupped his hand to protect his eyes from the rain, straining to see how many had been downed by the spears, but the auxiliary infantry were now advancing as a single wall, and he found his eyes were locked instead on those rigid ranks, closing in on the shrieking enemy, who were still pounding their swords on their shields.

Even through the muffling drizzle Lucius heard the dull clash as the two armies met, and sections of his own lines wavered, the bright, tangled weave of barbarian clothes and weapons bleeding into the uniform ranks of Roman red, yellow and polished iron.

There was a momentary struggle, the flanks of both armies heaving in a confused ebb and flow of men, and then suddenly something changed. The barbarians were giving ground already, seeping back up the slope.

Lucius shifted in his saddle, uneasy. It was too soon for such a retreat – the barbarians had displayed little of their usual reckless ferocity. Then he glimpsed the prefect and the
primus pilus
racing over to him from different directions, and just then, the enemy line suddenly broke altogether and galloped up the rise, disappearing into the mouth of the valley.

An entire flank of his own auxiliary infantry, encouraged by this act of cowardice and the scent of an easy victory, took the opportunity to pursue. The prefect’s shout carried faintly to Lucius beneath the ash tree, but the tribune in charge of the pursuing men could not stop the red tide, their soldiers goaded by weeks of fear and exhaustion into leaping for revenge. As the first lines pounded away over the churned mud, so more soldiers followed.

Lucius spurred his horse from the knoll across the wide space around the army’s flank, the tribunes endeavouring to follow, but cut off from him by the surging tide of men. Lucius soon lost their cries behind as he galloped onwards, the rain and wind gusting into his face, his horse’s steps stumbling dangerously at times on the boggy ground. And as he was the only horseman behind the attacking infantry, so Lucius alone saw what happened.

Just inside the valley mouth another tiny glen sliced up into the mountain wall, and into this cleft the retreating Albans were streaming, shouting Roman soldiers on their heels. Lucius kicked his horse harder, screaming desperate commands that were lost in the rain, for he remembered with dread Agricola’s stern command never to follow the wild men into the hills. But it was too late.

Lucius’s throat was stopped with horror as the sides of the narrow glen suddenly erupted in a volley of arrows, and from the bracken slopes above poured hundreds of fresh barbarian warriors, their swords driving downwards into the confused ranks of Roman soldiers. His men scrambled to retreat, but only stumbled over themselves and the rocks, and were pushed into disarray by those pressing from behind.

By the time reinforcements raced to the glen’s mouth, it was over. The barbarians had not paused to ensure total victory, but merely killed and maimed as many as possible in the first downward rush and then melted away over the cliffs into the rocks and ferns.

Lucius lowered his sword, his voice spent in shouting. In the rain, he didn’t notice the tears of rage running down his cheeks.

Every muscle in Eremon’s body ached: his legs from running; his arms and shoulders from swinging a sword. And now, wedged here in a rock overhang in a high valley, it was his back giving him pain, awkwardly hunched on the damp earth. Yet he hardly noticed.

He barely registered the drip of rain from the cave wall, trickling down the back of his mailshirt; the angry rumble of his belly; or the jarring cold seeping up from the ground. The throb in his wrist, where he had caught a sword blow on his shield, took up most of his bodily awareness. Yet even that was only a reminder of the inner glow which consumed him and provided all the warmth he needed. It was the fire of triumph, victory, relief.

In the deepening dusk, Conaire’s eyes glittered with excitement, and Rori’s teeth flashed in the darkness of the shallow cave. Eremon grinned back. They felt it, too.

The night would be long, until tomorrow they moved out to regroup far from here. But for now, despite the lack of food or fire, they had all they needed.

So Eremon ignored the stink of drying blood and sweat, sank deeper into his filthy cloak, and let sleep claim him.

CHAPTER 51

R
hiann woke with a start inside the thick, dark walls of a northern dun. A storm was raging outside, the wind streaming over the grim peaks of the encircling mountains and down the valley to the little fort. Despite the hut’s wooden door and thick door-hide, the gusts were so strong that they forced their way under the thatch roof and between the tiny chinks in the wattle walls.

Shivering, Rhiann burrowed deeper into the furs on the guest bed. It wasn’t the storm that had woken her, though, but a dream, the first clear vision of Eremon she had received in moons. Yet it was a strange sending.

She was in the valley of light, holding the cauldron of Ceridwen in her hands. But its glow was dulled, and she could not feel its warmth in her fingers. In panic, she searched for Eremon, unable to see him. The eagles screeched their challenge into the clear air above, and around her she heard the frightened murmurs of her people. ‘Fear not,’ she said to them, yet she herself burned with fear.

Then there was a stirring among the people, and a light gleamed from far away, and she ran towards it until the hill slopes rose narrow and steep above her head. ‘I could not find you,’ she said to Eremon, looking up to him on his horse, tears in her eyes. ‘I searched but could not find you.’

Eremon smiled as he slid to the ground, and took her in his arms. ‘But
I
was waiting for
you
!’

They both laughed with relief, and when Rhiann pulled away from his embrace, the cauldron was a glowing bowl of heat in her hands. Alive again.

Blinking sleep from her eyes, Rhiann stared into the thick darkness, knowing that the dream had been triggered by the message she received that day. Eremon and Calgacus had won a great victory, and the Roman army had at last gone into retreat, weakened by the constant Alban harassment of the past few moons. And what should Rhiann’s path be now?

Feeling heavy and dull from lack of sleep, she asked Nectan about their journey as they broke their fast the next morning, before a blazing hearth-fire. She had done her best with the Creones and the Decantae, and was satisfied at the murmurs of rebellion that were growing louder the further north they travelled. Now they were deep in the territory of the Boresti, a small, scattered tribe living high on Alba’s mountain spine.

‘We are nearly at the Smertae border,’ Nectan confirmed, scooping up soft cheese with a crumbling piece of barley bannock. ‘Yet I advise not going further into those territories. The Smertae and the Lugi are all that stand between us and Maelchon’s lands, and they are, as far as we can tell, friendly with the Orcadian king.’

Something cold crawled under the surface of Rhiann’s skin. No, I wish to stay clear of the far north,’ she replied evenly. Do those tribes command many warriors?’

Nectan shrugged. ‘Not large enough to warrant the risk.’ He swallowed and glanced at her carefully. ‘By the Mother, your husband would be my friend no longer if I took you closer to the Orcades. Very soon, lady, we will reach the limits of our journey.’

Rhiann’s heart soared at those words, for it meant they would soon be home, and she could lay down the mantle of control and fierceness she had donned moons ago. Now, after Samana, she wanted only to turn away from that hardness, and find and nurture something soft in her again.