The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (72 page)

One face came to her then, a man who had stoked in her the hottest of flames. A man she hated, but whose memory could still melt her body. So Samana clung to it then, the memory of Eremon of Erin, his dark hair falling about her face, his broad back tensing beneath her hands. And mercifully she felt her cheeks flush, and the softening begin inside. Her breath, which was being pushed out of her by each thrust of the Egyptian’s body, now quickened of its own accord, fluttering high in her throat.

Eremon
, she repeated to herself.
Cariad
…

A hiss broke through Samana’s trance, and her eyes flew open to see Agricola standing right above her head, his eyes glowing in the light of the lamps. ‘So the whore of Alba is laid open once more, as she will always be.’

Ice suddenly flooded Samana’s veins, the cold of premonition, and she clawed at the shoulders of the man impaling her. Yet he pressed down harder, his face a dark mask of determination, and when she felt the hot spurting begin within, she could only wrench her head back and glare at Agricola with fury, her throat long and exposed. ‘Bastard!’

Agricola only smiled. ‘Fitting isn’t it, my whore?’

Then his eyes flickered over her head to gaze into the face of her attacker, and Samana gasped and pushed upwards with all her strength, as the man’s oily mouth came down upon her split lip and bruised cheek. From far away, it seemed, she heard Agricola speak once more.

‘Did it never occur to you, queen of traitors, that in the end you would be one risk too many?’

Samana tried to scream, choked by the writhing tongue in her throat, but it was too late. With the last of her priestess senses, long scorned, she clearly felt the dagger enter her throat, before the eternal darkness took her.

CHAPTER 63

T
he trills of the thrushes and robins rippled through the sunlit woods, along with the trickling of water into Linnet’s pool. Rhiann was completely still, the cacophony of bird calls and wind in the leaves and creaking branches the only external senses penetrating her trance.

For inside, her blood was running to another tide, as the circle formed by Caitlin, Fola, Linnet and herself pulsed with warmth. The heat flowed from Caitlin’s hand on her left, and out through her right hand to Fola. In between, Rhiann’s whole body vibrated like one of Aedan’s harp strings.

In a low voice that echoed from the rock bowl of the spring and the ridge above it, Linnet called on the Mother to bless the warriors and protect Dunadd while it lay empty.

For a long time after Linnet fell silent, Rhiann was loath to break the circle, for the warmth and sense of bonding soothed her as much as the sun, spilling over her hair from the clearing in the trees. Yet at last they all stirred and broke apart, blinking and smiling at each other. Linnet had set a stone jug of mead to cool in the water, and now she filled five ash cups, and poured one out as an offering to the spring.

Rhiann took her cup and sat on the lip of the pool. ‘Aunt?’ she ventured, brushing fallen birch leaves to spiral across the still water. ‘Have you decided where you yourself will go while the men are away?’

‘Go?’ Linnet turned, her brows drawing together. The sunlight struck sparks of copper in her hair. ‘I intend to go nowhere, child. If our people are safe in the high duns then I will certainly be safe here on this mountain.’ She sipped her mead, her eyes sharp over the lip of the cup. ‘In fact, you all could come and stay with me.’

Rhiann’s gaze lifted to Caitlin’s, who was biting her lip, her mead untouched. Meeting Rhiann’s eye, Caitlin, rather unhelpfully, did nothing but screw up her face.

Rhiann sighed and twirled her cup in her hands, mustering a smile for Linnet. ‘Actually, aunt, Caitlin and I have decided to follow the men.’ Just as she had as a child, Rhiann fixed her eyes intently on her feet, waiting for the explosion.

Yet Linnet herself was silent.

‘
What?
’ Fola erupted, her cup falling to the mossy ground and spilling its contents. Ignoring the splashes on her skirt, she looked wildly from Rhiann to Linnet, just as Caitlin chose the moment to leap in.

‘Mother,’ Caitlin said, stepping forward to Linnet, ‘I have come to ask you if you will take Gabran for me.’ She smiled weakly. ‘He is weaned now, he takes after his father in his love of solid food.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Though my heart aches to leave him, we must be practical. Aside from my own concerns as a mother, he may be the next king – we cannot risk him.’

‘Yet you will risk yourselves!’ Fola glared down at Rhiann, trembling. ‘I cannot understand – you are safest here!’

‘Peace, daughter,’ Linnet murmured, laying a hand on Fola’s arm. ‘It is love that drives them, and it overrides such matters as safety.’

Relief flooded Rhiann, and she rested her cup on the spring’s lip. ‘I confess we thought you would fight us, aunt, though our minds are set. We have talked about it at length, together.’

‘And what do your husbands think of this?’ Fola demanded, her hands clenched by her sides. ‘I cannot believe they will support such folly.’

Rhiann and Caitlin exchanged rueful glances. ‘They do not know yet,’ Caitlin confessed, raising her chin. ‘But we think that their way lies dark before them, and they will need the light we can give – at the end.’

Fola’s own chin jutted out, her calm face set with a hardness Rhiann had never seen before, and she drew her priestess cloak closer as if seeking its strength. ‘And what about your child, Rhiann? How can you go riding about the land at six moons along – into war! It is ridiculous!’

Rhiann appealed to Linnet with her eyes now, and to her surprise her aunt seemed to rouse herself from some deep thought. ‘The early days are more dangerous,’ Linnet pronounced. ‘If she takes care, she will be well.’

Fola gasped at Linnet’s response, obviously confused. Then she snapped her mouth shut and crossed her arms. ‘Then I am going, too. She needs my help.’

‘Old friend.’ Rhiann rose and took Fola by her elbows. ‘You must stay here with my aunt. If anything were to happen to us, I want my people to have the benefit of your skills and wisdom. There is little left of the Sisterhood; we must keep it safe.’

‘If you are so concerned about preserving all that, then you would do best to save yourself, Rhiann! Your people need
you
!’

‘That may be true,’ Rhiann countered gently, ‘but I have risked much for Eremon. Nerida and Setana told me to open to his love, and now that I have unleashed that power, I cannot turn my back on it.’ Fola’s whole body was trembling, and her dark eyes welled with hurt. When Rhiann saw what lay there, she simply stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her friend, foreheads touching, nose to nose. ‘Bramble I used to call you once – blackberry eyes. Do you remember?’

‘I remember,’ Fola whispered. ‘And I called you Little Seal because you loved the sea.’

‘And then we lost each other,’ Rhiann murmured, ‘in the darkness that fell over me. Through Eremon I have found that light again, and I cannot let it go.’ She pulled back and held Fola at arm’s length. ‘I feel that if I follow it, if I hold to that love, then I
will
find safety. I share this with you, as one priestess to another, and ask you to accept it.’

Fola’s eyes shone with a film of tears. ‘Let me come,’ she whispered.

‘No.’ Linnet now drew herself straight, her eyes commanding as they rested on Fola. ‘I have seen some of what will come, and child, you are not there.’

‘Seen it?’ Rhiann immediately turned to Linnet. ‘When?’

Linnet breathed in deeply, and let it out, her shoulders lowering. ‘At your birth I saw it.’

‘My
birth
?’ Rhiann strode to her, excited. ‘What are you talking about? Why did you say nothing?’

Linnet’s eyes flickered with something that resembled guilt. ‘I could not be sure it would come to pass.’

Rhiann was suddenly breathing hard. ‘That is why you won’t argue with us, isn’t it, aunt? You know we must be there.’

Linnet’s throat bobbed as she swallowed, and at last she nodded. ‘I saw you, Rhiann, on a great battlefield. Not Caitlin, not then, for of course I thought her lost to me. But you, I saw clearly.’

Instantly, Caitlin was on her feet, her fair braids flinging out as she grasped Linnet’s arm. ‘And our men, mother? What did you see of Conaire?’

‘Yes!’ Rhiann echoed. ‘What of Eremon?’

Yet Linnet’s palms came up to hold them at bay, and abruptly she turned to look out over the wind-rippled surface of the pool, her face hidden by the shadows. ‘Of the men I saw nothing,’ she said. ‘I am sorry.’

Although the people were grieved to abandon their homes at Dunadd, they did it without question. For days Rhiann and Fola laid offerings in pits before doorways, burying the household gods, closing the houses and sprinkling the lintels with sacred water.

Aldera and Bran’s house was the last. With a blessing, Rhiann laid a joint of pig meat, some loom weights and one of Bran’s finer arm-rings in the pit before the door. She then recited the ritual words slowly, her hand gripping the spade, for the strange lurching visions were coming more and more now since Beltaine, slipping in almost between each thought.

A few days ago while baking bannocks, it was as if the house around Rhiann shifted subtly, and she was suddenly
somewhere else
, clad in furs, cracking mussels over a fire – she actually tasted the salty meat on her tongue. And just now a brief flicker had come of a red wool tent that bucked in a searing wind, unlike anything in Alba.

‘Lady?’ Rhiann had been unmoving for so long that Aldera was obviously concerned.

‘I am … well.’ Flushing, Rhiann took Aldera’s arm to straighten, pushing that odd, dizzy feeling and the roaring away. ‘The offering will keep the house safe for your return,’ Rhiann murmured, smiling at Aldera with sympathy.

‘So it will,’ Aldera agreed, sighing. ‘Hush,’ she ordered, when her youngest began to wail in her arms, and then, ‘I hope your own birth goes easy, Rhiann.’

Rhiann did not miss the lack of her formal address, and it warmed her, for Aldera had known her since she was born. ‘Thank you. I pray so, too.’

Aldera’s eyes were suspiciously moist as she reached for the hand of her next eldest child, a boy lingering against a broken plough-share in the yard. ‘Come, laddie,’ she murmured, and set her chin resolutely towards the gate, where her kin waited with their carts. She did not look back.

Chilled despite the bright sun, Rhiann stood for a moment in the yard behind the open village gate. Most of the roundhouses were already deserted, as people moved away from Dunadd in family groups, going north, east and south, following the winds.

The paths between the houses and workshops had fallen silent, devoid of all the sounds that had cradled Rhiann since she was young: dogs barking and children wailing; cook pots clanking; the thunk of axes and hammers; men arguing; women scolding. Only the chanting of the druids floated down from the shrine, for Declan and his brethren would ritually close the King’s Hall, supervise the battle offerings and bless the warband on departure.

Yet departure for where? Eremon had not decided yet.

A pang of grief welled up from deep inside Rhiann, and she wrapped her arms about her chest, allowing it to pool in her heart, for once not forcing it back down. There was no one to see her, after all, and her grief was the proper way to honour Dunadd, she realized suddenly, her tears a blessing for all who had lived here.

Yet she was given little peace for such musings. The watch horn suddenly blasted out from the walkway above, startling her, and Rhiann wiped her cheeks with both hands and composed herself, walking a few steps to peer under the tower. Eremon was coming over the causeway on Dòrn. He had been gone for four days, visiting the scouts on the eastern borders, and Rhiann strode forward eagerly to greet him.

Eremon’s boots and trousers were splashed with the mud of hard riding, as were those of Conaire, Rori and the five other horsemen who had accompanied him. Yet what Rhiann saw in Eremon’s face as he dismounted seemed to darken the bright sun. She glanced at Rori, his freckles standing out like drops of blood on his white cheeks. Conaire’s features, too, were closed in and set.

With no word, Eremon threw Dòrn’s reins at Rori, then his fingers closed hard around Rhiann’s elbow as he immediately steered her up the stairs to the top of the palisade. There he released her, gripping the pointed oak stakes instead of her arm, looking out over the river meadow.

‘What is it?’ Rhiann said at last, for Eremon seemed reluctant to speak, or even look at her. His knuckles were pale ridges beneath his tightened skin.

‘The scouts were reporting people fleeing over the mountains from the east and south,’ Eremon said at last, something held in check in his voice. ‘They are Damnonii tribesmen – and Venicones.’

‘Venicones!’ Rhiann had only ever heard this tribe mentioned along with curses, for they had been among the first to ally with Rome four years ago. Why would they come west?’

‘They were driven.’ Eremon spoke so softly Rhiann had to crane to hear him. Suddenly, he turned to face her, white-lipped with fury, his eyes dark with anguish. ‘Let me tell you all at once,’ he forced out. ‘For then I cannot speak it again.’

Sheltering her throat with her hand, Rhiann nodded dumbly. And so, in a slightly trembling voice Eremon told her, the terrible words flowing straight from his fathomless gaze into hers.

The entire Roman army from all Britannia had been gathered, and was on the move – yet this time burning every league of ground, razing every homestead, byre, hut and hill-fort. No one, not even allies, were being spared, from the Votadini lands north. And no mercy was being given. After crushing the desperate warriors, the Romans were skewering children, even babes in the womb, with lances. Old ones were cut down by sword or arrow as they stumbled away. Women were being ravished, their throats cut.

The Romans were leaving nothing to be salvaged once the army passed.

They had left nothing for Alba.

When Eremon had finished, Rhiann’s fingers were pressing into her throat so hard she coughed, the spasm turning into a gag of nausea that she swallowed down. It stung her, as tears welled and slid from under her closed eyelids, down her cheek and over the back of her hand. Yet even with eyes closed, Rhiann couldn’t shut out the visions Eremon had conjured.