The Dawn Stag: Book Two of the Dalriada Trilogy (83 page)

Yet suddenly there was a curious thud, and Gelert’s hand tensed into a claw on her ankle and then fell slack. Rhiann rolled to one side, wrenching her skin away from those clammy fingers, before peering back at the druid through her tears.

He lay with arm outstretched, pinned to the ground by a white-fletched arrow that swayed and fluttered in the middle of his back. His eyes were flickering and, as Rhiann watched, they guttered out, leaving only an old man. His wrinkled face collapsed into deep folds, his lips still drawn back in the same rictus of rage, slick with spittle. And from the rock above, Caitlin came leaping, her face grim beneath the smeared dirt and pale tracks of weeping.

Without a word she laid down her bow, gathering Rhiann’s head on her chest. ‘I walked in dark dreams,’ Caitlin whispered, ‘yet came as soon as I woke. I am sorry, my sister, that I was no swifter.’

Rhiann’s shoulders shuddered, and for a moment she forgot her agony in the relief of being held somewhere safe, and rocked.

‘Hush,’ Caitlin murmured, her tears falling on to Rhiann’s upturned face. ‘For all is well now. All is well.’

CHAPTER 74

L
orn identified Eremon and his men not by the trampled Boar banner, but by Rori’s hair, bright among the dark ranks of Roman fighters.

Rallying his own warriors with the Epidii war cry, Lorn found himself urging them into the formations he had learned on the plain before his own dun, enabling them to swiftly hack their way through to the remnant of Erin and Epidii men defending Eremon from attack.

Rori snarled like a maddened wolf when Lorn at last made it to his side, ducking the boy’s wild sword slash and grasping him by the shoulders. ‘Where is the prince?’ Lorn screamed, shaking him until a flicker of sense came back into the boy’s eyes. Rori tried to speak, but only managed to squeeze out a cracked, exhausted sob, and then Lorn followed the direction of his pained gaze.

Fergus was straddling Dòrn’s body, leaping at anyone who came near, and on the ground beneath him Eremon was curled around Conaire, the big man’s ankles falling slack on either side. Around them was a cleared space, the cut and thrust and screams of war and death held at bay by the boundaries of its stillness.

Lorn paused on his way to Eremon to step carefully over Colum’s body, his belly sliced open by more than one manic slash. Half-trapped beneath him was old Finan, lying where he had fallen defending his prince, his grizzled head nearly severed from its neck.

Bending down, Lorn saw immediately that Eremon still breathed, and though he was drenched in blood none of it seemed to be his. ‘Prince.’ He pulled on Eremon’s shoulder. ‘Come away now.’

Eremon did not respond, however, and Lorn yanked at his arm until at last he tore the prince’s hands away from where they were folded on his brother’s face. Underneath his palm, Lorn saw the pooled blood and empty eyes, and closed his own lids for the briefest of moments.
Fare thee well, son of Lugaid
.

‘Eremon,’ Lorn said aloud then, urgently. ‘Calgacus and the others have been overcome … all of them …’ His throat closed over for a moment. ‘They are beginning to flee, and so we must, or die here.’

Yet Eremon only stared up at Lorn dumbly, blinking as if he could not understand the words. His fine helmet was gone, his hair plastered to his forehead with drying blood that had run down his face, encasing it in an unrecognizable mask.

‘Calgacus is lost,’ Lorn repeated hoarsely. ‘The battle is lost. They were too many for us …’ There was no reaction from Eremon, and it was then, as he looked into the empty void of the war leader’s eyes, that Lorn knew he himself must take charge.

He straightened and drew a deep breath, trying to marshal his spinning thoughts into some sort of order. ‘You there!’ he barked to the remnants of Eremon’s men. ‘Get him to his feet now, or you will lose him. And bring his sword, and that of his brother!’

Leaving Fergus and Rori to carry out his order, Lorn urged the rest of the Epidii who were with him to form their version of the testudo, the Roman tortoise formation, their shields a protective circle around their war leader and king. Then with shouted encouragement, Lorn got the cluster of warriors moving, painstakingly fighting their way to the west of the field, driving forward in another wedge to break through the Roman cavalry lines. All around them was chaos, with desperate Albans having abandoned all order, throwing themselves into the knots of hard-faced Romans. Behind them, Conaire’s body fell away from view, his golden hair soon merging with the shattered reflections of sun on broken weapons, and the armoured forms of the others tangled in death.

Lorn forced himself to ignore the mayhem around him, the screams of dying men and horses, the dirt beneath that was now a slick field of blood-soaked mud, the burning heat. The earlier, exultant fire in his soul had flickered out, and all that remained was an icy calm.

He had to concentrate on saving them, his people. There was only him left to do it now.

‘The gold-haired sword king and his guard have fallen. The Caledonii and their allies are shattered.’

It was an Alban scout who spoke, in halting, guttural Latin, a Votadini man Agricola had kept by him to comment on the battle. They stood as they had for the past few hours, on the little rise to the west and rear of the new Roman camp, in a patch of cool shade thrown by an oak tree.

‘And what of the Erin prince?’ Agricola demanded, still on horseback. He swilled wine in his dry throat and spat it out on the ground in a stream of dark red.

The scout shrugged, and shifted his weight to lean on his spear. ‘I cannot see, but all order is lost. There are no groups holding steady ground any more.’

Agricola grunted. So, he thought.
I catch up with them at last
.

‘It worked then,’ his youngest tribune Marcus remarked.

Agricola glanced at him. ‘We needed a small enough land force to draw them into the open. The master stroke, though, was bringing the other ten thousand by sea. It taxed the horses – and the ships! – but it was worth it, eh? Remember that, Marcus; you may need it some day.’ Marcus returned a tight smile, and Agricola’s gaze swept back over the field.

Even he was surprised at the scene of utter desolation that stretched before him now. For the famed ferocity of the Alban warriors had been no exaggeration. So desperately did they throw themselves at his soldiers, so foolhardy were their charges, so reckless the men who waded into the fray single-handed, swinging swords around their heads, that they had done his soldiers’ work for them.

Of the thousands of Albans who had been ground into the bloody dirt, mere hundreds of Romans appeared to have met the same fate. The barbarians had no chance, not against a machine as perfect as Agricola’s army.
It should not have taken them so long to understand, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now
.

‘Scour the plain and the woods,’ Agricola ordered, turning his horse away towards the camp. Even now, his tent was being assembled; the lamps lit, the wine poured. He would not gloat over the carnage he left behind him – the stink of blood and entrails, the weakening calls of the dying. Yes, he had wavered often in his assault on Alba, but in the end he had discharged his true duty with dignity.

For the rest of the day, his men would despatch the wounded and hunt down those who fled. And sometime, perhaps tonight, perhaps at dawn tomorrow, what was left of the Alban force would no doubt surrender. Then the emperor would have his victory.

Without another glance, Agricola rode away, looking forward to the best sleep he had enjoyed in four years.

The swirling dust thrown up by the battle covered the low sun, turning its light a dreary red. Then, well before true dark, it slipped behind the high mountains to the west, and the hilltop on which Caitlin and Rhiann waited was abruptly eclipsed by shadow.

Yet they barely noticed the darkening of the light, for they were engaged in their own battle.

Caitlin recognized now, with desperate eyes, the destruction wrought on the plain below; realized from the rent banners and methodical movements of the Roman troops that the day was indeed lost. Yet Rhiann’s moans soon brought her back from the edge of the rocks on which she stood, and her sister’s twisted face pierced Caitlin’s heart with fear.

Tenderly, Caitlin wiped Rhiann’s sweat-soaked brow with the edge of her tunic, wet with ale from her flask. ‘Sister, we must move from here. It is not safe.’ Caitlin tried to keep her voice from trembling, to blot out what she had seen on the plain below. Yet Rhiann only moaned again and shook her head, her hands clenching on Caitlin’s arm.

Because of the fall, and the rock, the child was coming – they both knew it.

Swallowing her tears, Caitlin studied the hilltop above, her eyes alighting on the copse of hazel trees to which she had directed Rhiann before. Behind it, a skirt of tangled hawthorn branches swept almost to the ground. ‘There,’ she said, pointing. ‘We must get to those trees, to the scrub behind them. We can hide there.’

Her voice sounded certain, but inside Caitlin was reeling.
Where is he?
her heart screamed.
Where have they gone?

Rhiann arched her back now, her belly rigid, her breaths squeezing out in pained gasps. Caitlin bore the fingers clawing her arm for as long as the pang lasted, holding Rhiann’s head to her breast. Then as her sister fell back in her arms she tried again. ‘We must get you up there,’ she coaxed. ‘We may die if we don’t. The baby will die.’

Immediately, Rhiann’s eyes flickered open, the lids red and drawn, the pupils glazed. ‘I did it before,’ she whispered. ‘I can do it again.’

‘Good girl.’ Caitlin looped Rhiann’s arm around her neck and managed to haul her to her feet, half carrying her to the screen of thorns. They crawled their way beneath the bushes, the thorns tearing their hands and faces, but in the centre they broke free into a space carpeted with soft grasses, the branches meeting just above Caitlin’s head where she squatted over Rhiann.

There it was dark, but the wind stirred the leaves, whispering some comfort that Caitlin could not quite grasp.

Rhiann did not notice day fading into night, for the pains splintered into searing lights behind her eyes, pushing closer together until there was no break, and she existed in one long scream of agony, a wave that bore her up and swept her away. She panted and writhed, almost insensible, rearing up in Caitlin’s arms again and again to push. Her own groans floated to her as if from afar, and she wondered in her daze what wild animal bellowed in such distress.

She barely felt the child crowning, lost as the sensation was amidst the bands of iron squeezing her, the knife contractions tearing her. And so, in the end, the baby slid out from between her numbed legs in a rush of fluid, almost unnoticed by her.

The tearing pain then abruptly stopped, however, and in relief Rhiann almost slipped away to the darkness within. But something prevented her, urging her to stay awake. She dragged her eyes open, Caitlin still busy with the child between her legs, and all she could see above was the patch of grey sky that filtered through the hawthorn leaves.

There, the last remains of dusk light still lingered – it had not been long after all.

There was no sound from the child, and she squeezed her eyes shut, a wave of desolation greater than the pain cresting over her.

‘It is a girl,’ said Caitlin then, and despite the thickening of tears her voice sounded a strange note. The grasses rustled as Caitlin turned back to Rhiann’s head, and then she was pressing something into Rhiann’s arms, a tiny, wet, slippery thing, slick with blood and stirring feebly, as she had stirred all those moons in Rhiann’s belly.

Caitlin hunkered down close to Rhiann’s ear. ‘She’s alive!’ she whispered, her tired gladness the only light in that dark, dreary dusk. ‘Rhiann, she’s alive!’

CHAPTER 75

T
wo cheeks, held close together. A tiny breath in, shallow and fluttering; a tiny breath out, bird wings brushing Rhiann’s cheek.

The baby mews weakly, and curls up her fist, but her eyes do not open. In the gathering dark, Rhiann cannot see her skin; if it is healthy and pink, or blue and pale. She does not know how much time is left to them. She knows only that it is early, much too early to leave the womb. All the distant clashing sounds of the battlefield fade away, and Rhiann strains to listen to only one sound. The tiny breath in; a tiny breath out.

The baby is pressed close to Rhiann’s cheek, close enough so that Rhiann can set her own lips to the side of her tiny mouth, pushing the air in and drawing it out. Giving her the life this rude expulsion from the womb will soon deny her.

Sometimes, Rhiann is vaguely aware of the marching of feet, twigs cracking, the underbrush rustling, and harsh male voices. At these times, Caitlin curves her slight body over Rhiann and the child, her hair, smelling of sweat and birth blood, falling into Rhiann’s eyes. She has delivered the afterbirth and buried it to hide the scent, though few would pick that out among the blood of this day. Yet the baby herself makes no sound to give them away. She does not cry. She only struggles, writhing with her meagre strength. Fighting to live.

Live, baby, live!
Rhiann cries inside.
Take my breath as you take your own. I will always bear you up; I will always hold you safe
.

Goddess, let her live.

Starlight now filters down amid the darkness, and from somewhere below rises the faint glow of fires.

‘Why haven’t they come?’ Rhiann’s voice is cracked, plaintive.

‘They will come,’ Caitlin murmurs, and places one cold hand against Rhiann’s cheek. ‘They will come.’

Eventually, the footsteps and fierce male voices and jingling of weapons fade away. The Romans retreat from the hill, leaving it still and quiet, and soon even the soldiers’ fainter shouts are swallowed by silence.

Damp begins to creep up from the earth beneath, and Rhiann holds the baby against her skin, inside her tunic, her cloak wrapped around them both. There, she feels only the faintest fluttering of the child’s heart, cradled against the steady beat of her own.