Dreaming the Bull Read online

  The thirty-two men and horses of the first troop, who trained under a decurion who had trained with the Batavians on the Rhine, dismounted, tied their helmets more tightly on their heads and fixed their swords to their belts with leather thongs tied in a complex loop that might be easily undone even when wet. In fours, they took to the water, swearing viciously at the cold and then at the current and then at the cold again as they emerged, four abreast in good order, on the other side. The jeers of the infantry watching from the banks became slowly less derisive.

  Longinus and Valerius swam it last, as rear guard, turning a slow circle in the middle of the river because they were officers and must be seen to do more than their men. The water was brownly turbid and the current swift. It grabbed at armour, limbs and harness with searching hands. They swam holding their horses and then let them go, to show that they could do that, too. They emerged onto dry land and the wind, mild as it was, cut through wet wool to the shivering skin below.

  Valerius said, “We should have brought wine.”

  “I did, but not enough for the entire troop. In any case, you owe me a flagon. Axeto didn’t lose his sword.”

  “You’ll lose it before we get to the fortress. In the meantime, the horses need to run. Take half the men a mile up ahead and circle back. I’ll take the others when you’re back.”

  The rain ceased at some point between the time when the moon set and the sun replaced it low in the rinsed sky above the mountains. Threaded cloud caught fire above the jagged silhouettes of the peaks, spreading from saffron to scarlet to a bruised purple where the rain still hung on the lowest edge of the skyline. The upper layer of cloud was turning from lilac to an uncoloured grey as the last of the cavalry approached the fortress of the XXth: the legion’s home in the west.

  This was not a night-camp built by legionaries of sods and carried staves, nor a frontier post, designed to last only as long as the fighting season, but an unassailable edifice of stone and wood built by the same engineers as those who had first put together the fortress at Camulodunum.

  Exactly as at Camulodunum, a lively settlement had grown beyond the oak stockade of this new fortress. Merchants’ huts lined the road leading in from the east to the lion-mounted gate of the porta praetoria and others spread back and out from that central trunk. On the margins were living huts and fenced enclosures in which the livestock of the traders grazed and sheltered. At the outermost ring larger paddocks housed the breeding herds of cattle and their attendant bulls.

  Approaching them, Valerius heard before he saw the cluster of men leaning in over the dry stone wall surrounding the most easterly of the fields. Closer, he saw the red hair and armbands of the Gaulish cavalry, all alike in russet tunics with the Capricorn and the Eye of Horus stitched on the left sleeve. Corvus’ men, riding at the head of the column, had arrived, settled their horses, taken their orders, paraded for their governor and the legate of the XXth and been dismissed. They had eaten and drunk and then, because they were not required the next day to ride into battle, they had drunk some more until someone, somewhere, offered a wager which was more enticing than further drink, or perhaps involved further drink and likely some violence and a woman, or a boy or a pliant sheep. The Gauls were not well known for their moderation, or their ability to stay clear of trouble when drunk.

  “This is it.” Longinus pushed the chestnut mare alongside Valerius’ horse. She shied a little at the noise coming from the field and pushed at the bit. As much as any of their mounts, she knew the smell of war and yearned for it.

  “The ill luck you felt?”

  “Yes. We should ride by.”

  They should and they would not, each knew that. Already Valerius had heard the rising nasal whine of Umbricius, the man who had been actuary in the days when they had both served under Corvus in the Gaulish horse. Umbricius hated his old billet-mate and was hated in his turn. The man had soured since the battle against the Eceni, resenting himself and Valerius for surviving when most of their troop had died. On top of that, he had watched Valerius rise in the ranks of the Thracian horse while he himself had remained an actuary. It had been Umbricius who had thrust the shield edge into Longinus’ throat in practice and it had been as much an attack on Valerius as on the Thracian. The flogging ordered by Valerius afterwards had been every bit as personal.

  Umbricius’ presence alone would have drawn Valerius in, but over it he had heard the bellow of a bull in pain and the bull was the god’s messenger on earth and could not be ignored. There was a hound, too. It had barked once, with a voice like molten iron poured over gravel. It would be big and male and Valerius, who would have sworn to any man, Longinus included, that he had not taken note of it, bet himself that it would be brindle, with a white ear. A white left ear. In the days before a battle as big as the one that was coming, he could recall his ghosts and not fear them. Like a man afraid of heights who stands on a cliff edge, he did so, deliberately, watching the ebb and flow of his own terror, held at bay by the necessities of war. It gave the illusion of control and he was happy for it.

  Longinus had ridden a stride or two ahead. “They’re baiting a bull,” he said.

  “Obviously. The question is what kind of bull and what are they baiting it with? More important, will it win? If it’s going to gore Umbricius, we’ll put money on it and leave.”

  “It’s too young to win. He’s going to kill it, but not yet.” The Thracian spun his horse on its hocks. “Julius, it’s a red roan. It’s not white. You don’t have to be here.”

  Longinus had been invited to join the ranks of the bull-worshippers and had declined; his Thracian gods could not be supplanted. His knowledge of Mithras came through hearsay and he had never once asked Valerius for confirmation or refutation of the many rumours. He knew the raven brand intimately, and the other marks that had come later when Valerius had risen above the lowest rank, but he had never once asked their source nor their meaning.

  Valerius said, “It doesn’t have to be white to be the god’s. That’s a myth.”

  A crowd gathered at the gateway. To a man they were Gauls and Valerius had trained with at least a third of them on the Rhine and fought at their side in the invasion battle. Those who had begun together were loath to part and kept themselves separate from the incomers sent to replace those who had died. Valerius, whom they had once regarded with affection as a luck-bringer, they now saw as a traitor for having moved to other ranks.

  He pushed the Crow-horse through the heave of bodies and men grudged him room. He had reached the gate when a high whine began to sound in his ears, like the hum of swarming drones. A pressure built in his head and on his brand in a way that had not happened before. Feeling attacked, he looked about him for the source. He was in the land of dreamers and had not guarded against it, not knowing how. He saw nothing and no-one and the whine became louder and was clearly only in his head. From the field, the bull wrecked the earth with its horns and then lifted its eyes to meet Valerius’. The whine became a whistle that passed beyond hearing and came back again and it dawned on him slowly—stupidly slowly—that this was what he had prayed for these past years and not felt: the genuine presence of his god.

  He had no idea what to do. Four years’ training in the cellars of Camulodunum had taught him the litanies and the rituals; he could fast and pray and had, once, acted in the induction of new acolytes. He knew the songs that told of Mithras’ birth from untouched rock and of his acts as he walked the earth, but he had no notion of how to act in his presence.

  He prayed; he could do nothing else. The bull accepted his prayer and transformed it. Valerius fumbled to hold on to the feel of it.

  A man—Umbricius—shouted a challenge and the moment fell apart, sickeningly. From the west of the field, a young hound yammered, close to hysterics. From the gate, Valerius could see that it was neither broken-coated nor brindle and had no white ear. Its pelt was the smooth blue of newly chipped flint and its ears were round-tipped like those of the hound carved
on the altar on the wall of the Mithraeum beneath the first centurion’s house in Camulodunum. The hound on the altar drank the blood of the slain bull. In the field outwith the fortress of the XXth legion in the high mountain country of the Cornovii, this hound was trying its utmost to drink the blood of a Gaulish actuary, or at least to spill it.

  Umbricius crouched with his back to the gate, a dozen paces into the field. The paddock was a small one, set aside for the best of the youngstock bulls, those too old to be kept in large groups without fighting but not yet old enough to challenge the prime bulls for the right to serve the cows and sire next season’s young. A dry stone wall surrounded the perimeter, high as a horse’s stifle. Oaks shaded it, with trunks so broad three men could not link arms round them. Wild rose grew in tangles between, dripping waxen hips bright as the spilled blood of the sacrifice.

  The gloss on the hide of the young bull facing Umbricius was of a deeper red than the rosehips and it was shaded through with white at the shoulders and rump. He was proud and it was easy to see why he had been singled out to be kept entire, not cut with the rest and salted for winter beef for the legion. His horns swept out and forward and the tips were clean; the bull, or one who cared for him, had not let them catch hair and leaf-litter and mud about the tips. He bellowed and his voice was the god’s, speaking from the ageless heavens. A man only had to interpret it and he could ride the world.

  Valerius had no idea what it meant.

  Longinus, whose gods spoke in voices other than a bull’s, was at Valerius’ left. He said, “The hound will break free from the boy if Umbricius doesn’t get out of there. If it kills an officer of the auxiliary, they’ll kill the hound and hang the boy. Umbricius isn’t worth that.” They had never spoken of hounds and what they might mean in the past history of either man; there had never been the need. It was too late now, but perhaps still not necessary.

  Valerius lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the late sun. A youth held the hound. In looking earlier, Valerius had failed to see that. He was not an exceptional youth in any way; his hair was dark, and he was of middling height and gangling. Nothing linked him to the god except that he was kneeling on his left knee with his arms about the hound.

  Something metallic flashed in the air. The bull flinched and bellowed. The hound howled. The boy shouted something in the language of the Cornovii. Alone among the tribes, they worshipped the horned god before the Mother. The boy’s eyes met Valerius’ and begged for help. Uncounted others had done so in the steadings of the Trinovantes and he had ignored them, had slain their sisters, had hanged the ones who begged, silently or aloud. Then, the god’s breath had not whined in his ears nor the bull stared him down.

  For the god, not for a dark-haired youth and his hound, Valerius pushed the Crow-horse close to the gate and shouted, “Umbricius, leave the bull alone.”

  The Gaul was twice armed. A short throwing knife glinted in either hand. He was the son of a fisherman; where other men, given the right knife and the right pacing and enough practice, could throw a knife and sometimes hit a target, Umbricius could throw any knife and place the point to within a finger’s width of his aiming place. Three other short, wide blades hung from a belt slung over his shoulder. He was known to carry nine, the number of luck. Of the remaining four, three lay on the turf around the bull. The last one thrown jutted, vibrating, from one massive shoulder. The gloss of the beast’s coat hid the blood.

  “Umbricius, leave it. That’s an order.”

  Umbricius was only an actuary, albeit on double pay. A decurion of any troop outranked him. The first decurion of another wing ranked so far above him that only a prefect could call back any order he gave. To ignore him was a flogging offence. Umbricius ignored him.

  The gate was closed and there was no room for the pied horse to jump it. Gauls crowded close and none made any move to support the Thracians. Somewhere, far back, Valerius’ troop had gathered but they were too few and too far away, and anyway none of them could force a way through to the gate. Valerius and Longinus stood alone within a sea of Gauls. Men had died in similar circumstances and the threat of decimation had not brought forth the names of their killers. Valerius doubted whether either Scapula or Corvus would choose to slaughter ten men in a hundred of their foremost cavalry wing on the eve of a battle against warriors renowned for their use of the horse.

  “Get Corvus.” Valerius said it without turning, in Thracian. The whine in his ears altered the sound of his voice.

  Longinus said, “I’m not leaving you.”

  “You are. I order it. If you ignore that, I’ll have you flogged with the Gaul. Do it.”

  There was a breath’s silence, and room to feel shock and regret and to know that, in this company, it was not possible to take back the words. In Thracian, Valerius said, “Just go. Please.”

  Longinus saluted, rigidly. His chestnut mare backed away from the gate. The Gauls were more willing to let her go than they had been to let her in.

  Valerius turned the Crow-horse sideways to the gate. “Umbricius, if I have to come into that field and get you out, you’ll regret it more than anything else in your life.”

  “The bull is mine. The boy insulted me.”

  Valerius found suddenly that he liked the youth. He pitched his voice to carry. “Why? Did you try to take him and he refused you? Anyone with eyes in their head would refuse you. He should be given half a year’s advanced pay and offered a place in the wing for displaying uncommon good sense.”

  The men about him were Gauls and he knew them well. In the press of bodies, men sniggered. Umbricius coloured, unflatteringly. “I did not—”

  “Really? The bull then? I don’t think even gouging its eyes out will make it any more amenable. Face it, you’re going to spend tonight alone, and all the nights after this until one of Caratacus’ spears finds the dried goat turd that is your heart and breaks it open. Now get out of that field. If you go now, while Longinus is away, no-one need know that you were lax in following an order.”

  It was said for the men closest to him because not all of them favoured Umbricius and Valerius had, after all, brought the horses over the barrier at the salmon-trap and kept them alive. Talking, he had given them time to remember that, and to find that they did not want to hate him. They grinned and, when Valerius slid down from the Crow-horse, they crowded less close. He vaulted the gate, neatly, and was applauded. The hound bayed at him. The bull slashed the turf with its horns. Valerius prayed to the god that the beast knew he came to help, not to injure.

  His presence changed the balance in the field. Before, Umbricius had had a clear run to the safety of the gate if the bull charged. With Valerius blocking his escape, the Gaul was trapped between two foes, both of whom wanted to kill him—three if he counted the hound.

  However much one hated him, one could never say of Umbricius that he lacked courage. He grinned and drew two more knives from his chest belt and began to juggle them, flashily. He, too, was applauded. Gauls liked excellence and, if he was not beautiful, Umbricius could create a measure of beauty with his knives.

  In the juggling, the Gaul took a single pace back and where he had stood between Valerius and the bull was now clear space. With his eyes on his knives, he said, “If the bull kills you, will they decimate the natives, do you think?”

  “Maybe, after they have hanged you.” The bee-whine in Valerius’ ears made it difficult to think, more difficult still to remember the exactitudes of a language he had not spoken regularly for half a lifetime and had made some effort in the past two years to forget. He tried, feeling for the words, raising his voice so that it carried over the keening of the flint-pelted hound to the youth who held it. In the dialect of the dreamers that was common throughout the tribes, he said, “Take your hound and leave. I will keep the horned one safe.”

  He felt the cut of the boy’s stare. The Cornovii worshipped the god as stag, not as bull, but they would know of Mithras and perhaps believe that one god or the other would k
eep the beast alive. Valerius spoke again, remembering more words. “Go now. The hound is in danger if you keep him here. If you care for him, you must take him to safety.”

  A boy will care for the welfare of his hound when his own pride might require him to remain in danger. Peripherally, Valerius saw the youth clasp his hound closer and speak to it. The urgent keening ceased. The humming in Valerius’ ears did not, which was a pity but could not be altered. It had only come once before and then only briefly, when he had gathered the Crow-horse to ride him over the barrier at the salmon-trap. He had thought then that it signalled his imminent death and that only luck and the god had prevented it. He prayed again for the same luck, or for the god to keep safe his soul if he died. On the western edge of the field, the boy began to move towards the gate, dragging his hound with him.

  A knife danced in an arc and sliced across the forehead of the bull. It bellowed and turned towards Valerius, who was closest. Horns as long as a man’s arm gouged the turf, flicking black soil to the treetops. Its eyes were dark as walnuts and too soft for true rage. The red-roan hide blackened around them, smudgily, as if one of the officers’ wives had applied paint in haste and the rain had smeared it. Valerius had long enough to see that and for part of him to want Longinus to see it and to share the joke before the eyes dipped and the horns became horizontal and the bull charged. It was not at all too soft for rage.

  The world divided and became two; at once impossibly fast and infinitely slow. In each world, Valerius both met his death and avoided it. In the slower, he noted small things: the change in the timbre of the god’s voice in his ear, so that it became lower and calmer and was a pleasanter prelude to death; the sudden flurry of crows in the upper branches of the oaks when he had not realized any birds were watching; the tight jingle of armour as men in repose came suddenly to attention in the unexpected presence of an officer; the sound of Corvus’ voice, shouting.