Dreaming the Bull Read online

  Meanwhile, they had the river to cross. It ran in front of them, in full autumn spate so that the force of the water ate away at the banks, and pools at which in earlier months the deer had drunk were sluicing wells of strong currents. Storm-split branches and other debris from the high mountains spun down heavily enough to sweep horse and rider from their feet and drag them under. At the only sane fording point, the water foamed and spun and crashed through piles of smoothed boulders and jagged rocks, placed days ahead by Caradoc’s warriors to make the crossing more treacherous.

  On the far bank, warriors in their thousands stood in clusters, or sat their painted horses, waiting. A man who knew what to look for could pick out the bands and sub-bands of the tribes by style of hair and cloak colour and the dyed flanks of the horses. A man searching for one specific enemy could find with ease the yellow hair and multicoloured cloak of Caradoc and the knot of white-cloaked Ordovices about him. That same man could note that the rumours were true and that a second Caradoc rode at his side, white-cloaked and bare-headed and mounted on a horse that had been in every major battle since the invasion, but now bore a new rider whose hair was not the red of a fox in autumn.

  Caradoc and his daughter did not take part in the posturing that was the usual prelude to battle. From among the rest of their ranks, a warrior would periodically accept a challenge and step forward to hurl insults and spears at the enemy. The tribes had learned since the invasion; the spears they threw were stolen legionary javelins, tipped with soft iron that bent on impact so that they could not be picked up and thrown back at their original senders. On a day like today, with the river so broad, it made little difference; very few had the power to send a spear clean across to the far bank. Their impact was more on the minds and hearts of the waiting legions who must stand and watch what faced them. Twice already, sorely provoked, a century of legionaries had stepped to the river’s edge and hurled their own javelins, wasting them likewise in the water.

  The morning passed too slowly, with nothing to show for it. Somewhere out of sight, a war band started up a high-pitched, ululating chant that wove through the thunder of the river and soared over it, stretching further the overstretched nerves of the new recruits. In the foremost lines of the legions, men new to battle gripped their short swords and refixed their shields, wasting energy and condensing their fear. On the far right, set back from the river, Scapula’s standard cracked in the wind. Twice so far the governor had ridden down to the water and twice backed away again. Valerius watched him and felt the indecision spread south down the line. He felt, also, Longinus waiting for an answer to his question and realized he had answered it only in his mind.

  “There are fewer of them than were at the Thames on the first day of the battle,” he said. “We should be glad he has gathered only the western tribes. If Cartimandua’s Brigantes were not sworn to us, we would be facing twice or three times this number.”

  He raised himself high in the saddle and looked north. The governor’s ewe-necked gelding was still balking at the water. Valerius cleared his throat and spat, a uniquely Thracian habit with uniquely Thracian implications. “We could sit here all day if we’re waiting for Scapula to get his bloody horse into the river.”

  Longinus said, “We may as well. He’s only going to make us dismount on the other side. Myself, I’d rather stay on my horse.”

  “We can if we hold the ford.”

  “We’d have to take it first.”

  “I know.”

  A rider bearing a white armband on his mail waited to one side, designated for the day as a runner, to fight only in extreme need. To him, Valerius said, “Take word to Governor Scapula that the acting prefect of the Ala Prima Thracum believes that his men can make a crossing of the river and hold it so that the legionaries will be able to cross downstream of our horses. If he gives the word, we will attempt it. If he can spare men with javelins to give us cover, that would make the attempt more likely to succeed.”

  The command was too long in coming. The enemy dreamers had long since marked the men they knew. Valerius had felt them at the beginning, that tickle of meeting minds, of mutual loathing, and the challenge that was of the spirit and the gods and not of battle. Still, it was in battle that the wills of the gods were made manifest and the delay in Scapula’s order gave the dreamers and singers of Mona time to gather on a heathered slope directly opposite the Thracian cavalry and to direct their ire and that of their slingers at one man and the horse he rode. Valerius felt them long before the first sling-stones began to puncture the river in rippling lines ahead of him.

  Longinus said, “If you ride in there, you’re dead.”

  “Is that your ill-feeling again?”

  “No, it’s common sense. You should stay on the bank and give them a target and let the rest of us make the crossing.”

  “Maybe, but if the god wants me dead, I’ll be dead wherever I go. If you think I’m bad luck, I’ll stay apart. Otherwise, I’ll lead and draw their attention, and the rest of you who follow will be safer.”

  “Is that meant to be encouraging?”

  “No, it’s common sense.”

  “Good. Then have the sense also to remember what Corvus said. The governor wants Caradoc and his family alive to parade before the emperor in Rome. If you’re seen to kill him, they’ll nail you to a plank and leave you. Others apart from me would think that an awful waste of a life.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  He had not forgotten, could not forget. Corvus had addressed the officers in a group but his eyes and his words, and the threat they carried, had been for Valerius. Valerius had smiled at no-one in particular and gone away to design his own pennant for the battle. Since the cave, he had begun to understand more deeply the words of his god; there are many more ways to destroy a man than to kill him in battle. He considered those ways and savoured them and prayed that he might bring at least one of them about.

  He believed absolutely that the god heard and was with him. All through the morning, the words of the deity whispered in his head. His death is matched by your death, or the death of one you love. Caradoc was still very clearly alive. While the corn-gold head remained a beacon amidst the enemy, Valerius believed himself safe. When, belatedly, the order came from the governor to attempt the crossing, he pushed the Crow-horse a pace at a time into the murderous torrent. Thirty-two men of the first troop, First Thracian Cavalry, followed in a line behind.

  As they entered the water, Valerius said, “They’ve seen the red bull pennant. If you were ever planning to pray to Mithras, now would be a good time.”

  Longinus Sdapeze, who had no intention whatever of praying to the bull-slayer, but had been praying all day to his own gods, could have sworn he heard his decurion laugh.

  A handful of knuckle bones lay forgotten on the ash-strewn turf. A man, a boy and a grizzled, three-legged war hound lay on their bellies on the dreamers’ outcrop and looked down on the backs of circling crows. Beneath the birds, a river thundered blackly; on its northern bank, small as field mice, men and women scurried back and forth, fighting for land and life, for honour and fame, for the futures of their born and unborn children. Against them, like so many beetles, fought the legions.

  Battle had been a long time coming. For a while, it had seemed to both sides as if the volume of water alone would defeat them and Caradoc’s salmon-trap would never be put into effect. Dubornos, watching, feared that Venutios might come too early and his warriors, particularly the small, undisciplined war bands of the Selgovae, being unable to contain themselves, might hurtle down the mountain at the enemy and betray the plan.

  It was only when the Thracian auxiliaries rode in at the rear of the enemy column that he had the first sense of how it might go. From the safety of his god-sworn heights, Dubornos saw first the pied horse, then the rider, and then, impossibly, stunningly, he saw the personal standard fluttering high over his head.

  “Briga take him, he’s stolen the sign of the bull.”


  Others around the field had seen it. A string of oaths ran north to south and back again amongst dreamers, singers and warriors. If Briga listened that day, she was called on more in the first few moments than at any other time throughout the battle. If she looked, she would have seen a man sworn to another god who had taken as his personal emblem the mark of the bull as it was first carved by the ancestors of the tribes at the time when the gods were young.

  The gods alone know what the symbol meant for them, but for the tribes the marks of the ancestors were sacred to all, so that no one tribe took them for itself but kept them as a sign of honour for all the gods. The bull particularly was beautiful in its simplicity, bulky and bold, full of pride and unyielding vigour. For the enemy blatantly to take it was ultimate sacrilege. For him to mount it in stolen colours made it more so, and this he had done; the background to the pennant was the iron-grey of Mona, and onto it the rounded, flowing shape of the ancestors’ bull-form had been etched in a deep, rich red as if painted directly onto the cloth in newly shed blood. Breaca’s serpent-spear was painted in exactly that ever-living blood and had been since long before Claudius first sent his legions. The two things together, colour and sign, were an unmistakable message from a man who had taken part in the invasion battles and had used the time since to learn his enemy’s strengths, enough to subvert them for his own use. In language anyone could read they said, What was sacred of yours has become mine. I can turn it to my own will. Stand against me if you dare.

  “We dare. Oh, gods, we dare.” Barred from battle and close to weeping with frustration, Dubornos smashed the edge of his balled fist against the rock by his head. “Efnís, wherever you are, come to the water’s edge and direct the slingers against that one. If we get none of the others, his death alone would make this battle worth the while.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  The singer’s mind and heart were in the battle. He had forgotten the child. Cunomar sat cross-legged beside him, Hail’s head on his knee. He was weeping silently but copiously. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It’s my fault you’re here. If it weren’t for me, you would be there in the fight. You could kill the pied decurion yourself.”

  Dubornos had not meant to speak aloud. It was not part of his oath that others should feel in his debt. He turned on one elbow, dragging his eyes from the gathered armies. “That’s not your concern. I am here because I choose to be. There is no fault, no blame.”

  “But there is, isn’t there?” At times Breaca’s son displayed a wilful selfishness that bespoke neither of his parents. At others—now—he was entirely his mother. He pursed his lips and the straight line carved between his brows, as hers did. His voice was no longer a child’s, but that of an adult, talking reason.

  “Ardacos told me,” he said. “You were cowardly in your first battle and afterwards, out of shame, you forswore the ways of the warrior and became a hunter and maker of harness. Later, when the gods marked you as singer and warrior both, you made an oath to Briga and Nemain to protect my mother’s children, your life for theirs, wherever they went. But I would have been safe on Mona and you could have come here and fought against the decurion on the pied horse, so it’s my fault that you can’t.”

  The sun burned from the south-east. In the valley, warriors waded into the water the better to throw their spears. On both sides, the souls of the battle-slain began their journey to the world of the dead. Here, too, they faced a river, wider and faster flowing than any they had ever met in life. With Briga’s aid, they forded it, some more easily than others, leaving only memories in the land of life. On the heights of the mountain, Dubornos mac Sinochos, singer of Mona, once of the Eceni, remembered his father and another day of fighting. It was not a scene he readily forgot; his mornings woke to it and his days ended with the bitterness of its truth. The child who was the voice of his conscience met his gaze evenly, trading new guilt for old.

  The gods demand and it is given to men to offer their souls. Dubornos searched the depths of his and answered with honesty.

  “You may be right,” he said. “If you had stayed behind, I might have come here to fight. But I might just as well have stayed on Mona with you, your mother and the new child, in which case it is because of you that I am here at all to witness what is taking place, and gather deeds to fire the songs of later. My oath was freely given, and the gods know best how to use it. I am here because they willed it as much as you. Would you hold the gods at fault?”

  Unexpectedly, the child considered this, frowning. “I might, if they destroyed the things I cared for. Or if they kept from me my heart’s wish. Is it true you have loved Airmid since childhood and will take no other lover while she lives?”

  The words fell into quiet, as if the howling chants of the warriors giving and taking life in the valley were less than the sigh of a spring breeze. A thrush sang from the rowan and the high notes pierced Dubornos’ head. He stared at the boy, who stared back. Very carefully, because, for the first time in as long as he chose to remember, his hold on his temper was not certain, Dubornos said, “Who told you that? Was it Ardacos?”

  “No. I heard Braint tell Cygfa. It was while you were talking to Gwyddhien. Anyone could see you were uncomfortable in her company. Cygfa thought you craved Gwyddhien and were sore because she was Airmid’s. Braint said it was the other way round. Efnís told her what happened. He knew you all as children in the Eceni home lands before the invasion, she said. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  Dubornos had sworn never again to lie. He had not sworn to expose all of his soul to a child. He said, “If it is, does it matter?”

  “It matters to Cygfa. She thinks you don’t notice her and grieves for it.”

  A child may see what a man does not, particularly if the latter’s attention is elsewhere. Nevertheless, it was not a conversation Dubornos wished to pursue. “Does she so? That’s strange when she is your father come to life in female form and every other warrior, man and woman, sees it. I think that when your sister is past her long-nights, she will not worry that one man among thousands may not see her in the way that she—What is it?”

  Cunomar’s eyes were widely black. The whites flared like those of a startled horse. He pointed down into the cauldron of conflict. “The decurion,” he said. “The one on the pied horse with the red bull banner. He is swimming his mount across the river. His troop are following him across.”

  He was right. Some things require a man’s undivided attention and the means by which Scapula’s legions forded the river of the Lame Hind in pursuit of Caratacus was one of them. Dubornos lay on his high ledge and watched as a troop of Thracian auxiliaries, led by a man he loathed but whose courage he could not question, swam their horses into the torrent and stood broadside to the flow, stringing a rope between them so that the infantry might wade across and not drown as they did so.

  The officer on the pied horse stood mid-stream, presenting a ready target to the warriors on the far side. Efnís was there, directing spears and slingers alike. He was joined by over half the dreamers of Mona and the decurion became the target of many warriors. At no time was he hit. Sling-stones and spears carved the white water, legionaries and cavalrymen of other troops died on either side, but the pennant of the red bull remained upright, and the pied horse and his rider beneath it.

  Dubornos cursed viciously and knew he was not alone. It was widely believed that, from time to time, Briga sent her emissaries in the shape of enemy warriors to claim the lives of those she had already marked for herself. In those cases, the chosen one could not be killed by normal means but only by a dreamer who was prepared to face Briga’s wrath. It was also possible that Mithras, the bull-slayer, was pleased with this man and had the power to protect him on the field of battle in a land that was not his own. Or he may simply have been lucky; it was best to think so because a man’s luck may be made to change by other men who do not require the intervention of the gods. The efforts to kill him were redoubled
without effect.

  With the rope in place, the legionaries swarmed across the water. One could not fault their discipline, or the order with which they fought. Their clashes with the warriors were fiercest on the north bank of the river. The principle of the salmon-trap depended on the legions’ swarming, uncaring, over the rampart into the defile when in all probability the decurion of the Thracians had warned them of the trap. The defending warriors, therefore, must fight as if their lives depended on it, as if the barrier at their backs were a retreat of last resort, as if the war would be won or lost in the rock-cluttered, blood-slick slopes of the mountain. Knowing this, claiming honour and fame with every kill, they fought as savagely as they had ever done.

  In the chaos, Caradoc was readily visible, his hair bright beneath the ever-rising sun. Cygfa stayed close to him, both of them blazing beacons in the thickest point of battle. Ardacos’ she-bears could be heard, howling their war songs, and once in a while a circle of them became visible, surrounding a huddle of doomed legionaries. Gwyddhien’s horse-warriors circled the margins, attacking cavalry and infantry alike. Braint held a solid line in the centre, her warriors carving space in the air around them with swords that rose and fell like threshing flails.

  On the enemy side, Scapula was surrounded by a century of legionaries and could not be approached. The rest of his men kept to their lines and fought with their shields locked as they had been trained to, stepping forward over the bodies of the slain. The officer on the pied horse was visible only because his men held the ground around the water’s edge. His standard fell once as the bearer’s horse was killed beneath him, but the rider rolled free and it could be seen that the decurion brought him up on the pied horse and called another man forward to hold the standard until the bearer found another mount. Thereafter, fouled and bloody, the red bull could only rarely be picked out from the others. Dubornos held to his memory of a single moment of hatred and prayed to Briga that the man would die before he could warn his governor of the trap, or simply that he would die.