filling the chiselled marks with molten metal so that they came alive and stood shimmering from the walls.
The light was too bright. It hurt to look at it. Believing herself dying, Breaca turned her head away. ‘What of my children?’
Would you have them in the slave pens? If you would have your victory, you must lose them. Better lost now to Mona, where they are loved, than later to Rome.
The serpent-spears on the walls faded to dark. Only the single fire-cast mark hung against the sky-blue roof of the cave.
With disturbing solicitude, the ancestor said, There is none other who can do it, else you would not be asked. If you go with all speed, then the tide of Rome may yet be turned.
‘Do you promise me that?’
I promise you nothing. Only that I will be with you, and that if you ask it, I can give you death, which you may crave, or my aid to live, which you may not.
She woke to the smell of burning.
Her cloak lay smouldering on the edge of the fire and the wound in her arm had burst open, leaking an evil-smelling pus. The pain that racked her was more than she had ever known, even at childbirth. She stared up into blackness and saw nothing and heard nothing, only the ever-running river and its echoes into silence.
After a while, she rolled onto her side and then onto her front and doused the edge of her cloak to stop the burning and then drank a little and then, gritting her teeth, pushed her bad arm into the water and let the current strip it clean.
Later, still crawling, she found the messenger’s saddlebags and the wormwood and vervain and plantain and other things she could not name that Efnis had sent, in case the bearer were injured on his journey.
Airmid would have known how best to use them. Breaca did as much as she could remember, and prayed to the gods, not the ancestor-dreamer, for help in her healing.
She slept again, for a long time, and woke cooler and shaking with hunger not fever and so knew the worst of it was over. She ate from the messenger’s saddlebags, thanking his shade for his foresight and the gift of food, and went slowly to tend the horses. The roan mare knew her and whickered, nuzzling her hair. She stood scratching its withers and teasing out tangles from its mane.
In a while, because she had been thinking of it and had reached a decision and needed to speak it aloud, she said, ‘We will stay here in safety until I am well enough to ride and then we will go east. Alone. We may find warriors and rouse them to battle, we may find the iron to arm them, and one to lead them. If we do not turn the tide of Rome, it will not be for want of trying. But I pledge to you now, that if the legions come to take you or your young into slavery, I will kill you, or them, rather than let it happen.’
The mare knew nothing of slavery, only heard the undercurrents of passion. She turned her head and rested her chin on Breaca’s shoulder and lipped at her sweat-soaked hair and for a while, in the darkness, they were company, one for the other, before the journey east began.
IV.
A THREE-QUARTER MOON TIPPED THE EDGE OF THE HILL. A WREN sang for the dawn. The child Graine lay behind a square edged boulder with her hand on the neck of a slate-blue hound called Stone. Untrue to his name, the hound did not lie still, but quivered under her touch, his gaze fixed on the steep slope of the hill at the place where the heather of the high land gave way to grass and long stretches of bracken. Hay had been cut there in summer and the grass had regrown to a finger’s height, making good grazing. Graine watched where the hound watched and, as her eyes became his eyes, a triangle of smudged outlines became the shapes of three yearling hares, feeding.
The hares were young and unwary. Graine, who was also young, had listened to others’ tales of hunting: ‘Watch them from a distance. When you get one alone, that’s the time to strike.’
Dubornos had told her that, the gaunt and watchful singer whom
The light was too bright. It hurt to look at it. Believing herself dying, Breaca turned her head away. ‘What of my children?’
Would you have them in the slave pens? If you would have your victory, you must lose them. Better lost now to Mona, where they are loved, than later to Rome.
The serpent-spears on the walls faded to dark. Only the single fire-cast mark hung against the sky-blue roof of the cave.
With disturbing solicitude, the ancestor said, There is none other who can do it, else you would not be asked. If you go with all speed, then the tide of Rome may yet be turned.
‘Do you promise me that?’
I promise you nothing. Only that I will be with you, and that if you ask it, I can give you death, which you may crave, or my aid to live, which you may not.
She woke to the smell of burning.
Her cloak lay smouldering on the edge of the fire and the wound in her arm had burst open, leaking an evil-smelling pus. The pain that racked her was more than she had ever known, even at childbirth. She stared up into blackness and saw nothing and heard nothing, only the ever-running river and its echoes into silence.
After a while, she rolled onto her side and then onto her front and doused the edge of her cloak to stop the burning and then drank a little and then, gritting her teeth, pushed her bad arm into the water and let the current strip it clean.
Later, still crawling, she found the messenger’s saddlebags and the wormwood and vervain and plantain and other things she could not name that Efnis had sent, in case the bearer were injured on his journey.
Airmid would have known how best to use them. Breaca did as much as she could remember, and prayed to the gods, not the ancestor-dreamer, for help in her healing.
She slept again, for a long time, and woke cooler and shaking with hunger not fever and so knew the worst of it was over. She ate from the messenger’s saddlebags, thanking his shade for his foresight and the gift of food, and went slowly to tend the horses. The roan mare knew her and whickered, nuzzling her hair. She stood scratching its withers and teasing out tangles from its mane.
In a while, because she had been thinking of it and had reached a decision and needed to speak it aloud, she said, ‘We will stay here in safety until I am well enough to ride and then we will go east. Alone. We may find warriors and rouse them to battle, we may find the iron to arm them, and one to lead them. If we do not turn the tide of Rome, it will not be for want of trying. But I pledge to you now, that if the legions come to take you or your young into slavery, I will kill you, or them, rather than let it happen.’
The mare knew nothing of slavery, only heard the undercurrents of passion. She turned her head and rested her chin on Breaca’s shoulder and lipped at her sweat-soaked hair and for a while, in the darkness, they were company, one for the other, before the journey east began.
IV.
A THREE-QUARTER MOON TIPPED THE EDGE OF THE HILL. A WREN sang for the dawn. The child Graine lay behind a square edged boulder with her hand on the neck of a slate-blue hound called Stone. Untrue to his name, the hound did not lie still, but quivered under her touch, his gaze fixed on the steep slope of the hill at the place where the heather of the high land gave way to grass and long stretches of bracken. Hay had been cut there in summer and the grass had regrown to a finger’s height, making good grazing. Graine watched where the hound watched and, as her eyes became his eyes, a triangle of smudged outlines became the shapes of three yearling hares, feeding.
The hares were young and unwary. Graine, who was also young, had listened to others’ tales of hunting: ‘Watch them from a distance. When you get one alone, that’s the time to strike.’
Dubornos had told her that, the gaunt and watchful singer whom
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