Ravens of Avalon (21 page)

Automatically she counted them—a
contubernia
of ten soldiers, escorting three men in civilian tunics and knee-length riding breeches and one in checkered trews who must be their guide.

“Salutatio.”
She offered the beaker to the best dressed of the riders, eyes widening as she recognized the big nose and dark eyes she had last seen in the purple shade of the emperor’s pavilion. Surely the taxes they were supposed to pay the Romans were not already due! Her smile grew a little stiff as she continued. “Lucius Junius Pollio,
salve!”
That was all the Latin she remembered from her years at King Cunobelin’s dun.

“Greetings,” Pollio replied in her own language. “I drink to you, my queen …” He had an Atrebate accent.

Boudica lifted an eyebrow. She had not expected that the Romans would have the sense to send a man who spoke the British tongue.

The next few minutes were occupied with getting everyone dismounted and arranging where to put horses and men. She directed a quelling gaze at the younger of her warriors. Some of them were new to the king’s service, replacements for men who had fallen at the Tamesa, and they glowered at the Roman legionaries. By the time she had everyone settled and fed Prasutagos had still not returned. Rather than sit staring at Pollio across the fire, she suggested a tour around the dun.

Steps had been cut into the inside of the grass-covered earthen embankment that surrounded it. On the outside, the bank was faced by a palisade. “My husband’s family has held this dun since his great-greatgrandfather’s days,” she said as they gained the top, “but the clans here have been at peace for many years.”

“Yet King Prasutagos is building a new place.” It was not quite a question. “A new dun to guard the harbor where the ships that cross the Wash come to shore?”

“I think he likes to build things.” She shrugged. She had ridden out once to view the massive rampart faced with blocks of chalk, but workmen’s huts were the only lodging, and the king had been too focused on the work to notice whether she was there or not, so she had not stayed.

“He does indeed …” Pollio agreed. His gaze moved briefly to the swell of her belly and then away. “The bank gives you a fine vantage point.”

She smiled a little, as she always did when she stood here and looked across the fields. At this season the country was richly green with new grass, broken by the corrugated brown of newly plowed and seeded fields. A flock of crows had settled on the nearest, pecking for grain. A child ran across the field shouting, followed by a barking dog, and the crows exploded upward in a yammering cloud.

Cathubodva, take your chickens away,
she prayed.
There is neither meat nor mast for you here!
Although she would rather share with the goddess than with the Romans, she thought, glancing sidelong at the man beside her. Disconcertingly, he was looking at her, not at the fields.

“It is true that we have no steep hills on which to build our forts as they do in the Durotrige lands,” she said blandly. Even out here they had heard that the Roman campaign in the southwest had slowed to a crawl as General Vespasian beseiged each hillfort in turn.

If that had stung him, he gave no sign. “You grow barley here, and cattle?” His dark gaze flicked away.

“And spelt, and sheep on the heaths,” she added, putting a little distance between them. “Our fields are not so rich as those in the Tri-novante lands but we feed our people, most years. In a bad winter there are floods, and we are lucky to get a crop at all.”

“I understand,” he said smoothly. “But that is where you benefit from being part of the Empire. In such years we can make loans to tide you over, and when you have a surplus you can repay. Nor do you need to fear that some other tribe whose crops have failed will try to take yours. Our general Vespasian has already taken many hillforts,” he went on. “Soon all the west will be conquered as well.”

She would have liked to wipe away that smug smile, but unfortunately what he had said was true.
Goddess keep Lhiannon from harm!
she thought then. But surely they would keep the priestesses out of the war. She made her way along the bank and he followed her.

“You speak our language well,” she commented as they reached the strong timbers that supported the gate.

“The emperor assigned me to be a companion to young Cogidub-nos when he came to Rome and to learn his tongue as I taught him ours. Claudius, of course, knows the language from his youth in Gal-lia,” he replied.

How long had the emperor been thinking about the conquest of Britannia?
she wondered wildly. Had all their struggles to prevent the attack mattered at all? She took a deep breath. “To speak the language of the people around you is always a useful thing. Indeed, I have been thinking that it would be well to have someone here who could teach the Latin tongue.”

“You are wise. If you are to become citizens of the Empire you will need to speak its language, although to be sure there are many who still hold that Greek is the only civilized speech.”

Boudica resented the unconscious superiority she sensed beneath Pollio’s words. But now she could see horsemen on the road. Even at such a distance there was something in the relaxed balance with which the first rider sat his mount that she recognized.
It is less than a year,
she thought in wonder.
Have I become so linked to him already?
Perhaps she ought to have expected it, even though he was for the most part as silent as ever. Perhaps it was because she was carrying his child.

She stretched and waved as Prasutagos cantered toward them, as grateful for rescue as if she had been beseiged.

ELEVEN

hiannon faced Ardanos across the fire, their voices twining in the chant as the column of smoke twisted toward the sky. The earthen ramparts that protected the barrows of the ancient dead were covered by grass and eroded by the years. It was the hilltop across the valley to the south that would be Caratac’s refuge. Even now, Durotrige tribesmen were toiling up the slopes with hods filled with earth and stone to reinforce defenses built by people whose names were lost from the land.

In the days of peace the Turning of Spring had been a time to work for a bountiful growing season. But this year the blood of men would fertilize the fields. Through the heat-haze she saw Ardanos’s features exalted and intent as always during ritual.
He would look like that while making love …
She tried to banish the image, but these days they were so linked that he felt her thought, and when his eyes met hers her whole body flushed with desire. Her first instinct was to suppress it, but this, too, could be an offering.

As the circle began to move sunwise she allowed that energy to grow, flowing out through her left hand through the circle to the Druids and village priests who had joined them for the rite.

“Equality of day and night, Balance point of dark and light— This is the day, and this the hour, To choose the purpose, raise the power—”

Since the submission of the tribes in the south and east the previous summer she and Ardanos had been moving steadily ahead of the Roman advance westward, always together, but never alone. King Veric had died shortly after the Roman emperor left Britannia. While General Vespasian was busy putting down the last of Caratac’s supporters on the

Isle of Vectis and establishing Cogidubnos in his grandfather’s place, Lhiannon and Ardanos had gone to King Tancoric. The Durotrige lands were rich in hillforts built in ancient days and rebuilt during the west country’s endless intertribal wars. Surely the Romans would not be able to capture them all …

Wind gusted across the hilltop and the fire flared suddenly, sparking along the juniper boughs that had been twined among the the oak logs in sigils of flame. Now the pine branches caught with a crackle of resin, adding their spicy scent to the smoke that was being blown eastward by the ever-present wind. Eastward … toward the advancing enemy.

The fire flared and hissed as now one, and now another dancer would dart forward to throw an offering of oil or mead or blood on the flames. The smoke grew thicker, billowing above the hill. Lhiannon could feel power building within the circle as they danced.

“By our words and by our will, Here upon the holy hill, A blessing bid on all we see, A spell we cast for victory!”

Wind gusted again, blowing the hair she had left unbound for the ritual across her face. She shook her head to dislodge the fine strands and her smile faded as she realized that the wind had changed. Ardanos pulled his side of the circle forward, arms lifting to release the power, and rather raggedly the others followed. The column of smoke that had flowed eastward to threaten their foes was now drifting north, toward the hill of stones.

hiannon sat down on the bench and drew up one foot, drying it with her cloak of heavy, oily wool. The skin was pale and waterlogged, the flesh cut and bruised from going barefoot in the mud. At least when your refuge was a hillfort, most of the rainwater that did not go into the cistern ran downhill. The folk of the fens around Avalon were said to have webbed feet. She wished that she did. She wished she were on the Isle of Avalon and not beseiged on this hill. She peered upward, hoping that the fine mist that had begun to fall meant a possible break in the clouds, but all she could see was gray.

The omen at the equinox ritual had proved a true one—the Roman advance had caught up with Caratac’s forces a week later and dug their own bank and ditch all around the base of the hill. With them came the rain. Lhiannon looked up as a dark-haired warrior scrambled down from the rampart and over to the pile of stones to scoop more ammunition for his sling into the bag hung from his belt, and she gave him what she hoped was a cheery smile. The defenders of the hillfort had laid in supplies enough for a lengthy siege, but construction had focused on strengthening the ramparts and deepening the ditch between, not the buildings within. Yet though comfort might be lacking, they had plenty of water, and plenty of stones.

Now, of course, they could not forage for thatching straw or whitewash to protect the wattle-and-daub walls. The circles of hastily erected roundhouses clustered on the muddy turf of the hilltop were less secure than the buildings in which folk kept their cows at home, and there were no withies with which to mend the fencing that kept the cattle they had brought here penned. The food had been moved to the best shelter, and even then, some of it had spoiled. Humans were expected to be more resilient. With a sigh she picked up her other foot, grimacing at the touch of cold mud when she put the first one back down.

The reason she had refused to stay with Boudica was standing on the rampart, peering between two of the pointed logs that formed the palisade. Ardanos’s white robe was mud-colored now, but then so was Lhiannon’s priestess-blue gown. What was needed here was a nice, neutral gray. But new clothing was another thing they were going to have to do without for a while.

Someone shouted and she squinted upward, following the flight of the incoming stone with wary gaze. The Roman catapults were quite powerful, but the area protected by the double rampart that surrounded an extended square atop the hill was extensive enough that apart from the wear and tear on everyone’s nerves, they rarely did any harm. The boulders that struck the palisade were another matter, but they still had logs enough to replace by night what was smashed during the day, bolstered by the stones with which the enemy had gifted them.

Why was it that the epics the bards were so fond of reciting never mentioned the sheer misery of standing seige in the rain? She hoped the Romans were equally uncomfortable. She hoped that their iron breast-and backplates were rusting together, the laminated arms of their bal-listas becoming unglued, their leather tents rotting away.

Lhiannon stood up with a sigh and pulled the cloak over her hair as the rain intensified once more.

e have held this place longer than any of the others,” said Caratac, coughing as a draft set the smoke from the hearthfire swirling around the roundhouse where the chieftains had gathered. Lhiannon shielded her face with her veil and dipped up more herb tea from the cauldron. The rain on the thatching made a dull patter beneath the whisper of the fire, so familiar that it was only at moments like this, when everyone fell silent, waiting for the smoke to clear, that she even noticed the sound.

“Nearly two moons …” said Antebrogios, the chieftain Tancoric had put in charge of the defenses. “But longer is not forever.” He coughed, either from the smoke or from the catarrh that afflicted most of those here. “Our supplies are getting low and we have sickness among the men.”

“So do the Romans,” muttered one of the others. “At night you can hear them coughing in their tents. They curse the climate of Britannia, and they curse the emperor who sent them here.”

“Then let them go home to sunny Italia,” muttered someone. “If this rain keeps up much longer I’ll be wishing I could go, too.”

“If they run out of food or men they can ask for replacements,” pointed out his chieftain. “We cannot.”

“Are you saying we should give up?” challenged Caratac. He held out his beaker for Lhiannon to refill. Like the rest of them, he was gaunt and grimy, honed down by hardship to muscle and bone.
If he had foreseen this day at the council on Mona, would he have spoken so boldly?
she wondered as she handed the cup back to him. Would any of them?