Songwoman Read online

  ‘Is this what his father protested in him?’ I had asked, as we spun at her fire.

  ‘This, and the fact that Caradog would see no compromise in the dealings with Rome.’ Euvrain smiled. ‘In that matter he is entirely constant.’ She leaned forward to correct the line of my wool.

  ‘Do they weary you?’ I asked, setting my spindle beside me. ‘His tempers?’

  ‘At times. But once you have his loyalty, it is as certain as sunrise.’

  He had offered me no such certainty. But it was me he had chosen to accompany his personal war band and bless it for battle, while Prydd had been sent with another.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said as a servant handed me a bowl of steaming porridge.

  Amidst the laughter, there was a heightened alertness in the warriors. Slowly they dispersed to sharpen their weapons and pace through their sword strokes in preparation for tonight’s attack.

  Caradog had split his fighters into five bands of over a thousand men. Each band had taken a different path from Llanmelin, with a different target at its end. But tonight, when the star of the hunter reached its apex, the bands would move all at once. Five of the Roman outposts would be burned and their soldiers slaughtered. The grain fields, store huts and bridges that supplied the camps would be destroyed as well.

  I had questioned this when Caradog announced it at the council, for these actions would injure the Dobunni tribespeople as well as the Romans.

  ‘They forfeited my loyalty when they knelt before Claudius,’ he had said. ‘We will protect them if they join with us. Otherwise they are my enemy.’

  Night and day.

  We had already been joined last night by Dobunni resistors who were ready to fight with us against their Roman captors. Other messages had come from the Durotriges, whose chiefs pledged to move northward with their spears, into the tail of Tir Dobunni, while we tore at its belly. There were insurrections planned and promised by warriors in the Iceni to our east and the Coritani to our north.

  I glanced at Caradog, now standing alone at the fire.

  All across Albion was an invisible web of hope and rebellion, the war chief poised at its centre, alert to any tug or movement on its strands. Yet there was one space, one branch where his thread had found no purchase.

  Even now he stared northward, as if Cartimandua may emerge from the forest at any moment.

  I scraped the last of my porridge and stood up beside him. ‘She is not sending men, War Chief,’ I said. ‘We will defeat them without her.’

  He turned to me. ‘When the Roman army lies butchered across the fields of Tir Dobunni,’ he said, ‘then she will come to my hearth. Then she will honour me as war chief.’

  ‘Turn to those who honour you now,’ I whispered.

  ‘Do you seek to command me yet again?’

  ‘I seek to help you.’

  ‘I will ask for what help I need.’

  Caradog was intuitive as an animal. He must know that I had seen his fear. How could I tell him that I honoured him despite it? Because of it? ‘You have my loyalty, Caradog,’ I said.

  He nodded, without expression, and walked to his tent.

  The soldier stood at the northwest corner of the viewing platform, behind spiked palisades. His face held a faraway expression as he stared into the Dobunni night. Was he thinking of the bread he would eat when he finished his shift, or was he remembering his wife’s sun-coloured shoulders in the warmlands of Italia?

  I looked at the sky. Fifty of us crouched behind a hedge of gorse, hidden by darkness. Despite the cold of early winter, the men were bare-chested, the warmth of their muscles releasing the foul cabbage stench of the woad on their skin.

  The rest of our war band was positioned in clusters of warriors surrounding the fort.

  Caradog’s best slingsman had his first stone poised. I stood beside him. My task was to tell Caradog when the hunter’s star had reached its crest. Prydd had taught me the calculation using cord and the horizon.

  ‘It is time,’ I whispered to Caradog, pocketing the cord. I looked to the fort, inhaling sharply as a second soldier appeared on the platform. The scouts had told us explicitly that by night the forts were guarded by only one.

  ‘I cannot hit two at once,’ whispered the slingsman in panic.

  ‘We need a second slingsman,’ said Caradog. ‘Hefin? Patuix? Who is confident?’

  It was at least forty paces, with a keen gradient, but I had shot more difficult targets when I was forest living. ‘I am,’ I said.

  ‘You?’ hissed Caradog. He had never seen me wield a weapon.

  My sling still hung beside my sword on my belt. I knew the skill was still sharp in my fingers. ‘Let me try.’

  ‘Go then!’ he said.

  The slingsman passed me a river stone, heavy and smooth as an egg in my palm.

  ‘Prepare,’ said Caradog.

  ‘Shall I take the closer one?’ I whispered to my companion as the warriors made space around us.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘He is taller and easier to hit.’

  I circled my shoulder to loosen its movement, then positioned the stone in the cradle of the sling, jiggling it to sense its weight.

  The wind carried the voices of the guards and their clipped Latin tongue. The first of them looked suddenly in our direction, frowned, then turned away.

  ‘Begin,’ said Caradog.

  I could barely breathe for my thundering heart. I set my eye to the soldier’s chest. I had not trained to the warrior’s mind. I could only imagine that he was a buck and my belly was empty.

  We began to spin the slings in full circles. My pulse grew steady with the motion. The slings hummed softly in perfect alignment as the bands of leather sliced through the air. We increased our speed, summoning the force that would make the stones kill.

  My buck looked up.

  ‘Now,’ whispered Caradog.

  My eyes were welded to the buck’s breast. At the apex of our next arc, we opened our grasp and let the stones fly.

  Both soldiers crumpled behind the points of the palisades. The Mothers were with us.

  Caradog gave the whistled signal and several hundred fighters surged forward from the darkness, throwing hooks and ropes over the palisades, and pouring like water over the walls, in silence.

  I stood at the base of the fortress as a tide of bodies rushed past me, whispering prayers to the Mothers to strengthen our fighters. I would not follow. The Kendra must be preserved.

  Within moments, the clashes of swords and howls of injury rang out from the fort. Now I could lift my voice in curses to the enemy. I screeched and ululated into the smoking sky, but my cries felt empty when I could not see whom I condemned.

  The last of the tribesmen were over the wall. Their ropes hung free, awaiting their departure. I felt outcast, useless, hiding my flesh while my people risked theirs. I could stand here no longer.

  I ran, grabbed a rope and hauled myself up, struggling over the palisades and onto the platform behind it. Below me was killing as I had never seen it. Fire, smoke, bodies, shit. And blood, so much blood the ground was dark with it.

  The Romans had been sleeping. Many must have been slain before they had even awoken. The rest now fought, without armour or strategy, clumsy with shock.

  Many tribesmen were shooting arrows from the platform, while others wielded spears and swords on the ground. Caradog was among them, attacking a thick-set soldier with the fervour and skill that I had often heard praised, but never had seen. I stared, entranced, as he blocked and stabbed, eyes blazing, skin shining with sweat, his movement precise, yet utterly free.

  He bellowed as he impaled the soldier through the chest, alive with the exhilaration of granting his body the task for which it was born. And there was no question now, as I watched him pull his sword from his opponent’s sternum, then turn to another, that he was born for this war. I saw now what it must cost him to fight by stealth. For he was a warrior.

  Hefin and Caeden fought at his flank, prot
ecting his back with equal fire. This was not the order and discipline of the Roman army. This was the soul of the tribes brought to flesh, iron and motion, the animal turmoil that channelled the Mothers. This was pure spirit. And Caradog was at its shining head.

  As if called by my gaze, he looked up and saw me. ‘Get back!’ he roared, scowling, before he lunged again, immersed in the battle.

  I was not supposed to fight. But, by the Mothers, I wanted to. I had no stones to throw from the platform, but I had my sword. It had killed a Roman soldier once before. It could do so again. I dropped down from the platform, skidding in blood pooled on the dirt.

  A man shouted in Latin behind me and I spun to face him, drawing my sword. He was young, soft-lipped and his eyes were full of fear. I faltered—he was a son, a brother—then I raised my weapon; these were our tribelands and they would stay free.

  The force of each strike shuddered through my bones. Mothers, what had I done? I was in no practice. I swung wildly, desperately. This was not like any fight I had known in my training. I was not seeking to be artful, nor outwit my opponent. I was seeking to kill. The purpose awakened my skill.

  I was not deft, but I screamed with the fury of the Mothers and the soldier was scared. With three swipes, I knocked his sword from his hand. With the fourth I buried my blade between his ribs, until I felt it hit bone at the back of his body. He met my eye, cursing my people to eternal suffering, as he sank to the ground.

  I withdrew my blade and wiped it clean on his night tunic.

  Through the roar of burning, I heard Caradog shouting. ‘Rise Ailia! To your rear!’

  I spun to face another, his short sword raised and his face confused, horrified to meet a woman in the ambush. I lunged at him while he reckoned it. All my days I had worshipped life. Now I was determined to leave this fortress a tomb.

  We fought on. Without planning or equipment, the Romans could not organise themselves into formation, and it fell to each soldier to command his own fight, sword against sword, body against body. It was combat that demanded brazen courage over strategy and, in this, our warriors were far superior. Gradually the enemy began to fall.

  I was not the only woman in Caradog’s war band, there were at least nine or ten from the northern tribes: fierce, well-muscled women, who must have distinguished themselves in training and given their chiefs no reason to withhold them from the war. I saw how they disoriented the enemy, how the Romans faltered with the shock of bare breasts and a smooth-cheeked face, regretting their delay once the blade had been put through their throat.

  Our fighters began to shriek with elation as it became clear that no Roman soldiers would remain. As the contest quieted, I saw Caradog slip into the doorway of a hut. It was the largest of the soldiers’ barracks, the commander’s tent. I followed him in.

  The commander was slain, slumped at a table.

  Caradog spun, sword raised, at the sound of my entry. ‘Ailia!’ he exhaled. ‘Are you harmed?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You did not tell me you could use a sword,’ he called over his shoulder as he strode to the table.

  ‘I did not think it would be needed.’

  ‘It’s always needed.’ Caradog lifted the commander’s head by the hair and began to saw through the neck.

  I glanced at a pale, stiff sheet of fabric spread on the table, its ends wound around a cylinder of wood. It was covered in row upon row of tiny black shapes made with the finest brush. As Caradog continued his hasty surgery, I moved forward to examine it. These were Roman letters. I had seen them on coins from the east and on the jars and boxes that had come to Caer Cad by trade. I had heard of the messages that were entrusted to sheets of stretched calfskin, but I had never seen one nor gazed upon its patterns. It was said that the Romans no longer held their stories in song. These insectile marks were their knowledge. I traced my fingers over the symbols. What did they mean?

  Caradog grunted with the labour of his task. I looked up. The throat gaped open, but the blade had lodged in the spine.

  ‘Here,’ I said, taking hold of his sword. I had treated many injuries of the back and I knew how the nodes of a spine locked together. ‘You must cut through this cleft between the bones—’ With a firm jerk and a wiggle of the blade, I had the commander’s head free in my hand as the body fell heavily to the floor.

  Caradog roared with laughter and crushed his lips against my cheek. ‘Mighty woman,’ he murmured, his breath warm on my skin, ‘is there nothing you cannot do?’

  I stared at his face, speckled with blood-spray. His eyes shone with the rapture of killing. What was this praise?

  Shouts and burning timber roared outside the barrack. Inside it was silent.

  Caradog lifted his hand and touched my face.

  For the briefest moment, it felt possible—certain—that I would step forward and lay my cheek against his chest, imprinting my skin with his sweat and dye.

  Instead I turned and walked to the entrance.

  I leaned on the doorway, reeling with desire. I had not hungered for a man since I had lain with Taliesin. The fierceness of it shocked me. Yet I was dizzy with killing. I was not of clear senses.

  I turned to see him setting a torch to the bed and then to the table. When he was satisfied they had caught, he walked to the door and pushed past me without further word.

  As I watched the flames consuming the room, I saw the sheet of letters flare bright, then perish into ash. Where, I wondered as I backed away from the surging heat, was their knowledge now?

  The war band gathered to take count of themselves and replenish with water. There was no time to celebrate our victory. ‘Do not rest too long,’ said Caradog, passing his bladder to the warrior beside him. ‘We must go to the settlements and finish our task. The Dobunni were the first tribe to submit to Claudius. Remember this when they cry for you to spare their grain.’

  And so we continued through the night, destroying the store huts, smashing the structures they had built to passage water, burning fields, and roping the best horses. The townspeople took up arms and some were slain in the fight, but Caradog had not come to slaughter men of the tribes. Our purpose was to incur as much damage as possible to property that lay within Roman territory, so that repairs would bleed out the governor’s purse.

  I no longer used my sword, but chanted the rites of whomever had met their death. Throughout the rampage, Caradog called to the Dobunni to shun their new Roman lord, to bring a tent to his war camp and move forth with his band.

  At dawn we rode back to our camp, leaving a network of scouts. We sat exhausted by fires as the morning became golden, drinking ale and eating strips of smoked beef. Within hours, riders bore news from camps to the north and south of us along the Sun Road that the other four attacks had been successful. The forts were destroyed, thousands of Roman soldiers had been slain, and the tribespeople of the Dobunni had not risen to defend them.

  Today we would rest. Tomorrow we would move our camp forward. We would continue the attack on Roman-held territory for as long as it took Scapula to mobilise his wintering legions. And when he did, it would leave at least one region within the rear of his province unguarded, giving the eastern chiefs their chance to act. Whatever Scapula did now, Rome’s position would be weakened.

  Caradog was right, I thought, as I sipped my ale, and watched the bruised and muddy fighters sprawled and laughing. We could defeat them. We could free our tribelands.

  4

  Two halves of Sovereignty

  Warriors seek victory.

  Journeypeople seek knowledge.

  The pull between them holds the land firm.

  I SPENT THE rest of the day in my tent, tending wounds and binding limbs with strips of linen. My own back and shoulders had never ached so deeply. Killing asked much of the body.

  By sunset we had packed the carts for tomorrow’s march. Caradog spoke to the men of his plan to continue until the first sighting of a legion. Under no circumstances would we engage in fi
eld battle with the Roman army, for this would hand them certain victory. Our triumph would be to erode them by stealth.

  At dawn, I heard the thud of hooves. Blurry with sleep, I stumbled from my tent as Caradog and the other chiefs emerged.

  The messenger dismounted swiftly and bowed to Caradog. ‘I carry news from Anwas’s camp, now disbanded,’ she said, panting. ‘There are reprisals.’

  Anwas was a chief of the Ordovices, a steady and cool-headed warrior, to whom Caradog had entrusted the command of the northernmost band.

  ‘Which legion has marched against us?’ asked Caradog. ‘And by whom is it led?’

  ‘It is Scapula himself who leads the force, but it is not one of the legions.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Caradog. ‘Who comes?’

  ‘A small force of auxilia, entirely on horseback.’

  ‘Cavalry?’ questioned Hefin. It was not typical of Romans to fight with horses.

  ‘You say a small force,’ said Caradog. ‘Therefore easily defeated?’

  She shook her head. ‘They are no horsemen of this world,’ she said. ‘Their skin is blacker than night and their horses run with unearthly speed.’ Her eyes were bright with fear. ‘I spoke to one who had seen them. He said their agility is inhuman. They ride without reins and cast spears with both hands.’

  ‘I know of these riders,’ said Caradog. ‘They are not of the otherworld. They come from the desert lands near Carthage. They are the Empire’s most deadly cavalry, but they have never been posted in Albion.’

  ‘So Scapula has brought them with him,’ I said.

  Caradog nodded. ‘How many of my band are lost?’

  ‘Anwas commanded them to retreat, but the riders were too swift. There are few survivors.’

  ‘And Anwas?’ asked Caradog.

  The rider paused. ‘He is fixed to a cross of wood, by means of iron nails through the wrists and feet, and the cross is stood upright as a tree.’