Dreaming the Hound: Boudica: A Novel of the Warrior Queen Paperback - 2005

Excerpt

LISTEN TO ME. I AM LUAIN MAC CALMA, HERON-DREAMER, ONCE of Hibernia, now Elder of Mona, adviser and friend of Breaca, who is the Boudica, Bringer of Victory. We are in a time of great peril; if you do not understand the past, you cannot come to understand the present, and without it, the tribes of Britannia have no future. Here, tonight, by the fire, you will learn what has come before. This is who we were; if we win now, this is who we could be again.

It is fourteen years since the Emperor Claudius sent his legions to invade our land. Then, we were a diverse people, of many tribes and many gods, united only in our care of our dreamers: the men and women who came here, to the gods’ island of Mona, to study for a dozen years in the great-house under the elders. Warriors, too, came to learn the arts of honour and courage that might lead later to acts of heroism in battle. We fought against each other for show and thought each skirmish a mighty battle.

Then Rome came, with its legions and cavalry. The men of Rome do not fight for honour or to hear their names sung in the hero-tales at winter. They fight for victory, and when they have made a land their own, they do not leave it.

The tales of how we fought have been told in other places; the battle of the invasion lasted two days and will be told for ever round the fires. A thousand heroes lost their lives and those few who emerged alive did so through the sacrifices of others. It was then that Breaca, once of the Eceni, then Warrior of Mona, led the charge to rescue Caradoc and earned the name by which we know her: Boudica, Bringer of Victory.

Breaca and Caradoc were amongst those who, on the orders of their elders, left the battlefield. They did so with reluctance, fleeing only to continue the war against Rome, and to protect the children, who are precious above all else. They brought them here, to the gods’ isle of Mona where warriors and water hold safe all that is most sacred; where dreamers, singers and warriors of many tribes come to know themselves in the full gaze of the gods, that they may take that knowledge, and the wisdom it brings, back to their people.

From here they fought for ten years, preventing the Roman legions from gaining any foothold in the west. Thus the Romans built their first fortress in the east at Camulodunum, which had been the stronghold of Caradoc’s people.

In the early years of the occupation, thousands of warriors and dreamers died in the east; whole villages were slaughtered in reprisals for rebellions, real or imagined, and it was declared illegal for any man, woman or child to bear a weapon.

The legionaries who broke the swords of our warriors were led by an officer, Julius Valerius, who rode a pied horse. More than anyone else he was hated, for he had been Eceni once, and had sold his soul to Rome and its gods. He fought for Mithras and for the emperor and both thrived on Eceni blood.

Breaca and Caradoc had a son, Cunomar, and then a daughter, Graine. Shortly after her birth, Caradoc was taken captive by treachery and made prisoner in Rome. Captured with him were his son Cunomar and his elder daughter, Cygfa, a warrior of high renown.

The family were taken to Rome, to die at the whim of the Emperor Claudius, only that Airmid, the dreamer who is the other half of Breaca’s soul, found a way to bargain with the oldest and most dangerous of the ancestors and was able to prevent their death and, much later, to bring about their freedom.

Caradoc was tortured and maimed beyond repair. He was well enough to bring his family to the coast of Gaul, but not to go beyond it. He could not have returned as a warrior to Mona – his injuries were too great for him to wield a weapon as he had done with such success before his capture and he would not inflict on his warriors the pain of seeing him brought low by Rome. Thus he stayed in Gaul and word was sent that he gave his life to save his children as they boarded the ship that would bring them back to Mona.

That was three years ago. Breaca mourns Caradoc, but inwardly. Outwardly, she has given herself heart and soul to the battle against Rome. In summer, she leads the warriors of Mona to keep the legions from reaching our island, and to push them back as far as she can from the mountains of the west. Through winter, she hunts alone, taking men singly or in pairs, and they have come to fear her, as if she were a spirit of the mountains who feeds on their souls.

One other returned on the ship from Gaul, who was not expected: Julius Valerius, the once-Eceni cavalry officer who had led the oppression of his people. By the will of the gods, he was called back to Rome by the ailing Claudius to undertake a final duty: to escort Caradoc’s family to the Gaulish coast and thence to a ship that might take them to freedom.

Claudius died before the family could reach freedom and Nero, his successor, required that they be returned. Valerius could not go against an oath sworn in the name of his god, and thus was named traitor, and forced to flee.

I would have brought him to Mona, for reasons that are not only my own, but Breaca forbade it and she is not only the Boudica, whose word holds sway with the warriors, she is also Breaca of the Eceni, sister to the man who was once Bán and became Valerius, an officer of the legions.
These, then, are the ones who have fashioned our pasts: Breaca, who hunts legionaries in the mountains of western Britannia, and her brother Valerius who is in exile in Hibernia, where he drags out a living as a smith. Neither can continue at this for ever. The world changes and they must change with it, or die.

Meanwhile, the children, and the dreamers, wait on Mona, watching a world that grows more brutal by the year. Rome seeks revenue from its provinces, and Britannia is not the rich vein of silver and gold that Claudius believed it to be. Nero was made emperor in his place and Nero is ruled in turn by his advisers. These are men without pity, for whom a land and its people mean nothing, unless they have gold or can be made to yield it.

This is the future we fear and against which we fight. Mona is safe now, under the care of the gods, but if it is the gods’ will that it be no longer safe, then all that is sacred will continue in the hearts and minds of those who hold the lineage of the ancestors. We are those people, you and I. Dream now, and know that in the dreaming is your future and all that we believe to be true.