Dreaming the Bull by Manda Scott Page B

their faces and continued with the work. Only the natives remained dry-eyed.
    The change came at the final roundhouse. A young warrior with startling corn-gold hair knelt and laid his sword at the feet of Gaudinius, the armourer. It was a good blade; the weld-patterns woven in the metal stood out proudly from nights of polishing and the hilt was tightly bound in copper wire, but the pommel was plain, lacking enamel, and, while the warrior wore four gold-banded kill-feathers, the blade itself bore no notches to show it had been used in battle.
    Valerius was already behind Gaudinius when the warrior rocked back on his heels and it was to Valerius that the youth’s eyes rose. They held a defiance, a guarded question and perhaps, in their depths, a plea. Word had passed, then, that Valerius spoke their language. What had not passed with it, because it was not known, was the depth of his loathing for their people and the identity of the man who had spawned it.
    The moment of decision was not without turmoil; Valerius still believed in the laws of honour and maintained an abiding respect for personal dignity. Had the warrior’s hair been other than gold, had his nose been less distinctive,had his eyes not been that particular iron-grey so that one could less readily imagine Caradoc’s smile beneath them and Caradoc’s soul within, what followed might have been different. They were not. The Crow-horse pushed between the man and the crowd.
    “Stop.”
    Gaudinius had stooped to pick up the sword. He froze and then stood, empty-handed.
    Valerius said, “He’s giving you a false weapon. This is not the blade of his ancestors.”
    He said it in Latin, as was required, and then repeated it in Trinovantian. The scuffle had been noted. Already, Longinus was at the pied horse’s shoulder. Others ran to assist, forming a defensive knot. Valerius registered their presence as he would register the arrival of reinforcements in battle—distantly and without taking his attention from the enemy who would kill him. His gaze was locked entirely with that of the young, corn-haired warrior who had just tried to save the blade of his ancestors.
    The youth was a good actor; he could control his face, but not his eyes. Anger followed shock and was followed in turn by a brief, swamping despair. Valerius knew that feeling intimately, the desolation of the soul when what one has most feared becomes reality. He knew also where it led. He was ready long in advance for the moment when the warrior took refuge in action.
    The blade lying flat on the beaten earth was not the one with which the corn-haired man had grown to adulthood, not the one with which he had killed so often in battle, but it was good and he had used it enough to have the feel for its weight and swing. Certainly it was enough to kill a youngofficer who had lost his battle-sharpness. Gaudinius died where he stood, spraying blood from his opened throat. A Thracian auxiliary would have been next if Longinus had not slammed into the man’s shoulder, hurling him sideways so that the killing blow cut only the flesh of his upper arm.
    The warrior backed against the wall of the roundhouse and was joined by two others and, yes, finally, as had been clear all along, the red-headed smith was one of them. Valerius felt a moment’s exhilaration, tainted with an unexpected sorrow that one with such dignity should choose to die in such a manner, and then the Crow-horse, following a barely articulate thought, rose above the gathering mêlée and drove a smashing forefoot down in a blow not even a giant could resist. The beast relied on his rider to block the weapon that would slice open its guts and Valerius did so, wielding a cavalry sword that was the best Rome could offer and did not come close to the quality of the blades that it met.
    Yet it was enough and the sparks flew high over the thatched roof of the roundhouse and Regulus was yelling, “Don’t kill them all. I want one to hang,” and