Good food and affection had transformed the little dog, who now stood nearly as high as my knee, with a silky black and white coat and a wildly-waving plume of tail. To Hylas, the market was a place of infinite possibility, full of fascinating smells and even more interesting and odoriferous objects. It was poor Philip’s task to keep the dog from trying to drag them home. For the human members of the household the market was a source of gossip that kept us informed about the progress of the campaign.
The Goths they were fighting were the last survivors of the great incursion that had shaken the Empire two years before. But even in the days when Rome still claimed Dacia, its northern mountains had resisted the penetration of the legions. The Goths had melted into the wilderness like snow in summer. But it was winter now, and a dwindling food supply would put them at a disadvantage before the well-fed legions.
Or at least we could hope so. To think of Constantius on the march, wet and hungry while I sat warm before my fire, chilled my soul. But there was nothing I could do to help him. Only my yearning spirit reached out across the leagues that separated us, as if by doing so I could bring him some comfort.
And more and more, as winter drew in, it seemed that I was indeed touching his spirit. I had tried to do this when Constantius was in Syria, without success. Was it because I now carried his child that the link had strengthened, or perhaps because my successful pregnancy had restored a confidence lost when I was exiled from Avalon?
I dared not question too closely. It was enough, in the long winter evenings, to sit before the hearthfire, humming softly as I combed out my hair, and allow a vision of Constantius to take shape among the glowing coals.
On one such evening, just before the solstice when soldiers celebrate the birth of Mithras, I found the visions I saw in the coals taking on an unusual clarity. A chunk of charring firewood was transformed into a mountainside, and below it, on an outcrop, glowing sticks became the square palisade of a Roman marching camp with neat rows of tents laid out inside. Smiling, I indulged the fancy. Constantius might be settling down for the night in just such a camp even now. I leaned forwards, willing myself to see the tent in which he lay—
—and suddenly I was there in the camp, staring at falling tents and running men lit by the flames of the burning palisade as the Goths burst in. Spearpoints flickered like exploding sparks as the Romans rallied, swords darting in and out in tongues of flame. Frantic, I searched for Constantius, and found him standing back-to-back with Crocus. He was defending himself with a legionary’s pilum, while the big German fought with a longer German spear, and their valour had swept a circle of safety around them.
But even together they could not defeat the entire Gothic army, and the rest of the Romans were getting the worst of it. There were so many! Now another contingent drove towards Constantius. Instinctively I leapt forwards with an inarticulate cry. I do not know what the Goths saw, but they recoiled.
Suddenly I remembered a fragment of teaching from Avalon, offered as a historical curiosity, since surely we would never have any use for it now. In the ancient days, the Druid priestesses had been taught battle-magic, spells to protect their warriors, and the shriek of the Raven-Goddess that had the power to unman a foe.
It was that shriek that I felt building in my breast now, a cry of rage, of despair, of utter negation. I extended my arms and they became black wings, bearing me upward as that fury filled me, body and soul.
The Goths looked up, mouths opening, fingers flexing in the sign against evil as I swooped towards them. They were no Romans, to make divinities of abstractions and abstract principles of their deities. They knew the spirit world was real…
“Waelcyrige! Haliruno!” they cried as I bore down upon them. And then I opened my throat, and the scream that left my lips separated them from their senses, and me from consciousness as well.