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sat the horse he called Crow and spoke in coruscating Latin to the Roman procurator who lay between its feet. Moments later, he had slain the man with the horse. Half of her fevered dreams had been of the implacable rage of that killing.
    He stood now in the quiet light of the clearing and she looked at him properly for the first time. He was taller than she remembered, and leaner, but not as gaunt as he had been on the boat from Gaul, when she had wanted to kill him. His hair was long for a Roman, but short for Eceni, and he had not woven in the warrior’s braid at the side as he might have done. He wore an Eceni cloak over a Roman tunic and the blade at his belt was of his own making, shorter and slimmer than the great-blade of the Eceni warrior but longer than the auxiliary cavalry swords of his legionary past.
    His eyes were black, as they had always been, but far less troubled. He was a man caught on the dividing line between two worlds and he did not look badly for it. She remembered that he was given to Mithras, hidden god of the legions, as well as to Nemain.
    The pain in her back was less now. She lifted her blade. “Will you match against me? So that I can find how I might live, or die, in battle?”
    It was a fanciful offer, only half serious. Valerius threw her a grin that was layered with too many meanings to be read. His blade came fast after it, before she was ready.
    She swung her own blade up to block and braced herself for the pain of impact, but he was already gone, the iron flashing blue in the moonlight, a twisting fish that tapped her own sluggard sword and danced away, and tapped and away and again and again, fast and fast and too fast to follow, until she forgot herself and her pain and raised her own blade in both fists and brought it cleaving down towards his head, screaming his name as if they were in battle.
    “
Valerius!
”
    He did block that one, hard, slamming his blade crosswise against hers so that the jar ran from her wrists to her arms to her shoulders and on to the ruined flesh of her back. She stopped abruptly and was still, grinding her teeth and swearing aloud. Sweat poured from her as much as it had done in the fever. The sound of her breathing rasped between the trees.
    “And so?”
    Breaca lifted her head. Her brother was breathing a little faster than he had been, but had not broken sweat. He studied her and said nothing, only cocked one brow, dryly.
    “If you can remember never to lift your blade like that without a shield-warrior on either side to protect your flanks, you will be perfectly able to lead. If you forget, then the first raw recruit with a javelin will run you through and our war of liberation will be over before it starts. Can you remember, do you think?”
    “Maybe. If there’s nothing else happening that might distract me. Which doesn’t change the fact that I’m not yet fit enough to lead any army into battle. You’re more than fit. You know Rome as no-one else does and you have led more men to victory than anyone else. You’re the obvious choice.”
    “Am I?” Valerius sat down suddenly, folding his legs beneath him. Turning towards the gods’ pool, he said, “Graine? We have nearly five thousand untested warriors who have gathered in the Boudica’s name. Do you think I should lead them if your mother is not fit? What would your brother Cunomar say if I did?”
    Breaca watched her daughter step over and sit beside him with an air of confidence and ease, as if she saw in him only the dreamer of Nemain, trained on Mona, and not the other, equal half, which was Roman.
    Graine said, “Cunomar remembers the prophecy the ancestor-dreamer made to mother.
Find the warrior with the eyes and heart of a dreamer to lead them and you may prevail.
The vision showed a warrior leading the final charge against Rome. My brother wants to be that warrior. He always has. Then you came and were not only the man who abandoned his father in Gaul, but now a warrior and a