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the right. I don’t want tolead your war host. With this blade as his gift, Cunomar may yet grow into the leadership of—”
    “No.”
    Graine and Breaca said it together, with one voice.
    The owl chick screeched again, in underscore.
    In the quiet afterwards, Valerius asked, “Why not?”
    “If my grandchild ever wields my blade, know that the death of the Eceni will follow. I trust you to see it does not happen.”
    Breaca had not meant to say it with the voice of her father, but it came out so, echoing across the gods’ pool.
    In her own voice, she said, “Eburovic’s spirit spoke when we hid the blades. Cunomar was there; he heard it as clearly as any of us. One source of his grief is that he will never wield his grandfather’s blade. If you tried to give it to him, he would refuse it.”
    “And likely think I was trying to bring ruin on the entire Eceni nation, which would hardly improve his trust of me. I see.” Valerius pressed long, lean fingers to his eyes. Some time later, hollowly, he said, “I have no sense, then, of what your father would have wanted. I can hear no word from him or the gods, except that we need to wait until his wish is made more clear. In the meantime…”
    His hands had dropped from his face. His eyes were oddly amber. In quite a different voice he said, “In the meantime, there may be more pressing things to consider and we may no longer be alive to consider them. There are fires lit in the east.”
    Breaca turned as he had turned and looked at the place where the moon had been and where should now be black night and was instead pale, flickering light reflected off a boiling sky.
    Dawn had come early, many dawns; she could count four smaller fires beyond the first and the greatest, four columns of smoke, which became white and black in steady rhythm.
    She said, “Cunomar,” because no-one else would, and then, “He’s attacked one of the watchtowers and set off a signal chain.”
    Valerius said, “He was forbidden to attack either the Ninth in the north or the city of Camulodunum to the south. We had not thought he would bring both on us at once.”
    Very briefly, her brother was quite easily read: raw anger was followed by frustration and both gave way to the wry, dry humour that was his response to most things, except that, this time, a hint of astonished admiration coloured it.
    Valerius whistled slowly, and ran his tongue across his teeth. To Breaca, thoughtfully, he said, “We can’t afford to be caught between the hammer of the Ninth and the anvil of Camulodunum. But the centurion in charge in the city has just lost three cohorts of fighting men to the western wars; he won’t try to march his veterans out against us until he knows what it is he faces. What he will do, as soon as there’s daylight, is send messengers north with all speed to the Ninth legion asking that they march down to assault us from the rear. If we can intercept them, there’s a way we could yet make a victory of this.” His gaze took in all of her. “Could you do that?”
    “No.” The sweat was still wet on her face from their fight. “We’ve spoken of this already. I can’t ride a horse faster than a walk or wield a blade for the time it would take to fight a full battle. I’m not fit to lead the war host into conflict.”
    “I know. But I have an idea, and if it can be made to work, there won’t be a full battle. All you have to do is kill a messenger in front of the war host so that they can believe they’ve seen you fight. I’ll be there, I’ll call him in and, if necessary, I’ll hold him for you. Will you trust me to do that much and keep you safe?”
    He asked it lightly, this brother she had once tried to kill. He had not done so before, only offered her his service until the end of his days. There was doubt in his eyes that she had not seen before.
    Breaca took his hands between her own. Close by, the owls hunted and a shrew died, shrilly. With no irony intended at all,