Dreaming the Serpent Spear by Manda Scott

lame in both forelegs with heat and swelling in the tendons that could leave it lame for life if not treated with skill. Valerius had come to like it in the short journey north and was not proud of the damage he had done. Encouragingly, the beast was being groomed and fed and clucked over with much disapproval by a freckle-faced lad not yet in his teens who had Civilis’ hawk-beaked nose and gold Batavian hair.
    Civilis himself had gone to use the latrines, leaving them alone. The lad spoke to the horse and studiously ignored the man who had ridden it to such harm. Experimentally, Valerius tossed him a silver coin from his messenger’s pouch and watched as the boy tested it with his teeth, nodded at the result, and then tucked it up between cheek and teeth for safe keeping. He looked no less wary afterwards than he had done before; certainly no more prone to idle conversation.
    Valerius slid his back down the nearest wall until he crouched on his heels, hugging his knees to his chest. From that less threatening height, he said, “Civilis will be with us again shortly. My soul-friend the Thracian and I will have to ride south again to show the legate where best to fight the Eceni. If your kinsman were inclined to honour us with fresh horses for the ride and for the battle after, which ones do you think he would give?”
    He spoke in Batavian, the language of all sentiment, where soul-friendships were made between men for life and sealed in blood and the bonds of kinship were stronger by far than any oaths taken or given by Rome. One or other of these two facts reached places the silver had not touched. The boy’s eyes grew round and then narrow in thought.
    Newly shy, his gaze flickered down the horse lines to a certain place and back again. He grinned conspiratorially and, in well-schooled Latin, said, “To give a gift honours the giver. The greater the gift, the greater the honour.”
    “Indeed.” Valerius offered another silver coin and saw it taken with less mistrust.
    He pushed himself away from the stall’s edge and walked down the line. At the place the boy’s gaze had alighted, the hindquarters of a horse faced the passage between the stalls.
    Alone of all those around it, the beast stood facing the wall. Similarly alone, it was not the rich, red bay of every other horse in the barn, but the colour of aged walnuts, so darkly brown as to almost be black. At Valerius’ approach, it snaked its head round and pinned its ears back, savagely. He stopped abruptly and stood in the alleyway between the stalls with his hands laced before him and his face wiped entirely of feeling.
    A long moment passed. Valerius let out slowly the breath he had taken. A trivial comment to Longinus on the unruly nature of Batavian horses died unspoken in his throat. The world was very sharp, suddenly. He was aware of the beast’s part-white ear flicking towards him, of the white splashes on its brow, of the individual strands of black hair in its tail, of the narrow stripes of black down all four hooves where ermine marks at its coronet no bigger than a denarius gave colour to feet that would otherwise have been completely white, as its legs were completely white, to knee and hock and above.
    More than any of these, Valerius was aware of the tight, knotting pain that had taken hold of his diaphragm and all the hope and pain that it heralded. He took a hesitant step forward, extending one hand to the broad cheek and the wary, white-rimmed eye above. “Tell me, son of a god, did your sire—”
    The not-black horse pinned its ears again and struck at the stall’s side. Teeth cracked on wood with a noise to shake the rafters. Throughout the barn, the quiet rhythms of eating ceased for a moment and then started again a little faster.
    Valerius stood very still, watching the place where the teeth had gouged deeply into age-hardened oak. His face felt cold and slick and a single line of sweat ran down the centre of his spine. He was