And with the first light, the first attack came.
Alexios heard the sharp clear alarm-notes of the horn, shouted orders, the surge of sound from the ramparts. This was it, then. He stopped pacing. He stood quite still before the high window. Out of the habit of his training, his hands were going over harness buckles, making sure that sword and dagger sat freely in their sheaths. He dragged open the window, and the sound of shouted orders and the distant clash of weapons came in on the grey sleety wind.
He stood rigid, his hands clenched on either side of the window-frame. He never knew how long he stood there. Outside, between him and the surf-roar of the fighting, he heard the steps of the sentry in the colonnade. He could simply open the door in the blind instant after the man had passed and take him from behind. He did not think that anyone of his Wolves would try to stop him but that would be better for the man than just walking past him – and then he would be out. But if he did that, he would create a diversion and raise divided loyalties, and his little hardpressed fort could not afford such luxuries at the moment.
The daylight was coming fast under a low racing cloudroof, and he thought the noise was lessening, as though the attack was drawing off. He heard feet in the colonnade, coming at a stride that was almost a run. Lucius’s voice this time, speaking to the sentry. The door opened and the Junior Centenarius stood there, breathing hard, with a smear of blood on one cheekbone.
‘Sir,’ he said formally, ‘will you come and take over your command?’
‘Praepositus Montanus?’ Alexios said, turning from the window.
‘Praepositus Montanus is dead.’
11 ‘We’re Pulling Out’
FOR A MOMENT Alexios was back in the North shooting turret at Abusina. (‘Centurion Crito’ – ‘What of Centurion Crito?’ – ‘He’s dead, Sir.’)
‘Oh God of the Legions!’ he thought, ‘Not again!’
Aloud, he said, ‘I’m coming.’ He caught up his iron-bound cap and put it on, hurriedly knotting the thongs, hitching at his sword-belt as he passed Lucius to the open doorway. The sentry stood aside, and looking after them, shrugged and went off to join his comrades.
‘What is the situation?’ Alexios was demanding, as he made for the south rampart and the sinking sounds of the attack.
‘It looks like about six hundred of them,’ Lucius said. ‘We have inflicted heavy losses on them and they’re drawing back for the moment. But there’ll be more – a lot more I reckon. The Caledoni must be over the Wall in some strength – there have been Pictish arrows coming over the ramparts since the rain slackened off.’
The reserves were massing in the clear space below the ramparts, the wounded were being brought down.
‘The Votadini?’
‘Mostly the Votadini at present – couldn’t expect anything else, Sir, after what’s happened.’
They came to the rampart stair, and Alexios took the steps two at a time with Lucius at his heels.
The Senior Centenarius turned from the breastwork and saluted. ‘They’re pulling off, Sir.’
Alexios nodded, looking down over the timber coping, and saw a dark mass of figures falling back out of bowshot. One figure a little behind the rest, pitched headlong, screaming like a hare, with a parting arrow from the ramparts quivering in his back. There were dead and wounded men in the ditch and all across the open ground between the fort and the first buildings of the town; dead and wounded sprawling grotesquely along the rampart walk, hampering the feet of the living defenders. Two men stumbled past, carrying a third close-wrapped in an officer’s dark green cloak, stark dead men’s feet in fine bronze studded boots sticking out at one end, the feathered crest of the Praepositus’s helmet sticking out at the other. Alexios scarcely wasted a glance at it. He looked right and left along the ramparts, seeing men standing leaning on their weapons, here one cradling a wounded arm, there one sitting with his back to the breastwork and staring down with a kind of numb surprise at the Pictish arrowshaft sticking out of his belly. And they were so thinly strung out; two hundred men – a few more counting the First Ordo Wolves who had formed Montanus’s escort – to hold a fort that had been meant for five hundred. Not even the full two hundred now, come to think of it, and fewer still by the time the next attack was over. And the Caledoni swarming down from the north to join spears with the Attacotti, the men of the White Shields from across the Western Sea? And the Votadini who yesterday had been their friends? Curse Connla! Curse Praepositus Montanus!
There would be time to get the wounded under cover and the dead cleared from the rampart walks, to bring up more arrows and javelins from the armoury and get a morning ration of bread and curds to the troops and maybe do something about watering the horses. Not much more. He heard his own voice giving the needful orders. Then on the point of departing about the score of other matters that must be seen to by the fort Commander at such a time, he checked for a few moments longer beside his Senior Centenarius, looking down into the roof-huddle of the town, ‘Any idea what has happened down there?’
Hilarion shook his head. ‘The place was buzzing like a hive about to swarm in the earlier part of last night. Then it went quiet. My guess would be that it was empty, in one way or another, before our war-painted friends arrived.’
Still looking down at the huddle of roofs, Alexios was thankful that unlike most ‘Long-stay’ troops, the Frontier Wolvesseldom bothered to take wives. They went down to the women’s huts in the town when the mood took them; but there would be no wives or families, however unofficial, down there to tangle the situation more than it was tangled already.
Something like a hornet sang towards him, and with a small vicious ‘tock’ a Pictish arrow landed and stood quivering in the timber coping between himself and his Senior Centenarius.
‘But it’s not empty now,’ added Hilarion, ducking behind the breastwork, but with no change of tone.
‘Seemingly not. They’ve probably left one of their marksmen behind every wall.’ Alexios pulled out the arrow, which had not penetrated deeply. ‘Well, this was loosed at fairly extreme range, and our bows have the range of theirs. Keep a few of our best archers here to pick off anyone who tries to get nearer.’ He tossed the arrow back over the breastwork; it would not fit the Scouts’ composite bows anyway. ‘Let me know the instant the main force breaks cover again.’
And he dived back down the rampart stair and went off to see about his score of other matters.
Presently the horn sounded again from the look-out tower, the harsh bright notes of the Alarm scattered on the squally wind, and the respite was over.
Out from a passing sleet-scurry the tribesmen came swarming; and standing in the shooting turret beside the Praetorian gate, Alexios watched them come; the Caledoni half-naked for battle under their sad-coloured cloaks, grotesque in their warpaint, running low from wall to wall up through the deserted town; the Votadini pouring in from the flanks. Only on the western side the river gorge would make it hard to mount a strong attack. Thanks be to the Lord of the Legions for the river gorge; that meant only two sides to bear the full force of the attack; three if they managed to break through the stockade covering the bath-house and the old shipyard quarter beyond the Northern gate. ‘Start loosing at extreme range,’ Alexios had ordered. The sleet-scurry was passing and had not been enough to wet the bowstrings. And in the shooting turrets the best marksmen among the Frontier Wolves stood loosing steadily through the embrasures into the thick of the rush.
The main thrust seemed to be against the Praetorian gate this time, and among the spearmen ran others carrying bundles of brushwood to pile against the gate timbers, others with torches that streamed behind them as they ran, and above their heads flew the arrows of the hidden Pictish bowmen to give them cover.
‘Get a fire party ready,’ Alexios shouted to the Optio behind him. ‘Bucket chain.’ And to the archers in the gate-tower, ‘Keep them back from the gates, and pick off any you can of the Caledoni covering them.’
T
he tribesmen were flinging brushwood bundles into the ditch to swarm over. They carried long notched poles for scaling the ramparts. The attack was roaring in from all sides, but still it seemed the main thrust was against the Praetorian gate; and in the forefront of it, Alexios saw a short strong figure with russet hair flying from under a war-cap, a glint of amber among the neck-folds of a red and saffron plaid, a long sword-blade catching the light of the torches. There was nothing much to set the Chieftain apart from the rest of his warriors, except the intangible something by which one man recognizes another, friend or enemy, in the distance or the almost-dark.
As though he felt Alexios’s eyes on him, Cunorix looked up, and for a single heartbeat of time their gaze met. Then a bowstring twanged beside Alexios’s ear; the shaft passed through Cunorix’s hair as he sprang forward and took the man behind him in the throat. The bowman cursed softly. Next instant the young Chieftain was beneath the gate arch, where no arrow could reach him.
There was an acrid smell of burning, and a crackle of flame shot up in the archway, and the fire party went into action. All along the breastwork the fight was reeling to and fro, the war-cries of Frontier Wolves and Votadini mingling with the hideous wild-cat yowling of the men from the north. The smoke thickened and began to mingle with a fresh sleet squall sweeping across the fort so that the far side was all but lost in the murk. And out of the murk the warning call of the horn sounded again, and fresh forked tongues of flames were leaping up from the direction of the bath-house beyond the north walls.
Alexios was down from the shooting turret and halfway across the fort when Bericus met him. ‘Sir, word from Centenarius Lucius; the stockade is near to its going.’
He waved up the reserves on the Dancing Ground, and raced on with them for the North gate. The space beyond seemed fringed with fire; slim hungry tongues of flame licking up from the stockade in a score of places, and against the glare, the figures of tribesmen and Frontier Wolves struggling for the defences. Lucius’s face, blackened now as well as bloody, was suddenly in front of Alexios, saying with his usual slightly wooden calm as he saw the reserves, ‘Now we’ll be able to do something about the fires – couldn’t spare any men before, you see Sir.’
They fought the fires with water from the bath-house supply; at least there was plenty of water on the northern slope of the hill; fetching it in their war-caps or anything else that came to hand, beating out the flames with their wolfskins dripping from the plunge-bath. They fought the tribesmen with their spears and swords and bare hands and with the last weapon of the wolfkind – Alexios saw one man with his teeth sunk in a tribesman’s throat, and never forgot the sight. He never forgot, either, the grating of blade on bone as he pulled his own sword out from the rib-cage of a boy he had known and drunk mares’ milk with, or the painted giant whirling an axe with heron’s feathers on its shaft, and Bericus’ surprised grunt as he went down beside him with his head split open . . .
At last, like a wave spending itself, the force of the attack wavered and curled over on itself and began to stream away. The shouting and the clash of weapons died, and in the silence between the gusting of the wind, the only sound was the stamping and neighing of terrified and angry ponies from the horse-lines, and the heavy gasping of men leaning on their weapons to get their breath back. ‘That was a hot fight well fought, my wolflings!’ Alexios called to them.
But standing with Lucius in the bath-house doorway, he said, ‘Pull them back into the main fort.’
‘You mean – abandon this quarter?’
‘Yes,’ Alexios said.
‘If we do that it will mean losing the water, and there’s only the one well in the main fort.’
‘One will have to serve. If we don’t pull back, it will mean losing the men.’
They looked at each other, knowing the real decision that was being taken in that moment.
Then Lucius said, ‘Sir,’ and saluted and turned away to carry out the order.
So the men were pulled back from the old bath-house quarter, carrying their dead and wounded with them, and the half-blocked North gate was closed and made fast. And Alexios, having given orders for the tally of dead and wounded to be brought to him, went to the Sacellum and got out the muster rolls and duty rotas and pay lists; and put more charcoal on the brazier and watched the glow under the white ash brighten.
Not that he could imagine such things being much use to the Painted People or even to the Votadini; and the things that mattered, the reports of comings and goings on the western coast or up the northern glens, of tribal unrests and men who talked sedition were not kept written down in the fort but sent straight back to Headquarters. But standing orders were standing orders, here or at Abusina; no papers to fall into enemy hands, and there might not be a chance to see to the matter later on.
As at Abusina . . . But there was no chance of a relief force this time. The scattered ordos of the Frontier Scouts, as Julius Gavros had said that first evening of all, were in no position to back each other up in time of trouble, and the Wall was six days’ march away, even if one did not have to fight one’s way through.
Funny, he thought, after nearly a year and a half of trying to get clear of Abusina, to have come round full circle and be back exactly where you had started.
Not so funny really, a jest in very poor taste.
(‘Stop thinking about yourself, Ducenarius Alexios Flavius Aquila, it’s not just you and the choice you have to make; it’s the two hundred or so men out there you’ve got to make it for!’)
He pushed back his shoulders with the small jerk that he was unaware of, but that would have been familiar to anyone who knew him, and turned to the door and the orderly waiting outside.
‘Ask Centenarius Hilarion and Centenarius Lucius and the Quartermaster to join me here as soon as they are at liberty. Anthonius too, if he will spare me a few moments from his wounded, when he can.’
‘Sir.’ The man went off.
A short while later the two centenarii entered the Sacellum almost together, and found the Commander sitting at the table, leaning on his elbows and staring at the stack of papers before him.
He looked up as they entered. ‘All quiet?’
‘For the moment.’ Hilarion drew a forearm across his scorched and filthy face.
‘I’m sorry to have dragged you here; I know you have enough on your hands.’
Alexios drew a long shuddering breath and got to his feet, pushing himself up from the table with his spread hands as though the decision he had made had drained all the strength out of him. Vaguely he was aware of the Quartermaster’s red rumpled face in the doorway.
‘You will agree, I think, that there is no chance of relief getting through to us, despite the Praepositus’s gallopers,’ he heard his own voice saying.
‘None whatever,’ said Hilarion cheerfully.
‘And there is certainly none of being able to hold Castellum for more than a couple of days. Even with the bath-house quarter lopped off, we have too few troops to man the long stretch of defences, and we shall have fewer with every attack that we beat off, while the Tribes can call on all the fresh men they need – and on the supplies of the country round, including water.’ He spoke slowly, like one who has thought some complicated matter out with great care and wants to keep it all in order. ‘We’re well enough for stores and weaponry, but not water. One well would serve for the men but not for the horses.’ He crossed glances with Lucius. ‘I had not forgotten that when I gave orders to pull back into the main fort. The loss of the bath-house spring wasn’t worth the lives of the men that it would have cost to hold it – and it wouldn’t have made all that much difference in the end, anyway.’ He broke off and stood looking at their three waiting faces. ‘Hilarion, Lucius, Quartermaster, am I missing something? Is there any useful purpose that we can serve by holding out and dying here at Castellum?’
‘None, if you rule out heroics,’ said Hilarion lightly after a moment.
The Quartermaster sn
orted, though what the snort meant it would be hard to guess. Lucius said nothing at all.
‘Then let us rule out heroics – or save them for another time. The men have been fighting like heroes; but the Frontier Wolves are at their best and most dangerous in open country, not behind walls. Our mobility and field-craft should give us a good chance of getting back to Headquarters. So . . .’ Alexios’s mouth felt very dry. It was the right decision this time, he knew it; but it took almost more courage than he possessed to force out the words. ‘We shall pull out at first dark tonight.’
There was silence, and a sharp spatter of sleet against the window. It was almost dark enough to need a lamp, though it was not yet noon.
Another figure was in the doorway, bloody as though he had come straight from a butcher’s shop. ‘What about the wounded, Sir?’ asked Anthonius.
Alexios looked at him for a moment, not quite understanding.
It was Lucius who answered, touching the dagger in his belt. ‘Among their own kind it’s the custom to – make sure they don’t fall alive into enemy hands.’
‘Not that way,’ Alexios said. ‘We’ll take the wounded with us – sling them across their ponies’ backs if need be; any way we can.’
‘It will probably kill some of them,’ Anthonius said, clearly anxious that the Commander should understand all the facts.
‘But at least they’ll have a chance.’
The Medic’s long-nosed weary face creaked into a shadow of a smile. He exchanged glances with Lucius. They had brought the matter up in all seriousness, and would have seen to the carrying out of the order; but both were glad that it was not being given.
‘Make your own preparations for their transport,’ Alexios said. ‘But keep me in touch.’
When the Medic had gone, Hilarion returned to the point they had reached when he arrived. ‘So – we’re pulling out at first dark. How, Sir? We’re pretty well ringed about, and they’ll make their watch-fires all around us after dark.’
Frontier Wolf Page 14
