The Horse Coin

by David Wishart

  An hour later the city was blazing in earnest. A thick blanket of smoke moved slowly from west to east across the Annexe, turning the setting sun red and bringing with it the stench of burning buildings. Specks of soot, carried on the evening breeze, fell as a constant rain, covering everything in a greasy black film.

  Aper walked through the makeshift fort. It was a hive of desperate activity. Along the wide strip of ground left clear around its edge a constant stream of carts moved, loaded with lengths of planking, furniture, empty oil jars, anything that would serve as an obstacle, while at regular intervals gangs were working on the fighting platforms. The civilians – some fifteen thousand, Aper estimated – had grouped themselves around the temple podium: women and children mostly, crammed together in tight huddles that filled the limited space completely. They sat in almost total silence. The faces that turned to Aper as he made his way between the groups were pinched and drawn, and what talking there was was in whispers. Some of the women had lit fires and were stirring cooking-pots balanced on stones above the flames.

  At least there's no panic, he thought. Thank the gods for that. The Colony – or its core – was Army, and army wives and children did not panic easily. Walking through the crowd, he felt a sudden surge of pride, and of anger at the sheer waste.

  He could see Ursina now, and Sulicena, sitting by the temple steps with Bellicia; but the people round about them were strangers.

  Aper's mouth was dry as he quickened his pace, pushing through the crowd. Ursina looked up as he came closer, but Bellicia's eyes were fixed and staring at nothing.

  'Where's Albilla?' he said quietly.

  'I haven't seen her.' Ursina's voice was low and controlled. 'Nor Trinnus. Bellicia was here already.'

  A cold knot had formed itself in Aper's stomach. They should have come by now; the last of the Colonists had passed the barrier long since and the gaps were closed. Uricalus was missing, too, but that he had half-expected. His mouth tightened. There was nothing he could do; nothing anyone could do.

  'Aye, well,' he said.

  Ursina reached out and touched his wrist. 'Liberius has been looking for you,' she said. Liberius commanded the London troops. 'He's inside, I think.' Then, when he hesitated: 'Go on, Titus. I'll look after Bellicia.'

  He nodded and went up the temple steps. He had never felt so old.

  The temple was vast, empty and echoing. And bitterly cold, despite the torches; the chill that seeped from the stonework cut through the warmth of Aper's cloak and made him shiver. Straw mattresses had been laid down one of its sides, and at the door end, where the light was better, a round-shouldered man with thick eyebrows and the wide-pored olive skin of an Asiatic Greek was talking earnestly to a slave carrying an armful of salves and bandages.

  'Cadmus, is Liberius here?' Aper said.

  The Colony's chief medical officer looked round, frowning at the interruption.

  'In the priest's robing room.'

  He turned back to the slave.

  Aper walked towards the temple's far end where the statue of the emperor-god stared back at him across the cold incense braziers. The robing room was behind it; small, hardly more than a cupboard, and scarcely big enough for the four men who occupied it, sitting knee to knee around a folding table. They looked up as he came in.

  'Commander.' Liberius was a man in his fifties with strong patrician features. 'Good, you're here. I was worried.'

  Aper put his own worries and griefs aside and pulled up the camp stool that Castor, the officer in charge of the port garrison, had unfolded for him. 'I thought I'd better have a look round the defences first,’ he said. ‘Good evening, Bassus. Fidus.'

  Bassus nodded; Fidus did not: the Roman banker, his urbane polish gone, sat slumped, half-leaning on his forearms.

  'And your conclusions?' Liberius asked. They were all watching him closely, Fidus with an almost hungry desperation.

  'We might hold the first attack. Maybe the second, if we're lucky. After that, no.'

  The obvious tension seemed to ease. Bassus and Castor grunted with what sounded almost like satisfaction. Fidus simply stared straight ahead.

  'Yes,' Liberius said. 'That was exactly our view of the situation. That being so the question is what to do once the wall is breached. I'm thinking numbers, of course. We've fifteen thousand civilians outside. When the enemy break through with the best will in the world we can't protect them, not with the men we've got. Certainly not for long.'

  ‘True enough,’ Aper said. Beside him Fidus shifted and opened his mouth to say something, but stayed silent. 'All we can do is bring as many women and children here inside the temple as we can and have them bar the doors.'

  'Indeed. The temple will hold –what?' Liberius looked at Castor. 'Twelve hundred?'

  Castor grunted. 'Fifteen, at a squeeze.'

  'Let's call it fifteen, then.' Liberius closed his eyes briefly. 'By all means, fifteen. Yes. I agree, Commander. Bassus?'

  The decurion nodded. 'Aye, me too, sir,' he said. 'It's all we can do. The place is solid stone and the doors are metal. Once they're closed and barred they'll be safe enough. For the time being, anyway.'

  'Good.' Liberius turned to Fidus. 'Fidus, you can organise that?' There was no answer. 'Fidus!'

  The banker's head jerked up and round.

  'What?' he said.

  'I asked if you could organise the temple side of things.'

  'What about the rest?' Fidus's cheeks were shaking. 'The other thirteen and a half thousand? Where do they go? And do the lucky ones select themselves, Liberius, or do you expect me to play god for them as you're doing now?'

  'Gently, Fidus, gently,' Aper murmured. 'None of us wants to play god.'

  Fidus looked at him, then dropped his eyes.

  'No,' he said. His voice was barely a whisper. 'No. I'm sorry, gentlemen. Don't worry, I'll see to it.'

  Moving like a sleepwalker, he stood up and left the room. The others watched him go.

  'Now,' Aper said. 'What forces do we have exactly?'

  Castor counted them off on his fingers. 'Regular troops; my own lads, that's a cohort. With yours, Liberius, say seven hundred men altogether. Veterans another eighteen hundred.'

  'Nearer the two thousand,' Bassus said. 'Five hundred of them are cavalry, sir, but I doubt if we've horses for half that number. Say two hundred mounted and equipped.' He grinned. 'The rest of the buggers will have to fight on their feet for once.'

  'Male civilians and slaves, approximately another four thousand,' Castor said. 'Not all those will be armed with anything better than a knife, but we've a few bowmen and slingers.'

  'Put those on the roof,' Aper said. 'Radix's idea. Decurion, your cavalry. Two hundred mounted, you said.'

  'Aye, sir.'

  'We'll keep them in reserve. As for the rest, when the barrier goes we fall back towards the temple steps.' Taking the knife from his belt, Aper drew an oblong in the wood of the table, then three lines in front of it, covering the sides. 'Non-combatants at the back, armed civilians in the centre, veterans and regulars forming a screen in front and on the wings. We hold the temple frontage at all costs for as long as possible. The podium's high enough at the sides and back to secure our rear, and what there are left of us can use it to make a final stand.' His lips twisted and he set the knife down. 'After which any further arrangements are a matter of personal preference. That's the plan, such as it is. Comments?' There was silence. 'You agree, then, gentlemen?'

  Bassus grinned sourly.

  'I reckon that'll do us nicely, sir,’ he said ‘And if nothing else we'll take a good few of the bastards with us.'

  'We'll do that at least, Decurion.' Aper stood up. 'That we will certainly do. Meeting adjourned.'

  36

  The first attack came from the south as the daylight faded. The Trinovantian war-host flowed across Ditch Street and Residency Road towards the barricade. As it reached the outlying barrier of hurdles its momentum checked and faltered.

  A s
ingle trumpet blared.

  The javelins struck out from the fighting platforms and upturned carts in a solid wave, tumbling body after body onto the growing heaps until the dead formed a third wall breast high and three paces deep. For the space of twenty heartbeats the attack held as fresh warriors poured in to take the place of the fallen. Then, as javelin followed javelin and the piled dead began to outnumber the living attackers, it slowed, wavered and finally broke apart, the screams now pain, not anger as those behind clambered over the corpses of those in front and died in their turn.

  The war-horns on the flanks and rear sounded. The milling crowd of painted warriors shifted like a field of wheat in a gale, then broke and scattered. The world was suddenly still. Here and there, among the smashed and bloody remains of the attacking force, a figure raised itself to crawl over the heaped corpses towards the line of the road.

  'That's learned the buggers!' Radix was exultant. 'They'll think twice before they try that again!' He turned to Aper. 'Permission to send a company out, sir, to recover javelins.'

  'Go ahead, Centurion.' Aper was pleased, too: the attack had been easier to beat off than he had expected. 'Tell Bassus to give you cavalry cover.'

  'Right you are, sir.' Radix saluted and went off whistling.

  The mood within the Annexe had lightened. As Aper walked back to the temple steps more than one veteran held up a hand to him in the Victory salute. There was even, by Claudius's altar, a knot of children playing. He could still smell the sour, charred odour of burning buildings, but it was overlaid now by the homelier scents of porridge, flat-cakes and bacon fat.

  Well, he thought, so we aren't dead yet after all. Perhaps the gods will be kind.

  Sulicena had cooked a chicken by spitting it on a shaft of hazel over a fire of wood chips. The grease dropped hissing into the flames. Aper settled down with a sigh on the blanket next to Ursina. She kissed his cheek without a word and handed him a cup of wine. Setting his back to the temple step, he looked up at the sky. It was a fine evening with a moon half-way to the full. The wind had shifted to the north, and now the smoke from the burning town had dispersed the stars shone down bright and unclouded. He wondered if Marcus, too, was watching them.

  'Where's Bellicia, Bear-cub?' he said.

  'Safe inside.'

  Aper nodded and sipped his wine.

  'You think they'll come back tonight?' Ursina poured wine for herself and Sulicena.

  'Maybe.' The fingers of his left hand brushed her neck. 'Tomorrow, certainly.'

  'So.' Ursina was not looking at him. 'Titus, Sulicena and I have been talking.' The old woman looked up, then turned back to her cooking. 'When they come, if they break through, promise me you'll...see to both of us yourself.'

  Aper set the cup down and placed a finger over her lips. She moved away.

  'I'd rather it was you, and then,' she said. 'Promise me, please.'

  Aper said nothing.

  'Titus.' Her voice hardened. 'Have I your word or not?'

  He looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded, once, his throat tight.

  'Aye, lass,' he said, kissing her. 'Of course. You have my word.'

  He was woken just after midnight by a shout from the temple roof. The lookout man was pointing, not to the south but to the north-west, across the fields that bordered the river. Aper could hear a low rumble like distant thunder.

  Ursina was awake too. She watched him as he slipped the sword-belt over his head and arm.

  'They're coming?' she said.

  'Aye.' He adjusted the sheath at his side. 'Rouse Sulicena.'

  All around them people were stirring, but quietly as if noise would bring the enemy all the faster. The moonlit Annexe was full of flitting, silent shadows and the muted rustle and clink of weapons being readied as the barricade was manned and the troops formed up round the standards.Aper mounted the steps with Ursina and Sulicena behind him. Radix was already standing at the podium's edge staring out towards the river. He glanced round briefly as Aper came to stand beside him, but said nothing.

  Aper looked.

  The moonlit fields that bordered the river's banks were a moving sea of people, a dark wave that spread westwards as far as his eye could reach in a long curve that took in half the length of the Colony beyond. Here and there tiny sparks of light bobbed like fireflies, accentuating the blackness that surrounded them and giving it depth. As he watched, the dots of light drew nearer and the low rumble swelled, breaking into separate, distinct sounds: the distant braying of war horns, isolated shouts and the beating of spear-shafts on wooden shields.

  The Iceni had arrived.

  He was aware of Ursina standing at his shoulder. He turned.

  'Take Sulicena, Bear-cub,' he said gently. 'Wait for me by the temple doors.'

  She reached up and kissed his cheek and left without a word.

  'I'll be getting down to the barricade now, sir,' Radix said. His eyes had never left the advancing war-host. 'You'll need a signaller. I’ll send one.'

  'Thank you.' Aper drew his sabre. 'Good luck, Centurion. Give the lads my best.'

  Radix saluted and moved off towards the temple steps.

  The attack was sudden, savage and total; an inexorable running tide of men that swamped the barricades at the first rush as completely as if they had been a child's wall of sand. What defenders remained alive scattered, running for the sheltering lines of the main body of troops drawn up in a three-quarter circle around the temple, their wings curving round to touch the mid point of the podium walls. Aper, standing with the signaller on the podium's topmost step, watched the dark tide stream across the broken line of carts and spread like spilt ink to cover the stretch of ground beyond the shield line where the bulk of the Colony's civilian population had gathered. As the killing and the screams began he clenched his jaw until he could feel the teeth almost crack under the strain, knowing that in a few minutes they would all be dead and that there was nothing, nothing in the world, that he could do to stop the butchery.

  Thirteen thousand people! Merciful Jupiter, thirteen thousand!

  He forced the thought and the screams from his mind and shifted his attention to the silent lines of veterans and auxiliaries waiting beneath him. The tide flowed on towards the temple, darkly anonymous no longer but a sea of yelling warriors with painted faces and bodies.

  Eighty yards. Seventy...

  Aper's head went up. 'First volley, Bugler,' he said.

  The signaller blew a single note. The lines shifted, and the first wave of javelins smashed into the howling mass. Men fell screaming, clutching the iron shafts that had sprouted suddenly between their ribs.

  Forty yards. Thirty...

  'Second volley.'

  Again the wave of javelins struck. It was like throwing handfuls of gravel into a torrent. The first ranks were down in a kicking tangle of bodies, but there were thousands more behind them to take their place. The gaps that the javelins had opened up closed in moments. And the rush had not checked.

  Twenty yards. Ten...

  'Draw swords.'

  The two lines met with a shivering crash of shield on shield. Here and there, a head sank down to be replaced by another. Most of the heads wore Roman helmets. The line shivered, and buckled inwards; held the space of a breath, then slowly began to give ground.

  'Signal to cavalry,' Aper said. The bugler blew three rising notes.

  The circle broke, leaving a gap on either side of the podium's lateral base. From where they had been waiting behind the sheltering wings, Bassus's two squadrons of horse burst through the defensive screen and fell on the ragged edges of the close-packed mass of warriors like a hammer-blow, smashing them aside. They galloped in a tight arc across the open ground on either side; then, wheeling, drove hard against the Icenian flanks, hacking their way towards the centre.

  Aper held his breath, praying to every god he knew.

  Slowly, like slack water caught in a contrary current, the mass below him began to waver as the panic a
t its edges spread inwards. With the forward pressure reduced, the infantry line, or what remained of it, gathered itself and reformed.

  The cavalry attack faltered and died. Buried deep in the Icenian ranks, and unable to move, the horsemen were struggling to keep their seats. One by one they were sucked down into the press until the last bobbing head had vanished. Aper watched for a moment, then set his jaw and turned to the bugler.

  'Sound lock shields,' he said.

  At the signal the line, barely longer now than the podium's width, moved quickly backwards, forming a tight crescent around the temple steps and opening a clear space between itself and the Iceni. There was a rustling clatter as the edges of the metal-rimmed shields overlapped.

  'Archers.'

  The bugle sounded again.

  From the roof above and the podium walls to the sides, arrows and slingers' bolts swept the exposed Icenian battle-front, scything into the close-packed ranks and turning them into a screaming chaos of dead and dying. The warriors at the front of the press threw themselves forward at the shield-wall; but this time the wall did not break.

  Nor, though, did it advance. And the line was too thin now to leave its wings unguarded. Aper knew it; and so did the Iceni.

  They drew back. For the space of a dozen heartbeats, Roman and Briton faced each other in silence across an empty no-man's-land half a spear-cast wide. Then, from the Icenian rear, a single war-horn blared.

  With a spreading roar, the huge host moved forward.

  Aper watched the human tide surge towards the temple's base and his pitifully-depleted shield line. There was nothing more to be done, no more reserves to call on, no more tricks to play. This time it would be man against man, sword against sword, and when the line broke it would stay broken.

  He felt neither fear nor anger, only a great sadness.

  Gods, what a waste! he thought. What a godawful waste!

  'Bugler?' he said quietly.

  'Yes, sir?' The man was granite-faced, expressionless: a Spaniard like himself, he would guess from the accent, but from the south, near the Baetican border.

  Aper shook his head. 'No,' he said. 'No orders, lad. Not now. Off you go.'