The Legions of the Mist

by Damion Hunter

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Licinius said, as the laughing couple ran hand in hand to the fire. They leapt across it, the girl’s blonde braids flying, and landed well to the far side. A great roar of approval went up from the tribesmen and someone shouted, ‘There’ll be a son at the hearth before next Beltane!’

  ‘That, my boy, is Vortrix.’

  Justin took a closer look as the couple came back to the crowd and the young man said something softly to an older man who was apparently the girl’s father.

  ‘So young?’

  ‘Mmm. He’s nineteen. But you have to remember that these people become warriors at fourteen,’ Licinius said. ‘So he’s decided to marry. I think he’s chosen well. That’s Branwen, the daughter of the chieftain of the clan nearest us. Those were his villages we burned off last winter. A blood tie with Cathuil would be useful.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. How do you happen to know him?’

  ‘You get to know all the local nobility when you’ve been out here a while. At times like tonight… and they occasionally consent to let me treat their illnesses when the priests give up. Though I must admit they have more skill than you’d think. I’d give a good deal for a chance to sit down with a tame one and go over the local healing herbs.’

  Vortrix and the girl sat down, and his household warriors gathered around, shouting congratulations and cheerful advice, while one of his ‘hounds,’ the boys of the tribe who served in the King’s hall, brought him a cup of mead.

  ‘So every clan of the Brigantes will come to the bride feast,’ Justin murmured, ‘with probably a council beforehand. Now that’s what I’d give something to be at. I don’t quite trust friend Vortrix,’ Justin took a drink of mead, ‘for all old Lupus thinks he’s so damn young.’

  ‘The god’s greeting to you, Centurion. And you, Licinius the Surgeon,’ a voice said in his ear and Justin choked.

  ‘And to you, Vortrix the King.’ Licinius also sounded as if he were about to strangle.

  Justin turned round to find a fair-haired boy with a wolfskin cloak about his shoulders grinning cheerfully at him. Finn made a soft growling noise in his throat and moved a step closer. Finding that the High King was looking him carefully up and down, Justin pulled himself together and followed suit.

  Vortrix was a tall man, half a head taller than Justin, and he looked down at him from a pair of eyes as crystal blue as a rain-washed lake. The golden fillet of the King glinted in the shining mane of hair which hung past his shoulders, and a massive golden torque was clasped about his throat. The blue spirals tattooed on his brow were visible also at the open neck of his shirt, which, like the short kilt he wore, was of some soft, finely dyed blue leather. His feet were encased in strong boots of wolf’s hide, and from his belt, Justin noted, hung a sword of excellent workmanship. All in all, Vortrix made an impressive and dangerous figure, softened only by the smile beneath his luxuriant blond mustache.

  Justin was surprised to find himself feeling a sudden liking for this boy who at the age of nineteen, with little more to go on than a closer right of blood and his own abilities, had won the kingship and the tribe from an older and more powerful kinsman. Also feeling that he now trusted him less than ever, Justin said pleasantly, ‘The sun and the moon on your path, Vortrix the King,’ and offered him good wishes on his forthcoming marriage.

  ‘It is time I had a son to come after me,’ Vortrix said. ‘I set my house in order, you see.’

  ‘To what end, I wonder,’ Justin said softly, and suddenly found his eyes locked with those blue ones. It was like peering into the pool of an oracle, but what could be read from it was hidden in the depths.

  And then the moment was past, and Vortrix was only a boy with the king’s circlet on his head. ‘That there be no more disputes and no more regencies,’ he said. ‘My family have done with tearing each other’s throats for this kingship.’

  ‘Then don’t end by tearing your own throat with it,’ Justin found himself saying, and again Vortrix’s eyes touched his and then slid away again, as if he too were puzzled by something.

  They chatted of this and that for a while, like two dogs sizing each other up, and then Vortrix took his leave, saying that it grew late.

  ‘Vale, Vortrix the King.’

  Vortrix smiled. ‘Vale, Centurion Corvus.’

  ‘Vale indeed,’ Licinius said as he left. ‘A pity he isn’t a Roman or you a Briton. You’d like each other.’

  ‘I do, damn him,’ Justin said. ‘I wonder how he knew my name.’

  ‘I don’t. You may not know it, my innocent, but you’re one of the few officers in this Legion who poses any great threat to him.’

  ‘You mean I’m the only man save you who doesn’t think his youth makes him no threat.’

  ‘It amounts to the same thing. That’s his stock in trade where we’re concerned. You went to the Legate after that patrol was cut up. News goes through the heather like the wind out here.’

  Justin had another brief vision of those clear blue eyes and the deceptive gentleness that lay in them. ‘Damn him. When will this bride feast be?’

  ‘In a couple of weeks, most like.’

  ‘And trouble after that. Come on, it’s an early morning for us, and any number of aching heads on sick parade from that mead, I should think.’

  They turned and began to work their way back down the hill, pausing to greet friends and acquaintances from the fort. Geta, his wound healed, was there; and Centurion Cassius, the tall dark-faced man who commanded the Fifth Cohort, laughing over some joke with a pair of legionaries and a wine seller from the town; and Favonius with a number of other young centurions, standing apart from the gathering, nonchalant and amused.

  ‘He looks as if he’s watching a play and wondering if the last act is going to be as bad as the first,’ said Justin, who had taken a not entirely rational dislike to the man.

  ‘Yes, well, he’s young yet,’ said Licinius, showing more tolerance than usual, perhaps under the influence of several horns of native mead.

  ‘So is Vortrix.’

  The crowd was beginning to thin out, and they could see flashes of fire across the hillside and through the surrounding woods as the youngest warrior from each house thrust a torch into the flames or carefully placed a few coals in an earthen pot to carry the new fire back to light the hearth again. Two boys, fresh from their initiation, ran past them laughing, the fire streaming out behind them like comets’ tails.

  Catching sight of Gwytha and Aeresius among the knots of people moving back toward Eburacum, Licinius and Justin made their way over to them, Finn and Whitepaw loping on ahead. Aeresius carried a small pot of coals in one hand and gnawed contentedly on a piece of rib with the other.

  Gwytha saw Justin and slipped round to Aeresius’s other side to talk to him. She was wearing her best tunic of brilliant saffron bordered with scarlet, and her blue cloak was pinned with a bright bronze ring brooch. Her long hair, normally braided out of her way, fell in a cascade past her waist, turned to gold at the back by the fire. She looked very bright and cheerful, her blue eyes shining and her cheeks flushed with the fire and the brisk night wind.

  ‘You look different tonight,’ Justin said.

  She glanced up at him. ‘I am different. I remember my own people tonight. This is our night. I saw you talking with young Vortrix,’ she added.

  ‘So you did, little Eyes-and-Ears. Your own people or the Brigantes?’

  ‘Nay, then, what have Vortrix and his plans to do with me? I am Iceni, and not even that, now.’ She looked where the paths parted, the clans streaming back across the hillside, herself and Aeresius toward the fort.

  ‘Still, the Iceni have been known to think of rebellion – occasionally.’

  Gwytha’s eyes were sober now. ‘Yes, they took your Hispana to bits, didn’t they? We were a great people until Rome took her price for that. I rather like young Vortrix, but I like you too, Centurion, for the same reasons, and I know you better. I am a woman, and, moreov
er, a slave. I don’t know why you worry what I think.’

  Since Justin found he didn’t know either, he merely requested her not to call him Centurion, it made him feel like a fool. He wondered what had prompted the unexpected admission that she liked him.

  * * *

  Over the next weeks, the cold muddy ground, soaked through with melted snow, dried finally into the springiness of new grass, setting the cavalry horses to frisking like colts in the pasture. The soldiers had left off their woolen mufflers and heavy, cross-gartered leggings and looked, as the Primus Pilus, commander of the First Cohort, remarked, more like Roman soldiers for a change and less like painted barbarians. The air was full of birds, even the fortress streets a-hop with them, spring-fat and important. And even Justin, heading for the Principia to put in his monthly transfer request, had decided that it could as well be done tomorrow, and picked up his hunting spear instead. He went alone, as he knew the country fairly well now, and had no intention of venturing outside Eburacum’s patrol perimeter even with a guide.

  Now he lay sprawled in the sun on the hill where the Beltane fires had burned, with Finn at his feet and his spear in his hand, and the wheeling curlews to watch for amusement. He didn’t even much mind that he hadn’t caught anything. It was very pleasant to lie here, with the men from the fort moving back and forth like scarlet dots in the distance, and watch someone else work. He scratched Finn’s back idly with one sandaled foot and turned over in his mind the events of the past month.

  Vortrix had had his wedding and his bride feast in the King’s Hall at Isurium Brigantum some fifteen miles away, but after that very little more had been heard of him. He was certainly not at Isurium, in and out of which Roman officials went frequently, but no one was quite sure where he had gone, and there was a noticeable lack of men of fighting age in most of the nearby villages. Vortrix had packed up his warriors along with his bride and melted into the hills to the north.

  To give him his due, the Legate had at least taken notice of this fact, although he was more inclined to put it down to the Brigantes’ wish to avoid any further punitive action for last winter’s attack, now that the roads were passable, than to their readying for war. Justin had argued that the time to deal with the Brigantes was now, before they could gather their strength, but the Legate remained unmoved. The Primus Pilus, a man of strict loyalty to his commander, might have had his own opinions, but he didn’t voice them.

  So they mended wall and waited, and the men remained as sloppy as ever. As long they looked reasonably decent on parade and gave no open trouble to their officers, most of the officers didn’t care much what they did. Justin, who knew perfectly well that a transfer was unlikely to come through before fall, and in any case had too much conscience, wrestled mightily with his own cohort. They were slowly coming into line, especially the first century with which he had the most contact, and the second, whose centurion was a sober young man who had been more relieved than not to see Justin take over. But you couldn’t, especially with the bad example of the rest of the Legion shining before them, reform overnight a whole cohort of men who had no great desire to be reformed. Still, they were developing a grudging respect for their mocking, sardonic commander.

  ‘He looks like Hades himself when he’s mad, with those damn yellow eyes of his,’ one of them remarked, watching Justin chewing out another century. ‘Especially if it’s you he’s mad at. But you can go to him when you’re in trouble, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Aye, did you see him when Septimus broke his leg? Carried him up to the hospital himself, and mud all over his parade uniform. Most officers wouldn’t take the time.’

  ‘He makes me nervous, is what. He knows too much.’

  ‘The Legate doesn’t think so. I saw him coming out of the Principia with a face like fury and mad enough to spit.’

  ‘The Legate?’

  ‘No, thickwit, the centurion.’

  ‘Well, I expect he hates this stinking hole as much as we do. They say he’s been asking for transfer ever since he got here. Me, I hope he doesn’t get it.’

  ‘Aye, there’s no saying but he might think the same as us on a lot of matters. There’s some of the officers do.’

  ‘Like Centurion Cassius? They’re a poor lot. This one’s different.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You try any of your funny business on him, Drusus, and you’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘Oh, pack it up, all of you. Let’s go and get drunk.’

  * * *

  Justin, oblivious to this estimate of his character, lay drowsing on the hillside as the sun began to sink. The thudding on the roadway below had become a rolling thunder before he woke and heard it, and he sat up to see a cavalry scout flying at full gallop along the road from Isurium. He jumped up, whistled to Finn, and went headlong down the hill. Midway to the fort, he stopped and looked backward to the northwest. A cloud of black smoke rose from the signal fire at Isurium, and he could barely see another one, pale in the sunset, farther north. That would be Cataractonium.

  IV

  The March to Cataractonium

  By the time Justin reached the fort, the Legate, the Primus Pilus, and several other senior officers were gathered around the scout. He had dismounted from his horse, which stood stock-still, flanks heaving and head low, until someone led it off to be walked dry. A crowd of curious legionaries had collected, and the Optio was endeavoring, with little success, to shoo them off about their business.

  ‘… Cataractonium,’ the cavalry scout was saying. ‘We beat them off, but they’ll be back. They came down from Vinovia. They killed nearly every man there.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Near the whole tribe by the look of it, and that devil Vortrix at the head of them. They’ll walk all over Cataractonium. They only pulled off to regroup and let the stragglers from Vinovia catch up.’

  At a word from the Legate, the Primus Pilus sent the man off to the mess hall to be fed and turned back to the little group of officers. ‘Pack up. We march in the morning. Centurion Hilarion,’ the Primus Pilus nodded at the thin, freckled commander of the Ninth Cohort. ‘Take a relief column and get up there tonight. You,’ he motioned to the Optio, ‘send me the quartermaster.’

  So it had happened. Damn Vortrix and damn the Legate, and, now that he thought about it, damn the camp commander at Hippo Regius too. When he had seen to his men and given his orders for the morning, Justin went up to the hospital, where he found Licinius with his dark head bent over the lamp, calmly polishing his instruments.

  ‘Evening, Justin. You look like death. Sit down.’

  ‘I’m just mad. This could have been stopped.’

  ‘Maybe. And then again, maybe not.’ He glanced at his junior surgeon, who was packing ointment into a case. ‘I’ll finish up, Flavius. Go and get some sleep. We’ve an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And tell young Octavian he’s to stay here and take care of anyone who brains himself with a catapult.’

  ‘He won’t like it, sir.’

  ‘He’s not required to like it, he’s only an apprentice. He’ll get his chance later. I can’t leave you, I’ll need you too badly.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Everything’s nearly ready. There’s only the linen to be packed. And your kit, of course.’

  ‘Justin,’ Licinius said slowly, when the boy had gone. ‘You liked Vortrix, didn’t you?’

  ‘That depends on what you mean,’ Justin said. ‘Let’s say I have a good healthy respect for him.’

  ‘Could you kill him?’ Licinius kept his eyes on the scalpel he was cleaning.

  ‘I’m supposed to be a soldier, remember? That’s what I’m here for. But I’m not likely to get the chance.’

  ‘Then make the chance. Look for him. He’ll be in the thick of it, it’s a matter of pride with them. Vortrix is the only thing that’s holding the Brigantes together, and he’s no one to come after him. Yet.’

  ‘That sounds st
range, coming from you,’ Justin said. ‘I would have thought you were too much a surgeon.’

  ‘So would I,’ Licinius said shortly.

  Something moved against Justin’s feet and he looked down. Finn. He had forgotten him. ‘I’d better take him down to Aeresius,’ he said.

  ‘All right, then. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  The fort was buzzing with preparations as Justin turned off down the Via Praetoria under the shadow of the great gilded Eagle of the Legion where it shone pale in the torchlight. Men hurried to and fro about the baggage carts, and the cavalrymen turned out by troops to give their mounts a grooming and an extra feed of grain. A sentry at the gate was explaining to a highly indignant legionary that there were no passes that night, and somewhere in the distance the cook was loudly complaining that he couldn’t put together that kind of provisioning in a few hours for the Emperor himself.

  ‘Didn’t you just hear me telling that one?’ the harassed sentry demanded as Justin approached. ‘Absolutely no passes. Oh, sorry, sir. I didn’t recognize you.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Justin returned his salute. ‘I’m only taking the dog back.’

  As he passed out of the gate, he saw that the town was as much in upheaval as the fort with the suddenness of the news. Men were coming back to the camp from all directions, having been found and firmly rounded up by the Watch. They were laughing, most of them, and seemed more pleased than otherwise to have something to do for a change. There was a fair-sized crowd of women about the gate, looking for a glimpse of their men, women whose men had not been out on pass when the orders came and who would consequently have no chance for farewells. One who carried a small, black-haired baby on her hip, Justin recognized: Manlius’s wife. He wondered if she had found another man or if she were there out of some perverse habit.