The Wolf of Britannia Part I

by Jess Steven Hughes

  White waters of many streams plunged swiftly from the iron cliffs and crags of the hills into the Rivers Swale and Ure, which flowed into the Ouse, a river gracefully wandering around the edge of Eburacum, draining into the broad Humber near the British Ocean. It was a land more accustomed to frequent, cool, summer rains and winds rather than breath-sucking heat waves.

  Columns of bare-chested warriors, caked with dust, snaked across the countryside, grouped in loosely knit companies. Woven banners bearing images of black boars, red stags, and gray wolves hung limply from poles tilted at lax angles. Including Rhian, the women, riding large ponies, sweltered in colorful, hot, woolen tunics and breeches. Custom forbid their stripping to the waist.

  Abandoned housesteads, whose occupants had been victims of plague, grew more numerous as the army moved further north. Caratacus’s warriors soon trekked across hundreds of barren acres of now-fallow, dusty farmlands, a land pimpled with newly constructed burial cairns and old defensive dikes. Every now and then the army encountered pockmarked peasants, men stripped to their waist, and women dressed in itching, woolen cowls, toiling on small plots of land. The parched earth belched little dust clouds with the blows hacked from each hoe. One of the men complained that even if the farmers plowed and planted, what would they use for water when it hadn’t rained in months. The survivors were a grim reminder the countryside had not recuperated from the epidemic.

  In the best of times, less than half the children reached the age of five. If a king lived to age forty, the kingdom considered itself fortunate for such a long rule. And if a man reached fifty, people would wonder how he did it. Now, most of the survivors had been swept away by the great sickness. Warriors, who would have otherwise plundered the homes, left them alone in fear of catching the dreaded pox. Even more, they feared the wrath of Caratacus, who ordered his fighters to stay away upon pain of death. His men were little better than the brigands from the north.

  The army tramped on, drawing closer to the rocky, northern uplands.

  Caratacus received word the Caledonians fled just ahead of them, flushed with booty and vulnerable to attack. Determined to destroy the redheaded demons before they reached their homelands, he dispatched orders to all companies to pick up the marching pace. The raiders would pay for the destruction wreaked upon the Brigantes.

  Caratacus’s sweltering host slogged along the cobblestone remnants of an ancient trackway, hugging the western slope of the eastern Brigantian Hills, gradually leaving behind the narrowing plain of the Brigantian Valley.

  *

  Early afternoon of the second day of the march, a minor clan chieftain drew up his mount before Caratacus and reported his scouts had spotted the Caledonians less than five miles ahead approaching the River Tees. Upon dismissing the leader, Caratacus rode his gelding toward the front of the column. If the enemy successfully crossed, their army would scatter and disappear into the mountains and thick forests of the Northern Pennines. Hunting them down would be impossible.

  The combined armies of Caratacus and Venutios ascended the steep trackway carved into the sides of a mountain cliff. Strung out like a hunting snake, the army slithered and twisted its way up the mountainside and through a narrow defile toward the pass that would lead them down into the Tees Valley. Familiar with the terrain, Venutios’s scouts rode far to the front of the loosely formed companies of infantry and cavalry squadrons searching for signs of the enemy.

  Caratacus sat tall on his horse at the head of the main body of warriors with Clud riding at this side. Tog rode at the rear to check on stragglers and keep the army moving.

  In the center of the vanguard trundled the baggage and supply wagons escorted by Rhian and her mounted warrior women. The high cliffs on one side and sharp ravine and thick forest falling away to the other side of the trackway, left only a narrow road wide enough for six files of men to pass.

  A scout riding a piebald gelding through the file of tramping warriors pulled alongside Caratacus. “Lord,” he said, “one of our advance columns sighted Caledonian bandits in the Tees River Valley below.”

  “Very good.” Caratacus grinned. “We’ll make quick work of them.”

  A deafening roar jerked them about. Huge, gray boulders, followed by rocks and dirt, trees and shrubs, tumbled down the craggy cliff sides above the narrow road. The murderous, crashing avalanche drowned the screams and moans of men and horses. Choking clouds of dust engulfed not only the survivors but the victims trapped in the crushing mound of debris.

  “Get back! Get back!” Caratacus barked. “It’s a trap!”

  “I’m not leaving you!” Clud shouted.

  Caratacus turned about and caught a glimpse of the baggage train and the escorting women. They were far to the rear, out of harm’s way.

  Finding it impossible to circle around the flying boulders, hundreds of Caratacus’s warriors on foot and horseback fled from the direction of the onslaught back into the still-advancing column.

  Just as quickly as it began, the great din subsided. Screams and groans and cries for help shot through the receding dust cloud from about five hundred warriors pinned by boulders and logs. Bloody, lifeless limbs stuck through the rubble as if buried in a refuse pit.

  A flood of warriors rushed forward to pull free their trapped comrades.

  “Look out!” Clud shouted. From the great scarp above, a murderous stream of arrows and sling-stones rained down, killing many would-be rescuers and scattering the rest.

  A stinging pain slammed through Caratacus’s bronze helmet onto the back of his head and knocked him off his mount. Just before he struck the ground, he instinctively brought up his hands in front of his face. As he lapsed into unconsciousness, two more black stones hammered his back.

  Moments later, he awoke, his head and back aching as if horse kicked. Still on his stomach, he turned his head to the side and discovered a blood-smeared warrior sprawled on the ground nearby, dead, with arrows sticking from his back and neck.

  “You’re alive!” Clud exclaimed as he pulled alongside Caratacus and jumped from his horse. He dropped to Caratacus’s side. “I figured sure you’d be dead.”

  Caratacus nodded and with a scraped and bloodied hand touched his aching head, still enclosed by the helmet. “Thank the gods this stayed on my head, it saved my life.”

  “Can you get up?” Clud asked.

  “Let’s see.” Again, pain shot through Caratacus’s back and head. He flung off his burning-hot helmet allowing the cool air to caress his skull. He winced as he pulled his hands to his side, straightened his arms, pushed up, and came to his knees. Nausea roiled within his throat and stomach and for a second he thought he would vomit. But the sensation quickly fled. He struggled again before he eventually stood.

  Tog galloped out of a cloud of billowing dust and pulled his mount up beside his older brother. “Thank Lugh and Teutates you’re alive!” He dismounted, his body and long chestnut hair covered with grime, and stepped closer. Tog checked Caratacus’s face and head. “That’s a nasty knot you’re developing—it’ll stick through your hair like the bloated belly of a dead horse. And there’s four or five welts on your back.”

  “Thanks for the encouraging remarks.” Caratacus gasped. “The gods must have danced on me—I feel sore all over.”

  “You’re lucky it ain’t worse,” Clud said.

  “Aye, when this is over, I’ll sacrifice to the gods,” Caratacus said. He stood and, for a few seconds, allowed the dizziness to pass before pulling himself up onto his horse. He took a few breaths and shook his head. “Let’s get out of here.” Caratacus dug the sides of his heels into the horse’s flanks and kicked the animal forward.

  Caratacus found that the survivors of the advance companies had retreated on their own to the last bend in the road just beyond the range of the archers.

  Boldly standing on the steep escarpment above, the Caledonians hooted and taunted the survivors below.

  Sitting on his horse out of range of the enemy’s arrow
s, Caratacus studied the band of ragtag outlaws on the cliff above. “They think we’re trapped, but they’re mistaken,” Caratacus said.

  “Are you daft? This is a choke point,” Tog said as he and Clud sat by Caratacus’s side. “We can’t get through!”

  “You’re right,” Caratacus said, “but the Caledonians should have kept going instead of attempting to stop us.”

  “Aye, the prince has something else cooking up there.” Clud touched the side of his head.

  “You’re not thinking of climbing directly up the cliff? It’s impossible,” Tog said. “No, another way.”

  One of Venutios’s men, a native uplander guide, approached Caratacus on foot. “Did you find it?” the prince inquired.

  “Aye, Prince Caratacus,” he said, looking up at the prince. “Long has it been since I used it, but it wasn’t hard to find.”

  “There’s a little used trail on the other side of the ridge circling the Caledonians’ backside,” Caratacus explained to Tog. “This man hunted here as a boy. I sent him out this morning to find another way through. I hate having one choice through any pass. Now, we’ll bring the fight to them.”

  Caratacus sent runners to his captains with orders for his troops to keep drawing the enemy’s attention. At any given moment, one of his clan chieftains and his followers would step out on the road, just beyond the range of Caledonian arrows, and taunt the enemy. And Caratacus’s archers will engage them in duels from behind the protective cover of the huge rocks.

  He sent runners to summon Venutios, who arrived moments later in his chariot. “I want you and Tog to take a small group of warriors and scout back the way we came,” Caratacus said.

  “Good as done,” Venutios answered and rode away.

  “Clud, you stay with me,” Caratacus ordered.

  The iron maker grinned. “Aye, someone has to keep you from getting another skull cracking.”

  Chapter 24

  In the suffocating afternoon heat, Caratacus, Clud, and his warriors remained out of arrow range of the Caledonians, who harassed them from the overhanging cliff more than one hundred yards away. Occasionally, boulders thundered down the landslide that had previously fallen upon his men, gray, choking dust settling over the area.

  “It won’t be long now,” Clud said as he sat sweltering on the back of his mount next to Caratacus, “until your brother, Tog, Venutios, and their men are in position to launch the surprise attack.”

  Caratacus, his head still aching from the stones that had struck him earlier, turned northward and surveyed the outcropping. He watched the bearded raiders, dressed in leather breeches and variegated kilts, yell challenges and shoot more arrows. He looked to the left toward the path, which Tog, Venutios, and the detachment had used to hike up into the mountains behind their attackers.

  “If all goes as planned,” Caratacus said, “our men will rush them from the rear and cut them to pieces.”

  A trumpet blare from above echoed down the canyon.

  “That’s it,” Clud said, “the assault’s underway.”

  Caratacus turned to the captains waiting behind him. “Get the men ready to move forward and clear the rocks once those bastards on the cliff have been wiped out.”

  A thunderous crack erupted. Caratacus looked toward the rocky outcrop again. Dozens of screaming Caledonians tumbled down the landslide, bouncing along the rocks like rag dolls, dead by the time their bodies smashed upon the debris-strewn road.

  Seconds later, Tog and Venutios appeared above on the outcrop waving their hands in Caratacus’s direction. They shouted something he couldn’t understand.

  Caratacus assumed they were saying they had slain the raiders and raised a hand in acknowledgement.

  “By the un-named gods, they did it,” Clud said. A wide grin spread across his face.

  The prince raised an arm and waved his men forward. They raced along the road and quickly cleared the remaining obstructions.

  A short time later, Venutios and Tog returned down the mountain trail, their clothing and faces splattered with blood, the odor a mixture of copper and salt. Their men followed close behind.

  A crooked grin flashed across Tog’s sunburnt face. “We slaughtered the lot.”

  “Aye, we caught them by complete surprise,” Venutios added, thrusting his sword upward, stained with drying, brownish-red spots of blood.

  “Excellent,” Caratacus said. “Give me the details later. Right now, take your warriors and halt the enemy down there.” He pointed to the demons from the north as their army spread themselves along the foot of the valley. “Cut them off.”

  The main Caledonian force, which had remained idle down in the Tees Valley to the northeast, had a clear view of the pass and the avalanche their men had sprung on Caratacus’s army. But when they saw their kin were now being destroyed, they yelled bloody war chants and swarmed to engage Caratacus’s forces as they reached the valley floor.

  Tog and Venutios motioned their men to follow.

  Caratacus shouted, “Follow me!” and waved his warriors forward with his blade.

  Like a raging torrent, Caratacus’s army flowed down into the valley. A great head-on clash ensued involving thousands as warriors hurling their javelins and slamming into the carnage before them. The sounds of metal upon metal swords, screams of the wounded and dying as limbs and heads were severed and smashed to the churning earth, echoed across the plain. Choking dust, the coppery, salty smell of blood, and vile odor of urine and feces drifted from the battlefield. Caratacus was in the middle of it all hacking, chopping, and stabbing with his massive, double-edged, steel sword. He ignored the stifling heat, while from his mount he deftly blocked and parried the enemies’ blows with shield and sword, the impact of their bodies barely shoving him back. Awash in blood and gore, he sliced through the warriors like a hot knife through lard.

  As Caratacus raced around the battlefield exhorting men to butcher the Caledonians, his huge frame appeared in the Caledonian’s midst and reinforced Caratacus’s warriors’ enthusiasm to keep fighting.

  Broken and defeated, in less than an hour the scattered Caledonians fled, leaving over one thousand bodies on the field, a fortune in booty, and hundreds of cattle and horses scattered throughout the countryside.

  Signaling the trumpets to sound recall, Caratacus ordered his men to gather the spoils and animals and move them to an open area and wait for Rhian and the supply wagons, which he expected to arrive shortly.

  Covered in more blood, Tog and Venutios reported back to Caratacus after regrouping their men, and together they rode toward the caravan.

  “All right,” Caratacus said, “backtrack and fill me in on the details of your attack on the cliff.”

  Before answering Caratacus, the two wiped blood from their faces. They looked at one another and grinned.

  “It was like this,” Venutios said. “Tog and me led the men as quietly as possible along the path through the woods. The climb was steep, and the place riddled with bristled gorse—damnable stuff—jagged rocks, and small boulders. Then the Brigantian guide, who was a short distance ahead of us, signaled a halt.”

  “Aye,” Tog interjected, “we heard laughter and curses and an occasional bark of a crashing boulder—careless buggers they were.”

  Venutios took up the story. “Me and Tog crept to the guide’s position, and through an opening in the bushes, we spied the Caledonians along the broad ledge.” Venutios said that several of the raiders dug at the base of a gigantic boulder with daggers and makeshift shovels, while others worked it with a long, thin log. At the same time, many of the three hundred used slings and bows and arrows to harass Caratacus’s army.”

  “We didn’t expect so many,” Tog said.

  “That’s when I whispered we’d carve them down to size,” Venutios added. “We returned to our companies, and I gave instructions to the group leaders. Then, quietly, we spread along the forest’s edge. I raised my hand, and the trumpet sounded the signal.”

  Ca
ratacus smiled as he pictured the fight in his mind, wishing he could have been there with them.

  Tog tapped the hilt of his sword. “We hurled ourselves upon those stinking bastards with a fury,” Tog said, “like banshees from the underworld, wielding and hacking our swords, slicing through the lot.”

  “The rear Caledonians panicked,” Venutios said. “We cut off our enemy’s room to maneuver and pressed the attack. Our men shoved and crowded the Caledonian shit eaters to the cliff’s edge. Out of about three hundred, only their first few ranks could fight us.”

  Venutios continued the narration explaining that although the Caledonians defended themselves with longswords and small rectangular shields with cutaway edges, they were no match against the ferocity of his and Tog’s warriors, whose quick advance had negated the defending superior numbers.

  “Within minutes, we’d cut the enemy to half their numbers,” Venutios continued. “Dozens fell to their death over the cliff, as you probably saw.”

  Caratacus nodded. “Served them right.”

  “Venutios butchered many of the enemy with his great, iron sword,” Tog said.

  The young chieftain shrugged. “You did pretty good yourself, Tog.” Turning to Caratacus, he grinned. “Your brother hacked nine or ten of the slimy bastards to death.”

  “What happened next?” Caratacus asked.

  “It wasn’t long before the survivors fled, screaming down the cliff pathway in a ragtag mob,” Venutios answered. “You know the rest.”

  “I do,” Caratacus said. He recalled the clash of warriors head-on, the war of metal on metal and leather followed: screams, yells, the thunder of hooves, blood and gristle, disembowelment and decapitation; the demons from the north were slaughtered without mercy. “Still, many got away. We will reorganize and strike them again.” He twisted his body in Venutios’s direction. “Then you and your men can hunt down the enemy remnants and avenge your fallen warriors.”