The Wall at the Edge of the World

by Damion Hunter

  “The love you bore my father! I know what kind of love you bore my father!”

  “You know nothing.” Galt’s voice was dangerous now. “And you are hot-headed.”

  “Because I see a chance to free us of the Romans’ yoke!”

  “Precisely. It may be that I have learned things from this Roman that you would do well to hear.”

  “And what has he learned from you?”

  “Nothing that they don’t know already, I expect.”

  “Don’t give me reason to doubt your loyalty, Galt! You are not regent now.”

  Postumus slid away before they could finish their quarrel and find him. Bran and his retinue rode out the next day, and only small Evan bade Postumus farewell.

  He had learned one thing of interest: the tribe was not a legion. Bran might be the High King, but he did not wield absolute power. He could command, and if the council of chieftains thought it unwise, they could decline. If Galt had kept them from an ill-thought-out rebellion during his regency, then he plainly had influence. That was something to take back to the legate, and Postumus knew it was time to go, although he found himself oddly reluctant.

  Just now, having walked the prescribed distance, they mounted the chariot again, Galt leaping into the driver’s place with no sign of pain. He shook out the reins and the ponies flew like arrows down the narrow track. Galt’s hair was freshly washed and bleached and it streamed out behind him like sunlight. He leaned over the chariot rim and crooned to the ponies, his own team this time. They lengthened their stride still further and ran like the steeds of Dis, taking a turn on one wheel before they nearly overset an ox-drawn wagon coming from the hay fields. The driver, a stumpy man with the iron collar of a slave, made a furious gesture.

  Galt pulled up and looked repentant and the ox cart made its careful way past them.

  Poppies flickered on the hillside and above them a cloud of birds swooped joyously on the warm updraft. Postumus eyed them regretfully, thinking of the bleak lands to the north, and the frontier hospital he should have been riding for days ago.

  Galt, watching him, loosed the reins and let the ponies drop their heads to crop the summer grass. “My leg is as close to healed as it needs to be,” he said quietly, echoing Postumus’s thoughts. “You are leaving.”

  “I have to. I’m needed in the north. I’ve outstayed my orders as it is. Not to mention my welcome.”

  Galt was silent for a moment, watching the careening birds.

  He minds, Postumus thought, surprised.

  “We’ve built an odd peace, for two men intending to spy on each other,” Galt said lightly. “I only hope I have proved as unuseful to the legate as you have been to the High King.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Postumus said. Although he thought that if he had given Galt enough reasons to forestall a rebellion, he would count that as useful enough.

  * * *

  Postumus lay somewhat wakeful that night. It was close to Lughnasa and the cutting of the Corn King, and there was a certain amount of pre-festival merriment going on by moonlight outside. The women had been berrying all day, coming back purple-stained with baskets of fruit, and the great fires were already laid. On its surface, midsummer belonged to the Sun Lord Lugh, but it had been the Mother’s once and she was still the earth that took in the corn and made it grow. The Corn King, cut from the last stalks and given to the fire, had been human once, cut down by the new king.

  He shifted under the blankets, wondering how long it had been since a Corn King had died in these hills. The Old People had belonged to the Mother, as the Picts still did. Not all that long, maybe. It was even said that the last independent king of the Silures had died in some such fashion, in Agricola’s day.

  A bank of cloud moved across the moon that slanted past the window’s edge and the room deepened into blackness. Postumus sighed and turned over again. Tomorrow he would be back to the Army, a more cheerful thought to sleep by than the Corn King.

  It might have been that the Corn King got into his dreams anyway, because toward morning he found himself riding a dark pony down the twisting road from Dawid’s hold, through the three gates and the outer courtyard, holding a burning stalk of grain that bit at his fingers until he dropped it and woke.

  There was only the faintest brush of movement that might have been a mouse. Postumus stiffened, awake now, foggy-headed but knowing from the pricking on the back of his neck that it wasn’t a mouse. He lay still, fingers closing around the dagger under the blankets, and waited to see what happened.

  Something that might have been a breath in the dark. Postumus kept his eyes half closed, letting the darkness lighten as they became accustomed. He sighed and shifted and looked asleep again. Another breath, and the faint glint of light off a knife blade. He could see it now, just barely, but barely was enough. Whatever was in the room raised its arm to strike and Postumus rolled out from under the knife that embedded itself in the straw. He was up and had the man by the shoulders from behind before he could turn. The man pulled from his grip, flailing with the knife, and Postumus raked his own dagger across the knife hand and heard the rattle as it fell. They grappled blindly in the dark until Postumus caught the man’s arm with his left hand and twisted it behind him. He pushed him flat to the floor, knees on his ribs. His right hand still held his dagger, unpleasantly close to the man’s ear.

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one!”

  Postumus snorted and dug his knees a little deeper into the man’s ribcage. “I can break those,” he commented.

  “No one! I only thought to rob you.” It sounded like an afterthought, and farfetched at that.

  “You planned to rob Lord Dawid’s guest? And leave his body in the bed?” Postumus pushed on the shoulder where the arm was pinned behind his attacker, where he knew it would be most unpleasant. “I don’t possess anything that would be worth that.”

  The man was silent. It was too dark to see his face clearly, but Postumus supposed it probably didn’t matter. He weighed his options. He couldn’t sit on the man all night. And killing him did not seem like a good idea, however tempting. What wasn’t wanted just now was trouble between Rome and the Brigantes. It seemed likely that was what had been intended. “You had a shot at me,” he said. “Another try would be a bad idea. I am leaving tomorrow, and I think I shall sit up the rest of the night.” He lifted his right hand to touch the dagger to the man’s throat, and took his forearm in his left. “Get up now and remember that I can pull this arm from its socket, or cut your throat, whichever you prefer.” He shifted off the ribcage and the man stood with a moan of pain. Postumus shoved him through the door. “If I’ve broken a rib, you should ask someone to tape it for you before it punctures your lung,” he said to the footsteps stumbling down the hall.

  * * *

  The next day Postumus rode back into his own world again, flanked by half a dozen of Dawid’s men, bare chests and arms displaying the blue spirals of the Shield Pattern and the shining bronze arm rings and torques that marked them for free men and warriors. None seemed to have a cut on his hand.

  Galt, with a cacophony of gold bracelets rattling at his wrists, limped out to the gate to say farewell. He pulled off an arm ring of gold, embellished with blue enamel in the shape of running horses, and put it in Postumus’s hand.

  “It is an insult to speak of payment to a hearth guest,” he said quietly before Postumus could speak. “This is a gift.” He paused. “If for some reason you should ever need to, show it to a man of the Brigantes and you will find that it is also not without power.”

  Postumus nodded and slipped it on his arm. “You should know that there was someone with a knife in my room last night,” he said quietly, too low for anyone else to hear.

  Galt snapped his head up at that and met Postumus’s gaze. He made no other response but said, “May the Shining One keep you in his hand,” and then he was gone into Dawid’s hold, and the little cavalcade was flying out along the downhill track to
ward Eburacum.

  * * *

  Galt shifted in his chair to ease his right leg. “And what does Lord Galt think?” Dawid asked, as Galt had known he would, and the High King smacked his fist on the arm of his chair at the head of the Council table. The rest of the Council, clan chiefs of the Brigantes, listened warily.

  “If Brendan of the Selgovae has sent an emissary to the clans of the Brigantes—” Galt nodded at the man who sat at the far end of the table, opposite the clan chiefs— “then I think that we will listen when Brendan himself comes.”

  “The Warlord of the Selgovae is old,” the emissary said.

  “Precisely,” Galt said.

  “He is still warlord.” The man held up his right hand and the gold signet ring of the Selgovae lord gleamed on his forefinger in the firelight.

  “Enough!” Bran snapped. “I will hear Brendan’s emissary, whatever the Lord Galt thinks. Or Dawid.”

  “My lands run nearest to the Eagles at Eburacum,” Dawid said. “I must think of them before I think of Brendan.”

  “The Eagles’ fort is nearly empty.”

  “So I believe it was when we made war the last time,” Dawid said. “I was young, but I remember.” As the king cannot was unspoken. Dawid was cousin to the king and could push things farther than most, but not that far.

  The emissary of the Selgovae had come to the High King’s hold bearing a green branch as the Lughnasa fires burned down, and the king had summoned all his Council to hear him. Galt wondered if it was some kind of curse to be able to remember the last such council so clearly. It had been Vortrix in the king’s chair then, with Galt beside him. And there was still the other matter to be dealt with.

  “The peace that was made still stings,” the emissary said. “We are a free people and not lapdogs of Rome. When he meets Lugh Shining Spear, he would go as a free man.”

  The rest of the Council were silent. Rhodri, the youngest, deferred generally to the king. Conor was of the royal house in his mother’s line, which still carried power. Duncan had been in the old war and survived it, as had Conor. None, including Dawid, would have willingly been vassal clients of Rome. All, including Dawid, would take the chance to hunt the Romans down again and cleanse their hills of them. The question was whether Brendan of the Selgovae had the power to offer it. He had been flirting with war with the Romans for a year. Conor found that foolish and said so.

  “Brendan would do better to bide his time rather than poking at the Romans with a paring knife until they know exactly how many men he has and where they’re laired.”

  Bran nodded at that. He had been tempted himself, but Conor was right.

  Galt watched the king be persuaded by Dawid and Conor, saying the same things that he himself had said. It didn’t matter so long as he listened. At some point he wouldn’t. And perhaps by then the Roman strength would have been drained off again, as the emperors kept their armies flowing like the tide to try to keep so much territory in their hands. They would decide again eventually that they could turn their backs on Britain.

  Bran stood up and the clan chiefs rose as well. Galt waited until they had left the chamber and they were alone before he turned on Bran.

  “You would kill a man who was a guest in the house? In Dawid’s house?” Galt had arrived that morning, driving furiously along the chariot track between Dawid’s lands and the High King’s hold. This would taint them all, possibly even Dawid.

  “Did someone try to kill the Roman? That would have been most welcome, but it was not my hand on the knife,” Bran said.

  “It was your word that sent it! I am not a fool, Bran. Rhys has a cut on his knife hand. I wondered why you left him behind.”

  “To do what you should have and get you out of the Roman’s lap!”

  “You are a fool. Now you will have to go to Talhaiere and make amends. I doubt you’ll like it.” Galt looked disgusted.

  “He isn’t dead, unfortunately.” Bran shrugged. “And in any case, it wasn’t my knife.”

  “If the High King thinks that trying to murder a guest at secondhand is something the gods will overlook, then the High King is more foolish than I thought,” Galt said. “Your father killed a man on his own hearth, knowing what the punishment would be, and he went to his purification willingly, for the good of his people. That is the least you can do for yours, or evil will come of it, to be talking of war with that on your soul.”

  “Don’t talk of my father to me!”

  “Your father knew what was owed the kingship, and he paid it more than once.”

  “Then run and tell tales to Talhaiere if you will.” Bran turned to Galt so that the triple spiral of the King Mark on his forehead was plain in the light from the lamp. “But I will not make penance for a Roman spy.”

  “Then you will make something worse,” Galt said and turned on his heel.

  VIII. Claudia Silva

  Postumus stepped down from the chariot driven by the captain of Dawid’s household in the shadow of the gray stone bulwark of Eburacum Fortress. Conscious that the manner of his arrival was creating some to-do, he saluted the sentries at the northwest gate and stepped through briskly, but just inside he turned back to watch the little knot of chariots heading north again, growing smaller along the road.

  The great fort was almost empty. Postumus, stopping in the Principia for his orders, found a very junior centurion in charge, and the legate of the Victrix and almost every man in it who could carry a pilum already in the north this past week. His orders consisted of a testy note from the legate that Postumus’s information had better be good, and a request that he report to the secondary field hospital at Castra Damnoniorum on the northern frontier immediately, on pain of some dark and unnamed retribution. He took a day to get a decent bath that wasn’t in a freezing stream, to see how Gemellus was getting on, and to supervise the loading of replacement supplies, for which a mountainous stack of requisitions had arrived by military post that morning. He set out for the north the next day on Boreas, with a cavalry troop for escort, yet another contingent of Valerian’s charges rousted out of the comfort of their hillside forts. They made slow going of it, from having to keep pace with the mule-drawn wagons, and Postumus, as the senior officer present, found himself dealing with crises that rarely came his way as a surgeon. An apparently undying enmity between a mule driver and a cavalry trooper, conceived on the first day out, was among them. Postumus and the cavalry decurion, who were younger and stronger than either, dealt with this by knocking their heads together and promising a repeat performance accompanied by stopped pay for both at any time that either started up again. This tactic halted further physical combat and left them confined to muttered insults about each other’s sisters.

  Worse was the cavalryman who decided to show off for a farmer’s golden-haired daughter and took his troop horse over a thick hedge which proved to have a rocky ditch on the other side, and broke both its front legs. Killing a horse was a miserable occupation, but Postumus and the decurion did it anyway, in the certainty that the shaken trooper would botch it. Then they argued with the farmer about leaving a dead horse in his field and gave him a goodwill payment that the decurion furiously announced would come from the trooper’s pay, after he had paid for the horse. It also rained a good part of the way.

  It was in no good frame of mind that anyone rode into the supply depot at Corstopitum, south of the old wall, where they would add another mule train to their caravan, and double their cavalry escort. Postumus’s mood was not improved by the depot commander informing him that the second cavalry troop had yet to arrive and that in any case the extra wagons wouldn’t be loaded for three days. When Postumus complained that he was needed in the north now and not next Saturnalia, the depot commander said so were the wagons and he didn’t have any spare men to waste protecting one lone surgeon from the Selgovae. Postumus saw the justice of this, stabled Boreas, and stalked off grumpily to find something to do for the next three days.

  When the southern
wall had been built twenty-five years before, Corstopitum had become a lazy, orderly place, keeping supplies moving east and west along the Wall’s length with calm efficiency. Now it was once again the last major supply depot before the front lines, the jumping-off point for troops and grain wagons, and cartloads of pilum points and newly fletched arrows. There was even a disassembled catapult, each piece numbered and tagged, in one wagon. Carts were coming in from the south or barges upriver from the coast to unload, military transport mostly, with a few civilian merchants thrown in. Postumus jumped back out of the road as a load of clay roofing tiles lumbered by.

  He found the fort baths, where he oiled himself and scraped off the road dirt. There was no one else there at mid-morning except the statue of Fortuna at the end of the warm pool, and he spent an hour soaking there with just his nose and eyes above water like a crocodile until he was in a better mood. He persuaded the hospital laundry to do something with his travel-stained tunic, and with a clean one under his lorica and leather uniform kilt, set out to explore.

  The fort itself was being rebuilt in stone, and Postumus skirted around piles of rubble and cut stone apparently left where they would be most in the way by the workmen swarming about them. Outside the gates, as Corstopitum’s military population had exploded, so had its civilian one, swelled by the entrepreneurs who gathered in an army’s wake. The market stalls by the public fountain were doing a brisk business in trinkets and souvenirs, and a number of shops advertised perfume, bath oil, and grooming kits for the discerning gentleman, the small luxuries that would grow scarce beyond the Wall. The Army was getting its fill of other luxuries as well. Six new wineshops and two new whorehouses had opened up in the last week, the hospital orderly had informed him. Business was booming in Corstopitum.

  Postumus wandered idly through the crowded streets, wondering what to do with himself. He inspected a souvenir shop and moved on, having no great desire to own a pottery plate with the likeness of the Corstopitum Basilica embossed on it. He resisted also a jug with the emperor’s visage, an array of sticky sweets, and the blandishments of a woman selling dubious bits of unidentified meat on a stick. A ragged urchin with a basket of rapidly wilting roses tugged at his belt.