The Wall at the Edge of the World

by Damion Hunter

  The villages thinned out as they marched north, and the skies ahead stayed clear of signal fires. The governor, in a jolly mood, let them sing again as they went.

  Oh fare you well, my darling, we’re off in the morning

  And we may not be back when it’s over…

  They sounded much more cheerful than their song. It was another day’s march to the first fort on the highland line, and then to Tamia, halfway up the Tava to Castra Pinnata. They would come back by way of the western glen-mouth forts and so south again to the wall. Each morning they were a little closer to Castra Pinnata, Postumus a little more jumpy and withdrawn until Valerian dragged him to his own tent, the night before the last march north, and got him as drunk as possible. In the morning, they followed the river to Castra Pinnata, Postumus nursing a headache under his helmet but grateful all the same.

  Castra Pinnata had been built to house a legion, and the outlines of its walls still stood in tumbled stone. The rest had been burnt, not once but twice. The ditch and ramparts, re-dug and rebuilt to a smaller circumference, enclosed only a scattering of new timber buildings at the center, where blackened stones marked the old outlines of Principia and hospital.

  The encroaching weeds and briars had been uprooted and the streets laid out again in their old pattern with military efficiency. The forest creatures who had moved in each time that man had left were only recently evicted, still lairing among the rubble of the outer walls. A fox scurried out of sight as the governor’s cavalcade passed through the remains of the old Praetorian Gate.

  The sun glinted on the gilded standard of the garrison, a detachment of the Aelia Dacorum, as they halted before the Principia for an official reception, and Postumus wondered what the foxes thought of it all.

  Built by the Twentieth Valeria Victrix in Agricola’s day on the banks of a navigable stretch of the Tava, Castra Pinnata was to have been the lynchpin of his short-lived occupation of the highlands, until revolts elsewhere pulled troops from Britain. It was abandoned then and burned to keep the Picts from using it, and then burned again when the Ninth Legion died in it. Each time the foxes would have moved back in, and the deer and the badgers and the owls and the mice. The only men left until Governor Urbicus had sent the Aelia Dacorum here were under the ground somewhere.

  Postumus picketed Boreas with the troop horses and toured the hospital, reassuring its resident surgeon that he wasn’t Calpurnius Aquila, while the governor’s entourage put up their camp outside the garrison’s new walls but inside the old perimeter. Formalities achieved, Postumus dragged his own tent, the red leather of an officer’s abode, from the baggage wagon and erected it, a task which generally involved much cursing, and thought again about buying a slave. The notion only occurred to him when he was at a task he didn’t care for, so it probably wasn’t a great idea. If he married and had a household to see to, that would be time enough. When he had finished, he looked out over the tumbled rubble to the meadows and river beyond, and whistled Finn to heel. The graveyard was going to be here somewhere, outside the walls, and he might as well get it over with.

  He had gone nearly round the old perimeter when he found it in a meadow below the Sinister Gate. The ground was overgrown with scrub and briars and a hare erupted from the thicket as he approached. There was only one stone, tilted now, and sinking on the right side into the turf.

  DIS MANIBUS

  LEGIONARII IX HISPANA

  Nothing more, just the two lines.

  They would have burned all the bodies, of course, a ghastly task in summer when they had lain rotting for days. Postumus closed his eyes. There would have been rain, and ashes, and mud, and carrion birds that had got there first. The Britons would have taken their own dead away, along with any loot they found, and the legion’s Eagle, still a disgrace, a lost Eagle; that was still here somewhere in the mountains to the north but Rome would never see it again unless they occupied the highlands entirely, and that was not an investment that Rome would make even for a lost Eagle, particularly not that of a disgraced legion.

  Postumus pulled his belt knife from its sheath and pricked his forefinger with it. He rubbed the drop of blood on the stone. A prayer, an offering, he wasn’t sure what. They were the same really, weren’t they? “Dis manibus…” It seemed important to give something of himself, some connection to the scattered ash mixed with earth below the turf. What was left of a legion, and his father somewhere in it.

  Governor Urbicus, riding the perimeter with his staff officers, caught sight of the silent figure in the meadow, motionless, head bowed over the old stone with the dog at his heels. He drew rein and watched, and Valerian leaned over and whispered in his ear. The governor nodded and they rode on, but when he made sacrifice that evening at the Shrine of the Standards, he added a prayer for the last men who had tried to hold this fortress.

  * * *

  “This is good broth. Drink it now.”

  Brica knelt beside the bed and Galt smiled at her, but he shook his head.

  “Just a little.”

  He sighed and held out a thin arm from under the furs that covered him. He was always cold now. He struggled up on one elbow and she held the cup to his mouth.

  He managed a sip without choking. “There.” His voice was hoarse. He pointed at the small bundle that Postumus had left him and she nodded and stirred a bit into the broth. It took the edge off the pain so that he thought he could bear not to drink the whole vial.

  “Dawid is here to see you,” Brica said. “He has been in the high pastures with the herdsmen, looking at new foals.”

  “Not at Council?” Galt looked surprised.

  “So far there hasn’t been one.” Dawid pulled a chair next to the bed. Brica took the broth and untouched food away and began to tidy the room.

  “I am a stone in the king’s shoe,” Galt said.

  Dawid smiled. “You are.” Those who stood between the worlds held power, and because Galt had also been regent and the king’s foster father, the Council wouldn’t vote for war against his advice. Not now. Nor would the king risk Talhaiere’s anger and cross him further.

  Galt lay back against the furs as the drug began to work. There was a space between the pain and the sleep when he could feel as he used to, or something like it. It never lasted long. “And what of the day when he can shake the stone out?” he asked.

  Dawid looked away, at the saffron glow of the embers in the hearth. He took off his cloak. The room was stiflingly hot. “The king is my foster brother,” he said slowly. “I will counsel against war, you know that.”

  “And if he sends the call anyway?” Galt asked.

  “I will follow,” Dawid said. “You know that too.”

  Brica slammed the dishes down on the clothes chest and spun around. She didn’t say anything, but her lips were pressed together in a thin line.

  Dawid stood. “When it is time, I will send that arm ring to the surgeon of the Eagles for you, as you promised him. I can’t do any more.”

  Galt touched the enameled band. Dawid knew that a warning to the Eagles might cut off the possibility of war. And also that it might only mean another loss if Bran was determined. “You were a hound the last time we fought,” Galt told him. “And the king an infant. The world changes.”

  Dawid didn’t answer and Brica followed him out. Her shoes made an angry rustle in the straw on the floor. They would quarrel over this, Galt knew. But what else was there to say? Even in the grip of the drug, maybe more so then, he could remember how Bran’s father and the surgeon’s father had fought each other to the death while he watched. He had never told either of them that, why should he tell Dawid now?

  Sometimes he resisted the drug for the dreams it gave him, sometimes he welcomed them, thought of taking more and slipping entirely into that next world, wherever it was.

  * * *

  It was dark and he sat naked with seven other boys around a dead fire, shivering, on the night of their initiation into manhood. Vortrix was next to him, h
is corn-colored hair catching the moonlight that filtered into the hut, each stifling his fear for the sake of the other. “I will be your hound now, and not the king’s,” Galt told him.

  The Beltane fires were dying to embers as Vortrix and Branwen, old Cathuil’s daughter, leapt them hand in hand. He was king now and needed an heir.

  They were washing away the dirt of a hunt where the river pooled into a swimming hole, diving like fish into the depths, rising to splash each other or throw handfuls of river moss. Vortrix’s hair was dark with river water, slicked back like a seal and plastered down his back. He dived, grabbed Galt by the ankles, and tumbled them both laughing into the shallows.

  The roan chariot ponies thundered down the slope into the Roman line. The chariot was a live thing under his feet, the ponies’ reins an extension of his hands, and Vortrix was beside him, war spear in hand, bare chest painted the blue of his war shield and the King Mark tattooed on his brow.

  The fire of their torches ate away at everything the Romans had rebuilt at Inchtuthil, that they called Castra Pinnata. Fading sunlight through the burned roofbeams washed the still body as Galt whispered his last oath. “So I swear, who am the Hound of the Father.” There was blood in Vortrix’s pale hair and soaking his arm and thigh.

  The dreams came and went, but it was always Vortrix at the heart of them. Sometimes Galt thought he was real, felt his hand touch his own. Vortrix had died because that was his right. Maimed, he could not have held the kingship, nor could a regent have ruled effectively with him hovering like a ghost in the background. He had died to secure the kingship for his cub, to stop another inter-tribal war. Kings had died thus before. Had anyone instead lived beyond his wishes for the same cause?

  Galt turned restlessly in the bed.

  “He talks to someone,” Brica whispered, peering through the door again.

  “The old king,” Dawid said. “He comes to him when he dreams.”

  Brica looked uneasy. “From the Otherworld? Or just a fever dream?” Wandering spirits were dangerous, particularly those of powerful people.

  “Both, maybe. It doesn’t matter. He only comes to Galt.”

  XVIII. Epona’s Mare

  It was fall when the governor’s detachment rode south again through a scurry of wind-driven leaves and intermittent rain. As they neared the new wall, the sun came out, flinging scraps of rainbow into the sky over the half-built temple that was rising to mark the governor’s conquest.

  They made camp in sight of it and one of the governor’s junior staff fetched Postumus from his armor-polishing. “Governor Urbicus wants a word.” He shook his head at the polishing rag. “You need a slave. It’s not dignified.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Postumus put the rag down and followed the messenger to the governor’s tent, somewhat warily. Any time the governor had sent for him before, the results had been unsettling.

  This time the governor waved him to a seat beside his camp table and handed him a cup of wine. “Have a drink and a bite to eat and then we’re going to go look at my temple.” It was a pleasant day, the tent flaps rolled up to catch the breeze. The governor pushed a plate of olives, eggs, and cheese toward Postumus. He was in field armor, his scarlet sash knotted around a serviceable cuirass.

  Postumus suppressed the various questions he could have asked, which mainly boiled down to “Why me?” and drank the wine, which was excellent.

  The governor didn’t elaborate. He fed an egg to Finn, who had crept into the tent at Postumus’s heels, and remarked that he needed a dog himself.

  “His loyalties are suspect,” Postumus said. “He switched sides for a bowl of stew.”

  “And perhaps you are a better master,” Urbicus observed. “I doubt that he would part from you for stew. Dogs know things, I have found.” He stood. “Come along. I sent for your horse and mine. We’ll ride across and see the progress.”

  The circular temple was cut into the hill above one of the many tributaries that flowed east into Bodotria Estuary. The governor had designed it himself in the style of his homeland. Three cavalry troopers accompanied them, and Postumus was certain that others had gone ahead. Urbicus wouldn’t ride unprotected even this close to his wall. But he seemed to wish for privacy and the troopers hung well back as they rode, and halted at the short rough-cut road that led to the site.

  Boreas and the governor’s horse picked their way up the temporary track, still dirt but graded to allow drays of dressed stone to make their way up. A legionary crew was at work and saluted as the governor arrived.

  Urbicus nodded at them. “Very satisfactory. We wish to go inside. Please take a rest and don’t drop anything on our heads.” He led the way into the temple while Finn nosed at the foundation stones and peed on one. Postumus pretended not to notice. He assumed the gods made exceptions for dogs.

  Inside, the floor was still rough, lacking the mosaic that would adorn it later, and the roof still open above the scaffolding, the dome unfinished. Inscriptions dedicating it to Victory would be set into the plinth below her winged figure, and commemorate the emperor and the governor who had built it and reconquered the North. It was a message to the Picts as well: We are here to stay.

  “You are right about young Cinnamus,” Urbicus said when they had admired the progress and the marble plinth where Victory’s gilded bronze statue would stand. “The Twentieth has lost a junior surgeon—to promotion, I’m glad to say—and I think I shall send him there. He’s going to be good, as you say, and I don’t want another province snatching him just now.”

  “Thank you, Governor. I take it you are of the opinion that we will continue to require good surgeons?” And the governor had not brought him out here to tell him about Cinnamus.

  “I am always of that opinion. Monuments notwithstanding. I have a question I must ask you, and I fear it is insensitive, but since I am not known for my sensitivity, I shall ask it anyway.”

  Postumus pondered which thoroughly embarrassing question regarding the governor’s personal spy might be coming, until Urbicus said, “Did you lay your ghosts to rest at Castra Pinnata?”

  Postumus tried to switch horses and found no ready answer.

  “General Valerian told me,” Urbicus said. “I was grateful to him. I would not knowingly have put a good officer in an untenable situation.”

  “Untenable, no,” Postumus said. “Painful, yes, but I think I am glad we went there. And if you had known, you might not have taken me.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Urbicus said flatly. He fingered the small stone fish that hung around his neck, a talisman of some kind. Even a governor needed luck. “Which goes to show that I am not infallible, but don’t let that go to your head.”

  “Certainly not, sir.”

  Urbicus nodded. “Very well then. I am under no illusions that the Picts’ ambitions have been curtailed. They are waiting for something. Possibly the Brigantes, which is why the Sixth is going back to Eburacum in full force. And also why I want a Chief Field Surgeon in place before I have a need for one. If we should march north again, if we should end up fighting the Picts at Castra Pinnata again, if you should be the Chief Surgeon, would the ghosts there keep you from your job?”

  So not about Claudia at all. Claudia might have been easier. But he had an answer now, now that he had been to Castra Pinnata. “My family has generations of service in the Eagles. I will serve and my ghosts can talk to me about it afterward.”

  Urbicus smiled. “A straightforward answer. I would have worried if you had denied the ghosts. Very well, if we campaign next spring, you will take Aquila’s place. He recommended you, by the way.”

  “I’m grateful. Or appalled. Or both,” Postumus said. “Before he left Eburacum he terrified my third junior surgeon into competence.”

  “He has that capacity. Just remember the cow and don’t get a big head.” Urbicus nodded again and strode out, indicating the completion of whatever it was they had been doing.

  * * *

  With the new wall
fully garrisoned by auxiliary units, many of them pulled from the Brigantian Hills, the Sixth Victrix settled into its home fortress for the winter, patrolling the hills as weather permitted. The streets and drill fields echoed with the noise of five thousand men whose officers were trying to keep them in shape over the winter, while the civilian town along the riverbanks did a brisk business among the returning troops and their accumulated back pay. Postumus’s morning sick parade returned to patients with coughs, legionaries who had injured themselves with their own weapons, and sudden unexplained rashes that appeared after visits to Rusonia’s House of Fine Dining, With Extras.

  Valerian’s Dacian wing, to which he was currently returned, was mainly assigned to the wall, but he rode into Eburacum on the first day of Saturnalia for a visit with the governor and the legate of the Sixth and went afterward to the hospital to find Postumus.

  It had snowed the day before, but the sky cleared afterward and half the garrison was engaged in pelting each other with snowballs in the streets. Because the previous winter had been miserably spent building a wall in a blizzard, the legate and the governor had declared this Saturnalia a rest from most duties, and had provided five days’ worth of wine and figs and dates and various other imported delicacies shipped up the river from the south.

  Postumus was in an empty surgery, ceremoniously serving dinner to the orderlies on the surgery tables, with the assistance of his junior surgeons and Quintus. The surgery lamps and cabinets were decorated with bunting made of bandage linen and evergreens, and Postumus himself wore a crown of bronze catheters and ivy. Valerian watched in amusement, snow melting from his boots onto the stone floor, until they saw him in the doorway and hailed him in.

  “Io Saturnalia, Valerian!” Lucian beckoned him to the table. “Have a sausage.”