The Wall at the Edge of the World

by Damion Hunter

  “Thank you.” Valerian drew a chair to an empty spot at the second table, tactfully draped in white linen to obscure whatever bloodstains might be left from its usual use.

  “We’re just drawing for Princeps,” Lucian said. “Here.” He held out a wooden instrument case filled with small clay beads.

  Valerian reached in, feeling them carefully so as not to get the one with the ‘X’ incised into it. The Saturnalia Princeps was supposed to be a slave or servant, or in this case, one of the orderlies. It wasn’t done for an officer to win the role.

  The box went around and Tertius extracted the winning bead, grinning. He declined to annoy Postumus, but Lucian, Flavian, and Gemellus were fair game.

  “I brought you something,” Valerian said to Postumus while Tertius directed the junior surgeons in a dance that he was making up on the spot. Valerian held out a small leather bag and Postumus emptied it into his hand. It was a sigillaria, one of the small figurines traditionally given as Saturnalia gifts. This one was a bronze mouse about half a finger length long.

  “For toothache,” Valerian observed, and Postumus laughed.

  “Wait here.” Postumus departed for the hospital office and came back with a similar bag. “I’ve been keeping this in the hope that you’d show.”

  Valerian shook out a small dragon, very much in the mode of a cavalry draco banner. He smiled. “Io Saturnalia.”

  Around them, the junior surgeons were marching in a complicated field drill, directed by Tertius. Like Postumus, they were all supposed to keep up their training with periodic drills and marches, and like Postumus, they evaded it when possible, so none of them were surefooted. They were also mostly drunk. The orderlies applauded when Flavian fell into a table and knocked a sausage on the floor. Finn collected it and disappeared down the corridor.

  “After him!” Tertius pointed a finger at Quintus, who had been trying to be inconspicuous. “Rescue our sausage!”

  “He’s a dog. Do you think he’s going to hold it for ransom?” Quintus said. “It’ll be gone by now, and anyway, it was my sausage.”

  Tertius seemed to see some wisdom in this and settled for making them all sing a song in his praise, with many verses.

  Postumus beckoned Valerian out of the surgery and they settled in his office while the festivities went on. “I put up pretty much anything they could break,” he said, removing his crown. “As long as they don’t overset the lamps, we’ll be fine. Just keep your nose open for the smell of smoke.”

  “My grandfather disapproved of Roman ways in general,” Valerian said, “but he took to Saturnalia like an Italian. He once got so drunk at the feast that he fell into the hearth when there was a fire going. My grandmother pulled him away and my mother rolled him up in a rug and put him out. I was four. It was the high point of the holiday for me.”

  Postumus got down the green glass cups, which he had had no intention of exposing to the festivities in the surgery. He poured them each a modest amount. “I have to thank you for telling old Urbicus my tale. I don’t think I could have managed to.”

  “I was afraid you might not appreciate that.”

  “I did, though. He asked me if I could deal with the ghosts if we ended up at Castra Pinnata again, when the Picts do whatever it is they’re going to do.”

  “We all know perfectly well what they’re going to do,” Valerian said. “It’s the particulars that are uncertain.”

  “Anyway, I had to think about that. I suppose I gave him a reassuring answer. He’s made me Chief Field Surgeon, when the Picts, et cetera.”

  “He told me.” Valerian raised his cup. “Io Saturnalia.”

  * * *

  After the festival’s end, the officers of the Sixth were occupied in collecting their charges from various ditches and from the comfortable rooms at Rusonia’s, but it was generally agreed that the holiday had been good for morale. When the legate decided that matters were sufficiently in hand, he allowed pay, which had been prudently held back until after Saturnalia, to be dispensed.

  Postumus traded pleasantries with Appius Paulinus and Frontinus in the offices of the Aquilifer, the bearer of the Eagle who also served as legionary banker, while the officers’ pay was brought up from the strong room under the floor of the Shrine of the Standards. The imperial post, also delivered to the pay office, produced a pair of letters addressed to him as well.

  The first was from Constantia, who could generally charm the optios at Isca Fortress, who remembered Hilarion, into letting her slip letters into their mail bag. Unlike his mother, Constantia had mastered a lovely, readable script. Gwytha’s letters often took deciphering and intuitive leaps of faith.

  I write for all of us to wish you a happy if belated Saturnalia, which will be over by the time you get this. This year the youngest herd boy got the cake with the coin in it for Princeps Saturnalia and made us all walk in a circle in the courtyard, baaing like sheep. Mother gave everyone new clothes and we had a fine time. My hedgehog has apparently met another hedgehog because there were baby hedgehogs in the pantry this summer. Just now they are all hibernating among the turnips. Cook was very unhappy about it and threatened to go to Papa and buy herself and go open a restaurant in Calleva, but I talked her around and gave her my silver bangle with the moonstones.

  Which is a good thing because the biggest news is that Justin has apparently removed his head from whatever treatise on strategy he has been reading, and has finally noticed Aurelia. They will be married on the day before August Kalends and we all hope that you can be here. June is supposed to be luckier, but late July is when Justin can get leave again. He gave her a ring before he left and Papa and Uncle Licinius are consulting lawyers and drawing up the contract. They tend to bog down over minutiae, but I think they’re enjoying themselves. Mother and Aunt Felicia are occupied with the guest list and extensive lists of Things That Must Be Done to both houses, since he’ll have to take her home to our house. She can’t go all the way to the Rhenus on her wedding night. I’m very pleased. I really like Aurelia and she will make a fine Army wife. She’s prepared to follow him wherever he’s posted, which I should hate, but she seems perfectly cheerful about it. Justin’s had another promotion, in case he didn’t write to you, and should be able to afford decent quarters and staff to look after them.

  Postumus tucked the letter into his tunic.

  “Good news, I trust?” Paulinus said, trying to read his expression. Winter quarters were dull; anyone’s news was interesting. “Or not? Sorry. I shouldn’t pry.”

  “Excellent news. My brother is getting married at the end of July. They hope I can be there. That’s the debatable part.”

  “Soldier’s dice,” Frontinus said. “A constantly rolling variable.”

  Neither of them had any mail and they looked wistfully at the second letter but Postumus slid it into his tunic with Constantia’s.

  In his quarters, he contemplated the outside of the wooden tablet. It had come from Lindum and he only knew one person who lived in Lindum. Or who could also get her mail into the imperial post. He broke the tablet’s seal with his thumbnail.

  Postumus my friend,

  I never thanked you properly for the help you gave me last winter and thought to let you know that I am back in Lindum, tidying up various business messes made in my absence and tending my roses. An elderly rose collector of my acquaintance has given me some specialty cuttings, and I have sent a few to your Aunt Felicia to try in her garden. I understand that you have been to Castra Pinnata, and apologize if I have been told things that are private to you, but I hope that it eased your mind all the same. As someone of our mutual acquaintance said, those of us who are native-born often walk a troublesome road. Do you still have the dog? You and he would be most welcome should you have the opportunity to visit Lindum.

  Claudia Silva

  He was pleased to know that she was in Lindum and not risking her tattooed hide among the Caledones. And also suspicious of the fact that she was clearly still in tou
ch with Lollius Urbicus. And asking about him, it seemed. Or perhaps Urbicus had asked her about him and her assessment of his stability. Postumus felt mildly annoyed by that, but Urbicus’s priorities had no room for his surgeon’s sensibilities. He found after a moment that he didn’t mind her knowing, but he wondered what else she knew. She would be risking her life trying the spy game on the Brigantes with those tattoos. Claudia had sold her usefulness for one valuable trove of information. He hoped she remembered that.

  * * *

  “All that can be done has been done.” In Dawid’s hold, Talhaiere bent over the sleeping man while sleet came down outside. His staff, surmounted by the gold disk of the Sun, stood above the bed. “He travels in some other world now, with other company.”

  Galt stirred and held out a hand, now bone thin, to someone no one else could see, and murmured something.

  * * *

  It was the gray hour before dawn, the sun just cutting over the green trees along the ridge to light the gold diadem in the High King’s corn-colored hair, and the gold torque at his throat. His shield hung at his horse’s side, and the gray stone walls beside them were deserted, grown with moss and wild grasses. A curlew wheeled in the air overhead but it made no sound. Vortrix held his hand out and Galt leapt onto the horse’s back behind him. A stag grazing among the trees raised his antlered crown to watch as they rode away westward, the sun on their backs, before he lowered his head to the grass.

  * * *

  Brica watched the body go still and began to weep.

  Dawid put his arm around her. “We knew death was coming, and he has endured much.”

  “I weep for all of us,” she said, “and for men’s stupid pride.” She glared at them both. “Go and tell the king his foster father is dead.”

  Dawid waited until Talhaiere had stumped out of the room. That would be the High Priest’s chore, and he didn’t envy it. He pulled the enameled band from Galt’s arm and weighed it in his hand while the sleet made a metallic whisper on the roof outside.

  Brica caught her breath. “The king would call that betrayal.”

  “It may be,” Dawid said. “I don’t know. But I swore it. I have to think.”

  “And then you will ride out with the rest and what good will it all have done?” She began furiously to pull the braids from her hair for mourning.

  “I don’t know that either,” Dawid said. “There is some circle to be closed here but I don’t know what it is.”

  * * *

  Talhaiere stepped from the chariot by which Dawid’s driver had delivered him to the king’s hall. He hitched his green robe above the puddles of freezing rain in the courtyard, leaning on his staff, hood pulled over his white hair.

  “Where is the king?”

  The small hound who had come to take the horses bowed hastily and pointed. “In the Council Hall, Lord. With Lord Duncan.”

  Talhaiere stood in the Council Hall doorway until they noticed him. “I have need to speak with the king alone.”

  Duncan rose, leaving a half-eaten meal. There was one reason Talhaiere would be here, and a test of wills between the High Priest and the king was not something a man in his right mind would wish to be part of. There was too much power loose there, worldly and unearthly. The air crackled with it.

  “He is dead,” Bran said flatly.

  “Yes.” Talhaiere pushed his hood back and shook the rain from his hair and beard. “You will come to Dawid’s hold and mourn him. And then you will make penance for trying to kill that Roman in Dawid’s hall. Before anything else.”

  Bran stood, knocking his cup aside so that the dregs ran down the table and dripped in the rushes on the floor. The King Mark on his forehead stood out against his reddening face. “I have told you no! I will mourn Galt, for the shortest time necessary, and then we will move!”

  Talhaiere glowered at him. Bran was shouting. Talhaiere pitched his voice so low that the king was forced into silence in order to hear him. “It is not given us to know how any course we set will end; our fates are not foreordained. But some things are inevitable, and men’s actions have consequences in the way that roots grow trees.”

  “Do not come to me spouting Druidical nonsense about roots and trees.”

  Talhaiere glared back at him. His knuckles were white where they gripped his staff. “The Druids’ ways are not ours, but their knowledge is old and deep and we are kin at the bone. You have trifled like a child with dark matters and the longer you wait, the darker they grow. Rhys knew. He came to me after a week of dreams. Have you not had any?” He dared Bran to deny it.

  “Dreams are dreams.” Bran looked furious and uncomfortable. “It was Rhys who held the knife and Rhys has done penance.”

  “You ordered it done. Don’t argue like a child with me. You have committed sacrilege. Your Council know what you have done. How loyally will they follow you when they see what you risk for the sake of your pride?”

  “They follow,” Bran said. “They would not go against him while he lived, but now they will follow me.”

  Talhaiere put both hands on his staff, settling it in front of him so that the sun disk at its top stood above the High King’s head. “For yourself, King? These men knew your father, and for that they may follow you. It is you who owe a debt, and something will pay it.”

  * * *

  The last snow melted and the first muddy grass and shoots of bracken greened the hillsides, and Governor Urbicus made ready to move his forces north to meet the Pictish army that was assembling in the mountain valleys. Scouts had confirmed it, reporting that the Caledones were making their way east to join with the tribes whose lands lay in the central and eastern glens. Urbicus had called out the bulk of the Sixth Victrix, some four thousand men plus their auxiliaries and cavalry, and two-thirds of both the Second and the Twentieth, a force of more than ten thousand. Scouts also reported that the Brigantes remained peaceful, occupied with tending cattle and the spring crop of lambs, and plowing the fields for spring sowing. Those they encountered reacted to the passage of the Roman army through their territory with apparent indifference.

  Postumus left Quintus behind to manage as well as he could whatever should ail the small remaining garrison at Eburacum, and took all three of his juniors. He insisted on Tertius driving a hospital wagon, to Tertius’s annoyance.

  “Shut up. You’re no help to me if you drop on the march.”

  One of Tertius’s old century passed with a mock salute, armored and helmeted, sword at his belt, with the regulation pilums, saw, pickaxe, sickle, basket, bucket, chain, and five days’ worth of rations on his back. “Hail, Tertius, does the surgeon need another houseboy? Tell him I’m available!”

  Tertius made a rude gesture. “Surgeon says I’ve got the same thing the Emperor Hadrian died of,” he informed him proudly.

  By the fifth day they were north of the old wall and well into the territory of the Selgovae, a bleak contrast to the tidy farms, fat cattle, and sleek horses of the Brigantes. Here there were blackened farmsteads, and piles of rubble where anything defensible had been pulled down. Three women digging in a rough garden beside the newly patched walls of a small drystone hut stared as the governor’s army passed by in a sea of scarlet and bronze, its wagons laden with catapults and tents and enough food to have fed their village for a year. One raised her hand as if to fling something at them and another pulled her arm down.

  Postumus sat down in camp with the surgeons of the other legions, and those assigned to the cavalry and auxiliaries, and set about constructing a protocol for the intake of wounded, remembering the crisp efficiency with which Calpurnius Aquila had ordered his domain. The number of wounded depended on the generals, but the number of survivors on the surgeons. One of them, Galerius of the Second Augusta, was senior to him, and he worried about that, but Galerius seemed unruffled. “I’m due for retirement,” was his comment. “You cope with Urbicus.”

  Postumus had also been pleased to find that Domitius, the surgeon from Alauna, h
ad been promoted to a senior’s position in the auxiliaries.

  “I’ve heard that Pictish spears are dipped in whatever nasty thing they can find.” Cannius, the surgeon from Valerian’s old wing of Dacian Horse, looked around the circle.

  “Haven’t seen that myself,” Domitius said. “In my opinion we’re more likely to poison ourselves.” He gnawed determinedly at a military biscuit, the evening rations, along with sour wine, olives, and what Postumus considered a dubious cheese. Finn regarded the cheese hopefully.

  “I’ve heard that too,” Sabinus, the surgeon of the Twentieth, said. “On the other hand, I’ve also heard that they have three-inch fangs and their priests can start fires with their eyeballs.” He rubbed his chin, the same helmet callus they all bore. It was an almost universal Army habit. “How many men have we got, all staff included?”

  “Eight senior surgeons, counting auxiliaries and cavalry,” Postumus said. “Plus at least two juniors apiece, probably two apprentices each, and orderlies. Maybe forty all told, plus orderlies, and most of the orderlies can handle basic work.”

  “That’s marginal,” Galerius commented. “On the other hand, I’ve worked with less.”

  “The first thing we’ll get will be the wounded from the chariot charge,” Postumus said. “They really do it for effect, to scare the piss out of men who haven’t seen it before. It’s not sustainable but they make a fine mess while they’re at it.”

  “The ones who’ve been in Britain long are on to that by now,” Domitius said, gesturing at the sea of tents that filled the marching camp. “It’s that first time that’s so exhilarating.” A small amulet carved in the figure of a fish dangled from his wrist, and Postumus remembered a similar one around the governor’s neck.

  “What is the little fish?” he asked Domitius. “Is it sacred?” Anything that brought luck was welcome.