Swords Around the Throne

by Ian Ross

  All around him, fighting in darkness, wild cries, spears jabbing and cutting. There were men on the ground, some dead and others thrashing wounded in the grass. Castus glanced behind him and saw his own shield wall waver and break apart. An arrow struck his helmet and clattered away. The grass crackled and rushed with the noise of running men. Somewhere a dog was barking madly.

  For a moment, panic took him. In the darkness he could barely distinguish friend from foe. His own men were dying, and his senses reeled with the realisation of disaster. Where had the enemy come from? They must have been tracking the other group, the auxilia, and struck when they saw the confused confrontation. It did not matter now.

  ‘Sol Invictus!’ he cried out, planting his feet firmly. A man ran at him and he cut him down with a single slashing blow. He sensed movement behind him and spun around, but his shield caught in the grass – a bare-chested figure raised his arm for a killing blow. Castus released his grip on the shield, tried to swing his sword around to block the strike – too slow, too slow. A whirr in the air and a chop, and a Roman javelin spitted the man through the torso from shoulder to ribs.

  ‘Jupiter! Jupiter!’ The cries came from the far side of the clearing, and for a few moments Castus could make no sense of them. The dog was still barking. Then he heard his own men yelling the watchword back, and saw the tide of the confused fighting shift. Roman voices now, and a line of advancing shields.

  ‘Aurelius Castus, that you?’

  Valens came striding through the grass, the dog still capering around him with bared teeth. Behind him, his men had herded the enemy forward into the clearing; between the legionaries and the Mattiaci auxilia, the barbarians were trapped.

  Castus threw his arm around his friend. ‘Thought I’d lost you back in the river!’

  ‘Not me – I float like a cork. Nice to see you made a start without us, though.’

  Castus shoved Valens away, laughing with relief.

  Side by side they moved across the clearing, shields up and swords ready. Others fell into line beside them: Modestus grinning savagely from the darkness; Diogenes with a dark smear of blood on his face. Within a few heartbeats most of the fighting was done, but the butchery continued. The ground was black and wet underfoot, the grass choked with fallen bodies. By the time Castus and Valens reached the far trees the last of their attackers had either died or fled.

  It seemed only moments since he had crouched in the bushes with Erudianus, but when Castus glanced up he saw the eastern sky lightening over the treetops. Birds screeched and cried out of the pre-dawn shadows.

  ‘The riverbank’s about fifty paces that way,’ Valens said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. Now it was lighter Castus could make out the mud and blood on his face. ‘We should be able to make out the boat bridge on the other side. Trouble is, we’ve lost our hornblower. Where’s yours?’

  Castus glanced around, then remembered that his own century’s hornblower had been in the boat with Flaccus. Where were all the other detachments? Surely they had not all been lost in the crossing?

  ‘Modestus, lend me your cloak,’ he said, ‘then follow me.’

  Passing quickly through the long grass, he pushed his way back into the undergrowth and between the trees. It was almost light enough to see clearly now, although the sun was not yet up. Kicking his way through the tangled scrub, not caring about the noise any more, Castus reached the bank of the river. Mist still covered the far bank, and he cursed under his breath.

  He thought of the batteries of artillery over there, the heavy ballista bolts aimed at precisely the point he was standing now. The energy of battle was still in him, driving him onwards.

  ‘Cut me a long pole,’ he said to the men behind him. They gladly shrank back into the cover of the trees, thrashing about, breaking sticks.

  Heaving himself up onto the mossy bole of a fallen tree, Castus gazed out across the water into the slow roll of mist. He considered shouting, but didn’t trust the men on the far bank to distinguish his voice. The artillerymen had been known to loose off shots at anything that moved or called from the barbarian shore.

  One of the legionaries passed him up a cut stick, ten feet or so long. Castus looped the cloak over the top of it, tied it securely, then raised it over his head.

  Come on, you bastards. Open your eyes!

  Waterbirds cackled and splashed down in the river. The mist rolled steadily by.

  A distant call from out of the mist – recognition, or a challenge?

  ‘Jupiter!’ Castus shouted. ‘Jupiter, by the arse of Mars! Preserver of Rome!’

  The cloak flapped over his head, beating the mist.

  Then the noise of a trumpet call from the far shore. One trumpet, then more.

  Cheering drifted across the water.

  Castus let his arms drop.

  4

  For the first day after crossing the river, the army crawled through a wilderness abandoned by man. Trees grew thick and wild, shagged with ivy and moss, and the ground between was lost to vaulting banks of brambles and fortresses of fern. The cavalry scouts and light-armed auxilia went ahead of the column, picking out a route, and the army marched behind them along overgrown droving trails criss-crossed by narrow footpaths, with forest massed all around them.

  After the exploits of their detachment in the riverbank fight, the Sixth Legion had been assigned to the rear of the marching column. There were no baggage wagons with the army: all the supplies and even the artillery were loaded onto mules, and the animals left a rich fester of trampled dung all over the track behind them. Through hot dappled light and plunging shade, the column marched deeper into the barbarian wilderness. In places Castus could make out the shapes of ruined buildings, roofless and overgrown. He remembered what Diogenes had suggested on the riverbank. Surely it was true, he thought. The Bructeri had withdrawn their habitations for many miles from the Rhine.

  But there were at least traces of human presence. They passed through clearings with the remains of fires, and in some of them the embers still glowed and smoked. Later in the day the soldiers saw bodies tumbled into the undergrowth beside the trail where the cavalry scouts had cut them down: bearded men in rough woollen tunics and breeches, some with a cloak shrouding them, others left exposed. The men of the Sixth glanced at them dispassionately as they marched by. These were the men that had attacked them on the riverbank, and sniped at them from the darkness. They owed them no respect – let the wild beasts of the forests take their dead flesh.

  The soldiers made camp that night in clear ground, cutting timber to make a rough breastwork around their position, and the next morning in the cool grey of dawn they marched on once more. Now Castus and his men began to see signs of settled life: small fields stitched into the folds of the hills; the remains of plundered cattle byres. They crossed a small river, the banks rutted and boggy from the passage of the men and mules ahead of them, and climbed up through dense and tangled forest onto a high grassy ridge. From there, the men at the rear of the column could see the trails of black smoke rising from the horizon.

  ‘Is it true what they say, centurion? asked Aelianus. They had paused on the ridge in the hot sun to rest and drink water. ‘Do those trees stretch all the way to the frozen ocean at the top of the world?’

  Castus stared out over the winding valley of the river, the hills and the plains beyond. A landscape of treetops, green shading into distant blue and grey.

  ‘With any luck we won’t have to find out,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen quite enough trees to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘You shouldn’t disrespect trees,’ came a voice from his left. Erudianus, the tracker, tipped his head back and directed a jet from his waterskin into his open mouth. He swallowed, then nodded away into the forested distance. ‘Trees are all different,’ he said. ‘They have quite different scents. The smell of an oak – like that one there – is completely different to a larch like those down the slope. And those pines up there on the hillside opposite...’ He
paused, closing his eyes and breathing in, as if he was inhaling the choicest perfume.

  They marched on along the ridge, and the sun shone down on the column of men, blazing off their armour, their polished helmets and the ranked tips of their spears. Almost like a triumphal procession, Castus thought. Was it just a ritual, then, this attack on the Bructeri? A show of power, to overawe the barbarians?

  He remembered what Valens had told him three nights before as they had looked across the river, and apprehension itched at him. The Bructeri were the last of the Franks still under arms, and with them subdued there would be no further threat from the peoples across the Rhine. Then, with his rear and flank secured, the emperor would be free to direct his army against the new enemy: an enemy that came from the south, within the empire. Civil war was coming, of that Castus had no doubt. Roman against Roman, legion against legion. It was a type of war that Castus had never known, the sort of fighting that would make this foray into Germania look like a rabbit hunt. The thought of it roused his blood, but it chilled him to consider the cost.

  And even if this expedition was a parade, or a rabbit hunt, the fighting here was real, the killing too. By midday the troops saw the first wounded men coming back down the line of march. First came walking men, hobbling on crutches or groping along in linked groups led by slaves. Then came others carried on stretchers, or on the backs of mules. The men of the Sixth moved off the trail each time to let them past; most were silent, a few called words of encouragement to men they knew.

  Soon afterwards, as the trail began to descend from the ridge, the first groups of prisoners were herded back down the column. A few at first, then they came in their scores, roped together at the neck and driven by slaves, destined to be slaves themselves. All of them were women and children, or older people. Not a man of fighting age among them. Castus watched one group of them as he stood in the shade of a spreading tree, drinking water. The captives were dressed in rough tunics of red or yellow wool. A lot of them had yellow hair, and the women wore it in braids down their backs. They passed with heads down, many of them weeping, but as Castus watched, one young woman raised her head and glared back at him, her eyes bright blue in the sunlight, her face taut with sorrowing hatred.

  ‘Not surprising their menfolk don’t let themselves be taken,’ Diogenes commented. ‘The last lot of Franks that surrendered to us got used as wolf-bait in the arena!’

  ‘They look like my people,’ Castus said. He watched the woman as she moved away, but she did not glance back at him again.

  The trail dropped further, then rose onto a last ridge before winding into a wide river valley. All along the valley the smoke trails were rising, and in places Castus could make out the roofs of the thatched houses as the fire took them. This was surely the heartland of the Bructeri, the place they had thought safe from Roman arms. He had to remind himself that Bructeri warbands had raided freely across the Rhine for years. The savagery they had brought to the Roman province was being repaid to them now.

  The soldiers moved down into the valley, following wider dirt roads between fields of standing corn and clusters of ransacked huts. At one point a cow stood in the middle of the path and would not move, and the troops streamed around it; no doubt it would be butchered later. Bodies were piled in the ditches, the blood bright in the sun.

  Smoke from the cooking fires hung low over the encampment that evening. Around every fire clouds of insects shimmered, and the men sat eating in weary silence, swatting at them occasionally. They had brought no tents, and would be spreading their bedrolls for the second night on open ground, but the air was warm and the long march had tired them. Sentries paced the perimeter wall of staked and heaped timber, and beyond them the forests grew hazy in the lowering light.

  Castus sat a little way from the fire, out of the smoke, polishing the spots of tarnish from his helmet with a damp rag and ashes from the firepit. His muscles ached as he sat, but it was a welcome ache, a familiar one. Tomorrow the Sixth Legion would move up to the head of the column and lead the advance further along the valley to the north-east. There would be fighting ahead, and after two days of trailing the rest of the army the men were ready for it. Now and then he would remember the face of the barbarian woman, the captive who had stared at him, and the hatred in her eyes. But he had lived with war for most of his life; people always suffered, he told himself. It was the way of things. The will of the gods.

  He went on with his polishing. Even on campaign, he kept the highest standards, and expected his men to do the same. The slightest spot of rust weakened a sword or a helmet; the slightest worn patch of leather weakened a boot or a belt. A soldier should make sure that his tools would not fail him when he needed them. He was glad of these practical things, which distracted him from other thoughts.

  Distorted in the curve of polished metal he saw the figure of a man behind him.

  ‘Centurion Aurelius Castus,’ the voice said. ‘I haven’t forgotten you.’

  For a moment Castus did not turn – he had recognised the man from his reflection. Looking up slowly at his own men around the fire, Castus silenced them with his glance. Only then did he turn, slowly, without obvious concern.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten that tap you gave me in Bagacum either,’ Urbicus said. The centurion was standing just out of reach, a couple of his soldiers from the Second Legion flanking him, but he was close enough to draw the men at the fire to their feet. He glared at Castus, his twisted mouth curling into a smile. ‘One of these days I’m going to give you a tap back,’ he said to him. ‘And I’ll make sure you feel it. May be the last such tap you’ll need.’

  Modestus had moved up beside Castus; he reached across and laid a hand on his arm, but Castus did not need it. There was no way he was rising to the challenge. Not here.

  Urbicus laughed, a dry bitter creaking sound from the back of his throat. Over his shoulder Castus watched him, saying nothing. The two men from the Second Legion were looking sure of themselves, chests out – but there were half a dozen of the Sixth around the fire. They were bluffing.

  ‘Well, I’ll be seeing you, then,’ Urbicus said, and began backing away. He mimed a thought striking him. ‘I hear they call you Knucklehead,’ he said.

  Castus felt his shoulders rise and tighten. Modestus kept the grip on his arm.

  ‘Perhaps, one day,’ the other centurion went on, ‘I’ll get to weigh that skull of yours, see how dense it really is, eh?’ He made a gesture with his cupped hand, as if he were weighing a sack in his palm. Then he barked a laugh and strutted away between the fires and the groups of other, oblivious men, his own soldiers grinning in easy triumph as they trailed after him.

  Modestus spat on the ground where the centurion had been standing, and punched his fist up with his thumb jutting between his fingers.

  ‘May Hades break his arse,’ he said.

  Three hours into the march the next day, they met the first of the barricades. A great barrier of fallen trees, rising higher than a man and blocking the neck of the valley. From a distance it could have looked natural – just windblown timber. Closer, and the ripe yellow scars of fresh-cut wood were clear to see, and the way the limbs of the trees had been artfully meshed together. The light infantry of the auxilia had already clambered across the barricade by the time the legionary vanguard arrived; they would create a perimeter on the far side, but for the rest of the army, the cavalry and the baggage mules to pass, the obstruction would need to be cleared.

  Without the tree cover the morning sun was hot and bright. Stripped to his waist, sweat tiding down his back and dripping into his eyes, Castus worked with the rest of his men, swinging an axe at the mesh of timber. Most of the others had also shed their tunics; each man was surrounded by a flickering nimbus of insects, drawn to the sweat and the hot blood. The noise of the axes and picks was constant, metal biting wood, chopping and clawing. As each axe-scarred length of trunk was cut free other men wrestled it up between them, carrying it and hurling it off
the path. The rest of the army was drawn up along the trail behind them in close defensive formation, alert for ambush from either flank.

  ‘This is labour for slaves!’ Flaccus cried, wiping a hairy forearm across his brow. ‘Why don’t they get them to do this?’ The standard-bearer and his boat’s company had reappeared early on the morning of the river crossing, to much mocking comment, after a night wandering lost in the forest.

  ‘Army slaves got it easy,’ said Speratus. His broken nose gave him a brutally wicked squint. ‘They just have to clean our boots and cook our dinners – not toil like this!’

  ‘Shut up and get cutting,’ Castus told them. He heaved the axe back, and then swung it down into a shower of wood splinters. They had been an hour at this work already, and the barricade was only halfway cleared. When he glanced over his shoulder he saw Jovianus the tribune standing with a group of other officers, calmly surveying the work. He clenched a curse between his teeth.

  One of the men further up the pile let out a cry and tumbled backwards. Castus paused for a moment – it looked as if the man had missed his footing and fallen, but he was writhing as he lay, plucking at something in his side. A snipping sound in the air and a thud; then Castus saw the arrow shaft jutting from the timber.

  ‘Shields!’ he yelled, throwing down his axe. ‘Arrow attack! Get behind your shields!’

  The shields, armour and weapons had been stacked a few paces back on the trail – now most of the men made a rapid dash to retrieve them. Some stood paralysed, gripping their axes, and others leaped down among the fallen trees, trying to shelter.